May 18, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: What You Do When You’re Not Feeling Well

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

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.

This week’s prompt didn’t specify what sort of illness we might have, so I’m going to assume it’s a contagious and common one like a cold or the flu that we’ve all experienced multiple times in life as opposed to diseases that only a small percentage of people have personal experience with.

These are the steps I tend to go through when I feel these sorts of viral illnesses sneaking up on me:

A thermometer and some pills lying on a white surface.

Step 1: Denial

No, of course I’m not sick! My sore throat and stuffy nose must be due to allergies of some sort even if it’s the middle of winter and everything here in Ontario is frozen solid.

This stage usually only lasts for a few hours or a day at most.

 

Step 2: Why? Sigh! 

Why did I have to get sick this week? Doesn’t my immune system know I have 1,043 things to do (or, even worse, that I was looking forward to a relaxing vacation)?

 

Step 3: Grudging Acceptance.

I suppose I will give in and accept my fate as germy sick person, but I do not agree to be cheerful about it. Harrumph.

 

Step 4: Naps and Soup

Schedule permitting, let’s squeeze in as many naps and bowls of warm, soothing soup as possible.

I almost never eat soup when I’m healthy, and of course I do eat other foods when I’m sick, too. There is something about soup that’s extra appealing when I’m sick, especially if it’s chicken noodle or a soft version of beef vegetable that’s friendly for a sore throat or upset stomach.

If my symptoms include a fever, this is when I start taking my temperature a few times of day and writing down the results.

 

Step 5: Ugh, This Cough Is Never Going to End

Is it pneumonia, consumption, or maybe even something worse?

I think I should spend inordinate amounts of time on WebMD looking up every symptom and seeing what the worst case scenario is for them just in case.

 

Step 6-9: Slightly Better, Slightly Worse 

Why am I coughing more today? Why am I coughing less today?

How soon can I exercise? How much can I exercise? What does the Internet say about how quickly I can go back to normal habits without risking the rare cases of heart damage that happen when people exercise too soon after a viral illness?

Shall I google it all a dozen different ways over the next couple of weeks until my cough disappears completely?

 

Step 10: I am Actually Well Again! 

I think this one is pretty self explanatory. There’s nothing like feeling like your old self again.

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May 17, 2022 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was SO EXCITED to Get, but Still Haven’t Read


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Black-and-white photo of books hanging from a glass ceiling by pieces of thick string.I have a confession to make: my eyes are bigger than my stomach and my TBR list.

That is to say, I have the tendency to put more food on my plate than I can actually eat and to gush about more books that i can realistically read if I don’t pay attention to what I’m doing.

This is even more true if we’re talking about books from highly-anticipated authors or places that serve dairy-free meals and desserts. When you have food allergies (or any other dietary restriction, I’m sure), you get used to not being able to eat a lot of delicious-looking foods that others enjoy without a second thought. It’s simply part of life.

When I get the rare chance to pick anything on the menu at a restaurant, I often have the urge to over-order because of how unusual this experience is. The same thing can be said for when there are more attention-grabbing books than I have hours in the day to read.

Here are some books I am still excited to read but haven’t actually picked up yet. I’ve mentioned all of them in previous seasonal TBR posts for Tio Ten Tuesday over the past few years.

 

City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life Into a Dying American Town by Susan Hartman Book cover. image on cover is a drawing of buildings in a town.

1. City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life Into a Dying American Town by Susan Hartman

 

The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander Book cover. Image on cover shows a photo of a black child staring into the camera with a neutral expression on his face.

2. The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander

 

Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore Book cover. Image on the cover shows drawing of two teens standing in a lake with leaves on their heads.

3. Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Ask: Building Consent Culture by Kitty Stryker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

 

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi book cover. Cover image is of a woman's face.

6. Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

 

Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond by Lydia Denworth book cover. The only images on the cover are of stylized DNA strands lying on their sides at the top and bottom. They are behind green or blue backgrounds.

7. Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond by Lydia Denworth

 

Finna by Nino Cipri book cover. Cover image is of bent tubes and screws scattered around.

8. Finna by Nino Cipri

 

Book cover for Ghost Wood Song  by Erica Waters. Image on cover is of book title in the shape of curved pieces of wood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9.Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

 

Book cover for Sara Seager's The Smallest Lights in the Universe. Image on cover is of an adult and two children walking outdoors at dusk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10.The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager

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May 12, 2022 · 1:00 am

Keeping an Open Mind: A Review of The Watch

The Watch by P.A. Western-Pittard book cover. Image on cover shows a watch face that’s glowing yellow and green. It’s superimposed over a photo of some furniture draped in white sheets. Title: The Watch – An Upfallers Story

Author: P.A. Western-Pittard

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 27, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Humour, Contemporary

Length: 55 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A Hilarious longish-short story adventure for fans of Terry Pratchett and lovers of quirky fantasy scifi.

