I have several different superpowers. Almost all of the humorous things I was going to include on this list fit better into the Strange or Useless Talent prompt that’s coming up in November, so keep an eye out for that one. It’s going to be delightful.
1. Analyzing stuff. That is, I’m really good at picking a story apart, figuring out what did (or didn’t) work in it, and then writing a solid review about that book, TV show, or movie.
2. Working quietly behind the scenes. I’m a little too bashful to want the spotlight pointed at me, but I excel at keeping things going behind the scenes while someone else gives a speech or otherwise acts as the public face of whatever it is we’re working on.
3. Using up leftovers. I grew up in a family culture that deeply disliked waste, especially when it came to food. If there was only half a serving of rice or potatoes left, it went back into the fridge and someone would eat it before it went bad. Sometimes this means my meals are a little nontraditional, but I love the feeling of making sure that everything that is cooked is eaten. For example, I recently ate three ears of corn, two hardboiled eggs, and a slightly soft pear for dinner because that was what needed to be used up in the fridge. I like those kinds of mish-mash meals, though!
4. Seeing the best in people. If someone does something I find perplexing, I do everything I can to find a rational explanation for it. We all have off days, and I have a lot of grace for people who accidentally say or do the wrong thing.
5.Making and updating spreadsheets. This is something I’ve done for years for fun. It’s so satisfying to see neat, little rows of numbers in a document.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.
Seriously, how fun was this prompt? I had such a good time coming up with my list this week, and I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone else answered it, too.
1. Mint Tea
Caffeine tends to make me anxious, so I try to stick to caffeine-free beverages and foods as much as possible. Mint tea both smells and tastes nice.
2. Vegan Yogurt
I’m not vegan, but I eat a lot of products marketed to that demographic group due to my milk allergy. Non-dairy yogurts have gotten pretty good these past few years, so thank you to the vegan community for creating a demand for them. You’re awesome.
3. Salted Pistachios or Other Mixed Nuts
Nuts are such a satisfying snack.
4. Fresh Fruit
It’s hard to remember the last time I tried a new type of fruit and disliked it. Just about any sort of fruit is delicious to me.
This is what kohlrabi looks like.
5.Crunchy Vegetables
I love crunchy vegetables like carrots, celery, radishes, or kohlrabi. It’s so satisfying to munch away at them, especially if I’m reading something a little frightening or atmospheric. Somehow having a plate of food to snack on makes me feel a bit less nervous in those circumstances.
6. Hard-boiled Eggs
I eat hard-boiled eggs with a little salt and pepper. They’re amazing. As soon as I pick up another bottle of hot sauce at the grocery store, I might try them that way next.
7. Cinnamon and Sugar Toast
This has been one of my favourite snacks since childhood. It’s even better if the toast is whole grain. My mom always bought healthy bread like that when I was growing up, so I developed a strong preference for it.
8. Grape Jolly Ranchers.
Will I eat other flavours of jolly ranchers? Absolutely, but the grape ones will always be my favourite. They are so delicious.
9. Almond Butter.
Honestly, any nut butter is appealing to me. it can be spread on toast, apple slices, celery, and so much more.
10. Sardines
I totally expect to be the only Top Ten Tuesday blogger who mentions this snack this week, but I love sardines. They have such a unique taste, and I find them really filling. They’re also a good source of certain nutrients like calcium and Vitamin D that I need to make sure I consciously include in my diet due to my milk allergy .
Film Content Warning: blood, hypodermic needles, animal abuse, and animal deaths. These scenes were brief and were often more implied than actually shown. As always, this otherwise will be a spoiler-free review, and I’m happy to share more details in private with anyone who requests them.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a 2018 science fiction adventure film that is the sequel to 2015’s Jurassic World. Fallen Kingdom is set on a fictional island about 200 miles southwest of Costa Rica called Isla Nublar where all of the dinosaurs from Jurassic World were relocated from a failed amusement park before this tale began.
Isla Nublar was intended to be the permanent home for the dinosaurs. When scientists realized that the volcano on that island was soon going to erupt, the main characters in this universe had to decide how and where to relocate the dinosaurs before Isla Nublar was destroyed.
