Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

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I could give impromptu speeches on any of these topics.

Navigating the Canadian Immigration System. I’d discuss everything from filling out the many pages of paperwork for it, to adjusting to Canadian culture, to how long it took me to go through each stage of the process.

Thriving with Food and Environmental Allergies. I’d probably focus on travelling with allergies in particular as that’s something that took me the longest amount of time to adjust to.

Writing a Fair, Honest Review. There is skill involved in reviewing a book, film, or other piece of media in such a way that readers have a clear understanding what did and didn’t work for you. Their opinions of it may or may not be the same, but they should at least know exactly why you gave it the rating that you did.

Developing a Social Media Calendar. Keeping an audience’s attention is also a skill. I love the challenge of figuring out what they respond best to.

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It was tough to narrow this down to only one answer, but I’m going to have to go with Robert J. Sawyer’s Neanderthal Parallax trilogy.

This series showed what happened when a link was established between our Earth and an Earth in a parallel universe where Homo sapiens went extinct and Neanderthals survived until present day.

Readers who have followed my site for a while may remember how much I enjoy reading fiction and non-fiction about the different human and human-like species that have lived on Earth.

What made this series even more interesting were the many cultural differences between us and Neanderthals.

If you picked out two humans on our Earth who had the least in common as far as language, culture, and life experience goes, they’d still be miles ahead when compared to introducing a Neanderthal to a Homo sapiens in this series.

To give a few of the least surprising examples, Neanderthals in this series have remained hunter-gatherers, have no farms or other formal agricultural systems, do not have a monetary economy, have no concept of religion or a belief in any supernatural being, and have a rate of serious crime that is all but non-existent.

Honestly, the world building is the most unique one I’ve ever seen. I can’t recommend it highly enough for that reason alone.

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Quick! Imagine a carrot.

What colour is it?

I’m going to guess you all picked the colour orange.

One of the weirdest and most interesting things I’ve learned from a book is that carrots weren’t originally orange. Up until the late seventeenth century, they were nearly always purple. You might see a rare one that was white or yellow, but those colours weren’t encouraged by carrot farms.

How did that change? Some Dutch growers began cross-breeding different types of carrots in the late 1600s. It’s thought that they probably crossed purple carrots with white ones to eventually create the orange carrots we all know.

They also selectively bred this crop to make carrots bigger, juicer, and sweeter than the ones that people ate in previous generations.

I wasn’t able to find the book that mentioned this, but this article has more information for anyone who is interested.

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I’m a quiet, gentle, shy person who has a mischievous streak that occasionally surprises people. Here are some characters who remind me of myself.

Matthew Cuthbert from L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series. 

I adored Anne, but kind and gentle Matthew was the character who really won my heart. I understood him on such a deep level and was thrilled by the way he warmly welcomed Anne into the family.

Beth March from Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women. 

She was the only March sister that I think I could spend time with regularly while coming away from those visits with an invigorated spirit. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Meg, Jo, and Amy quite a bit. But Beth had one of those mellow, easygoing personalities that both attracts my attention and reminds me of how I am, too.

There’s something to be said for peacemakers who try to find the good in everyone.

Allan Karlsson from Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (The Hundred-Year-Old Man, #1)

Remember when I told you all I had a mischievous streak? I wasn’t joking.

90% of the time, I’m that calm, unassuming person who peacefully sits in the corner and finds amusement in the simple things in life.

The other 10% of the time, I’m quietly getting into mischief without giving anyone advanced warning. Only folks who know me incredibly well will be able to predict these moments before they happen.

If I make my childhood goal of living to see my one hundredth birthday, you just might catch me climbing out of a window at the retirement home on that day.

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I am a creature of habit. This is especially true when it comes to what I reread and when I return to those old, friendly stories. Often my urge to reread things are tied to the seasons of the year and specific holidays.

Since we’re currently in the middle of winter, I tweaked this week’s topic a bit so I could talk about the books I’m most likely to reread at this time of the year.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

I first read this book one winter when I was in high school. Cold, dark weather makes me feel sad and glum at times. There was something oddly comforting about reading about a character whose troubles were much bigger than my own.

The happy ending she eventually received is a nice mood lifter as well.

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

There comes a time every March when I feel like winter will linger on until the end of time itself.

This is when I like to pull out the first Chronicles of Narnia book and read about an enchanted winter that lasted there for a century and never included a single Christmas to look forward to. Imagine how tired of the cold and snow the Narnians must have been by that final year! And yet spring did arrive for them eventually, so I can have hope that the same thing will happen for our completely non-magical winters, too.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

As much as I dislike winters in southern Ontario, there are places that are much colder, snowier, and darker than Toronto. The Snow Child is set in Alaska about a hundred years ago. Back then the people who lived there were basically snowed into their homes for months on end, especially if you lived out in the country away from any towns.

The main characters were a couple who had longed for a child for many years. When a little girl showed up in the middle of a fierce blizzard, they took her in while trying to figure out where on Earth she must have come from.

Figuring out what was happening with her and with the kind couple who looked after her is so engrossing. I could reread this book a dozen times and still want more.