Tag Archives: Humour

A Review of Christmas Inc.

Book cover for Christmas Inc. by Tim Vee. Image on cover shows one row of metal shelves in a warehouse that are stuffed full of boxes. The florescent lights overhead are dimmer than one would expect and give this scene a sad feeling, especially when combined with the fact that there are no people to be seen anywhere. Just what feels like endless merchandise. Title: Christmas Inc.

Author: Tim Vee

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 15, 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Satire, Political, Contemporary

Length: about 181 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

When a new US president is elected, and war is declared on illegal immigration, there is one “illegal immigrant” to America firmly in the cross-hairs of this new president, who was always a very naughty boy and was never, not even once, on the nice list.

Christmas Inc. tells the story of Mrs. Claus, four elves, the reindeer, and a little red crab, and their battle to save Santa and Christmas from the forces of greed, hubris, and dysfunction.

Christmas Inc. is an anarchic, subversive, timely, and satirical look at populist politics, greed, capitalism, slave labor, the cult of the billionaire, and (of course) the magic of Christmas.

Content Warning: Reindeer being harmed. Smoking. A detainment camp for undocumented people. A few brief references to waterboarding (but it wasn’t actually shown). Pigeon pie made from pet pigeons. Someone choking on a bone while eating.

Review:

Not even Santa is safe this Christmas.

It takes a lot for someone to end up on naughty list year after year. Santa would much rather see everyone be judged as nice from what I observed! Some of the most memorable passages for me were the ones that explored how the North Pole worked in this universe and what Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elves did in the lead up to Christmas Eve to ensure everything ran smoothly. As someone who wasn’t taught to believe in Santa, there were a lot of things about his mythology that I quietly wondered about as a kid when children who did believe tried to figure out how it all worked. It was amusing to see how these characters explained it all and what happened to people who consistently disappointed Santa with their naughtiness.

I thought the satirical elements of the storyline were a little heavy-handed, especially in the beginning. In my opinion, satire works better when it requires some additional work from the audience to figure out what the author is poking fun at. It will be interesting to see if other reviewers agree with me there as I do agree this is a subjective topic and that some readers do need things to be spelled out more clearly in order to understand what’s going on.

With that being said, I enjoyed the thought of Santa of all people being one of people the president targeted as immigrants were identified and removed from society.  One would think that Santa would be loved and admired by everyone who believed in him, but that wasn’t so for reasons I’ll let other readers discover for themselves. This was a fun twist that helped to smooth over the heavy satire in the beginning as it drove home the author’s points.

Christmas Inc. made me chuckle.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Describe Your Sense of Humour

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Image of something being downloaded. The text reads “downloading future. Please wait” and there is a loading image above the cancel bar. I started working on this back in March and have been slowly adding to it as I find more examples of things that tickle my funny bone. Some posts work better if they’re allowed to percolate for a long time.

My sense of humour is gentle and kind but honest.

Everyone should be laughing and feeling happy by the time the punchline is revealed.

 

I love these types of humour:

  • stories or videos about pets or people doing amusing things like accidentally scaring themselves
  • jokes that allow people to poke gentle fun at themselves if they wish to
  • puns and wordplay
  • wholesome memes
  • anything that sidesteps the audience’s expectations of what will happen next and gives us something clever in exchange.

 

Here are some examples of things that have made me smile or laugh recently:

 

One day, a police officer pulls a car over and sees the backseat is full of penguins. The officer tells the driver, “You can’t be doing this, you need to take these penguins to the zoo!”

The next day, the police officer pulls the same car over again, and says, “Hey! I told you to take these penguins to the zoo!” The driver says, “I did, and today I’m taking them to the movies!”

 

 

Beagle Puppy Learns How to Go Down Stairs  (1 minute, 33 seconds long)

Adorableness is always in style. This dog has been a YouTube star for years.

