Books and Backpacks

  In March, I finished six books and Did Not Finish 2. I'm a little underwhelmed with this month's reading, but am looking forwards to April to try and find some books better suited for me.  1. Rituals - Kelly Armstrong:                    ⭐⭐⭐.75 The last book in one of my new favourite series, and written by--as I discovered whilst looking for more of her books at my local library-- a Canadian author! I thought this book as a wrap-up to a series was okay, it felt kind of weird to have 100 pages left in the last book in a 5 book series and have so many things unresolved-- and, as a result of the limited pages at the end-- the ending felt a bit rushed. I think Armstrong should've either cut the last book, or added a 6th one to the series. Preferably the latter so I can get more Liv and Gabriel.  The love triangle in this book was also kind of weird, like our main girl (Liv) spends like 3 of the five books with one guy...

With the recent announcement of Roberto Acguirre Sacasa's True Blood reboot , I was inspired to revisit one of my favorite TV series-- the original, 2008 True Blood . As a lover of the beautiful American South  and all things paranormal romance, True Blood was right down my alley. While I was too young to watch it when it was first airing, I watched it all on streaming services a few years later and instantly fell in love. A show centered around vampiric love triangles and all set in Louisiana? How could I not love it.  So, when they announced in December of 2020, they were rebooting the show, I was ecstatic. Then I saw who the show runner was, and I got less excited. And then I read some of the books and became even less excited. Not because the books weren't great (because they were), but because I started to see and remember some glaring issues from the show.  However, since that December 2020 announcement it's been difficult to find any more recent updates on the show...

The whole day was a massive, and very successful, publicity stunt. Actually, the majority of “The Inventor”, as he was colloquially known, was in order to create and maintain the shroud that permanently encapsulated him. Nothing was known about him except his accomplishments. Nothing was published about his company other than those minute details in the posts on his website that were deigned to be shared with the public. Most of the time, those little posts were just pushing whatever Zosia’s newest project was. He never made a press release. He never held any public meetings. Everything known about him had been published in blog posts on his company website. People only knew as much as he allowed. As one might imagine, the curiosity around him had quickly made his moniker infamous. Rumours promptly spread over who he was and why he remained anonymous. So, the day that infamous tech genius and trillionaire announced the opening of his new amu...

Violet My father would die soon. Tonight was Victor Van Camp Senior’s 90th birthday party. To me, that is the official notice that my father was nearing the end of His life. It was also the notice that it was time for me to move on. Forgive Victor Van Camp, forget Viola Van Camp, and more than anything, let go of childhood. Eyes closed and taking a deep breath, I sink down into the crimson crushed velvet couch behind me. I spent the vast majority of my life in this house, but I no longer recognize it.   Huntley’s hand rests gently on his daughter’s shoulder, as he stands beside her chair. His head twists towards Ezra and I. Our stares meet and my brother’s blood-shot eyes give me a knowing look. I take another steadying breath, relaxing further into the furniture.   My husband settles in next to me.   “Are you ready for this?” He leans in to whisper to me.   As I’ll ever be, I guess. I think, but merely raise my eyebrows to him as response enough.   “Ah, childre...

 In February, I, not only had my reading week, giving me a break from school readings so I can enjoy some personal reading, but I also found a series that I absolutely  adored . Needless to say I had a very successful reading month.  I had originally aimed to read 6 books, but ended up finishing 11, and DNF-ing one at about 80%, so I'm counting it as read since I did read like 300 pages of it, before I had to give up on it. But we'll get into that. Of that 11, I finished 4 out of the 5 books I had on my month's TBR. The first book I read was Jimmy Carr's Before and Laughter . I started listening to this in middle of January-ish, but I go through audiobooks really slowly. I really enjoy stand-up and Carr is one of my favourites, so I was really excited to read his book. However, because I know him from his stand up, I was expecting a really comedic books. While it does have it's moments, it largely felt really self help-y, but not where you're learning something ...

  In 2021, I read nearly 200 books, and added nearly 200 more to my "want to read" shelf on Goodreads. Needless to say, BookTube and BookTok had given me an inordinately long TBR. However, I kept adding and forgetting about books that I'd add to my "want to read" shelf, then the I'd realize that there were so many that it was getting hard to go through and pick one. As such, my list hardly used as a way to pick a book I'd been wanting to read, and I usually ended up scrolling through Libby or Kindle Unlimited to find a new read.  Eventually, I tried to compile a smaller "TBR" shelf on Goodreads, where I kept the books I most urgently wanted to read, but most of those ended up being exclusively the genre I wanted to read when I made the list, not always what I wanted to read then Eventually, I had given up on all my GoodReads shelves, really only using the site as a way to track what I'd read so far. So there was my first issue with my GoodR...