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.

16 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Tagged as , ,

February 28, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Xenofiction I’ve Enjoyed


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

The first layer on this picture is a computer screen where dozens of lines of code has been written. This code is overlaid on the face of a robot that looks like a caucasian woman with very short light brown hair. She is staring blankly ahead as if to wait for instructions from the viewer…or perhaps she is reading the code. Xenofiction is written from the perspective of a non-human protagonist.

The protagonist could be all sorts of different things: an animal, a mythological creature, an intelligent robot, an alien, a microbe, or some other living (or robotic but sentient) being.

The possibilities are endless.

I enjoyed all of these stories and would recommend any them to someone who wants to read something from a non-human perspective.

 

Book cover for Memoirs of a Snowflake by Joe Vasicek. The cover is a pretty light purple colour, and it has four large snowflakes, four medium sized snowflakes, and dozens of tiny little snowflakes falling down on what I presume is a night sky on it. It gives the feeling of standing outside and feeling the snow fall onto your face and hands during an early morning or sunset snowstorm.

1.  Memoirs of a Snowflake by Joe Vasicek  (My Review)

The protagonist is a: snowflake.

 

 

Book cover for Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams. Image on cover is a sketch of a little brown bunny sitting in a field of wheat (or some similar ripe yellow grass) with his ears turned back as he solemnly surveys the landscape. You can see a forest in the distance.

 

2. Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams

The protagonist is a: rabbit.

 

Book cover for A Dog's Purpose (A Dog's Purpose, #1) by W. Bruce Cameron. Image on cover shows a black Labrador retriever looking up from the bottom of the cover as he stands against a light blue background. A thought bubble above his head includes the title of the book.

3. A Dog’s Purpose (A Dog’s Purpose, #1) by W. Bruce Cameron

The protagonist is a: dog.

 

Book cover for Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. Image on cover shows a drawing of Pinocchio after he’s lied. His nose is about two feet long and two little leaves have sprouted from the tip of it, one yellow and one orange.

 

4. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

 

The protagonist is a: a wooden puppet who is magically brought to life.

 

Book cover for Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott. Image on cover shows a repeating pattern of yellow and black lines that fold in on each other at the centre of the cover as if they all originated from that point.

 

5. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott

 

The protagonist is a: a two-dimensional being who travels to three-dimensional, one-dimensional, and no-dimensional worlds and must try to make sense of them.

 

Book cover for Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker. Image on cover shows a raptor and her baby standing on top of a large flat stone where one spindly plant is growing. The setting sun behind the raptors and plant is casting deep shadows on everything, but the raptors appear to be watching the sunset together.

6. Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker

The protagonist is a: raptor.

 

If you’ve read xenofiction before, what are some of your favourite books from this genre?

96 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Tagged as

February 23, 2023 · 1:00 am

Whimsical Winter: A Review of Memoirs of a Snowflake

Book cover for Memoirs of a Snowflake by Joe Vasicek. The cover is a pretty light purple colour, and it has four large snowflakes, four medium sized snowflakes, and dozens of tiny little snowflakes falling down on what I presume is a night sky on it. It gives the feeling of standing outside and feeling the snow fall onto your face and hands during an early morning or sunset snowstorm. Title: Memoirs of a Snowflake

Author: Joe Vasicek

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 22, 2011

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 9 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

The life and times of a December snowflake.

Every death is a rebirth. Every end is a new beginning. Though I do not know what awaits me as I leave my cloud-mother, I am not afraid.

Review:

Snowflakes have feelings, too!

This was such a creative take on sentient snowflakes and what might really go on in a snowstorm if it were comprised of millions of individuals who all have strong feelings about where they end up as they fall from the clouds above. I found myself smiling and nodding along as I followed the main character’s journey from their cloud-mother to their destination on the land below. There’s not much else I can say without giving away spoilers, but I enjoyed the plot twist once it arrived.

I found myself wishing that a bit more time had been spent explaining snowflake society. For example, do snowflakes get to be reborn as water droplets during the warm months of the year? How are they born already knowing so much about their short lives and what awaits them once they melt? A few more pages of exposition would have convinced me to go for a full five-star rating as I loved everything else about this tale.

The metaphysical portions of the plot played a big role in making this such an unforgettable read. The cycle of life and death and how we should all respond to it weren’t topics I would expect a snowflake in the fantasy genre to think about, much less use to guide them during their brief life. The juxtaposition of xenofiction and philosophy here was delightful, and it has encouraged me to keep an eye out for more of Mr. Vasicek’s work in the future.

Be sure to read the author’s notes about how he came up with the idea for this story as well. They were included after the final scene and provided yet another layer of meaning to the plot.

Memoirs of a Snowflake was a peaceful metaphysical adventure.

