Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

August 16, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Documentary I Liked

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A photo of a dinosaur skeleton against a black backrgroudn. The skeleton has been pieced back together and is standing up straight and tall as if the dinosaur is still alive. You all may remember how much I like nonfiction. I enjoy watching documentaries about science, history, medicine, and other topics just as much as I do reading about them.

I think documentaries are the perfect thing to watch whenever you need a distraction for any reason. You can learn so much about the world through them!

I’ve been anticipating this week’s topic so much that I’m going to give two answers to it. (Honestly, I wanted to give like a dozen…but I won’t overwhelm all of you with my enthusiasm for documentaries).

 

 

I recommend Prehistorical Planet to dinosaur fans age 5 and older

Poster for season two of the documentary Prehistoric Planet. It shows a close-up drwaing of a dinosaur’s eye. The dinosaur has blue feathers and a yellow-brown iris. You can see the reflection of a flying dinosaur in this dinosaur’s eye which is cool.Prehistoric Planet is a 2022 and 2023 British-American miniseries about what life was like for dinosaurs and other animals in the Late Cretaceous period. It’s based on the latest scientific research of that era and was filled with information about how those creatures hunted (or tried to avoid being hunted), found mates, built nests, and raised their young.

If there are any elementary-aged or older kids in your lives who love dinosaurs, this is something they can enjoy just as much as adults do. The second season just came out in May, and the writing felt like it was meant to appeal to viewers from a wide variety of ages and backgrounds which is delightful. This one is for everyone!

 

I recommend Shiny Happy People to teen and adult viewers only.

Poster for the documentary Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. Image on cover shows a photo of the Duggar Family that has a happy smiley face covering the actual face of every single member of the family.

Shiny Happy People is a 2023 documentary about the Duggar family and their relationship with the Institute of Basic Life Principles which was founded by Bill Gothard.

The Duggars have been a staple of reality TV programs on The Learning Channel since the early 2000s due to their frugal lifestyle and having 19 children.

They cultivated a wholesome image, but there were years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse going on behind the scenes both in this family and in Gothard’s organization in general.

This was not an easy thing to watch by any means, but it was educational. I especially appreciated the sections that pointed out some of subtle signs people can inadvertently give off when they’re being abused but trying to hide it as other programs on this topic will often only mention the biggest red flags of something like that going on.

There were so many people who could have reported these crimes but either never did it or were not listened to when they did. I think there’s something to be said for being aware of what to look for and alerting child protective services when warranted. Sometimes it takes more than one report for the authorities to take action.

Anyway, these are the two most recent documentaries that I loved. I hope you all like them, too, if you watch them!

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August 9, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: The Strangest Dream I’ve Had Recently

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Five little green plants are growing in five glass test tubes as the tubes sit in a test tube tray on a white counter in the sunlight. Back in May I dreamed that I was standing in a laboratory watching scientists work. I may have been a scientist, too, although the dream logic wasn’t very clear on that.

We had a limited amount of time left to solve the biggest problem humanity has ever faced: the plants were revolting.

That is to say, every single plant on Earth had become sentient and was furious with humanity.

Not only were we eating the plants themselves, we were stealing their children (seeds) and eating them, too.

Plantkind had run out of patience with us. They were so angry, in fact, that they made a unanimous decision to stop reproducing forever.

The scientists I was working with had captured a plant specimen and was attempting to find her seeds. When they realized she had none, they decided to try reasoning with her. She was about the size of a small doll, dark green, and almost too angry to speak with us.

Didn’t she realize that her species, too, would die out if there were no seeds left?

She knew and didn’t care. So far the scientists had only strengthened her resolution to carry out her plan and encourage every other plant to do the same.

And then I woke up.

(Aren’t dreams odd sometimes?)

