Category: Uncategorized

Hey there, readers, it’s your girl, me. I’ve been away for a while, because, you know… *nudge nudge* the v-word. The global thingy. End times etc. The Germaphobe’s Vindication.

So… yeah. I know I’m not the only one who is feeling very weird right about now. We got the notice that the library would close on Friday March 13 (mmmm-hmmmmmmm) and honestly, it was like finding out we were all getting a few extra vacation days. I thought I would get housework done, spend time with family and friends, and, of course, get a helluva lot of reading done.

Well, as of today, Day 37 (!!!) of quarantine, I’ve really only done the first thing. Every inch of my living space has been triple cleaned, purged, organized, sterilized, and, in some cases, colour-coded. I’ve baked some cake, I’ve binge-watched countless series, and I’ve read… 8 books? Maybe??? And to be honest, I skimmed one of those. (Although I tore through the Neapolitan series by Elena Ferrante and godDAMN you better believe I’ll be reviewing those.)

The surprising thing is, I’m not really disappointed or pissed off with myself. It’s a strange time, and we’re all figuring this out as we go along, one day at a time. And despite the frankly staggering number of post-apocalyptic novels I’ve read, I really don’t know how to handle any of this, other than to hold on to hope as tightly as I can, and take solace in the love of my husband, my mother, my cats, and the rest of my family and friends. And books, too, of course – always books – and movies, and tv series, and music and podcasts, hobbies and crafts, and nature, and the hundred thousand other things that are still good and joyful. Because as a wise wizard once said…

And right now, the most heroic thing we can all do is the opposite of marching out in a big group to travel across the continent on a mission to destroy some evil jewelry. The best, smartest, safest thing for everyone is, in fact, a hobbit’s dream: stay home, and read. I think that, for me, the answer to finding solace in books is to start re-reading all of my old favourites. In fact, I think it’s time for a little ole Harry P marathon. That’s right, my dudes. It’s Potter time. And then, after that, who knows? Maybe I’ll go full retro reads and start the Redwall books, maybe even Pern! All I know is that I need the company of old friends right now, and actual, physical, paper books, and the smell of a good story in  yellowed pages and creased spines.

To anyone reading this, thank you for spending a few minutes of your day in my weird little corner of the internet. I wish you and your loved ones health, and happiness, and good books.

– xo, R

So. Yes, I am still doing this thing. I’ve been silent the last few Thursdays, mea culpa, but in my defense, I was on vacation (okay, it was a staycation, deal with it). Read some good books, wrote absolutely no words at all, almost almost almost moved into our house (at laaaaaaaast), and spent plenty of nights with my bae. It was perfect.

But this week it’s back to the grin, and what a motherfukkin grind it is. The library life is good, my friends, but sometimes it’s good and also fucking shitty. Know what I mean?

Anyway. This week’s question: Do you participate in reading challenges? Why or why not?

This one is too easy: yes. Or even – yes, duh. Because why wouldn’t you? There are challenges for every kind of reader, every kind of interest. I don’t actually like ones that are overly specific, though. I find them restrictive. I’m a chaotic reader, I read what I want when I want. So TPL’s Reading Challenge, for example, is a huge no for me. Great in theory, and good for getting ideas if you’re someone who doesn’t know what they want to read about next, but not ideal for me, with approximately 6 billion books on my TBR pile.

And then there’s Goodreads. Hate on it all you want, but I live for the Goodreads Challenge – it’s allllll about the numbers, baby. Just give me more – more words, more pages, more boooooooooooooks. You can set your own goal, edit it if you were too ambitious or not ambitious enough, and if you “win,” you get a nice little badge on your Goodreads profile. What’s not to love??

Well this was kind of a dud, topic-wise. Next, week, something juicier… hate-reads!!!!! Yeah boiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

– xo, R

One-Day Read, that is. Very surprising. 2020 is clearly gonna be a memorable year for books that rob me of my precious slumber.

Before we begin, YES, I have been AWOL, and NO, you don’t get to know why.

Today, I’m reviewing Followers by Megan Angelo.

Cover Talk

Another book I maaaaaaaaaaybe bought just because the cover is so goddamn beautiful. Actually, fun fact: Georgie bought this book for me, along with Such a Fun Age, for now particular reason, out of nowhere, and it was just the most random, kindest thing to do that I don’t think I’ll forget it for the rest of my life. I mean, he’s pretty great all around, but sometimes, it’s those small, unexpected things that catch you right in the gut, isn’t it?

