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Rat care

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Snakes and other reptiles/amphibians

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Goat and backyard farming

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ASMR

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Most of the texts I have read feature women and girls (Catherine Earnshaw, Rosemary Harper, Emma, Circe, Alice Proserpine, Persephone) as the protagonists. I find that books with female protagonists are the most compelling, because they reflect my experiences as a girl. The main struggles they face are all often accompanied with the (sometimes barely noticeable) strain of being a girl, which is something that I can relate to.

One book that has definitely been influencing my thoughts and views, is Braiding Sweetgrass. The book combines ancestral Indigenous knowledge with scientific findings to educate us about the natural world, specifically plants. The authors proposes we think of trees as non-human people, and reminds us that nature anything but compartmentalized. I have been thinking a lot more about plants in this connected way, and have begun thinking about ways to use these ideas in my life. When I look at the sprawing fields around my town, I no longer see cash crops, instead I see unhealthy monocultures and dead soil that could have been fixed with the three sisters.

A lot of the books I have read have queer characters in some capacity, and most of the time it's not a big deal. They often take the stance of "Yeah, Achilles and Patroclus are clearly gay, but who isn't", and it has started to seep into my everyday life. When I was younger, hearing someone was queer was really important and interesting, but now it's just a run of the mill thing, which I think is exactly how it should be.

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Rom Com

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The sequel to The Hazelwood, this novel shows Alice navigating a post-fairy-tale life, and dealing with the remnants of the hinterland, because worlds do not die quietly. It is another horror/fantasy/fairy-tale, and it is just as good (if not better) than the first one.

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Alice Proserpine has spent her life running from bad luck with her mother. When Alice's mysterious grandmother — who's famous for writing a book of terrifying fairy tales — dies, it initiates a string of events that culminates in Alice venturing to her grandmother's estate and discovering that the fairy tales weren't as made up as they seemed. The Hazelwood is an excellent horror/fantasy novel that explores themes of family and belonging.

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This is the original version of Olga and the Smelly Thing From Nowhere. It is about a young girl who discovers a new (and very strange) species living in her garbage bin. Her new pet leads her on adventures, and helps her make friends.

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Sit Com

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Rom Com

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A lot of the books that I read on my own time are either children's fantasy, or graphic novels. I find that these books are easy to digest, they are comforting, and they don't take up much space in my brain. This is also reflected in the fluffy rom-com movies that my friends and I have been watching recently. I think this says something about where I am in life, specifically the high school experience. My brain can feel so overwhelmed once I have been at school, worked, done homework, and completed my chores that it feels like there's not any space left. With university applications and increasingly complicated science and math courses, it sometimes feels like everyday brings a new challenge when I haven't dealt with the one from yesterday. I think the media I consume shows that at the end of the day, all I want to do is latch onto what is comforting and familiar. If you only looks at the books I've read, you might also realise that I am a girl. Most of the books I'vs read have had strong female protagonists or narrators. While many of the series I constantly reread feature male protagonists (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, etc.), when I'm choosing a new book to read, I often land on ones about girls and women. This may be a side affect of mainly reading female authors, but I think it's also because I find those characters easier to relate to when it comes to their perception of the world.

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One gap that exists in my reading is the fact that I have only read one book by a non-white author. To address this, I'm going to try to ensure several of the next books I read are written by BIPOC authors. Before this year, I mainly read books that were either horror, mystery, non-fiction about animals, or children's fantasy. This year I have been correcting that by reading as many genres as possible, but even though I took the NBE course last year, I never read an Indigenous non-fiction. I think this is a good place to expand both genres and authors. Something else interesting I noticed is that since the beginning of the year, I have only read one male author (and his books weren't very good). This honestly doesn't strike me as much of a problem, so I likely won't start conscientiously picking out books written by men, but it is an interesting pattern I'm going to keep observing.

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Rom Com

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Circe is the excellent retelling of the story of Circe, the witch of Aiaia, who is known from the Iliad. It gives her a backstory, and a life post-oddyseus. It is an excellent book, a mythological fantasy with strong feminist messages.

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Rom Com

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Technically this is not a book, and is actually a fanfiction, but it is 370 000 words, so I'm counting it. It follows Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy in a post-war world that deeply resembles the hand-maids tale.

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Comedy

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This romance novel follows Emma and Justin, two people who seemed to be plagued with a curse that means every person they date finds their soulmate right after they break up. They decide to date each other, hoping that after they break up their curses will cancel out and they will find their soulmates. Their plan becomes a lot more complicated when Emma's toxic mother reappears, Justin gains custody of his three siblings, and feelings get involved.

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Harry knows Voldemort is back. No one believes Harry. Hogwarts is under the control of the Ministry. Harry is seeing into Voldemort's mind. Everything feels like it has collapsed, but Harry still has to do homework. How will the golden trio survive this one?

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Olivia Rodrigo

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Joe Hisaishi

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Rom Com

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This is a children's fantasy novel set in the land of Quill, where only the practical are wanted, and with any sign of creativity, children are killed. When Alex is sent to his death, he discover Artimé, where creativity becomes magic.

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Oryx and Crake is the story of Jimmy navigating a dystopian world where he is the only human left. In this future, genetic engineering went off the rails, leading to a viral apocalypse. This horrifying speculative fiction is told in a series of analepses jumping between the present, with Snowman struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world while mourning his best friend and the woman they both loved, and the past, telling the story of how Jimmy grew up and how he came to be the only human left alive.

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Note: These are mainly books I read before bed, so they are... not excellent demonstrations of my reading ability.

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Romance

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Rom Com

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Children

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Sit Com

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Maya Hawke

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Children

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Rom Com

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Sit Com

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Sci-fi

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Sci-fi

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Joe Hisaishi

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Chappell Roan

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Ologies is a science podcast that explores a different field of study each episode. Some of my favourite episodes include medusology (jellyfish) and wildlife biology. Even if the topics aren't super interesting, I love hearing how much passion the scientists have for their work.

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Alie Ward

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ASMR

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Wuthering Heights is the story of the Earnshaw/Linton/Heathcliff family, as told by a maid to a young man renting one of the two properties; Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. This is a dense book, with a lot of themes to unpack. For some reason I went into this believing it was a ghost story, and I was so very wrong.

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The Long Way to A Small Angry Planet is a sci-fi novel set in a distant future where humans have left Earth and travel through space along with other species from foreign galaxies. Nothing incredibly exciting happens in this book, but that is what makes it so delightful. We watch the members of the crew navigate their intrapersonal and interpersonal issues with the grace and kindess that is missing from our society.

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These are the movies and TV series I have watched since the beginning of the school year! I really like to re-watch the same things over and over again, so it's really only when I watch TV with my friends or family that I watch something new.