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About lydias

I'm a sci-fi writer who loves lifting weights and hates eating Brussels sprouts.

Top Ten Tuesday: Animal Companions


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A green frog sitting peacefully in the water of a pond. The water includes algae and a few small green leaves that have fallen from nearby plants. Thank you to P.S. I Love Books for submitting this theme.

Here are ten books about animal companions that are based on true stories. They make me wish I could have a pet!

1. Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan

2. Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron

3. Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien

4. A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion
by Anthony Bourke

5. Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer

6. Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry

7. A Seal Called Andre by Harry Goodridge

8. In Search of Lost Frogs: The Quest to Find the World’s Rarest Amphibians by Robin Moore

9. Mexican Mutts Tequila Pups & Chili Dogs: True Stories of the Dogs of Mexico by David Gordon Burke

10. The Big Squeal: A True Story About a Homeless Pig’s Search for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by Carol Alexander

Do you all have pets? What types of pets do you wish you could have?

 

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A Review of Desert Soul

Book cover for Desert Soul by Alejandra Cue. Image on cover is a photograph of a desert filled with red sant. There are no signs of life anywhere, but there are a few small mountains on the horizon. Title: Desert Soul – Old Tales of the Traveler 

Author: Alejandra Cue

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: February 3, 2019

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal

Length: 20 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

When the desert of ashes decides your fate, there’s no escaping it. When death crawls in the blackness, struggling is pointless.

Or is it?

This is the story of a boy with one such fate, a boy who lost and found hope in the desolate land, hope that came in the form of a mysterious traveler. But does this newcomer have the power to invalidate the desert’s will, or will they struggle in vain? And even if they succeed, so what? How will they escape the nothingness of ash and sand and death?

Prepare for the tale of a boy and a traveler, who at the time no one knew would become the Traveler.

Content Warning: Death.

Review:

Let the punishment fit the crime.

I was impressed with how Ms. Cue balanced the plot and character development of this short story with her world building for this series as a whole. As someone who has never read anything set in this universe before, I immediately felt at home in it. Yes, there were questions I had about how everything worked that were left for later development, but those mysteries in no way impeded me from enjoying the conflicts here as the traveller tried to save the life of a child whose life was endangered by the heat and intense thirst he felt in the desert. Kudos to the author for pulling this off as it was such an intriguing introduction to her work. 

The conflicts kept me heavily invested in this tale. Not only was the child in dire need of water and medical treatment from the time he’d spent alone in the desert, the traveller who assisted him faced multiple obstacles in his attempts to help the boy. Along with figuring out how the kid had ended up in this predicament, I wanted to know if he was going to be okay and if anyone could help them. This is an excellent example of how a short story can provide all of the necessary details to pull a reader into their world and make us care about the people we find there. Not everything needs hundreds of pages to be effective. Sometimes brevity is the best option!

As excited as I already was by this story, the twist at the end only amped up my interest. Obviously, I can’t share spoilers there other than to say that it made me look at certain characters in a new light and wonder what other secrets they might be hiding up their sleeves. There is definitely something to be said for revealing information only as it’s needed and trusting the audience to figure out the rest with the sufficient number of clues we are provided.

This is part of a series, but it works perfectly nicely as a standalone tale.

Desert Soul has piqued my interest and made me want to learn more about this world.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Lessons I Learned From a Book Character

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Lessons learned from Isaac, the protagonist of Isaac’s Song by Daniel Black. I highly recommend reading Don’t Cry for Me, the first book in this series about a family struggling to heal from generational abuse and dysfunction, before tackling the sequel because of how many references and retellings there are of previous events.

So, what did I learn from Isaac:

The worry sorry is written on a white card. The card is being propped up by two sprigs of dried flowers and leaves against a white background. 1) Forgiveness is different for everyone and does not automatically include reconciliation which is not something I was necessarily taught in church growing up. Too often, they’d expect people to forget what happened and welcome the person that hurt them back into their lives without any evidence that the person who harmed them had actually changed.  You can forgive and invite someone back into your life perhaps with very strong boundaries and only after genuine, longterm evidence of change on the transgressor’s part this time. You can also forgive but never interact with that person again. There are many different options.

