Category: Books

Series I’d Like to Start/Catch up on/Finish

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is a TTT rewind, where we can pick a previous topic that we missed, so I decided I’d like to put together a list of books that fit all three of the criteria in the title. I imagine I could have picked one of the three, but I’d rather take advantage of the more broad approach. I’m not sure how to feel about how many series I’ve actually got lined up, but it’ll be nice to put them all together in one place.Read More »

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Book Review – Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

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Wolf in White Van

Wolf in White Van is a 2014 fiction novel by John Darnielle, American musician and primary member of the band the Mountain Goats. The story follows Sean Phillips, a reclusive game designer whose face has been disfigured ever since suffering  a gunshot wound when he was 17. His games are play-by-mail role-playing games, exploring post-apocalyptic futures and fantastical realms. After two players of his game Trace Italian take their play into the real world, with grave consequences, Sean is brought in to account for it, sending him down a path a self-reflection to that fateful day where his own life permanently changed.Read More »

New Books & Novel Discoveries (February 2023)

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Once again, I find myself wracking my brain about what I’ve purchased this month. I could have sworn that some book or other had been preordered a while ago and it arrived earlier this month. Apparently that is not the case, as I’ve picked through the books lying around and found nothing. Nevertheless, it has been another rather big month, though unique at the same time, as I usually don’t buy a lot of one series at once. I guess I kept looking for anything else I might have bought because I wanted more than one thing to talk about.

Enough vague waffling, on to the books!Read More »

New Books & Novel Discoveries (January 2023)

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It seems with the start of the new year that I wanted to make up for the past couple of light months, as I’ve acquired more books than the previous two months combined. I haven’t gone crazy with the purchasing mind you, but it’s notably more all the same. I suppose with the holidays having passed finally, I decided it was time to let go of the holiday restraint and buy a little more for myself again. I hope the new year has treated everybody well and the weather hasn’t been too miserable.

Enough rambling, on to the books!Read More »

Book Review – Pet Sematary by Stephen King

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Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary is a 1983 horror novel by Stephen King. The story follows the Creed family—husband and wife Louis and Rachel, their five-year-old daughter Ellie, two-year-old son Gage, and Ellie’s cat named Church—who have just moved from Chicago to an idyllic country house near the small town of Ludlow, Maine, with Louis starting a new job as a physician at the University of Maine. It takes some adjusting to at first, but the family finds themselves very taken with the property and their new neighbors.

The nearby woods hide an unearthly secret, however, something altogether more strange than the macabre yet innocent “pet sematary” that has been maintained by the children of the town for several decades. Some say the ground in this hidden place has gone sour but nevertheless contains a terrible power that people cannot help being drawn in by. As tragedy strikes the Creed family thanks to the dangerous traffic that plagues their road, Louis struggles with the cold, hard truth that sometimes…dead is better.Read More »

Top 5 Books I Read in 2022

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Transitioning to a new year of reading has been going slowly, as it turns out. I’m still trying to finish up my final read from last year (a fact that will keep bothering me at least a little bit), so I haven’t even given myself the chance to start reading anything new for 2023. As my editing workload increased after the end of 2021, I managed to have less and less time to read throughout the year, so I actually read an even smaller number of books than I was expecting. Still, I did manage to finish a decent amount, and as I’ve done the last several years, I’d like to list my five favourite reads from the past year, in no particular order. As is always the case, these are not books that came out in 2022, simply the five books I enjoyed the most.Read More »

New Books & Novel Discoveries (December 2022)

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This was another surprisingly quiet month as far as new books go. As it turns out, I didn’t receive any gift cards for books for Christmas this year. It’s fine, I still really appreciate all that I did receive, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little sad that I won’t be going on a small book-buying binge. I hope everybody else has enjoyed their holidays too and continues to enjoy them with New Year’s Eve tomorrow

Enough about the holidays, on to the books!Read More »

Books on My Winter 2022–2023 To-Read List

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. I always like topics like this for these posts because it’s a great way to get thinking about what I feel like reading, not just what I may have laid out ages beforehand. This is especially considering a new year coming up, with presumably new personal reading challenges to be had that I haven’t really thought about yet. Though this will include 10 books, I’m fairly certain I won’t read all of them listed here during winter; I’ve just been too slow lately. Nevertheless, these are all books I’d really like to get to in the coming winter season.Read More »

New Books & Novel Discoveries (November 2022)

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Well, the daylight has become more and more scarce once again, and the holidays are just over the horizon. November feels so much like a liminal month for me sometimes, being a void of time between the holidays (at least here in Canada) and feeling more subdued as the weather transitions to darker and colder. Somewhat in keeping with that all that, it has been a considerably low-key month for me as far as book buying goes too, but I did manage to pick a little something up for myself anyway.

On to the books!Read More »

Books I’m Thankful that School Had Me Read

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is a “thankful freebie”, which I presume is because American Thanksgiving is this week. I’m Canadian, so Thanksgiving was back in October for me, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to put together a list of books I’m thankful for. To make the list a little more considered, I decided to provide a list of ten books I’m grateful for having to read in school. Ever since high school and university, I’ve only ever really chosen books out of personal interest; I don’t really follow any book clubs or things like them. So, that was the last real time in my life that it wasn’t up to me what I needed to read. I’m not sure I’ve properly plumbed the depths of every syllabus I’ve ever been given, but I’m happy with this all the same.Read More »