Sara Kabir

Studio Ghibli, the trail-blazing Goliath of the Japanese animation industry, has a house style that’s hard to miss.

Each book in this list features strong, fearless, bold, multi-faceted, creative, inspiring, vulnerable, witty, and most importantly, real women from all walks of life.

At its core, Encanto is a story of a family trying to support each other.

It is still eerily relevant to our contemporary hustle work culture.

You walk into a room and come across stacks and stacks of books neatly arranged on shelves lining the walls, a couple of pristine white bedsheets, an intricate marble backdrop, and the smell of half a dozen candles blending together as your eyes are drawn to the centre of attention: glimmering, gold-foiled book covers. This is the commonly seen, romanticised setup for a book blogger’s photoshoot. Unfortunately, the real, behind-the-scenes process of blogging in Bangladesh can be quite different. 

Whoever said the phrase “Make your hobby your job, and you won’t work a day in your life” clearly didn’t think through the whole process of actually starting your own business and monetising your hobby.

The perfect allegory for young creatives trying to make it on their own.

BTS’s new hit single, “Permission to Dance”, depicts an idealised future, with a Covid-free world.  The upbeat song with its bright colours and pop beat makes us almost reminiscent for a time that hasn’t come yet; a future where we can take off our masks, feel the fresh air and dance to our hearts’ content with our loved ones. The bright, funky beat is enough to make you want to get up and start dancing along.

Fitzwilliam Darcy. You know who we are talking about.

For any popular book to screen adaptation with an already existing fanbase, there is always a risk of either enraging or disappointing fans of the original source material or confusing new viewers. Netflix’s new fantasy series, Shadow and Bone, takes that risk and takes it a step further by having Leigh Burdugo, the author of the bestselling “Grisha” trilogy and “Six of Crows” duology, upon which the show is based, as an executive producer. Burdugo, along with show developer Eric Heisserer, took this already enriched fantasy world filled with magic and mayhem and brought it to life for the audience brilliantly.

What started as a group of seven boys from South Korea with big dreams but only a handful of fans has amassed today into the global phenomenon known as Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS) with millions of admirers from all over the world. BTS’s fanbase, known as ARMY (short for Adorable Representative MC for Youth), are often misjudged for being immature and toxic due to the lack of proper media representation.

In 2013, a group of seven boys, all from different backgrounds, who left behind their friends and family to follow their dream of becoming K-pop artistes, were about to debut.

Korean dramas, popularly known as K-dramas, are taking the world by storm, and audiences here in Bangladesh are not immune to the allure. For years, aside from home-grown tele-fictions and movies, most Bangladeshis have adored American TV shows and Indian serials as their source of entertainment.

“Language courses are so expensive and complicated,” said the guy from the 1940s.

Altered Carbon made a huge debut this year and had people asking for a second season days after the first one's release. It takes place in the future, where the rich can practically live forever by transferring their “souls” to other bodies, once the old one ages. However, the not-so-rich people are bound to mortality. These new rules of existence are fascinating, and so is the emotional fallout of the presence of eternal life. As with so many of the vampires

With the news of the confirmation of Season 3 of this series being at the top right now, the excitement over Stranger Things is bigger than ever. Stranger Things is an American science fiction-horror Netflix

You might think you know a thing or two about K-pop if you've listened to Gangnam Style but K-Pop is so much more than this one song.

I have been a book lover since childhood and I found various ways to spread the joy of reading. Now as a teenager, I have access to social media, which has not only broadened my horizon as a reader but also as a “bookstagrammer”.

If you are a teenager, there's a chance that you suffer from the symptom known as “social awkwardness”. Or you are a party animal who can and does socialise with literally everyone you meet and in that case, teach me your secret. Being less social is not a disability or disease which can be addressed by popping a pill or visiting a doctor.