Wednesday Wish List #30

The countdown to Christmas is upon us! I can't believe how much time has already gone by, and how little time I have to continue making gifts for people, especially for the IGGPPC Geeky Santa Swap that I signed up for. Even so, I've still managed to have time to surf the internet and find really cool/cute things to add to my Christmas list :) Take a look at the newest additions.

#1: Instax Mini 8 Sparkle Frames! I found out about these on Pinterest, and I think these are the coolest things ever :) I'm always looking for cool ways to display my Instax shots, because I love taking these pictures and whether I have to buy or make something to display them in, I will go out of my way to show off my pictures. These things are apparently only $6, so I may very well pick myself up a couple of these one day when I have some more money.

My Captured Moment #3 - Toronto Fan Days & Snakes and Lattes

Hey guys, here's another post from the My Captured Moment photo link-up from Running In Lavender. What a week it's been! Well, truth be told, most of this week was pretty uneventful, but this weekend is something I'd been looking forward to for a while now, and it's something I've been eagerly waiting to tell you guys about, and to share pictures from. Let's get to it!

This Saturday, me and my friends headed up to Toronto for this great event called Toronto Fan Days, hosted by the same people who organize Toronto ComicCon. This event was essentially a big dealer's room like at a typical convention, only with way more holiday-themed cosplay costumes and merchandise for sale. Above are just pictures of the city (and the inside of the Eaton Centre) that I took on our way to the big event.

Funko Friday - December Show & Tell

2 posts on a Friday?! Has hell frozen over?! XD Yeah, I know, this is rare of me, but I felt like participating in two links-ups today instead of one. I only recently looked into what exactly these Funko Friday blog posts were, even though I'd seen these posts shared on the Female Geek Bloggers G+ group for a while now. I have a small number of Funko figurines, which I often refer to as Pop Vinyl's, and I thought it'd be fun to get involved with this link-up :) It looks like the first theme of every month is to do a show and tell of one Funko figure that you own & to tell people about it, so here goes!

This is the newest addition to my Funko figure collection - Allison Reynolds from The Breakfast Club, aka The Basket Case herself! How I came across this Funko was at a comic book shop that I decided to check out with my friend Blair in Niagara Falls, shortly after we visited The Geekery Restaurant for the first time. It was a bit crowded inside, so we were stuck at the front of the store for a bit, where there were super tall stacks of Funko figurines of all different sorts, but it was the ones that bore the logo from The Breakfast Club that immediately caught my interest. I'm pretty sure that they had all of the members of the club present, including the principal, but it was the Basket Case that I was the most interested in.

5 Favorite Holiday Recommendations

First Friday of December, yay! And just think, three Fridays from now, it'll be Christmas already! Can you believe it?! Time just flies by. Soon it'll be 2016. Jeez, where does the time go? Anyway, time for 5 Fandom Friday posting fun time! This week we're supposed to tell you about our 5 holiday recommendations, and I'm thinking this is pretty open, so I'm going to have each of my suggestions be a completely different type. I'll be sharing my favorite holiday-themed apparel, movie, craft, book, and snail mail item :)

Apparel: Geeky Ugly Christmas Sweater! I know I should probably just stick to recommending one type of ugly Christmas sweater, but I found so many cool ones online that I couldn't decide between these three because they're all so awesome! I love how popular the Ugly Christmas Sweater style has become this year, and I've always wanted to go to one of those ugly Christmas sweater parties. There are so many nerdy options! From Guardians of the Galaxy to Legend of Zelda and even Die Hard have their own versions!

Michaels Christmas Crafting Haul 2015

This Christmas is going to be quite different from other years - because I'm currently unemployed, I don't have much money to spend on buying gifts for Christmas this year, so instead I'll be working to make as many gifts as possible. Last week there was a massive sale at Michaels craft store, so my mother and I got up early to hit up the store and pick up as many craft supplies as we could! Just for fun, I thought I'd show you guys pictures of everything I picked up to make various gifts, and to use for future snail mail projects as well!