2) The future is an open book. You could be surprised by a bend in the road five minutes or five weeks or five months from now, so never assume your current circumstances are going to last forever.

3) It takes immense emotional strength to end harmful relationship patterns and cycles which is something outsiders may often overlook or downplay when they’re taking note of what you’ve accomplished in your life. Isaac was far from perfect, but I loved seeing his personal growth as he recovered from the negative aspects of his childhood and built a good life for himself as an adult.

Did I know some of this already? Yes, of course, but some lessons need to be repeated over and over again in many different ways in order to sink in.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books that Feature Travel


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Travelling isn’t something I’m generally that into due to a few health problems I have that can make things  like keeping myself fed, well-rested, and pain-free more complicated than they probably are for most people.

Aerial shot of a plane wing as the plane flies over rock terrrain. You can see mountains below that look small and some fluffy, white clouds in the sky. I do like reading about travelling, though, so here are ten books about that.

1. Spirited Waters: Soloing South Through the Inside Passage by Jennifer Hahn

2. Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa

3. Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell by Kristiana Gregory

4. Llamas & Empanadas: 5000 Kilometres by Bicycle Through South America by Eleanor Meecham

5. The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman by Nancy Marie Brown

6. The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica by David G. Campbell

7. The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America’s Race in Space by Eugene Cernan

8. Kalashnikovs and Zombie Cucumbers: Travels in Mozambique by Nick Middleton

9. Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing by Alan Paul

10. Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia by Jeffrey Alford

 

How do you all feel about traveling?

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A Review of Jade Cargo

Book cover for Jade Cargo by Rudolph Kohn. Image on cover shows blue, green, and yellow Northern Lights dancing in the sky at dusk. Title: Jade Cargo

Author: Rudolph Kohn

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 18, 2024

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror

Length: 14 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

A security officer on a routine patrol finds a small lone ship floating in the middle of nowhere. The ship’s systems tell him that it’s dead–a derelict, fated to float aimlessly until it is pulled into the gravity well of some heavenly body. However, the officer’s investigation turns up strange facts one after another, until he discovers the one fact that explains it all–perhaps too well.

Content Warning: Death.

Review:

Anything can happen in space.

I loved the foreshadowing in this short story. It struck the perfect balance between hinting at what was to come without giving the reader too many clues about why this ship is floating alone in the middle of nowhere. I had a rough idea formed in my mind of what might be going on, but even there I had plenty of  opportunities for surprise as the unnamed narrator continued to search the abandoned vessel for possible treasure.

This is one of those cases when readers don’t need to know much about the protagonist in order to empathize with them. Their sex, race, age, and other identifying characteristics were never mentioned because their expertise in this field was what made their observations so valuable. Readers from any demographic group could imagine themselves in this character…and they just might be right! The protagonist knew something was wrong but didn’t have any concrete proof to back up their gut feeling. I both understood why they wanted to gather more information and kept hoping they’d listen to their urge to run away and never come back.

The ending was what convinced me to give this a perfect five star rating. No, of course I won’t spoil it for anyone reading my review. All I can say is that it tied up the loose ends from earlier beautifully while also making me wish for a sequel so I could see how things played out from that point. The horror themes popped out nicely here without ever needing to describe the visceral details of it in order to show the audience why we should be so scared. Now that’s the kind of horror I like to read when I do indulge in the genre!

Jade Cargo was utterly perfect.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Love That Became Films or TV Shows

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Photo of the red, soft chairs in an upscale movie theater. There is a curtain covering the screen and light glowing at the bottom of the curtain, probably to give audience members a better chance to see where they’re walking before the film begins. This will be a longer list, but most of the books on it are older. I have not had as much luck seeing more recent favourites on the small screen or the big screen, but I hope that will change now that the writer’s strike has been over for a while.

