March 22, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Famous Book I’ve Never Read and Why

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.

Here’s a quick housekeeping note before I dive into my answer: blogger was once again not allowing me to comment on some blogspot sites yesterday for Top Ten Tuesday. I was eventually able to leave most of those comments by switching to a different browser and playing around with certain settings, but if I can’t reply to your post today it’s probably due to this issue.

Okay, onto my answer.

I have never read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and never plan to change that.

ILeather-bound copies of several classic novels that are sitting on a bookshelf. The one with the clearest title has a navy blue cover and says “Pride and Prejudice” with the name Jane below it. You cannot see her last name. ’m treading gently here because I know this is a classic novel that many people adore, but I am not interested in it for the following reasons:

1) Romance is something I appreciate as a garnish in stories instead of as the main dish. I normally read books with little to no romance in them at all, so leaping from that to a full-fledged historical romance novel is a bit too much for me in the vast majority of cases.

2) With all due respect to Ms. Austen, she and I grew up in wildly different cultures. I struggle to relate to books from any era that make getting married the most important life goal for their characters, much less ones where an entire family’s economic and social fate hinges on whether their daughters find wealthy husbands.

I grew up in a family that prioritized education and personal development to the point that I was discouraged from dating when I was a teenager, so it’s a huge culture shock for me to read about families that push their teenage and young adult daughters to find a husband. It’s a completely unrelatable theme for this reader because of that.

3) From what I’ve heard, the main character clashes terribly with the man she eventually marries when they first meet. I tend to shy away from people who have abrasive encounters with me online or in real life unless it’s a one-time occurrence or there’s a reasonable explanation for why we clashed on topic X and we otherwise get along pretty well.  There’s a huge difference between politely existing in the same space with someone who may not be your cup of tea due to reason X and purposefully seeking out the company of someone you struggle to find common ground with during your limited free time.  Life is too short to waste worrying about high-conflict, optional relationships in my opinion. Why not seek out more compatible friends, romantic partners, etc. whenever possible instead?

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March 21, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Things I’ve Quit Doing


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

This prompt was shared on October 6, 2015. I wasn’t aware of Top Ten Tuesday back then, so today I will reach back into time so I can borrow this idea and talk about bookish things I have quit doing.

Edit: Blogger/blogspot is once again being really finicky about letting me comment. A few of my comments are randomly going through, but most are being denied. I will keep trying but wanted to let everyone know what’s going on.

The word goodbye is written in white chalk on a black chalkboard. The chalkboard is sitting in a black mesh container on a wooden shelf. There is a plant growing out of a green drinking glass next to the chalkboard.

 

1. Setting Lofty Reading Goals 

I purposefully pick reading goals involving pages or books finished that I can easily accomplish so that this hobby continues to feel fun for me. I never want to feel stressed out by how much I have (or haven’t) been reading.

 

2. Giving Unsolicited Book Recommendations 

That is to say, I only give out recommendations to people who have either directly asked for one or who are close enough to me that I feel like I know their tastes in books quite well and who have told me it’s okay to share books I think they might like.

I never gave out a lot of unsolicited book recommendations in the past, but now even those occasional recommendations feel a little too close to unsolicited advice to me.

I’d rather gush about the books I love and let others decide for themselves if they want to read them in the vast majority of cases.

 

3. Accepting Unsolicited Book Recommendations 

Likewise, I’ve also become more cautious about accepting unsolicited book recommendations unless the person giving them is in my inner circle and knows my tastes well.

There are so many books in this world and such limited time to find the best ones. I will listen politely, of course, but I will only actually read a recommendation if the blurb sounds right up my alley.

 

4. Reading (Most) Bestsellers 

My reading tastes so rarely coincide with the bestseller list that I generally pay it no mind at all when deciding what to read next. (This is no way a commentary on people who do like really popular stuff or the books themselves. It’s simply an acknowledgement that I usually prefer other sorts of stories).

 

5. Entertaining Nonsense 

For example, I will stop reading a book if it promotes racist, sexist, homophobic, or other hateful beliefs.

(There’s a difference between writing about a character who says those things and promoting the ideas themselves to the audience as something admirable. I will read about the former but not the latter).

I also shake my head and ignore advertising that assumes that your membership in a specific group should mean you like X but not Y instead of encouraging everyone read whatever appeals most to them. <glares at Instagram and the sometimes weirdly narrow little boxes their ads try to put people in>.

