Category Archives: Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Book Covers 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.

A bouquet of little white flowers - possibly of the dogwood variety - lying on an antique hardcover book. The book’s cover is brown and looks like it may have once had a floral design on it. There are scratches and little pieces missing here and there on the cover, though, so it’s hard to tell for sure. Honestly, I’m a little picky about how blurbs and the first few pages of a tale are written and what is or isn’t included in them, but book covers themselves aren’t as important to me. There are many different styles I like or even love and only a few that would deter me from giving something a try.

My favourite types of covers are the ones that are just a little jarring or surprising in a good way for the viewer. That is to say, you glance at them and wonder what the heck in going on in that scene.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

Book cover for The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1) by Margaret Atwood. Image on cover shows two women wearing long red dresses and white hats that cover their faces. They are walking beside a tall brick wall in an otherwise desolate scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid’s Tale, #1) by Margaret Atwood

I knew absolutely nothing about this story when I picked it up, but the cover made me feel nervous about their strange clothing and curious about where they were going.

 

Book cover for Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1) by Diana Wynne Jones. Image on cover shows a castle that has somehow sprouted large wooden legs and is walking in a meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1) by Diana Wynne Jones

 

This book has been on my TBR list for ages, so all I can go by is the oddly ambulatory castle on the cover that utterly fascinates me.

 

Book cover for A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper, #1) by Christopher Moore. Image on cover shows someone in a grey tunic pushing a baby skeleton in a hot pink carriage. The baby is carrying a scythe and is maybe the grim reaper as a child?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper, #1) by Christopher Moore

 

While I haven’t read this one and it is not currently on my TBR list, it has such an eye-catching cover. I’d never think to draw a baby grim reaper (if that is, indeed who he or she is).

 

Book cover for Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Image on cover shows the silhouette of a young black woman’s head. Her hair has been braided in dozens of little braids and she’s looking up expectedly at something beyond the viewer’s gaze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

There is subtle foreshadowing on this cover that I found delightful after finishing the last chapter and realizing what hints were shared immediately. (It was an excellent read, too!) If only I could go into more detail without spoiling things. Just know that everything in this image matters.

 

Book cover for Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. Image on cover shows two young Victorian girls playing dress up. The one on the right is a preteen and is wearing a long white dress and a paper crown. The one on the left looks like she’s about six, is dressed as a knight, and is sitting on one end of a wooden seesaw. There is a leopard pelt - whether real or fake I cannot tell - lying on the floor between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

 

Here’s another book I haven’t read that has such an intriguing cover. I’m guessing these girls were playing dress up, but why is a cured leopard pelt part of their games?

 

Book cover for The Deep by Rivers Solomon. Image on cover shows a black mermaid with dreadlocks who is swimming in the ocean next to a whale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Once again, this cover has excellent clues about the storyline embedded in it. I appreciated the fact that it lets the reader know immediately that this is about mermaids without giving away the many important differences between Yetu and, say, Ariel from The Little Mermaid. The mythology of and backstory in this tale are of utmost importance, but one also doesn’t want new fans to know too far ahead of time exactly what to expect for spoiler reasons. Hollywood, please hurry up and turn this into a film. The source material has so many little moments in it that would look amazing on the big screen.

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: LGBTQ Summer Fiction


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Drawing of a heart that has ridges and swirls in it like a fingerprint.The heart has all of the colours of the Pride flag in it with red at the bottom and then going counter-clockwise for the rest of the of the shades. Happy Pride Month to everyone who is celebrating it! Here are ten LGBTQ+ books with summer settings or themes that I am curious to check out once the humidity and heat rises and it’s too hot to spend much time outdoors.

We’ll see how many of them I get around to.

If you’ve read any of them, I’d love to hear your thoughts on their characters and plots!

1. Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan

2. The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding

3. Kings of B’more by R. Eric Thomas

4. Donut Summer by Anita Kelly

5. The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala

6. The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake

7. Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler

8. This Pact Is Not Ours by Zachary Sergi

9. If We Were a Movie by Zakiya N. Jamal

10. Get Real, Chloe Torres by Crystal Maldonado

Do you also tend to save up books to read for when the weather becomes less pleasant for outdoor adventures?

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books That Need a Sequel

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.

A large question mark scribbled in blue ink. I wasn’t able to come up with many answers for this week’s prompt because just about all of the books I wished had sequels were eventually given them regardless of what I thought of how those series turned out.  I’ve been very lucky in that regard.

Let’s see which books I still wish could have sequels. Beware of spoilers for older titles in this post!

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Why: The bleak and underwhelming ending. While I still enjoyed the plot, I was expecting the protagonist to accomplish so much more than he actually did.

 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Why: Once again, the ending was dark and a let down from what I assumed was going to happen. I also thought that the way it was wrapped up conflicted with the themes in earlier chapters about what it means to be human and whether clones should be given the same human rights as someone who was conceived in a more traditional manner.

 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Why: I’d love to see how the world continued to be rebuilt after the events of this book. It ended on such a hopeful note.

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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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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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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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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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