#those of u who had many muses do u ever feel that nostalgia or still have that love for that one character?

[hopemerged]

I HAVE TO SAY THAT-

[macktm]

          WHEW! hey angels. i’m really out here taking the time i could be using to work on my essay to write this huh. love this for me. anyway though, i’m bri ( or aubs or aubrianna or whatever! ), i’m twenty, i live in the midwest ( est ), and i’m playing the actual love of my life, mack. we love a good harry styles clone. SMFSLDFM  more on that later though. under the cut is a mini-bio to get you up to date with his intricate backstory in as little words as possible, some statistics, some headcanons, and some connection ideas! feel free to give this post a LIKE, though, and i’lll come to you to plot!

discord: spencer reid stan#8320

pinterest.

aesthetics: clean-cut suits hiding button-downs that are never buttoned all the way up, playing a competitive & shoulder-jabbing game of soccer outside the studio between takes, and handmade fresh fruit & champagne basket arrays. 

biography,

mack is from glencoe, in scotland. there, he’s the middle child of three, and the youngest of two boys. his big brother is a brute and his younger sister could serve mack up for dinner if she wanted to. 

when he lived in scotland ( which was up until about six years ago, when he was eighteen ), you could always find mack playing a brutal game of shinty in the hills. he was a boy’s boy for sure, and still is ldkfmgdflkgm. he loves goofing off and having a good time and generally being immersed in the company of people he loves. he’d spend way too much time with his family, in the kitchen pretending to help with dinner when he was actually just eating and talking and distracting his father and sister ( the bred cooks in his family ). 

mack always found himself compensating for his drunk of a big brother. his brother, graham, is four years older than him, and constantly caused the family strife before he was kicked out. mack, being the heartfelt clown he is, was the beating heart of the family. he kept everyone in love with each other, he made sure there wasn’t a day in which each of his family members were wanting--of attention, of quality time, of someone to fetch the groceries while laney ( his sister, five years younger than him ) was at school. so when mack decided to leave glencoe and start traveling on his own, his family definitely felt winded.

mack is so kind and loving and takes decisions that’d affect his loved ones so seriously that his parents looked to him, rather than to his big brother, to be the heir of their manor. but mack is also..... fickle and fleeting and can’t understand why people want to tie him down and put those good qualities to work to save his life. so instead of agreeing, he broke his family’s heart and decided to follow his own--throughout europe, and then to asia, and finally to america, where he has been setting down for four years as an actor in xoxo. 

statistics,

full name.    mackinley damien ross.

aka.    mack, mickey.

occupation / show & role.     xoxo, damien lafferety.

age.    twenty-four.

pronouns.    he/him.

orientation.    bisexual.

physical appearance,

hair.    curly & brown.

eyes.    blue.

build.    muscular & slim.

scars.    an appendix scar on his abdomen, and a scar down his right bicep from when he cut his arm open on wire on the ground outside as a kid.

tattoos.    n/a.

personality,

zodiac.    virgo.

alignment.    chaotic good.

hogwarts.    gryffindor.

positive traits.    nurturing, ardent, benevolent, fun-loving, & compassionate.

negative traits.   selfish, fickle, fleeting, & hedonistic.

how they’re portayed.     abrasive, promiscuous, selfish, hedonistic, & withheld / reticent.

medical record,

mental.    n/a.

physical.    has broken a lot of bones playing sports over the years. once had asthma, and still carries his inhaler around for the sake of nostalgia.

phobias.    ladders & terminal illnesses.

eyesight.    no glasses necessary.

drug use.    occasionally. isn’t big on them, but isn’t opposed to doing anything non-addicting.

alcohol use.    recreationally.

diet.    his diet consists of intricate and carefully handled homemade meals.

background,

birth place.    glencoe, scotland.

parents.    isla macintosh & alexander ross.

siblings.    graham ross ( 28 ) & laney ross ( 19 ).

pets.    n/a.

education.    n/a. 

languages.    english, french, italian, & russian.

headcanons,

mack is for sure what harry styles is to the press of the music world. every fic written about him is based on this bad boy heterosexual image of him that the world loves to flaunt and daydream about. it doesn’t help that he loves to play the part he knows everyone else loves to lay out for him. he finds it a little fun to pretend that he was typecast for his lothario, bad boy role in xoxo. but he definitely wasn’t. mack, beneath that tabloid gossip, craves real & true love, would be the first to give his life for the people he loves, gives far more than he receives, etc. he’s just... lowkey about it. his clownery doesn’t really help dial down his frivolous press image either but.... oh well. LMDLGKMFG

mack still keeps in touch with his little sister, who thinks he’s an idiot and hates his acting ( lovingly <3 KDLMFG ). he doesn’t keep in touch with his older brother, though, who’s still a drunk and now has inherited the ross estate after their parents died three years ago.