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August 2, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Job I Wouldn’t Be Good At

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A neon sign lit up against a black night sky in a city. You can see a skyscraper next to the sign. The words “Peninsula Night Club” are in neon blue on the sign. The word “liquor” is larger than all other words and in neon orange on the sign. The word “dancing” is on the bottom of the sign and in neon pink. If any of you secretly own a nightclub and are looking for people to work late hours and pressure your patrons into buying watered-down alcohol while the DJ blares eardrum-rattling music all night long, I am not a good candidate for the role for the following reasons:

1) I am a morning person who needs an early-ish bedtime and a stable sleep schedule in order to function properly and stave off ugly sleep-deprivation migraines,

2)  Migraines give me horrible noise sensitivity, so I would not be able to  remain in a noisy environment if I’m at any point in the migraine cycle.  I also really don’t want to suffer permanent hearing loss from dangerously noisy work,

3) Sales is not something I’m naturally good at,

4) When I worked roles that involved sales in the past, I only said truthful things to my customers and respected their boundaries if they didn’t want to upgrade to a more expensive model of whatever they were shopping for or add extra items to their order. I  never pressured them to buy anything they weren’t interested in and actually got in trouble sometimes for not selling stuff that my customers never wanted or needed in the first place,

5) I haven’t touched alcohol in years, wouldn’t know what to recommend other than telling everyone to go drink a strawberry margarita*, and would be perfectly honest every time someone asked if the drinks were watered down or otherwise deceptively advertised.

*Back when I did occasionally drink alcohol, it was at most two or three glasses of it per year, and strawberry margaritas were one of the handful of drinks that might entice me. I liked the fruit and the fruit juice in them a thousand times more than the alcohol, though, so now I just ask for a freshly-squeezed orange juice or something for rare celebratory moments instead.

So there it is. You now all know my weaknesses and what sort of job I’d be terrible at. Please make your hiring decisions accordingly. 😉

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July 26, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Job I’d Be Good At

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I’m going to give two long answers to this week’s prompt because I have a lot to say on this subject. One answer is a job that actually exists, and the other is a job that should exist.

Closeup photo of hardback, antique books with red covers and gold stars on their spines. The words “Volume I,” “Volume II,” and “Volume III” are stamped in gold ink on their spines. Professor

As far as the former goes, I would have loved to become  a professor.

I spent a few years tutoring other students to make some extra pocket money when I was in college. It was so exciting to finally figure out the best way to explain a topic to someone (or a group of people) who had been struggling to understand it.

I was lucky enough to do some training of new staff in jobs I had after graduation, too, and found teaching them to be mentally stimulating and worthwhile every single time.

If the job market for English professors wasn’t so slim, I would have happily gone on to earn my Master’s degree and Ph.D. in order to pursue this line of work.

Unfortunately, by the time I started college the administrators were already replacing tenured professors who had stuff like health insurance and retirement accounts with part-time adjunct positions. There were actually a few professors who taught both at the community college I started at and the four-year college I earned my Bachelor’s degree from. They worked just as hard as anyone else in their field but had low pay, no benefits, and little job security.

I would have happily taught all sorts of composition, literature, creative writing, history, and similar courses if we lived in a world where getting your Ph.D. was more affordable and almost always ended with one being offered a full-time, permanent job with benefits that could easily pay off student loans and cover all of the other expenses of life, too.

Can’t you see me strolling down the halls of some college or university and nodding a friendly hello to students passing me by before going to my office to grade essays? I sure can. I would have kept a candy dish full of treats in my office to serve as an icebreaker for nervous students.

(Well-Paid) Book Reviewer

A white person wearing a black sweatshirt is holding up the Book Review section of the New York Times while standing outside on a cloudy day.My second answer involves a problem that many writers and publishers have that I sorely wish I could help to solve for them.

I’ve been writing book reviews for over a decade now and, without trying to toot my own horn here, have a file full of positive feedback on how thorough, kind, and honest my reviews are.

If there were some way to create full-time, permanent jobs with benefits for book reviewers, I’d be the first person in line for it.

There are so many amazing stories out there that never get enough attention because of how time consuming it is for reviewers to go through the reading, analyzing, and reviewing process even if you happen to be a fast reader and talented writer who has a lot of experience translating your reactions to a tale into review form.

This is equally true for short stories, novellas, and picture books that I’ve seen some new reviewers assume must be simpler to write about. Yes, you can often finish reading them in shorter period of time than it would take to read a full-length novel, but the review writing process is the same and may even take much longer than usual if you need to figure out how to share relevant details about it that support your criticisms or compliments without giving away spoilers.