If you haven’t seen Jurassic World or the original Jurassic Park trilogy from the 90s, before, don’t worry. There are plenty of references to the earlier instalments in the later films that are fun Easter eggs for devoted fans, but everything in this franchise has worked well as standalone stories so far. I will briefly fill you in on a few important details in my character descriptions, too.
The Characters
I began discussing characters in the past tense in my first horror film review here to avoid the slightest whiff of spoilers about their fates. This is something I’ve continued doing for the sake of blog continuity and should not be interpreted in any other way.
This cast is on the larger side, but it’s important to know who everyone is before I jump into my review.
Chris Pratt as Owen Grady
Own Grady was the Animal Behaviourist hired by Ben to help round up as many dinosaurs as possible on Isla Nublar before the volcano destroyed them. He had previously worked as a Velociraptor trainer for the Jurassic World theme park in the first part of this trilogy, so he was an expert on the topic.
While he was impulsive at times, Owen was at heart a deeply kind and brave man.
Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing
Claire was the former Operations Manager of Jurassic World. After that theme parked closed down, she became a dinosaur-rights activist and founder of the Dinosaur Protection Group. Their mission was to round up as many dinosaurs on Isla Nublar as possible and relocate them somewhere safer.
Unlike some of the men around her, Claire was both emotionally and intellectually intelligent. She knew exactly how to read subtle signals from another person and adjust her behaviour accordingly. I try to avoid picking favourite characters in my reviews, but she was the lynchpin of this film.
James Cromwell as Sir Benjamin Lockwood
Sir Lockwood was one of the two people who originally invented the cloning techniques that brought dinosaurs back to life approximately twenty-five years before this tale began. He was as brilliant as ever, but his attention to detail had begun to waver due to his deteriorating physical condition.
Isabella Sermon as Maisie Lockwood
Maisie was Sir Lockwood’s granddaughter and heir. She had inherited his love of dinosaurs and science.
Rafe Spall as Eli Mills
Eli was Sir Lockwood’s personal assistant who required Owen and Claire to join the dinosaur rescue mission. He was an intelligent, ambitious man who was cautious about who he trusted and how much information he shared with them about his work.
Justice Smith as Franklin Webb
Franklin was a former IT Technician for Jurassic World who now worked with Claire at the Dinosaur Protection Group. His technological knowledge was excellent, and his quirky personality brought a dash of humour to the plot.
Daniella Pineda as Zia Rodriguez
Zia was the paleoveterinarian for the Dinosaur Protection Group.
She did a wonderful job of thinking on her feet in a crisis. Along with Franklin, she was a character I wish had been given more opportunity to shine in the plot. What I saw of their personalities was well-developed, and I loved the way they interacted with the rest of the rescue crew.
Ted Levine (centre) as Ken Wheatley. The characters behind him are his fellow mercenaries.
Ken Wheatley was a season mercenary hired by Eli Mills to provide protection for the rescue crew while they were rounding up dinosaurs.
He was a tough, assertive man who felt most comfortable when he was in charge.
B.D. Wong as Henry Wu
Henry was the head geneticist of both Jurassic World and the original Jurassic Park. There was no one in this universe who knew more about dinosaurs than he did.
My Review
One of the most interesting things about this film was how many different conflicts it included. The first quarter of the show were spent introducing the characters, explaining a few things about the first Jurassic World flick, and seeing how various characters reacted to the idea of saving the dinosaurs instead of letting them go extinct again.
No sooner was this conflict resolved than a few more took its place as the plot sped up. This was a cycle that happened multiple times during the roughly two-hour runtime, and it occasionally made me feel like I was watching a series of short films set in the same universe instead of one long one. This was something I grew to like quite a bit once I recognized the pattern.
The humour in this film was well done, especially when it came to Franklin’s lines. I mentioned earlier wishing that he and Zia had been given more screen time, and this was a big part of the reason why. They both had quietly lighthearted approaches to their roles that worked nicely for the subject matter.
Zia and Claire at the Dinosaur Protection Group Headquarters.