he lives in a gated la community in a house he bought. it’s the first house he has ever had since he began traveling at eighteen, and the not moving around gig is making him a little antsy.

he loves being surrounded by people. he loves throwing cast parties at his house, drinking wine with friends all night, playing stupid party games, and making people laugh until they cry. between takes he’s never in his dressing room. that thing is probably barren. he’s always goofing off, always kicking a ball outside the studio, always playing pranks on cast members, etc. mack is rarely not interacting with people. 

so when he is at home alone at the end of a long day... you can bet he’s wishing he had company. this urge for “something, always” has definitely gotten him into trouble before.

connection ideas,

traveling friend. someone he met when he was out in the world for a year? someone who took his hand and played the responsibility-free game with him? maybe they’re the one who led/pushed mack to pursue acting ( with them? ) in america?

ex. someone who broke mack’s heart because they didn’t want to be serious in the way he wanted to be, someone mack let down when they were just about to get serious because he wanted to keep their relationship private, someone who wanted to used mack for fake relationship clout but quickly realized that mack--once he realizes you don’t actually want him--will make it a point to make you look like a fool while he continues to sleep around openly.

line-buddy. someone who’s always going over lines with mack and/or getting frustrated when their studying inevitably gets sidetracked by mack’s need to drag them out to a gross karaoke bar or something.

on-again-off-again. someone mack is always with, and then fighting with, and then making up with, and then going back to, and then leaving, and then realizing he can’t leave because he wants to give them his attention and he wants their attention in return, etc.

hateship. literally just people who hate mack and think he’s a reckless, brainless idiot. because he is. maybe him and these people have fucked before. u know. MDGVLDFKGM

pr-esque relationship / party friend. someone who is literally always matching mack’s energy, going out all the time, singing karaoke drunk at the top of their lungs together, etc. they’re always realizing they’re being watched and inevitably make out or are all over one another in the meantime to publicly boost but also lowkey make fun of the images the tabloids like to dress up for them. it’s like... these two people ( mack and the mystery muse ) know their reputations are beyond their control, so they live up to them instead, only to go home at the end of the night completely platonically.

caretaking relationship. oh mack loves to nurture. so someone who nurtures and looks out for him right back? we’re eating good tonight.

literally so many more. i’m a vessel. DKLMVKDMFG

[ishgard]

emerald, lapis lazuli, zebra stone

Me, reblogging the meme: I’mma just have fun and keep the answers ~~short and breezy~~.

Also me: VOMITING WORDS IS MY HOBBY. CRYING AS I JUST KEEP TYPING AND CAN’T STOP MYSELF. PUTTING IT ALL UNDER A CUT BECAUSE IT’S UNHOLY LONG.

THANK YOU NILLA I LOVE YOU

emerald: how my muse tells someone they love them without words 

Oh boy, this one’s gonna get long. (Spoiler: They all got long) Ahru is generally pretty openly physically affectionate with loved ones. There are times when she becomes more withdrawn, but she’s usually eager to greet her beloved friends with big hugs. The same holds true with lovers, (once she’s in an established relationship more or less) and she genuinely just enjoys being close to them. 

i absolutely 100% have had delightful visions of ahru running and tackling gaius and just wrapping herself around his upper torso 

Sex is also a pretty big one - admittedly she used to be a bit more flippant and casual in her more intimate relationships, but as she’s gotten older and so, so much more tired, she doesn’t find herself very interested in those kinds of dalliances, barring those more ‘established’ relationships. 

She’s also pretty big on gift-giving, and while she’s not the best cook in the world if she’s having fun and wanting to make something special for you, that’s a pretty big give-away (platonic or otherwise). Honestly, for a bard, she’s really BAD at telling people how she feels so she really just shows it in about any other way imaginable. She’ll take interest in what the other person likes, their home and their history (if such things are ‘on the table’) - Ahru loves to soak up information anyway, so tacking on the bonus factor of that information being attacked to someone important to her makes it extra savory and dear to her. 

lapis lazuli: where ‘home’ is to my muse

“Where the heart is”…? Home is such big thing for Ahru, which stems into the meta kind of behind her family name.

