Category Archives: Blog Hops

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Character Relationships


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Five little paper boats sitting on a light blue surface. The one out in front is red, the two behind that one are blue, and the last two are teal. I had a bit of an adventure trying to find a good stock photo for this week’s post.

So many of the pictures under tags like friendship and relationship presumed I was only talking about romance or that I wanted to see photos of people laughing together without any context as to what was so funny.

There’s nothing wrong with those answers, of course, they just quite weren’t what I was hoping for this time around. Luckily, I eventually found something that left a bit more scope for the imagination as Anne Shirley would say.

Book cover for Waswanipi by  Jean-Yves Soucy. Image on cover is a photograph of a lake and a small range of mountains (or large range of hills) that are part of Cree territory. The sky above is blue and mostly clear. The scene is placid and there are no people around.

1. Waswanipi by  Jean-Yves Soucy

This memoir was never finished, but the portion of it that could be published provided such an interesting glimpse into what Cree life was like before Europeans disrupted it. I enjoyed seeing how every member of the tribe relied on others to survive and how they came together to work on problems. That’s really all I can say without giving you too many spoilers, but the relationships between the folks mentioned in this book were beautiful.

 

Book cover for A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers. Image on cover is a drawing of a winding dirt road through a forest that the viewer sees from above. There are multiple trees and bushes next to the road that begins on the bottom left with a person pedaling a little metal home around. And, at the end of the path, a robot waits to greet them!

2. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Yes, I know I’ve mentioned this book on many other Top Ten Tuesday themes before. If you’re curious about this series but haven’t read it yet, maybe all of this repetition will convince you to give it a try. Hehe.

Sibling Dex (a human) and Mosscap (a robot) didn’t seem to have much in common at first glance, but I loved discovering all of their similarities and seeing how their friendship blossomed.

 

Book cover for Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black. Image on cover is a painting of the side of a black man’s face as he stands next to an empty yellow road and stares at something the viewer cannot see. The road disappears over the top of a hill, and you can see a setting sun in the distance.

 

3. Don’t Cry for Me by Daniel Black

This is sort of an unusual choice for this prompt because of how lonely and isolated Jacob was as he neared the end of his life. The relationship aspect comes in when he recalled his difficult childhood and how his older brother protected him from their sometimes violent grandfather. Those sorts of bonds can last forever.

 

Book cover for The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler. Image on cover shows an unsettling painting of a garden where strange, spindly blue and white flowers grow. In the distance, a reptile-like alien hides in the mist.

 

4. The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler

The protagonist of this novella was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. As she struggles to remember the present and sometimes mixes up the past with her current life, she also discovers aliens living in her backyard.

The friendship she strikes up with them was as unexpected as it was mesmerizing. If only this one had a sequel.

I look forward to reading all of your answers!

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Song Lyrics I’ve Misheard

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 close-up of a sheet of music on a music stand. The stand is next to a window that is covered by horizontal blinds.

This isn’t the sheet music to my answer. It’s simply a nice thing to look at.

I thought this topic was going to be an easy one, but it almost stumped me. Only one answer came to mind.

Artists and Song: Lloyd Feat. Lil Wayne, I Want You

What I Heard: “She’s 5’2,” but I want you.”

The Actual Lyric: “She’s fine, too, but I want you.”

I spent years wondering why height matters at all to these rappers. I don’t notice a meaningful difference between someone who is 5’2” versus an inch shorter or taller than that unless I have some compelling reason to pay close attention their height.

It feels weird to publish such a short post, but this one can help to balance out some of my earlier Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge posts where I gave long, chatty answers because I simply had to give two or more responses when only one was technically called for. Ha!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Defied My Expectations


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A shooting star zipping across a velvety purple and black night sky just after sunset. You can see the stars beginning to twinkle in the sky and the dim outline of a forest in the background where the last drops of sunlight are quickly fading out of view. This is going to be one of those tougher weeks when I do not have ten answers for the prompt, but I’ll do my best to come up with as many as possible.

Please note there are a few spoilers in this post, so reader beware if any of these books are on your TBR list.

