Tag Archives: Top Ten Tuesday

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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.

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Sadly, Covid killed off some my favourite bookstores that I would have loved to include in this list, so I decided to pivot to fictional answers instead.

 

1.Women & Women First from the television show Portlandia 

Why I’d Want to Visit: the owners were humorous and memorable characters. I loved seeing the absurd lengths they took some of their beliefs.

 

2. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore from  the novel Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Why I’d Want to Visit: It has ties to a secret society. What could be cooler than that?

3. The Travel Book Company from the film Notting Hill 

Why I’d Want to Visit: I’d forgotten travel books were ever a thing! It would be interesting to see an entire store dedicated to them.

 

4. The Village Bookstore from the film Beauty and the Beast 

Why I’d Want to Visit: Beauty and the Beast was set in the 1740s. I don’t know what the literary trends were back then, so I’d be curious to see what sorts of books were available to average citizens.

 

5. The Android’s Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop from the television show The Simpsons 

Why I’d Want to Visit: It seems pretty similar to real-life comic book stores (wacky Simpsons physics and logic and such aside), but it would be cool to make comparisons.

 

6. The Magic Box from the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Why I’d Want to Visit: To see what they had to offer. I wouldn’t touch anything, and I’d make sure I was safely back home before dark when the vampires and other monsters started causing trouble.

 

7. A. Z. Fell and Company From the novel Good Omens by Terry Pratchett

Why I’d Want to Visit: Because Aziraphale had invited me to stop by. It would be neat to see what sorts of things he’d collected over the millennia. Other than that, it seems like the sort of place best avoided due to how much it bothered him to have visitors at the private collection of materials he kept there.

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To be perfectly honest, I generally prefer book covers that include some sort of picture on them over the ones that have a fancy typographic font and nothing else.

Pictures, drawings, and other visual representations of what a book might about play an important role in helping me decide what to read. Will it be romantic, scary, or thought-provoking? Should I have my box of tissues on standby? There’s so much you can tell from what is and isn’t included in this sort of cover.

As pretty as an individual font may be, it can never convey as much information about what to expect from a story in my experience.

I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who love typographic covers, though, so I look forward to reading your posts and/or comments about why you prefer them to other types of covers.

 

 

1. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

 

2. Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out by John Calipari

 

3. Never Use Futura by Douglas Thomas

 

4. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

 

5. The Affairs of the Falcóns by Melissa Rivero

 

6.Burned (Burned, #1) by Ellen Hopkins

 

7. The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity by Lewis Raven Wallace

 

8. Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam

 

9. Oil: Anatomy of an Industry by Matthew Yeomans

 

10. Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer

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Those of you who have followed this blog for a while might remember how short my seasonal to-read lists generally are since I rely so heavily on what the Toronto Public Library has to offer and prefer to be a mood reader instead of sticking to a strict schedule.

Well, this autumn is going to break that trend.

I’ve found nine books I’m excited to read that have either recently been released or are scheduled to be published later on this fall.That may be a record for me for these types of posts. Ha!

If you’ve read any of them or have them on your TBR lists, let’s talk.

 

 

Our Shadows Have Claws by Amparo Ortiz (Editor) and Yamile Saied Méndez

Why I Want to Read It: Halloween is sneaking up on us quickly, and monster stories are the perfect thing to read in preparation for it if you ask me.

 

Meet Me in Mumbai by Sabina Khan

Why I Want to Read It: I’m a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and I have several relatives who were transracially adopted. There aren’t a lot of books out there that touch on both of these topics, so I’m pretty curious about this one.

 

Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman

Publication Date: Today!

Why I Want to Read It: Actually, I’m not sure if I do. The thought of taking a pill that allows you to see ghosts piqued my interest, but I don’t know if this will be too scary of a read for me. I will keep it on my TBR for now as I decide.

 

Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese

Publication Date: October 4

Why I Want to Read It: This is the first retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter I’ve ever seen. (If you’re a fan of retellings and know of other books like this, please speak up!) I am thrilled to finally experience this tale from Hester’s perspective.

 

They Were Here Before Us by Eric Larocca

Publication Date: October 25

Why I Want to Read It: The blurb is actually pretty vague at the moment, but the words “horror” and “novella” in it have caught my attention. This could be a fun and spooky Halloween read for sure.

