Category Archives: Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books That Deal Well With Tough Topics

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.

A person with long straight hair is sitting on a pier at sunset and leaning their head on their knees. Their body language looks bent over and sad. Most of my picks are in the nonfiction genre, but I did try to branch out a little to other options.

I am including the topics these books discuss so that my readers will know in advance if a particular title is or isn’t something that piques their interest.

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

Topics discussed: Childhood sexual abuse, kinship care, separation from parents, racism, and trauma.

 

2. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

Topics discussed: Sexism and misogyny.

 

3. 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food by Susan Albers

Topics discussed: Emotional eating, binge eating disorders, and mental health.

 

4. CBT for Social Anxiety: Simple Skills for Overcoming Fear and Enjoying People by Stefan G. Hofmann, Robert L. Leahy

Topics discussed: Social anxiety and mental health.

 

5. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Topics discussed: Sexual abuse and mental health.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Things I Love About Museums


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

As we have the option to discuss non-bookish stuff for this week’s freebie, today I’m going to gush about one of my favourite hobbies: visiting museums.

Closeup of the head of a t-Rex skeleton that’s displayed in Belgium. Its mouth is opened and you can see teeth sticking out of it. I was homeschooled for several years growing up, and we sometimes visited local museums as part of our education. Those early experiences taught me not only to love museums as well as learning in general. It’s exciting to be so close to paintings, pottery, or other items that are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of years old. For a brief moment, it almost feels like stepping into a Time Machine and actually going to visit those places!

Here are ten things I love about museums:

1) Reading the plaques

You can learn so many interesting details about an item this way.They can include funny stories about the creator or unusual facts about the piece. For example, sometimes artists have reused old canvases to create new paintings, but modern scanning techniques can still kind of tell what was originally painted there.

2) Windows into the past

Did you know that watermelons used to have much thicker rinds and whiter flesh? This painting by Giovanni Stanchi shows a cut watermelon that doesn’t look much like our modern fruit at all. It’s a little detail about the past that I never would have known had I not seen that painting.

3) Likeminded people

Not everyone is interested in science, art, or history, so I relish the opportunity to be surrounded by people who share these interests regardless of if or how much I talk to them.

4) Peace and quiet

So many public places are noisy and overstimulating that it makes me smile to enjoy a quiet place that doesn’t have any flashing lights or heavy scents.

5) Truth

Yes, sometimes our understanding of certain things changes as new evidence is uncovered, of course, but that’s not what I’m talking about. One of the downsides of social media is how easy it is for half truths and sometimes completely made up stories to circulate there. When I’m at a museum, I can generally be reassured that what I’m looking at or reading about actually happened. It’s not photoshopped or a LLM hallucination. That painter really did exist. This fossil really does represent a living creature that lived X number of years ago.

6) A bonding opportunity 

There’s nothing like visiting a museum with a loved one and talking about what you find there. I have so many happy memories of doing this over the years from everyone from my preschool-aged nephews to my grandparents and everyone in-between.

7) Beauty

Museums are filled with so many beautiful old paintings, ceramics, outfits, swords, fossils, displays, and other things to enjoy. I don’t know about all of you, but I need more beautiful things to think about in life!

8) Repentance

On the other hand, not everything in museums is pleasant to look at or think about, but I do see the benefit in acknowledging the ugly parts of them and taking note of how future generations can avoid making the same mistakes. It takes courage to admit what one’s country or culture got wrong in the past. I think there’s something to be said for talking about these things, now more than ever.

9) Music and dance

I love music and dancing, so any display or special event that includes them will have my attention immediately.

10) The gift shop

I rarely buy anything in them, but it sure is fun to window shop!

How many other TTT bloggers also love museums?

 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Had to Read in School and Liked

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.

A hardback book, a quill, and a bottle of ink artfully arranged outside in the grass. The book and quill are propped up so the viewer can better see them. This is going to be a much longer list than the one I had a few weeks ago. I liked to loved most of the assigned reads in school, including:

1. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

2. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (but I thought these two should have listened to their parents and not been so impulsive or dramatic!)

3. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

7. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

8. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (even though it made me permanently suspicious of books about beloved pets and what will probably happen to those poor animals by the final scene)

9. The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe

10. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

11. Walden or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau (although I wanted a sequel where his poor mother went off into the woods to find herself while Henry stayed home to do all of the washing, mending, gardening, and cooking for once!)

12. Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1) by Chinua Achebe

13. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson (I wish we had lived in the same era. I think she and I could have been great friends).

14. Selected Poems by Langston Hughes (I feel the exact same way about Mr. Hughes and wish I could have been his friend, too).

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books with a High Page Count


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Closeup of a huge hardback book. It looks like it has 800+ pages in it. Sometimes I have to include books I haven’t actually read in my answers to Top Ten Tuesday posts because those weekly topics cover things I have little to no experience reading about.

Luckily, this is not one of those weeks! While I didn’t quite come up with a full ten answers, I have read and enjoyed all of these books. If they catch your attention and you’re interested in older tales, consider this a personal recommendation from me.

1. The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1) by Ken Follett (976 pages)

2. Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley (729 pages)

3. Hawaii by James A. Michener (937 pages)

4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (502 pages)

5. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth’s Children, #1) by Jean M. Auel (516 pages)

6. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1216 pages)

7. The Stand by Stephen King (1152 pages)

8. Dracula by Bram Stoker (488 pages)

9. Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams (478 pages)

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: What I Read When I’m Not Feeling Well

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.

Closeup photo of small pills that look like vitamin e vitamin pills to me. They are soft, small, oblong, and slightly yellow. My answers to this question depend on why I’m not feeling well.

If I’m dealing with something like a migraine, I generally won’t be reading due to how symptoms like trouble concentrating, light sensitivity, nausea, etc. strongly affect what I do on those days even if my pain levels aren’t a hindrance in and of themselves

That’s not a very fun answer, of course, so I’m going to assume we’re all talking about less debilitating sick days when, say, one has the common cold or a sprained ankle instead but can still concentrate and enjoy the written word for at least a little while.

There are three things I especially like to read on these occasions:

Poetry

A hardback, cream-coloured book of Persian poetry that has a single red rose lying on the book.Mary Oliver is – or, rather, was – one of my favourite contemporary poets because of how beautifully she would described something as simple as a sunset or seeing a bird flying around in a field.

She wrote the kinds of poems that nearly anyone can relate to because we’ve all experienced nature in some form in our lives, whether you’re walking past pigeons pecking at bread crumbs on a city street or live in the middle of a forest in a little cottage and go weeks without talking to other human beings.

Black River is a good place to start for Oliver.

For more classic poets, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes are my all-time favourites. They were both incredibly talented and fantastic at capturing those little moments in life that are so easy to overlook.

Hope is the thing with feathers is one of my favourite Dickinson poems.

Theme for English B is a thoughtful Hughes poem that captures a lot of the most common themes in his work. (I can’t possibly pick a favourite poem from him. He wrote so many fantastic ones).

If anyone has recommendations for other modern (or modern-ish)  poets who write or wrote short, snappy pieces, please share! I have not had great luck finding ones I’ve liked. Yes, it’s fine if your definition of “modern” is 1960 or something. I’m not at all picky so long as they’re a great writer whose work still feels fresh and meaningful to you even if it might have been written last century. 🙂

 

Nonfiction

I especially like history, science, and nature-themed books when I’m not feeling well. Medical topics may or may not be interesting, too, depending on how closely related they are to my ailments. For example, I’d rather not read about the misery of the 1918 flu if I have currently have the flu, but a book about how doctors discovered the existence of vitamins or something else would be fine.

A green wooden bench beneath a mature tree. the bench and tree are facing a peaceful little river whose banks are covered in green bushes and healthy grass.These topics are great distractions from something like a fever, a cough, or mild pain because they transport you to other times and places and teach you all sorts of interesting things about the world.

This summer I have enjoyed these nonfiction titles:

“No One Taught Me How to Be a Man” by Shannon T.L. Kearns (A memoir about gender identity and what is expected of men).

“Ghosts, Trolls and the Hidden People” by Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir (Icelandic folktales and the history behind them).  

“Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care” by Shelley Sella, MD (Stories about people who needed third-trimester abortions for things like terminal diagnoses). 

“The Friendship Bench: How Fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution” by Dixon Chibanda MD (a memoir about senior citizen women offering friendship, advice, and mental health care to young people in Zimbabwe).

I have not read enough nonfiction this year and will try to dig more deeply into it.