Wednesday Wish Lists #29

Happy December, everybody! 24 days until Christmas, hope everybody's excited, either for Christmas or for their own favorite holidays. The continuation of my Christmas Wish List continues, and here are the latest items that have made it to the list.

#1: Project Life Core Kit! So let me explain a little bit about what Project Life is: It's a form of scrapbooking mixed with journaling mixed with planner making and a bunch of other stuff too. Basically you can put together these books with these plastic sheets with all these different sized pockets, and inside the pockets you put in these cool inserts or pictures or journal squares or whatever else might strike your fancy. I love the idea of this, and the main thing I like about it is not the idea of putting a book together, but instead sending out those plastic sheets filled with different pictures and inserts and other things to send out as a cool piece of snail mail. I bought one pack of Project Life things, but owning a core kit would be freaking awesome :)

My Captured Moment #2

How is your weekend treating you, people of the internet? This past week has flown by pretty quickly, but that didn't stop me from taking a photo pretty much every day, and I have the perfect arrangement to share with you for this week's captured moment. Again, this is a picture link-up created by Running in Lavender, and you're welcome to join in with your captured moment on your blog and social media accounts each week :)

I lucked out this week, because I got to visit one incredibly important man in my life on 3 different days. That little an is Charlie Terence Cruise, my adorable nephew, who will be 4 months old in early December.

Review: The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet

Not sure if I say this very often about a book, but this story came into my life at the absolute perfect time. I'm sure that others have experienced this same thing, but this book hit so close to home at a time where I needed this exact brand of encouragement in my life, I feel like I'll burst if I didn't share this with all of you.

Ever since the end of this summer, when I finished with my post-grad program in Creative Book Publishing, I've been struggling with a lot of personal issues, along with having to answer a lot of hard questions. What do I want to do with my life? Am I a failure for picking the wrong path to take with my schooling? What sort of job am I qualified to do now? The biggest question of all for me, out of all of them, turned out to be the shortest one: What's next?

In this book that takes place after the events of the Emmy award-winning web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and after the events of the novelization, The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, Lydia faces many of the same issues and struggles with what to do with her life when she isn't feeling as solid about who she is, what she wants to do, and what she is capable of achieving in her life. She's on the verge of a big change in her life: Finish a couple summer credits at her community college to receive her associate's degree, finish the application for the "real" college in San Francisco, and then move out there with her cousin Mary to go to school as a psych major, to spend time closer to her middle sister and her cousin, and to finally get past the events of George Wickham and the sex tape and everything that being famous on the internet brought into her life.

My Captured Moments #1

How's everybody enjoying their weekend? I'm bringing you something completely new titled My Captured Moments, a weekly photo link-up created by Running In Lavender. Some weeks I will include multiple photos, other times I'll only be sharing one, but each week I'm going to try to share a captured moment with all of you. Anybody else is welcome to join in with this link-up as well and there's a lot of flexibility on when you feel like sharing your own post, whether you want to include words or just photos, and about how many pictures you'd like to share. Enjoy my very first Captured Moment post :)

This week's captured moment is from early this week, where I had both a productive and an incredibly fun Monday. I managed to finish up one project that I have been putting off for a long time, and that is to send a package to my very first IGGPPC pen pal, Diana. I had been collecting a few odds and ends in order to send her a cool little package full of fun things. I had things like scented erasers, a pack of Snow White stickers, and even a cool pen included in there, all of this along with a letter I had written for her. I also sent her a little something I made that should help out with a project the two of us are working on, which I can't tell you about yet ;) Stay tuned for more details on that!

Review: Girl Online On Tour

I've been eagerly awaiting the day I completely finished this book, solely so I could post a review of it for you guys! Is it a little sad that I felt almost more excitement for writing this post then for the end of the book itself? Regardless of my weird sense of priorities, it doesn't change the fact that this book was fantastic from beginning to end, and reading it made me feel like I was curled up on the couch with my best friend after a hard day, where we're eating sugar cookies and drinking hot apple cider and watching fun things on TV that make us feel comforted and happy.

