I’d never heard of a book hangover until Jana mentioned them in this week’s prompt.
Most of the strong attachments I formed to books happened when I was a child or teenager. It was fairly rare for them between that point in time and my current age until pretty recently for reasons I haven’t figured out yet.
So this list is a short one, but a few years ago it wouldn’t have existed at all. The links in this post will go to my reviews of these books.
The imagery in this book was so strong that reading it made me feel as if a movie were playing out in my mind. I sure hope this gets made into a film or TV show someday. We’re overdue for an aquatic show, especially one that tackles as many important themes as this one does.
There’s something about reading about pandemics that comforts me every flu season. I still need to read the rest of this series, but, wow, was this a good introduction to this universe! Jumping around among so many different characters really drew me into this world.
I’ve been a huge fan of The Handmaid’s Tale for many years now. It was immensely satisfying to finally get a sequel to it. I can’t wait to see how the updates on so many characters from the first book are integrated into the TV show based on this series, too.
Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
Recently, I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago.
A Theory of Flight
Justina Ireland’s “A Theory of Flight” is the first instalment of this series. It was about a daring plan to build an open-source rocket could help more people escape Earth. Click on the link in the first sentence of this paragraph to read it for free or scroll to the bottom of this post to watch the short film version of it. There are mild spoilers in this post, so reader beware after this sentence.
When I first began this series, I talked about my expectations for hopeful science fiction.
This type of sci-fi isn’t about creating a utopia or brushing aside the very real challenges people face. It’s about finding hope and fighting for a happy ending no matter what the circumstances are.
Carlinda was no stranger to conflict or struggling. She was a black woman who’d grown up in a low-income neighbourhood. This may have been set in a future version of Earth, but the obstacles she faced were the same ones that people from all of these groups face today.
The big difference between her time and ours had to do with how much the environment had degraded thanks to climate change. Life on a hot, polluted planet was beyond difficult, especially for people who didn’t have the money or social clout to get away from Earth.
Cooperation
Carlinda had some money saved up from a well-paid job building spaceships for the wealthy folks who were fleeing Earth for safe colonies on Mars and Europa.
Her funds weren’t enough to get her to either of those places, though, much less help anyone else to join her. This futuristic version of society was so economically stratified that the vast majority of people were doomed to live out short, painful, poverty-stricken lives on Earth.
Or were they?
The beautiful thing about Carlinda’s open-sourced plans for rocket ships was that they could be built out of trash. Very little money was required to create them. All you needed were some workers who understood how to follow the plans and build something that could safely bring a few hundred folks to Europa.
There are some plot twists related to the political ramifications of this plan that are best left up to new readers to discover for themselves. Still, I loved seeing how the small percentage of humans who were wealthy and politically powerful reacted to the idea of ordinary folks taking their own fates into their hands.
Not only did it add a layer of urgency to the plot, it gave Carlinda and the people working with her even more of an incentive to keep building and to share their knowledge with as many other poor folks as possible.
A better world is possible, and it all begins with regular people banding together to creatively solve problems that are too big for any one person to fix on their own.
Content warning: racism, sexism, a few brief scenes involving blood, death of a pet, and sexual harassment. I will only mention the first three items in this list in my review.
The Shape of Water is a dark fantasy romance about a lonely janitor who falls in love with an amphibious humanoid creature who is being held in captivity by the U.S. government. It is set in 1962 in an undisclosed government facility.
This film was directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. It won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as other honours at the Golden Globes, British Film Academy Awards, and the Critic’s Choice Awards.
The tags for this post do contain mild spoilers. I will not be discussing them in detail today but wanted to label this correctly for future readers.
Characters
Sally Hawkins as Elisa Eposito
Elisa was a mute woman who worked as a cleaner at a secret underground government facility. Her dear friend and chosen family member Giles described her as “the princess without voice.” She has a whimsical personality that found joy in little things like dancing down the hall or gently interacting with everyone she met.
While I can’t go into her backstory without sharing spoilers, I will say that she was someone who was quite alone in the world. She had no genetic relatives to rely upon.