 

 

Q. Why are frogs so happy?

A. They eat whatever bugs them.

 

 

First Day of Rural Medicine (2 minutes, 15 seconds long)

This is a skit about the challenges of providing medical care to a culture that tries to tough everything out. I grew up around so many farmers and other rural folks who avoid modern medical care unless there’s a true emergency, and even then they won’t go in very promptly. For example, one of my relatives had a heart attack in the middle of the night years ago, took some antacids, and then casually strolled into their family doctor’s office the next morning. Their family doctor examined them and immediately called for an ambulance. After emergency surgery for a quadruple bypass, my relative is doing well. Their family doctor might need a hug, though.

 

 

Q: What would bears be without the letter B?

A: Ears.

 

 

Screenshot of a message on a social media site (possibly tumblr?) from user Roxy Horror whose username is roxiqt. The message says: “I went to the ER for a migraine once. The nurse asked me what I took for it. I said, ‘a litre of chocolate milk.’ She paused and said, ‘odd…but only something a migraine sufferer would try’ as if I correctly answered her riddle and she was granting me passage to the land of pain relief.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one is funny and relatable to me. I have tried the chocolate milk – well, actually mine was chocolate almond milk – trick when I was desperate for relief. It did not work in any way, but it was delicious. Now I have more effective prescription medication to take when I feel a migraine coming on, so I have been granted passage to the land of pain relief, too, assuming my meds work.

 

 

Photo of a cat sitting on a wooden swing outside. The cat is wearing an orange scarf and a blue sweater. There are colourful autumn leaves scattered about and some trees in the background that look like their leaves are turning colours, too. Humorously enough, the text on this image reads “Friends: it’s still 85 degrees out. Me: …..” 85 Fahrenheit is about 29 Celsius. So even when it’s still warm out, both this can and I yearn for autumn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Autumn is so much nicer than summer to me!

 

Animals Reacting to Their Reflections  (2 minutes, 32 seconds long)

I thought this was funny and educational. Some animals seem to have much more self-awareness than others do.

 

Closeup photo of the head of a peaceful capybara. Image on text reads: “Humans and capybaras are evolutionarily closely related. You are genetically as cute as this capybara.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I don’t know that we’re actually that closely related to capybaras….but this meme made me smile. I hope you all smiled, too.)

 

This is a still from the 2001 film Shrek. In it Donkey (the sometimes overly cheerful grey donkey in it) is walking in a meadow looking pleased with himself. There is a dark forest behind him and a boulder in front of him. The text reads, “me going outside to improve my mental health.” At the bottom of the image, the donkey’s line of dialogue is on the screen and reads “I like that boulder. That’s a nice boulder.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking is not a cure-all, but it sure does help distract me when I’m worried about something. Exercise is a great form of stress relief.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Funny Animal Video

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Close-up photo of a little brown baby bunny sitting in a patch of dirt outside. Its ears are perked up as it listens for anything nearby. One of my favourite types of amusing animal videos involves rabbits squeezing through spaces the humans thought were far too small for them to fit through or hopping further than anyone thought they should be able to.

If you’ve never held or otherwise been near a rabbit, know that a lot of their volume can be taken up by their fur and that they hop over and around all sorts of barriers.

Their bodies beneath all of that fluff are smaller and more flexible than you might think, especially if they’re sporting an especially fluffy coat or if it’s the right time of year for their winter fur to grow in.

Here is a short video about a baby rabbit who squeezes thought a cage.

Here is another one.

And a third and final great escape from a so-called rabbit-proof fence. (I do not think anyone consulted the rabbits before deciding to call it that!)

This is a baby bunny who has been temporarily placed in a laundry basket that is much too high for them to jump out of….right?

The tale of a rabbit in a large glass cage.

All of these videos are short. They are a few minutes long at most, and some are more like 20 to 30 seconds of footage.

I adore seeing tiny little rabbits outwit humans. It’s so funny.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Funniest Advice I’ve Received

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The word advice is written in block letters with chalk on a chalkboard. I began working on this post in March and will slowly add to it until the publication date arrives.

Sometimes advice is funny because it’s horribly wrong and should never be followed by anyone.

In other cases it’s amusing because of how it makes you see the world or the way it plays with our expectations of what might happen among many other reasons.