In the Temple City of Tarn, no one and nothing is who they seem…

When Julian, a down-on-his-luck acolyte, comes across an ancient watch, he thinks this is exactly what he needs to solve his money problems. But Julian always was an optimistic dreamer. What begins as a seemingly simple stroke of luck soon turns into an adventure where he must find the impossible, or literally die trying.

But considering Julian isn’t much a fan of either dying or trying, this is going to turn out to be harder than he thought.

A longish-short story involving Soap-Bubble-Temples, a quest for ancient warbots and the meanest gunrunner in town, The Watch is a riotous introduction to the world of the Upfallers series.

Review:

The fewer assumptions you make about this novella, the better.

I appreciated the way the narrator repeatedly broke or reimagined many of the most popular tropes of the fantasy genre. Yes, the plot included a quest, but even there the author was discerning about what happened to his character and how they reacted to it. There were multiple times when I was fairly certain I knew what might happen next due to how long I’ve been reading this genre. In most cases, I was completely wrong in a pleasant way. This was my first time reading Mr. Western-Pittard‘s work, so I don’t have anything else to compare it to yet. What I can say is that I was impressed with how he approached the concept of contemporary fantasy, and I’m curious to see if his other works might do the same thing.

Even though the blurb interested me quite a bit, I struggled to remain engaged with the slow pacing of this novella. It spent so much time setting up Julian’s backstory and strengthening the world building that I wished for more action and conflict. This was a pattern that repeated itself after Julian’s adventures with the talking watch began. It read more like the first chapter of a book instead of a self-contained story. I don’t want to make any assumptions about why it was written this way, but the style did interfere with my desire to learn more.

What saved the storyline for me was the wry personality of the watch. If I had to assign a personality to such an item, I would have gone with something much more serious and academic because for some reason my brain assumes that something that was created to keep track of time would probably be staid in general. This is only loosely related to what the author actually came up with, of course, but it was delightful to see how creatively Mr. Western-Pittard approached character development. Playing around with the audience’s assumptions and expectations always grabs my attention, and this is even more true when it’s done as joyfully as it was done here.

This seems to be the introduction to a series, and I believe it is where readers are supposed to begin meeting the characters. I can’t say if the later instalments can be read out of order as I haven’t picked them up yet.

The Watch – An Upfallers Story is a good pick if you’re in the mood for something humorous.

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May 11, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Do You Believe in Aliens? Why or Why Not?

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

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.

A little green alien flashing a peace sign. I’ve been looking forward to this week’s discussion ever since Long and Short Reviews first released their 20222 list of topics!

My answer to this question all depends on what you mean by the term alien.

Do I believe there are little green people running around on Mars? Not at all.

Do I believe that aliens in shiny spaceships have visited Earth? No. Among many other factors, sending organic beings on longterm space missions is horribly dangerous due to all of the radiation they’d be exposed to during that trip. It takes years to travel between planets in our solar system and prohibitive amounts of time to travel between solar systems with our current technology. I can’t see other sentient beings attempting, much less actually making, that trip here. At best they might send a probe…but who knows if even a probe would survive such an arduous journey!

Do I believe that aliens abduct people, create crop circles, or kill livestock in bizarre ways? No. There are perfectly rational scientific and medical explanations for experiences like these. My first impulse is to believe simple, ordinary explanations of extraordinary events wherever possible.

Do I believe that aliens currently exist (or have existed in the past)? Yes. In fact, I think we could find the first evidence of life on other planets or moons very soon given how many probes we’ve already sent or will soon be sending to places like Mars, Venus, Titan, and Mercury.

You see, I think the kind of alien life we are most likely to find out there is microbial. Some of it may have already gone extinct and will only reveal itself as tiny little fossils, but I’m hoping we’ll find at least a few unicellular aliens that are still thriving deep underground or swimming happily in salty, half-frozen puddles somewhere.

Titan seems like the best place in our solar system to find larger and possibly even (slightly?) intelligent forms of life due to it’s vast methane oceans that may be protected from radiation and other dangers by its dense atmosphere and the thick layer of methane ice that sits on its surface. Only time will tell if that hunch is correct and if we’d have any practical way to communicate with those creatures if they do exist.