It was interesting to me that all of the authors I picked this time around were women.

That was not done on purpose, and I didn’t even realize it until I was nearly finished writing this post.

Isn’t it interesting how our brains sometimes make patterns like that without us noticing it at the time?

 

 

Book cover for The Ghost and the Real Girl by Avery Carter. Image on cover shows a black and white drawing of the profile of a woman’s face. Her hair has been piled on top of her head in a Victorian-style puffy bun, and she has a scarf with a few sprigs of flowers tired around her neck. There is also an oval border around this drawing that has roses, vines, and leaves sprouting around it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. The Ghost and the Real Girl by Avery Carter (My Review)

My Assumption: It was going to be 90% romance and 10 % fantasy.

What It Was Actually Like: 90% fantasy and 10% romance. I ended up really liking this one.

 

 

Book cover for The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Image on cover shows a painting of a young black girl who is wearing a red coat and a dark grey hat. She is sitting slumped over beside a window whose blinds are opened. You can see the brilliant oranges and yellows of a setting sun in the sky, but the girl’s body language is sad and defeated in contrast to that brilliant display of nature.

 

2. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

My Assumption: The justice system would work in Pecola’s favour, and the person who abused her would be punished.

What It Was Actually Like: Beautifully written but sadly lacking in justice of any sort.

 

 

Book cover for Skylark (#2 in the Sarah Plain and Tall Series series) by Patricia MacLachlan. Image on cover is a painting of Anna, the little white girl who is the protagonist of this series, sitting sadly and petting her dog. She is wearing a green 1800s style prairie dress. Her dad, stepmother, and little brother are sitting in a wagon and looking at her from the background. The horse is about to take the stepmother and children away from the drought, but Sarah doesn’t want to go. All around them is dead grass, and there is a barn and a few green trees in the distance.

 

3. Skylark (#2 in the Sarah Plain and Tall Series series) by Patricia MacLachlan

My Assumption: The first book in this series was about a single woman named Sarah coming to visit Anna, Caleb, and Papa while she decided whether or not she was going to marry Papa and stay on the prairie. There was a lot of angst about her possibly leaving them in that tale, so I assumed the sequel would move on from that conflict now that Sarah and Papa are married.

What It Was Actually Like: I was wrong. Everyone still worried about Sarah leaving because of how homesick she was for Maine. It was cool to revisit characters I originally met as a kid, though.

 

Book cover for Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming of Age Story by Stacey Chomiak. Image on cover shows a drawing of a plump white girl with glasses and straight shoulder length brown hair sitting on a brick wall next to a lake. She’s wearing a white shirt and shorts and looking wistfully into the water as she dips one foot into it.

 

4. Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming of Age Story by Stacey Chomiak

My Assumption: This is an autobiography of the author’s evangelical childhood as a deeply closeted lesbian. I thought that Stacey’s parents were eventually going to accept that both of their kids were gay.

What It Was Actually Like: Based on the post-script, her parents are more accepting now but their relationship still sounds pretty strained.  I wished she could have had a happier ending before she became a parent herself, but it was honestly pretty realistic for the time and place Stacey grew up in based on my own experiences with that denomination.

 

Well, that was a short list this time! There aren’t a lot of books that defy my expectations these days, but I hope the rest of you had better luck coming up with answers.

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A Review of The Red Pencil

Book cover for The red pencil by Shawna Reppert. Image on cover shows a red pencil lying on an opened spiral notebook. Title: The Red Pencil

Author: Shawna Reppert

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 26, 2015

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: About 19 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

A young girl learns to be careful what she wishes for. . .and as an adult decides that some things are worth the cost. Contemporary fantasy by an award-winning author.

Although this story is inspired in part by the author’s childhood in Pennsylvania and her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, it is contemporary fantasy/magical realism, not memoir. The magic in the book is entirely the author’s invention, although inspired by archetypes from several cultures. It is in no way meant to represent the Pennsylvania Dutch hex tradition.

Review:

Content Warning: Two brief descriptions of animal abuse and one brief description of a dead pet cat.

Everyone needs the right tools for their education.

