Lydia Schoch

October 22, 2024 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time

A time lapse photo of a red amaryllis flower from bud to full bloom. It is show in seven different steps, from tight little bud on the left side of the image to full bloom on the right. Each intermediate plant is a little redder and prettier than the last. These days I am generally not interested in:

Poetry
Long books
Polemics
Classic or traditional-style fantasy
Nonfiction about disease, war, or suffering
Gory horror
Romance
Classic novels
Dark endings
Fairy tales

(There are occasional exceptions, of course, but these aren’t categories that immediately spark my interest in most cases).

And I have a deep interest in:

Short stories and novellas
Cozy science fiction and fantasy
Memoirs, biographies, or autobiographies of people who make the world a better place
Nonfiction about scientific advancements in any branch of science, animals, food, and plants
Ghost stories
Psychological horror (e.g. no blood or gore, just apprehension)
Humorous books
Stories about emotionally healthy platonic relationships*
Hopeful writing in general
Historical fiction about the lives of ordinary people
Justice being served to the antagonists

*they don’t have to be perfect by any means! I simply prefer to read about characters who genuinely try to be good and treat each other kindly than about characters who are stuck in dysfunctional patterns of behaviour with their family and friends.

My tastes seem to shift every few years, so I’d have to make this a much longer post to document every little change I’ve experienced since childhood. Honestly, I don’t know that I’d even remember all of them anymore.

All I know is that I tend to dive deeply into a topic for a few months to a few years and then move on to other topics in most cases.

I look forward to seeing how everyone else’s tastes have evolved over time.

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October 17, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of Why Didn’t You Just Leave

Title: Why Didn’t You Just Leave

Author: Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin (Editors)

Publisher: Cursed Morsels Press

Publication Date: April 30, 2024

Genres: Horror, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 308 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

It’s the question asked of any story about a haunting: why didn’t you just leave? But if accounts of people who have stayed in haunted houses are any indication … it’s never that simple.

In this book, you’ll find twenty-two all-new stories about the reasons people don’t leave scary situations—parents who stay in haunted houses to protect their children, convicts who literally can’t leave their prison, retail workers who need a paycheck even if it’s from a haunted workplace, trauma survivors suffering from agoraphobia, and more.

Featuring Shauntae Ball, I.S. Belle, Die Booth, Max Booth III, Christa Carmen, Raquel Castro, Alberto Chimal, Gabe Converse, Lyndsey Croal, Victoria Dalpe, Alexis DuBon, Corey Farrenkopf, Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, E.M. Linden, Steve Loiaconi, R. Diego Martinez, J.A.W. McCarthy, Suzan Palumbo, Tonia Ransom, Rhiannon Rasmussen, and Eden Royce. With illustrations by Luke Spooner, Yves Tourigny, and Yornelys Zambrano.

Content Warning: Murder. Possible infanticide. Serial killer. Deaths caused by things like drowning, falls, or hypothermia. A character with a transphobic parent who misgenders him. Emotional abuse. A ghost child who died from neglect. Pregnancy. Covid. Animal deaths. Infidelity. Hoarding. I won’t discuss any of these topics other than the last one in my review.

Review:

Escape isn’t always as easy as it may seem.

The bureaucracy in ”Your Application to Vacate 372 Wicker Avenue Is Still Pending” was simultaneously amusing and scary, especially once I realized why this particular home was included as an affordable option for low-income applicants. Writing it in epistolary form only increased the tension in the storyline as it was easy to imagine what sorts of angry and frightened letters the clerk was responding to as things went from bad to worse.

As much as I enjoyed the theme of this anthology, the stories themselves were uneven. Some of them were excellent while others ended much too abruptly for my tastes. While I wouldn’t expect every loose end in them to be tied up, there were multiple times when I was left hanging and wondering what just happened. ”The Spirit Bed” was one example of this. It showed what happened to two sisters after one of them was attacked by an evil spirit. I was immediately drawn into the storyline but surprised by how quickly it ended and how many unanswered questions I had by the final sentence.

“AITA For Setting My Dad’s Trailer on Fire?” was a memorable way to end this book. It was written in the style of Reddit post by a character who wondered what her ethical obligation was to her parents whose house had become unliveable thanks to hoarding. (You do not have to be familiar with Reddit or the Am I the A**hole subreddit in order to understand this one, but people who do understand the social conventions on that site and that subreddit in particular many find a few extra things to think about). I don’t want to give away spoilers about what else she discovered there, but I loved the narrative flow of this one as additional layers of detail were revealed as she described her parents’ dangerous home without holding anything back.

Why Didn’t You Just Leave made me shudder.

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something That’s Improved Since I Was a Kid

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.