 

Rereads

Honestly, this is one of the most common times for me to reread old favourites. There’s something comforting about reading or listening to a story when you already know what’s going to happen in it, especially for a series like the Anne Shirley books or The Chronicles of Narnia where there are many instalments to read if you happen to need multiple days or weeks to recover.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books Guaranteed to Put an End to Your Book Slump


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A white cat with grey and black spots is sitting in a white windowsill in Cyprus. Behind the cat is a brilliantly blue window that stands out beautifully. When I’m in a book slump, I immediately take a break from this hobby as even the slightest expectation of reading only prolongs and deepens those feelings for me.

What I need to do instead is get out of the house and exercise, attend non-bookish events like festivals or parades, spend a lot of time in nature, visit museums, socialize in person, try a new food, get a new hairstyle, go on a day trip or full vacation, or whatever else it is I have the money, time, and energy to do to shake up my routines.

In no way do I expect this to be the solution for everyone, but I wanted to mention it as a possible option for anyone who is currently in a terrible book slump. You can be a voracious and enthusiastic reader and still take breaks of any duration when necessary.  Hobbies are supposed to be fun and relaxing, after all!

Okay, now I will buckle down and try to answer this question without going off on a tangent.

If someone is in a book slump and finds that reading is actually helpful in that moment, I’d suggest ideas like:

1) Rereading your all-time favourites

2) Poetry

3) Children’s picture books

4) Exploring genres you rarely or never visit

5) Watching film or TV adaptations of books you’ve read

6) Listening to audiobooks (say, while you’re taking a walk in the park if that’s a safe thing to do in your community!)

7) Stories that are much longer or much shorter than what you typically read

8) Books from cultures or places in the world you do not know much about

Why do I suggest these things?

Well, it’s about getting exposed to tropes, methods of storytelling, and styles that you are not used to.  All of these things vary widely from one corner of the library or bookstore to the next.

As much as I love science fiction and fantasy, I’ve read so much of them that sometimes it’s really nice to pick up a mystery or piece of historical fiction instead and enjoy something that has a different flow to it.

In my experience, sometimes a book slump is actually about feeling deeply tired of reading the same types of plots over and over again. If you can shake things up and try something new, reading can be become a joy again.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Had to Read in School and Didn’t Like

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.

Photo of a grumpy tabby cat making an angry face.

I don’t own a cat, but this is basically the face I made while reading these tales!

I was one of those bookish kids who loved English class and could find something enjoyable,  or at least relatable, about almost every piece of literature we were assigned.  I’d even read as many sections of our textbook that weren’t assigned as I could because I loved discovering new authors, poems, and stories.

These are the handful of exceptions to that rule. I still dislike these books and authors to this day…although your mileage may vary!

1. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

This bored me due to the slow pacing as well as a setting (a boarding school for wealthy and often terribly emotionally neglected children) that I couldn’t relate to in any way despite honestly trying my best. My family was warm and loving but generally tight on funds for anything other than the basic necessities in life, so the idea of being sent away to an expensive boarding school and not seeing my parents for 9+ months of the year was just as unthinkable as sending one’s child to the moon. Honestly, reading about a moon colony would have been more relatable to me than this!

 

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I hated everything about this book: the glorification of wealth, the selfish, vain characters who valued money and social status over anything else, the bizarre indifference Daisy and her husband whose name I can’t remember felt towards their own child, the way the wealthy characters threw lavish parties and wasted money while the poor people in their communities suffered terribly, and more.

As an adult, I realize that at least some of these passages were meant to be criticisms of the pursuit of wealth and power above all else, and it might come across to me differently if I’d read it when I was older than 16. But being exposed to it at that age, and after growing up in a family whose values were the opposite of the ones these characters held, disgusted me and I have never felt the urge to reread it or check out more of Fitzgerald’s work in general.

 

3. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Technically, this was a long poem from the 1700s we were assigned to read in one of my university courses, but I think it’s close enough to count. It was about an old sailor who kills a harmless albatross that helped their ship escape from an ice jam. I was furious with this sailor for not only killing an animal he wasn’t planning to eat but also for killing one that had just helped him. It was a senseless and cruel decision. Honestly, I rooted for the antagonists for the rest of this poem instead of for the sailor. That’s how mad I was at him.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Nonfiction Books on My TBR List


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

 

A beige agaric mushroom growing in a lush patch of grass.I am grateful for all of the Top Ten Tuesday participants who blog about nonfiction and enjoy talking about it. One of my quiet hopes for the future for this blog hop is that we’ll get even more nonfiction readers to join in on the fun.

With those thoughts in mind, here are eleven nonfiction books on my TBR list that I’m excited to read.

1. Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

2. I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying by Youngmi Mayer

3. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer, John Burgoyne

4. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

5. Elephants in the Hourglass: A Journey of Reckoning and Hope Along the Himalaya by Kim Frank

6. How to Be Resilient: Simple Steps to Embrace a Positive Mindset and Build Inner Strength by Gail Gazelle MD

7. Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser by Amy Wilson

8. The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space and Deep Time by Helen Gordon

9. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

10. How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty by Bonny Reichert

Which genres, if any, do you wish you saw represented more often in TTT posts?

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Loved But Never Wrote Reviews 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.

A black woman with an Afro who is sitting in bed and reading a hardback book. She has a serene expression on her face and is wearing yellow eye shadow and a pretty white cotton blouse. My answers are going to be for older books this week, and I’m trying to pick titles that I have not discussed in previous WWBC or Top Ten Tuesday posts as well. (Or at least haven’t discussed very much).

These days, I will write a review for just about any 5 star book I read, so it would be pretty rare for a brand new title to appear one of these lists for me.

 

“Miss Peregrin’s Home for Peculiar Children” by Ransom Riggs

What I Liked About It: Strong and exciting world building .

 

“Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” by Lisa See

What I Liked About It: Reading about the lifelong friendship between the protagonist and her best friend.

 

 “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker

What I Liked About It: What a joyful ending it had! The protagonist endured so much pain in her life, so to see her end on such a happy note was both a thrill and a relief.

 

“The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption” by Katherine Joyce

What I Liked About It: This book honestly explored the dark underbelly of the adoption industry where corruption and coercion is used to procure children for adoption who could have otherwise remained with their birth families with a little support. I think adoption can be an excellent option for some children, but it should always be done ethically and only after exhausting all other possibilities for families who are experiencing hard times.

 

“The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women” by Kate Moore

What I Liked About It: Learning about a chapter of history that was never mentioned in school. Worker protection rules were created for a reason and should be respected. So many people died horribly from exposures to all sorts of unsafe substances and environments before we had such laws. This was not an easy read, but it was an important one.

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Beach Reads


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A glass bottle that has a piece of paper sealed inside of it. The bottle is sitting in the sand at the beach and you can see the water coming in behind it. No idea what message is scrawled on the paper, though!I’ve been participating in Top Ten Tuesday for years now, but I’m still a little confused by the concept of a beach read. Being at the beach is no different than being in a library, coffee shop, waiting room, train car, or at home when it comes to what I read.

My state of mind matters far more. If I’m nervously waiting for an update about someone who in the hospital, for example, I’m probably going to need something lighthearted to read that doesn’t require too much analysis. If I’m bored and craving a challenge, I might pick up one of the classics or something from the literary fiction genre that is nuanced and subtle.

I am trying to remain in the spirit of this week’s theme, though, and so I’ll share some fun seafood and marine-themed cozy mysteries as my answers as they’re the sorts of books I could read in almost any situation.

1. Sunny Side Up (Li Johnson Murder Mysteries #1) by Daniel Stallings

2. Dressed to Keel (A Darcy Cavanaugh Mystery #1) by Candy Calvert

3. Murder at the Lighthouse (Exham on Sea Mysteries #1) by Frances Evesham

4. Town in a Lobster Stew (A Candy Holliday Mystery, #2) by B.B. Haywood

5. Beach Blanket Barbie (Zoe Donovan Mystery #6)by Kathi Daley

6. A Shell of a Problem (Sanibel Island Mysteries, #1) by Jennifer L. Schiff

7. The Cruise Ship Lost My Daughter by Morgan Mayer

8. Lowcountry Boil (A Liz Talbot Mystery, #1) by Susan M. Boyer

9. Live and Let Chai (Seaside Café Mystery, #1) by Bree Baker

10. Clammed Up (A Maine Clambake Mystery, #1) by Barbara Ross

(Don’t they have great titles?)

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