Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Had to Read in School and Didn’t Like

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Photo of a grumpy tabby cat making an angry face.

I don’t own a cat, but this is basically the face I made while reading these tales!

I was one of those bookish kids who loved English class and could find something enjoyable,  or at least relatable, about almost every piece of literature we were assigned.  I’d even read as many sections of our textbook that weren’t assigned as I could because I loved discovering new authors, poems, and stories.

These are the handful of exceptions to that rule. I still dislike these books and authors to this day…although your mileage may vary!

1. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

This bored me due to the slow pacing as well as a setting (a boarding school for wealthy and often terribly emotionally neglected children) that I couldn’t relate to in any way despite honestly trying my best. My family was warm and loving but generally tight on funds for anything other than the basic necessities in life, so the idea of being sent away to an expensive boarding school and not seeing my parents for 9+ months of the year was just as unthinkable as sending one’s child to the moon. Honestly, reading about a moon colony would have been more relatable to me than this!

 

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I hated everything about this book: the glorification of wealth, the selfish, vain characters who valued money and social status over anything else, the bizarre indifference Daisy and her husband whose name I can’t remember felt towards their own child, the way the wealthy characters threw lavish parties and wasted money while the poor people in their communities suffered terribly, and more.

As an adult, I realize that at least some of these passages were meant to be criticisms of the pursuit of wealth and power above all else, and it might come across to me differently if I’d read it when I was older than 16. But being exposed to it at that age, and after growing up in a family whose values were the opposite of the ones these characters held, disgusted me and I have never felt the urge to reread it or check out more of Fitzgerald’s work in general.

 

3. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Technically, this was a long poem from the 1700s we were assigned to read in one of my university courses, but I think it’s close enough to count. It was about an old sailor who kills a harmless albatross that helped their ship escape from an ice jam. I was furious with this sailor for not only killing an animal he wasn’t planning to eat but also for killing one that had just helped him. It was a senseless and cruel decision. Honestly, I rooted for the antagonists for the rest of this poem instead of for the sailor. That’s how mad I was at him.

12 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Loved But Never Wrote Reviews For

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A black woman with an Afro who is sitting in bed and reading a hardback book. She has a serene expression on her face and is wearing yellow eye shadow and a pretty white cotton blouse. My answers are going to be for older books this week, and I’m trying to pick titles that I have not discussed in previous WWBC or Top Ten Tuesday posts as well. (Or at least haven’t discussed very much).

These days, I will write a review for just about any 5 star book I read, so it would be pretty rare for a brand new title to appear one of these lists for me.

 

“Miss Peregrin’s Home for Peculiar Children” by Ransom Riggs

What I Liked About It: Strong and exciting world building .

 

“Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” by Lisa See

What I Liked About It: Reading about the lifelong friendship between the protagonist and her best friend.

 

 “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker

What I Liked About It: What a joyful ending it had! The protagonist endured so much pain in her life, so to see her end on such a happy note was both a thrill and a relief.

 

“The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption” by Katherine Joyce

What I Liked About It: This book honestly explored the dark underbelly of the adoption industry where corruption and coercion is used to procure children for adoption who could have otherwise remained with their birth families with a little support. I think adoption can be an excellent option for some children, but it should always be done ethically and only after exhausting all other possibilities for families who are experiencing hard times.

 

“The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women” by Kate Moore

What I Liked About It: Learning about a chapter of history that was never mentioned in school. Worker protection rules were created for a reason and should be respected. So many people died horribly from exposures to all sorts of unsafe substances and environments before we had such laws. This was not an easy read, but it was an important one.

 

16 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: TV Shows I’ve Binge-Watched

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Drawing of a large screen tv and a remote floating in the air beside it. I generally do not binge-watch shows due to my spouse’s preference for programs that involve war, pandemics, alternate history (and not the cheerful sort that imagines a better world), various sorts of apocalypses, fascist governments, etc.

Many of these shows have great storytelling…but they are also heavy. Characters die or get hurt regularly, so after one episode I’m ready to turn off the TV and go do something peaceful.