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March 16, 2023 · 1:00 am

The Science of Vampirism: A Review of Serotonin

Book cover for Serotonin by Joshua Scribner. Image on cover shows a campfire burning outside against a pitch black sky. Title: Serotonin

Author: Joshua Scribner

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 2, 2019

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary

Length: 15 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

A vampire story with historical references and a strong science fiction component.

Review:

Content Warning: Stalking, imprisonment, a discussion about why one character is a cannibal (but no actual cannibalism happens in this tale), and a vampire’s finger being cut off. I won’t discuss any of this in my review.

Sometimes there are no good guys.

I almost stopped reading halfway through this short story due to how violent certain passages were, but the two charismatic antagonists made me curious to see which one of these bad guys might win. Neither of them was someone I’d ever want to meet in a dark alley, but I couldn’t deny that they were both intelligent and quick-witted. It was amusing to see how their ominous energies interacted with each other.

What ultimately convinced me to go for a five star rating was how terrifying vampires are in this world. I’ll leave it up to other readers to learn for themselves why this is the case, but it was refreshing to see an author take a more traditional approach to this lore and make the main character someone who truly feels like a menace to human society. This is a great option for readers who like being scared and who would rather have their vampires without a single ounce of romance or sentimentality.

The world building was fantastic. Given how short this was, I don’t want to share too many details about how vampires or their abilities work in this universe. All you need to know is that they choose their victims carefully and that there are things humans can do to increase and decrease the odds of being selected as someone’s dinner option. There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as a random vampire attack here. That made me want to learn more about how it all worked.

Serotonin was an excellent example of what horror should be.

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March 15, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Historical Personage to Read About

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.

Edit: Just so you all know, Blogger is being finicky about letting me comment again. I’m able to comment on a few blogspot sites, but most of them are giving me an error message. I will keep trying!

This is one of those questions that I’d give a different answer to every month or so depending on whose books I’m reading and what portions of history I’ve most recently studied.

A black and white photograph of Claudette Colvin in 1952, three years before she refused to give up her seat to a white person. She is wearing thick black glasses in this photo and a dark grey shirt. She is smiling faintly at the camera with her head turned on a slight angle. Her hair is neatly pulled behind her head.

Ms. Colvin in 1952, three years before she refused to give up her seat.

Most of the history classes I took in school covered the exact same stories about kings, wars, and presidents over and over again every year, so I try to study the cultures, people, and events they skipped over now that I’m an adult and can expand my knowledge of the world.

Lately, I’ve been reading about the life of Claudette Colvin. 

Everyone has heard about Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white person, but Ms. Colvin did it nine months before Ms. Parks did.

Because Ms. Colvin was a teenager at the time, the civil rights organizations of the time decided that they’d wait for a case involving an adult to challenge segregation on buses.

Whoever was chosen was going to be dealing with quite a bit of racism and hatred for speaking up, and they weren’t sure that Ms. Colvin was emotionally prepared for it.

I think she would have done a marvellous job, though, and should have been recognized for her courage from the beginning.

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March 14, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Spring 2023 To-Read List


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

There is an opened hardback book. Four white tulips with pink streaks in their petals are lying on top of the book. The flowers have just begun to open and have not yet reached their full bloom. You can see their green stems and leaves on the bottom left hand side of the image. I know that not every Top Ten Tuesday participant lives in the Northern Hemisphere or in a part of the world that has similar seasons to Ontario, but some of us are inching closer to spring with every passing day.

I cannot wait for spring so I can go outside and enjoy some warmer and non-soggy nature time. (It can get pretty muddy here in March and April after the ice and snow begins to melt but the soil hasn’t absorbed all of that water yet).

Who else is counting down the days until the change of the seasons?

My answers to this week’s prompt are going to be the usual random assortment of topics. I love jumping around between nonfiction and fiction as well as zooming between all sorts of genres within the fiction label as well.

Let’s see what will hopefully be capturing my attention this spring.