Hiraeth is a Welsh concept of longing for home, which can be loosely translated as ‘nostalgia’, or, more commonly, ‘homesickness’. Many Welsh people claim ’hiraeth’ is a word which cannot be translated, meaning more than solely “missing something” or “missing home.”

Way back during beta when I saw this I thought heck yeah I love it, it sounds awesome, looks awesome, the meaning is awesome. Yanno. Like ya do. I hadn’t really anticipated just how deeply it’d end up rooting itself into Ahru herself or her clan. I could go on and on about this for a long time though, but in brief the whole of the Hiraeth bloodline shares this underlying sense of, well, ‘hiraeth’, and Ahru isn’t an exception to that.  

Furthermore, Hir’asra, the Hiraeth village, was never ‘home’ to Ahru, even though it was where she was born. She was ostracized and looked down upon for not being capable of inheriting her mothers powers, and often sent away to various mentors in the hopes of ‘fixing her’. 

Ahru never really had a sense of home until the Waking Sands, and losing that devastated her. The Rising Stones being her new home, the Scions her ‘found family’, she’s extremely protective of both. 

Likewise, Fortemps Manor and Camp Dragonhead are both very much ‘homes’ to her, places of rest where she’s found solace, though the latter (well, both really, just to different extents) is much more bittersweet these days. Whenever she’s in Ishgard, I headcanon that she usually stays in her own quarters Edmond had prepared for her at the manor. 

But Ahru has always been at home on the road. While she’s never had strong faith, there was once a time she believed she was under the Wanderer’s eye, and for the most part embraced it as an answer to that sense of ‘hiraeth’ - and still does to this day, albeit with even less faith attached to the sentiment. 

As for the gooey gushy ‘people who feel like home’ bits; yeah, if Gaius is there, she’s content in some fashion or another. I have a whole fucking AU about her staying at HIS manor in Garlemald (post-a lot of messy stuff) and that’s a really big ‘home’ for her that she nor I ever expected but wow if that isn’t capital ‘A’ capital ‘U’. Also Alphy. If she’s got that boy with her nothing else matters. 

zebra stone: what gets my muse excited

NEW PLACES! NEW THINGS! NEW BOOKS! Ahru gets pretty tired honestly, and where she is now, well… she’s a pretty bad depressive episode, so the things that usually excite her admittedly are a little dulled at times of late. But she really does love traveling, and seeing new places, learning about new people and cultures and trying new foods! She’s got an adventurers heart through and through, it’s just a little worn and tired right now. 

Oh, good, god, though - can a fight get her blood pumping. I wouldn’t say she’s always scrapping for a fight and she absolutely isn’t the sort to butt heads just to throw fists, but any fight that challenges her, that makes her sweat and bleed? Let’s just say her and Zenos have a VERY strong albeit very twisted bond. When he struck her down at Rhalgr’s Reach, despite every other horrible thing happening around her, for one selfish moment she was elated. She was so close to being decimated, but in that instant she felt such a raw, instinctive urge to live, and it felt so goddamn good. 

“Losing” Zenos had a pretty confusing effect on her, one that is still resounding to present day (MSQ), and she loathes Elidibus all the more for wearing his skin around, as she has a strange sense of “kinship” and “respect” for Zenos himself. BUT THAT’S GETTING PRETTY FAR OFF THE SUBJECT HERE their fucked up ‘relationship’ just gives me life, and I’m so excited to see what happens when we meet Elezenos gosh. 

Anyway, in the deepest of her depressions, a good fight like this is the best way to get her riled up. 

[suchagiantnerd]

54 Books, 1 Year

2018 was my first full year back at work after my mat leave, and thanks to all the time I spend on the subway, my yearly reading total is back up to over 50 books!

2018 was a dark year, and I made a conscious effort to read more books from authors on the margins of society. The more those of us with privilege take the time to listen to and learn from these voices, the better we’ll be as friends, colleagues and citizens.

You’ll also notice a lot of books about witchcraft and witches in this year’s list. What can I say? Dark times call for resorting to ANYTHING that can help dig us out of our current reality, including putting a hex on Donald Trump.

Trigger Warning: Some of the books reviewed below are about mental illness, suicide, domestic violence, sexual assault, and violence against people of colour, Indigenous people and people in the LGBTQ community.