It’s difficult for me to believe that life exists on Earth and nowhere else, especially when small creatures like tardigrades have been known to survive long-term on the moon and in outer space. I think there must be something out there that exists now or used to exist in the past. Here’s hoping we’ll someday confirm my suspicions no matter how big or small the aliens might be.

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May 10, 2022 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Characters


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Silhouette of 3-inch tall person holding up the page of a book.My list for this week is a hodgepodge of books as it often is. I’ll be quite curious to see what everyone else has come up for it as most of my answers were of older stories and I wasn’t able to come up with the full ten answers this time.

1. Liesel from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2. Matilda from Matilda by Roald Dahl

3. Guy from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

4. Clay from Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
by Robin Sloan

5. Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

How long did it take all of you to come up with your lists?

 

 

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May 5, 2022 · 1:00 am

Suburban Sorcery: A Review of My Evil Mother

My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood book cover. image on cover shows a 1970s style casserole dish that’s yellow, covered in witchy symbolism like moons and a hand, and has a white lid. Title: My Evil Mother

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

Publication Date: April 1, 2022

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 32 pages

Source: I bought it.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

A bittersweet short story about mothers, daughters, and the witches’ brew of love—and control—that binds them, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments.

Life is hard enough for a teenage girl in 1950s suburbia without having a mother who may—or may not—be a witch. A single mother at that. Sure, she fits in with her starched dresses, string of pearls, and floral aprons. Then there are the hushed and mystical consultations with neighborhood women in distress. The unsavory, mysterious plants in the flower beds. The divined warning to steer clear of a boyfriend whose fate is certainly doomed. But as the daughter of this bewitching homemaker comes of age and her mother’s claims become more and more outlandish, she begins to question everything she once took for granted.

Review:

How do you spot a witch in the suburbs, and what do you do with her if you find her?

I adored the playfulness of this short story. When we first met her, the main character was a teenage girl living in a single-parent home in the 1950s and desperately trying to be normal. Sometimes her mother toed the line of what a woman was supposed to be like in that era, and sometimes she subverted those expectations in the most unusual ways. Was the girl’s mother really a witch? I’ll leave other readers to come up with their own theories about the answer to that question, but do solidify your decision before you move forward in the story. No matter what your answer is, it will be important to understanding what happens once the girl reached adulthood.

The plot twists were fabulous, and there were a surprising number of them in thirty-two pages. No sooner was I pretty sure I knew what was going to happen next than Ms. Atwood once again surprised me. This is one of the many reasons why she’s one of my favourite authors. There is definitely something to be said for anticipating the audience’s expectations and then playing around with them while pushing the plot in directions that many storytellers wouldn’t think to explore.

Tucked underneath the inventive storytelling and the humour were some serious messages about motherhood, girlhood, the complexity of family life, and how society slowly evolves over time in ways that older generations may not always fully understand and younger generations may take for granted. It’s difficult to discuss these things without wandering into spoiler territory. All you need to know is that there is plenty of substance beneath the fluffy exterior of certain scenes, and it’s well worth exploring after you’ve enjoyed the silly moments for what they are.

My Evil Mother was the perfect read for anyone who has ever wondered what’s really going on behind the scenes on quiet, unremarkable streets.

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May 4, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Best Mother in a Book, Movie, or TV Show

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

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.

Mother holding child up with joy at a beach at sunset. My choice for this week’s prompt is Mrs. Dorothy Quimby from the Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary.

Ramona and her older sister Beezus could be rambunctious and stubborn kids. Everything in their family was written from little Ramona’s perspective, and she didn’t always understand the world the way her parents or even her older sister did.

I loved seeing how patient, empathetic, and understanding Mrs. Quimby was with her daughters. When young Ramona decided she wanted to run away from home, Mrs. Quimby helped her pack her suitcase with everything a kid would need to survive to give the girl a chance to reconsider her decision. (It ended up being so heavy that little Ramona changed her mind).

She gave her daughters space to make their own decisions even if they didn’t always necessarily make the right ones. Her love for them was unconditional, and she had a wonderful sense of humour, too.

I only wish the author had written one of the books in this series from the mother’s point of view!

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May 3, 2022 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: One-Word Reviews for the Last Ten Books I Read


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Green typewriter with a piece of paper stuck in it. The word “review” has been typed on that page. Narrowing down my opinions of these books to a single word each was definitely not easy, but it was an amusing challenge.