I tried to come up with a mix of these types for my replies.

Piece of Advice #1

“Stop taking your antibiotics once you’re feeling better! That way you’ll still have some antibiotics to take the next time you’re sick.”

This is something a relative who does not understand science, medicine, public health, or how antibiotics work said a few years ago. Please do NOT follow her advice. The last thing we need in 2024 or beyond are more antibiotic-resistant superbugs getting passed around and causing life-threatening illnesses.

 

Piece of Advice #2

“Never do anything you wouldn’t want to explain to the paramedics.”

And, honestly, I think this is an excellent litmus test to apply when deciding whether to take a specific risk.

 

Piece of Advice #3

”Leave Canada geese alone.”

I had multiple Canadians tell me this when I first moved up here, and it’s something everyone should listen to. Yes, they’re beautiful birds, but they can also be quite territorial and aggressive, especially during breeding season. It’s best to give them a wide berth and admire them from afar.

 

 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Things I Totally Misunderstood as a Kid

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Photo of a few hundred dollars bills crumpled up in the hands of a light-skinned person. The bills look like a bird’s nest. In the background of the image you can see a forest floor. Here are a few fun stories about things I misunderstood as a kid.

Story #1

There was a wooden box in the foyer of the church my family attended. I saw someone put money into it when I was about 3 or 4 years old and asked my parents what that person was doing.

”They’re giving it to God,” was the reply. As God was somewhere up in the sky so far as I knew, I wasn’t sure how the money was going to make it from that box all the way up past the clouds.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided the church ushers probably unlocked the box, took the money outside, and threw it up really high so God could catch it once everyone had cleared the parking lot and it was safe to stand out there for a while.

 

Story #2

”My doctor recommends Dr. Pepper” is a phrase that has echoed through my head since I was five. Did I see it on a commercial or billboard somewhere? Did someone tell it to me jokingly? I feel like I might have seen it on an old poster, possibly by the community swimming pool, but I don’t know if that part of the memory is accurate.

What I do remember is being very suspicious of any doctor who thought soda was something you should drink every day. He or she couldn’t possibly have known what they were talking about in my concrete 5-year-old worldview.

 

Story #3

My parents were making spaghetti and talking about prom in our family kitchen one evening. They disapproved of the things teenagers did after prom.

“What will they be doing?” I asked. I was about 5 at the time.

”Oh, acting like they’re married,” my parents said. What they meant is that there might be premarital sex after the dance, something that was strictly forbidden in our church.

But what I thought was, “what’s wrong with making spaghetti? Maybe they’re really hungry after all of that dancing?”

 

Story #4

Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E, was an American educational program that teaches elementary-aged students about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes in the hope that it would prevent them using any of those substances when they grew older. (So far as I can tell, it’s rarely taught these days although similar programs are still around).

I happened to switch schools at exactly the right stage in life to miss out on being part of this program. My old school gave these presentations to sixth graders, but I stopped attending it after the fifth grade due to a cross-country move my parents made that summer for a new job. The new school my family enrolled me in only taught it to fifth graders,  so little Lydia wasn’t eligible for it when she started the sixth grade that autumn.

My misunderstanding about the program was about its name. I thought each word in it signified a different step in the growth process:

First you did drugs.

Then came abuse.

Then came resistance to change.

Then came education and, I presumed, the end of the cycle and a healthier future.

It felt a little too dramatic in my mind, but I was sure the grownups had good intentions.

Honestly, I was about the last kid in the world who needed this class, though. No one in my family smoke, drank, or did drugs. Even when a few relatives dabbled in smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol when I was older, they only did so socially and occasionally. Nobody was addicted or anything, and I grew up to have zero interest in anything other than the very rare strawberry margarita or something before I gave up even that tiny amount of alcohol as well.

That class may have been more meaningful for kids whose friends or relatives had substance use disorders, though. I was very lucky to grow up in a family that was not tempted by such things.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Funny Things I’ve Googled

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A distinguished little Yorkshire Terrier is lying on a white surface. The puppy is wearing black glasses and a black and yellow striped scarf. There is an opened book in front the puppy, and he is looking up as if we’ve just interrupted his reading. Here is a quick snapshot into the funny sorts of things I look up online.

