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.
My goals for 2020 are simple.
Visit More Museums. It’s been too long since I stepped foot into a museum. That needs to change.
Try New Things. It could be as simple as visiting a new restaurant or as complicated as having a full-blown conversation in Spanish. I want to stretch my comfort zone this year.
Study Spanish Again. Speaking of foreign languages, I stopped studying Spanish last year. I want to pick it up again and hopefully get to a point where I can have conversations in that language. Learning a new language is hard, and I deeply admire everyone who becomes fluent in a new language.
Spend More Time in Nature. While I love living in a big city, there’s something incredibly relaxing about spending time in nature. I want to do that more often.
Reply to Emails Faster. I wasn’t always good at that in 2019. Let’s see if I can do better this year.
Why I’m Excited for It: There aren’t enough books out there about friendship, especially when it comes to the end of a friendship. I hope this one does so well that publishers realize there’s a demand for these types of stories.
Why I’m Excited for It: This is apparently based on her short story called “The City Born Great.” I loved the world building in that story and can’t wait to see where Ms. Jemisin goes next with it.
Why I’m Excited for It: While the young adult genre in general is getting better at including mental illness reps, I can’t remember the last time I read about a character who was at all familiar with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I hope it’s a good read that does justice for this illness!
Why I’m Excited for It: There have been a few great books about asexual characters that came out over the last few years. This one is about someone who is aromantic and asexual, so I’m super curious to see what it will be like.
Why I’m Excited for It: I’ve never been good at any sports no matter how hard I tried to play them. Serena’s talent on the tennis court amazes me, and I’d like to learn more about where it came from and how she became a star in her sport.
Why I’m Excited for It: As soon as I saw the phrase “literary ghost story” in the blurb, I knew I had to read this one. Hauntings of both the literal and metaphorical kinds are always interesting to me.
Why I’m Excited for It: My sense of direction is honestly not spectacular. Like reading about star athletes, I find joy in learning how other living beings find their way around in our world much better than I can!
Why I’m Excited for It: I take good care of my skin. Reading about the newest science on what you should and shouldn’t do for healthy skin is something I enjoy quite a bit. Here’s hoping this book will touch on that topic!
This post is the final instalment of a four-part series I’ve been slowly working on about walking during each season of the year. Click on the links in this sentence to read about the things I love about spring hikes, summer strolls, and autumn hikes.
Winter is my least favourite season. The cold temperatures, short days, and frequent snowstorms means I generally spend a lot of time indoors.
I do so much of my exercising outdoors from spring to autumn, so this also means that getting workouts in is trickier at this time of the year than at any other. With that being said, there are still advantages to getting outdoors for a walk in the winter.
The Blissful Solitude
While I mentioned something pretty similar to this in my post about spring hikes, but it bears repeating again for this season. There are always some people walking around in my area, but you definitely see fewer of them on cold days.
As an introvert, I love this. There’s nothing like going to the park and having it all – or nearly all – to yourself.
The same can be said for walking down a street that is generally quite crowded in warmer weather. Rather than dodging strangers, I can focus on looking at all of the little things I might not have noticed about the architecture of the buildings I pass or the new plants at the park or forest that appeared since my last visit.
The Quiet Consistency
The months between April and November are filled with changes in the natural world here in southern Ontario. I revel in every change I see as plants sprout leaves, flowers bloom, or the first trees began to change colours for the season.
Winter is a long pause in this cycle every year. It’s just about impossible to look outdoors and immediately know whether we’re in the first week of December or the last week of March. Every day more or less looks the same during those months unless there’s been an ice storm or snowstorm recently.
There’s something to be said for appreciating that consistency. Spring will arrive eventually. In the meantime, I don’t need to think about whether a plant hanging over the side of the sidewalk is poison ivy or whether I’ve photographed that flower already.
Winter is a time of rest. I’m coming to appreciate that.
The Cold, Crisp Air
A year or two ago, I noticed that the temperatures were a bit cooler one August morning than they’d been that previous week. I decided to set out for a walk before the true heat of the day set in.
