Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

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The topics for this week’s post and the one on November 6 are going to be a little tricky for me because I don’t request or give out a ton of personalized book recommendations.

Taste is such a subjective thing that I feel a bit shy about these sorts of conversations unless I’m 100% sure the other person will love that book (or that what I’ve been recommended is actually my sort of read).

So I’m going to be reaching way back into my reading history to answer this prompt.

C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series.

My uncle gave me all seven books of this series as a gift when I was a kid. I quickly became a huge fan of that universe and read them over and over again.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. 

That same uncle also gave me copies of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy a couple of years later. The former was a fun right read away, and I pushed myself to become ready for the sequels a year or so later.

Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time series.

I no longer recall who recommended this to me, but I’m glad they did. The narrator’s descriptions of what it feels like to have autism were so detailed. The mystery was great, too.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

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The assumption I made this week was that most participants would be talking about books they are not interested in reading that were published in the last twenty years or so.

It will be interesting to see if everyone else answered this from the same perspective.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) by Stieg Larsson

Why: I do enjoy the occasional mystery, but I’ve heard this is more of an action/adventure novel. Generally, I’m not interested in mixing those two genres together.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Why: This book includes some disturbing content that I refuse to read about.

No Country for Old Men  by Cormac McCarthy

Why: After finishing The Road, I decided not to read anything else from this author. He’s a talented writer, but his imagination is too dark for my tastes.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Why: I’m burned out on World War II novels, especially if they’re about all of the inhumane things that happened in concentration camps. Of course it’s important that we never forget what happened to the victims of the Holocaust, but this reader needs a long break from stories set in that time and place.

Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1) by Ernest Cline

Why: I’ve read too many books similar to it. If that wasn’t the case, this would be the sort of thing that would grab my attention. 

A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)
by Sarah J. Maas

Why: Romance is a genre I’m generally not that interested in. While there are definitely aspects of this story that appeal to me, I’d much rather read fantasy that doesn’t include plots about falling into or out of love.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

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Here are the assumptions I’m going to be making for this week’s prompt:

1. The island has a climate that will not kill me with heat stroke, frost bite, or unlucky encounters with the wildlife when I arrive.
2. I will have enough food, water, shelter, medicine, and other basic supplies to keep me alive and well until I’m rescued.

If we’re talking about an island that is freezing cold, filled with venomous snakes, or is otherwise inhospitable to human visitors, all I’d want is to get the heck out of there as soon as possible. I’m going to assume this is not what Long and Short Reviews intended and answer this question under the assumption that I’m safe there as long as I don’t do anything silly like try to jump off a cliff.

In that case, this is what I’d want to have with me.

A notebook to write down memories of and stories about my time there.

A camera to snap a few pictures.

A hammock to sleep in (and a warm blanket in case the night air was damp).

A couple of buckets to use in my sand castle creations.

A swimming suit and towel to make my explorations of the shore a bit easier.

A few people I loved for the companionship.

A few large, friendly dogs to play with and to help me grab the attention of the rescuers whenever they arrived.

And a paperback or two to read if I grew bored.

Give me all of those things, and I’d be pretty happy there for a little while until the rescuers arrived.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

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When I originally saw this topic on the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge List, I thought it would be an easy one. It turns out that most of the books I’ve read recently have not been about tough topics, and the ones I have read are not necessarily titles I’d recommend. So I had to dig deeply into my reading history to answer this prompt.

Title and Author: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Issues It Covers: Racism, Police Corruption, and Injustice

Title and Author: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Issues It Covers: Second Wave Feminism, Sexism, and Mental Health

Title and Author: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto
Issues It Covers: Gender, Medical Malpractice, and Mental Health

Title and Author: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Issues It Covers: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Mental Health, and Racism

Title and Author: Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud
Issues It Covers: Mental Health, Unhealthy Interpersonal Relationships, Toxic People

Title and Author: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Issues It Covers: Grief

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

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This list will be a long one. I had some truly wonderful Language Arts teachers over the years. While there were a few books they assigned to us over the years that I didn’t like, I found something enjoyable in the vast majority of our assigned reads.  

I’m assuming that all of the WWBC participants have at least heard of these plays, poems, novels, and other works if they haven’t read them. I chose not to write commentary on them to keep this post from turning into a 1000+ word essay, but I’m happy to expand on anything that you’re all not already familiar with. This is roughly sorted by the age when I read them. Little House in the Big Woods was a fourth grade reading assignment, I believe.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder 

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Edgar Allen Poe’s works, especially “The Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death”

Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Othello by William Shakespeare

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Emily Dickinson’s collected poems

e.e. cummings collected poems

The Iliad by Homer (I think we only read excerpts of this one),

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

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There are three different types of things I like to read when I’m not feeling well. I’ll give everyone a few examples of each one.

Comic Strips

All of these comic strips tend to be a mish-mash of whatever it is their creators have been thinking about recently. There are few if any continuous storylines in them. That makes it hard to explain them to new readers but also a great deal of fun to explore. We never know what might pop up in them next!

The Oatmeal.

Will 5:00 Never Come?

War and Peas.

Humorous Blog Posts and Essays

Doctor Grumpy in the House.

If you enjoy medical humour, this doctor’s blog is fantastic.

The Red Brick Blog.

Sadly, this hasn’t been updated in almost two years, but the archives are filled with some wonderful posts.

Mock Ramblings.

Michael and I have been friends for so long that I no longer remember how we met. If you haven’t already scrolled through his site after reading his previous WWBC posts, I highly recommend doing so sometime. He blogs about everything from his strange dreams, to snippets of the stories he’s working on, to recaps of the amazing D&D games he organizes for his kids.

Not everything he writes is necessarily funny, but when he writes humorous stuff he truly excels at it.

SFF Stories

I’ve chosen not link to specific tales from these magazines because of how particular I am about my science fiction and fantasy. In general, I find that all three of these publications do an excellent job of selecting unique, well-developed stories that show off under-appreciated authors in the SFF genre. If you have any interest at all in speculative fiction, I do recommend scrolling through these links to see what might appeal to you.

Fireside Magazine.

Syntax & Salt Magazine.

Lightspeed Magazine.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.