Here are this year’s mini reviews:

1.       The Lottery and Other Stories / Shirley Jackson

Jackson’s short stories were published in the late forties and fifties, but their slow-burning creep factor holds up today. The stories involve normal people doing normal things until something small gives, and we realize something is really wrong here. As you read through the collection, take note of the mysterious man in blue. He appears in about half of the stories, always in the margins of the action. Who is he? I read him as a bit of a trickster figure, bringing chaos and mayhem with him wherever he goes. Other people have read him as the devil himself. Let me know what you think!

2.       The Ship / Antonia Honeywell

I was excited to read this YA novel about a giant cruise ship-turned-ark, designed and captained by the protagonist Lalla’s father in a dystopic near future. The premise of the book is great and brings up lots of juicy questions – where is the ship going? How long can the passengers survive together in a confined space? How did Lalla’s father choose who got to board the ship? But the author’s execution was a disappointment and focused far too much on Lalla’s inner turmoil and immaturity.

3.       The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex and Murder / Carolyn Murnick

My book club read this true crime memoir detailing the intense, adolescent friendship between Carolyn, the author, and Ashley, who was murdered in her home in her early 20s a few years after the girls’ friendship fizzled. Murnick is understandably destroyed by the murder and obsessed with the killer’s trial. The narrative loops back and forth between the trial and the girls’ paths, which diverged sharply after Ashley moved away in high school. Murnick (the self-proclaimed nerdy one) muses on the intricacies of female friendship, growing up under the microscope of the male gaze, and the last weekend she ever spent with Ashley (the hot one). This is an emotional, detailed account of a woman trying her best to bear witness to her friend’s horrific death and to honour who she was in life.

4.       The Break / Katherena Vermette

Somebody is brutally attacked on a cold winter night in Winnipeg, and Stella, a young Métis woman and tired new mother is the only witness – and even she isn’t sure what she saw. The police investigation into the attack puts a series of events in motion that make long-buried emotions bubble to the surface and ripple outwards to touch a number of people in the community, including an Indigenous teenager recently released from a youth detention center, one of the investigating officers (a Métis man walking a fine line between two worlds), and an artist. This is a tough read, especially in the era of #MMIW and #MeToo, but all the more important because of it.

5.       So You Want to Talk About Race / Ijeoma Oluo

Probably the most important book I read this year, I will never stop recommending this read to anyone and everyone. This is your Allyship 101 syllabus right here, folks. Do you really want to do better and be better as an ally? Then you need to read every chapter closely and start implementing the lessons learned right away. This book will teach you about tone policing, microaggressions and privilege, and how all of those things are harmful to people of colour and other marginalized communities.

6.       The Accusation / Bandi

This is a collection of short stories by a North Korean man (written under a pseudonym for his protection as he still lives there). The stories were actually smuggled out of the country for publication by a family friend. The characters in these stories are regular people living regular lives (as much as that is possible in North Korea). What really comes across is the fine line between laughter and tears while living under the scrutiny of a dangerous regime. There are several scenes where people laugh uncontrollably because they can’t cry, and where people start to cry because they can’t laugh. This book offers a rare perspective into a hidden world.

7.       Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen / Jazz Jennings

Some of you will be familiar with Jazz via the TLC show about her and her family, “I Am Jazz”. I’d never seen it but was inspired to read the book to gain a better understanding about what coming out as trans as a child is like. Jazz came out to her family at 5 years old (!) and her parents and siblings have had her back from the beginning. If you are still having a tough time understanding that trans women are women, full stop, this book will help get you there.

8.       A Field Guide to Getting Lost / Rebecca Solnit

When it comes to the books that gave me “all the feels”, this one tops the 2018 list. Solnit is everything - historian, writer, philosopher, culture lover, explorer. Her mind is always making connections and as you follow her through her labyrinthine thoughts you start to feel connected too. Her words on loss, nostalgia and missing a person/place/time actually made me cry, they were so true. For me, an agnostic leaning towards atheism, she illuminated the magic in the everyday that made me feel more spiritually rooted to life than I have in a long time.

9.       I Found You / Lisa Jewell

Lots of weird and bad things seem to happen in British seaside towns, don’t they? This is another psychological thriller, à la “The Girl on the Train” and “Gone Girl”. One woman finds a man sitting on the beach one morning. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. Miles away, another woman wakes up one morning to find her husband has vanished. Is the mystery man on the beach the missing husband? Dive into this page-turner and find out!

10.   The Midnight Sun / Cecilia Ekbäck

This novel is the sequel to a historical Swedish noir book I read a few years ago. Though it’s not so much a sequel, as it is a novel taking place in the same setting – Blackasen Mountain in Lapland. This story actually takes place about a hundred years after the first novel does, so it can be read on its own. Ekbäck’s stories dive into the effect of place on people – whether it’s the isolation of a harsh and long winter or the mental havoc caused by the midnight sun on sleep patterns, the people on Blackasen Mountain are always strained and ready to explode. (Oh, and there’s also a bit of the supernatural happening on this mountain too – but just a bit!)

11.   After the Bloom / Leslie Shimotakahara

Strained mother-daughter relationships. The PTSD caused by immigration and then being detained in camps in your new home. Fraught romances. Shimotakahara’s novel tackles all of this and more. Taking place in two times – 1980s Toronto and a WWII Japanese internment camp in the California desert – this story of loss, hardship, betrayal and family is both tragic and hopeful.

12.   Company Town / Madeline Ashby

In this Canadian dystopian tale, thousands of people live in little cities built on the oil rigs off the coast of Newfoundland. Hwa works as a bodyguard for the family that owns the rigs and is simultaneously trying to protect the family’s youngest child from threats, find out who is killing her sex-worker friends, mourn her brother (who died in a rig explosion), and work through her own self-esteem issues. Phew! If it sounds like too much, it is. I really did like this book, but I think it needed tighter editing and focus.

13.   The Power / Naomi Alderman

In the near-future, women and girls all over the world develop the ability to send electrical shocks out of their hands. With this newfound power, society’s gender power imbalance starts to flip. The U.S. military scrambles to try and work this to their advantage. A new religious movement starts to grow. And Tunde, a Nigerian photographer (and a dude!) travels the world, trying to document it all. This is an exciting novel that seriously asks, “what if?” in which many of the key characters cross paths.

14.   Milk and Honey / Rupi Kaur

Everyone’s reading it, so I had to too! Kaur’s poems are refreshing and healing, and definitely accessible. This is poetry for the people, for women, for daughters, mothers and sisters. These are poems about how women make themselves small and quiet, about our inner anger, about sacrifice, longing and love.

15.   Tell It to the Trees / Anita Rau Badami

In the dead of winter in small-town B.C., the body of big-city writer Anu is found outside of the Dharmas’ house, frozen to death. Anu had been renting their renovated shed, working on a novel in seclusion. As we get to know the Dharmas – angry and controlling Vikram, his quiet and frightened wife Suman, the two children, and the ghost of Vikram’s first wife, Helen, we feel more and more uneasy. Was Anu’s death just a tragic accident, or something else entirely? There is a touch of “The Good Son” in this novel…

16.   You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life / Jen Sincero

This book was huge last year and my curiosity got the better of me. But I can’t, I just can’t subscribe to this advice! All of this stuff about manifesting whatever you want reeks of privilege and is just “The Secret” repackaged for millennials and Gen-Z. Thank u, next!

17.   All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness / Sheila Hamilton

Shortly after a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, Hamilton’s husband, David, took his own life after years of little signs and indicators that something wasn’t right. Her memoir, in the aftermath of his death, is a reckoning, a tribute, and a warning to others. In it, she details the fairy tale beginning of their relationship (but even then, there were signs), the birth of their only child, and the rocky path that led to his final choice. Hamilton’s story doesn’t feel exploitative to me. It’s an important piece in the global conversation about mental health and includes lots of facts and statistics too.

18.   This Is How It Always Is / Laurie Frankel

This is a beautiful novel about loving your family members for who they are and about the tough choices parents have to make when it comes to protecting their children. Rosie and Penn have five boys (that this modern couple has five children is the most unbelievable part of the plot, frankly), but at five years old, their youngest, Claude, tells the family that he is a girl. Claude changes her name to Poppy, and Rosie and Penn decide to move the whole family to more inclusive Seattle to give Poppy a fresh start in life. Of course, the move has consequences on the other four children as well, and we follow everybody’s ups and downs over the years as they adjust and adapt to their new reality.

19.   Dumplin’ / Julie Murphy

While I didn’t love the writing or any of the characters, I do need to acknowledge the importance of this YA novel in showing a fat teenager as happy and confident in who she is. Willowdean Dickson has a job, a best friend and a passion for Dolly Parton. She also catches the attention of cute new kid, Bo, and a sweet summer romance develops between the two (with all of the miscommunications and misunderstandings you’d expect in a YA plot). This is an important book in the #RepresentationMatters movement, and is now a Netflix film if you want to skip the read!

