#HappyNewFears: My 2020 Bookish New Years Resolutions

Andddddddddd….I’m back! New decade, new blog post, new goals!

Tell me booknerds, how were your holidays?? Mine was busy and went by way too fast. I don’t feel like I relaxed at all, or was gifted anything to make me feel better about the amount of money I spent. I did, however, get drunk on Christmas Day for the first time in a decade. I stopped drinking-to-excess in college because I just do not like the feeling of being drunk and out of control, but somehow Christmas went off the rails for me. I think it was all of 2019 collapsing in on me.

You know how it goes: you’re making dinner so you pour a glass of wine. Cooking and wine go so well together that you’re not paying attention to how much alcohol you’re actually consuming. You’re getting wine-drunk so slowly that by the time you realize you officially passed the line of what’s acceptable in front of family two glasses ago, it’s too late. So you eat a bunch of crackers and cheese in a vain attempt to break down your blood-alcohol level, but you’ve had a bottle-and-a-half just to yourself! It’s over! You’re drunk! And now your mother-in-law starts saying things like, “I’m still on my first glass!” in this passively judgmental way, and your youngest stepkid is saying: “You’re fun when you’re drunk,” to the entire dinner table and you’re trying not slur when you respond, “I’m not drunk, I’m just a little buzzed. Issssaa not a big deal,”

You’re definitely drunk, and later, you try to vomit very quietly so no one hears how bad it actually was.

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#HappyNewFears: My Bookish New Years Resolutions

Happy Boxing Day, Nerds! And for everyone in the U.S., hey suckers! Sorry, you all had to go back to work today while we get a second stat holiday!

But truly, I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season, no matter what you celebrate.

I’m probably still in my PJs, hopefully playing a new game I got as a gift from my husband after dropping heavy hints since my birthday about what I wanted next. *cough Hellblade cough*

My in-laws are probably about to hit the road to get home to NY, taking my stepkid with them so he can reluctantly spend some time with his mom who makes him feel, quote “trapped.” Aw yes, the pitfalls of having a shitty parent who you still have forced visitation with. The true meaning of Christmas… wait…

On a happier note, come Friday I will have officially started my three weeks of vacation that I’ve been saving all year. And Omigod, I need this break so bad. I’m going to be reading and reading and playing games and reading and rotating a nearly endless supply of jogging pants for the next 19 days.

You can expect a lot of scheduled posts that I wrote the week before Christmas. To be honest, using the “post schedule” feature is probably what I should have been doing since starting this blog. Maybe then you’d have more of my salty AF reviews and ranty writings to read. I’ll try hard for the new year.

With that in mind, this post is dedicated to all my bookish resolutions for 2019.

The New Year is literally just around the corner and with that comes a lot of “new year, new me” bullshit posts about health and diet and being a better person. But not this one. Nope, not me. It’s going to be “new year, same me” for real. I just want to make a few tweaks to the bookish side of my life, but I promise to stay the same girl you grew to ~~love~~ know in 2018.

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#Slashmas: My Bookish Holiday Wishlist! (Someone Please Buy Me These Books, Thank Youuuu)

I’m sure all of us booknerds are the same: We are asked for a wish list for the holidays – “What do you want for Christmas? Give me some ideas!” – and your ideas turn into a long list of books.

Generally, people are too nervous to buy me books (at this point in my life, I’m fully aware people are legit scared of me but I’m really not that bad?) so, I just end up with a lot of gift cards. But that is totally fine with me! The more excuses I have to walk around a bookstore the better.

So, today I thought I’d share the books that are top of my list this holiday season.

Image result for bookworm wish list cartoon

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#Halloween: Haunted Libraries

Happy Hump Day, ghouls and ghosts!

Halloween is getting closer with each passing day and I’m so excited about it that I’ve literally been living off of pumpkin pie and bite-sized candy for the last week.

…I don’t feel good. I think maybe some basic organ functions are stressed out?

Anyway, while I try to maintain a normal blood-sugar level, today we’re going to explore haunted libraries! And honestly, my afterlife plan is to be a library ghost so I can read all the books I couldn’t get to while I was alive.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not is completely irrelevant. We’re not here to discuss the probabilities of life after death. Although I will say, once people start reporting ghosts whispering “it’s Britney, bitch,” and “what’s the wifi password?” I might give a little bit more credence to the idea.

Right now, it seems like every ghost is wearing a civil war uniform and women are in bonnets, bemoaning a lost husband. Where are all the modern ghosts in trucker hats and flared jeans haunting a Starbucks Where are my feminist ghosts at?