Doug Jones as Amphibian Man
The Amphibian Man could not speak, but he was intelligent. Very little was shared about his background in this film other than the fact that he was the first of his kind discovered by humans.
Richard Jenkins as Giles
As mentioned above, Giles was Elisa’s dear neighbor and friend. He’d worked as an adverting illustrator for many years but was struggling to find work as his industry switched from painting to photographs for the imagery in ads.
He was a kind, gentle, creative man who could be a little absent-minded when it came to looking after basic needs like fixing himself dinner. Like Elise, he was quite alone in the world for reasons I’ll leave to future viewers to discover for themselves.
Octavia Spencer as Zelda Fuller
Zelda was Elisa’s co-worker and friend who served as her sign language interpreter at work. Her personality was assertive and opinionated, the opposite of how Elisa generally behaved.
Michael Shannon as Richard Strickland
Richard was a United States Colonel in charge of the project to study the “asset,” as they referred to the Amphibian Man. He followed protocol strictly and was obsessed with getting the results his bosses expected.
Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Robert Hoffstetler
Dr. Hoffstetler was the physician who was given the responsibility of figuring out the physiology of the Amphibian Man’s body. The U.S. government hoped to learn how to create astronauts who could better adapt to the rigours of space exploration by learning how this creature was capable of breathing both air and water.
David Hewlett as Fleming
Fleming was the laboratory’s head of security. He was a rigid, unfriendly man who expected perfection from himself and everyone around him.
My Review
Prepare yourselves for some gushing. This was such a good story.
There was an immensely satisfying amount of foreshadowing. I’d imagine that anyone who is familiar with the romance or science fiction genres could spot the biggest plot twists coming ahead of time. This wasn’t the sort of film that relied on the audience not knowing what to expect next. It was how the characters reacted to them that was important, and this was something the filmmakers showed beautifully.
The cinematography was beautiful. I was immediately drawn into the plot thanks to how much effort was put into constructing this era. It was also interesting to watch shots that had important things happening in both the foreground and background. They added so many layers of meaning to the storyline.
Octavia Spencer and Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water.
I did find myself wishing that the racism, sexism, and other types of discrimination in this era was presented in a more nuanced manner. In my experiences with sexism and biphobia, a lot of it can be subtle depending on who is around and what prejudiced folks think they can get away with. People can convey so much with body language and the words they do (or don’t) use that I was surprised by how blatant everything was here.
Perhaps things were radically different in 1962 in this regard. I wasn’t alive then and will defer to people who may say this portrayal is more accurate than I originally thought it was. But I still would have liked to see these topics handled a little more sensitively. (I will also defer to other reviewers to discuss their personal experiences with racism and ableism as it relates to this point).
With that being said, I still really liked seeing how these various types of prejudice were not only expressed but intersected with each other and this is my only criticism of a film I otherwise loved. The storytellers did a good job of showing how someone might be advantaged in one area (e.g. race, social class, or gender) while still oppressed in others (e.g. disability or sexual orientation).
The numerous references to water in this film were well done. They included everything from bathing to hard-boiling eggs, and they were just the tip of the iceberg. One of the things I enjoyed the most as I was watching it was to take note of all of the aquatic-themed moments that needed a little more effort to take notice of. It was satisfying to add them to my list of these references and try to guess where the storytellers would subtly introduce the next one.
This isn’t a criticism in any way, but I did want to make note of the disclaimer about blood in this tale. There were a few scenes that included characters who were bleeding from non-accidental injuries. While the violence that caused these injuries was briefly shown on screen, I always like to warn my readers ahead of time about stuff like this. I’d be happy to discuss it in full, spoiler-y detail in private with anyone who needs to figure out if this is the right thing for them to watch.
I’d heartily recommendThe Shape of Water to anyone who enjoys the romance or speculative fiction genres.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
I am a creature of habit. This is especially true when it comes to what I reread and when I return to those old, friendly stories. Often my urge to reread things are tied to the seasons of the year and specific holidays.
