First of all: happy first day of Autumn!

I know I’m not alone in loving Autumn more than every other season, especially when curling up with a good book. So to celebrate the first day of Autumn I wanted to go over my favourite things about the season and why they make for the best reading conditions. This entire list makes me sound like a spoiled princess but I’m a bit obsessed with making my environment as comfortable as possible, despite current stresses and anxieties. This is probably the most ‘basic’ post I’ll ever write and I’m not sorry at all because it’s been a ton of fun to put together! You have to enjoy the little things in life sometimes. 🙂

So here’s my list of why Autumn is the best season of all for reading!

Continue reading →

Quick note: Sorry for not posting on Saturday! My parents had an engagement BBQ for my fiance and I, so there wasn’t really any time to properly finalise a post/promote on social media. There will be a few days in the next couple weeks that I won’t be able to post as frequently, but I’ll let you all know about that in a separate post later this week. Thanks for understanding! 🙂 

You know when you curl up with a book in a new spot for the first time and it feels like you’re sinking into a warm, cosy cloud? Finding the perfect place to read is almost like finding a new best friend. It not only makes it easier to drift off into the story, but it also helps your body de-stress and relax after a long day. And because I’m a creature of habit, I love finding these reading nooks and look forward to jumping right back into them when I get the opportunity.

I use the term ‘nook’ loosely as some of these places are more out in the open, but they nevertheless help me turn my brain off after a long day. Since I live in both Canada and the UK my favourite reading spaces spread out over the two, and there are five in total that I dream about when I’m having an extra long day at work. So to start off the new week I’ll walk you through some of my favourite places to curl up with a book and disappear into another world. Be sure to let me know where your favourite places are to read in the comments!

Continue reading →

NPR released their ‘100 Favorite Horror Stories‘ from their Summer Readers Poll last week and I naturally have a few comments and new books to get excited about! The results, judged by novelists Stephen Graham Jones, Ruthanna Emrys, Tananarive Due and Grady Hendrix, were chosen from 7000 entries by NPR readers and carefully curated down to a list of 100. Unsurprisingly, 1023 of the 7000 entries were stories written by Stephen King — as to be expected. So to avoid having a list of just King’s works, the judges have allowed an author to only appear a maximum of two times on the list: once for a novel and once for a short story or novella, which has resulted in a wonderfully diverse list of horror stories.

So I wanted to chat a bit about the list, about the horror genre, and some of the books I have now added on my TBR because of it. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well, so let me know what you think of NPR’s 100 Favorite Horror Stories in the comments!

Continue reading →

Has anyone heard of ‘ergodic literature’? Because until today I had read a couple books in this unique little category without realising it had an actual name. And since words are so powerful, this single word has opened up a whole world of reading that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. So if you like strange, outside-of-the-box storytelling — read on!

What is Ergodic Literature?

Most English language books are read from front to back and left to right.  Ergodic literature, from what I understand, tells this basic rule of reading to piss off. Ergodic literature wants you to forget traditional written storytelling and take control of your own journey through the book. Want to read a book where you can start in the middle? Read upside down? Follow along with bizarre footnotes? These books are crazy and interactive and want to make you, the reader, a part of the story. It involves a level of interaction that traditional books simply do not require, whether that’s holding a book up to a mirror to read a passage or pulling a letter out of an envelope. It’s immersion and agency without a digital screen and a way of storytelling that someone is either going to love or absolutely hate.

Continue reading →

I’m not typically old-fashioned. In normal circumstances, I’m open and welcoming of new ways that technology can improve and better our lives. I love video games, I’m over-dependent on my iPhone, my laptop is my baby. But when it comes to e-readers I feel as though I’ve had a dramatic, unexplainable repulsion towards the idea of replacing my beautiful paperbacks with a digital screen.

At the beginning of the year, I tried to read a few books on my phone, inspired by the convenience of the library app Libby. I even tried to join the ebook craze five years ago when I was in university (I read 2001: A Space Odyssey on my iPad, very futuristic of me). But I never felt the same emotional connection as I felt when reading a physical book. And most importantly, reading a novel on a digital screen gave me a headache. After being on the computer at work all day I looked forward to reading my non-digital, non-artificially lit books when I came home in the evening.

Enter Amazon Prime Day 2018. A day of useless purchases and the illusion of saving money on items you never needed to begin with.

Continue reading →