This post is making me miss the search engines from years ago. I feel like the results these days are so tainted by ads and content written by chat bots that it’s much harder than it used to be to find genuine content, especially from non-commercial sites like blogs or small, quirky websites about hobbies, local news, favourite authors, and the like. May that change someday soon!

 

What I Asked:  Why are some people so argumentative online?

Why I Asked It: I’m a peacekeeper by nature, so it’s odd to me to run across folks online who not only seem to enjoy getting into arguments about often inconsequential matters but also actively seek them out. Sharing cool nature photos or telling Dad jokes seems like a much more amusing way to spend your free time in my opinion, but I accept the fact that not everyone is wired the way I am.

With that being said, I also reserve the right to step away from fruitless conversations about, say, what the best condiment in the world is.

 

What I Asked: Do pigeons hold grudges?

Why I Asked It: Toronto has a pigeon problem. They are so well-fed and have so few predators that their population is much larger than it would be if the land up here was all still swamps, meadows, and forests. This means that not every interaction a pigeon has with a person, a dog, or another pigeon is necessarily going to be a positive one.

Seeing them fight over dropped food or fly away in a burst of energy when an untrained dog lunges at them makes me wonder if they remember who bothered them in those moments and if they feel a little grumpy the next time they see that particular pigeon or dog in the future.

(So far as I could tell, pigeons are not like crows in this regard).

 

What I Asked: Why does Google think everything is a symptom of a terminal illness?

Why I Asked It: The first time I googled a minor symptom and this happened, I was a little nervous. Now I just roll my eyes and try to find results for a hangnail, headache, runny nose or other temporary annoyances that don’t assume the worst. You’d think the algorithm would choose the most likely answers, though, instead of focusing on the tiny percentage of people who might be far sicker than they think they are.

 

What I Asked:  How can I stop dreaming about stressful high school math and science tests?

Why I Asked It: I was curious because I keep having dreams about surprise math, biology, or chemistry tests I am in no way prepared to take despite the fact that I graduated from high school quite a while ago. (I was an average student in math and science, but they were not my favourite subjects by any means). Brains can come up with such vivid dreams sometimes, although sadly there doesn’t seem to be any scientific answers about why we dream about the things we do.

 

What I Asked:  Do pets know that they are adorable?

Why I Asked It: Because this is obviously critical information that all animal lovers must know. Also, I was curious to find out if other people’s dogs understand it when I tell them they’re cute and wonderful little creatures. I hope they do.

 

What I Asked:  Will the United States ever take over Canada? Will they enjoy poutine if they do?

Why I Asked It: Your population is about ten times larger than ours, after all, and we do have large swaths of land in Northern Canada that are filled with fresh water lakes and wildlife but are only very sparsely populated by humans due to how cold it is up there. With droughts happening in so many parts of the world and growing seasons lengthening in colder areas now due to climate change, it makes me wonder if the U.S. is going to decide that 50 Nifty United States isn’t enough for them.

As for the poutine question, all of the Americans I’ve known who have tried it have loved it. But I promise you can enjoy it without invading us. 😉

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Paranormal Business: A Review of Ghosted

Book cover for Ghosted - A Short Story by H.L. Burke. Image on cover shows a a drawing of the silhoutte of a black cat who is standing on a brick wall with its back arched under the light of a full moon. You can also see the branch of a nearby tree hanging over the cat. The branch has several leaves on it. Title: Ghosted – A Short Story

Author: H.L. Burke

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 15, 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 18 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Ghosts thrive on fear, but Maisie just isn’t delivering. In fact, Lazarus isn’t even sure she realizes she’s being haunted.

When expert haunter, Lazarus Bently, receives a cry for help from a fellow ghost, he rushes to the chaotic cottage of eccentric artist Maisie. If Ghost HQ finds out Lazarus couldn’t get a rise out of this little old lady, he’ll never live it down.