I did both read and review Zoella's first young adult book in this series, titled Girl Online, and one of the main reasons that I appreciated it so much was not because of the book's author, and that I would blindly love anything created by her (which hopefully is not completely true XP). The reason that it resonated with me so well was because it dealt with anxiety in a realistic and understanding manner. Because the author herself suffers from social anxiety and panic attacks, she made sure that the main character, Penny Porter, managed and experienced her anxiety and panic in a believable way - nothing melodramatic or idiotic to be had. That realistic portrayal continues with the newest installment of the series, Girl Online On Tour. The premise for this book is that time has shifted from January to June and Penny is getting ready to join her rock-God boyfriend on his European tour - Italy, Paris, Berlin, the works! - playing with his band as the opening act for this bigger rock group called The Sketch.

Wednesday Wish Lists #28

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Hope November is treating you well, and that this week is off to a good start. Lately I've had to start making a Christmas list for my family, so there's even more reason now to be looking around for things on the internet to lust after XD

#1: "Jolliest Bunch of Assholes" Christmas Sweater! Now, admittedly, I may have already ordered this sweater for myself after I saw an ad pop up on Facebook - I just couldn't resist, it's both cute and hilarious XD I guess what I want more than anything is for A) for it to arrive as quickly as possible, and B) for it to actually fit me XP This'll be really fun to wear around my family, that's for sure XD

5 Favorite Seasonal "Treats"

Hi all! The theme for this week is supposed to be "5 Favorite Seasonal Foods", and as I started to compile my list I realized that some of my favorite seasonal things happened to be sweets, so I was going to list Treats instead of Food. And then, I realized that there weren't as many things I liked to eat as much as there were things I liked to treat myself to around this time of year, so that's what I've decided to write about! You should be able to treat yourself any time of the year, but when it comes to this time of year when you're trying to finish your Christmas shopping and all of you American folks are getting ready for Thanksgiving, it's always good to take a little time to "treat yo temple", as Liz Locksley would say :) Here are 5 things I like to treat myself to around this time of year.

#1: Bath Bombs from Lush! It was originally Zoella that taught be about the glory of enjoying your favorite bath bombs during the cooler months, and this is the perfect kind of item that's out there for a person to buy in order to treat themselves. They smell great, some include nourishing properties for your skin, and a few even include glitter for those cold days that you want to feel a little more sparkly XDD The perfect seasonal treat!

Writer Support #2 - Find Your Writing Spots

How are all you amazing writers out there doing? I hope those participating in NaNoWriMo 2015 are hitting it off - and hitting their word counts - with great ease! Figured it was time to drop another one of these helpful posts for you to enjoy, and I wanted to thank everyone for the great feedback I received over Twitter regarding my first Writer Support post :) I hope you all enjoy this next topic just as much as the first, and let me know if you have any suggestions for me or any writing topics you'd like me to post about, and I'd be happy to oblige!

In his amazing writing guide, No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, lists a series of tips and suggestions about finding the best place to write, keeping in mind that everybody's different and some people will make progress in one type of environment over another. His suggestions are simple and easy to understand: Keep your writing area neat; Don't write in view of a bed; A place with expensive WiFi is a place where you'll be less likely to surf the internet and slack on your novel. All of his suggestions are top notch, and for my post I am going to expand on his suggestions with my own advice, as well as add a few suggestions for writing spots of my own. One thing I do recommend is that you always have more than one place where you can get a lot of good writing done, and if you're in need of one/two/several places to pen your novel, look no further!

Fallfessional 2015

For a couple of days last week we had gorgeous warm weather, like summer was making a comeback, but now we're officially into the depths of fall - which means its time for another Fallfessional post! This link-up was created by the lovely KrystelleMT, and if you'd like to check out my Fallfessional post from last year, you can click here. Without further ado, here are my fall-styled confessions for 2015 :)

Fall is the Perfect Time for Crafting! Unfortunately, fall also happens to be the time where the house is a complete mess, so I have the least amount of time or space to do any real crafting XP Lately I've been walking around stores like Wal-Mart or Zehrs that have their fall decor up, or I've just been walking around outside and taking in all the autumnal colours, and I've just been feeling a lot more of that creative energy coursing through my mind lately. I have snail mail things I want to make prettier, I have a memory planner I want to keep on decorating, and I have Christmas gifts that I want to start making. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll be able to work in my very own crafting space and be able to make some pretty things :)

