Tag Archives: Top Ten Tuesday

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This stock photo is making me giggle, so I must share it with you all. I don’t want to make assumptions about the climates you all live in, but nobody in Ontario walks around outside in the dead of winter without being bundled up warmly unless you want to risk developing frostbite or hypothermia. It can happen quickly, too, if the windchill and temperatures are both very low and you’re not dressed properly for the weather.

Yes, her outfit is scholarly and all of that, but it’s also totally impractical for this season. It’s funny to me to compare the aesthetic that some photographers use to capture their idealized versions of winter versus the reality of actually living in a cold climate …and there are much chillier places to spend the winter than Toronto!

Anyway, I have once again returned to my regular habit of not having many books to share for my seasonal to-read lists. It was quite unusual for me to have nine of them last autumn.

Winter is a time when I often read or reread classic novels. Last winter I reread Jane Eyre and the Chronicles of Narnia, so the likelihood of me rereading other classics this winter is high. As far as contemporary books that are set to be published over the next few months go, here is a short list of what’s caught my eye so far.

How to Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Publication Date: January 17

Why I Want to Read It: I’ve read many books about haunted houses, but very few about the trials of attempting to sell one. What a fun spin on the topic.

After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Publication Date: January 24

Why I Want to Read It: I enjoy stories about women breaking through societal expectations of them to forge their own paths in life.

This Is Not My Home by Vivienne Chang

Publication Date: January 24

Why I Want to Read It: My first reason for wanting to read it is that picture books are a nice refresher after reading a long, serious adult novel. My second reading for wanting to read it is because my family moved multiple times when I was a kid and I remember how hard it can be to say goodbye to old friends and adjust to a new life somewhere far away.

Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen

Release Date: January 31

Why I Want to Read It: It’s not every day you hear of a vampire novel about a middle-aged person living in the Covid era who is trying to hold on to some semblance of their pre-vampire life. It’s such a unique twist to the genre that I will be quite curious to see how it all pans out.

How many of you also reread old favourites in the winter? And what is winter like where you live?

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All credit for this idea goes to Line at First Line Readers. I adored her take on it last summer and decided to do my own for today’s freebie post.

Sometimes my interpretation of what a book title means isn’t exactly how the author interpreted it. Here are some book titles, what I think they should be about, and what they’re actually about.

If any of you also decide to borrow this theme for a future freebie post, I’ll add a link to your post here if you let me know about it.

1. Animal Farm by George Orwell

What It Should Be About: A cozy children’s picture book about a farm for abandoned pets and livestock.

What It’s Actually About: A satirical fable about corruption, greed, and Stalinist Russia.

2. There Is No Darkness by Joe Haldeman

What It Should Be About: The 80+ days of uninterrupted daylight in Alaska (or other northern places) during the summer and how people enjoy (or don’t enjoy) them.

What It’s Actually About: A military science fiction novel about a poor kid who joins the military to explore other planets and earn some much-needed cash.

3. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

What It Should Be About: A mermaid who grew up believing humans were a myth only to suddenly discover a few in a shipwreck after a massive storm. Maybe the cerulean sea could be a mermaid term for the Pacific Ocean, and the people they rescued were oceanographers?

What It’s Actually About: A group home for dangerous magical children and the man who was hired to determine whether they’d bring about the end of days for humanity.

4. Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

What It Should Be About: The first group of people to tame wolves and how they slowly changed an apex predator into man’s best friend over many generations of selective breeding.

What It’s Actually About: A beautiful friendship that began soon after one of the main characters lost her uncle and plunged into terrible grief.

5. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

What It Should Be About: After cheating a witch out of her rightfully-earned wages, Jacob de Zoet is cursed to live a thousand years. He finds the inability to die a blessing a first, but soon changes his tune when he realizes just how long a thousand years actually is and how unforgiving witches are when you cross them.

What It’s Actually About: A clerk who moves to Japan for five years in order to earn the money he needs to marry his sweetheart. While working there, however, he falls in love with the daughter of a powerful magistrate and must decide who to give his heart to.

6. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

What It Should Be About: A mischevious pet shrew who is intelligent enough to learn tricks but refuses to cooperate even with copious amounts of treats.

What It’s Actually About: Two young men who meet two sisters. The older sister must be married off before the younger one can be, and one of the young men decides to marry her against her will in order to gain access to her large dowry.

7. To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2) by Connie Willis

What It Should Be About: A romance novel about a couple who meet at a speed dating event. One of them has a dog who appears once in an early scene and then never mentioned again. (The dog is not harmed, just conveniently missing from all other scenes).

What It’s Actually About: A time travel romance set in the 1800s. The main character doesn’t know as much about that era as they think they do, and hijinks commence.

8. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

What It Should Be About: Someone who has the uncanny knack of always picking overripe, sour, never ripened, mouldy, or otherwise inedible produce at the grocery store. They soon meet an opinionated chef who can always pick out perfect produce but often buys expired box and canned goods because they don’t check for expiration dates. Neither of them trusts the other one’s opinions or can admit when they’re wrong, yet they decide to date anyways.

What It’s Actually About: A young American woman who moves to Paris in the late 1950s and has all sorts of romantic and comedic adventures.

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I don’t read many books with mushy, sweet, or cute moments in them, so let’s see what I can come up with.

Please note there are spoilers in this post and that some of these books discuss difficult topics like what life was like in British workhouses in the 1800s. Even sometimes painful stories can include happy moments or end on a blissful note, though!

1. A young girl in “Farewell to the East End” by Jennifer Worth  was terribly abused and neglected while she spent her entire childhood in a British workhouse. After she grew up, she was sort of unofffically adopted by the nuns of St. Nonnatus. They made sure she always had a job and a welcoming place to spend Christmas and other holidays. What really warmed my heart, though, was what happened when she fell in love with a wonderful man who gave her the happily ever after she’d dreamed of since she was a little girl.

2.Roderick Ayers was dealing with chronic pain, stiffness, and weakness in his leg as a result of a World War II injury in “The Little Stranger” by Sarah Waters. Seeing Dr. Faraday take his injury seriously and try a brand new therapy for it gave me an aww moment because sometimes modern doctors don’t do a good job of treating these sorts of things. Even though this is fiction and set about 80 years ago, it still made me smile to see a doctor listen and do his best to help. Compassion is so important.

3. There was a hilarious and adorable scene in “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot Series Book 2)” by Becky Chambers that showed the robot hemming and hawing over whether it would be acceptable to replace a broken part of his body that was necessary for him to function. He worried he would break robot law by accepting it and tried to convince the humans to make that part out of something biodegradable so it would feel more natural. This illuminated an entirely new portion of his personality and made me love him even more.

4. The first page of “To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner” by Carole Emberton described how Mrs. Joyner reacted when two strangers from the Federal Writers’ Project approached her in the 1930s to record her biography as the biracial daughter of a southern white woman in the 1850s. Mrs. Joyner said, “That’s nice. Would you like to see my garden?” and proceeded to show them her garden before telling them anything about her unique childhood. Wasn’t that a sweet answer?

Those are my answers. I look forward to seeing what you all came up with.

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I have mixed feelings about series.

When they’re well written, they’re my favorite sorts of books to dive into because of how deeply you can get to know the characters throughout the course of them. It’s thrilling to see a character slowly evolve over the course of several adventures, especially if they maybe weren’t particularly likeable at first. I love it when characters are given space to become three-dimensional individuals who feel just about as real to me as anyone I’ve met. This is difficult to accomplish for any author, but it’s so rewarding when it does happen.

Series that try to stretch out their original storylines too far are disappointing, though. I’d much rather read a tightly written standalone novel that wraps up all of the major conflicts and ends on a high note  than I would something about the exact same characters that had clunky pacing, or not enough going on in each book, or that put their characters in the same sorts of conflicts over and over again to justify creating a series when the protagonist really should have learned his or her lesson on that topic in book #1.