So, yes, I might be a skeptic. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the stories or the “…but maybes” that can come with the fact that no one can ever truly know for certain what else might exist beyond our earthly bodies.

Here’s my list of the most haunted libraries around the world!

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#YAWeek: My TBR’d YA Mystery-Thrillers!

I’ll be honest, I enjoy YA fiction, even though, I am no longer included in the targeted demographic and haven’t been for ~~almost two decades~~ a while. You know what, let’s not get into specifics about ages and dates. Those are all technicalities.

Sometimes I can feel a little bit weird when I have some interest in a YA books. A feeling of “I know I’m 30-something, but please don’t judge me for reading this” can wash over me from time to time.

I try to let myself like what I like, but there is a sense that YA is my “guilty pleasure” because it’s really not intended for me. And sometimes it’s painfully obvious that I am not intended for it.

I can also feel a little bit weird in reviewing YA books, because usually if the book didn’t work for me it’s because the 16-year-old main character says/thinks something along the lines of, “I’m not child!” And I immediately think, “oh, yes you are young lady!“

Or the 18-year-old who works at a grocery store part time is decorating her warehouse style loft apartment and it’s total bullshit because I didn’t buy my first piece of new furniture until I was 30 years old. That sense of utter and complete bullshit about how teenagers on their own would truly live annoys me because no one ever plays within the boundaries of real life, at least not of what I’ve read so far.

Nevertheless, I remain dedicated to my search for an amazing YA mystery-thriller that I actually like; one that feels honest and genuine and manages to pull some punches on someone who is hard to please. (Me. That’s me who’s hard to please.)

In honour of #YAWeek, I’m going to be taking a look at what’s floating around my YA TBR pile; what books I’ve come across and thought, “yes, you could be THE ONE.”

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Female Sleuths You Need To Know! (Other Than Nancy Drew)

Most of us ladies who are obsessed with crime fiction, likely got our start reading Nancy Drew when we were young girls in pigtails; young girls who didn’t really want to play the games our friends were playing. We liked puzzles and being observant and maybe kids thought we were weird or awkward. We watched Goonies and Ghost Writer and read The Babysitters Club. We wanted to go on a mystery adventure and solve a crime!

So we played at being Nancy Drew with our Sailor Moon “casebooks,” watching from our windows and writing down the neighbours’ activities as if we were going to catch them doing something sinister, like rolling a body into a carpet.

calm down bruce campbell GIF by Ash vs Evil Dead

And as we got older, we moved on to more adult crime fiction mysteries, but always gravitated towards Nancy like characters – Veronica Mars, Olivia Benson, Clarice Starling. Because Nancy had taught us it was okay to be into what we were into. We’ve never forgotten Nancy even though we have grown up. She’s frequently cited as an inspiration by writers and readers alike. Her name is mentioned in my “about” page for this blog, and I have been working on a collection of her books for a few years, picking them up from antique markets and used books stores. (Only the ones originally published by Dunlap & Grosset.)

But let’s be real for a moment – in hindsight, Nancy was kind of boring, tame. A true basic bitch. She was rich and white and polite, doing her sleuthing in sweet collared dresses and Mary-Jane pumps with a perfectly coiffed flipped bob. Of course, the series started in the 1930s, so what do you expect? There wasn’t really any room for Nancy to change societal norms drastically, nor was there a market for it.

Really, if you go back to those original books, you’ll find them to be racist and anti-feminist in a lot of their elements. Again, what do you expect from the time?

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Five Canadian Authors You Should Know

If you’re in the US right now everything is red, white and blue for Independence Day. The month of July gets y’all fired up and feeling aggressively patriotic. Fireworks and eagles, and 1 in 3 people predicting a civil war, and immigrant children in cages. It’s amazing.

Here in Canada, July has a similar effect. The 1st is Canada Day, our birthday. Everything is red and white, beavers and fireworks and our Prime Minister probably out somewhere taking selfies. True North, Strong and Free, eh!

Most people don’t even realize we’re celebrating a thing at all. And that’s fine, really, because we know and we go all out, covering ourselves in maple syrup and doing sexual things with hockey sticks. Maybe. Probably. Whatever. Don’t judge.

But it got me thinking, we Canadians have a lot to be proud of that doesn’t necessarily get recognized across borders until someone like Justin Bieber becomes an international sensation and people start screaming “take him back, Canada!” and we’re like, “but we don’t want him either! You made him weird! He’s too religious now!”

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