It took less than half a block for my body to become so drenched in perspiration that I headed back home for a cold glass of water. What I wouldn’t have given for a gust of cold, crisp air that day!
As much as I always look forward to spring, there is definitely something to be said for being able to exercise outdoors without getting dehydrated, developing a sunburn, or sweating through my clothes a few short minutes after leaving the house.
If you live in a part of the world that has winter and you spend time outdoors exercising during that season, what do you like most about it?
In January of 2013, I began blogging once a year about everything I’d read that previous year. This tradition began when my dad asked me how many books I’ve read in my entire lifetime.
I couldn’t begin to give him an answer to that question, but it did make me decide to start keeping track from that moment forward. The previous posts in this series are as follows: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.
There are links included to the books that I also wrote reviews for here.
I had some trouble finishing books this year. There were so many more titles that I started but then gave up on. I think I was pickier about what I read over the last twelve months, and the lure of social media also made reading a little less appealing than it normally is for me.
If any of you have advice on how to get out of this sort of slump, I’d sure like to hear it!
Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs
“Living like Livvy: A Mother’s Story about the Girl Who Refused to be Defined by Rett Syndrome” by Andre Govier
“Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free” by Linda Kay Klein
“Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” by Camille Laurens
“Diary of Family G” by Ami McKay
“Shut Away: When Down Syndrome was a Life Sentence” by Catherine McKercher
“Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited” by Elyse Schein
Mystery
“The Paying Guests” by Sarah Waters
Poetry
“Charlotte: A Novel” by David Foenkinos
“The World According to Fred Rogers: Important Things to Remember” by Fred Rogers
Happy New Year! Long and Short Reviews has released the list of topics for their second year of Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge posts. There isn’t a topic for today, but I will be participating in it again beginning next week.
If you can’t read the graphic above, here is the list of prompts and the dates they’ve been scheduled for. Everyone is welcome to join in!
January
8 – My Goals for 2020
15 – Books I Can’t Wait to Read in 2020
22 – New Hobby I’m Trying (or would like to try)
29 – Best Book/Movie/TV Couples
February
5 – My Celebrity Crushes
12 – Books I Reread or Want to Reread
19 – Types of Exercise I Enjoy
26 – My Favourite Memory and Why
March
4 – Characters Who Remind Me of Myself and Why
11 – One Skill I Wish I Had But Don’t
18 – The Weirdest Thing I Learned Reading Fiction
25 – Favourite Things to Do in the Spring
April
1 – Favourite Book Series and Why
8 – Topic(s) I Could Give an Impromptu Speech On
15 – Characters I’d Invite to a Dinner Party
22 – My Silliest Pet Peeve
29 – Reasons Why I stopped Reading a Series I Loved
May
6 –Favourite Holiday of the Year and Why
13 – A Villain That I Wish Could Be Redeemed and Why
20 – How I’d Fare in a Zombie Apocalypse
27 – Books Set in My City or State
June
3 – Things I Wish I Were Better At
10 – Favourite Poems, Short Stories, or Novellas
17 – My Life in Photos or Gifs
24 – My “go to” Book or Movie for a Pick-Me-Up
July
1 – The Last Place I Traveled to and Why
8 – A Project or Hobby of Mine Inspired By a Book
15 – Things I Collect
22 – Character Names in a Book I Can’t Pronounce
29 – Stuff on My Bucket List
August
5 – My Favourite Tropes of X Genre
12 – What I Wanted to Do When I Grew Up vs. What I Do
19 – Favourite Book or Movies Quotes (and Why)
26 – The Strangest Thing(s) I’ve Eaten
September
2 – Topics That Make Me Stop Reading a Book
9 – Topics I Never Get Tired of Talking About
16 – Books with the Most Words I Had to Look Up
23 – Favourite Things to Do in the Autumn
30 – The Non-Fiction Book Everyone Should Read and Why
October
7 – Recipes From My City/State/Country
14 – Re-reading Books: Why or Why Not?
