a study day in my life | first week back to class, thesis, lots of reading 

I don’t have the same exact interests, but this video makes me remember what it felt like to be excited to learn and pursue interests. I feel like I’ve been so dead inside the past 3 years. This video inspires me to focus on things that make me happy.

First time I'm so early. I love your videos so much. I've wanted to study English Literature since high school but I wasn't brave enough to take the plunge for what I wanted and went with a safe option cause of the insane employment crisis in my country. Anyway, watching you study and do these vlogs is comforting. And the reading. You have amazing taste in literature. ❤️ Have a good one

Hope everyone is having a great morning :)

David Copperfield is one of the books that I'm actually in love with. Please please please do a complete detailed annotation showcase of it once you're done, I beg of you. Matter of fact make a separate video on detailed annotations walkthrough of all the Dickens' works you read. Big fan lysm Em!❤

I started reading “the poetics of space” for an art project I was working on, but it might be relevant to your hotel project. It basically just explores the significance of physical space in art and literature, but mostly poetry. It focuses on the home, but the theory of it can be applied to other things. It’s kind of dense since it’s just theory/philosophy, but from the small bit I’ve read so far, the writing is often very poetic even though it’s non fiction.

Wow... the unexpected intertextuality btwn David Copperfield, Gun Island, and Dance Dance Dance is very cool. Your videos are an integral part of my Sunday late morning coffee ritual, and I needed this particular pick-me-up more than I thought I did. Merci beaucoup!

That person jet-skiing in winter along with the iced coffee while out in the snow is literally Canada... we are the people who are like "it's minus 40 any one want ice cream for dessert?" and most people will accept it :D I love Canada, we are definitely an interesting group :P

I absolutely did not expect that you would be reading Amitav Ghosh for your curriculum. But, honestly I am so glad ❤ I read The Hungry Tide when I was 14 and it stuck with me so much that words fall short to describe what I feel. I am really glad that his work is reaching international students and it is getting the due credit.

Super cool that there's an ecological lit course, I'm doing a world religions minor and I took a course on religion and ecology a couple years ago that was one of the most fascinating courses I've ever taken - ecology in the humanities is just a lot of fun tbh 😊

I’ve been a classic film fan my entire life and I legit squealed when you held up Hotel Lobbies and Lounges because the cover photograph is a still from Grand Hotel (1932). I recognized it right away ❤

What a beautiful community emmie has built filled with positivity an love. Always a calm and comforting vibes. Ty Emmie❤

This was lovely, thank you for bringing us along on your day. Its great when connections between the books your reading come up, it adds to my reading enjoyment when it happens 😊

I love the weird intersection in books! That’s so cool that you’re getting so many right now. I’m loving David Copperfield and I put Gun Island on my TBR. The cover makes me think of Ninth House which at first made me not interested at all so I’m glad you’ve talked about the book so much 😅

Emma!! I'm so glad you're doing study vlogs again!! Right now, I need to be disciplined and go back to writing my 25 pages long research paper before I watch this, but I'll be glad to come back to a new video, can't wait!

You should read The Shining, one of the most influential modern horror stories and it is all about a hotel

This was so on time since I desperately needed motivation to keep on studying, Love ya! 💗

Your vlogs are always so incredibly calm, thank you for you efforts and continually putting out amazing content ❤

It's so cozy when I see the vlog. Thank you for sharing your daily life today, emma:) 💕

i can’t define the comfort you give me with your videos . I love you ❤

I love every new video. I’m going to start watching the old ones in between new ones. Thank you for sharing your day Emma.

i was feeling very low today and cannot stop crying for hours really haivng a hard time coping with it and then you came 🥺 thank you emma !! every time i watch your videos it feel like having a friend, less alone. love you. hope you're having a pleasant day^^

Hi, Emma. Dolphins were a common motif found in fountains and on many hotels and other structures during the Victorian era. Not sure what they symbolized but, as with pineapples, adopted by royals because they were rare, delicious, and costly, dolphins evoked if not a royal then perhaps an upper-class ambience. This could explain the interesting concordance among your books that somehow includes Dickens, yes, with whose work Murakami is likely conversant.

you might find edith wharton’s short story “a cup of cold water” interesting for your thesis! a good chunk of it takes place in a nyc hotel

The timing couldn't have been better , i have been desperate for motivation. Never clicked a video that fast ! love how regular your posts have been 😊.thank you

It’s so heartwarming to see you talk so happily and passionately about these books and classes 💖

watching this while procrastinating on uni work as i've done the entire week... intersections in books are funnn

aaa another vlog!! u inspire me so much, emma

PLEASE do a thesis diaries series thing. I would love that!!!

Two of some of my favorite movies are Eloise at the Plaza and Eloise at Christmastime, based off the Eloise books. They are so comforting and pure, and I adore the community the movies set up within the Plaza Hotel. I think that's another aspect of hotels that is so interesting - all the moving parts that work together to create an imitation of life to become someone's home away from home, over and over with all different kinds of people. It's really interesting and comforting to think about!

