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Memes Miscellany Recommendations Watchlist

Ten Recs for Halloween

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, we have a Halloween Freebie. Well, it’s a freebie, so I’ve put together some random (mostly) book-related videos and articles that I really liked recently. Hope you’ll enjoy these too!

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Art & Illustration Recommendations Watchlist

Alice: Bizarre & Compelling Czech Film

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland gets a makeover in this old Czech film from 1988. And what a makeover it is!

The movie starts off on an eerie note, when little Alice, troubled and lonely, begins to tell you about her dream. It’s told like a child’s story, even a nursery rhyme, but the movie is clearly intended for older audience.

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Best of List Memes Starred Recommendations Watchlist

Wednesday Weekly: Meet My Pets

It’s time for The Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. The topic for August 4, 2021 is Meet My Pets.

It’s a lifelong desire for me to bring home a pet dog. Perhaps some day I shall! So, I have no images to share for now, but I do have some fabulous links about pets that steal the show.

First, look up the YouTube channel by MochaMilk. This YouTuber has two wonderful dogs, though I’m partial towards the Samoyed named Wooyoo (meaning milk in Korean). I just adore this dog, and the videos are always shot so well.

Another YouTube channel is Life with Malamutes. They are giant fuzzballs, so close to their wolfish ancestors. I love Phil the most, and here’s a video of them doing some food-tasting.

I’d recommend the movie Hachiko, on the off chance that you’ve not seen it. It’s a moving tale about a dog that waited for his best friend, years after even his family had moved on. The dog here is the Japanese Akita, and he’s beautiful.

For fictional animal sidekicks, I have a full post here. There’s no scarcity of those in my life, thankfully.

Who are your pets? Let’s go meet them!

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Books Miscellany Recommendations Watchlist

Monthly Wrap-Up: July 2021 / June 2021

June and July 2021 have been quite cruel in terms of reading and blogging. I have been apartment hunting and it really takes over everything else! I also ended up DNF’ing a lot of books which just added to the reading slump. Hoping all’s well with everyone, and here’s a wrap-up post.

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Books Miscellany Music & Poetry Watchlist

Monthly Wrap-Up: May 2021

May 2021 was a slow reading month for me. I blogged much more than I read, which was unusual, but all thanks to the wonderful Wyrd And Wonder challenge. The link has all the posts for that challenge, most of these being SFF rec lists, but one standout read was Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi.

Aside from that, here’s a wrap-up for the month.

Lang Leav’s The Universe of Us

A very short book, with poems of varying length. These are all love/ heartbreak poems, but I think we can view them from a non-romantic lens too. I’m sure we’ve all had friends and loved ones with whom we had a parting, Lang’s poetry would ring true for those relationships as well. Rating: B

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Art & Illustration Best of List Books Memes Watchlist

Desert Island Reads #WyrdAndWonder

(PEGASUS IMAGE CREDIT: Svetlana Alyuk on 123RF.com)

For the Wyrd & Wonder challenge, throughout May 2021 we have a series of challenge prompts. I’ve managed to tackle most of these by now, and our favorite Desert Island Reads are next on the list. You choose 8 (audio)books, 1 piece of media, and 1 artifact.

As our hosts put it: “Imagine yourself cast away with nothing to do but read. Okay, so this doesn’t sound entirely awful – but choosing our limited island library is the real challenge. We’re not going to worry about solving the challenge of survival, just how to while away the days (weeks? months?) until we’re rescued.”

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Best of List Memes Watchlist

Page to Screen Adaptations Some Day #Wyrd&Wonder

Screen Adaptations - Asterix GIF

The Wyrd and Wonder challenge is running through this month. Today we are talking about any Page to Screen adaptation / dramatization that we would really like to see get made. I thought I’d have a go at this for the SFF genre, and I think many of these may already be in the works.

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Books Memes Watchlist

Top 10 Recent Reads/ April Wrap-Up

This week I have decided to combine the April wrap-up and the Top 10 Tuesday topic of books I recently read. It was a busy month, unlike March, with many hits and misses.

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Best of List Memes Watchlist

Wednesday Weekly: 20 TV Shows I Binge-Watch(ed)

I discovered a cool meme recently, The Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. The topic for March 31 is TV Shows I Binge-Watch(ed). Here they are, and maybe you’ll find something new-to-watch here!

1 / Jessica Jones (Season 1)

Why I binge-watched: the “neo-Noir” tones, a Marvel Comics hero rediscovering confidence, great friendships, Krysten Ritter as Jessica, David Tennant as Kilgrave, and Melissa Rosenberg’s screenwriting.

2 / Stranger (Seasons 1 and 2)

Available on Netflix. A public prosecutor teams up with a cop to fish out the corrupt, while their two departments remain at loggerheads. Realistic but still marvelously uplifting. 

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Books Memes Watchlist

Top 10 Books with Great WorldBuilding

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. And this week, you get to choose top 10 places from books you’d like to live in. Honestly, I couldn’t really remember any specific places — so I decided to focus on worldbuilding instead.

1 / The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. Detailed and intricate mythology: World Tree, void, floating city of Sky, Shadow worlds…

2 / Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. A dystopian, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, controlled ruthlessly by its dictators.

3 / Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. A castle that can travel as the magician Howl dictates, fed by a magical fireplace engine.

4 / Lord of the Rings Series by J.R.R. Tolkien. Have you seen the movies? Enough said.

5 / The Bitterbynde Trilogy by Cecilia Dart-Thornton. This Tolkien-esque Faerie world has been sealed off, but some humans still long for it.

6 / The Sevenwaters Series by Juliet Marillier. The tension between the Celts and the Britons gets an epic, magical portrayal in ancient Ireland.

7 / Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Alice falls into a dream-world where the Queen of Hearts bakes some tarts. Well, we know how this goes.

8 / Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson. The Malazan Empire is in turmoil and the imprisoned Crippled God plots to escape.

9 / Game of Thrones Series by George R. Martin. The Hundred Years’ War gets re-written, with oodles of grimdark and gore. Ask HBO.

10 / Imperial Radch Series by Ann Leckie. Radch has expanded its inter-galactic empire by means of sentient AI spaceships and soldiers.

I’m sure I’ve missed out several as this list was only for 10 books! Which ones would you add on?