Wednesday Wish Lists #27

Happy Wednesday, folks! I hope everybody is enjoying their November so far. While this autumn weather is nice, and Christmas being right around the corner is certainly something to look forward to, this can be a month that might be a little lacking in excitement. But that leaves plenty of time to get some things done that I've been putting off - perhaps getting a job so I can work on affording some of these things on my list XD But first thing's first, save up to buy Christmas presents! :P

#1: "Don't Dream It" Rocky Horror T-Shirt Design from Emilie_B on TeeFury! I adore this t-shirt design so much! It comes in a few different colours, but I think the purple looks best. Not only does it feature all of the amazing Rocky Horror Picture Show characters at their best, but it also displays one of the best messages that the story has to convey: Don't Dream It - Be It!

Writer Support #1 - Top 3 Writing Guides

It's that time of year, where Nerdfighters and iggles everywhere are dusting off their favorite notebooks (or picking up new ones), opening up Microsoft Word on their computers, and digging deep for the beginning of National Novel Writing Month! This year, I regret to inform you all that I won't be participating in the incredibly fun and chaotic tradition known as NaNoWriMo, but that is not because I didn't enjoy my experience with it last year. I reached over 26,000 words during the very first time I attempted NaNo, and I am extremely proud of that accomplishment, and I absolutely plan on joining in with the insanity another time. But for now, I have to focus on things like getting a job and organizing the clutter that I'm constantly surrounded by. And, not to mention, I put on quite a bit of weight from all the snacking at my laptop last year XP

But that doesn't mean that I won't be focused on writing this month either! Not only do I plan on trying to flex my creative writing muscles on a few personal projects I'd like to get off the ground, but I'm hoping to be able to write some more posts here for all of you :) Which leads me to introducing this new series of posts that I plan on writing for the month of November, which is currently named Writer Support. I want to act as a sort of NaNoWriMo cheerleader this year, even though I myself am not participating, and try to help in any way that I can. In order to do that, I'm going to be writing a variety of posts that are in some way related to writing, reading, and/or the writing process for your enjoyment. If there's anything in particular you'd like me to address in these posts, let me know in the comments below.

5 Characters I'd Love to Dress Up As For Halloween PART 2!

Hey guys! So this is a prompt that actually came up last year, and I wrote about 5 character I want to one day dress as for Halloween, and you can click here to check out that post. This year I'll be showing you five more characters on my to-dress-up-as list - a list that I think needs a better-sounding name XP

#1: Sherlock Holmes from BBC's Sherlock! It's a good thing I saved my old black winter coat, because it is the perfect match for Sherlock's preferred outerwear! All I'd need to figure out is a preferred hairstyle to crossplay as Sherlock, and I'd need to find the scarf of course. My jacket even lets me pop up the collar to try and look cool ;)

Wednesday Wish Lists #26

Happy Wednesday, people! It's bee autumn for a while now, but as the weather actually starts to cool down, we're getting into that time of year where all we want is to curl up at home with a good book, maybe some video games, and that special someone to help fight off the winter chill. All of the items I'm adding to my wish list this week will go a long way in helping to create that ideal image as we move through autumn and get closer to winter.

#1: Happily Ever After: Companion to The Selection Series by Kiera Cass! You would think that anything related to The Selection series would be on my radar, and I would've picked up a copy as soon as it hit the shelves, but I didn't realize this was finally out until I visited the bookstore where I used to work with my friend, and she pointed it out to me. She is not a fan of the series, much to my displeasure, but she was at least nice enough to let me know that the companion was finally on the shelves. Unfortunately, being unemployed, I can't afford it just yet XP But it's got a place on my wish list in the meantime!

