October 12, 2021 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Book Settings

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A cozy stone fireplace in a wooden house. I could talk about this topic for ages! Let’s see if I can keep my list down to a reasonable 10 or so answers.

I will expound on some, but not all, of my responses.

1. Anywhere that has a cozy fireplace.

Yes, I know it isn’t healthy to breathe in the particulates from wood smoke over the long term, but I still find the crackle of a fireplace to be so relaxing. It’s also sometimes the beginning of wonderful adventures in certain stories!

2. Libraries.

3. Cemeteries.

4. Old buildings, haunted or otherwise. 

5. Boarding schools.

I’d never want to attend one or send my (totally hypothetical) children to one, but I do like reading about them.

6. Mostly quiet beaches.

Completely deserted beaches frighten me a little, and loud, crowded beaches aren’t much fun at all. The mostly quiet ones are where it’s at!

7. Museums, especially after hours. 

8. Funerals.

One of the benefits of being a preacher’s kid is that I got to spend a lot of time attending funerals for people who weren’t related to me. There are memorable and even occasionally beautiful moments to be found within all of that grief.

9. Kitchens.

They’re a very underrated setting if you ask me! Not only are kitchens (hopefully) filled with amazing food for everyone to share, they’re often the part of the house where the most intimate and memorable conversations happen.

I can think of a few different relatives of mine who announced exciting news like a new pregnancy in someone’s kitchen. Reading about characters cooking meals or cleaning up after them always makes me hope someone in that scene is about to share thrilling news.

10. Cold, snowy woods.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe taught me that all sorts of wonderful things can happen in them.

11. Any forest where the seasons are changing.

The first subtle announcements of an impending spring or autumn are probably the most striking, but there’s something memorable to be found every time we begin to say goodbye to one season and hello to the next.

I think 11 answers is a pretty decent number, so I’ll stop writing here.

 

 

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October 7, 2021 · 7:00 am

A Review of No Good Deed: A Sourdough Tale

Book cover for No Good Deed by Angela Slatter. Image on cover is a drawing of a white skull wearing a flower wreath on the top of it’s skull.Title: No Good Deed – A Sourdough Tale

Author: Angela Slatter

Publisher: Brain Jar Press

Publication Date: February 17, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Historical

Length: 35 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb: Angela Slatter’s No Good Deed is a dark fantasy tale of magic, ghosts, and marriage set in her World Fantasy Award-winning Sourdough universe.

Isobel assumed her wedding would be the grandest day of her life, but when she wakes in a ghost-filled tomb still wearing her bridal veil, it’s clear events have taken an unexpected turn.

With the assistance of a vengeful spirit Isobel escapes her imprisonment, but her new husband Adolphus will not be pleased to discover his wife is alive. As Isobel comes to understand her husband’s darkest secret, the newlyweds begin a deadly dance that only one will survive.  

This chapbook presents a stand-alone Sourdough story that does not appear in any of the three mosaic collections devoted to Slatter’s world of myth and magic, plus a chronology for all the publications that have appeared thus far.

Review:

Content Warning: Murder and revenge. I will be briefly discussing these things in my review.

Sometimes justice is a battle cry.

Isobel was a delightfully contradictory character. Sometimes I shook my head at the foolish choices she made because I could think of several safer options for her that would have taken the exact same amount of brain power to come up with and time to accomplish. In other scenes, I felt a wave of sympathy for how scary it must have been for such a young and vulnerable woman to wake up in her own grave. Getting to know her was a real treat, and I appreciated how many different facets of her personality were displayed here.

It would have been helpful to have more world building in this short story. I understand that it was a prequel to a series, and I certainly wouldn’t expect something of this length to be as well-developed as I’d hope to see in a full-length novel. With that being said, there were many aspects of this world and how magic worked in it that I struggled to figure out. It was frustrating for me at times to see how often the narrator took these details for granted instead of giving the audience a quick explanation of what was going on, especially since the blurb described it as a stand-alone work.

I valued what this book had to say about how women and other vulnerable people are so often mistreated by people who are in positions of power over them. Isobel lived in a time when women had few social and legal protections from those who wished to harm them, so her predicament was even more dire than it would otherwise be. While I’ll leave it up to other readers to discover exactly what the narrator thinks of cultures and families who turn a blind eye to suffering for the sake of tradition or social convention, I was quite pleased with the message myself. It was subtle enough to fit the storyline perfectly but also blunt enough to get its point across for anyone who might think they have a good reason for participating in such things.

