Category: Books

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 »

New Books & Novel Discoveries (October 2022)

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No unfortunate happenings got in the way of me posting this on time in October, I just wanted to indulge in Halloween, so I didn’t set aside the time to work on it. October was a strange month, as it was so eventful that it didn’t just fly by, but I also find myself marveling at how little I was able to finish doing with respect to the blog. Work has continued to be a lot busier than normal. I also managed to do a lot of fun things for the Halloween season, though, so my life still has a little balance.

Enough rambling about life, we’re here to talk about books!Read More »

Book Review | The Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones

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Dark Lord of Derkholm

The Dark Lord of Derkholm is a 1998 young adult fantasy novel by author Diana Wynne Jones. Once a year, a magical fantasy land receives guests from another world. These guests, whom visit as Pilgrim Parties under the organization of a ruthless businessman named Mr. Chesney, embark upon this journey to experience a real-life fantasy adventure, complete with dragons, battles between the forces of good and evil, and even a Dark Lord to vanquish at the end of their hard-fought quest. However, after years of suffering the devastating consequences, the people of this fantasy land have had enough. Maybe, if they completely sabotage this year’s tours, nobody will ever want to visit again. To do so, they’ll have to appoint the worst wizard for the job of Dark Lord. Unfortunately for Derk and his family, that’s him.

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New Books & Novel Discoveries (September 2022)

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I normally try to get this up during the last couple of days of a month, as I have successfully done for nearly every month before now0 since I started, except for one. But, on September 30 I had to say goodbye to an animal companion who’d been with me for just over 13 years, and I frankly forgot that I even needed to write one of these up. Then, I just needed some time. Without further delay, I’ve now got the motivation and time to put this up.

I’ll not linger on this any longer. Let’s talk about some books.Read More »

Books On My Fall 2022 To-Read List

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. Considering how poorly my reading progress has gone throughout the year, it’s rather generous to believe that all ten of these books will be read before the end of the year (I’m just going to go ahead and count Fall as from now until the end of December). Nevertheless, this was a rather easy list to fill, as I do indeed intend to try and read all of these during this span of time. A great many of these are taken from my yearly to-read list, in fact, so I’ll actually be rather disappointed if I don’t get to most of them.Read More »