4 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 22, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: The First Website I Remember Visiting

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 magnifying glass magnifying a page that has the word facts printed on it over and over again for ten lines. The words are written in white ink and have been placed on a blue surface. The first website I remember visiting is Snopes.com.

When I was a kid, there were some people in my life who liked to forward chain emails about all sorts of conspiracy theories and urban legends. Their critical thinking skills were rather weak at times, so I eventually began looking up everything they sent me on Snopes and replying to them with links to that site that disproved rumours like the one about strangers giving out poisoned Halloween candy or the one about people being drugged by strangers and having their kidneys stolen.

Sometimes that link was all I replied with if the conspiracy theory or urban legend was a bigoted and/or ridiculous one. I’m a patient person in general, but I draw a firm line at stuff that is used to harm people or that is so obviously untrue even a child should be immediately suspicious of it.

Eventually, they stopped forwarding any of those sorts of emails to me at all.

Adult Lydia would have been a bit more tactful when sharing links to disprove yet another wacky email, but I still think that people should research the information they share online before insisting that Scary Internet Story #567 is 100% true and that everyone should panic about things that a) are so vague no one has found proof of them really happening, b) are medically or scientifically impossible, and/or c) have been recklessly misinterpreted in the worst possible light while leaving out information that is critical to understanding the truth. Mixing what is at best a teaspoon of fractured facts into a frothy gallon of pure nonsense helps no one except scam artists.

Now I’m wondering if I should start reading Snopes again. I only have a couple of people still left in my life who believe in conspiracy theories and urban legends, so I don’t know too much about the current crop of them.

If you have a favourite lighthearted urban legend or conspiracy theory, tell me about it. I’m personally intrigued by the Area 51 lore and what the U.S. government might really be doing there.

24 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Tagged as , , , , ,

February 21, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Character Traits for Heroines


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I’m tweaking this week’s prompt a little bit so I can take a meta approach to the topic. Heroines come in all shapes and sizes, of course, but the reader’s expectations of how she should behave probably wouldn’t be the same in the historical romance genre as in a contemporary horror novel or a cozy mystery set on a lunar space station 500 years in the future.

With that being said, here are some character traits I love to see in heroines across many different genres and settings.

 

Black and white photo of a white woman wearing a black one-piece bathing suit. She’s crouching on a barren rock that’s surrounded by water and placing a black flag on the rock. The waves around her are gentle, and it appears to be a nice day outside although the sky is not visible. 1. Healthy Boundaries

Here in North America, girls and women tend to be socialized to be peacemakers and endlessly accommodating to other people’s needs and wishes.  This can encourage some of us to have trouble setting and recognizing appropriate boundaries, so I love seeing examples of characters who can both set boundaries and respect other people’s limits, too.

2. Meaningful Flaws 

No one is perfect. I like it when heroines have flaws that make a meaningful difference to the plot and to their daily lives. That is to say, I prefer realistic protagonists who procrastinate too much, or who have a bad temper, or who give too much unsolicited advice (or what have you) over ones whose biggest problem is that they’re a clumsy dancer but are otherwise pretty perfect.

3. Common Sense and Street Smarts

I  prefer heroines who remain aware of their surroundings and take reasonable precautions before rushing into an unknown situation. It’s one thing to be caught off guard after doing everything right but quite another for a heroine (or a hero) to ignore multiple red flags for the sake of plot development.

 

4. Frugal 

As much fun as it can be to read about characters with limitless budgets, I find it easier to relate to the ones who know that they only have so much money to last until the end of the month. There’s something comforting about seeing characters juggle bills and figure out how to afford what they need when the plot requires it.

 

5. Calm and Quiet

This is not to say I expect characters to behave this way all of the time, only that I think we need more characters who have easygoing personalities and aren’t the life of the party. Think of all of the interesting things that happen in the corners of a room and out of the attention range of the loudest and flashiest partygoers. There are so many folks hanging out quietly on the perimeter who are worth getting to know, and I’d love to have more stories about their lives.

 

 

60 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Tagged as , , ,

February 16, 2023 · 1:00 am

No Whimsy in This Winter: A Review of St. Aymon

Book cover for St. Aymon - A Canadian Horror Story by George Gordon. Image on cover is a painting of a rustic wooden cabin next to a woods filled with fir trees. it is winter and everything from the tree limbs to the ground to the roof of the cabin is coated in a layer of snow. A light is on in the cabin’s only window, but nothing else can be seen in there because of how bright it is. Title: St. Aymon – A Canadian Horror Story

Author: George Gordon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 7, 2018

Genres: Horror, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 43 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Welcome to the village of St Aymon.

An Englishman moves to his wife’s home in the Canadian wilderness. The village of St Aymon is located deep inside the boreal forest in the Northwest Territories, hundreds of miles away from civilisation.