No Good Deed – A Sourdough Tale was a satisfying read I’d recommend to anyone who like dark fantasy.

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October 6, 2021 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Required Reading in School – Yay! Or Nay?! Why?

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.

Blind child reading a braille book I enjoyed most of the required reading in school.Then again, I’ve been a voracious reader my entire life!

Some of the famous writers, poets, and playwrights we studied in school were ones I was already familiar with. For example, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes were all appealing to me.

School introduced me to other storytellers that I hadn’t yet discovered such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, S.E. Hinton, and the person or people who wrote Beowulf. It took a little work to understand them and the cultures that created them, but it was well worth the effort.

I strongly disliked a small percentage of the writers we were assigned to read. A couple of them were dreadfully boring, and others talked about things so beyond my personal experiences that I struggled to relate to them in any way. Out of respect for those individuals, I won’t mention them by name. Not every author will appeal to every reader.

I sympathize with students who felt that way about most or every English class assignment. Yes, expanding young minds is a worthwhile goal, but some works have aged so much that they might be better suited for an adult audience than a preteen or teenage one.

This might veer a little off-topic for today’s post, but I think modern students should still study some classic works. There’s definitely something to be said for being familiar with famous stories that are referenced in so many later paintings, plays, songs, and novels.

However, I also hope that today’s kids and teens will have a chance to read some contemporary authors, too. Not everyone enjoys older writing styles or the themes they explored back then, and there are brilliant storytellers in every generation!

I’d rather encourage students to learn to love reading and to get into the habit of trying new authors, genres, and styles of writing as they come across them.

The classics that might not appeal to them today will still be there when they become adults and have more life experience with which to understand stories from past centuries. Then again, maybe they will be like me and quietly cross a few names off of their reading lists for good!

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October 5, 2021 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Pet Peeves

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

 

Cartoon face of someone who is raising an eyebrow in irritation. I generally write short introductions to Top Ten Tuesday posts, but I think this time my list will speak for itself.

1. Film Covers for Books.

They often tend to look dated after a few years. I’d also rather not have actors as my point of reference for how characters look. It’s more fun to imagine those things for yourself while reading the author’s descriptions in my opinion.

2. Films that Dramatically Change Themes or Endings.

Look, I totally understand why some plot twists might need to be altered so they come across more clearly on the big screen, but I don’t like it when directors change the essence of a story to appeal to a wider selection of viewers. This leads into my third point.

3. Bonus Genres Shoehorned Into Plots That Don’t Want Them.

I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. The genres that tend to be shoehorned into these tales most often in my experience are romance, action/adventure, horror, and mystery. While I also enjoy reading stories that include multiple genres and have absolutely nothing against these particular genres…not every story needs to be written to appeal to multiple audiences. It really is okay to write in just one or two genres at a time, and some stories flow much more smoothly with a narrower focus.

4. Spoilers.

While I appreciate content warnings for potentially triggering material, I otherwise abhor spoilers.

5. Too-Similar Character Names.

This is something I see most often in the fantasy genre. If you have an Odin, an Orin, and an Ordin* in your story, I am really going to struggle to keep those three characters apart unless the character development for all three is superb and begins happening in the first chapter. Honestly, I prefer it when most characters have names that start with totally different letters of the alphabet, are of various lengths, sound nothing alike,  etc.

*Not a real example.

6. Books in a Series that Are Different Sizes or Shapes.

. Obviously, this is irrelevant for ebooks, but it feels weird to me to line up paper books in a series and have one that’s much taller, wider, or thicker than the others. I do not know why this irritates me as it doesn’t affect the storylines themselves at all. It simply feels slightly wrong.

7. Stickers on Book Covers.

If only they were easier to remove without permanently damaging the cover!

8. Unexamined Stereotypes.

It’s one thing to include a stereotype in a storyline in order to make fun of it or turn it on it’s head.

It’s quite another to include one in order to say that everyone from group X must like (or be) Y. I’d much rather meet genuine characters who are well-developed and whose hobbies, interests, and passions are not limited by what others assume someone of their sex, race, age, etc. would be like.

That is to say, maybe a woman in a story might love to sew, and that’s totally okay. But maybe the men in her life enjoy it just as much!

9. Is It Part of a Series? Must They Be Read in Order? 

I like series, and I don’t mind jumping in the middle of them if the author takes the time to explain a few things. I do not like discovering that what I’m reading is #5 in a series several chapters in and that you really need to read the first several books to have any idea what’s going on. If you ask me, blurbs should always be crystal clear about both of these things.

10. Too Predictable.

Yes, there are tropes in every genre. It would be quite difficult to write a story that didn’t rely on any of them at all!

With that being said, I will lose interest in a story if I finish the first scene or even the first chapter and can already guess exactly how it’s going to end and what all of the major plot twists will be along the way.

Surprises are a good thing. I’d much rather be slightly annoyed by an unconventional plot twist than have everything figured out in advance.

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September 30, 2021 · 1:00 am

Autumn Adventures: A Review of The Neighbourhood Squirrel

The Neighbourhood Squirrel by Wilfredo Gonzalez book cover. Image on cover is a drawing of a dog waving at a squirrel sitting on a fire hydrant as a full moon shines above them at night. Title: The Neighbourhood Squirrel

Author: Wilfredo Gonzalez

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 14, 2021

Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 67 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Every neighborhood has a neighborhood squirrel. This includes your neighborhood too. You have not known this because people don’t need to know, in most cases. The neighborhood squirrel has an occupation that is most important, as you shall see.

Review:

Content Warning: Bullying and fighting (between kids at a middle school). I will be discussing these things briefly in my review.

Have you ever wondered why some kids are so mean? If so, this tale might have a few answers for you.

I appreciated the nuanced approach this book took to the topic of bullying. It never shied away from the fact that Hector had harmed his classmates both physically and emotionally, but it didn’t demonize him for these choices. He had reasons for his behaviour that, while they weren’t framed as excuses for his terrible deeds in any way, did provide a satisfactory explanation for how someone so young could cause so much chaos at school. It was also cool to see how his peers reacted to the idea of bullying and what kept them from lashing out the same way he did. There were so many opportunities here for self-reflection for kids who may have bullied others in the past or refrained from standing up for classmates who were being mistreated.

It would have been helpful for me to see the narrator include more connections between the storyline about the intelligent talking squirrel who protected the neighbourhood and the uneasy relationship between Gonzalo and Hector. As excited as I was by the idea of animals taking note of the conflicts between children and trying to help them, it was tricky at times to understand why the squirrel was so interested in the affairs of humans. He could have easily lived a quiet life in the park and ignored them. I was glad he made such a noble choice, but from a reader’s perspective I did wish his motivation for getting involved was explored in greater detail. There was so much room here for exposition and world building.

Some of my favourite passages were the ones that described how the world changes from the beginning to the end of autumn. A warm September day is generally nothing at all like a chilly December one when winter is around the corner. Mr. Gonzalez did a wonderful job of describing this process in detail. Not only was it important for the plot, it was just plain fascinating to read about all of the things that children and maybe even your neighbourhood squirrel might think about as the leaves fall and the first few snowflakes tremble with anticipation in the sky.

The Neighbourhood Squirrel was a thought-provoking read.

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September 29, 2021 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something I Wish Someone Would Invent

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.

White thought bubbles against a bright pink background I wish someone could invent an app that would get to know the user’s habits, preferences, talents, and interests in depth and without selling to or sharing any of that information with other companies. Instead, users would pay a small monthly fee to keep it going or opt to see ads if they wanted the free version. Companies who wanted to use it to find new customers, employees, or volunteers would pay a larger monthly fee.

We’d start using it by filling out a survey and sharing updates on how we spent our time in many different areas of life.

The app would then start to recommend people, experiences, events, volunteer gigs or maybe even actual job advertisements to us. The more information it had about your likes and dislikes, the better it’s recommendations could be.

For example, if you loved Jazz, it could let you know about any upcoming concerts or festivals within X number of miles or kilometres of your location. You could also opt in if you wanted to make friends or find romantic partners who shared that hobby.  Anyone who was a Jazz musician could receive tips on restaurants or other places that were looking for live musicians, and people or companies who wanted to hire one could do likewise.