Sometimes I need to read these stories multiple times and take detailed notes in order to figure out how to word my review fairly, accurately, and in a spoiler-free manner. For a picture book, this can be done in ten to twenty minutes depending how many notes I need to take and is no big deal.

Rereading a possibly confusing or dense 100-page novella again to catch all of the nuances to it I might have missed the first round, though, can take as much (and possibly even more) time than picking a full-length novel to begin with.

Does this happen every time? No, of course not, but page counts can only tell you so much about how you’ll react to what you’re about to read or how tricky it might be to write a good review of it. I’ve been surprised multiple times by which books were and were not easy to review.

(Now don’t get me wrong. I love reviewing shorter works that generally don’t get as much attention as novels do, but there are still no shortcuts here).

It would be so much easier for authors and their books to get more exposure and gain new readers if this sort of job actually existed. Who knows! Maybe someday we’ll have a Star Trek sort of economy that enables everyone to do the work they love the most.

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July 19, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Share One Interesting Fact You Know

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Closeup of a pale person’s hand reading braille on a white page. While doing research for this post, I stumbled across a fact that I never would have guessed is true.

The majority of blind people in the U.S. Canada and the U.K. cannot read braille.

Statistically, less than 1% of British people and less than 10% of Americans and Canadians with sight impairments can read. (I couldn’t find the percentages for other countries. If you know any of them, please share!)

There are a few different reasons why this is true:

1) Braille is harder to learn as an adult,

2) there’s a social stigma to using it,

3) some kids who are blind or partially blind have other health problems like diabetes that can reduce sensation in their fingertips and make learning Braille difficult,

4) a lot of special education teachers are carrying heavy caseloads and may not have the time to teach much Braille, and

5) some schools prioritize auditory teaching methods to teaching braille or using large print books for students who have some sight.

Other sites said the rise of audiobooks and technology like text-to-speech apps that will read for you is making the use of Braille less necessary.

Isn’t this fascinating? I always assumed that the majority of people with a sight impairment would know Braille.

 

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July 12, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Describe Your Fashion Sense

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My fashion sense is comfortable and practical.

I tend to gravitate towards dark shades of purple, red, blue and green because those colours look best on me. (Especially purple!)

A white woman who is wearing a dark red t shirt, black sneakers, and a pair of jeans is sitting on some wooden bleachers in front of a brick wall. She has loosely curly brown hair, is wearing sunglasses and a watch, is holding a grey jacket, and is smiling as she leans her right arm on her left knee and leans forward towards the audience. Here’s a photo of me from last autumn so you can see what I typically wear. Jeans, yoga pants, and subtle shirts that generally don’t have any writing, logos, or obvious designs are what fill up my wardrobe for the most part.

I buy clothing that can be washed in a regular washing machine with as little fuss over it as possible. (That is to say, no ironing or dry cleaning, please.) Rarely, I’ll splurge on something that needs to be air dried if I otherwise love it, but the rest of the time I prefer clothes that can be tossed into the dryer without a second thought.

Softness is important, too, so I avoid scratchy fabrics like wool or lace. I want my clothing to move naturally with my body, provide adequate coverage from the elements, be okay if it gets a splash of mud on it while I’m out in nature, and to impede my movements as little as possible.

Brand names mean almost nothing to me when it comes to clothing. This was different before fast fashion became so ubiquitous and drove down the quality in so many stores, but I’ve noticed that some brands I used to spend more money on are no longer worth it. The $50 shirts from higher end stores tend to fall apart just as fast as the $10 shirt I picked up on sale at a fast fashion store these days, so why bother spending more in most cases?

(I sincerely hope this changes. I would happily spend more on clothing if it were constructed better and if more of the profits were passed onto the workers who sewed and/or sold it. But if it’s all equally poorly made and the workers often aren’t treated well either way, I’d rather keep my attire budget smaller and save or donate the rest).

I do tend to buy name brand shoes because my feet still notice a big difference between thrifty, poorly-made shoes that wear out in a month or two and better-made shoes that I can wear for the entire year. So I suppose that is one area where certain brands matter to me.

To be honest, fashion isn’t something I think much about aside from what I said earlier. If I ever have more money than I know what to do with, I might hire someone to show me other styles that might suit me. For now, though, I’m happy with my practical and thrifty wardrobe.