Obviously, this is an action and adventure movie, so keep that in mind when reading this paragraph. One of the things I didn’t like was how little attention was paid to character development. Would I expect characters in this genre to have rich inner lives and dozens of minutes apiece to explore then? Of course not, but I would have liked to see more examples of people stepping out of the boxes they’d been places in.
The plot was fast-paced and filled with exciting explosions and scuffles, but the characters were a bit too predictable for me. There’s a difference between following the tropes of a specific genre and being chained to them. I did find my attention wandering at times due to how quickly I figured out what would happen to which character, and I’m saying that as someone who enjoys this genre in general. This was something I noticed the most with Ken Wheatley and Henry Wu.
With that being said, I still had a good time watching it. The CGI and animatronics for the dinosaurs was excellent as usual, and I loved seeing how various species reacted to everything from seeing a human to being captured to encountering lava. How a carnivore reacted to these things was nothing at all like a herbivore’s reaction. What made it even more interesting was seeing how members of similar species responded to the same stimulus. Those scenes were clearly thought out and a lot of fun to watch, especially if Owen was involved in any way.
The ending was handled nicely as well. I liked the resolutions that were brought to certain conflicts as well as the new questions Fallen Kingdom asked that will hopefully be answered in the final instalment of this trilogy.
Blurb: A raven appears on a cold winter’s night. An old woman helps a stranger find his way home. A young girl encounters a bad-tempered dwarf. Enter within, where magic is found alongside the ordinary, and things aren’t always what they seem. Where curiosity leads to a nightmare. Where ashes have the power to transform. And where stolen mortals are doomed to be forever lost in the forest.
Review:
This is a collection of ten short stories that are all firmly rooted in the fantasy genre. One of the coolest things Joy did with them was to briefly explain where her ideas for them came from after the conclusion of each story. I always enjoy learning where writers find inspiration for their work, so I was excited to have a sentence or two of explanation before beginning the next tale.
The most effective way I’ve found to review anthologies like this one is to pick about three of the stories in them that most accurately represent the over-arching themes and writing style in my opinion, describe their plots in a spoiler-free sentence or two, and then share my impressions of them. If any of these mini-reviews grab your attention, I’d heartily recommend checking out the whole book.
The Forest of the Others
Grace’s father and younger brother had wandered into a mysterious, forbidden forest and never come home again in “The Forest of the Others.” Three years after their disappearances, Grace ignored her mother’s warning to stay away from those trees and went into the forest to see if she could find out what happen to them.
I sure would have liked to see better communication between Grace and her mom. These woods were such an irresistible place in this universe that I think Grace would have still gone into them even if her mother had been more clear about how dangerous they were. It felt a little odd to me for someone who had already lost two relatives to what should have been an innocuous patch of land to be so vague about what she thought happened to them or why Grace should never break this rule.
This is something I’m saying as someone who loved everything else about this story. The dialogue was fresh and crisp. Grace’s character development was handled wonderfully. Her experiences in the woods made me shudder, although I’ll leave it up to future readers to discover why. The world-building was really nicely done, too, especially when it came to the mixture of emotions Grace had about the forest she wasn’t supposed to visit. All I needed was for Grace to know exactly why that area was forbidden before she decided to break that rule anyway.
Stranger at the Crossroads
Some of the tales in this collection were so short and filled with plot twists that I need to be pretty careful what I say about them for fear of wandering into spoiler territory. “Stranger at the Crossroads” was one of them. In it, a woman who was walking down the road with her donkey met a stranger who wasn’t at all what he appeared to be.
Does this sound like a mystery or possibly something from the horror genre? Well, it wasn’t. The main character was such a brave and kind soul that her reaction to the unnerving stranger at the crossroads was as pleasantly surprising as it was creative. I enjoyed this entire anthology, but I must say that she was my favourite character of them all. I couldn’t have asked for a better protagonist on that particular day and in that specific time and place.