A Trip To The Falls & The Geekery

Earlier this month, a friend of mine happened to tell me that he wanted to take me to a restaurant, but he wouldn't tell me where this restaurant was. All he would tell me is that it's in a city that I've been to before. Obviously I gave him crap for this, telling him that's hardly a clue, he responded with, "Yes it is! It eliminates parts of Europe!" My response, as you may have guessed, was around the lines of -_-

The trip ended up being a great one though! He drove us to one of my favorite places in the world, Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, where we spent the day earning tickets at the Midway, taking funny pictures by the falls and the "secret garden", and concluded the day by having lunch at The Geekery Restaurant, one of the coolest places on earth! Here are some pictures of how me and my friend Blair spent our day!

Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Lately I haven't felt like doing a lot of reading - which is oddly inconvenient, considering I now have more time to read than ever before. But I recently took a day trip to Toronto in order to visit a friend, and I decided to grab a book off my shelf at random to take with me for the commute, which consisted of a bus, train, and a short subway ride. I wanted something that was a paperback, so it would be easy for me to travel with, and nothing too thick so that it would fit in my bag. I can't remember exactly if I had any other motivation for picking up this particular title, but one guess I have might be the bright red cover XD Either way, I'm glad I chose The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya to pull off my shelf and finally read.

To give some background, this title also belongs to an anime and manga series, created by the same author. Before these were created was this novel, the first in a series which were later translated into English. When I was younger I was certainly aware of the existence of this anime series - it's kind of hard to be interested in anime or manga as a hobby and to have internet access and to not be aware of the heroine known as Haruhi Suzumiya. To be honest, I've only seen about 5 or so episodes or so of the anime. I'm pretty sure I picked up this book during one of my trips to my favorite convention, Anime North, and it's been sitting on my book shelf ever since, until this trip to Toronto where I decided to pick it up again, and I was not disappointed in that decision. It was a fun and very compelling read that made my trip to Toronto and back fly by, and I haven't been so gripped by the events of a novel in quite some time.

Wednesday Wish Lists #25

Happy Hump Day, folks! . . . Ugh, I felt gross just typing that XP Anywho, on top of a brand new Wednesday Wish Lists graphic that you can see above, there are of course 5 new items to add to the never-ending list this week.

#1: Planner Essentials Organizer from The Reset Girl Shop! Lately I've spent a lot of time following people on Instagram that are really big into making and customizing their own planners. There really is a fine art to it, and it gives you the opportunity to get both crafty as well as organized.These little organizers are pretty nifty for storing all of the different materials people use when customizing planners for themselves or for others.

Tabletop Games - Discount Salmon

Greetings, my fellow geeks! Some of you may know that I used to write board game reviews for a fantastic online magazine known as Paper Droids. I thought it might be fun to start writing about board games I have played and enjoyed here on my very own blog, to get back into writing about one of my favorite past-times and to gush about some of my favorite games with other fellow tabletop enthusiasts. Plus I'm much better at playing board games & card games than I am at playing video games XD

One of my favorite board game cafes to frequent is Snakes and Lattes in Toronto. Me and my friend Blair that I met during my days at Brock University occasionally make the trip to the big city to enjoy an evening of trying out new board games, for the memories and for finding games to add to our wish lists. We're also big fan of the Italian sodas, and we always get them with mixed strawberry and peach flavors. To wrap up our last visit, we sought out a simple game that would be easy to learn and wouldn't take us hours to complete while we chowed down on the gummi worms in the candy bowl we ordered, and we found that in a speed-based card game titled Discount Salmon.

Here's the premise: You're fishing in a body of water that has been highly contaminated, and because of this, a lot of the fix are flawed in a number of ways - they could be Stinky, Nuclear, or just plain Ugly. Your job is to use the cards in your hand to try to "fix" the flaws of these fix - a little Perfume for stinks fish, an Antidote to rid your catch of harmful chemicals, or some Makeup to give your fish a little more self-confidence :P

This is one of those fast-paced, crazy games where quick reflexes are definitely a requirement. Each player (2-5 people can play this game) holds cards that either fix a fish's problems or adds on whole new ones that need to be fixed before the fish can be claimed. Yep, you have cards that can affect a fish that's already stinky and can make it ugly, which gives you and the people you're playing with more problems you have to solve. It can help if you don't have the proper card to solve the original problem, and it can just slow down progress for the other people you're playing with. When a fish's problems are all fixed, whoever put down the card that cured the fish's final problem, that player gets that fish card - they also get all of the cards that players put down to try to cure the fish, which get added to their hand.