The Summary Heist

An electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make and the stunning moment that changes the world as we know it forever

Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss―a striving wannabe A-lister―who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss’s methods are a little shady and sometimes people get hurt? Their legions of followers can’t be wrong.

Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity―twelve million loyal followers―Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks.

Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we’ll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection.

Robyn Says

This was very very good. And sooooooooo creepy. I legit want to smash my phone with a hammer – I mean, I’ve wanted to do that for a while, but I really really want to do it after finishing this book. The vision of the future painted in this novel is grimly believable, and I quite enjoyed the dual narratives of 2016 and 2051.

I won’t say much, because to say anything about the plot will spoil it and I recommend going into this one blind, but it was a really great sci-fi lite. The contemporary story was probably the better of the two, perfectly capturing the current cultural climate of social media stars, cancel culture, and the 24-hour news cycle. It’s bleak, fam.

The characters are pretty great, as well. I felt uncomfortably called out by Orla, but I guess that’s the point. Floss was perfect, too, a kinda-sorta villain with a heart. I think more time could have been spent developing the future plot, starring Marlow. I would have liked a more vivid description of the world post cell-phone apocalypse (oops, spoiler?), and similarly, a richer protagonist to guide us through it all. I felt that Marlow and her story were devices for the story, a means of depicting the end of Orla and Floss’s story. But still, overall, it was enough of a page-turner that I finished this is LESS THAN 24 HOURS.

Yeah, what can I say. I’m amazing. So is this book.

Verdict

Read it. ONE. DAY. READ. VERY GOOD.

Best Lines

Didn’t take notes, don’t be surprised.

Fancasting couch

Orla – Honor Swinton Byrne

Floss – Anya Taylor-Joy

Marlow – Nathalie Emmanuel

Book Boyfriend material

The Ukrainian neighbour with the terrace. Obviously.

Rating

Eight and a half out of ten gossip website articles that are casually bringing about the end of society as we know it.

ROBYN’S FINAL THOUGHT

Just this:

Phones are the new enemy. Destroy them before they destroy us.

Fun times as always 😉

– xo, R

So I’ve been thinking about this blog. Blogs. Are they even still a thing? Whether they are or not is irrelevant to me, I couldn’t care less what other people are doing or not doing with their blogs (blogs god that fucking word). But I’ve been thinking about this blog, my blog, and I think I want a change. I don’t want to abandon it, because it’s my one consistent form of writing these days, but I gotta say, I am getting bored of just using it for book reviews. I still think it’s fun and worthwhile to publicly review the books I loved, liked, and loathed, but I also want to try something different.

So, inspired by a recent-ish post from BookRiot.com, I am going to try something new. Introducing Thursday Thoughts, a weekly (I hope) post about something book-related, that isn’t a book review. Meandering, bull-shitty, navel-gazing drivel, maybe, but definitely not a book review.

First topic: What was your favorite book as a child?

Wow, so that’s not actually an easy one to answer. I had so many favourites over the course of my childhood. The first book I remember reading and loving and thinking about loving to read was Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are – a classic, proving that even as a tiny human, I had good taste.

Other books followed, each one my all-time favourite in turn – Little Women, The Hobbit, Gone With The Wind. (Yeah, I was a weird kid.) Then, too, I had favourite series, and favourite books in those series – the Bailey School Kids, The Baby-sitters Club, Redwall, the Dragonriders of Pern. I was a voracious reader, an obsessive reader, a re-reader. I still am, I think, but somehow, it’s not the same. But nothing compares to those days before cell phones and on-demand streaming, when there was nothing good on TV and I had no social life to distract me, when the world in my books was far safer and saner than anything in my real life. I would spend hours and hours reading, bingeing books like an addict. My evil step-father would yell at me for reading too long and for reading at the table, and the mean old lady librarians would try to stop me from signing out too many books, but nothing stopped me. I tracked which books I had read by whether or not the covers had tiny chunks bitten out of them, evidence they had been found by my pet cockatiels Cutie and his brother Daisy, both of whom loved to munch on paperback covers.