Here are a few shows that I have been able to binge-watch in the past in large part because they are either sitcoms or have enough humour in them to balance out any scary or sad scenes in them. I’m trying very hard not to repeat any answers here that I shared in a recent WWBC post about shows we’re currently watching:

Black-ish

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

How I Met Your Mother

Kim’s Convenience 

Ted Lasso 

The links above will take you to their respective Wikipedia articles. While I don’t have very niche tastes, I didn’t want to make assumptions about which shows my readers might or might not already be familiar with.

13 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: My Favourite Summer Quotes From Books

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A straw hat with a black ribbon wrapped around it is sitting on top of some wheat in a field. The wheat is golden brown and looks ready to harvest. I have no idea why the hat was left there. I’ve done a lot of quote posts for various blog hops over the years, so I’m going to make it a little more challenging for myself this week by narrowing it down to quotes about summer.

1. “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
Henry James

 

2. “Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”
Roman Payne

 

3. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

 

4. “All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.”
L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

 

5. “The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.”
E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

 

6. “some winters
will never melt

some summers
will never freeze

and some things will only
… live in poems.”
Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

 

7. “I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.”
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

 

8. “The sidewalks were haunted by dust
ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up,
swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on
the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strol-
lers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a
volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes every-
where, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable
dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spon-
taneous combustion at three in the morning.

Dawn, then, was a time where things changed element for
element. Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no
sound. The lake was a quantity of steam very still and deep
over valleys of fish and sand held baking under its serene
vapors. Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were
brass and gold, roof tops were paved with bronze. The high-
tension wires were lightning held forever, blazing, a threat
above the unslept houses.
The cicadas sang louder and yet louder.
The sun did not rise, it overflowed.”
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

16 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Fictional Worlds I’d Love to Visit

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A shooting star falling in front of the Milky Way just after dusk. The land below is treeless and rather flat, so the sky is the star of this show. The sky moves from being dark blue to light blue to showing just a sliver of light from the sun that’s just set over the horizon as you move your eyes from the top of the scene to the bottom of it. I believe we had this topic for a previous WWBC post, and my answers are probably going to be pretty similar this time around.

The Star Trek universe is somewhere I’d love to live because of how many current social problems are rarely if ever an issue there due to the existence of replicators,  advanced medical treatments, and other cool technological and social advancements.

I’ve love to visit the woods between worlds from The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth book in the  Chronicles of Narnia series. Little Lydia was annoyed that we only got to see a couple of the worlds that could be visited through that in-between place. There were so many other ponds to explore.

Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot duology has another peaceful setting I’d love to explore.  I could be quite happy living in harmony with nature if I picked the right community to visit there.  Their methods of ensuring that work got done appealed to me, too, because of how customizable it was and how forgiving it was for people who are disabled or more talented at some skills than at others. You do just about anything useful for a community:  growing food crops, washing dishes, providing medical care,  fixing bicycles or other machines, caring for children or adults who needed it, teaching kids how to read, etc. There weren’t any judgements about who did what. It was all appreciated which is quite refreshing when compared to how certain types of work are over or undervalued in modern society in my experience.

How about all of you?

 

 

22 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Board and Card Games I Like

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

As an adjacent hobby, I also love jigsaw puzzles and similar sorts of things that don’t quite fit into today’s theme.

I don’t get to play board and card games very often, but I  love them! My preference is for games that don’t require you to memorize a long list of rules because this is a hobby I pursue for relaxation and socialization purposes. (Sorry, chess!) Whether I win or lose is pretty far down on the list of things I worry about, so games of chance are perfectly fine by me.

Here are some of my favourites:

  • Dutch Blitz (which is the only time my otherwise stoic German-Mennonite extended family is noisy on game nights!)
  • The Game of Life
  • Clue
  • Risk
  • Sorry!
  • Scrabble
  • Battleship
  • Boggle
  • Concentration

Closeup of scrabble tiles. Some are turned upside down, but you can see an a, q, t, and r tiles lying face up. As well as any sort of cooperative board games where all of the players band together to, say, defeat a bad guy or find the materials they need to fix their spaceship and leave a dry desert planet before everyone runs out of water.

Yes, I know that most of these games have been around for a very long time. It’s largely due to the fact that my grandparents taught us to play most of them from old card and game sets they’ve had since, I don’t know, maybe the 1960s or 1970s?