Books into films:

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Matilda by Roald Dahl

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

Room by Emma Donoghue

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

 

Books into TV shows:

 

The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid’s Tale, #1) by Margaret Atwood (And they’re making a tv show based on the sequel, The Testaments, too!)

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett

The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) by Lev Grossman

The Mist by Stephen King

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

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Top Ten Tuesday: Ways in Which My Blogging and Review Style Has Changed Over Time


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to Susan @ Bloggin’ ‘bout Books for submitting this topic!

The words “stories matter” have been typed out on an old-fashioned manual typewriter. Here are five ways my blogging style has changed and five ways my reviewing styles has changed over the years.

For blogging:

1) I write shorter posts now, generally 100-500 words a piece instead of 800+ words.

2) I rarely if ever write advice posts anymore. (I used to publish longer posts about stuff like meditation, fitness, or writing and share what I’d learned about them).

3) I’ve reduced the number of posts per week I publish from 4 to 3…and 2 of those posts are Blog Hops so I don’t have to come up with a topic for them unless it’s a freebie post.

4) Bloghopping isn’t something I do as much these days…although I am trying to get back into the habit of it!

5) It’s less common for me to share stories about my personal life now. Mostly, I talk about books and other media.

 

For reviewing:

1) Almost everything I review these days are books from indie authors or small publishers.  Big name authors don’t count on every single new review to reach new readers the way the little guys (and gals and nonbinary pals) do, so most of the time I’d rather focus on the folks who really need that exposure.

2) I’m more selective about what I review. 3-star reviews are generally the lowest ones I have ever published (with only a handful of exceptions to that rule over the years), and even then I only review the books I thought had good bones but maybe didn’t quite stick the ending, or should have worked more on character development, or something similar. A 3-star review from me means I liked that story!

3) I avoid social media book recommendations unless they come from a friend who knows my tastes well because it’s so uncommon for the hottest books on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc. to be my cup of tea. If one of them did appeal to me, I would, of course, still read it, and no offence intended to people whose tastes do match up with what often goes viral on those sites.

4) I’m much less nervous about sharing relevant plot details in my reviews these days. Years ago someone told me that they found one of my reviews hard to understand because they couldn’t tell why I was dissatisfied with a conflict between two characters. While I still avoid any major spoilers, I think it’s okay to say something like “I wish Megan’s anger with her mother had been explored more deeply to help explain why the flashbacks of things I thought were fairly trivial disagreements between them were such a sticking point with this character.” (This example is made up and not a reference to any specific book).

5) I now include content warnings in my reviews, although I’m still not always sure what topics I should and shouldn’t warn readers are in a book other than the usual things like violence, blood, death, and abuse. For example, I know someone who has a phobia of flowers, but that’s not something I’d typically think to include in a content warning.

Now let’s see how you all responded to this prompt!

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A Review of Pain Is So Close To Pleasure

Book cover for Pain Is So Close to Pleasure by Jonathan Antony Strickland. Image on cover shows an orange octopus with all eight tentacles curling around its body. Title: Pain Is So Close to Pleasure

Author: Jonathan Antony Strickland

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 5, 2012

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror

Length: 5 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 stars

Blurb:

This is the story “Pain Is So Close To Pleasure”, a short comedy story I wrote several years ago. The story looks at an alien race who has recently come into contact with our own. To learn more about each other, ourselves and the aliens decide to send an exchange student to the others world to spend time there so each race can learn more about the other.

Content Warning: Swearing and death.

Review:

Cultural misunderstandings don’t even begin to cover what happened here.

Mr. Kolmortis truly felt like an alien to me which is not always something that happens when I read science fiction about creatures from other planets. His thought processes were so different from how a human would interpret the same situation that I understood why he was bewildered by our species. We were not at all what he expected to find when he agreed to this exchange student program on behalf of his school.

With that being said, I struggled to believe that either side would agree to this program without getting to know a lot more about each other first. Just because two species can communicate in some way doesn’t mean that what works for one of them will be a good idea for the other one, too. Yes, I know I’m being vague here, but the twist is something best left up to other readers to be surprised by just like I was. If only the protagonist had given more hints about why this decision was made and why the adults in the situation assumed they had all of the information they needed for such a massive step in interspecies relations.

