Tag Archives: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Titles That Would Make Great Newspaper Headlines


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to Cathy @ What Cathy Read Next for coming up with this topic. It’s a unique one.

I’d sure want to read all of these newspaper headlines. Many of them could easily appear in a regular newspaper, while others would work best if written by a reporter who lived in a speculative fiction universe.

Some weeks I can only come up with four or five answers, so this time I’ll happily be going over the limit to help make up for that.

A black man sitting at a table and reading a newspaper. He has a serious, thoughtful expression on his face and has just looked up to make eye contact with the reader when this shot was taken. He’s sitting bedside a large picture window that has the blinds drawn, but it’s such a sunny day that you can still see lots of light pouring into the room. 1. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

2. 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth and Other Useful Guides by Matthew Inman

3. I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It by Adam Selzer

4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

5. By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters

6. The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

7. The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War by James Hider

8. 15 Days Without a Head by Dave Cousins

9. How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

10. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
by Lindsey Fitzharris

11. Making Mummies, Shrinking Heads: And Other Useful Skills by Pat Murphy

12. First You Write: The Worst Way to Become an Almost Famous Author And The Best Advice I Got While Doing It by Joni Rodgers

13. Great Gals: Inspired Ideas for Living a Kick-Ass Life by Summer Pierre

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Top Ten Tuesday: Things I Love About Halloween


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates it! This is my favourite holiday of the year, so I’m thrilled to see October 31 come around again on the calendar.

In previous years, I’ve blogged about My Favourite Halloween Treats, Halloween Picture Books, and Halloween Things I’ve Never Done  for Top Ten Tuesday’s Halloween Freebie post.

This time I’m going to talk about why I love this holiday so much, especially since I wasn’t allowed to celebrate it as a kid as I’ve mentioned before.

So what’s so fantastic about this holiday?

1. Presents Aren’t Needed

It’s a relief to celebrate without being expected to give or receive gifts. I have a lot of mixed feelings about that tradition.

Two white people are each holding up a sugar cookie that has been decorated for Halloween. One cookie is shaped like a ghost and the other one a skeleton. 2. Candy and Baked Goods

Halloween candy and baked goods are delicious. If I receive something I can’t eat for allergy reasons, there are a lot of other people who can eat it and who wouldn’t mind taking it home.

3. Free Expression

This is the only time of year when it’s socially acceptable for adults to dress in costumes (unless you’re going to a comic conference or something). I love having the freedom to be anyone I want for that night…even if, truth be told, most Halloween nights find me no longer dressing up at all.

4. You Can Eat Anything 

I enjoy cooking, but I do not like the pressure that can come on other holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas to follow a rigid menu and make all of the dishes the exact same way every time. There is no set menu for Halloween. You could eat pizza, samosas, Pad Thai, or a nice, big salad if you wish!

5. Halloween Music

Don’t tell anyone, but I start listening to Halloween playlists in September. I love jumping around from lighthearted kids’ songs to the season finale song of Supernatural to all sorts of other spooky music.

6. Autumn Is Gorgeous 

I love walking through crunchy leaves in the park and seeing the brilliant red, yellow, orange, and occasionally purple leaves still clinging to their trees or bushes.  Halloween is often pretty close to peak colour here in Toronto, so this is yet another reason why I love this holiday.

7. Ghost Stories 

Whether I’m going on a ghost tour, reading a ghost story, or watching a paranormal film, I think it’s interesting to explore the spirits’ motives for haunting a particular location.

A jack-o-lantern is sitting in a patch of glass. There is a candle inside of the lantern that is making it glow orange and yellow. It’s dark outside, so few other details can be seen other than the lush grass it is sitting on. 8. Carving Pumpkins

Am I good at it? Not really, but it’s still amusing. When else are you going to have permission to play with food? (Or potential food, rather).

9. Acknowledgement of Death

A friend of mine died in a car accident when we were in high school. One of the weirdest parts of that experience for me was how quickly people stopped talking about him. We were all grieving, and of course I respected everyone who found it too hard to discuss him or his accident. Halloween is a relief to me because it’s one time of year when more folks are willing to broach such topics and remember the dead.  Yes, there is pain in those moments…but over time there can also be so much joy to be found in retelling funny or touching stories about those who are no longer with us.

10. Fear Is Fun In Small Doses When You’re Not Really In Danger

Wow, that was a wordy sentence! But, yeah, I do see the value in feeling a little fear from a spooky movie or ghost story when you know that it is 100% fiction. This is such a different feeling than being afraid of something or someone who could actually harm you.