20.   Kintu / Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

This was touted as “the great Ugandan novel” and it did not disappoint! The first part of the novel takes place in 1754, as Kintu Kidda, leader of a clan, travels to the capital of Buganda (modern day Kampala) with his entourage to pledge allegiance to the new Kabaka. During the journey, tragedy strikes, unleashing a curse on Kintu’s descendants. The rest of the novel follows five modern-day Ugandans who are descended from Kintu’s bloodline and find themselves invited to a massive family reunion. As their paths cross and family histories unfold, will the curse be broken?

21.   The Child Finder / Rene Denfeld

I bought this at the airport as a quick and thrilling travel read, and that’s exactly what it was. Naomi is a private investigator with a knack for finding missing and kidnapped children. This is because she was once a kidnapped child herself. The plot moves back and forth in time between Naomi’s current case and her own escape and recovery. There was nothing exceptional about this book, but it’s definitely a page-turner.

22.   Difficult Women / Roxane Gay

Are the women in Gay’s short stories actually difficult? Or has a sexist, racist world made things difficult for them? I think you know what my answer is. The stories are at times beautiful - like the fairy tale about a woman made of glass, and at times violent and visceral – like a number of stories about hunting and butchering. Women are everything and more.

23.   My Education / Susan Choi

I suggested this novel to my book club and I will always regret it. This was my least favourite read of the year. I thought it was going to be about a sexy and inappropriate threesome or love triangle between a student, her professor, and his wife. Instead it had a few very unsexy sex scenes and hundreds and hundreds of pages about the minutiae of academic life. I can’t see anyone enjoying this book except English professors and grad students.

24.   Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities / Rebecca Solnit

This series of essays was a balm to my soul after Ford won the provincial election. It reminded me that history is full of steps forward and steps back, and though things look bleak right now, there are millions of us around the world trying to make positive changes in big and little ways as we speak.

25.   The Woman in Cabin 10 / Ruth Ware

Another novel in the vein of “The Woman on the Train”, that is, a book featuring a young, female, unreliable narrator. Lo knows what she saw – or does she? There was a woman in the now empty Cabin 10 – or was there? And also, Lo hasn’t been eating or sleeping. But she’s been drinking a lot and not taking her medication. I’m kind of done with this genre – anyone else?

26.   My Brilliant Friend / Elena Ferrante

After hearing many intelligent women praise this novel (the first in a four-part series), my book club decided to give it a try. I didn’t fall in love with it, but I was sufficiently intrigued by the intense and passionate friendship between Lila and Lenu, two young girls growing up in post-war Naples, that I will likely read the whole series. Many claim that no writer has managed to capture the intricacy of female friendship the way that Ferrante has.

27.   The Turquoise Table: Finding Community and Connection in Your Own Front Yard / Kristin Schell

This is Schell’s non-fiction account of how she started Austin’s turquoise table movement (which has now spread further into other communities). Schell was feeling disconnected from her immediate community, so she painted an old picnic table a bright turquoise, moved it into her front yard, and started sitting out there some mornings, evenings and weekends - sometimes alone, and sometimes with her family. Neighbours started to gather for chats, snacks, card games, and more. People got to know each other on a deeper level and friendships bloomed. This book is a nice reminder that small actions matter. A small warning though – Schell is an evangelical Christian, and I didn’t know this before diving in. There is a focus on Christianity in the book, and though it’s not quite preachy, it’s very in-your-face.

28.   Sing, Unburied, Sing / Jesmyn Ward

This was hands-down my favourite novel of the year. It’s a lingering and haunting look at the generational trauma carried by the descendants of those who were enslaved and lived during the Jim Crow era. One part road trip novel, one part ghost story, the plot follows a fractured, multi-racial family as they head into the broken heart of Mississippi to pick up the protagonist’s father, who has just been released from prison.

29.   Full Disclosure / Beverley McLachlin

This is the first novel by Canada’s former Chief Justice, Beverley McLachlin. As someone who works in the legal industry and has heard her speak, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this. But, with all due respect to one of the queens, the book was very ‘meh’. The plot was a little over the top, the characters weren’t sufficiently fleshed out, and I felt that the backdrop of the Robert Pickton murders was somewhat exploitative and not done respectfully. Am I being more critical of this novel than I might otherwise be because the author is so intelligent? Likely yes, so you can take this review with a grain of salt.