Review: Everything, Everything

People say time and time again that you should never judge a book by its cover. To look at it literally, as someone who worked at a bookstore for 7 years, and somebody who has studied book marketing, I can tell you that this is not everybody's policy. The #1 thing that will work to market a book is how the cover is designed, and speaking as a reader, I know how easy it can be to get turned off from buying a book from a poorly designed, unattractive cover.

When it comes to Everything, Everything, a YA novel by first-time author Nicola Yoon, if this colourful, intricate, gorgeous cover doesn't sell you immediately, then the plot certainly will :)

Madeline Whittier was born with a disease that "is as rare as it is famous," which you learn right from the first words of the synopsis. Maddie is basically allergic to the world, and because of this she has not set foot outdoors since before her sickness was discovered when she was a little baby. The only people that are admitted through the air-lock front door are Maddie's mother and her nurse, Carla. That is, until a family moves in next door, including the black-clad teenage boy named Olly.

It's easy to determine that if Madeline were a real person, she would be an iggle, no question. She's an avid reader, writes super-short book reviews on Tumblr, she plays an ultra difficult but fun-looking game known to her and her mother as Phonetic Scrabble, and even if all of her incoming mail needed to be 100% disinfected before she could touch it, she would still love getting mail and other gifts from geek girls around the world.

5 Broadway Roles I'd Love To Play

Happy Friday, everybody! This week most other bloggers will be writing about their favorite pumpkin items, in celebration of autumn finally being here, but I've honestly never been a fan of pumpkin-flavored items - shocking, I know. So instead, I've decided to backtrack a little bit and use a prompt from a previous week this month. I've always been a fan of musicals, and while I might not be talented in the singing/dancing/acting departments, I'd be crazy not to imagine myself in a few of these killer roles. Without further ado, here are the top 5 Broadway roles I would love to play - including fun video clips for each!

#5: Mama Rose from Gypsy! I went to see this musical when a production company was putting it on in Hamilton this past Winter, and it was incredible. The woman that played Rose was an absolute power house, and she rocked the roof off the place with her voice alone. To be able to have that kind of bravado would itself be "a dream come true, baby!"

Wednesday Wish Lists #24

What's up, folks? Trying to catch up on posts this week and get re-organized (although that is sometimes a losing battle - see item #5). I have a not of new stuff planned to come your way, so look forward to some updates :) In the meantime, here is my most recent wish list!

#1: Colin O'Donoghue on a Silver Platter, Please ;) Recently I got back into roleplaying on a new site, one with a supernatural theme, and I also reunited with an old roleplay partner of mine. We had this plot between my witch Ebony and her vampire Erik, whose celebrity face claim is Colin, aka Hook from Once Upon A Time (which I recently started watching and absolutely LOVE!). But yeah, either when I'm replying to a post with Ebony or I'm watching season 3 of this great show (no spoilers, please), one of my current favorite past times is just staring at this adorable devil :)

5 Fandom Deaths I'm Still Upset About - SPOILERS!

Happy Friday everybody! It's been a good long while since I've done one of these posts! I'm hoping to be able to keep up with these for the entirety of September, especially since we've got a pretty good line up of topics for me to blog about for this month. Today I'll be rambling about several fandom deaths that are still bugging me. Fair warning, this post will be full of major spoilers, and to keep anybody from being accidentally spoiled, I'll be listing the specific series/fandoms I'll be writing about, so you'll know whether or not this post is safe or not.

In this order, I'll be talking about the Gemma Doyle/Great and Terrible Beauty YA series by Libba Bray, the latest season of HBO's Game of Thrones (obviously), season 5 of Glee, the latest season of The Big Bang Theory and in the final novel of the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. So scroll past the spoilers that you need to avoid and enjoy the rest :) Fair warning, many of the images I have chosen contain spoilers as well.