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July 5, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: How I Stay Cool During Heat Waves

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June, July, August, and September are generally hot, humid months in Ontario.  You may catch a break at the beginning of June and the end of September with warm but otherwise pretty pleasant weather, but even that isn’t guaranteed these days thanks to climate change.

Closeup of a tiny little wave in a lake. It’s so small it wouldn’t even cover your ankles, but it’s very cute. I stay cool during heat waves by:

1) Showering in cool water at least once a day and more often if it’s unbearably hot (Think anything above 35 Celsius in general or above 30 Celsius and really humid. That translates to about 95 Fahrenheit with lower humidity or 86 Fahrenheit with high humidity).

2) Eating cold, healthy meals. My diet becomes much more raw and plant-based in the summer when so much delicious fresh produce is in season and I’m trying to avoid turning my stove on.

3) Visiting Lake Ontario. All of that water cools the outside temperature down dramatically on the pier and beach. That’s before you take swimming or wading in the lake into account as well.

4) Exercising early in the morning, after sunset, or (if the heat warnings are severe) not at all. I rest as much as possible during the hottest portions of the day unless I’m going swimming and have plenty of sunscreen to prevent me from burning.

5) Keeping the blinds closed. This makes more of a difference than you might think if you do it consistently and don’t turn your oven or stove on either. My air conditioner is busy enough as is with the outdoor heat, and on very hot days it struggles to keep up.

6) Enjoying vegan ice cream. I don’t eat it very often the rest of the year and hot weather diminishes my appetite, so this gives me something to look forward to when we’re days or weeks into a heat wave.

7) Drinking plenty of ice water, especially if I’m being exposed to the heat for long periods of time.

8) Running ice cubes up and down my limbs.

9) Watching films or tv shows about cold, snowy places. I have no idea how this works, but it sure does seem to help.

10) Wearing loose garments made from natural fabrics and as few layers of clothing as possible. (That is to say, no socks, please!)

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June 28, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Recent Songs I’ve Loved

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Photo of a rainbow audio spectrum capturing the sounds of various notes that are being played. The colours are, from left to right, purple, red, orange, yellow, green, and blue, and each colour is at a slightly different height against the black background. In addition, the colours have dim reflections of themselves in the shiny black but dimmer floor of this image as well. I know this week’s prompt only asked for one answer, but I’m going to give four because I couldn’t narrow them down any more and, just like I do with books, I also jump around between musical genres.

As I’m a pretty new listener to three of my four answers, I had to make a guess as to what genre some of them best fit into.

Brutal by Olivia Rodrigo

Genre: Punk Rock

Why I Like It: This is something I discovered while watching the first episode of the science fiction television show The Power. I like the way it captures the angst of being a teenager who is still figuring themselves out and doesn’t know how to respond to adults who romanticize that stage of life. This is great for when you’re maybe a little grumpy and need to vent your frustrations through music.

 

When We Were Kings by The Temptations

Genre: R&B

Why I Like It: It tells the 60-year story of how the Temptations came to be and what they’ve done over their incredibly long music career. How cool is that? I’ve slowly been going back and listening to their entire catalogue. They’ve made so many beautiful and uplifting songs, many of which are about how love can enrich your life.

 

Opera #2 by Vitas (Go here for an English translation of lyrics)

Genre: A fun mashup of Opera, Classical, and maybe a little Folk music thrown in there, too?

Why I Like It: Vitas has an amazing voice, and his music videos are like little works of art with the stories they tell. I can’t help but to wonder what encouraged him to write such a sad song, though.

 

 

Gambia by Sona Jobarteh (Go here for an English translation of lyrics)

Genre: A contemporary spin on traditional Gambian music.

Why I Like It: This is a joyful song about Sona’s love for her people and her country. The music video is a beautiful tribute to the peaceful daily lives of people in Gambia as well.

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June 21, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Things I Like and Dislike About the Romance Genre

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A black and white photo of a heart drawn into sand on a rocky beach. There is an arrow drawn through the heart and several white rocks that are about the size of a human infant sitting in the sand behind the drawing. It will be interesting to see how devoted fans of this genre answer this question.