Childhood isn’t always a fun experience. It was interesting to see how Mari coped with her jealousy over a classmate who seemed to live a charmed life. Those sorts of emotions can be intense, especially when the ordinary scuffles of recess spill over into other parts of life. Getting to know the main character was even more rewarding than it had already been once she shared how she handled her feelings and how the red pencil helped her learn an important life lesson at such a tender age.

I would have loved to see more world building in this short story, especially when it came to Mari’s relationship with the Huckster. He was such a mysterious figure that I would have loved to know how they first met and how he knew she was the right person to give the red pencil to. There was space to expand this world here, and I would have gone with a full five-star rating if the author had done that.

With that being said, I thought Ms. Reppert did a fabulous job of explaining the allure and danger of the red pencil. Some of the most memorable scenes for me were the ones that explored Mari’s relationship with what she originally thought was a perfectly ordinary gift from an acquaintance. I’ll leave it up to other readers to discover what was actually going on there, but this is the sort of magical touch to a plot that leaves me wanting more.

The Red Pencil was a thoughtful back-to-school read.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: The Weirdest Thing I Loved as a Child

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 photograph of a very old graveyard. The gravestones are covered in moss and have most of their etchings either hidden by moss or worn away. The largest and nearest one has begun to bend over and looks like it might soon fall over entirely. Please note that this post includes references to child mortality and epidemics because little Lydia read tons of stories about (typically Victorian-era) children who caught all sorts of unpleasant illnesses. This will be a general overview, and I will not be going into detail about specific characters, individuals, or causes of death.

The weirdest thing I loved as a child was visiting the pre-1950 (ish?) sections of graveyards, figuring out how old the people there were when they died, and trying to guess what might have killed them and if they would have survived if they had access to modern medicine. I was most interested in the gravestones of those who died young because almost everyone I knew who died had done so at a ripe old age.

Why was I interested in this? Well, there were a few reasons for it:

1)  I’ve always thought cemeteries are beautiful and peaceful places to remember the dead. I liked seeing the pretty tombstones, reading names on them that maybe weren’t so commonly used these days, and pondering their creative epitaphs.

2) Getting sick made me anxious in small part because of how many classic novels I’d read about kids being disabled or killed by all sorts of diseases that can now be cured with medications like antibiotics or prevented entirely with vaccines. (See also: Beth March from Little Women, Helen Burns from Jane Eyre, and Mary Ingalls from the Little House books). It was always nice to go to the library later on, or maybe ask my mother who was training to become a nurse back then, and learn about how modern medicine has radically changed the world in this regard.

3) It made getting vaccinated slightly less horrible. I still hated needles, but at least I knew why vaccines were so important.

4)  I liked being scared, and it was frightening to read lists of names on a gravestone who died one right after the other and realize they were probably related and suffered from the same illness.

In conclusion, I have a bit of a gothic side. Don’t tell anyone. 😉

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Top Ten Tuesday: Sea Monster Stories


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A photograph of a dark portion of the ocean. Something huge is stirring in the water and making waves. It’s too dark in the water to tell what might be churning around down there.I have previously blogged about mermaids, rubber ducks, and wetlands, so it took me a little while to come up with a good spin for this week’s water freebie theme.

Large bodies of water like lakes and the ocean can be beautiful on a calm summer day.

They‘re treacherous during a hurricane or other violent storm.

They can be a safe place to swim, boat, or play.

They’re often a good food source.

What else can they be? Well, depending on what sort of books you read, they might also contain sea monsters. Here are ten titles about that exact scenario.

1. Jaws (Jaws, #1) by Peter Benchley

2. Black Water Horror: A Tale of Terror for the 21st Century : Creature from the Black Lagoon
by Larry Mike Garmon

3. Slime by John Halkin

4. How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack by Andrew Shaffer

5. Goliath by Steve Alten

6. Creature from the Black Lagoon by Vargo Statten

7. Zomby Dick or, The Undead Whale by J.D. Livingstone

8. The Origin of the Crabs by Guy N. Smith

9. Orca by Arthur Herzog III

10. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters

11. The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft

 

 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Three Fun Facts About Myself

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.