My most vivid childhood reading memory is the time my mom bought me a pretty fresh copy of Little Women from the second-hand bookstore we used to hit up weekly, like it was church (and I guess it was, in a way). I read that book over and over and over, getting to the final chapter when Jo and the girls say goodbye to girlhood, and then flipping right back to the first page and Christmas at the March house. And then, one night, I fell asleep in the middle of reading – not a rare occurrence, but notable on this occasion because I had rolled right over the book in the middle of the night, destroying the binding of the book. I was so upset when I woke up in the morning and discovered my favourite book of the moment murdered by my own mass. And this was back in the day, when books were a luxury and not easy to replace. I cried, of course, and tried to tape the poor ruined thing back together, but in the end just put the whole bundle of loose pages in an elastic, and when I went to re-read it again, I would read each individual page, one at a time, like a medieval monk turning over his leaves of vellum. And it was wonderful and strange and monumental, because somehow that made the next reading of the book distinctly physical. The act of reading the recto and the verso of each page, and then laying it down carefully on the read pile and moving on to the next page on top of the unread pile, was the sort of meditative experience I’d never encountered before in my young life, and eventually, that mattered more than the story. I outgrew Little Women, but never my deep connection to and appreciation for books as artifacts, as physical vessels for the stories I loved, and still love, so deeply.

My bullshit is not as artless as it once was, and my writing not so elegant, but good gravy, this was nice. Thanks for reading, if you did, and if you didn’t, I guess you won’t mind if I say screw you.

– xo, R

Let me tell you about my weekend, my lovely loves. My weekend featured a Thing that has not occurred since I was a feckless youth, attending precisely 11% of my classes and spending the majority of my time on extracurricular reading comprised equally of high-brow lit and total smut. That Thing?

The One-Day Read. The 24-hour-power-through read. The don’t-stop-til-you-drop-the-book read. It was GLORIOUS. I felt like a kid again, with the free time, attention span, and wrinkle-free complexion of university-age Robyn. What a goddamn miracle.

So today I obviously have no choice but to review the amaze-balls book behind this marathon read – it’s Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.

Cover Talk

I hate to say that I bought this book because of the cover but… yeah, I bought this book because of the cover. I love it, love the colours, love the design, love the texture of it. And the font is good.

The Summary Heist

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. A mother to two small girls, she started out as a blogger and has quickly built herself into a confidence-driven brand. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night. Seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, a security guard at their local high-end supermarket accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. 

Robyn Says

I gotta say –

This book is fucking  a m a z i n g. Like, I’m sitting here wracking my brain for something that I had an issue with or something that could have been improved, but guys, I got nothing. The writing is stunning – plot, characters, themes, fucking setting, the writing style, all of it was just *chefs kiss* perfect. I really can’t say much about it at all, other than this was by far the best book I’ve read this year – so far.

And then, not only is this a fast-paced, excellently written book, it’s also kind of an important one as well. The exploration of racial tension in the era of ‘wokeness’ is exceptional, and resonated deeply with me. The author is a WOC, making this an Own Voices read, and although this is told from the perspective of a black woman in the US, I felt the story and the characters were just as relevant for any WOC living in the western world.

Verdict

Read it. ONE. DAY. READ.

Best Lines

Wayyyyyy too many… but take one for a sample.

“Emira realized that Briar probably didn’t know how to say good-bye because she never had to do it before. But whether she said good-bye or not, Briar was about to become a person who existed without Emira. She’d go to sleepovers with girls she met at school, and she’d have certain words that she’d always forget how to spell. She’d be a person who sometimes said things like, “Seriously?” or “That’s so funny” and she’d ask a friend if this was her water or theirs. Briar would say good-bye in yearbook signatures and through heartbroken tears and through emails and over the phone. But she’d never say good-bye to Emira, which made it seem that Emira would never be completely free from her. For the rest of her life and for zero dollars an hour, Emira would always be Briar’s sitter.”

Fancasting couch

Can’t do it for this book… the characters were so vivid in my mind, I can’t pick actors to take their places. Sorry fam.

Book Boyfriend material

Emira, obvs.

Rating

Ten out of ten grimy pink phonecases (you will understand when you read it, but for now, trust me that it’s a beautiful reference).

ROBYN’S FINAL THOUGHT

I mean…

Just… slow clap. Slow clap all around. Now excuse me while I go stress out about my own writing…

– xo, R

Well, the book slump is over, thanks to a truly gut-wrenching read that I did not expect to be so affected by. It’s a tough one to talk about, but I’m gonna give it my best.

Today’s review is about Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.

Cover Talk

Ominous. Sinister.Very appropriate. I like it.