Six speech bubbles lined up in three equal rows. The row on top is coloured peach, the middle row is pink, and the bottom row is sea green. One of the biggest improvements I’ve seen since I was a kid has to do with how much easier it is now to find people who share the same hobby, interest, identity, or diagnosis.

Among countless other possibilities, if you are:

LGBTQ+,

A fan of a specific book series, tv show, or obscure hobby,

Trying to learn more about a new hobby,

A llama herder, or

Just coming home from the hospital or doctor’s office after you or someone you love has been diagnosed with disease X,

You can find communities of people online who are in the same boat.

This is valuable for everyone, but it is even more important for folks who are living in rural areas or with health conditions that limit how much they can travel and who therefore may not be able to find anyone in their neighbourhood to discuss such things with in person.

When the Internet became something that virtually everyone in the western world has daily access to, countless people were finally able to meet others like themselves online for both serious and lighthearted purposes.

For subjects like life-changing illnesses, this means that information about the latest tests, studies, and treatments can spread much faster and farther than it could have a few decades ago. There is no doubt in my mind that this has saved a lot of lives as well as reduced suffering.

But even if you’re only searching for likeminded folks online who share your interest in topic X, it is still a wonderful thing to find those kindred spirits and finally get to dig deeply into the minutia of what you enjoy. Hobbies are an important part of living a fulfilling life, and I love how much easier is to meet other people who like the same very specific things you do these days.

I am so grateful that such things are possible and common nowadays.

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October 15, 2024 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wasn’t Assigned to Read in School (But Wish I Had Been)

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I already did this topic last July during the Freebie post that week that asked us to pick an old topic from the Top Ten Tuesday archives. Had I known it would be repeated so soon, I would have picked a different option from that list!

Photo of rows of empty, two-person desks in a classroom. Each desk has two chairs and enough space for two kids to sit there. You can see a chalkboard at the front of the room but it has been wiped clean and is ready for the next class. Therefore, I’m going to be making a list of books I was not assigned to read in school but wish had been on the syllabus. I ended up borrowing some of them from the library and reading them on weekends on over the summer. It would have been helpful to have a teacher around to explain certain cultural norms that have since changed or references to other works I didn’t quite get, for example.

1. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

2. The Iliad by Homer

3. Native Son by Richard Wright

4. 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

5. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

6. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

7. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

9. Beloved by Toni Morrison

10. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Which classics – modern or otherwise – do you wish had been taught in school?

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Tagged as Childhood Stories, Top Ten Tuesday

October 10, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House

Title: I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House

Author: Ben Farthing

Publisher: Self-Published (I think?)

Publication Date: January 23, 2023

Genres: Horror, Paranormal, Halloween, Contemporary

Length: 106 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Lost in a labyrinth of circus tents…

Dave and his four-year-old, Jacob, find a circus tent in the woods behind their house. A strange voice invites them through the dark doorway.

When they refuse, the tent swallows them.

What follows is a nightmare fleeing through a maze of circus tents. Strange performers lurk inside. They want Dave and his little boy to put on a show. The a shifting figure on a platform high above the trapeze wires.

With Jacob perched in the crook of his arm, Dave determines to outsmart the boss of this dark circus, and escape this horrifying tent.

Content Warning: Clowns. Blood. Murder.

Review:

The woods aren’t as safe as one might think.

It was interesting to see how parenthood had changed Dave. He gave several examples of what he used to do on the weekends before becoming a dad and how he had to give those hobbies and volunteer hours up due to having two young children to raise. Most of the fiction I read focuses on mothers, so I liked seeing what parenthood can feel like from a father’s perspective. Despite his other flaws, Dave seemed like an attentive and loving dad who was genuinely trying to give his children the best childhoods he could.

I struggled with the repetitive nature of this novella. Dave kept sharing the same thoughts with the audience over and over again, and he didn’t always make the most logical decisions. While I wouldn’t expect a character in his situation to be eloquent by any means, I did find myself wishing that he’d spend less time talking to the audience and more time either getting himself and his son out of that creepy circus tent or figuring out why the circus performers were so keen on luring humans into their world. As much as I wanted to give this one a higher rating, this issue prevented me from feeling comfortable to do so.

With that being said, I did appreciate the writing style of this piece. It reminded me of an adult version of the old television show Are You Afraid of the Dark. That is to say, it was a little cheesy in a good way and gave the characters plenty of opportunities to escape. The scenes that included scary moments were not emphasized the same way they probably would have been in, say, a Stephen King story. Honestly, I could see a preteen reader who loved horror being into this just as much as the adult audience it was written for, so it could be a good stepping stone into the horror genre for people who don’t mind brief references to blood but mostly want to be scared by imagining what might happen next.

This is the first instalment of a series that can be read in any order. If you do decide to read any of the books in it, though, be sure to check out the author’s explanations of where his ideas come from after the final chapter. The two I have read so far helped me to see their storylines in a new light and were well worth my time. (I will be reviewing I Found Puppets Living In My Apartment Walls in a few weeks, so stay tuned).