I will read or watch the occasional romance, but my visits to that genre are short and sporadic.

What I Like About The Romance Genre

 

Everyone Lives Happily Ever After. Most of them end with the main characters living happily ever after together. That is not something that regularly happens in, say, the horror genre, so I appreciate bonding with characters I know will almost certainly have a cheerful ending. It’s a nice change from the scary stuff I more often read.

There Is Hope. Some romantic plots begin with characters who are in pretty bad shape. Maybe they’ve recently gone bankrupt, lost a loved one, been diagnosed with a serious illness, or been laid off from their dream job. Those first few scenes are usually the often the saddest ones in the entire story, so I enjoy seeing characters slowly (or quickly) find solutions to their problems and hold onto their hope for the future.

It’s Becoming More Inclusive. I’m seeing more romances being released about people who are senior citizens, LGBTQ+, non-white, disabled, or members of other under-represented groups. Yes, there’s still plenty of work to do to make this genre more inclusive, but that’s true of every other genre as well. In the meantime, I love seeing characters from all sorts of backgrounds getting to live happily ever after.

 

What I Dislike About The Romance Genre

 

Overemphasis on Romantic Love. I’m saying this as someone who has been married for years and loves her spouse, but there are so many other types of love out there that are just as important. You can have a perfectly wonderful life without ever getting married or falling in love, and I’d hope that everyone cultivates strong relationships with family members and friends no matter what your marital status is. There’s no such thing as one person fulfilling all of your emotional and social needs. That’s too much pressure to put on any relationship.

Too Repetitive. As much as I like seeing characters live happily ever after, I can only do so many stories in a row that are all but guaranteed to end the same way. This is also a feeling I have if I spend too much time in the horror, mystery, or speculative fiction genres, so it’s definitely not limited to one form of storytelling. Although, in my admittedly limited experience, romances seem a little less likely to take risks than some of the other types of storytelling do. (If you know of romances that broke major rules of their genre and surprised you with their plot twists, please give me suggestions! I would love to explore the most  creative examples of what a romance novel can be like).

It’s Shoehorned Into Other Genres Too Often. I’m slowly seeing more romantic subplots being included in speculative fiction stories that do not need romance in them. I understand the desire to appeal to multiple audiences and agree that some stories flow better if characters X and Y fall in love with each other, but I’m also wearied by how often I pick up what sounds like will be a dramatic space adventure or a clever new twist on  zombie lore (or what have you) only for the protagonist to get distracted by a sexy stranger and disrupt a storyline that was working just fine on its own.

I do occassionally enjoy romantic speculative fiction, but I don’t like to be blindsided by it. Just like there’s a paranormal romance tag, we should have clearly-labeled tags for all other types of speculative fiction so that readers can easily find or avoid them as desired.

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June 14, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Reasons I Love Being a Blogger and Reader

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I’ll give a few answers to both of these questions.

Reasons I Love Being a Blogger:

1) It sharpens my mind.

2) It helps me remember when certain things happen. For example, I will sometimes look back through my archives to recall when I read a certain book or which year something from my personal life that I blogged about happened.

3) It has introduced me to so many delightful people over the years.

4) It gives me empathy for typos in books, newspaper articles, tweets, and other places. Editing is important, but I also understand why the occasional mistake might slip through unnoticed when you’ve read the same piece multiple times and can practically recite it in your sleep.

 

Reasons I Love Being a Reader:

The arm of a person with pale skin is holding an opened hardcover book up against a blue sky that has a few fluffy white clouds sailing through it. 1) It has taught me so much about our world that I wouldn’t have otherwise learned, from the customs of other cultures to what life was like for people who lived in a specific century, with a certain illness, etc.

2) It provides safe fodder for small talk.  I love seeing people’s faces brighten up when we realize we both loved the same book, author, or genre.

3) It’s a fantastic distraction when I’m sick, injured, waiting in a long line, travelling on an airplane or train, or recovering from a migraine.

4) It’s an inexpensive form of entertainment that doesn’t require electricity or an Internet connection. E-readers are awesome, but you can also throw a paperback or two in your suitcase and have plenty to do if the power goes out during a stormy day on your vacation.

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