With his professional pride on the line, can Lazarus get through to this unshakable woman? Or will this unbeaten scarer be the one quaking in his boots?

Review:

You don’t have to be a big fan of being scared to enjoy this one!

Artists aren’t easy to scare…especially someone as independent and creative as Maisie. I adored the descriptions of how she worked on her paintings and drawings in her cluttered and messy but also warm and inviting home. She was the sort of antagonist that I can’t help but to root for because she genuinely didn’t realize she was annoying her resident ghost at all. After all, who has time to worry about the spirit world and what it wants from the living when there are countless ideas out there to try to commit to paper or canvas? Her self-absorption was understandable given how quirky she was in general, and it also matched the ghosts’ frantic attempts to frighten her beautifully.

The world building was amazing as well. The author only had about eighteen pages to work with here, so it was impressive to see just how many descriptions of paranormal society and how the dead were expected to interact with the living she managed to pack into such a small space. While I would have happily read another few hundred pages about the complexities of it all, I was also content with what I was given and finished the last scene with a chuckle.

Speaking of the ending, it couldn’t have been better. This piece played around a lot with everyone’s expectations, including the ghosts, Maisie, and even those of us who participated in it simply by reading. I don’t want to share too many details and accidentally give away spoilers, but what I can say is that Ms. Burke is clearly well-versed in both the fantasy and paranormal genres and knew exactly how to tweak her plot twists to bring out the funniest aspects of being a ghost, being haunted, and even of wanting to read about a haunting gone terribly wrong in a silly, not tragic, sense of that phrase.

Ghosted – A Short Story was cozy, sweet, and hilarious.  If you need a palate cleanser between checking out more serious works, I highly recommend starting here.

 

This post was edited on March 31, 2024 to include a link to Berthold Gambrel’s review of it. He was inspired to try it by reading this post! 

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Persistence: A Review of Ghost Coach

Book cover for Ghost Coach by Amanda Linehan. Image on cover is a closeup photo of some white satin or silk sheets on a bed. The sheets are a little rumpled. Title: Ghost Coach

Author: Amanda Linehan

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: January 10, 2015

Genres: Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 15 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Sarah hasn’t been sleeping well. Turns out, she has a ghost in her house. But this ghost has a problem.
And only Sarah can solve it.

Review:

Content Warning: brief reference to blood, a dead animal, and a ghost with a severe head injury. I will not discuss these things in my review.

Even ghosts need a little tutoring sometimes.

I adored the fact that Sarah was oblivious at first to the ghost’s attempts to scare her. She had such a logical and calm personality that the spirit of a dead person was the last thing she ever would have suspected to be the cause of the fluctuating temperatures in her bedroom. This was a nice change of page from the sorts of characters who generally populate this genre, and I found myself wishing for just a few more scenes with her in them so I could get to know her even better.

The beginning and middle of this tale did not quite match the ending due some references to blood and gore in the last few scenes. While other style could have worked for this piece, I have to say that I preferred the lightheartedness of the first two-thirds of it to the more violent – albeit still sort of humorous – tones at the end and wish that the author had stuck to one style or the other for the entire thing. Some readers will love both, of course, and that’s totally normal and okay, but in my experience these two approaches do tend to attract different audiences whose interests may not overlap here as much as the author might hope they would. Sticking to one lane would have made this a more effective and memorable story in my opinion.

There are only so many things someone can do after death to amuse themselves. It made perfect sense to me that the ghost would eventually want to interact with the living in order to get some sort of mental stimulation and socialization, as one-sided as those experiences could often be depending on who they were haunting and how that person reacted to suddenly having their covers pulled away or their television turned on in the middle of the night.

Ghost Coach was a funny, playful, and occasionally a somewhat dark take on the haunted house genre.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Weird or Funny Things I’ve Googled Thanks to a Book


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to Astilbe @ Long and Short Reviews for coming up with this fun prompt!