The numbers 1, 2, and 3 are beige coloured and lying on a red surface. Beneath each letter is a small lego: a white one underneath the number 1, a black one underneath the number 2, and a red one underneath the number 3. Once again, I’d like to have a crystal ball so I can see how you all answer this question! Will you be telling us a secret? Posting pictures? Sharing funny childhood stories? Or maybe something else entirely?

Here are three fun facts about me that I don’t think I’ve shared on my blog before:

1. I once stopped driving and pulled over to the side of a quiet, flat, country road to save a turtle that had been flipped over on its back. There were no other vehicles anywhere to be seen in either direction, so I was not putting myself in harm’s way by doing this. The turtle was a greenish-brown little creature that was about the size of a small dinner plate. It wasn’t at all heavy to pick up and probably weighed no more than 5 pounds. It didn’t look anything like a snapping turtle, but I’m not sure which type of turtle it was. I picked it up, brought it to the edge of the road, and made sure it was walking into the grass safely where it would live happily ever after before I drove off again.

2. I was born with an innocent heart murmur that wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult. It’s called an innocent murmur because it doesn’t cause any health problems and doesn’t need to be treated. Some of you may have one, too! About 10% of adults and 30% of kids have them, so it’s a pretty common variation of normal. I only ever think of it when I meet a new doctor who pauses and listens again to my heart while examining me.

3. I  have always loved educational stuff. When I was a teenager, my family visited some family friends in a big city. There was a gorgeous, huge museum there I desperately wanted to see. Our hosts said museums were boring and wanted to show us a local mall instead. Mom took me aside and told me to be polite, so I smiled and said nothing more about it.

My only memory of that excursion is of patiently sitting in a food court with a neutral expression on my face as I silently felt the sting of disappointment and the grating texture of boredom that somehow seems worse when you’re a kid or teen.

On a positive note, I have visited that museum multiple times since then and always have a marvellous time examining their fossils, paintings, and artifacts in detail.

But I still don’t like going to the mall. Ha!

(This is in no way a judgement of people who love shopping or malls, by the way. May you enjoy those hobbies to your heart’s content. Our hosts and I simply had wildly different ideas about what is fun in life, and I doubt they realized what a rare treat visiting a museum was for rural people who didn’t have a lot of disposable income.

We had a mall in the town we lived in, but it was about a one-hour drive to the nearest small museum and  several hours to a full day of driving for the large ones. Due to the cost of gas, multiple meals, parking fees, highway tolls, and possibly renting a motel room or two for the night in addition to buying general admission tickets to a museum, we were only able to afford to do this about once every five to ten years when I was growing up. It was a huge deal whenever it happened, and it was one of the many reasons why I moved to an urban area as an adult).

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Top Ten Tuesday: Memoirs Written by Women


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A pink dried flower that is lying on the blank white page of an opened book. Here’s a quick heads up before I jump into today’s post. Long and Short Reviews is hosting a virtual party on their site this week to celebrate their 16th anniversary. If you’d like to learn about new indie and small press books in a wide variety of genres or win one of the gift certificates or other great prizes, click on the second link in this paragraph and read some of their guests posts to find out how to enter the drawings.

Okay, onto Top Ten Tuesday stuff now.

The genre topic I picked for this week’s freebie post is memoirs written by women.

I enjoyed all of these books and would recommend them to anyone who likes memoirs or who wants to learn more about the lives of these incredible women and girls.

1. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

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

3. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

4. I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai

5. Educated by Tara Westover

6. Becoming by Michelle Obama

7. Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

8. Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s by Jennifer Worth

9. Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

10. Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Documentary I Liked

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 photo of a dinosaur skeleton against a black backrgroudn. The skeleton has been pieced back together and is standing up straight and tall as if the dinosaur is still alive. You all may remember how much I like nonfiction. I enjoy watching documentaries about science, history, medicine, and other topics just as much as I do reading about them.

I think documentaries are the perfect thing to watch whenever you need a distraction for any reason. You can learn so much about the world through them!

I’ve been anticipating this week’s topic so much that I’m going to give two answers to it. (Honestly, I wanted to give like a dozen…but I won’t overwhelm all of you with my enthusiasm for documentaries).

 

 

I recommend Prehistorical Planet to dinosaur fans age 5 and older

Poster for season two of the documentary Prehistoric Planet. It shows a close-up drwaing of a dinosaur’s eye. The dinosaur has blue feathers and a yellow-brown iris. You can see the reflection of a flying dinosaur in this dinosaur’s eye which is cool.Prehistoric Planet is a 2022 and 2023 British-American miniseries about what life was like for dinosaurs and other animals in the Late Cretaceous period. It’s based on the latest scientific research of that era and was filled with information about how those creatures hunted (or tried to avoid being hunted), found mates, built nests, and raised their young.

If there are any elementary-aged or older kids in your lives who love dinosaurs, this is something they can enjoy just as much as adults do. The second season just came out in May, and the writing felt like it was meant to appeal to viewers from a wide variety of ages and backgrounds which is delightful. This one is for everyone!

 

I recommend Shiny Happy People to teen and adult viewers only.

Poster for the documentary Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. Image on cover shows a photo of the Duggar Family that has a happy smiley face covering the actual face of every single member of the family.

Shiny Happy People is a 2023 documentary about the Duggar family and their relationship with the Institute of Basic Life Principles which was founded by Bill Gothard.

The Duggars have been a staple of reality TV programs on The Learning Channel since the early 2000s due to their frugal lifestyle and having 19 children.

They cultivated a wholesome image, but there were years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse going on behind the scenes both in this family and in Gothard’s organization in general.

This was not an easy thing to watch by any means, but it was educational. I especially appreciated the sections that pointed out some of subtle signs people can inadvertently give off when they’re being abused but trying to hide it as other programs on this topic will often only mention the biggest red flags of something like that going on.

There were so many people who could have reported these crimes but either never did it or were not listened to when they did. I think there’s something to be said for being aware of what to look for and alerting child protective services when warranted. Sometimes it takes more than one report for the authorities to take action.

Anyway, these are the two most recent documentaries that I loved. I hope you all like them, too, if you watch them!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Characters from Different Books Who Should Team Up


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A humorous photo of two people who are each holding a pet. One is holding a chihuahua and the other is holding a siamese cat. The animals are positioned so that they can look at each other, but they are instead looking at the photographer with puzzled expressions on their little faces. I read books from so many different genres, styles, and eras that it’s often hard for me to imagine what various characters might think of each other.

It’s like grabbing two random pets and expecting them to be friends. Maybe it will work, or maybe they’ll fight like, well, cats and dogs.

Some books dive deeply into character development. Others barely skim the surface of it in favour of adding in extra action scenes. There are also cases where the characters are all well-rounded but so wildly dissimilar that I don’t know how much time they’d even be willing to spend in the same room.

(My theory is that those of you who tend to stick to one genre for most of your reading time are going to have an easier time coming up with matches. Let’s see if I’m right!)

With that being said, here are my picks:

 

1. Anne Shirley from L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series and Ove from Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove.

The Ove we first met would probably be irritated by how talkative Anne could be when she was a child, but I think these two would eventually get along well if they’d met when Anne was older and a little quieter. She was almost always good at softening out the edges of grumpy people, and I think he’d be amused by some of her fanciful ideas about how life should work.

 

2. Yetu from Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Ariel from The Little Mermaid

They’d be good friends, I think. Well, other than the fact that Ariel wanted to be human and Yetu most definitely did not.

 

 

3. Fatima from Nnedi Okorafor‘s Remote Control and Charlie from Stephen King’s Firestarter 

They were both young girls who had been given powers far beyond their comprehension that they needed to learn how to use safely. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what they thought of each other?

 

4. Yetu from Rivers Solomon’s The  Deep and Fatima from Nnedi Okorafor’s Remote Control

 

I hope it’s okay to pick the same characters more than once, because I also think it would be cool to see how Yetu and Fatima got along. They both had a strong desire for justice that I think would become even more noticeable if they teamed up.

 

Anyway, that’s my short list. I look forward to seeing what everyone else has to say.

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