 

Book cover for In the Lives of Puppets  by T.J. Klune. Image on the cover is a drawing of a little red cottage in a forest filled with wooden tree-like items that have no leaves and oddly smooth trunks. Maybe they’re made out of metal and only look like wood? The three “tree” structures closest to the red cabin have little houses of their own installed high up on their branches hundreds of feet up in the air. One little house is yellow and round. The second is comprised of metal and has a roof that slopes over the sides of the house so that the walls can’t even hardly be seen. It has a solar panel on top of it. The third house is clear and seems to be made of glass. There are thin wires connecting all three houses, possibly to share electricity.

In the Lives of Puppets  by T.J. Klune

Publication Date: April 25

Why I’m Interested: T.J. Klune is one of those authors I keep meaning to read but never quite get around to it. I love robot stories, though, so this one might convince me to take the plunge.

 

 

Book cover for The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise  by Colleen Oakley. Image on cover is a drawing of a senior citizen and a young dark-haired person driving off into the sunset in a green car that doesn’t have a top on it.

The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise  by Colleen Oakley

Publication Date: March 28

Why I’m Interested: I love stories about cross-generational friendships. It’s also nice to see more protagonists who are senior citizens.

 

Book cover for A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan. Image on cover shows a photograph of a small town street that has stores on the ground level and apartments on the second level. The sky is dark and ominously cloudy in places with blue skies at the very top of the cover. There are a few scattered cars on the street.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

Publication Date: April 4

Why I’m Interested: I’d never heard of Madge Oberholtzer before, but she sounds like she was a courageous and incredible human being.

 

 

Book cover for Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson. The title and author are written in a 1970s font that is various shades of pink and red. On top of the title there is a tube of lipstick that has been digitally superimposed on top o an eye that is in the centre of three triangles of various sizes with the smallest one being inside of a bigger one, and the bigger one being inside of the biggest one. The triangles and lipstick are also superimposed on a red circle that has three little stars around it in roughly even spacing from one another.

Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing  by Emily Lynn Paulson

Publication Date: May 30

Why I’m Interested: It’s really sad to see people being taken advantage of by pyramid schemes and other “job” offers that promise wealth but often put one deeply into debt instead.

 

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March 9, 2023 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Old Man at the End of the World

Book cover for The Old Man at the End of the World: Bite No. 1 by AK Silversmith. Image on cover shows a lime green silhoutte of a zombie who has a thought bubble above its head that has a human brain in it. The zombie is shambling towards a black silhoutte of a man who is leaning on a black and white can and whose hat is popping off of his head in surprise. Title: The Old Man at the End of the World

Author: AK Silversmith

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: February 15, 2017

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Humour, Contemporary

Length: 67 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

The end is nigh…. and Gerald Stockwell-Poulter has had quite enough of it already. Pesky business altogether. All this hiding and running about. Makes Brexit look like a doddle.

After 87 largely well-behaved years as a model citizen, less than four hours into the ‘zompocalypse’ and he has already killed a neighbour, rescued a moody millennial drug dealer and forged an unlikely allegiance with a giant ginger Scotsman. And it isn’t even tea time.

Join Gerald as he and his newfound allies navigate the post-apocalyptic English countryside in their hilarious bid to stay off the menu.

Review:

Content Warning: Blood, gore, and (obviously) zombies. I will be discussing these things briefly in my review.

This isn’t the quiet retirement Gerald was hoping for.

The character development was well done. Gerald’s default emotional range fell somewhere in the vicinity of various shades of grumpiness, and he certainly had a lot to be annoyed about about here when the plot gave him opportunities to express his feelings. I enjoyed contrasting his reaction to the sudden appearance of zombies with how other people reacted, especially since Gerald didn’t pay attention to the news and had no idea what was happening in the first scene. It was amusing to see him essentially shrug his shoulders at such a momentous shift in human history and get on with his life as best as he could.

It would have been helpful to have more plot development. I started this not realizing it was the beginning of a serial, so it came a surprise to me to see how long it took anything to happen and how abruptly everything ended. Yes, serials need to end on an exciting note in order to keep their readers hooked, but in this case the storyline evolved so slowly that I struggled to remain interested even though I was initially thrilled by the thought of describing a zombiepocalypse from the perspective of someone in their 80s.

I chuckled at the dry British humour in this novella. Gerald and his allies were far less afraid of zombies than most characters are in this genre. If anything, it was a nuisance for them to have to run away from such creatures on such a beautiful day when there was so much gardening to do. They often didn’t have strong emotional responses to what was happening to them, and that lighthearted exaggeration of British culture worked nicely with the text. It certainly helped them make logical decisions in the heat of the moment as well.