I look forward to seeing what you all suggest and hope to discover some fun games that are a bit more modern.

 

16 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops, Personal Life

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Do You Follow Celebrity Gossip? Why or Why Not?

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A pineapple sitting in front of a bright yellow wall. It has a pair of sunglasses hanging on the fruit as if the pineapple has eyes. The green leaves of the pineapple are still attached to it and look like a spiky hairdo. Eh, occasionally?

I have to admit to paying more attention to it for a while when the Covid-19 pandemic first began because I needed a distraction from the traumatic ways it was affecting humanity in general as well as the lives of so many people I know (or knew) and love. Those were years I hope to never see repeated in any way.

There was one star who shall remain nameless here who kept having children with different women he wasn’t married or otherwise committed to (so far as I could tell, of course). As in, he was fathering multiple children per year for a while there. It was something I found so unusual that I did let my morbid curiosity get the best of me as yet another birth announcement was released every few months or so.

This was not a hobby I’m proud of, and I have gone back to avoiding celebrity news as much as humanly possible now.

Some of it always seems to leak through, though, even if I do something as simple as look up what new projects my favourite entertainers have coming out.

Those generally positive tidbits of information are something I may save for small talk when nothing else is working and I’m trying to guide the conversation away from topics I don’t want to discuss with a particular person or anyone at all. Most people like babies, weddings, and/or pets, for example, so talking about a celebrity who recently had a kid, got married, or adopted a pet from an animal shelter is something the average person will find neutral if not endearing.

(I generally ignore negative stories unless there’s a rare pressing need to do otherwise. Celebrities are fellow human beings, so I try to give them as much privacy as possible unless they’re, say, harming others with their bad choices or something. Everything else is none of my concern…but I still want to know when their next film, tv series, book, or album is coming out. Ha!)

12 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops, Personal Life

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Humorous Book Titles

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Photo of a white pug who is standing on their back legs and peering over what appears to be a small stool or maybe a picnic table. The dog’s mouth is open and its little tongue is sticking out. It looks like it is smiling. I love this topic and could discuss it endlessly.

1. You Don’t Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But it Helps (J. W. Wells & Co., #4) by Tom Holt

2. Surviving Your Stupid Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School by Adam Ruben

3. Knitting With Dog Hair: Better a Sweater from a Dog You Know and Love Than from a Sheep You’ll Never Meet
by Kendall Crolius

4. Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them: How to Keep Your Tractors Happy and Your Family Running
by Roger Welsch

5. Four Eyes Were Never Better Than Two by Kelly Coleman Potter

6. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

7. Unicorns Are Jerks: A Coloring Book Exposing the Cold, Hard, Sparkly Truth by Theo Nicole Lorenz

8. Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison

9. How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity: A Guide to Financial Freedom by Patricia Carlin

10. How To Tell Your Cat About Trump by Breaking Burgh

No, I have not read any of them yet! The titles are great, though.

10 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Things to Do in the Summer

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

I know we’ve had this theme for WWBC in the past at least once, but I’m purposefully not looking up my old post or posts about it. Let’s see what my brain comes up with this time.

What do I like to do during the summer?

A black Labrador retriever who is wearing a rainbow-themed fuzzy faux feather wrap around his neck. Is this from a Pride Parade, perhaps? He looks interested in whatever he’s peering at. Eating fresh, local produce. There are a limited number of options for Canadian produce between about November and April or May, and most of those involve apples, cabbage, or other root vegetables. Due to this, I relish all of the seasonal and often more delicate foods that are abundant the rest of the year. Yay for berries, stone fruit, tomatoes, and more!

Going swimming. Yes, some Canadians enjoy a nice Polar Plunge (briefly swimming or wading in the Great Lakes in the dead of winter), but I am so not one of them. Give me sunlight on my skin and enough time for the summer heat to actually warm up the water to non-freezing temperatures before I’ll even think about dipping my toes in at a beach or pool.

Taking morning walks. Even on hot days, the weather can still be decent if you go outside before the sun has warmed up everything too much.  Evening walks can be nice, too, depending on the high temperature of the day.