21 – My Earliest Memory
28 – How I Decide What to Read Next
November
4 – Favourite Songs or Musicians
11 – Movies That Were Better Than the Books
18 – Funniest Things That Have Happened To Me
25 – Recipes from Fiction Books That I Want to Try
2019 was an odd reading year for me. I started and finished fewer books than I usually do. The ones that I did finish were less likely to stand out as amazing in my mind for reasons that had as much to do with me being honestly a little burned out on reading in general as it did with the content of what it read itself.
So my list this week is going to be short and sweet. I hope that I will have a much longer response for this prompt if Jana decides to recycle it next year.
I had no idea the former first lady was such a good storyteller! It was really lovely to read her remembrances of her childhood, college years, working/married life, and experiences in the White House.
I adored the way this sequel fleshed out the parts of The Handmaid’s Tale that Offred couldn’t have possibly known about. I can’t wait to see how it might be incorporated into the TV show next!
It took me a couple of years to finish this book because of how slow the beginning was and how much other stuff I had to read, but I’m glad I slowly chipped away at it. There are other Sarah Waters books that I enjoyed more, but I ended up really loving this one once the characters had all been introduced and the mystery elements of the plot started to coalesce.
If you’ve been through a reading slump, what have you done to get out of it?
Every December I catalogue my most popular posts of the year. This is something I first began doing in 2017 with a roundup of my 10 most popular posts. Last year, I decided to double that number in response to my blogging buddies Terry Tyler and Tom Williams doing the same thing.
I was surprised by how popular my reviews of various Youtube workout videos were this year. When they were first published, they didn’t get as many hits as I was expecting, but that changed quite a bit over the longterm. Look for some more reviews of free online workouts in 2020.
Interviews with readers and writers of science fiction were well-represented in this round-up, too. I’d love to do more of them in 2020 if anyone is interested. The informational link on how to sign up is included below.
On a silly note, I thought it was interesting to see how many posts that had stock photos with orange or yellow hues made it onto this year’s list. Maybe my readers really love those colours. Ha!
Every year I take the last two week of December off from serious blogging, so here’s a lighthearted topic for today that I’ve been slowly compiling since last winter.
The phrases and sentences in bold are the funniest, most interesting queries that have sent new readers to this site over the last year. My responses are below them.
Will we ever run out of new music
Only when we run out of people. Even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t leave behind a few machines that knew how to make music and continued to churn out new songs.
How popular is the name lydia
It was #85 on the top 100 list for baby girl names in 2017. I love my name and hope it becomes more widely used someday.
How much do gym teachers make
According to this site, it’s about $51,000 a year for elementary gym teachers and $53,000 for middle/high school gym teachers in the United States. Depending on your years of experience and where you live, the salary can be as low as $35,000 or as high as $80,000.
teleport lydia to me how to teleport lydia to me
If this is a Star Trek thing, sign me up! I’d love to explore your ship, have a few minor health issues fixed in your medical bay, eat replicator meals, and visit all of the cool holodeck programs.
achoo gif
Your wish is my command.
Gif description: a man sneezing repeatedly into a handkerchief.
What is gender treachery in the handmaid’s tale
Having a physical and/or romantic relationship with someone of the same gender. LGBT+ people didn’t fare well in Gilead at all. We’d give it 0 out of 10 stars.
compliments that begin with t
Talented
Tough
Tenacious
Terrific
Thoughtful
how to summon Lydia
Other than teleportation, you could offer me dairy-free chocolate and an engrossing story. Or, you know, text me and say you want to get together for tea or something.
Is The Magicians worth watching?
Yes. I found the first season a little slow in the beginning, but the storylines become really good once you get to the end of that season and the start of the second one.
wtf facts about silent people
Sometimes we have top secret meetings about talkative people. The ones that think it’s funny to ask us why we’re so quiet or treat our temperaments like they’re a character flaw get added to the naughty list. Everyone else gets fresh, homemade cookies (unless they don’t want cookies).
I’d say more, but I don’t know that the Silent People Board of Elders ™ would approve. 😉
How do I get to Mordor
Just about any other destination in Arda would be a safer place to visit. I’d much rather visit The Shire, Rivendell, or Treebeard’s Hill. If you insist on going to Mordor anyway, I’d suggest flagging down a Nazgul or wandering into Orc territory.
I’d follow you into the Mists of Avalon
Thank you. I’d lead you into the Mists of Avalon if I knew where to find it and that I could get us home safe again. Ideally, we’d use your teleporter and be back home again before anyone missed us.
Is Jean M. Auel dead?
Not so far as I can tell. She’s in her 80s now and isn’t particularly interested in spending much time online from what I’ve heard, so I suspect any future notices about her health will come from one of her children.
How to make lembas bread
I blogged about a recipe that’s the closest thing us mortals will ever get to true lembas bread. It’s pretty delicious, but it has yet to give me superhuman endurance.
This week’s topic was a little tricky for me because the list of books that I want to read but haven’t already purchased as e-books or requested from the library is honestly pretty small. When you add my minimalistic lifestyle on top of that, I’ll admit that I can be a difficult person to buy presents for.
What I ended up doing with this prompt was coming up with a list of titles that my library doesn’t carry and that were hard to find in e-book form the last time I looked for them.
It’s quite possible that one or both of these things have changed for any of these titles. Maybe I’ll do more searches for them after Christmas ends? Or maybe it’s best to keep these as ideas for people who want to buy me stuff and are totally stumped by what to get? What do you all think?
Why I Want to Read It: A friend of mine gave it a great review a few months ago. Witches and ghosts are also things I enjoy reading about in general, so combining the two is automatically going to make me perk up.
Why I Want to Read It: I was a huge fan of the first book! It’s surprising to me that my library doesn’t have it yet considering how popular Semiosis was.
Why I Want to Read It: It’s still disappointingly rare for characters who have disabilities or chronic illnesses to be main characters in science fiction stories. I’ve been yearning to read this book ever since stumbling across a reference to it on a blog earlier this year.
4. The Deep by Rivers Solomon
Why I Want to Read It: I’ve heard amazing things about this book from other bloggers. The premise of it makes me think of a horrifying scene in the 1970s Roots mini-series that showed Africans being thrown off slave ships to drown in the middle of the ocean. I love the fact that Ms. Solomon decided to create a world where these people not only survived but thrived.
Content Warning: Blood and a dysfunctional family. I will be briefly mentioning these things in my review.
Krampus is a 2015 dark fantasy horror comedy film about a young boy named Max who has a disappointing Christmas with his argumentative, dysfunctional relatives and accidentally summons a festive demon to his home as a result of it.
In Central Europe, Krampus has been known historically as a “half-goat, half-demon” creature who punishes naughty children at Christmas time. Some folklorists think he might have been invented long before Christianity existed!
He is generally described as a creature with cloven hooves, horns, fangs, and a thick pelt of black or brown hair covering his body. Think of him as a contrasting figure to Santa who rewards good children with presents, but stories about him probably existed in Central Europe long before Santa did.
I was vaguely aware of the legends surrounding this mythical figure before watching this film. It was fascinating to learn more about him both by watching it and doing some research about where this legend came from and how it has evolved over the years.
As always, my descriptions of the characters are written in the past tense to avoid giving away spoilers.
Characters
Emjay Anthony as Max Engel
Max was the main character. He still believed in Santa when this film began, and he accidentally summoned the Krampus after having a fight with his cousins about the existence of Santa among other sensitive topics in this family.
Adam Scott as Tom Engel
Tom was Max’s loving and devoted father.
Toni Collette (left) as Sarah Engel
Sarah was Max’s perfectionistic mom. She wanted all of her relatives to have a nice time over the holidays and spent weeks preparing for Christmas to help this come true.
Stefania LaVie Owen as Beth Engel
Beth was Max’s exasperated older sister who was dreading spending the holidays with her rowdy and uncouth relatives.
Krista Stadler as Omi Engel
Omi Engel was Tom’s mother and Max’s grandmother. She only spoke German, but she did understand English. Several of her relatives were fluent in German and could translate for her. Much of her time was spent baking sweet treats and brewing hot chocolate for her family.