Wednesday Wish Lists #23

Happy September everybody! It's the beginning of a new month, which means getting organized and planning ahead for the next 28 days that are yet to come. Some of you are starting back to school this month, some of you may have already started last month, and as for me, I am officially done with my schooling, so I'm enjoying a short break where I will be hoping to tackle some new projects. Some of the items on my wish list will hopefully be able to help me achieve my monthly goals.

#1: Sprinkle of Glitter 2016 Diary! I found out about this from one of Zoella's videos (of course :P) and it's filled with pretty illustrations and cool photos and positive, uplifting messages for the year of 2016. It's being released on September 29th in Canada, and will probably have the same release date in the US.

Event Recap: Felicia Day Book Signing @ Indigo Eaton Centre

Better late than never, right? In mid-August I was able to take a break from my program's Enterprise-ing for a chance to delve into downtown Toronto for my first trip to the Eaton Centre since moving to the GTA for my publishing program. I'm particularly fond of the Eaton Centre's Indigo store - mainly because of its size and the fact that this store has at least 3 manga sections :D But most importantly, this store gets to host awesome events like a live book signing with amazing innovator in geek culture, +Felicia Day! I was very lucky to get my book signed at this event, and to also spend some time with friends old and new that came out to meet Felicia.

Being a semi-ignorant small town girl, I figured that taking time to stop and eat dinner and not head out to the signing until about 6 would get me there right on time for 7 o'clock and I would have no problems. I have my friend Notes to thank for letting me know just how crazy the turn-out was, which drove me to get my butt in gear and hop on the streetcar about 5 o'clock instead. After all, it's a Felicia Day book signing in Toronto, of course there would be a whole whack of geeky individuals there ready to wait in line. Silly me!

Audio Book Review: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

There are a number of topics contained in novels that I will instinctively flock to. Having worked in a bookstore for 7 years, and generally because of how much I love to read, stories that surround the concept of working in or running a bookstore have always been naturally fascinating to me. For example, I loved The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry so much that after I finished reading the book (borrowed from my aunt's copy that I bought her for Christmas XP), I ended up downloading the audio book so I could re-live the story in a whole new way. Stories that have a bookstore as a primary fixture of the plot or setting remind me of why I love to read so much, why I enjoy being transported by these words and characters and these exciting and unique plot lines.

This is what ultimately guided me towards Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.

I was working at Coles Bookstore when this book was originally released, and of course the inclusion of the word "bookstore" in the title originally drew me towards it. I couldn't pinpoint the exactly reason for you why I didn't pick up this book shortly after it hit the shelves, but I'm pretty sure there was something about the synopsis/jacket copy that just didn't grab me. When this title came my way on my Audible app (probably referred to me after I finished listening to The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry), there was no change in the writing of the synopsis, but I was gifted with something else that hadn't been provided to me when I originally looked at that hardcover copy; a sound sample, an excerpt from the beginning of the book. The sample offered to me was a longer one, which I appreciated, and from that I was able to learn that the main character of this book, Clay Jannon, works with technology and online marketing, having previously designed the website for a bagel shop that netted him a marketing award. Ultimately the recession is what lands Clay out of a job and applying to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.

Wednesday Wish Lists #22

Hey all! I know I've been out of commission for a little while - my publishing program was beyond hectic, especially in our last month which made up the Enterprise portion of the program. But I'm all done now, and I'm back to having time to notice cute and amazing products through the internet that I very much want to covet. So here are the top 5 items on my wish list right now.

#1: New Tutti Fruity Line from Zoella Beauty. When it comes to Zoella's influence on me to buy products, I'd say that it's a pretty strong force. For example, on my last errand trip in Toronto before moving out of my dorm, I made a detour to take my very first trip into a Lush store to buy a bath bomb for my mother and for myself as birthday gifts (hers was on August 11th, mine was on the 19th). But I love her line of beauty products, not just because they have her name on them, but because they're quality products and they smell incredible. I'm still working through the bottle of Soak Opera bath and shower gel I purchased last year, and love how it can be used as both a shower gel and as bubble bath. I also have the bath fizzer bar of hers and her moisturizing lotion, along with one of her makeup bags. I have also purchased Zoella products as gifts for other people. Now that she has a whole line of products, I'm sure that I will be picking these up ASAP.