I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House was a fun Halloween read.

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something That Was Better When I Was a Kid

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 semi-opened laptop. It is in an otherwise pitch-black room, and the light from the screen is illuminating the keyboard with all sorts of soft, pastel colours. This is one of those topics that makes me wish I could take a peek at all of the other answers before publishing my own! Will most folks choose serious or frivolous answers, I wonder?

I’m going to bend the rules slightly and give two answers this week so that I won’t be out of place for giving a serious answer while everyone else bemoans the loss of their favourite snacks from decades past or for giving a lighthearted reply while everyone else soberly talks about recently extinct species of animals or something.

My Serious Answer: Winter

Winter was better when I was a kid because it was colder and snowier. This meant that there was more water to fill our aquifers when spring came and that fewer harmful species like ticks survived the deep freezes of that season.

Last winter was worryingly mild and dry in Ontario. We received less than half the usual amount of snow and some veterinarians here are now recommending that pet owners give their dogs tick medication year-round because they were still finding ticks on dogs in late December when the ground should have been far too frozen for any of those creatures to be crawling around, much less being alert enough to bite.

Climate change is here, and it’s rapidly affecting everything in our environment.

My Lighthearted Answer: Message Boards

I remember a time when there were active forums and message boards everywhere online for any topic you could imagine and probably many more for subjects you’d never think would have such numerous or devoted fans. Sometimes a thread would be started about a specific question and it would sit dormant for weeks or months until someone with the right knowledge discovered it, bumped it to the top, and answered it.

Social media is useful for a lot of other things, but it usually does not inspire deep conversations on niche interests that unfold over many years or reward people who are experts in their fields and genuinely know what they’re talking about.

I desperately miss having access to all of that knowledge and having the opportunity to add to it when I could.

If only we could experience both of these things thriving in 2024: social media for what is predominantly lighthearted, surface-level conversations and forums for people who want to dig deeply into a specific topic and either share their knowledge of it or become well-versed in it themselves.

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Tagged as Childhood Stories, Climate Change, Internet, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, Winter

October 8, 2024 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Brags

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

The phrase “believe yourself” written in black coloured pencil on white graph paper. There’s a little red heart written in red coloured pencil next to that phrase as well as three coloured pencils - gold, black, and red - lying on the page above these scribbling. I’m in a cheerful and confident mood and so will be sharing some bookish brags today.

1. I’m much better at saying no than I used to be. I wish I could read every speculative fiction book out there and then review it, but that’s simply not possible until someone invents a longer day for all of us to enjoy! Hehe.

2. I (usually) know which books will be up my alley.

3. I (usually) know which books won’t appeal to me.

4. Every week I comment on as many Top Ten Tuesday posts as I possibly can. Some comment systems don’t work for my tablet for some reason, but I send out friendly replies to as many blogs I can reply to until the list runs out or until my time runs out. I want new participants and less well known bloggers to feel included and welcomed.

5. Jana has accepted a few of my topic suggestions…including today’s topic. It’s thrilling every time it happens.

6. I’m reading a much more diverse array of authors these days. Most of the authors I read are women. My goal is for at least half of the books I review to be written by people who are non-white, LGBTQ+, disabled, chronically ill, immigrants, a member of another minority group, or some combination of these categories. I routinely surpass that goal and am thinking I should raise it for 2025.

7. I’ve met so many kind and intelligent people in Top Ten Tuesday and other bookish circles.

8. I no longer feel guilty for giving some number other than 10 answers for Top Ten Tuesday prompts. Some weeks it is fewer than that and other weeks it is more.

9. Top Ten Tuesday has taught me to pay closer attention to new release lists, so I now often know which books to keep an eye out for at my local library.

10. I am delighted to see bookish people thriving on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. I’m too shy to make videos myself, but it’s wonderful to see how social media can be used to spread the love of books. This is my post, so I can brag about other people’s accomplishments if I wish to. 😉

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October 3, 2024 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion

Title: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion

Author: Margaret Killjoy

Publisher: Tor Books

Publication Date: August 15, 2017

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, LGBTQ, Contemporary

Length: 120 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy pits utopian anarchists against rogue demon deer in this dropkick-in-the-mouth punk fantasy that Alan Moore calls “scary and energetic.”

Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and witnesses a protector spirit — in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer — begin to turn on its summoners. She and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town — or get out alive.

Content Warning: Brief reference to a previous suicide and a death by drug overdose. Dead and dying animals (livestock and wild animals, not pets). Blood. A demon. Murder.

Review:

Good intentions aren’t everything.

