You Should Read This: Top Ten Tuesday

I’m trying to get back on the wagon, guys! One of my 2013 Blogging Resolutions was to blog more often, and in the past four weeks I’ve completely and utterly failed to do so. I explained some of the reasons for this in my last post, but none of those reasons were excuses – the real excuse is laziness + apathy. But I’m determined to break out of the funk! I can do it!

(I also resolve never to use the term “funk” in that context again. It should only apply to music. Specifically, BBC 6 Music’s amazing Sunday Funk & Soul Show. Don’t judge me.)

This week, the ladies at The Broke and The Bookish want to know the top ten books that we all recommend the most. I’m an unrepentant book pusher. That said, though, I’m also really reluctant to recommend books that mean a lot to me – there’s too much at stake. What if the person doesn’t like it? What if – even worse – they have no opinion on the recommendation whatsoever? How could I ever trust their taste again?! I don’t want to have to unfriend people over a book in real life, but I will.

Without further ado and in no particular order, here are 10 books that I’m likely to throw at you if you come within a ten-foot radius:

1. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
I make no bones about my love of this book. So far, I think the only person I’ve successfully pushed it on is my boyfriend, but he liked it! Read the whole thing in a day and a half. But I haven’t pitched it to a lot of other people. I’m not sure why…

All Quiet on the Blogging Front – but Happy, Too

I’ve been missing in action for a while, because life kinda took over for a while there. Mostly I’m writing this to try to get back into the habit of writing at all, rather than to provide a list of excuses for my lack of posts. More than anything, I’m really excited by all the things that are happening this spring! Despite the snow we’re having in southern Ontario, it is spring, and that means that everything’s growing and changing – you just can’t see it yet. But you will! Soon!

A Life in Three Popes

I’m sitting in a cafe in Yorkville, in Toronto, watching the BBC live-stream a thin, capped chimney a quarter of the way around the world. I’m watching thousands upon thousands of people – mostly Italians, I presume, but there are flags from dozens of other countries – cheer and cry and sing in soggy St Peter’s Square as they watch white smoke pour out of that chimney, smoke that signals a new leader for the Catholic Church. I’m mostly tuning in because everyone else is; I’m also keeping up with my twitter feed, smiling at the jokes, reading with interest the complete bewilderment of the non-Catholics I follow. As with everything that the Catholic Church does, this moment is ostentatiously over-the-top, steeped in tradition, ritualistic.

And it’s so familiar.