An Unlikely Friendship
In “An Unlikely Friendship,” a young girl named Meg met a grumpy dwarf in the middle of the woods one day while she was out searching for edible plants to feed her family. Meg’s friendship with Nev, the dwarf, was unexpected but a nice distraction from the grinding poverty she, her widowed mother, and two older sisters had struggled with for years. Yes, this story was one of the ones mentioned in the blurb!
Meg’s personality was nicely written. She’d been taught to be kind to everyone she met. That’s a common trope in the fantasy and fairy tale genres, so I won’t go into much detail about it here. What was refreshing about this particular take on that lesson was how Meg reacted when it appeared that her kindness was not only going to be taken for granted but could very well lead her into a worse predicament than she’d been in when she was only poor and hungry.
This is the sort of twist to a genre that makes me want to come back for more.
I’m hoping to find plenty of interesting things to read in all of your lists this week! Mine was a lot of fun to put together.
Title and Author: Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories by Ellen Datlow What It’s About: The title says it all. Why I Haven’t Read It Yet: Halloween is my favourite holiday, so I want to wait until we’re closer to that time of year before reading about spirits and hauntings.
Title and Author: In West Mills by De’Shawn Charles Winslow What It’s About: The lives of various members of an extended and sometimes overly-close family between the years of 1941 and 1987. Why I Haven’t Read It Yet: The library list for it has been ridiculously long. I’m nearly at the top of it now, though!
Title and Author: Migraine: A History by Katherine Foxhall What It’s About: The title says it all. Why I Haven’t Read It Yet: The release date for the library copies of this book keeps getting pushed back! I’m on the waitlist for it, so I will have it eventually.
Title and Author: Becoming by Michelle Obama What It’s About: The former First Lady’s life from birth to present day. Why I Haven’t Read It yet: I actually have read some of it! I’ve been reading this memoir so slowly over the last few months because I want to savour every last word of it. Mrs. Obama is a wonderful storyteller.
Title and Author: Daughters of the West Mesa by Irene I. Blea What It’s About: The murders and burial of eleven women and one fetus. This novel is based on a real case from Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was recommend to me by a fellow WWBC participant. Why I Haven’t Read It Yet: My local library doesn’t have a copy of it. I’ve sent a request in that they buy it and am waiting for a response before I decide if or when to get my own copy of it.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.
I honestly don’t have much to say in the introduction to this post this week, so let’s jump straight into my list.
Title and Author: Networking for People who Hate Networking: A Field Guide for Introverts, the Overwhelmed, and the Underconnected by Devora Jack What It’s About: The title says it all. Why I’m Avoiding It: Most of the reason why I haven’t read this book yet is because there’s a long list for it at the library. I’m also a little worried about it being one of those “just pretend like you’re not an introvert and magically don’t get nervous!” sort of books.
Title and Author: Tell It to the Bees by Fiona Shaw What It’s About: Two women falling in love in the 1950s in a rural British town. Why I’m Avoiding It: I had major issues with certain plot twists in the film. I don’t know if the book followed the same path, so I’m a little hesitant to give it a try.
Title and Author: The Ministry of Truth: the Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey What It’s About: Why George Orwell wrote the famous novel, 1984. Why I’m Avoiding It: I’m trying to take a long break from the dystopian genre as a whole. I know I’m going to enjoy this book once I’m in the right frame of mind for it. Right now, I need lighter, fluffier tales.
Title and Author: Haben: The DeafBlind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma What It’s About: The title explains it all. Why I’m Avoiding It: As I said earlier, these days I’m more into short, fluffy reads. I’m saving this book for when I’m ready for something serious and thought-provoking again.
Title and Author: Suzanna by Irene I. Blea What It’s About: Child marriage, desperate loneliness, and what I think may turn out to be an emotionally abusive relationship. Why I’m Avoiding It: This book sounds like a powerful read, but I don’t think I can handle such heavy themes at the moment.
Title and Author: Wilder Girls by Rory Power What It’s About: A F/F romance, a deadly disease raging through an isolated school, and the mystery of what might lie beyond the fence the students have been forbidden from walking past. Why I’m Avoiding It: Just about everyone loves it. I’m simultaneously excited to read it and worried that it won’t live up to the hype for me.
If you’ve read any of these books, please do share your thoughts on them.