Some of the most memorable scenes to me were the ones that described how the residents of Freedom lived their lives. They were squatters who had banded together to create an ecologically-friendly commune where nothing was wasted and everyone’s basic needs were met thanks to a combination of gardening, gathering wild plants, visiting food banks, dumpster diving, and occasionally dipping into less legal forms of procuring food and supplies. Honestly, I would have read another hundred pages that described how their community worked and how they dealt with members who took more than they gave.

I struggled with the plot holes, especially the ones that protected Danielle and the other protagonists even when they were playing around with dangerous ideas that had gotten other characters killed off. Of course I wanted them to live happily ever after, but by protecting them from things the plot had repeatedly hammered home were terrible choices to make it watered down the message of it and left this reader feeling confused.

It was cool to realize how many of the characters in this tale were part of the LGBTQ+ community in part because of how it inverted the assumption that most characters should be cisgendered and heterosexual with only the occasional side character who breaks that rule. Representation is important, and I loved the fact that the characters identities were shared in ways that didn’t make a big deal out of any of them and quickly moved on to furthering the plot. That, too, makes a difference to those of us who are not cisgendered heterosexuals. Not everything needs to be announced with bells and whistles. Sometimes we just exist and go about our normal lives…albeit hopefully without seeing any supernatural deer causing havoc in the real world.

The themes in this novella were interesting but undeveloped. There was so much more the author could have done with ideas like the corruptive side effects of having power over others and how people who seek out positions that give them more power over others should be viewed with suspicion. I didn’t always agree with their thoughts on those topics, but I was intrigued and wanted to learn much more than I did about why the narrator – and maybe the author, too – feels this way.

After reading the last few pages, I wondered where this new series is going next. While I can’t go into a lot of detail about those scenes for spoiler reasons, there was obviously time spent setting up the characters for what was to come for them. While I thought some of the directions the end was hinting at didn’t mesh well with the themes that had been already established, I’m very open to being proven wrong about that. You never know what twists and turns might be ahead for a character, so it will be interesting to see what the author has up their sleeves.

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion was creepy.

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Tagged as 2010s, Book Reviews, Contemporary, Dark Fantasy, Horror, LGBT, Margaret Killjoy, Novella, Paranormal, Tor Books

October 2, 2024 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Genre I Want to Read More Of

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.

Last winter I reread the first few books in Jean M. Auel‘s Earth’s Children series. They reminded me of how much I enjoy historical fiction novels that have been well-researched and include the latest data about what life was like for average people in that era.

For example, the Earth’s Children books described what the characters ate, how they hunted and gathered, what their clothes and tools looked like, and so much more. Specific plants and animals from 30,000 years ago are explained in great detail, including species that have since gone extinct. The author extrapolated when necessary as not everything can be fossilized, of course, but she did an incredible amount of research for these books that really made ice age Europe come alive for me.

A photo of an abandoned stone cathedral on a grassy hill. It still has walls but no longer has a roof or glass in its windows. There is a stormy grey and slightly pink sky behind it. I love becoming immersed in a world so unlike modern life.

Years ago I adored how the Pillars of the Earth series by Ken Follett took a similar approach to English life in the 12th century. It was written from the perspective of one of the many working class men who was hired to build a cathedral.

They worked long, hard hours for low pay at a time when workers’ rights were much less protected than they are today. I was fascinated by how they managed to survive under such conditions.

If you know of other historical fiction novels that are similar to these ones as far as accuracy and research goes, I’d love to hear about them.

Generally, I do not enjoy reading about war or royalty, but I’m open to just about any other setting and era anywhere in the world.

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Tagged as History, Prehistory, Reading, TBR List, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

October 1, 2024 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I Read Because of the Hype

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I used to be much more willing to read the hottest new books even if they weren’t from genres I typically enjoy.

What I’ve learned over time is that my tastes generally do not overlap very much with the latest hyped titles. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, especially in the speculative fiction genre where I spend so much of my reading time, there tends to be an inverse relationship between how much fanfare is being created over a new book and how much it will appeal to me personally.

This is in no way a criticism of wildly popular stories or the people who read them. I’m sure there are many incredible books being released right now that also happen to be hyped up. They’re simply not my cup of tea, and that’s perfectly okay.

Here are some of the titles in this category that did not work for me for a wide variety of reasons but might be the ideal read for someone else.

1. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

2.The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

3. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

4. Wilder Girls by Rory Power

5. The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

6. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

7. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

8. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

9. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

10.The Host by Stephenie Meyer

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Tagged as Top Ten Tuesday

Lydia Schoch

Top Ten Tuesday: How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time

A Review of Why Didn’t You Just Leave

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something That’s Improved Since I Was a Kid

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wasn’t Assigned to Read in School (But Wish I Had Been)

A Review of I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something That Was Better When I Was a Kid

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Brags

A Review of The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Genre I Want to Read More Of

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I Read Because of the Hype

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