 

 

 

 

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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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Top Ten Tuesday: Books About Thunderstorms


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A dramatic photo of lighting striking the ground just after sunset. You can see the dim outline of a tree and a house on the land, but everything else is dark. The sky above is partially black, partially purple near where the lightning is striking, and partially lit up from the lighting itself. Assuming I’m able to remain safely indoors during them, thunderstorms are my favourite type of bad weather.

There’s something majestic about seeing the entire sky light up for a moment as lightning strikes in the distance or hearing the deep rumble of thunder as a storm gathers strength.

It’s like watching nature’s version of an action scene!

Here are some books from a variety of genres that are at least partially about thunderstorms. I really thought there might be more of them, but maybe someday there will be.

1. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1) by Rick Riordan

2. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

3. Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World, #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse

4. Storm by George R. Stewart

5. A Magical History (The Mauve Legacy, #1) by Emma Hart

6. Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison

7. The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies
by Richard Hamblyn

8. Photographing Weather by Storm Dunlop

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Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Jobs That Sound Interesting


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Thank you to Susan @Bloggin’ bout Books  who submitted the original topic for this week, “Bookish Jobs I Would Do For Free (Real or Imaginary).” 

A brown woman sitting at a desk and grinning while holding up her head with her left hand. She’s looking at something on her laptop. She is wearing a white and black striped sweater and holding a white mug in front of her with her left hand. I’m tweaking it a little because from what I have observed there’s already too much pressure to work for free in a lot of interests that attract people who are passionate about them. If you are a woman and belong to certain niche groups, the pressure can be even stronger due to stereotypes about women being inherently kinder and more generous than men (speaking again here in my experience. Your mileage may vary!)

This wouldn’t be a problem if we lived in a Star Trek world where everyone’s needs for clothing, education, housing, healthcare, and nutritious food are automatically taken care of for their entire lives.

It absolutely can be an emotionally healthy thing for people who have the time, money, and energy to devote their lives to their favourite topics or causes, but I’ve also seen it misused to extract far too many hours of unpaid work out of folks who deeply care about subject X but whose basic needs are NOT currently being met.

I’m ethically uncomfortable with those sorts of arrangements, so I’m going to be blogging about some bookish jobs that sound cool instead.

May we all someday have such abundance in our lives that we can do cool bookish jobs for free if we wish to, though!

 

Job: Researcher

Why It Sounds Interesting: Research is my idea of a good time. Before the pandemic began, I used to go to the library to look up all sorts of interesting topics from foster care to marsupials to the history of medicine and see how much I could learn about them. Now I dive deeply into these things at home instead!

 

Job: Indie/Small Press Book Reviewer

Why It Sounds Interesting: I know I blogged about this last summer, but there are so many amazing indie and small press books out there that I wish I could introduce to new audiences. I do what I can in my spare time, but it would be awesome if this could be a full-time, salaried position with benefits so that many more authors and readers could benefit from it.

 

Job:  Creative Writing Professor

Why It Sounds Interesting: Even if you happen to be born with an aptitude for writing, it still takes many years of practice to hone that skill. It would be so rewarding to teach others how to evaluate their own stories and make them sharper, crisper, and more imaginative.

 

Job: Bibliotherapist

Why It Sounds Interesting: Imagine combining the work of a therapist with that of a librarian! Bibliotherapists recommend specific books to their clients based on what their client currently needs, so being extremely well-read is an integral part of the profession which is honestly my idea of the perfect job.

 

Job: Bookish Event Planner

Why It Sounds Interesting: Word on the Street is a Toronto book festival that’s always well planned and delightful to attend. I wish that the event planners who work on that festival could organize all bookish events! In my opinion, festivals, book signings, book release parties, panels, talks, and other similar things often flow better when they’re designed and organized by people who are already passionate about reading in general and, even better, fans of the specific books and authors being featured there as well.

 

Job: Audiobook Narrator

Why It Sounds Interesting: A great narrator makes all the difference when I’m listening to audiobooks. I admire people who are able to narrate well and think that is a fabulous talent to have.

 

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Reading Goals I Still Want to Accomplish Before the End of the Year


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Today’s topic made me feel like I was back in college and a professor just gave us a pop quiz. Luckily, I was generally pretty well prepared for such things, and, of course, Jana would never hand out grades or anything.

A drawing of a black question mark inside of a yellow circle. The yellow circle is on top of a white circle, and the white circle is on top of an orange background. In addition, there are about a dozen slips of white paper floating around the question mark. Here are the goals I set last winter. My progress on them will be noted in bold.