Conchata Ferrell as Aunt Dorothy
Aunt Dorothy was Beth and Linda’s passive aggressive, prejudiced, and mean-spirited aunt. No one wanted to invite her to Christmas festivities, but no one could bear to turn her away either.
Allison Tolman as Linda
Linda was Sarah’s sister. She and her husband were overwhelmed by their four unruly children.
David Koechner as Howard
Howard was Linda’s husband and Max’s uncle. He loved hunting and making off-colour jokes.
Thor as Rosie the Dog
Rosie was the Engel family’s dog. She was a friendly pooch who was always in the market for a nibble of human food.
Luke Hawker as Krampus
Krampus was the demon Max accidentally summoned.
My Review
Yes, this film is part of the horror genre, but with the exception of one brief scene it was not gory. There’s a lot a storyteller can do to freak out an audience without showing anything graphic. The people who worked on this project did a great job of finding the horror in anticipation instead of bloodshed.
The buildup to Krampus’ arrival was well done. I felt like I had plenty of time to get to know the characters before their lives were turned upside down. It was also nice to see the juxtaposition between the sentimental approach to the holiday season at the beginning of this film and the darker turn it took later on.
Krampus was a wonderfully scary villain. It was rare for the audience to see his face during the course of this story. Somehow, that made him even more frightening than he would have otherwise been. Hearing heavy boots clomping on the roof or seeing the quickest glimpse of his long, sharp fingernails put my imagination into overdrive. Picturing what he might look like was far scarier than actually seeing him, and I’m saying that as someone who thought that the film makers did a great job of bringing this creepy legend to life.
I liked the way the character development was handled. The younger Engels had good reasons for dreading another visit with their relatives. While the extended family wasn’t abusive or anything like that, they did have some pretty unhealthy communication and behavioural issues. Spending time with Aunt Dorothy or the young cousins looked exhausting. Nothing satisfied them, and they seemed to change their minds about what they wanted from one moment to the next. It was pretty interesting to see how the Engels dealt with this and what happened when Max in particular reached his breaking point with them.
As mentioned in the content warning, there was one scene involving blood in the storyline. It happened quickly and was important to the plot development. The rest of the film relied on jump scares, psychological horror, and other non-gory means of frightening the audience.
There was a plot hole that was never resolved. It involved what one of the characters knew about the legend of this demon creature and what they did with that information. This was something so surprising that I was pretty surprised to see the plot brush over it so quickly. It sure would have been nice to explore this more in depth.
With that being said, I still had a good time watching Krampus. It was the first Christmas horror film I’ve ever seen, and I thought it did a nice job of combining imagery from both types of storytelling to come up with something unique.
If you’d like to try a Christmas movie that doesn’t have the slightest whiff of sentimentality to it, I’d recommend starting here.
Visit More Museums. It’s been too long since I stepped foot into a museum. That needs to change.
This post is the final instalment of a four-part series I’ve been slowly working on about walking during each season of the year. Click on the links in this sentence to read about the things I love about 
While I mentioned something pretty similar to this in my post about spring hikes, but it bears repeating again for this season. There are always some people walking around in my area, but you definitely see fewer of them on cold days.
The months between April and November are filled with changes in the natural world here in southern Ontario. I revel in every change I see as plants sprout leaves, flowers bloom, or the first trees began to change colours for the season.
A year or two ago, I noticed that the temperatures were a bit cooler one August morning than they’d been that previous week. I decided to set out for a walk before the true heat of the day set in.
In January of 2013, I began blogging once a year about everything I’d read that previous year. This tradition began when my dad asked me how many books I’ve read in my entire lifetime.
Every year I take the last two week of December off from serious blogging, so here’s a lighthearted topic for today that I’ve been slowly compiling since last winter.
This week’s topic was a little tricky for me because the list of books that I want to read but haven’t already purchased as e-books or requested from the library is honestly pretty small. When you add my minimalistic lifestyle on top of that, I’ll admit that I can be a difficult person to buy presents for.
Krampus is a 2015 dark fantasy horror comedy film about a young boy named Max who has a disappointing Christmas with his argumentative, dysfunctional relatives and accidentally summons a festive demon to his home as a result of it.