There have been multiple times when I heard about something I would have loved to attend or apply to work/volunteer for after the fact. I’ve often wished for a centralized way to be notified about stuff I enjoy doing and meet others who shared those same interests.

If it were moderated correctly, I think it would be a fantastic tool for networking, finding a great job, building communities, making friends, meeting a new life partner, advertising to niche audiences, and so much more.

 

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September 28, 2021 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten TTT Topics I Really Enjoyed Doing

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A heart shape cut out of a thick green hedge. My idea for this post came from Annemieke from A Dance with Books.

Last July, she wrote about this topic because the assigned topic for that week didn’t work for her.

Thank you, Annemieke, for inspiring me to write about my favourite TTT topics for today’s freebie.

I hope that Jana will borrow your idea and make it an official prompt sometime. If that doesn’t happen, maybe other participants in this meme will borrow it the next time they’re stumped by a prompt.

Wouldn’t that be delightful? It’s a fantastic idea.

Here are ten Top Ten Tuesday posts I really enjoyed doing. I included brief explanations for some of them.

 

1. Seasonal TBRs like the one we did for the Summer of 2021 

I’ve learned about so many amazing upcoming books through my own research for these posts as well as by reading all of your responses to it!

 

2.  Favourite Things to Eat/Drink While Reading 

 

3. Goals and Hopes for 2021 

This was such a wholesome and uplifting way say goodbye to 2020 and usher in 2021.

 

4. Thanksgiving Freebies

 

5. Unpopular Bookish Opinions 

 

Close up of the Add New Post here section of the backend of the WordPress blog. 6. Audiobooks Freebie

I actually tried some audiobooks thanks in part to everyone’s responses to this post. While I still prefer reading to listening in most cases, there are definitely some advantages to audiobooks.

 

7. Authors Who Have a Fun Social Media Presence 

 

8. Halloween Freebies 

Halloween is my favourite holiday of the year, so I always get excited at the prospect of gushing about it for Top Ten Tuesday.

As you may have already figured out, I also love freebie posts in general. There are creative responses to them every single time.

 

9. Outrageous Things I’ve Done for the Love of Books

 

10. First Ten Books I Reviewed 

 

What have been some of your favourite TTT topics?

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September 23, 2021 · 1:00 am

The Mysterious Noise: A Review of The Echo in the Valley

Book cover for The Echo in the Valley by Zak Standridge. Image on cover is a black-and-white photo of a woman in a white dress sitting on a horse at the edge of a large forest. The woman’s head is shaped like a ram and has two large horns curling out of it. Title: The Echo in the Valley

Author: Zak Standridge

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 28, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 33 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

“What about you? Long after sunset and way past midnight, when you gaze into that dark forest… have you ever seen a light?”

Review:

Content Warning: Murder. I will not be discussing it in my review.

Some questions are so big even the Internet can’t answer them.

It’s fairly rare to watch characters age from childhood to adulthood in a short story, so I was thrilled to keep meeting the protagonists over and over again beginning with who they were in their preteen and early adolescent years. There were all sorts of wonderful little hints about how they’d grown and changed over time. Kel and Tim always retained those parts of their personalities that made them unique, though, and and I loved seeing how their true selves stuck around no matter how much everything else around them changed.

There was too much foreshadowing in this tale in my opinion. I figured out the twist in it pretty early on due to all of the hints that were provided about it. Since that twist was such a central part of the plot, I would have preferred to either work a little harder at piecing everything together as I read or have some other conflict to occupy my mind for the last two-thirds of the storyline instead. This is something I’m saying as someone who enjoyed this piece quite a bit and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys these genres.

I adored the open-ended final scene. While it included a basic explanation of what was happening in the woods every year on April 22 that so terribly confused everyone in their small, rural community in the Ozarks, it also left plenty of space for the audience to come up with our own interpretations about what this phenomenon meant and why it happened. This was the perfect approach to something that so easily defied any logical explanation. There was room for a sequel if the author ever decides to write one, but I also found myself quite satisfied with how all of the most important things were tied together in the end.

If you like  paranormal stories, The Echo in the Valley might be right up your alley.

 

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September 22, 2021 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: What Makes Me LOL

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.

Here are a few of the things that make me laugh. I hadn’t previously realized just how amusing I find dogs. It’s cool to learn new things about yourself, don’t you think?