1. Read more classic novels this winter. Accomplished.

2. Submit a Top Ten Tuesday theme to Jana that she ends up using. Not Accomplished, but hope springs eternal.

3. Enjoy lots of ghost stories. Accomplished, but I always want more.

4. Attend more library and other bookish events either virtually or in person. Accomplished.

5. Read more nonfiction. Accomplished. 

6. Patronize independent bookstores. Not Accomplished.

7. Eat more food featured in books. Not Accomplished, but working on it. 

8. Try poetry again. Accomplished, but I didn’t find anything I liked. 

9. Buy bookish socks. Not Accomplished, but I have my eye on a few pairs that could work. 

10. Convince the entertainment industry to make excellent film or television adaptations of all of our favourite books. Hehe! Not Accomplished, but hope spring eternal.

5 out of 10 isn’t bad.

Maybe I’ll get up to 7 or 8 out of 10 before the new year?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book


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Surreal photo of dozens of people wearing suits and the same bowl-shaped hats standing in a neat row on a sidewalk under a stormy sky and next to such a thick layer of fog you can’t tell if they’re many miles up into the air on this surface or if there’s a calm little sea just below the fog. This has been a month filled with me having better luck finding fun stock photos for Top Ten Tuesday prompts than it has been with me actually coming up with ten answers each week due to how tricky I found most of the prompts. 

Sometimes things work out that way. But, hey, at least I’m having a good time in the process and I have the chance to feature some much older books this week that I usually wouldn’t include! 

Here’s the thing about secondary characters. In most cases, I understand why the author wrote them that way and don’t actually feel the need to dive more deeply into their lives.

There are a few exceptions to that guideline, though. I’d love to know more about the following characters for reasons I’ll share below.

Book cover for Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Image on cover is a drawing of Anne as a young woman whose hair is tied up into a bow. She’s standing outdoors and gathering yellow flowers on a spring day.

1) Dora from Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery 

Why: While her twin brother, Davy, gets into all sort of mischief at Green Gables, Dora just sits there and doesn’t influence the plot much at all. I know she’s a quiet, good child like I was at her age. Even quiet, good kids who follow all of the rules have hopes and dreams, though, so I would have loved to know more about who she grew up to be in the later books in this series.

 

Book cover for The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. Image on cover shows a drawing of a lion whose mane has been stylized to look like fire.

2) Susan Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis

Why: Yes, she was a major character in a few of the books, but she was quickly dropped from the storyline after that. I think she deserved better, especially when it came to her fate in the final instalment of this series that still irritates me.

 

Book cover for Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Image on cover shows a closeup of a white woman’s face as she looks off to the right with a little suspicion and fear in her expression. She’s concerned about whatever it is she’s seeing.

3) Miss Lucy (or any of the other Hailsham teachers) from Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 

Why: This is going to be difficult to explain without giving away spoilers, but I’ve always wondered why the teachers at Hailsham weren’t horrified by the fates of the students they looked after for so many years. It’s one thing to be fed propaganda but quite another to spend so much time with children you have been taught are disposable without having second thoughts about your line of work. Why didn’t any of the teachers stir up a fuss? Or did they and were their attempts to change the system futile?

 

Book cover for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Image on cover is a drawing of a maple tree whose leaves have begun to turn colours in the autumn. The tree is growing on a hill and the sky behind it is orange.

4) Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Why: He was described as someone who terrified the local children, ate raw animal flesh to survive, and had a long, jagged scar on his face. (I suspect many of the stories about him were exaggerated by scared kids, if not made up entirely). When I read this book, I was sure those details were going to be explained and his backstory revealed, but it never happened. He deserves to have his tale told, though. I think it would be a fascinating one.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List


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A cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows in it and four chocolate digestive biscuits are sitting on a white plate next to a closed,hardback white book. The plate and book are sitting on a white piece of fur that is in turn sitting on a white wooden surface that could be a table or floor. There are dried purple, yellow, and orange flowers arranged with their flowers pointing towards the items I described earlier. The entire scene seems like it was set up to say goodbye to summer and brace for the cold, damp winter to come. We were already asked to share the books we were looking forward to in the second half of the year, so I’ll do my best not to have too many repeats for this post.

I think it can be just as, and maybe even more, interesting to hear why someone is excited for a specific book as it is to read the blurb of that book in many cases.

You get such a fabulous peek at a reader’s personality, reading habits, thought processses, and what they value in a story that way.

Here is what I’m hoping to have time to read this autumn and why I’m curious about them.