30.   The Long Way Home / Louise Penny

This is the 10th novel in Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series. As ever, I fell in love with her descriptions of Quebec’s beauty, the small town of Three Pines, and the delicious food the characters are always eating. Penny’s books are the definition of cozy.

31.   In the Skin of a Lion / Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje has the gift of writing novels that read like poetry, and this story is no exception. Taking place in Toronto during construction of the Don Valley bridge and the RC Harris water treatment plant, the plot follows a construction worker, a young nun, an explosives expert, a business magnate and an actress as they maneuver making a life for themselves in the big city and changing ideas about class and gender.

32.   The Story of a New Name / Elena Ferrante

This is the second novel in Ferrante’s four-part series about the complicated life-long friendship between Lila and Lenu. In this installment, the women navigate first love, marriage, post-secondary education, first jobs and new motherhood.

33.   The Happiness Project / Gretchen Rubin

In this memoir / self-help book, Rubin studies the concept of happiness and implements a new action or practice each month of the year that is designed to increase her happiness levels. Examples include practicing gratitude, going to bed earlier, making time for fun and learning something new. Her journey inspired me to make a few tweaks to my life during a difficult time, and I do think they’ve made me more appreciative of what I have (which I think is a form of happiness?)

34.   The Virgin Suicides / Jeffrey Eugenides

I loved the film adaptation of this novel when I was a teenager, but I’d never actually read it until my book club selected it. Eugenides paints a glimmering, ethereal portrait of the five teenaged Lisbon sisters living a suffocating half-life at the hands of their overly protective and religious parents. The story is told through the eyes of the neighbourhood boys who longed for them from a distance and learned about who they were through snatched telephone calls, passed notes and one tragic suburban basement party.

35.   Time’s Convert / Deborah Harkness

This is a supernatural fantasy novel that takes place in the same universe of witches, vampires and daemons as Harkness’ All Souls trilogy. The plot follows the romance between centuries-old vampire Marcus, who came of age during the American Civil War, and human Phoebe, who begins her own transformation into a vampire so that she and Marcus can be together forever.

36.   The Saturday Night Ghost Club / Craig Davidson

Were you a fan of the TV show “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” If yes, this novel is for you. Davidson explores the blurred line between real-life tragedy and ghost story over the course of one summer in 1980s Niagara Falls. A coming-of-age novel that’s somehow sweet, funny and sad all at once, this story delves into the aftershocks of trauma and the way we heal the cracks in families.

37.   Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right / Jamie Glowacki

I hoped this was the book for us, but I don’t think it was. Some of the tips were great, but others really didn’t work for us. The other issue is that the technique in this book is much better suited to kids staying at home with a caregiver, not kids in daycare.

38.   The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One / Amanda Lovelace

This is a collection of poetry about women’s anger, women’s long memories and strength in sisterhood. It’s accessible, emotional and a bit of a feminist rallying cry. As someone who is obsessed with the Salem witch trials, I also loved the historical backdrop to the poems.

39.   The Rules of Magic / Alice Hoffman

I love to read seasonally, and this prequel to “Practical Magic” was a perfect October book. Remember Jet and Franny, the old, quirky aunts from the movie? This novel describes their upbringing, along with that of their brother Vincent, as the three siblings discover their powers and try to out-maneuver the Owens family curse.

40.   Witch: Unleased. Untamed. Unapologetic. / Lisa Lister

This book has a very sleek, appealing cover. Holding it made me feel magical. Reading it really disappointed me. From Lister’s almost outright transphobia to her unedited, repetitive style, this was a huge disappointment and I don’t recommend it.

41.   The Death of Mrs. Westaway / Ruth Ware

I liked this novel a lot more than Ware’s other novel, “The Woman in Cabin 10”. Crumbling English manor homes, long-buried family evils and people trapped together by snowstorms are my jam.

42.   Weirdo / Cathi Unsworth

Another British seaside town, another grisly murder. Jumping back and forth between a modern-day private investigation and the parental panic around cults and Satanism in the 1980s, Unsworth unpacks the darkness lurking within a small community and the way society’s outcasts are often used as scapegoats. The creep factor grows as the story unfolds.

43.   Mabon: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Autumn Equinox / Diana Rajchel

And so begins my witchy education. I have to admit, I really liked learning about the historical pagan celebrations and superstitions surrounding harvest time. I also liked reading about spells and incantations… ooooOOOOoooo!