 

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukheerjee

 

To Each This World by Julie E Czerneda

Publication Date: November 1

Why I Want to Read It: I love reading science fiction stories about humans being put into cryosleep and sent off to find new habitable worlds. It’s such a fascinating topic.

 

 

Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering by Margaret Atwood (Editor)

Publication Date: November 1

Why I Want to Read It: Each chapter of this novel about a diverse group of neighbours bonding together during a Covid-19 shutdown was written by a different author. Yes, Margaret Atwood wrote one of the chapters. I’m hoping it will capture that moment in history well. Fingers crossed.

 

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama

Publication Date: November 15

Why I Want to Read It: I really enjoyed reading her memoir “Becoming.” She’s a good storyteller, so I look forward to hearing what she has to say about hope and perseverance in hard times in this book.

 

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The geographical term I chose for this week’s prompt is wetlands. That is to say, areas of land that link water and land together. Some of them are always wet, while others can go through periods of being as dry as regular land depending on the season. Wetlands include swamps, marshes, and bogs.

I chose this term because one of the places I grew up in used to be a wetland before the land was drained and turned into farmland. It’s a beautiful place, but the mosquitoes there are overwhelming in the summer. I’ve often wished that my ancestors had left it the way it originally was and built their homes somewhere else instead.

1. Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination by Barbara Hurd

2. Swampwalker’s Journal: A Wetlands Year by David M. Carroll

3. Danger in Blackwater Swamp by Saundra Kelley

4. Birds of Lake Pond & Marsh: Water and Wetland Birds of Eastern North America by John Eastman

5. The Ghost Orchid Ghost: And Other Tales from the Swamp by Doug Alderson

6. The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise by Michael Grunwald

7. The Geese of Beaver Bog by Bernd Heinrich

8. In the Salt Marsh by Nancy Willard

9. Meadowlands: A Wetlands Survival Story by Thomas F. Yezerski

10. The Bog by Michael Talbot

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I don’t own a lot of books due to how amazing my local public library is, but here are some I loved that I do own in ebook form.

If I’ve written a review for a particular book, the link will take you to my review of it. In all other cases, it will go to Goodreads instead.

1. Becoming by Michelle Obama

2. My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood

3. The Visitor by Mark Lawrence

4. The Reluctant Familiar’s Guide to Christmas Tree Defence by Bethany Hoeflich

5. Safer at Home by Zoe Cannon

6. Boo and the Boy by Wayne Barrett

7. 1NG4 by Berthold Gambrel

8. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

9. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

How many of you also have wonderful local libraries? I hope all of you can say yes to that question!

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I struggled with this week’s topic. As I mentioned back in June, I think many modern books have too many sequels instead of not enough of them.

Here are a few series that break that rule of mine. There is still plenty of room for character development in them if only their authors had written one more book.

Do note that there are some mild spoilers included in my post.

As most of them were written years ago, I hope it’s safe to assume that everyone who still wants to remain unspoiled about their plot twists has had ample opportunity to read them.

If that isn’t the case for you, please feel free to avoid the sentences that explain why I think these series might benefit from one more instalment each.

1. The Mists of Avalon (Avalon, #1) by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Why I Want a Sequel to This Series: I’d like to see how the gods in this universe respond to contemporary society. Would they become more visibly active here? Would they completely retreat from us?

 

2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) by C.S. Lewis

Why I Want a Sequel to This Series: Susan’s storyline needs to be resolved once and for all. I loved so many things about this series, but I hated the way she was treated in the final book. She deserved better.

 

3. The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid’s Tale, #1) by Margaret Atwood

Why I Want a Sequel to This Series: Don’t get me wrong. I was thrilled to finally have a sequel to this book and get a good resolution to Offred’s story. If this were to become a trilogy, I’d want the third and final instalment to focus on the society that formed after Gilead was destroyed. There were tantalizing hints in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments that future generations had either not learned their lesson from this terrible period or had never quite understood the gravity of what happened. I’d love to dive into their world more deeply and see if they’d made the necessary changes to ensure that no one would ever be harmed the way Offred and the people she knew were harmed again.

 

4. Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes #1) by Bill Watterson

Why I Want a Sequel to This Series: In 2011, someone wrote a one-off comic strip about Calvin’s experiences as the father of a daughter who was just as mischievous as he was when he was a child. I would love it if either Bill Watterson or someone he approved of were to pick this up again and give little Bacon years of adventures in our modern era. Wouldn’t that be amazing?