Category Archives: Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: My Earliest Memory

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here 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 baby sleeping in a crib.

This is not my brother, but it is what I was hoping to find in that crib!

As this is the third time this has been a prompt for the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, I’ll provide links to my previous two answers: eating apples and tire swings.

This memory happened in the same old farmhouse as my first two posts. To be honest, any one of my three answers could be my genuine first memory. When you’re little things can be a little fuzzy as far as which moment happened first.

In this snapshot from my past  I am walking around the house looking for my baby brother which means I was probably about three years old when this occurred.  I liked knowing where my brother was and what he was doing.

There was a wooden crib in one of the rooms of the house, and I thought it was a good place to check.

I walked quietly into the room and past the crib in case he was asleep. He was not in there, so I decided to check the kitchen.

That is where this snippet of memory ends. I can only assume he was with mom in the kitchen, and I wish I could remember what happened next.

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books About Seasonal Affective Disorder


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A person’s hand holding up a very bright lightbulb that does not appear to be attached to any power source! Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that happens during the same season of the year every year. The winter blues are a milder condition similar to this one that has some of the same symptoms and many of the same treatment options, although some people also use that term colloquially to refer to SAD.

As someone who has SAD and struggles with winter because of it, I thought I’d use this week’s freebie post to share some books about it. Both fiction and nonfiction titles are included. I haven’t read most of them yet, but I’d like to!

1. The Girl and the Grove by Eric Smith

2. Super Chill: A Year of Living Anxiously by Adam Ellis

3. Light Boxes by Shane Jones

4. Stay and Fight by Madeline Ffitch

5. Winter Blues: Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder by Norman E. Rosenthal

6. Defeating SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder): A Guide to Health and Happiness Through All Seasons by Norman E. Rosenthal

 

If you have a medical condition or conditions, which books about it or them are you aware of? Would you recommend reading those books to people who want to learn more?

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Genre I Wish Were More Popular

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

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

Four red advent pillar candles. Two are lit and two have never been lit yet. Oh, this week’s topic is easy.

I wish Christmas ghost stories were popular today.

In Victorian England in the 1800s, telling ghost stories was a widespread Christmas tradition. There were new entries in this genre published every year for families to enjoy, and some of them became classics that are still well-known today.

I try to keep that tradition going in my own small way by seeking out and hopefully also reviewing ghost stories every December, but I’d love it if they were easier to find and if more people saw the value in reading something just a little scary at this time of the year.

Since Christmas isn’t always an easy holiday for me to enjoy for reasons beyond the scope of this post, having something to look forward to during it makes a world of difference for me. I think it’s so emotionally healthy to give people a wide variety of ways to interact with holidays they struggle with.  Not everything has to be cheerful and sugary sweet all of the time in order to be meaningful.

Oh, and one of the tags on this post is Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories because I actually reviewed quite a few classic ghost stories from the late 1800s and early 1900s on my blog a few years ago. Click on that tag to read my reviews if you wish to.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Quotes About Gratitude


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I have mixed feelings about Thanksgiving in general, but one of the things I appreciate about it  is how it gives me a chance to reflect on the many good things in my life. This is something that North American culture often needs more experience doing in my opinion, so I’m going to reframe the Thanksgiving freebie post a little this week.

Here are ten quotes about gratitude and the importance of feeling grateful for what you do have.

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
Epicurus

Eight little wooden blocks that look like Scrabble titles have been arranged to spell out the phrase “Thank you.” “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”
A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

 

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”
Maya Angelou

 

“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
James Herriot , All Creatures Great and Small

 

“…for love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride.”
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

 

“My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.”
Oliver Sacks

 

“It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.”
Germany Kent

 

“I marveled at the beauty of all life and savored the power and possibilities of my imagination. In these rare moments, I prayed, I danced, and I analyzed. I saw that life was good and bad, beautiful and ugly. I understood that I had to dwell on the good and beautiful in order to keep my imagination, sensitivity, and gratitude intact. I knew it would not be easy to maintain this perspective. I knew I would often twist and turn, bend and crack a little, but I also knew that…I would never completely break.”
Maria Nhambu, Africa’s Child

 

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

 

If you’re celebrating this week, may you be able to eat all of your favourite foods and perhaps think of a few things you’re grateful for, too!

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books That Influenced My Life

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

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

About a dozen lightbulbs are scattered on a white surface in a dark room. Despite not being screwed into anything, one of the lightbulbs is emitting light and therefore allowing the viewer to see what is in this space.

This is a bit of a slippery topic for me because of how my idea of an influential book has evolved over time.

A title that meant the world to me as a kid or a teenager may not have the same effect on me as an adult, for example. This doesn’t detract from how much I loved it at those life stages, but not everything is going to feel the same for a reader depending on when they pick it up and what circumstances they’re currently going through.

Change is a normal part of life, after all.

Here are some books that meant the world to me the first time I read them.

The Giver (The Giver, #1) by Lois Lowry

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Ishmael (Ishmael, #1) by Daniel Quinn

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present by Howard Zinn

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou’s Autobiography, #1) by Maya Angelou

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Would I feel the same way about them today? It’s hard to tell, but maybe!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Modern Books You Think Will Be Classics In The Future


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to Veros @ Dark Shelf of Wonders for submitting this topic. It’s something I think about regularly and can’t wait to see how everyone else responds to. 