Years ago, I occasionally answered reader questions about all sorts of topics. This is something I originally began doing because a friend of mine started doing it first.
The post that began this series on his site as well as some of the entries in it are no longer online so far as I can tell, but reading his answers to all of the questions people have sent in over the years has been fascinating.
My friend blogs about all sorts of topics: his chronic health issues, raising a (now-adult) child who has Down syndrome, photography, memories of his youth, U.S. politics, and the many theological and other changes his family has been through over the decades. The questions his followers send to him generally fit into one of these buckets, although sometimes people throw wild cards into the mix that probe parts of his mind he generally doesn’t share with the world.
Reason #1
One of the things I really like about my friend is how open he is to discussing just about anything with his readers. While I completely respect the wishes of some bloggers to stick to specific topics or to keep a firm line drawn between their online and offline selves, I think it’s interesting when they’re willing to open up to their audiences and talk about random things occasionally. This is the first reason why I’m considering answering questions again.
Reason #2
This site has grown and changed so much since the last question in my series was published in 2015.
I know that most of my current readers weren’t following this site four years ago. With all of the new followers who have shown up over the last six months to a year, answering questions you come up with instead of what I think my readers are most interested in checking out might be a fun way for you to get to know me a little better.
What could we talk about?
Meditation (and how not to fall asleep during it)
Reading habits
Genres I love like science fiction
Genres I generally avoid and why
Stories from my life as a preacher’s kid
Life as an immigrant and dual-citizen
The writing process
Self-publishing
Demisexuality
Bisexuality
Polyamory
Fitness for people who aren’t athletic or good at team sports
Or anything else you’ve wondered about while reading my posts.
I’m a little nervous about sharing the link to some of my old reader question posts because of how much my writing style and choice of topics have evolved over the years, but click here or do a search for the term mailbag if you want to look through what people have asked in the past.
Reason #3
Change can be a good thing. As much as I want to go back and revamp some of my old posts, I’m proud of how willing I’ve always been to try new things and see what works. There have been times when certain types of posts flopped when I expected them to succeed. At other times, a post I didn’t think would do well still continues to draw in readers years later.
The Internet can be an unpredictable place at times. I’m ready to roll the dice again and see who is interested in reviving this series with me.
Respond
If you have questions, I’ll have answers. Leave them as a response to this post, fill out the contact form, or email them to interviews AT lydiaschoch DOT com.
A few months ago, Apex Publications invited me to be part of their Back Catalogue Blog Tour. I chose to write a book review for Chesya Burke’s Let’s Play White as my contribution to it. Other participants will be sharing author interviews and guest posts throughout this month, so click the link above to check them out.
Source: I received a free copy from Apex Publications.
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Blurb:
White brings with it dreams of respect, of wealth, of simply being treated as a human being. It’s the one thing Walter will never be. But what if he could play white, the way so many others seem to do? Would it bring him privilege or simply deny the pain? The title story in this collection asks those questions, and then moves on to challenge notions of race, privilege, personal choice, and even life and death with equal vigor.
From the spectrum spanning despair and hope in “What She Saw When They Flew Away” to the stark weave of personal struggles in “Chocolate Park,” Let’s Play White speaks with the voices of the overlooked and unheard. “I Make People Do Bad Things” shines a metaphysical light on Harlem’s most notorious historical madame, and then, with a deft twist into melancholic humor, “Cue: Change” brings a zombie-esque apocalypse, possibly for the betterment of all mankind.
Gritty and sublime, the stories of Let’s Play White feature real people facing the worlds they’re given, bringing out the best and the worst of what it means to be human. If you’re ready to slip into someone else’s skin for a while, then it’s time to come play white.
Review:
Content Warning: racism, pregnancy, childbirth, deaths (including the death of a child), rape, domestic violence, and miscarriage. This will otherwise be a spoiler-free post, and I will not be going into detail about any of these topics in my review.
