Momina's Space

So first of all, I want to thank the team of Parhai Likhai for being so kind and sending me this lovely book. The delivery was prompt and the book so nicely packaged that it just filled my heart with so much happiness! Also, the book itself was very nice quality and reading it was an experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. .. Here’s my review of the book: It is indeed one remarkable masterpiece of a book. Although reading it requires a little patience at the reader’s part as it can get a bit difficult at time. The excellence of this book, in my opinion, lies in how the author navigates through so many time periods, each significant in its own way, so effortlessly. Covering the time of the war of independence in 1857 to the post-partitipn Pakistan in 1947, the author makes his characters – or more precisely tge generations of those characters – inhabit and engage with the lives that they have been entrusted with and evolve as the time goes on. The best thing about Hussain’s wri...

The Story of Philosophy  by Will Durant I'm reading this book these days and enjoying it so very much. I try and read one chapter of it daily and usually talk about it on my Instagram page where I have joined a challenge called #betterreadschallenge from the 1st of January. In this challenge you have to basically update your followers about the books you read everyday whether you get to read a hundred or merely five pages a day. I think this is a really great challenge as it pushes me to do at least a little bit reading everyday.   So this book covers the lives and works of all the important Western philosophers. And it's simply fascinating to read about these great thinkers as real people with real, exciting lives. Most of the times we get to know about these intellectuals with reference to the work they have produced without thinking of them as real human being made of flesh and bones, having relationships and all. So The Story of Philosophy is very useful as it le...

It feels like a thousand years since I last posted here. I don't know why but I developed an inexplicable aversion to posting. It started feeling like a chore that I didn't want to do. And that's kind of sad because posting here is something that I used to feel really passionate about. But then it just got a little frightening all of a sudden and I gave up on it completely. I think one of the things that was stopping me from posting here was the fact that I wanted my blog to be absolutely perfect. I wanted it to be something I had envisioned it to be for such a long time. But having that mindset and running after perfection didn't do me any good. It just made me feel hopeless and unmotivated. But for the past few weeks I just can't stop thinking about it. I think I really strongly wish to write and that suppressing this need would only make me feel sad. I post on my Instagram page almost daily and get such a positive response from all of you lovely people, but post...

I started reading this book quite a while ago and it took me a lot of time to finish. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I just don't stick to reading one book at a time and start reading any book that comes my way. Yes, I'm quite desperate like that. The disadvantage of this is that I rarely finish any book quickly. Secondly, I had taken a huge break from reading books that are not related to my MPhil thesis, although I wanted to do so very much. But because I had t discipline myself and read the ones that would help me write my thesis better, Beloved got really neglected. Now, however, I've submitted my thesis and can spend all my time reading whatever I feel like. So I just managed to finish this one and it didn't really took me that long  to finish after that. Enough about me now, let's talk about the book itself.  It's a book about an African-American woman, Sethe, who used to be a slave and had had to escape her previous masters in order to...

I bought this book a few weeks ago just because I saw it in a bookshop. To be fair the purchase was not entirely arbitrary because I had definitely seen people talk about it on Instagram. So I got the book along with a few others and began reading it the very same day. And I was pleasantly surprised because, as the name suggests, the book seems to be quite a daunting one, one that treats Pakistan as a land of darkness and horrors. However, by the time I was done reading the introduction I had realized that it turned out to be the exact opposite of my expectations. The introductory chapter, which may be taken as the crux of the entire book, gives a wholesome picture of Pakistan as a country and sheds light upon various different problems it has to deal with due to its geopolitic location. As the author points out that the book discusses "Pakistan's internal problems" as well as "the sources of [its] internal resilience.  The book was published in 2011 and is ...

I watched 13 Reasons Why a few days upon my friend’s recommendation. She warned me that it may affect my mood negatively. To be honest, I had heard that the show is about suicide but almost all the shows I watch are about death and gore so I didn't know how this one is going to be different. But it was certainly different and immensely depressing. It is one thing to see someone’s head being chopped off and another to see someone pushed to a limit where they take their own life. The show is about a high school girl named Hannah who commits suicide in the beginning of the show and leaves behind thirteen cassettes each explaining a reason for her suicide. Watching the first season made think how each and every person in our lives has the ability to have a significant impact on our lives or how we can change somebody’s life by our behaviours towards them. It made realize how awful school life can be and how it can maim somebody’s self esteem for life.  The show discusses issue like...

(Disclaimer: This is the last one of my old posts that I wanted to import here. Hope you enjoy reading it!)  (Courtesy: Google Images) First of all I need to define what I believe beauty is. For me beauty is to have a healthy, functional mind as well as body and it doesn’t matter what size you come in or what skin colour you have. If you have a positive mind and your body works properly, you are beautiful to me! It is not only important to have a beautiful body but to also have a beautiful mind and more often than not, these two things are very much interrelated. I believe that our bodies go through so much stress every day in order to function properly so they need extra care to maintain themselves. I am no beauty expert or guru by any means but following are the things that I DO to take care of myself and stay beautiful! 1. Drink loads of water: We all know how important drinking water is for our health. It is essential for all our bodily functions. If we do...