I did appreciate Mr. Kolmortis’ closing paragraphs in his confused letter to Mr. Francis, the human headmaster who had chosen Peter as the representative of humanity for this cultural exchange. He genuinely wanted to get to the bottom of what had recently happened, and he had no idea how readers were going to react to the information he included that didn’t make sense to him. It’s not always easy to write characters like him, so kudos to Mr. Strickland for diving so deeply into this world and imagining what it might really be like to meet a sentient alien species.

Pain Is So Close to Pleasure was a wild ride.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite TV Shows and Why

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Black and white photo of a pair of black-rimmed glasses and a tv remote sitting on leather couch. I have cut way back on watching TV these past several years.

When I do sit down to watch a tv show these days, I have a strong preference for lighthearted programs that do not remind me of any of the difficult stuff going on in the world or in life in general at the moment.

So what do I like to watch?

Young Sheldon. This was a prequel to The Big Bang Theory that I’m slowly catching up on. It shows what Sheldon was like as a preteen and teenager and why he behaved the way he did as an adult. I appreciate the kindness Sheldon often experiences in this show as well as all of the references to life in a small town in the 1990s.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It feels like classic, episodic Star Trek to me with the characters visiting a new planet or meeting a different species of alien every week. It’s nice to see problems resolved in this universe so cleanly in most cases.

The Orville. This was originally written as a friendly parody of Star Trek, but it’s become something that honestly feels a lot more like a Star Trek show than, say, Discovery. (Which was not a bad show or anything! It simply didn’t have the time for the lightheartedness or unbridled hope for the future that I prefer in this universe). I love the optimism and humour in The Orville and am thrilled it will have another season coming out at some point.

The Simpsons. Yes, I know this show is an older one, but I’ve started slowly watching beginning from season 1 which came out many years before I  was old enough for such programs. I think I’m on season 2 or 3 now, but I enjoy the silliness of it all and how, no matter what happens in an episode, just about everything will go back to the way it was by the time the next episode rolls around.  The writers have “predicted “ some things in their plots that actually came true, too!

The Last of Us. This is one of the few exceptions to my preference for lighthearted, fluffy shows because it’s so far removed from any of the scary stuff happening in our world right now that I can generally watch it without being reminded of what I watch tv to try to forget. I liked the explanation of how cordyceps takes over the human body in the first season, and I’m hoping the characters will find a cure for it by the time the last episode airs. That would be such a refreshing ending for the zombie genre.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Authors Who Live In My Country


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A Canadian flag flying on a flagpole in front of the Banff National Park mountains which are large and spectacular. There’s a large hill or maybe a small mountain between the flagpole and Banff that’s covered in fir trees. Thank you to Jennifer @ Funk-N-Fiction for submitting this week’s theme.

Here are ten books written by Canadian authors other than L.M. Montgomery or Margaret Atwood due to how well-known their books are across the globe.

There is another Canadian author I’m leaving off this list due to some terrible allegations that were made about them a few years ago. No need to give them any more attention if you ask me. 

I’d rather focus on authors with good reputations – at least so far as I know –  that you may not have heard of yet!  If you see this little asterisk symbol * it means I have read something they’ve written.  (I hope that’s the right word for that symbol. I believe it is). 

1. Cheryl Kaye Tardif

2. Margaret Laurence *

3. Jane Urquhart

5. Kelley Armstrong *

6. Michael Ondaatje

7. W.O. Mitchell *

8. Carol Shields

9. Farley Mowat

10. Richard Wagamese *

11. Robert J. Sawyer *

I’m purposefully not saying what I’ve read from the authors I have tried from this list because I don’t want to influence your opinions if you decide to give anyone’s books a shot.

(And also because in at least one case I believe I’ve read one of their books but don’t remember enough about it to have a strong opinion in any direction anymore. Don’t you hate it when that happens? 😂)

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