As much as I’d love to write a full-length review of all eleven stories in this anthology, doing so would have inflated this post to five or six thousand words at minimum because each one was set in its own unique universe. What I decided to do instead was to pick a few of the stories I enjoyed the most and talk about why I liked them so much. If any of these mini-reviews catches you attention, I highly recommend reading the whole anthology! It was well done and pretty interesting to read.
Purse
In “Purse,” a woman named Manyara battled anxious thoughts about the other passengers on the bus she was travelling on, especially when it came to a black man who was sitting near her. She was carrying thousands of dollars in her purse and worried she’d be robbed. This tale was filled with creative plot twists, so I’ll need to be mindful of what else I say about it.
What impressed me the most was how much effort I had to put in as a reader to figure out what was really happening on this bus ride. There was so much more going on with Manyara than she originally shared with the audience. This is something I’d recommend reading with as few assumptions about what is happening as your brain can handle.
What She Saw When They Flew Away
Grief doesn’t always end on a set schedule. Pearl, the main character of “What She Saw When They Flew Away,” had suffered a terrible loss before this tale began. Not only did she struggle to come to terms with it, she had even more trouble helping her daughter, Nayja, adapt to their new life together. Their sometimes-conflicting reactions to the same tragedy made me wonder what would happen by the final scene.
While I can’t say much else about their lives without giving away spoilers, I loved the metaphors Pearl used to explain how she was feeling even though I do wish she’d been given more time to show how they affected her life instead of simply telling the audience they were bringing up bittersweet memories.
Cue: Change
As the blurb mentioned, “Cue: Change” was set in a zombiepocalypse. These weren’t typical zombies, though, and their unpredictable effect on society was something I couldn’t have predicted ahead of time. I was fascinated by this twist on this monster. It was completely different from any other take on them I’ve read before, and it made me wish for more stories like this.
The humans also didn’t behave the way I’d normally expect them to in this sub-genre. Not only did they make calm, rational decisions, they stuck to their regular routines as much as they possibly could. This isn’t a common reaction to zombies, and it made me wish this was a full-length novel so I could get to know the characters even better than I did.
When I originally saw this topic on the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge List, I thought it would be an easy one. It turns out that most of the books I’ve read recently have not been about tough topics, and the ones I have read are not necessarily titles I’d recommend. So I had to dig deeply into my reading history to answer this prompt.
Title and Author: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas Issues It Covers: Racism, Police Corruption, and Injustice
Title and Author: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Issues It Covers: Second Wave Feminism, Sexism, and Mental Health
I had some trouble coming up with all ten answers for this week’s prompt. Generally, I don’t bother finishing books that are truly outside of my comfort zone. These titles were were exceptions to that rule, and they make for an eclectic, if also shorter than usual, list.
While I love science fiction in general, the process of Unwinding really freaked me out. That is a term I’m purposefully not explaining because of how graphic and disturbing it is. Feel free to google it at your own risk. I’m glad I finished this tale, but I don’t know I could ever watch a film based on it.
Romance is a genre I don’t read much in general because, despite being married for a decent amount of time now, I am a rather unromantic person at heart. (Well, unless we’re talking about chocolate covered cherries because who doesn’t like chocolate-covered treats!?) The romance in this book happened between two selfish and emotionally unhealthy characters, so that pushed it even further outside of my comfort zone even though the plot itself was well done.
Some of the allegories in it make my brain hurt. I simultaneously love the poetic nature of it and desperately wish for a straightforward translation of what it’s trying to say.
I know nothing about sports and have no interest in learning about them. Despite that, this book of poetry about a kid who was obsessed with basketball and worried about his father’s poor health was incredibly well done.
What a fun prompt this one was!
1. Mint Tea
9. Almond Butter.
Last year I blogged about my to-watch list of science fiction and fantasy films. Since then, I’ve been periodically reviewing science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative fiction films. Previous instalments in this series include 
One of the most interesting things about this film was how many different conflicts it included. The first quarter of the show were spent introducing the characters, explaining a few things about the first Jurassic World flick, and seeing how various characters reacted to the idea of saving the dinosaurs instead of letting them go extinct again.
Title: The Raven and Other Tales
This site has grown and changed so much since the last question in my series was published in 2015.
Title and Author: 