Two pink gerbera flowers are lying on an antique hardcover book that’s also been wrapped in a white lace ribbon.It’s hard to tell which books will become classics. Not every bestseller is actually well written or will continue to affect readers in twenty or fifty years. Likewise, I have no doubt there are some true gems out there that may have had middling to poor sales but will eventually be rediscovered and taught in classrooms all across the world.

Here are some books I think might pass the test of time…but we’ll have to wait to see if I’m right!

1. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

2. My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1) by Elena Ferrante

3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

4. The Deep by Rivers Solomon

5. Everfair (Everfair, #1) by Nisi Shawl

6. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

I was not able to come up with a full ten answers this week. Here’s hoping you all were able to do that.

 

 

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 Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Things I’m Thankful For

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

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

I love this topic!

A little white heart that has the phrase “I am grateful” printed onto it. There is a tiny red heart next to the phrase and a piece of twine attached to the heart, probably so it can be hung somewhere. This year I am grateful for…

Modern Medicine

A world without vaccines, antibiotics, antivirals, radiation and chemotherapy, contraception, anesthesia and painkillers in general, surgery, and other treatments for what ails us would include so much unnecessary suffering. History books are filled with stories about what happened before we had accesses to these things, and they are anything but easy to read.

 

People Who Do “Dirty” Jobs

That is to say, the people who pick vegetables, prepare meat, clean toilets, unclog pipes, monitor sewage, gather up garbage, scrub everything, empty bedpans, dress wounds, and do the other thousand and one jobs that keep the rest of us living in safe, clean places.

 

Books

With all of the difficult things going on in the world today, books provide such a welcomed respite from bad news.

 

Loved Ones

I am lucky to have such good relationships with my spouse, parents, siblings, sister-in-law, nephews, and other relatives.

 

Noise-Cancelling Earphones

Yes, really! Last summer was hot, humid, and didn’t always have good air quality, so I unfortunately had more migraines than I typically would. There’s nothing like the relief of noise-cancelling earphones when you’re in sensory overload and even the smallest sounds feel painfully loud.

 

Jokes 

It makes me so happy when people who are talented at cracking jokes share their gift with the world. Laughter can be like medicine for one’s soul.

 

All of You

You make the Internet and the WWBC a better place!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books About World War I


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Given that today is Remembrance Day, which commemorates the end of World War I and is also known is Armistice Day or Veterans Day depending on which country you live in, I will be sharing ten books about this war in my post. I tried to pick books about this subject that aren’t as well known.

Three grey and roughly hewn stone crosses in a German military cemetery from World War I. The sky is blue and the grass is green. It’s a peaceful scene. War isn’t something I like to read about, so this still fits the original “books outside of my comfort zone” theme as well!

1. The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War by Chad L. Williams

2. The First World War in Posters, from the Imperial War Museum, London by Joseph Darracott

3. Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary, 1913-1917 by Vera Brittain

4. Falsehood in Wartime: Propaganda Lies of the First World War by Arthur Ponsonby

5. The Forbidden Zone: A Nurse’s Impressions of the First World War by Mary Borden

6. The Poems of Wilfred Owen by Jon Stallworthy

7. Love Letters of the Great War by Mandy Kirkby

8. 1915: The Death Of Innocence by Lyn Macdonald

9. Bill the Bastard: The Story Of Australia’s Greatest War Horse by Roland Perry

10. Sword and Blossom: A British Officer’s Enduring Love for a Japanese Woman by Peter Pagnamenta

May we someday live in a world where war is nothing but a distant memory.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Strange or Useless Talent I Have

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

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

This time I am linking back to my previous answer to this question.

A grey, white, and black striped kitty is lying on a wooden surface outdoors, possibly a patio, and gazing at the viewer. Other than regularly looking away from tv shows and films just before something important happens, I am every cat’s best friend. They would like nothing more than to follow me around and go on feline-friendly adventures while I would like nothing more than for them to pick a new human to bond with.

No, I do not hate cats. In fact, I’d happily share my home with a few of them if it were possible.

This is an utterly useless talent because I am terribly allergic to cats and can’t even stand near them without coughing and wheezing, much less give them the affection they desire.

I suspect that they love me so much because I do my best to ignore them. While other people might squeal and rush after kitty, I keep a respectful distance.

According to cat logic, of course, this means that I am a well-mannered human and should be rewarded with a cuddle.

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Top Ten Tuesday: The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A little red squirrel sitting up and staring at the photographer. This photo was taken outdoors and the leaves are turning yellow for the autumn. The grass is still green.

Not my photo. I simply love squirrels and autumn.

I  am not sure how to write for the introduction to this post this week. Just like all of you, I assume, my TBR list is a long one. Eventually, I hope to read all of these titles.

As usual, this includes a variety of genres. I admire those of you who can stick to one genre all of the time, but I find it more enjoyable to bounce around from one to the next.

1. My Friends by Fredrik Backman

2. Recitatif: A Story by Toni Morrison

3. When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

4. Cemetery Boys (Cemetery Boys, #1) by Aiden Thomas

5. White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus-in Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World by Jack Lohmann

6. The Antidote by Karen Russell

7. The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, Jesse Kirkwood (Translator)

8. When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution’s Greatest Romance by Riley Black

9. Children of Time (Children of Time, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

10. Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1) by Seanan McGuire

 

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