 

Book cover for Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Image on cover shows a housecat who is sitting up and posing for a portrait. The cat is wearing a suit and tie. They have light brown fur with black streaks in it and a darling little white nose and mouth.

1. Starter Villain by John Scalzi

Why I’m Interested: Scalzi is a talented storyteller, and it’s always fun to see pets being anthropomorphized.

 

Book cover for Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things by Dan Ariely. Image on cover shows a drawing of a profile of a human head. There are grey, red, and white lines squiggled up everywhere inside of the head. At the end of each line is a little arrow the same colour as the rest of the line.

2. Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things by Dan Ariely

Why I’m Interested: I believe everyone should work to improve their critical thinking skills no matter who you are, how much formal or informal education you may already have, or what labels best describe your stances on religion, politics, etc. While some people do seem to fall for misinformation more often than others, it’s something that can fool any of us if we’re not careful. We all have blind spots, and I hope to learn how to start correcting mine by reading this book and learning more about the psychology of irrational beliefs.

 

Book cover for This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara. Image on cover shows a dried yellow flower - possibly a rose? - that is lying against a light yellow background. Most of the flower has been fairly well preserved, but a few petals are loose and just about to fall off.

3. This Is Salvaged: Stories  by Vauhini Vara

Publication Date: September 26

Why I’m Interested: I’m in the mood for slice of life fiction. The reference to a story about a character who decides to build a replica of Noah’s Ark also intrigued me. There were a few people in the churches my parents pastored back in the day who might have tried something like this if they had the money for such a project.

 

Book cover for The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings by Angela Slatter. Image on cover is a drawing of a short, red haired person standing in a smoky magical forest. There is a massive, about 15-foot-tall tree monster with glowing yellow eyes looking at the person as it slowly turns around.

4. The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings by Angela Slatter

Publication Date: October 17

Why I’m Interested: This looks like a great Halloween read, and you all might remember how much I love that holiday. I previously reviewed and enjoyed another book of hers, No Good Deed: A Sourdough Tale, so I’m hoping my second attempt with her work is just as worthwhile. 

 

Book cover for Like Thunder by Nnedi Okorafor. Image on cover shows a photograph of a beautiful African woman who has short hair and is wearing an intricate necklace. Her head is overlaid with another image that shows lighting striking a lightning rod on a building.

 

5. Like Thunder by Nnedi Okorafor

Publication Date: November 28

Why I’m Interested: She’s on my shortlist of must-read authors. Ms. Okorafor is such a fantastic storyteller, although I do need to read Shadow Speaker before picking this tale up!

 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Character Relationships


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Five little paper boats sitting on a light blue surface. The one out in front is red, the two behind that one are blue, and the last two are teal. I had a bit of an adventure trying to find a good stock photo for this week’s post.

So many of the pictures under tags like friendship and relationship presumed I was only talking about romance or that I wanted to see photos of people laughing together without any context as to what was so funny.

There’s nothing wrong with those answers, of course, they just quite weren’t what I was hoping for this time around. Luckily, I eventually found something that left a bit more scope for the imagination as Anne Shirley would say.

Book cover for Waswanipi by  Jean-Yves Soucy. Image on cover is a photograph of a lake and a small range of mountains (or large range of hills) that are part of Cree territory. The sky above is blue and mostly clear. The scene is placid and there are no people around.

1. Waswanipi by  Jean-Yves Soucy

This memoir was never finished, but the portion of it that could be published provided such an interesting glimpse into what Cree life was like before Europeans disrupted it. I enjoyed seeing how every member of the tribe relied on others to survive and how they came together to work on problems. That’s really all I can say without giving you too many spoilers, but the relationships between the folks mentioned in this book were beautiful.

 

Book cover for A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers. Image on cover is a drawing of a winding dirt road through a forest that the viewer sees from above. There are multiple trees and bushes next to the road that begins on the bottom left with a person pedaling a little metal home around. And, at the end of the path, a robot waits to greet them!

2. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Yes, I know I’ve mentioned this book on many other Top Ten Tuesday themes before. If you’re curious about this series but haven’t read it yet, maybe all of this repetition will convince you to give it a try. Hehe.

Sibling Dex (a human) and Mosscap (a robot) didn’t seem to have much in common at first glance, but I loved discovering all of their similarities and seeing how their friendship blossomed.

 

Book cover for Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black. Image on cover is a painting of the side of a black man’s face as he stands next to an empty yellow road and stares at something the viewer cannot see. The road disappears over the top of a hill, and you can see a setting sun in the distance.