A dog walking in a grassy meadow.

This isn’t their dog, but this one is of a similar size and colouring.

A True Story:

One of my neighbours has a little dog who loves people. No matter who you are or what you look like, this dog hopes everyone in our area will stop to say hello and pet him for a moment. (Our neighbours are quite friendly guys who don’t mind it if others pet their dog as long as they know you).

This same little dog dislikes every other dog he meets. He barks ferociously at puppies and senior dogs alike.

It’s hilarious to me to see our furry little neighbour switch from wagging his tale at the nice humans to scaring off any dogs who get too close to him in the blink of an eye. Maybe he wants all of the human attention to himself?

 

 

Three Jokes:

Q. What does a dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac do at night?

A. He stays up wondering if there really is a dog.

 

 

A guy spots a sign outside a house that reads “Talking Dog for Sale.” Intrigued, he walks in.

“So what have you done with your life?” he asks the dog.

“I’ve led a very full life,” says the dog. “I lived in the Alps rescuing avalanche victims. Then I served my country in Iraq. And now I spend my days reading to the residents of a retirement home.”

The guy is flabbergasted. He asks the dog’s owner, “Why on earth would you want to get rid of an incredible dog like that?”

The owner says, “Because he’s a liar! He never did any of that!”

 

 

How does NASA organize a party?

They planet.

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September 21, 2021 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Fall 2021 To-Read List

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A red pair of glasses sitting on top of an opened book. The book has a red cover and is sitting on a pile of moss and autumn leaves. Here are the books I’m looking forward to reading this autumn.

My TBR is always much longer than my actual reading time, so I’ll remain flexible as always as I wait to see what strikes my fancy and which titles have the shortest wait lists at the Toronto Public Library.

I try to schedule things so I always have at least a few books waiting to be read and some more that will soon be available.

There’s an art and a science to requesting library books in the right order to keep this steady stream of reading material flowing all year long.

Maybe someday I’ll write a full post about how I do that. Ha!

White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson book cover. Image on cover shows a young black girl with a gorgeous Afro that is surrounded by purple and white smoke.

1. White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson

Why: Ms. Jackson is on the list of authors I always check out when they release new books. The paranormal elements of this storyline only make me more excited for it.

 

What Lives in the Woods by Lindsay Currie book cover. Image on cover is a painting of a kid standing in front of a two-story picture window at night. There are yelllow-eyed creatures standing outside leering at her.

2. What Lives in the Woods by Lindsay Currie 

Why: This is exactly the type of playfully scary story I would have loved as a kid!

 

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach book cover. Image on cover shows a patch of a national park ranger’s uniform that has bears, trees, and other nature stuff on it.

3. Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

Why: I had no idea that wild animals were charged for their “crimes” a few hundred years ago in certain jurisdictions! This is the sort of unusual history book that I love reading. You’d never find this sort of stuff in a traditional history class.

 

The Insiders by Mark Oshiro book cover. image on cover is a drawing of various middle school aged kids sneaking into and out of various rooms.

4. The Insiders  by Mark Oshiro 

Publication Date: Today

Why: I always dreamed of finding a hidden room when I was a kid.

The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon book cover. Image on cover is two african women standing facing apart. Their hair has been styles to resemble the continent of Africa.

5. The Days of Afrekete: A Novel  by Asali Solomon

Publication Date: October 19

Why: The comparison to Mrs. Dalloway intrigued me. I couldn’t get into it when I tried to read it as a teenager, but I’m hoping I’ll be old enough to enjoy both The Days of Afrekete and Mrs. Dalloway now that I’m an adult.

 

The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu book cover. Image on cover shows a young opposite sex couple sitting on top of a large pink donut.

6 .The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu

Publication Date: November 2

Why: The blurb mentions that this is similar to Kim’s Convenience, one of my favourite sitcoms. Romance novels are usually out of character for my reading habits, but I’m totally happy to make exceptions to that general rule of thumb when something catches my fancy like this.

 

Everything else I’m looking forward to was already mentioned in the Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of 2021 prompt back in June. I don’t know about all of you, but I like to leave plenty of space for last-minute additions and mood reading when I’m thinking about what to read in any given season. May we all have a wonderful autumn filled with books that are perfect for us.

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