Tiny Humans, Big Lessons: How the NICU Taught Me to Live With Energy, Intention, and Purpose by Sue Ludwig

The One-Word Review: Mindful

 

The Heart of Caring:  A Life in Pediatrics by Mark Vonnegut

The One-Word Review: Hopeful

 

The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery

The One-Word Review: Playful

 

The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery

The One-Word Review: Bittersweet

 

You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion and Why It Matters by Vanessa Bohns

The One-Word Review: Inspiring

 

Hildie at the Ghost Shore by Paula Cappa

The One-Word Review: Spooky

 

A tachometer for feedback. From left to right, each section reads poor, fair, good, and excellent. The colours for each one left to right are red, orange, yellow, and green.

To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner by Carole Emberton

The One-Word Review: Amazing

 

The One-Word Review: Sobering
The One-Word Review: Surprising
The Annals of a Country Doctor by Carl Matlock, MD
The One-Word Review: Reflective

 

 

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April 28, 2022 · 1:00 am

Gently Combing the Sea: A Review of Hildie at the Ghost Shore


Hildie at the Ghost Shore by Paula Cappa book cover. Image on cover his a painting of a very foggy shore by a body of water. You can see almost nothing but the tiniest glimmer of blue water in the distance. Title: Hildie at the Ghost Shore

Author: Paula Cappa

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: May 17, 2015

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Mystery, Historical

Length: 22 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

We are in Old Belgium. Hildie the lace maker, Mistress of Runecraft, knows the secret spells of the runes from the wind-god Odin. When a mysterious old sailor visits her attic workroom, he requests a reading. Hildie agrees. During the casting of the runes, Hildie conjures the Ship of the Dead, Loki the trickster, and flame-eyed ravens. Who will survive this adventure in a land beyond the ghost shore? Hildie at the Ghost Shore is a quiet little mystery (Kindle Single) with a dash of Norse mythology evoking the magic of the Runes. This story was originally published at Fiction365.

Review:

Content Warning: Murder.

Danish mysteries abound on this quiet shore.

The poetic and etherial style of this short story made it impossible for me to stop reading. It was my first experience with Ms. Cappa’s work, and I was immediately impressed by how smooth and beautiful her writing style was. She excelled at drawing this reader into the storyline and making me never want to leave it. Reading this felt like the literary equivalent of stepping into a light, airy fog on a mostly-deserted beach on a chilly late winter or early spring day. That is to say, I felt as if I’d stepped into another world or some alternative version of our own world whose rules of physics were just different enough to make it impossible for me to guess what remarkable things I might discover a few moments in the future. It was a truly delightful experience that made me eager to discover what else the author has written.

I would have loved to see more plot and character development. There was very little of the former and almost none of the latter which struck me as unusual for something that went on for twenty-two pages.  It would have made sense for flash fiction, and the premise could have been shrunken down to accommodate a much shorter interpretation of it. Unfortunately, it felt out of place for a longer work that did seem to have more than enough room to include both of these elements.

By far my favourite portion of this tale was the final scene. This was when the plot grew as thick and substantial as it ever would, and it explained some things that keen readers might have kept tucked in the back of their minds as half-formed questions since they first began reading it. I should note that I’m not very familiar with Norse Mythology, so I also appreciated the quick explanations of certain key terms and figures from it. Perhaps readers who are already well-versed on that topic could expound upon it in greater detail, but I was perfectly satisfied with it as is. Yes, I know I’m being vague here! Why share spoilers when you can allow other readers the thrill of surprise instead?

Hildie at the Ghost Shore was a dreamy, wistful reading experience that I cheerfully recommend saving for the next time the weather outside is too foggy, snowy, or drizzly to venture forth outdoors.

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April 27, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Book, Movie, or TV Show You Can’t Wait For

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

I wonder if any of you will choose the same answer?

I’ve already talked about a few books I’m looking forward to this summer, so this week I’ll mention a TV show slated to come out in September that fans have been anticipating for years.

The Lord of the Rings The Rings of Power tv show poster. It shows a city carved from stone that’s protected by a large stone statute holding it’s hand out benevolently. If you can’t see the image attached to this post, I’m talking about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The official Twitter account for it has been sharing amazing gifs, short videos, photos and other promotional material that hint at what it will be about while also leaving plenty of room for the imagination.

I first read The Lord of the Rings during a period of my life when I was struggling with my mental health. It was like walking around the world with a thick, grey cloud enveloping me that amplified all of the difficult portions of life and did its best to smother the faintest flicker of anything positive.

This is something I’m sharing because I only revisited that series years later when the film version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were released.

While this TV show isn’t set during the same time period in this universe, I’m very curious to see how my mind reacts to the similar themes of it now that I’m doing better.

Seeing an epic saga unfold on the small screen should also be worthwhile. I have high hopes that this show will be a magical experience.

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