Through a series of letters home, the Englishman recounts his experience.

But St Aymon is not what it first appears… the family are part of a religious cult, there are queer objects hanging in the woods, and strange noises can be heard at night.

Life, and his new family,are not what he expected. Dark times, the end is nigh.

Evil lurks within the woods.

Dare you read the horrors within?

Review:

Content Warning: animal abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, limb amputations, hallucinations, religious cult.

Winter is a dangerous time to take risks in the woods.

Michael, the main character, struck me as someone who wasn’t used to things working out for him no matter what choices he made. He leapt into the opportunity to move to his new wife’s hometown without appearing to do much research at all about what life is like in rural Canadian communities or how he should prepare for the long, cold winters here. For example, he didn’t even bother to bring warm, appropriate clothing and footwear with him even though the Northwest Territories are known for their bitterly cold weather. I had some mixed feelings about Michael because of these obvious sorts of personal oversights, but I enjoyed getting to know him and figuring out why he was so eager to leap before he looked. He was a complex man who defied categorization.

I struggled with all of the loose ends that remained after the final scene. This is something I’m saying as a reader who normally relishes ambiguity and the chance to answer certain questions about the plot and characters for myself. I had so much trouble putting the pieces together, though, that I felt obligated to go for a lower rating than I would have otherwise loved to give. It was difficult to keep track of the multiple narrators and figure out how their letters fit together chronologically speaking, and I was never quite certain that my interpretation of what really happened matched what the author intended to say.

One of the most memorable aspects of this short story was how it explored the isolation of small town life in Canada. The experiences of someone who lives in a tiny village in the Northwest Territories, as was the case here, will be quite different from how someone who lives in a large and better supplied city like Toronto or Vancouver gets through the winter. It was cool to see this representation, and I enjoyed the scenes that described how quiet it is in those little villages and how far away the rest of the world feels once winter storms arrive and the roads aren’t necessarily safe for travel.

St. Aymon – A Canadian Horror Story was a deliciously scary tale to curl up with on a cold winter evening.

4 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

February 15, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: My Favourite Food

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 table decorated for a fancy meal. The focus of the shot is one place setting upon which three white plates of various sizes that have green and pink floral designs printed on them are stacked on top of each other. The biggest one is on the bottom and the smallest on top. There is a light brown cloth napkin rolled up in a darker brown napkin holder that is sitting on the smallest plate. A clear wine glass is sitting to the right of the stack of plates, and there is a striped grey and red tablecloth on the table. Everything else in the background is out of focus, but it looks like there is a thick light brown candle surrounded by greenery of some sort in the centre of the table. Strawberries are my favourite food.

When they’re in season, I eat them every single day by themselves, mixed in with almond milk and a little honey or sugar as a fairly healthy dessert, as a topping for pancakes, cereal, or ice cream, in a mixed fruit salad, or occasionally as strawberry shortcake.

When they’re not in season, I buy frozen strawberries for smoothies and might buy strawberry jam to put on my toast, too.

I like the occasional bit of tartness you find in strawberries. I prefer completely sweet berries, of course, but it is fun to be surprised by other flavours.

They complement so many different types of snacks and meals. I can’t get enough of them.

16 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops, Personal Life

Tagged as , ,

February 14, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Liked About Asexual Characters


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A photograph of 18 heart-shaped sugar cookies. They are frosted with various combinations of green, yellow, orange, purple, white, and blue frostings as well as thinner frostings that have written X’s and O’s on them or left romantic messages like “hugs and kisses” or “forever” on them. Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone celebrating it!

For today’s Valentine’s Day freebie, I’ll be sharing a list of books I’ve read and enjoyed about asexual characters.

I’m actually on the asexual spectrum myself, so it’s been wonderful to see such an explosion of stories about people who are like me or similar to me.

This is a complex topic that could easily take up its own blog post, but go to this link if you’re curious about the wide variety of identities that exist within the asexual spectrum.

In the meantime, here’s my list.

Book cover for “Loveless” by Alice Oseman. It is a warm purple colour and has a black and white drawing of a slim person who has straight shoulder-length hair and is wearing jeans, a sweater, and a pair of sneakers. They are standing up but their neck and head are bent over as they look at a large heart they are holding in their hands. The heart is steadily releasing dozens of tiny little hearts into the air, and the little hearts are floating up and away from the person.

1. Loveless by Alice Oseman

 

Book cover for Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann. The image on the cover shows a radiant dark-skinned black woman with an Afro. She’s wearing a sleeveless white blouse with ruffles near her neck and his holding both arms up in a triumphant pose as she grins and closes her eyes.

2. Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

 

Book cover for Finding Your Feet (Toronto Connections, #2) by Cass Lennox. Image on the cover shows a background drawing of the famous outline of Toronto that includes the CN tower. In the foreground, you can see a drawing of two people’s legs as they dance together. One has light skin and appears to be Caucasian while the other has dark skin and appears to be African.

3. Finding Your Feet (Toronto Connections, #2) by Cass Lennox

 

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz book cover. Image on cover shows a steaming cup of tea in a white mug that has fancy ridges and floral patterns on it.

 

4. The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz (My Review)

 

If you’ve read any other good books about asexual characters, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

84 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Tagged as , , , ,

February 9, 2023 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Cybernetic Tea Shop

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz book cover. Image on cover shows a steaming cup of tea in a white mug that has fancy ridges and floral patterns on it. Title: The Cybernetic Tea Shop

Author: Meredith Katz

Publisher: Soft Cryptid (Self-Published)

Publication Date: July 30, 2019

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ, Romance

Length: 118 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library. Thank you to Berthold Gambrel for reviewing it and bringing it to my attention!

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Clara Gutierrez is an AI repair technician and a wanderer. Her childhood with her migrant worker family has left her uncomfortable with lingering for too long, so she moves from place to place across retro-futuristic America.

Sal is a fully autonomous robot. Older than the law declaring her kind illegal due to ethical concerns, she is at best out of place in society and at worst vilified. She continues to run the tea shop previously owned by her long-dead master, lost in memories of the past, struggling to fulfill her master’s dream for the shop while slowly breaking down.

They meet by chance, but as they begin to spend time together, they both start to wrestle with the concept of moving on…

A F/F retro-future sci-fi asexual romance. A story about artificial intelligence and real kindness, about love, and the feeling of watching steam rising softly from a teacup on a bright and quiet morning.

Review:

Content Warning: Arson.

It’s never too late to try again.

Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that explored how Sal’s programming nudged her to make decisions that many humans would not. For example, her idea of terms like lifespan or forever were not the same as they were for Clara. The author did an excellent job of digging deeply into the psychology of artificial intelligence and showing the audience how a robot might really think about and interact with those around them.

I did find myself wishing for more world building in this story. This was set at least three hundred years in the future, yet most of the technology and culture was fairly similar to what we have today. That struck me as odd and pulled me out of the plot. It would have been helpful to either have a good explanation for why things had advanced so slowly or to see more examples of how their world was different from ours.

This was such a refreshing take on the romance genre. Whether you read a ton of romance novels or tend to avoid that genre altogether, I suggest going into this one without any assumptions about what’s going to happen next. It broke so many of the rules about how falling in love is supposed to look that I honestly couldn’t say for sure what would happen from one scene to the next. That’s the sort of thing I love to discover when trying out new authors, so I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what Ms. Katz comes up with next.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop was a cozy and romantic read.

8 Comments

Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 8, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books That Pleasantly Surprised 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.

Close-up of the hand of a white person as they begin unwrapping a red ribbon that’s been tied into a bow around a box wrapped in red and white striped paper. I love being pleasantly surprised by what I read. Here are my three answers from three different genres: literary fiction, memoir, and middle grade. I read them all last year.

 

Title and Author: Miss Jane by Brad Watson.

How It Surprised Me: This is loosely based on the the fascinating life of the author’s great-aunt.

Both the great-aunt and the main character of this tale were born in the early 1900s with severe urogenital birth defects that made them permanently incontinent and unable to have sex or bear children. The doctor in the opening scene talked about how bleak the protagonist’s life would probably be if she were lucky enough to survive the night. Doctors had no idea how to repair such defects when she was born. The prejudice against disabled people and their families was horrible back then, too, and there were no social services or support groups to help her or her family.

I shuddered when I read his dire predictions and was so relieved and surprised to see what a nice life that little baby ended up having. Yes, she had serious medical and social challenges from her first day until her last one, but she also had a kind family who gave her the best possible life they could for that era. It was such a nice tribute to the author’s great-aunt and everyone who loved her.

 

Title and Author: Cold: Three Winters at the South Pole by Wayne L. White

How It Surprised Me: I hadn’t realized how many traditions the scientists working at the South Pole have invented to help them get through the winter. For example, they have regular movie nights together and do regular check-ins with each other to make sure everyone’s mental health is still okay. The anecdote about how and why crew members convinced Mr. White to have fancy candlelight dinners with all of them was also hilarious and well worth reading.

 

 

Title and Author: Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary

How It Surprised Me: I’d forgotten this series begins with older sister Beezus as the main character. I wonder if my local library didn’t have that book when I was in elementary school? At any rate, it was interesting to transition from Beezus’ point of view to Ramona’s perspective for the rest of the series when I reread it last year.

12 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Tagged as