The Summary Heist

From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville’s children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress–with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past–Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish. 

Robyn Says

This was a very different book than the one I had expected when I read that summary. Say Nothing is intense, and long, and utterly compelling. Keefe’s writing is stellar, which is no surprise considering he is a writer for the New Yorker, but sometimes the ease and elegance of his prose is easy to overlook when you think about how much research this book must have required. It’s not simply the scale of the research either, but the scope as well – this book touches on so many different events and versions of events and people involved in those events, over the span of a century… it’s incredible. And controversial topics, too. Despite being firmly on the side of Irish independence myself, I found that I appreciated Keefe’s relative lack of bias. (I think he’s on the side of the separatists, as well, though certainly not the paramilitaries and the violence they brought to the conflict).

I thought this book would be an examination of Jean McConville’s tragic disappearance and the ensuing search to discover her fate, along the lines of a true crime nonfiction. What I got instead was a stunningly comprehensive study of Northern Ireland’s violent war, a history of the IRA and it’s various branches and key players, and a deeper understanding of a subject I’d only had a very basic awareness of, thanks to Sean Bean and Brad Pitt. This book is absolutely stunning, and I highly recommend reading it. It made me desperate to learn more about Northern Ireland and the Troubles, but sadly, Toronto Public Library doesn’t seem to have many books that seem as interesting as Say Nothing. I do recommend watching Steve McQueen’s debut film, Hunger to learn more about the hunger strikes of the 70s.

Verdict

Read it. A compelling tale of one family’s tragedy, set against an illuminating examination of the “troubles” of North Ireland’s struggle for independence.

Best Lines

As I mentioned above, this was a very well-written book. I am relying, as always, on Goodreads to find the best quotes, since I pretty much tore through this book so fast I barely had time to blink, let alone take notes.

– Claude Lévi-Strauss once observed that, “for the majority of the human species, and for tens of thousands of years, the idea that humanity includes every human being on the face of the earth does not exist at all. The designation stops at the border of each tribe […]

– Dating back to the Iliad, ancient Egypt and beyond, burial rites have formed a critical function in most human societies. Whether we cremate a loved one or inter her bones, humans possess a deep-set instinct to mark death in some deliberate, ceremonial fashion. Perhaps the cruelest feature of forced disappearance as an instrument of war is that it denies the bereaved any such closure, relegating them to a permanent limbo of uncertainty.

– Outrage is conditioned not by the nature of the atrocity but by the affiliation of the victim and the perpetrator. Should the state be accorded more leniency because, legally speaking, it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force? Or, conversely, should we hold soldiers and cops to a higher standard than paramilitaries?

Fancasting couch

Not appropriate at all.

Book Boyfriend material

DEFINITELY not appropriate.

Rating

Nine and a half out of 10 VERY GOOD BOOKS.

ROBYN’S FINAL THOUGHT

THIS WAS A VERY SINCERE POST AND I AM VERY NOT USED TO THAT SO. FORGIVE THE AWKWARDNESS. Back to normal, with the stupid jokes and the gifs, with the next review, which will be posted soonish.

– xo, R

I’m in one. It’s terrible. Approximately 1.6 billion books on my TBR and I still can’t find a book I want to read.

I mean, I’m reading. The no twitter thing is working, of course. But my dudes, my heart just isn’t in the books I’ve got on the go – some science fiction, some literary fiction, a few smutty romances. You know, the usual. I’m just not feeling any of it.

I need a series. No, I need a fantasy series. Shit, I need a high fantasy series. Dragons makes everything better. Throw in a wizard and you got yourself a goddamn winner. But I feel like I’ve read everything that would fall into this category?? Unless…

Do I dare…

Has the time come…

IT’S WITCHER TIME, BABY.

Aw yeah. Let’s do this.

– xo, R

Howdy, y’all. I believe I promised an actual review, and since this week has been insane at work (program planning for 2020 is in full swing and I went into panic mode after reviewing 2019’s fourth quarter stats… #librarylife), I’m going to make good on my promise to review my three favourite books of 2019, starting with number 3.

It’s one I held out against for a very long time (and also the wait list for the hardcover is still like 5 million people long… okay, 501 as of today – and this book was published in 2017!)… Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.