A question mark on a foggy window. It looks like it was made by someone’s finger recently. You can see something green and fuzzy through the foggy window that might be a forest, but it’s too obscured to know for sure. Here are some of the amusing things I’ve googled thanks to books. I sadly only remember the name and titles of a few of the books that prompted my searches, but I’ll edit this post if I can think of more of them.

There are explanations of my searches in this post as well so you’ll understand what I was thinking.

1. What happens if you drink tea that tastes like bitter almonds?

(A teacher had assigned us to read Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady” that featured this sort of tea.  Her explanation for what was happening in that scene weirded me out so much I looked it up later online and confirmed that this is not something anyone should be brewing or drinking!)

 

2. How long can smallpox remain active in frozen corpses?

3. How long can the 1918 flu remain active in frozen corpses?

4. How often are the viruses and bacteria in glaciers dangerous to humans?

(I’d been reading about the melting permafrost and glaciers. Some doctors worry our next pandemic could come from a virus or bacteria that has been frozen for a very long time. For example, there are bodies of people who died of the 1918 flu, smallpox, or other dangerous diseases and then were buried in places where it is always cold. So it’s possible we could see some of these illnesses come back if anyone were to, say, decide to relocate a cemetery or explore a melting glacier and not realize they might have been exposed to something deadly.)

 

5. Do birds remember which humans were nice to them?

(If you were curious, crows apparently do! They can hold grudges for a lifetime, too, if you’re unkind. And they will bring gifts to humans who are nice to them sometimes.).

 

6. Did Neanderthals have blue eyes?

(No, probably not. We don’t even think the first humans with blue eyes showed up until about 7,000 years ago, and Neanderthals died out long before then!)

 

7.  Why were kids allowed to run around everywhere on their own in the 1980s?

(Okay, so I technically googled this after watching the first season of Stranger Things…but a lot of older books feature fairly young kids going all over the place without any adult supervision or even without telling the adults in their lives where they were going, too. My parents gave us freedom to play outside without them as long as we followed some basic safety rules like avoiding large bodies of water and sticking together as a group, but they also generally knew where we were going, who we were with, and about when we’d be back based on our previous patterns. It confuses me a little to think of not having such information about your kids!)

 

8. What do spies do in retirement? Are they ever even allowed to retire?

(Yes, they can retire. Unlike what happens in some novels, you can retire from this profession and not be in any danger. Ha!)

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Bookish Memes That Make Me Laugh

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This week’s theme was “Memes That Remind You of a Favourite Book or Show.” I had so much trouble narrowing down my favourite media to just one show or book that I decided to tweak this topic a little and make it about bookish memes in general instead.

A grumpy orange cat sitting on top of an opened book. The text reads, “that’s not how it was in the book.”

I’m normally pretty forgiving of changes that are made to adaptations of books so long as there are good reasons for them and they blend seamlessly into the character and story development, but this meme still makes me laugh.

 

Aragorn from the film version of Lord of the Rings clasping his thumb and middle finger together in a circle and looking serious. The text reads, “one does not simply return from the library without a book.”

I 100% agree here.

 

A black woman who is grinning and wearing a white tank top as she reads the back cover of a book. The text reads, “when you find the next book of your dreams without even trying.”

It is so amazing when this happens!

 

Merida from Disney’s film “Brave” is sitting at a table and throwing her head back in sadness and annoyance. The text reads “when you get to an exciting part in your book but people keep interrupting you.”

My spouse has an uncanny knack for this. It’s a little irritating in the moment but kind of hilarious the rest of the time. How on Earth do they sense that I’ve reached an incredibly exciting scene so reliably, and can we somehow use this special power to make a lot of money someday? Ha!

 

President Obama making a surprised face. The text reads, “when you have to read a book for English and it actually turns out to be pretty good.”

This is such a great feeling. While I didn’t like everything we were assigned, there were a lot of books I ended up really loving and intentionally read more from those authors because of my positive first experience with them.

 

Photo of a person lying on top of a library bookshelf face down and with a defeated posture. The text reads “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. - Neil Gaiman”

I couldn’t agree with this one more. Librarians are incredible and deserve so much respect for all of their hard work.

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