Attending festivals and parades. I love being surrounded by happy people while celebrating books, cultural events, various minority groups, food, music, or other uplifting topics. You’ll often see dogs walking around with their people at these events, too! I like to pretend that everyone’s dogs know exactly who or what is being celebrated and wholeheartedly endorse it.

Travelling lightly. That is to say, in the summer there’s no need for a winter jacket, mittens,  hat,  scarf, long underwear, or any other extra stuff to remember to put on when I’m out and about. I love walking around in shorts, sneakers, and a t-shirt with nothing to carry in my hands other than maybe a bottle of water.

Visiting nature. I think you all could probably guess I’d pick this. Summer can be tricky for park visits depending on the heat and humidity levels and what the air quality index looks like, but on the cooler and less smoky days* I’m definitely up for a picnic, a few rounds of nature or other types of photography, some sightseeing, or a stroll through a forest or flower garden.

*Canada, and I believe many parts of the U.S. as well, have had massive forest fires in recent years during the summer. This can make the air quality too poor for exercising or non-essential outdoor time depending on how bad things get.

So this is my list. What can I say other than I’m easy to please and can amuse myself on a budget. 🙂

 

14 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops, Personal Life

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Book Covers and Why

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A bouquet of little white flowers - possibly of the dogwood variety - lying on an antique hardcover book. The book’s cover is brown and looks like it may have once had a floral design on it. There are scratches and little pieces missing here and there on the cover, though, so it’s hard to tell for sure. Honestly, I’m a little picky about how blurbs and the first few pages of a tale are written and what is or isn’t included in them, but book covers themselves aren’t as important to me. There are many different styles I like or even love and only a few that would deter me from giving something a try.

My favourite types of covers are the ones that are just a little jarring or surprising in a good way for the viewer. That is to say, you glance at them and wonder what the heck in going on in that scene.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

Book cover for The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1) by Margaret Atwood. Image on cover shows two women wearing long red dresses and white hats that cover their faces. They are walking beside a tall brick wall in an otherwise desolate scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

I knew absolutely nothing about this story when I picked it up, but the cover made me feel nervous about their strange clothing and curious about where they were going.

 

Book cover for Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1) by Diana Wynne Jones. Image on cover shows a castle that has somehow sprouted large wooden legs and is walking in a meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

This book has been on my TBR list for ages, so all I can go by is the oddly ambulatory castle on the cover that utterly fascinates me.

 

Book cover for A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper, #1) by Christopher Moore. Image on cover shows someone in a grey tunic pushing a baby skeleton in a hot pink carriage. The baby is carrying a scythe and is maybe the grim reaper as a child?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper, #1) by Christopher Moore

 

While I haven’t read this one and it is not currently on my TBR list, it has such an eye-catching cover. I’d never think to draw a baby grim reaper (if that is, indeed who he or she is).

 

Book cover for Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Image on cover shows the silhouette of a young black woman’s head. Her hair has been braided in dozens of little braids and she’s looking up expectedly at something beyond the viewer’s gaze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

There is subtle foreshadowing on this cover that I found delightful after finishing the last chapter and realizing what hints were shared immediately. (It was an excellent read, too!) If only I could go into more detail without spoiling things. Just know that everything in this image matters.

 

Book cover for Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. Image on cover shows two young Victorian girls playing dress up. The one on the right is a preteen and is wearing a long white dress and a paper crown. The one on the left looks like she’s about six, is dressed as a knight, and is sitting on one end of a wooden seesaw. There is a leopard pelt - whether real or fake I cannot tell - lying on the floor between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

 

Here’s another book I haven’t read that has such an intriguing cover. I’m guessing these girls were playing dress up, but why is a cured leopard pelt part of their games?

 

Book cover for The Deep by Rivers Solomon. Image on cover shows a black mermaid with dreadlocks who is swimming in the ocean next to a whale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Once again, this cover has excellent clues about the storyline embedded in it. I appreciated the fact that it lets the reader know immediately that this is about mermaids without giving away the many important differences between Yetu and, say, Ariel from The Little Mermaid. The mythology of and backstory in this tale are of utmost importance, but one also doesn’t want new fans to know too far ahead of time exactly what to expect for spoiler reasons. Hollywood, please hurry up and turn this into a film. The source material has so many little moments in it that would look amazing on the big screen.

 

10 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops