Books and Backpacks

In January, I read 6 books. I'm pretty pleased with the quantity of books I read, but I feel like the overall quality I read this month was a bit lacking. I only remember really enjoying one book, and a couple felt like a real dredge to get through. I think my average rating for this month is probably a 3/5 stars. ⭐⭐⭐ 1. Dear Aaron- Mariana Zapata: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ This was my favourite book of this month. The romance was really cute and I enjoyed the characters. However, I thought that the best part of the book was the email correspondences, everything else felt kind of awkward and out of place. After this book, though, I did feel the urge to track down and read another letters-to-a-military-man-who's-far-away-that-i-end-up-falling-in-love-with kind of book. I also kind of wish it was longer and I could've had the dramatic Dear John  moment where he finally comes home and she's with someone else but eventually they end up together. Oh, and some pining while hes at war.  2. Portrai...

  My university years have been the ones where I've read the least, which is the opposite of what I feel like it should be. For the past few years, I've been having trouble getting into the books I actually wanted to read after pushing myself through the mandatory school books I was assigned-- I forgot that I chose a major in English because it's something I actually enjoyed . 2021 was the most successful reading year of my life. I got back into reading for fun, and read nearly 200 books outside of school because of it.  My biggest goal in 2022 is to continue that trend, and in aid of that aspiration, I wanted to put together a list of books I do and definitely do not want to read this year to keep track of when I start feeling a bit sick of it. So, without further ado, is my 2022 Reading Resolutions list.  New author(s) you'd like to read? Joe Hill, Karin Slaughter, and K. Webster. Previous author I'd like to read more from: Emily McIntire. I loved her novel , Hoo...

 All in all, our vacation was a wonderful experience and I loved having so much time with my boyfriend since we'd been so busy with both of us being in school for the past couple of days. All of our hikes and travelling to the ocean were probably my highlights. However, I don't think I'd go back. While the weather was preferable to the -30 degrees back home, it wasn't as warm as I would've liked. I spent a large part of the trip in big sweaters and cozy sweatpants as the temperature hovered around 15 degrees. I remember a few years ago, when we were in Kelowna, we had one plus 40 day. That was one of the best days of my little human-lizard-hybrid life.  I also felt that there wasn't much to actually do in Palm Springs. So many of our days were spent inside watching movies or reading, which aren't bad in and of themselves. However, when I go on vacation if I'm reading, I'd like to be doing it while suntanning on a beach, soaking in the sun we Canadian...

  After Boxing day, we began our second and last week in Palm Springs. Well, what we intended to be our last week. On Monday, we went on a hike to Ladder Canyon. At Ladder Canyon, there are two different hiking trails-- one longer loop, through the mountains, and one shorter loop inside of it. The easier of the two was, surprisingly, the longer one. The longer one's trail is a sandy trail, with a steady incline, that takes about 3 hours to finish, pretty similar to the above image. The one on the inside is what puts the "ladder" in Ladder Canyon.  While we hiked the first, longer trail for about 1.5 hours before turning around, the second hike we only got about 30 minutes into before having to turn around. The second hike became almost impossible to continue by the 3rd ladder we came to. The first couple ladders were fairly easy to navigate, but the third ladder came about a foot short from the edge of the next rock up, and about halfway up it, you felt as though you were...