Since we’re currently in the middle of winter, I tweaked this week’s topic a bit so I could talk about the books I’m most likely to reread at this time of the year.
I first read this book one winter when I was in high school. Cold, dark weather makes me feel sad and glum at times. There was something oddly comforting about reading about a character whose troubles were much bigger than my own.
The happy ending she eventually received is a nice mood lifter as well.
There comes a time every March when I feel like winter will linger on until the end of time itself.
This is when I like to pull out the first Chronicles of Narnia book and read about an enchanted winter that lasted there for a century and never included a single Christmas to look forward to. Imagine how tired of the cold and snow the Narnians must have been by that final year! And yet spring did arrive for them eventually, so I can have hope that the same thing will happen for our completely non-magical winters, too.
As much as I dislike winters in southern Ontario, there are places that are much colder, snowier, and darker than Toronto. The Snow Child is set in Alaska about a hundred years ago. Back then the people who lived there were basically snowed into their homes for months on end, especially if you lived out in the country away from any towns.
The main characters were a couple who had longed for a child for many years. When a little girl showed up in the middle of a fierce blizzard, they took her in while trying to figure out where on Earth she must have come from.
Figuring out what was happening with her and with the kind couple who looked after her is so engrossing. I could reread this book a dozen times and still want more.
This week’s prompt is a love freebie, so I decided to share some romantic quotes for it since this isn’t actually a holiday I observe.
How many of the other Top Ten Tuesday participants live in countries where candy conversation hearts are sold at this time of the year? I enjoy them, but I haven’t seen them around much the last couple of years. Here’s hoping that changes soon.
If you celebrate Valentine’s Day and have a different favourite candy from it, I’d like to know about that, too!
2. “And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King.
3. “Come sleep with me: We won’t make Love, Love will make us.”
― Julio Cortázar
4. “It’s bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They’re not. They’re just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.”
― Rachel Cohn, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List
5. “your hand
touching mine.
this is how
galaxies
collide.”
― Sanober Khan
6. “Love is too precious to be ashamed of.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, A Stroke of Midnight
7. “Before I fell
in love with words,
with setting skies
and singing birds—
it was you I fell
in love with first.”
― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure
8. “Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don’t know you’re having one until you’re right in the middle of it.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,
10. “Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Last year I interviewed spring and autumn. Today I’m back with an exclusive interview with winter!
I’ll conclude this series with an interview with summer later on this year…that is, assuming winter eventually decides to concede their post.
Winter: Hey, I heard that!
Lydia: My apologies. I didn’t think you’d join us quite so soon.
Winter: Well, I was a little tardy showing up this year. And spring did warn me about you. 😉
Lydia: Heh, I heard a few things about you from spring as well. How have you been?
Winter: Things are changing rapidly for me. I’m sure you’ve all noticed how winter is different than it was in generations past.
Lydia: Yes, we sure have. How has climate change affected your work? It sure seems like your season has changed the most as a result of it so far.
Winter: I’ve noticed the same thing. Of course there have been shifts in our patterns in the past, but never this severe or rapid. It’s one thing to switch off duties with spring or autumn during the transition periods, but now it’s happening in the middle of my shift!
Lydia: That must make managing the weather pretty tricky.
Winter: It sure does. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even finally going to meet Summer one of these days. Spring and summer say we have oddly similar personalities.
Lydia: Hopefully, that won’t happen. Summer has been dealing with extreme temperatures, too.
Winter: What, you don’t want a heatwave and a blizzard in the same day?
Lydia: As tempting as that would be in the heat of August, I think the plants wouldn’t like that.
Winter: Well, I don’t like the plants!
Lydia: Wait, what?
Winter: I’m totally joking there. I forget that not everyone gets my frosty sense of humour.
Lydia: Okay, good. I was quite surprised for a second.
Winter: I’m not actually supposed to know the plants. Most of them die or hibernate by the time I show up, and the few stragglers left aren’t the best conversationalists.
Lydia: Does this mean all of the seasons are able to talk to the plants?
Winter: Yes, but humans weren’t supposed to know that. Forget I said anything.
Lydia: No worries, I won’t press the issue, but I’m going to keep this in mind for my conversation with Summer.
Winter: Just don’t tell them I said anything. Proprietary secrets of the trade and all. So what else do you want to know?
Two tales that look past death into the terror beyond. The Cup Runneth Over by Natasha Duncan-Drake You have been tempted into places unknown and there are things lurking in the shadows. The Promise by Sophie Duncan When a person makes a commitment, they should stick to it. Carol is determined to stick to hers no matter how scary it may become.
Review:
Content warning: Blood. I will not be discussing it in my review.
February is the perfect time to read something scary.
“The Cup Runneth Over” followed an unnamed narrator who was given a few odds and ends as a reward for helping their aunt pack up boxes in anticipation of a big move. One of the items they took home was an antique gold-inlaid book. The plot twists from this point forward made it hard for me stop reading. I was intensely curious to find out what the narrator had found and why it was so out of the ordinary.
It’s hard to discuss what happened next without spoiling anything. What I can say is that Ms. Duncan-Drake kept me guessing until the end. There were a couple of different times when I thought I had the next scene figured out only to be surprised by what actually happened. The author was certainly aware of the tropes in the genres she was writing in, but she used them sparingly in the very best sense of that term.
One thing I would have liked to see done differently in this tale had to do with the identity of the narrator. Not only was their name hidden from the reader, all other other identifying details like gender or race were skirted around as well. It would have been nice to know at least one or two of these facts about them. It was obviously impossible to imagine what they looked like in the absence of any details about their physical appearance whatsoever.
Carol made a promise while handing out treats at a Halloween party to the children of the community she’d recently moved to in “The Promise.” I thought it was quite interesting to see how the narrator juxtaposed the innocence of a children’s party with the darker hints about what was happening in this community. It was easy to leap from logical explanations for all of these weird coincidences to theories that required a strong belief in things that science can’t explain.
While I did come up with a fairly accurate guess about where this story was going, I still had a wonderful time following Carol’s adventures as she chaperoned the children. She was genuinely concerned about making a good impression on her new neighbours and helping the little ones have a spooky – but not too scary – Halloween. I liked her quite a bit and didn’t want it to end.
This was a short but satisfying collection that horror aficionados should try for themselves.
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.
What a fun topic as we move closer to Valentine’s Day!
My celebrity crushes include:
Julia Stiles.
I’ve thought she was cute ever since I saw her in 10 Things I Hate About You back in the 90s. She tends to play characters who know what they want out of life and go for it. I really like that.
Nina Dobrev.
A few weeks ago, my spouse convinced me to start watching season one of The Vampire Diaries. Nina plays the main character, Elena Gilbert, on that show, and I immediately thought she was pretty. Obviously, I have no idea what the actor’s personality is like, but her character is so sweet that I can’t help but to have a crush on her.
Photo by: Robert Trachtenberg/NBC
William Jackson Harper.
One of my longterm goals with the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge is to convince everyone else to give The Good Place a try. Yes, I’m joking there. (Probably 😉 ).
Not only is this show funny, many of the characters in it are quite attractive if any of you are looking for eye candy. Wlliam’s character, Chidi Anagonye, is a nerdy, intellectual guy which is something I find irresistible.
Jameela Jamil.
Jameela Jamil plays Tahani Al-Jamil in The Good Place. She plays her role as a wealthy, sheltered, but still incredibly likeable person extremely well. I was surprised by how quickly I developed a crush on her.
Does anyone else find it tricky to predict which books they’ll give five-star ratings to ahead of time? My list is short and sweet this week due to that. I hope my predictions will be accurate.
I love alternate history novels, so I have high hopes that this exploration of what would have happened if Africa developed steam-powered boats before Europe did will be as amazing as I expect.
The Three-Body Problem: Remembrance of Earth’s Past Series, Book 1 by Cixin Liu
This was recommended to me on Twitter a few weeks ago after I asked if anyone knew of good science fiction novels about aliens that don’t look or act human-like.
The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series, Book 1 by Rick Riordan
I accept the fact that I’m probably the last person in the whole world to begin this series. Everyone tells me it’s amazing, so I’m taking them at their word!
If any of you have recommendations for books similar to these ones, I’d sure like to hear about them.
Mall walking is a form of exercise involving people walking briskly through the long corridors of shopping malls before the stores open for the day when there are very few other folks about.
This is the time of year when I begin to yearn for spring. It’s one thing to experience snowstorms in November and December when the memory of summer is still fresh in everyone’s minds.
Winter weather somehow feels even colder and snowier when it’s been happening for a couple of months already and can be expected to keep popping up for at least two more of them.
Luckily, Toronto has plenty of malls to walk around in while the temperatures plunge and snow falls outside. There is definitely something to be said for taking advantage of all of that dry, temperature-controlled space until April arrives.
If you haven’t tried mall walking yet this winter, here are three reasons why it might be a good idea to give it a shot.
It’s Scaleable
Walking can be made as easy or as difficult as it needs to be to meet your current fitness goals.
It can be a short, gentle stroll through the mall for someone who is brand new to exercise or just coming back to it after an accident or illness.
A long, brisk power walk might be a good choice for someone who has been exercising for a while and wants to increase their endurance.
I’ve even seen people run up multiple flights of stairs while on walks in order to give their muscles and cardiovascular systems a bigger challenge. Note: I don’t recommend this one on busy days at the mall or other public places!
It’s as Sociable or Solitary as You Prefer
I’m the sort of person who loves walking with a partner or group of people. There’s something about walking and talking that makes both of those things much more appealing to me than they’d be on their own.
The nice thing about walking at a mall is that either of these options is perfectly safe and acceptable.
There are certain places like parks that I don’t feel safe visiting early in the morning and late at night when few other folks are around because I am a short, petite woman. This is even more true during the winter when the sun rises late and sets early.
Malls always have security guards patrolling them, and no matter how early I might show up in the morning I’ve always seen other mall walkers there as well.
I really like being able to get a walk in at the mall by myself or with someone else without needing to think about safety factors like these.
It’s Warm, Dry, and Indoors
Taking an outdoor walk on a warm, spring day in Ontario is a pleasant experience.
In February? Not so much. Our winters can be beautiful, but they’re also generally wet, icy, and freezing cold for months on end.
While I definitely prefer walking outdoors, it is nice to have a place to go during the winter where you can unzip your coat and walk around without slipping on any ice or snow.
Malls have plenty of flat, even surfaces to walk on. The ones I visit are kept very clean and dry, especially if you visit early in the day before the biggest crowds show up.
There are times during winter and early spring when I impatiently wait for the weather to warm up again. I doubt I’ll ever look forward to this part of the year, but I do appreciate having such nice places to move around in while the weather outdoors is cold, icy, snowy, muddy, rainy, and sometimes all of those things at once in a single day!
If you live near a mall, how often do you go there to exercise?
Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
I’d never heard of a book hangover until Jana mentioned them in this week’s prompt.
Content warning: racism, sexism, a few brief scenes involving blood, death of a pet, and sexual harassment. I will only mention the first three items in this list in my review.
2. “And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many.”
8. “Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don’t know you’re having one until you’re right in the middle of it.”
Last year I interviewed 
Winter: It sure does. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even finally going to meet Summer one of these days. Spring and summer say we have oddly similar personalities.
Lydia: What can you tell me about 
Title: Beyond Death – Tales of the Macabre
Mall walking is a form of exercise involving people walking briskly through the long corridors of shopping malls before the stores open for the day when there are very few other folks about.
Walking can be made as easy or as difficult as it needs to be to meet your current fitness goals.
I’m the sort of person who loves walking with a partner or group of people. There’s something about walking and talking that makes both of those things much more appealing to me than they’d be on their own.
Taking an outdoor walk on a warm, spring day in Ontario is a pleasant experience.