I’ve had experiences with both of these sorts of possibilities (and many grey areas in between then), so I never know what to expect when I start a new series. Will it horribly disappoint me two or three or six books from now? Is it worth my reading time? Will I find the first book pretty decent only to be shocked by how much I adore the rest of them after the world building and character development has been firmly established?

You never know what might happen. Here are some series I hope to read someday. Just don’t ask me exactly when that will be. Ha! Have you read any of these books and, if so, did you enjoy them?

1. The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, #1) by Robert Jordan

Multiple people have told me I’d love The Wheel of Time series.

2. His Dark Materials (His Dark Materials #1-3) by Philip Pullman

I once read that Pullman wrote this series partially as a response to the Chronicles of Narnia series. While I don’t know for sure if that’s true, it does make me curious to see what all of the fuss is about.

3. A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1) by Ursula K. Le Guin

Her short stories make me smile, but I’ve never explored her longer works. Maybe this is a good place to start?

4. Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1) by Diana Wynne Jones

This has been on my TBR for so long that it has apparently become a series now!

5. The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) by N.K. Jemisin

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I’m borrowing this theme from Jana’s Halloween post last year, so she gets all of the credit there. It was such a great idea for both Halloween and Top Ten Tuesday.

1. Visited a haunted house attraction.

I have been inside a house that others said was haunted, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen or heard anything there that defies scientific explanation.

Haunted house attractions don’t appeal to me because I dislike jump scares.

2. Attended an adult Halloween party.

3. Dressed up as something scary or gross.

4. Played the trick part of trick-or-treating.

I once toilet papered someone’s car, but they knew about it and I cleaned everything up immediately. I wouldn’t do anything to damage someone else’s property or leave a mess, so no egging or toilet papering houses for me.

5. Seen a ghost. 

6. Participated in a seance or used an Ouija board. 

7. Visited a fortune teller. 

8. Drank a pumpkin spice latte. 

9. Eaten many Halloween-themed treats. 

10. Decorated for Halloween. 

Here’s a quick explanation of why I haven’t done a lot of this stuff.

I was a preacher’s kid growing up, and my family didn’t celebrate Halloween at all until I was in middle school. We attended harvest festivals at various churches or didn’t do anything in particular that day instead depending on the year. When my parents later changed the family rules and said trick-or-treating was okay, we weren’t allowed to pick scary or gross costumes.

While I’m no longer a member of that church, I still have no interest in contacting spirits or having my fortune read. (I do not judge those who are into those things, though! To each their own).

Many Halloween treats, including pumpkin spice lattes, are filled with dairy products. I’m allergic to milk, so I usually can’t eat and drink that stuff unless I visit a vegan bakery or find a recipe that can be modified and make them myself. Maybe someday I’ll dig into that part of the Internet and do it, though.

Do you celebrate Halloween? What common Halloween things have you never done?

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I tweaked the themes of the last two Top Ten Tuesday posts, but this time I’m sticking to the script! Some of them will have explanations, but it didn’t feel necessary for others.

1. Vorpal

Okay, so this is technically only a word because Lewis Carroll said it was….but many other new words have been invented since then, so I still say it counts.

2. Petrichor 

I was so happy to learn there’s an official word for that lovely scent that happens after a rainstorm.

3. Gossamer 

4. Bucolic

I adore the feeling of this word rolling off of my tongue. Part of my childhood was spent living on a few different farms. There are many pleasant aspects of rural life to be sure, but I chuckle and shake my head at people who romanticize it. I can only hope they’ll spend a lot of time researching what life is really like there in every season of the year before moving.

5. Panacea

6. Curmudgeon

This isn’t to say being around grumpy people is relaxing or uplifting….but curmudgeon itself is such a great word.

7. Oeuvre 

It refers to the entire body of work of a writer, painter, musician, etc. Pronouncing it is delightful, too.

8. Palimpsest

That is to say, a manuscript written over a previous manuscript or manuscripts. It’s such a poetic and thrifty mental image.

9. Sequoia 

10. Defervescence

There’s nothing like the shaky, exhausted relief that comes when a fever breaks and your temperature (or the temperature of someone you love) finally goes back to normal.