The Old Man at the End of the World was an intriguing introduction to this series.

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March 8, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something Funny That Happened To Me

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.

About a half dozen pairs of dress shoes neatly polished and sitting in tidy rows on a wooden surface. They have shoe horns inside of them, too, to help them keep their shape. This is a story that happened when I was about two years old. I don’t personally remember it, and there aren’t any photos from this day so far as I know. Luckily, my parents made sure to tell me all about it once I was old enough to form longterm memories.

When I was a toddler, mom and dad took me on a trip to visit my mom’s younger brother at college. Uncle Joe had a roommate named John and trilingual friend named Sebastian who were both with him that day. From what I’ve been told, they were happy to meet my parents and have a little one around for a few hours.

I was a quiet, calm, and generally well-behaved child. The combination of those personality traits means that you can sometimes get away with things that noisier kids who unwittingly attract adult attention with their shenanigans might not.

So there was baby Lydia quietly looking around in an unfamiliar place when she noticed that Sebastian wasn’t speaking English! I stared at him in amazement as he had a conversation in French. (He speaks Spanish, too, although I don’t think he spoke it that day).

Then little Lydia saw an untidy pile of shoes near the door. She didn’t approve of such nonsense and decided to fix the problem by matching up all of the shoes with their mates and then placing every pair of shoes neatly by the door.

I imagine the grownups noticed what I was doing as they spoke to each other. Since no one intervened, I was able to straighten up every single shoe and be satisfied with a job well done.

Whatever toddler behaviour my uncle might have been expecting from me, this was not it. Everyone was amused by how I’d decided to keep myself busy and useful while the grownups talked. I’d like to think Uncle Joe and his friends placed their shoes neatly by the door a few times after we left just for the fun of remembering the little one who cleaned up after them.

Here’s another funny twist to the tale.  My untidy childhood bedroom sometimes annoyed my poor mother who is naturally good at organizing stuff and keeping everything in its proper place, but I have slowly become better at that skill as an adult. To this day, I still love fiddling around with things and organizing them into various ways even if I’m never quite as tidy as mom is.

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March 7, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish People I’d Like To Meet


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Ten people standing on top of a hill just as the sun has slipped below the horizon and darkness covers three quarters of the land. You can see the silhouettes of their bodies as they all leap for joy with their knees bent and their arms outstretched above them. While I currently have no plans to meet any of these bookish people,  it would be cool if that changed someday.

My prediction is that a lot of answers will probably be of famous authors and such. While there will be a few of those authors on my list, most of my answers will be of non-famous people I know whose online personas are kind and intelligent.

Honestly, who wouldn’t want to spend time with someone like that? (I’m sure they’re just as wonderful in person, too!)

1. Top Ten Tuesday Bloggers

It would be fun to meet some of the friendly Top Ten Tuesday bloggers I chat with throughout the week.  I don’t want to put anyone on the spot or make anyone feel overlooked by mentioning specific names, but let me know in advance if you’re open to this and have plans to visit Toronto in the future. We could snack on Beaver Tails* or check out the free bookish museum at the Toronto Reference Library or something.

*This is a Canadian pastry that is large and flat like a beaver’s tale. They have several delicious vegan options, too, for plant-based friends.

 

2. Berthold Gambrel 

He’s a fellow author and book reviewer I met on Twitter (before it imploded, of course). This will be a pattern for my next several answers because I am a creature of habit, so assume someone is a writer friend and kindred spirit from social media until I say otherwise.

Berthold and I have remarkably similar tastes in science fiction and he has a great sense of humour.

 

3. Hebah Amin-Headley 

I’d love to talk about books and knitting with her among many other topics.

 

4. Richard Pastore

He’s the sort of person you can talk about anything with. I can be a little shy sometimes, but I never feel shy around him. He’s so warm and welcoming to everyone.

 

5. Shykia Bell 

She’s only online in spurts, but I love her creativity and calm personality. Those are both excellent character traits.

 

6. Patrick Prescott 

Here is where I break the Writer Friends of Twitter (TM)  streak. Yes, he’s a writer friend, but I met him through Berthold Gambrel.

Patrick has a deep and methodical love for books. I’ve enjoyed his recommendations  over the years and hearing stories about how he’s filling his time with all sorts of cool volunteer and writing projects now that he’s retired.