Cover Talk

I gotta admit, part of the reason I wasn’t so eager to read this book despite all the hype, aside from the fact that I am suspicious of book hype in general, was the cover. I loathe it with a fiery passion. It doesn’t fit the book, in my opinion, and even if you overlook the generic design, the colours are hideous. It looks like those books you had to read in high school, the ones that came in sets of like 50 and that you’d never heard of and wouldn’t be able to name today, the ones that didn’t seem like real books at all but always had some bizarre twisted shit in the otherwise forgettable plots that low-key fucked you up for the rest of your life. Right?

The Summary Heist

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . the only way to survive is to open your heart.

Robyn Says

Holy. Fucking. Shiznit. This book. THIS. BOOK.

If I hadn’t had to work the day I started reading it, it would have been a one-day read. Fucking work, man. As it was, I read it on my breaks and on my lunch, when I got home, on the treadmill, during dinner, before bed… and I finished the next day, sobbing into my cereal.

This is a story… I don’t even know how to talk about this story. I can only speak for myself, but the most extraordinary thing was how this book captured how deeply trauma can damage a person, and how simple it is for a person to hide that damage quite well, in order to go about her day-to-day life. The slow reveal of Eleanor’s past is masterfully crafted. I really can’t say too much more about this novel. In my opinion, it’s best read without knowing much at all. I will say that there is a cat, and she is a life-saver, as most cats are.

Verdict

Read it. There’s a reason half a million people have given this book 4.3 out of 5 stars… it’s because it’s FREAKING AMAZING.

Best Lines

*Winifred Sanderson voice* GoodREEEEEEEADS!

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”

“…in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder”

“Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are.”

Fancasting couch

Eleanor – Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Raymond – pre-douchebag Chris Pratt

Sammy – Jim Broadbent

Polly – the prettiest google image result for “parrot plant”

Glen – the Prince

Book Boyfriend material

This is not a book boyfriend kind of book… but Raymond, I guess.

Rating

Nine out of ten perfect little rescue cats who give you a will to carry on, even when everything is shit and life doesn’t seem worth it. DO IT FOR THE CAT, GIRL.

ROBYN’S FINAL THOUGHT

FYI it is much easier to trash a book you hate than it is to write even a single word about a book you love. There is probably a life lesson in there but it’s not even Tuesday and I’m so so tired.

Next up, book #2 in my top 3 of 2019!

– xo, R

It’s that time of year again, time to burn the Yule goat and catch the Red Man in his flying troika! And also read, because every holiday includes reading when you’re me.

This year, I reread my all-time favourite Christmas book: Landline by Rainbow Rowell. (And if you need a refresher on the ingenious concept that is the RiRi’d Review, go to here).

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble; it has been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems beside the point now.

Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn’t expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts…

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

Robyn says…

My whole heart is full of CHRISTMAS EMOTION. Also, this entire book can be summarized (as so many great pieces of literature can be) in a single gif from The Office:

RiRi says…

This is exactly how this book makes me feel, too, Rihanna. In like, a Christmas-y way.

The RxR Rating…

10 our of 10, best Christmas book ever. Will reread every year on December 17th-25th. Magic. Fucking. Phone.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, blessed solstice – whatever you’re celebrating, I hope it’s a wonderful end to this crazy year.

Back soon with my 2019 reading wrap-up.

– xo, R

So it’s November 26th and the end of NaNoWriMo fast approaches, and my word count is currently sitting at… 13k words.

Yep.

I dunno, guys. I think I might be over Nano. I still really love the idea of a national novel writing challenge, but I saw a really interesting twitter thread that articulated some reservations I’ve had with the choice of November for the month chosen for the whole thing. It’s such a terrible month for it. If you over look the alliteration (haha november novel geddit *rolls eyes*), it makes no sense. November is busy for everyone, with the pre-holiday season in full swing, Americans have their Thanksgiving, Canadians have the American’s Black Friday sales, and everyone is reeling from the time change coupled with the shortened days and the cold bite of winter’s first breath. It is the WORST month to try to write a whole motherfucking novel, man. THE. WORST. Why not May? There is literally nothing important in May. Or even February. Fuck, January is resolution time, why not ride that wave?

Am I disappointed that I won’t “win” this year? No, fuck that noise. I’m amazing. Plus, I have 13k more words than I had on October 31, so I’m counting this my own win.

So yeah, that’s my Thought for today. Thumbs up for setting a daily writing goal and for making a commitment to actually finish a writing project, but fuck November, man.

– xo, R