44.   From Here to Eternity: Travelling the World to Find the Good Death / Caitlin Doughty

In North America, we are so removed from death that we are unequipped to process it when someone close to us dies. But this doesn’t have to be the case. In this non-fiction account, Doughty, a mortician based in L.A., travels the world learning about the business of death, the cultural customs around mortality, and the rituals of care and compassion for the deceased in ten different places. It seems that the closer we are to death, the less we’ll fear it, and the better-equipped we’ll be to process loss and grief in healthy ways.

45.   Samhain: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for Halloween / Diana Rajchel

Did you know that Samhain is actually pronounced “Sow-en”? I didn’t until I read this book, and felt very intelligent indeed, when later, while watching “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” on Netflix, the head witch pronounced the word as “Sam-hain”, destroying the writers’ credibility in one instant. I am a witch now.

46.   See What I Have Done / Sarah Schmidt

This novel is a retelling of the Lizzie Borden murders, illuminated through four characters – Lizzie herself, the Borden’s maid Bridget, Lizzie’s sister, and a mysterious man hired the day before the murders by Lizzie’s uncle to intimidate Mr. Borden (one of the murder victims). I knew very little about the murders before reading this book, but this version of the tale strongly suggests that Lizzie really is the murderer. Unhinged, childlike, selfish and manipulative, I hated her so much and felt awful for everyone that had to live in her orbit.

47.   The Nature of the Beast / Louise Penny

In the 11th installment of Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series, she sets the story up with a parallel to the boy who cried wolf and introduces us to her first killer without a soul. Crimes of passion and greed abound in Penny’s universe, but a crime of pure, cold evil? This is a first.

48.   How Are You Going to Save Yourself? / J.M. Holmes

This is a powerful collection of short stories about what it’s like to be a Black man in America right now. It’s about Black male friendship, fathers and sons, outright racism and dealing with a lifetime of microaggressions. Holmes makes some risky and bold decisions with his characters, even playing into some of the harmful stereotypes about Black men while subverting some of the others. This book really stayed with me. One disturbing story in particular I kept turning around and around in my mind for days afterward.

49.   Split Tooth / Tanya Tagaq

This is a beautiful story about a young Inuit girl growing up in Nunavut in the 1970s, combining gritty anecdotes about bullying, friendship, family and addiction with Inuit myth, legend, and the magic of the Arctic. The most evocative and otherworldly scenes in the novel took place under the Northern Lights and left me kind of mesmerized.

50.   Motherhood / Sheila Heti

Heti’s book is a work of fiction styled as a memoir, during which the protagonist, nearing her 40s, weighs the pros and cons of having a baby. I’ve maybe never felt so “seen” by an author before. I agonized over the decision about whether to have a baby for years before finally making a decision. The unsatisfying, but freeing conclusion that both the author and I came to is that for many of us there is no right choice (but no wrong choice either).

51.   The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories / P.D. James

This is a short collection of James’ four “Christmas-y” mysteries published over the course of a number of years. It was a perfect cozy read to welcome the holiday season.

52.   The Christmas Sisters / Sarah Morgan

Morgan’s story is a Hallmark holiday movie in book form. A family experiencing emotional turmoil at Christmas? Check. Predictable romances, old and new? Check. A beautiful, festive setting? Check. (In this case, it’s a rustic inn nestled in the Scottish Highlands). This novel is fluff, but the most delightful kind.

53.   Jonny Appleseed / Joshua Whitehead

Jonny is a Two-Spirit Ojibway-Cree person who leaves the reservation in his early 20s to escape his community’s homophobia and make it in the city. Making ends meet as a cybersex worker, the action begins when he has to scrape together enough cash to make it home to the “rez” (and all the loose ends he left behind there) for a funeral. The emotional heart of the novel are Jonny’s relationships with his kokum (grandmother) and his best friend / part-time lover Tias.

54.   Yule: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Winter Solstice / Susan Pesznecker

Do you folks believe that I’m a witch now? I am, okay? I even spoke an incantation to Old Mother Winter while staring into the flame of a candle after reading this book.

55.   Half Spent Was the Night: A Witches’ Yuletide / Ami McKay

Old-timey witches? At Christmas time? At an elaborate New Year’s Eve masked ball? Be still my heart. This novella was just what I wanted to read in those lost days between Christmas and New Year’s. You’ll appreciate it even more if you’ve already read Ami McKay’s previous novel “The Witches of New York”, as it features the same characters.