Tag Archives: COVID-19

Top Ten Tuesday: LGBTQ+ Horror Novels


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

An opened book is sitting next to a small pumpkin on a dusty wooden table. There is an illustration of some sort of gnome or other heavily-bearded figure on the right hand side of the page. It looks like an illustration from a dark fairy tale, maybe? Behind the book and pumpkin is a black candle and some orange and black sticks sitting in black pots. The original theme for this week was “atmospheric books.”

I was utterly stumped by it, so I’m going to turn my response into a Halloween post instead. Here are ten LGBTQ+ horror novels I have not read yet because I’ve lost a lot of interest in the horror genre since 2020.

When I do read horror these days, I avoid pandemic-related themes and am much less willing to read anything gory that I was in the past. (Granted, gore was only a rare and occasional part of what I read back then, but now I can do so much less of it than even that!).

It’s been almost four years with few if any adjustments to these mental rules for myself, so this might be a permanent change to my reading habits.

1. The Luminous Dead  by Caitlin Starling

2. Carmilla: The First Vampire by Amy Chu

3. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

4. Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

5. Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling

6. Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

7. Evergreen by Devin Greenlee

8. The Shadow of Oz by J. Michael Wright II

9. To Kill a Shadow by Katherine Quinn

10. Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

If you’ve read any of these, please feel free to tell me what you thought of them.

If you have other suggestions for Halloween and/or speculative fiction LGBTQ+ reads, I’d love to hear them, too.

Finally, if neither of those apply or if you’re in a chatty mood and want to answer multiple questions, tell me how the pandemic has (or hasn’t) changed your reading habits. I’ve spoken to several folks who had similar reactions to mine and wonder how common it is.

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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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Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Review of Ghost Stories for Christmas

Ghost Stories for Christmas by Shane Brown Book cover. image on cover shows a painting of a small, rural community in the 1800s. There is a thick layer of snow on the dirt road with two brown tracks through it. A church and some houses in the distance are snow-covered, too, and people are walking on the snowy sidewalk all bundled up as well. Title: Ghost Stories for Christmas

Author: Shane Brown

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 3, 2021

Genres: Paranormal, Holiday, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 105 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Five ghost stories set during the Christmas period to add an extra chill to the festive season! In “Houses Never Forget,” a man returns to the village he grew up in, only to find that a house hasn’t forgiven him for something he did as a boy. “The Philatelist” tells the story of two brothers, one good and one bad – but even the good might want revenge from beyond the grave. “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” is the tale of a man who is forced to repeat a tragic evening from his student days every year, but what happens when he tries to break the cycle? A university professor rents a remote cottage on the grounds of a former school in order to write up his research in “The Stranger in the Snow,” but, when the snow falls, he finds he’s not alone. Finally, “The Gift” is the heart-warming tale of an old man who is given an unusual gift by a department store Father Christmas. From the author of “The Pied Piper,” “The School Bell,” and “The Successor.” 

Review:

Content Warning: arson, death of parents, hypothermia, possession, grief, widowerhood, infertility, homophobia, mental illness, someone getting beat up, car accident, murder, and references to the Covid-19 pandemic. One minor character died of Covid-19 before the tale they were in began. I will not discuss these topics in my review.

Christmas is the perfect time to reflect on the past for the living and the dead alike.

Here’s an interesting tidbit of information for you as I get this review started: all of these stories are set in the same village, Brandley. Keep that in mind as you read them.

The unnamed protagonist in “Houses Never Forget” was someone who rarely thought about his rash childhood decision that that angered the house in his village so much. I can’t go into a lot of detail about what he did without giving away spoilers, but I thought this was an intelligent sketch of a character who would be easy to villanize but whose decision was also one that many other folks make every single day without realizing just how corrosive small town gossip can be.

Joshua, the bad son in ”The Philatelist,” was a violent troublemaker who never showed signs of empathy for anyone. I was intrigued by how the adults around him reacted to him when he destroyed property and physically harmed others. He was the sort of person I’d never want to cross paths with, and yet I couldn’t help but to wonder what had made him behave the way he did and why he enjoyed bullying his younger brother so much. It would have been helpful if the narrator had explained the origins of his behaviour because of how erratic and violent he was, but I also recognize that there are people like him walking around in real life whose decisions are just as difficult to understand. The plot of this one was straightforward, so I was glad to have some character development to ponder while I read.

After the heaviness of the previous story, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” was a nice change of pace. I think we all probably have at least one thing in our pasts we wish we could go back and change. When that isn’t possible and there’s a ghost involved who insists on repeating the same evening over again on the anniversary of her death every December, what’s the next best option? Other readers should discover the answer to that question for themselves, but I thought this was a thought-provoking look at the unhelpful patterns people can find themselves in when they’re unwilling to face their pasts. If only the narrator had dove more deeply into the topic. There seemed even more that could have been said about it, and I would have gone for a full five-star rating if a few minor things like this had been adjusted in this collection.  The final scene made me wish for a sequel, too, given all of the hints in it about what was about to happen to the main character next.

Everyone needs peace and quiet sometimes. Paul thought he’d found it in “The Stranger in the Snow” until the snowstorm hit. His compassionate response to the visitor who appeared after it had been snowing for a while told me everything I needed to know about him. I enjoyed seeing how they interacted and quietly waited for an explanation of why someone would be out in a snowstorm alone without enough layers to keep them warm. The ending, too, was my favourite of all of the endings in this collection. I held my breath as it was announced and wished I could dive back into the opening scene to warn Paul about what was to come.

”The Gift“ had such a cynical beginning that I honesty wasn’t sure what to think of that protagonist. Was Arnold this grumpy about everything, or was it only Christmas that he thought had been irrevocably ruined? Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long to get my answer, and when it arrived it softened my opinion of him immediately.  One never knows what others are quietly struggling with, and I wiped away a few tears as Arnold slowly shared more of his past with the audience. This was such a beautiful and heartwarming way to close off this collection.

Ghost Stories for Christmas made me smile.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Unique Talent You Have

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 sketch of a heart in an otherwise blank notebook Not everything in our world is poetic or beautiful by any means, but my unique talent is finding the poetry and beauty in situations that at first glance do not seem to have a silver lining in them at all.

I’ll give you all a few examples of what I mean.

Years ago, I needed to go through some medical tests for a potentially life-threatening health condition that I was ultimately found not to have. While the technician was performing the ultrasound and taking notes of what she was finding, I quietly came up with pleasant thoughts about how the thump of my heart on the monitor sounded like something you’d expect to hear in a submarine as it dove deep into the calm, blue sea.

When my spouse and I went through financial trouble many years ago and had no money to spare for frivolities of any sort, I made taking long walks my chief form of entertainment and imagined that all of the trees were whispering delicious forest secrets to each other as the humans passed by unobtrusively below. It was honestly just was much fun as going to the movies or buying junk food and other things we couldn’t afford!

More recently, there were some protests here in Toronto earlier this year that clogged up some of our most important streets in the hospital district of the city. I imagined the sound of their angry voices on megaphones and the incessant beeping of their vehicles passing down the street while on their way to their destination were a warning from some future version of Toronto where such things were now commonplace.

This isn’t to say that i ignore the very real troubles we all go through or expect other people to think about scary life events the same way I do by any means. I simply find it easier to deal with them if I can make up whimsical stories about them in my head once I’ve done everything I can to change the situation.

Why worry excessively if there’s truly nothing else you can do in the moment? I think it’s better to look for the good in those moments if you can.

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: 5 Reasons to Take a Reading Break


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A few years ago, I blogged about the general benefits of taking a reading break. Today I wanted to take a different approach to the topic and discuss some of the specific reasons why it can be a good idea to stop reading or to read less often for a while.

Reason #4 will mention grief and Covid-19, so feel free to skip that one if needed.

A beautiful park filled with large, healthy trees that are brimming with green leaves. 1. Enjoying Good Weather 

Southern Ontario is a humid and often stormy place. That humidity translates into chilly winters and stifling summers, so one quickly learns to take advantage of mild temperatures and clear skies when they occur.

To me, reading is an activity that makes more sense when it’s -30 Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) or 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) outside and it’s medically dangerous to be out there for long periods of time. If you’re lucky enough to have a balmy day in the15-20 Celsius (59-68 Fahrenheit) range, you’d better enjoy it while it lasts and go take a hike or enjoy a picnic or something.

2. Pursuing Other Interests 

I love my bookish and often nerdy interests, but that is not all that I am! It’s refreshing to switch between hobbies and interact with different social circles. Sometimes I also discover that there is more overlap between my various interests than I originally thought which is always cool to find.

3. Being More Physically Active

Yes, I know that some people listen to audiobooks while exercising, but that only works for me when I’m doing something like taking a brisk walk. I prefer to give my undivided attention to activities like weightlifting so that I can keep an eye on my form and stay focused on what I’m doing.

4. Resting My Mind 

This was especially true about eighteen months ago when a relative of mine caught Covid-19 and did not fully recover from it. (That is to say, they are still with us but have Long Covid now). Books can be a healthy distraction, but they can also be a little overstimulating when you’re waiting for news of even the smallest signs of improvement and do not necessarily get them.

5. Rediscovering the Excitment of Reading 

Nearly anything can begin to feel repetitive if I do it too often! As much as I love reading, taking breaks from it enables me to rediscover how exciting it is to crack open a book and once again anticipate what it will be like to discover all of its secrets.

 

 

 

 

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A Review of Dare vs. The Doll

Dare vs the Doll: A not-actually-scary horror short story Kindle Edition by Si Clarke author. Image on cover is a photo of a scruffy little dog looking up with alarm at someone standing next it in rain boots. Title: Dare vs. The Doll – A not-actually-scary horror short story

Author: Si Clarke

Publisher: White Hart Fiction

Publication Date: March 30, 2021

Genres:  Horror, Parody, Humour, Romance, Contemporary

Length: 31 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Who expects a haunted doll to be such a nuisance?

When Dare’s dog discovers an abandoned doll on their doorstep, Dare assumes it’s nothing more than a lost toy… until it begins to talk.

After the doll offers up a string of bad suggestions and unhelpful advice, Dare is left wondering if the isolation of lockdown has finally proved too much.

Struggling to get rid of the bed-tempered toy, Dare has no idea that this not-quite-scary fiend will accidentally change everything.

With a dash of humour, this queer cosy-horror short story is a fun, quirky tale – perfect for readers who like the idea of being scared more than the reality of it.

Review:

Content Warning: One haunted doll. This was also technically set during a Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 or early 2021, but none of the characters were sick or anything during it.

Some problems are much easier to solve than you might think!

Dare was an amazing main character. I will leave it up to readers who have autism to comment on those aspects of this character, but I really enjoyed their matter-of-fact approach to any number of problems, from the sudden appearance of a rainstorm to the probably evil doll that they couldn’t seem to get rid of no matter what they tried. Honestly, Dare was exactly the sort of person I’d hope to have around in an emergency. If only all characters in Horror stories were this sensible and practical!

I would have liked to see the author spend more time on the parody elements of the plot, especially when it came to making fun of how many characters behave at the beginning of horror stories. Those were the best scenes in this short story in my opinion, and I would have loved to have more of them. The author did an excellent job of acknowledging the expectations of that genre while also showing a much more realistic reaction to learning that one’s dog has accidentally brought home a haunted doll. I simply needed more of these elements in order to give this a higher rating due to how important those themes were to the storyline.

The romantic plot twist was as unexpected as it was delightful. I rarely find stories that mix romance and horror together, especially if they’re about Queer characters. This is even more true when I narrow that list down to authors who have done so successfully for me as a reader. They are such wildly different genres that it’s pretty difficult to find the right balance between the lightheartedness of most romance and the heavier themes of most horror, so it was a great deal of fun to see how it happened here.

Dare vs. The Doll made me chuckle.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Your Favourite Theme


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Drawing of a hand holding on a piece of string that’s connected to the letter P in the word Hope. How can anyone only pick one trope or theme? I think I could write dozens of blog posts on this topic and still not run out of things to say.

Over the past two years, hopeful stories have been the ones that caught my attention most often for reasons I’m sure all of you can already guess.

Hope seemed like a good theme for a post, so here are eight hopeful books that I’d recommend from a variety of genres.

1. Becoming  by Michelle Obama

2. The Martian by Andy Weir

3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3)  by C.S. Lewis (The rest of this series is pretty hopeful, too!)

4. A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)  by Becky Chambers

5. Oh, the Places You’ll Go!  by Dr. Seuss

6. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again  by J.R.R. Tolkien

7. The Princess Bride  by William Goldman

8. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco

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Stay Home, Stay Safe: A Review of The Machine Stops

Vintage Science Fiction Blog Challenge badge. It shows a rocket ship against a red background. There is a bubble city in the background. Vintage Science Fiction month takes place every January, and has a few guidelines:

 – read, watch, listen to, or experience something science fiction / fantasy that was created in 1979 or earlier

 – talk about it online sometime in January

 – have fun

If any of my readers are also interested in participating this month, let Little Red Reviewer know about your posts if you’d like them to be included in her official roundups. 


Title
: The Machine Stops

Author: E.M. Forster

Publisher: The Oxford and Cambridge Review

Publication Date: November 1909

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 25 pages

Source: I read it for free on the UC Davis site 

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

“The Machine Stops”” is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster’s The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories.[1] In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies such as instant messaging and the Internet.”

Review:

Book cover for The Machine Stops Here by E.M. Forster. Image on cover shows a big, red bow on an analogue clock. Who needs in-person contact when you have virtual gatherings?

There were some fascinating parallels between how Vashti had lived her entire life and what the Covid-19 pandemic was like for those of us who were lucky enough to work from home and order many necessities online. Vashti could summon anything with the touch of a button, from food to a warm bath, to an assortment of friends who wanted to hear a lecture on human history. She virtually never had reason to leave her home at all, and neither did the rest of humanity. It was supposed to keep everyone safe and content, and yet not everyone Vashti met was necessarily happy to live this way for reasons I’ll leave up to other readers to explore. What I can say is that staying home to reduce the spread of a pandemic is quite different from spending your entire lifetime in one room no matter how nice that room is. The various human reactions to them are similar, though!

The ending was confusing to me. I needed to google it to make sure that my understanding of what happened in that scene matched what the author was trying to convey. While I did find my answer, I do wish the author had been more forthcoming about what was going on there. He had several thought-provoking ideas he was working with throughout the course of this tale. All he needed to do was develop them a little more fully and I would have given this a much higher rating.

With that being said, I did think the conclusion was much more realistic than what typically happens with dystopian tales published in modern day. I appreciated the fact that the themes and hints embedded in earlier scenes were allowed to play out so naturally. While I did wonder if this twist was coming in advance, that was a good thing. It was nice to have a consistent experience even if it wasn’t something that most contemporary authors would do.

The Machine Stops was ahead of its time. Anyone who likes dystopias should check it out.

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My Most Popular Posts of 2021

A drawing of a bar chart whose bars move up and down but mostly up.

Let’s pretend these are my proper analytics.

Every December I make a list of my most popular posts of the year. This is something I first began doing in 2017 with a roundup of my 10 most popular posts.

In 2018, I decided to double that number in response to my blogging friend Tom Williams doing the same thing. I continued that tradition in 2019 and 2020 and am back again today with this year’s entry.

This year’s list won’t be as accurate as it was for previous years because the Google Analytics on my site isn’t collecting information anymore and I’ve missed out on some data while trying to figure out why it stopped working.

What can you do? Nothing in life works perfectly all of the time, and I’m grateful for the information I do have about visitors to this site in 2021. Hopefully, my 2022 analytic information will be complete.

The other unusual thing about this year was that I blogged less often during it. I used to write posts on Mondays about fitness, speculative fiction, meditation, and other topics. This wasn’t something I had a lot of emotional energy for this year due to grief and other aspects of the pandemic, so most of my posts were of more structured topics like book reviews or responses to blog hops like Top Ten Tuesday (TTT) or the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge (WWBC). (Those acronyms are included below when applicable).

We will see if this changes next year.

With all of that being said, here are some of my personal favourite posts in no particular order:

. Search Engine Questions from 2020 

This is often my most amusing post of the year! People search for the oddest and funniest stuff online.

Man struggling to open a jar of pickles. The man is not wearing a shirt.  What I Read in 2020 

A Photo Essay Update on Damaged Toronto Trees 

How I Changed My Mind About Weightlifting 

My Interview at Ginger Nuts of Horror

My Goals for 2021 (WWBC)

What I Include In My Content Warnings and Why

 

 

And here are my 10 most popular posts of 2021 according to the data that Google Analytics was able to collect:

A cellphone. Someone has searched for Google Analytics in it’s browser. 10. My Greatest Weakness (WWBC)

9. Places in Books I’d Love to Live (TTT)

8. Colourful Book Covers (TTT)

7. Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud (TTT)

6. Books I Loved That Made Me Want More of Them (TTT)

5. LGBT+ Book Quotes (TTT)

4. Bookish Gifs (TTT)

3. Books With Mountains on Their Covers (TTT)

2. Books I’d Gladly Throw Into the Ocean (TTT)

1. Books About Fresh Starts (TTT

 

I love that fact that Books About Fresh Starts was my most popular post of 2021.  May 2022 be a better year for us all!

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Wintry Gifs and Photos

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A snow-covered bench in a snow-covered park. I’m going to be achingly honest with all of you here. The winter holiday season is hard for me for a few different reasons.

One, I have seasonal depression that usually kicks in by early November when Ontario’s days grow short and our sunlight is weak and brief at best.

Two, I live thousands of miles away from the safe and loving relatives that I’d otherwise get to see during the various winter holidays we celebrate.  That homesickness is tough, especially since I haven’t been able to see those family members in a few years now thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Three, I used to work in an industry that was extremely busy in November and December and have some bad memories of those stressful months that felt like they’d never end.

When you combine all of these factors together, I basically begin counting down the days until January 1 arrives as soon as the leaves begin to change colour. In the meantime, I am happy for all of you who enjoy this time of year and hope it’s wonderful for you.

What I really want to do for the next few weeks is curl up and think happy bookish thoughts as winter approaches. Maybe some bookish wintry gifs and photos will suffice? I will be including brief alt-text descriptions of everything in this post for readers who are sight-impaired or who can’t see the photos and gifs for some other reason.

 

Person reading a book while sitting next to a crackling fireplace.

Reading by a fireplace sounds nice.

 

Olaf making a snow angel.

So does making a snow angel. That always feels like it should be the beginning of a story to me. Maybe it’s because you leave behind such pretty imprints in the snow when you’re done.

 

Snoopy characters caroling.

I went carolling a few times with friends as a teenager. I might be too shy to do it now, although I’d happy listen to others do it or help pick out the songs! Once again, this sounds like the opening scene of a book. I’m sure the closing scene would involve the main character performing a solo or something similar.

 

A weeping willow tree covered in icicles and snow.

There is a certain beauty to seeing trees covered in ice and snow. It’s almost like seeing a poem come to life.

 

Stock photo of a gigantic stone statue covered in snow and ice. It’s sitting in a valley next to a small cabin that has smoke coming out of its chimney and one light glowing from a window.

And some of the winter stock images of fantasy scenes are delightful.

 

Person wearing a heavy winter coat and scarf carrying a mug of hot chocolate.

It’s also nice to be entering the tea, hot chocolate, and other beverages time of year. There’s nothing like sipping a cup of something warm and soothing while you read.

 

Snoopy blowing a streamer and saying Happy New Year.

I’ll end this post with a question. Is it too soon to start thinking about what to read in 2022? The new year will be here sooner than we might think!

What do you all think of the winter holiday season?

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