Emma, you are amazing! I love you talking about the intersections between the books and the ending with you pushing the huge snowball and all the nature ! 💖💖💖💖

opened the app praying to see a new video and here it isss, i’m so happy

Happy start of the semester! Seems like you have such interesting assigned reading to get you started at least :) As for the weird coincidences, I had one recently. I’m rereading Hamlet for fun, and reading Vonnegut’s bibliography. The book I was on, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, features Hamlet prominently as a theme. So now I gotta reread and unpack that 😅 stuff like that is fun, but weird

The intersections between David Copperfield, Gun Island, and Dance Dance Dance! So freaky and so cool! I love when that happens when I’m reading very different books simultaneously.

thank you, emma!!!! 🥺💗

this was the perfect motivator to start a new week, thank you 🥹🫶

love today's video ♡ a motivation to study as well!

Your handwriting is so aesthetically pleasing ugh ❤

thank you so much for your content💘 i feel like a content flower watching this, as if pure joy was always at our reach and we just have to let it come across us

I started reading Dance Dance Dance and I’m loving it so far!

I love your uni videos. I've had my eye on Gun Island for a while and this has made me want to pick it up 😍 Your ecological lit course sounds really interesting. I did a uni course that was all about the Global South and it was one of my favourite courses. We read a lot of really interesting texts for it and had great in-class discussions too 🥰✨

Love your videos so much as always, Emmie ❤ I’m thinking about doing a theses too because I’m closer to graduate from my Hispanic literature degree! So watching you starting yours really makes me feel so excited ❤

I am also a Murakami fan and read a lot of his stories for my literary translation class, if you are interested, one of his short stories titled "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey" (2020) takes place nearly entirely in a hot springs inn. It stands alone in the New Yorker Fiction podcast series but is also in his First Person Singular (2020)~ good luck on your thesis! Finishing up my linguistics thesis currently 😊

I live in NH and the historical grand hotels are a huge thing up here! I’m sure there’s so much literature about them… wanted to mention in case it helps with your thesis!

You drinking cold coffee in that cold weather is such a mood!

I read David Copperfield a couple months back and absolutely loved it.

So glad to hear you're writing a thesis!! I just finished mine (I wrote about trauma in the haunted houses of horror literature) and I can't wait to hear more about your thesis writing :)

I miss school and my stydies, I love this videos becoue they make me remember how amazing experience it was for me.

Hi Emmie, I'm in the process of ordering all of Murakami's books, due to your influence as well as to Carolyn's and I just ordered Wild Sheep Chase, as I have his first 2 books you mentioned already. It's so thrilling to vicariously be a student at uni again THROUGH YOU and not worry about writing papers or taking exams!(😊)

Love your videos as always! Esp the music for this video … excellent choices !!

I thought the research on hotels was for your book. Would love to see how you're going to connect English lit and hotels, bit of an odd choice. Nice video as always. Loved those dancing waves, nicely captured.

in terms of ecological/climate lit (and also Indigenous Australian lit), I'd recommend checking out The Swan Book by Alexis Wright. It's probably one of the most difficult things you'll ever read, but it's utterly incredible. I genuinely don't know how to describe it, but once I'd figured out how to read it it was mind-blowing. She wrote it wanting to take a Western art form and make it "indigenous", using what she describes as "aboriginal realism" - sort of like magical realism, except an Indigenous world-view wouldn't necessary describe its events as "magical", so it's a novel but one which follows none of the rules or logic of the traditional Western novel. It centres an Indigenous world view which privileges the natural world over anthropocentrism and is just amazing. I suspect it might cover quite a lot of your interests at once.

Ahh I’m so pleased you picked up Dance Dance Dance, really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. One of my favourites of Murakami 🥰

I wrote a paper on Gun Island, there's so much good stuff in there! But yeah, I agree about the dialogue. Speaking of freaky links between things, I wrote my first paper in the Indigenous lit class about my grandmother just after her 100th bday, and I titled it "One Hundred Years of Fortitude." 😄

the chances murakami took the hotel name from dickens's novel are high, but the chances of you reading both books at the same time?? that was such a cool little coincidence! as a fellow english (and portuguese) language and literature student i always love watching the videos where you talk about uni 🥰

the thing about intersection in books is so real!

I m from India and Amitav Gosh is one of my favorite Indian authors.. I love his Hungry Tide.. Really happy to see his book included in your curriculum ❤

An essay that you might like and/or find useful for your thesis : Marc Augé - “Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity” 🤗✨

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is a great hotel book! 😊

David Copperfield is my favorite novel of all time!