 

3. Don’t Cry for Me by Daniel Black

This is sort of an unusual choice for this prompt because of how lonely and isolated Jacob was as he neared the end of his life. The relationship aspect comes in when he recalled his difficult childhood and how his older brother protected him from their sometimes violent grandfather. Those sorts of bonds can last forever.

 

Book cover for The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler. Image on cover shows an unsettling painting of a garden where strange, spindly blue and white flowers grow. In the distance, a reptile-like alien hides in the mist.

 

4. The Necessity of Stars by E. Catherine Tobler

The protagonist of this novella was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. As she struggles to remember the present and sometimes mixes up the past with her current life, she also discovers aliens living in her backyard.

The friendship she strikes up with them was as unexpected as it was mesmerizing. If only this one had a sequel.

I look forward to reading all of your answers!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Defied My Expectations


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A shooting star zipping across a velvety purple and black night sky just after sunset. You can see the stars beginning to twinkle in the sky and the dim outline of a forest in the background where the last drops of sunlight are quickly fading out of view. This is going to be one of those tougher weeks when I do not have ten answers for the prompt, but I’ll do my best to come up with as many as possible.

Please note there are a few spoilers in this post, so reader beware if any of these books are on your TBR list.

It was interesting to me that all of the authors I picked this time around were women.

That was not done on purpose, and I didn’t even realize it until I was nearly finished writing this post.

Isn’t it interesting how our brains sometimes make patterns like that without us noticing it at the time?

 

 

Book cover for The Ghost and the Real Girl by Avery Carter. Image on cover shows a black and white drawing of the profile of a woman’s face. Her hair has been piled on top of her head in a Victorian-style puffy bun, and she has a scarf with a few sprigs of flowers tired around her neck. There is also an oval border around this drawing that has roses, vines, and leaves sprouting around it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. The Ghost and the Real Girl by Avery Carter (My Review)

My Assumption: It was going to be 90% romance and 10 % fantasy.

What It Was Actually Like: 90% fantasy and 10% romance. I ended up really liking this one.

 

 

Book cover for The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Image on cover shows a painting of a young black girl who is wearing a red coat and a dark grey hat. She is sitting slumped over beside a window whose blinds are opened. You can see the brilliant oranges and yellows of a setting sun in the sky, but the girl’s body language is sad and defeated in contrast to that brilliant display of nature.

 

2. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

My Assumption: The justice system would work in Pecola’s favour, and the person who abused her would be punished.

What It Was Actually Like: Beautifully written but sadly lacking in justice of any sort.

 

 

Book cover for Skylark (#2 in the Sarah Plain and Tall Series series) by Patricia MacLachlan. Image on cover is a painting of Anna, the little white girl who is the protagonist of this series, sitting sadly and petting her dog. She is wearing a green 1800s style prairie dress. Her dad, stepmother, and little brother are sitting in a wagon and looking at her from the background. The horse is about to take the stepmother and children away from the drought, but Sarah doesn’t want to go. All around them is dead grass, and there is a barn and a few green trees in the distance.

 

3. Skylark (#2 in the Sarah Plain and Tall Series series) by Patricia MacLachlan

My Assumption: The first book in this series was about a single woman named Sarah coming to visit Anna, Caleb, and Papa while she decided whether or not she was going to marry Papa and stay on the prairie. There was a lot of angst about her possibly leaving them in that tale, so I assumed the sequel would move on from that conflict now that Sarah and Papa are married.

What It Was Actually Like: I was wrong. Everyone still worried about Sarah leaving because of how homesick she was for Maine. It was cool to revisit characters I originally met as a kid, though.

 

Book cover for Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming of Age Story by Stacey Chomiak. Image on cover shows a drawing of a plump white girl with glasses and straight shoulder length brown hair sitting on a brick wall next to a lake. She’s wearing a white shirt and shorts and looking wistfully into the water as she dips one foot into it.

 

4. Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming of Age Story by Stacey Chomiak

My Assumption: This is an autobiography of the author’s evangelical childhood as a deeply closeted lesbian. I thought that Stacey’s parents were eventually going to accept that both of their kids were gay.

What It Was Actually Like: Based on the post-script, her parents are more accepting now but their relationship still sounds pretty strained.  I wished she could have had a happier ending before she became a parent herself, but it was honestly pretty realistic for the time and place Stacey grew up in based on my own experiences with that denomination.

 

Well, that was a short list this time! There aren’t a lot of books that defy my expectations these days, but I hope the rest of you had better luck coming up with answers.

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