 

7. Rivers Solomon

I still think about her characters in “The Deep” and would love to ask her all about them.

 

8. Neil Gaiman 

He seems like a cool guy.

 

9. Andy Weir

I want to hear about what science fiction adventure he’ll be writing next!

 

10. <Insert People I’ve Missed Here>

Every time I make one of these lists, I worry about accidentally leaving folks out whom I would have happily otherwise included. Therefore, I will leave a space for them at the end of this post. You are included.

 

 

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March 2, 2023 · 1:00 am

Making Things Right: A Review of Have You Seen Jeffrey

Book cover for Have you Seen Jeffrey? By C.Y. Stewart. Image on the cover shows a person’s hand pressed up against a frosted glass window pane in a room filled with light. Title: Have You Seen Jeffrey

Author: C.Y. Stewart

Publisher: Cold Ridge Publishing (Self-Published)

Publication Date: July 14, 2020

Genres: Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 34 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

It has been a month since it happened. At first, Steve and I talked about it every day. In the mornings, while sitting on our balcony, drinking coffee and looking down at the lush green valley below, our thoughts and discussion would manage to drift back to the mystery of what happened to Jeffrey. I checked the news every day. Among the media coverage of all the craziness happening in the world, I searched and searched, seizing onto the hope that I’d see a small, obscure, local article somewhere providing an update, or at least a clue, about Jeffrey. But no, nothing. As days went by, I feared that at some point, I would start doubting if it had happened at all, or if it was all in my imagination.

Imagination or not, Jeffrey is gone. I have no idea where he is. Here, please let me tell you what I still remember. Maybe you can make sense of this…

Before we start, please allow me to ask you to please keep an open mind. There’s no other way to approach this story.

Review:

Content Warning: Murder and a few brief references to the early waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in April of 2020. No characters caught covid, though, and I won’t discuss any of this in my review.

True friendships are rare but precious gifts.

Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that included Carrie and Jeffrey reminiscing about their childhood in China. Not only did it give readers a chance to get to know both of them better, it was interesting to compare their opinions of western media and culture as children to what they thought now that they were both adults living in the United States. I also enjoyed hearing about what they missed from those early years as that can also be an excellent way to figure out what a character values in life.

I would have liked to see a little more character development, especially for Carrie due to how many warnings she ignored about the possible consequences of helping Jeffrey. Yes, he was a good friend, but she knew something was odd about the way he contacted her in the first scene. I always liked her as an individual, but I didn’t always understand why she kept pushing past the many hints that everything was not as it seemed. Had this been explained better, I would have happily chosen a full five-star rating.

The plot twist at the end was exciting and well done. There were plenty of hints included early on about what was to come, but solving the mystery wasn’t as important as understanding why this mattered to Carrie and how far she was willing to go to reach her goal. As much as I wish I could say more about this, it would be too easy to accidentally give away spoilers if I did. Just know that she was a determined woman who wasn’t going to let anything stop her even after the big reveal was shared.

Have You Seen Jeffrey made me wish for a sequel.

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March 1, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: My Favourite Subject in School and Why

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 black female teacher wearing black pants and a floral pink, purple, blue, and red blouse standing in front of a whiteboard. She has written the word English on the board and is looking at her students as they give her other words to put below it. Names like “Ringa,” “EBJ,” “Klas” have already been placed there using plastic alphabet letters that are in bright primary colours like red, blue, and green. I don’t think anyone will be surprised by this answer, but English was my favourite subject in school.

My family spoke Standard English at home, and my parents would lovingly correct us if we use the wrong verb form, misused punctuation, or made some other mistake. (Rarely, they still do!) This meant that the grammar, spelling, and punctuation portions of this class were intuitive to me 99% of the time because they’d been reinforced and taught at home for my entire life.

I loved reading in general, so the literature portion of this class was easy and enjoyable for me as well. I was the sort of student who tried to read every story in my textbook each year and was always slightly disappointed by how many I liked that we were never formally assigned.

History was a class I liked almost as much as English most years, although I preferred reading about it on my own on school breaks so I could focus on topics I really enjoyed such as the lives of ordinary people in various eras. It was interesting to see the patterns in history as well as to learn how so many different people have fought to make our world a kinder and better place.

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