The same thing happened to me recently where I just read two books that happened to be about food and memory. Ghosts by Dolly Alderton and Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune by Roselle Lim. Very interesting synchronicity!

i'm also taking an ecological lit course right now! we're reading ghosh in it as well, but the hungry tide instead of gun island

Todd here. Dear Emma, Thank you for making another nice and relaxing video! When I was 18 I thought I wanted to be a legal assistant, I took a few semesters of college, but stopped going after that. I always new college could be fun, and is an important part of life, but wanted a break and had my mind on other things. I have my own booktube channel that is still growing. I'm a published poet and plan on publishing all of my poems into one collection, I have to remind myself to never give up and keep trying. I might go back to college and take a few classes, I would love to work as a poetry editor for poetry magazine out of chicago. Peace.

Wasn't feeling my best today, and I was watching your old videos.

A hotel lobby in the book I've just read is described as "a parking garage designed for human beings instead of cars"

I'm currently rewriting my phd proposal and it's just so good seeing how academic writing is different for each country. I am from Brazil and I'm in a Media Studies phD writing about techno-orientalism in cyberpunk ❤

your videos always remind me that i don't actually hate college. thank you so much

Can’t wait for your thesis videos!

10:02 side note, I like the frames in the back

Hi Emma, I love the swans, and sea glass........great title for a story !

Ikr? This happens to me as well. It's like the books "KNOW"🙃😂

I just want to say I read Wild Sheep Chase because of you and I love it❤Thank you Emmie

I am loving David Copperfield. The name "Peggoty" is now one of my favorite words. I almost want to take up knitting. Almost.

I'm reading David Copperfield and I cant help relating! I am greatful your recommending! 😅enjoying it alot sofar! Anyway. 😖

HII!!!! I'M A BIG FAN I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS IT'S SO SATISFYING

the hotel in the shinning would be great

omg… I’m suffering my thesis for english degree too… that’s so tough especially design questionnaire for my research😢 hope i can get through it asap

In an earlier video, you mentioned you would be reading Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh. I just finished it. Great book!! I think you should read or listen to the Hunguy Tide first. The characters, as well as the islands, are better explained in Hungry Tide.

your handwriting is so pretty :p

Hello Emmie….Love your videos. Where did you purchase the gray and white stand/dresser beside you? I’m looking for something similar. Thanks in advance

"Gun Island" arrived for me at the library Monday.... The first twenty or thirty pages are excellent so far...

I picked up 'A wild Sheep chase' from your recommendation which led me to Dance Dance Dance despite--yes few of the part were unsettling--I cannot thank you enough for leading me to it...which also left me asking is it the work of Murakami I am in love with it or the translators

I'd love a round the world challenge update!

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend A Gentleman in Moscow! It's a historical fiction set in Russia and takes place entirely in a hotel. The protagonist is actually exiled and confined to the hotel so it really demonstrates how the hotel becomes his entire world while he's completely oblivious to the happenings of the outside world.

I've heard that the dolphins of Alderaan come out only when the weather is wet. You agree, n'est pas? It's nice to see you, and I'm glad you're finding your métier if not your niche.

If lovehotels would also count as hotels. You could also maybe look at one of your favorites of Murakami After Dark??

Wishing you the best of luck with your course and your reading 📖 prayers and thoughts for you and your family love your Aussie family friend John ❤❤❤

One of my profs recently talked about a book called Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor. It takes place in a hotel too and (apparently) really ties this into the themes. I have not read it yet, but it sounds really good and like something you might enjoy?

I give you MASSIVE respect for throwing in David Copperfield along with your school reads. Charles Dickens isn’t exactly an author who has any light reads. 😊

Hey Emma! I've been struggling to get back into the reading and writing of my English-major heyday. I contracted Lyme disease in 2010 and, although it's long gone now, it's left me with a mild cognitive impairment and a few chronic illnesses. I know you deal with post-concussion syndrome, so I was wondering if you had any advice for drumming up the mental energy it takes to read and write (especially reading the classics)? It feels like my brain just won't boot up properly.

Amitav ghosh is a great writer in Indian literature in English....If you are interested in literature during Indian partition...try out Ghosh's THE SHADOW LINES. A fantastic postmodern outlook on India's turbulent times.

It's the middle of March and it's still snowing?! Guess I'll know what that feels like when I move to Greenland next year.

essa bossa nova no começo do vídeo?? Não tava esperando

Hi Emma ! Love your videos as always. Sorry I don’t Know if you already said it in another video but what is your graduate school major ? Best ❤

Ok but where did you get that Alderaan shirt. Im dyin rn

I wish I had notes as neat as yours 😅

Have you given Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel a try?

Nice one ♥️😍

If you're looking for more hotel novels, Temptation by János Székely is a Hungarian classic and an absolute masterpiece. Follows a boy living in poverty during the early twentieth century who grows up to work in a Budapest hotel. One of the best novels I've ever read, even if it's just to tick Hungary off the list it's beyond worth the read

Can I ask where you got that Alderaan t-shirt? It cracked me up

Gonna sound weird but I actually miss university. Great video as always, Emma! I don't know if you've mentioned before but what is your thesis about? Have a wonderful week!