All posts by Adam

About Adam

Adam is a Digital Creation Specialist - Children who never has enough shelf space for his board game collection, wall space for his photographs, or stomach space for his baking. Once he’s got a book in his clutches (preferably a fantasy, or humorous non-fiction one) absolutely nothing else is getting done that day. Working in a library is a blessing and a curse to his free time.  |  Meet the team

Slithering into the Year of the Snake

The Cover of It's Your Year, Baby Snake by Ariel Hsu

It’s still a week away when this post goes live, but Happy Lunar New Year! The Year of the Dragon returns to the rivers as the Year of the Snake slithers from the woodwork1. In the spirit of Sumayyah’s post last year, I thought I’d highlight some snake-themed items in our catalogue.

I’ll get to that in a bit, though, as I’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with my research for this one. You see, growing up in York Region, this celebration was called Chinese New Year, which is hyperspecific but also an accepted2 name. In China, this is 春节3 (Chūnjié) or Spring Festival, and it kicks off the largest human migration on the planet as people travel to celebrate with family and friends and use the extended vacation for sightseeing in other parts of the country. I’ve been in China during a similar holiday period, and while it’s bonkers how many people are travelling, we got where we were going at the times we were supposed to get there. The issue is less about the efficiency of transit and more about getting a ticket in the first place.

The cover of Feasts of Good Fortune by Hsiao-Ching Chou and Meilee Chou Riddle

China isn’t the only country that celebrates this new year. As a couple of examples, it’s Tết in Vietnam and 설날 (Seollal) in Korea. Hence, ‘Lunar New Year.’ But even this is a misnomer since it’s not a purely lunar calendar that determines when the celebration is, but rather a lunisolar calendar, aka the Chinese Calendar, which is why some prefer ‘Chinese New Year.’ Whatever it’s called and wherever it’s celebrated, it’s a time to gather with family and friends to celebrate and feast. I don’t know our menu for that day yet, but I’ve gotten pretty adept at crispy skin pork belly, so that’s an option.

But you’re not here to read about me getting side-tracked. Or maybe you are? And it’s not precisely a side track, more of an overview of why I’m doing this. Snake books, though. That’s what I’m supposed to be talking about, sssssso it’sssss time to sssssstart.

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Secret Santa Part 100: (Not So) Secret Santa’s Shelf Pick Delivery Service

A pile of gifts that are vaguely book shaped.

There are only four1 of us, and I’m going last, so ‘surprise’ Sumayyah! I’m your HOTS Secret Santa. I hope I can live up to the standards you set when you kicked off this initiative, which our fellow writers have upheld for the past couple of weeks. So now I have three tough acts to follow, and poor Sumayyah has had to wait most of a month to get her Secret Santa shelf picks. This post is also going live on Christmas Day, so I’m too late for the rest of our readers to get physical copies of any of these books before we reopen on the 27th. To that end, if we have both a digital and physical copy of an item, the picture will be a link to the digital, while the text will be to the physical. A final note before we dive in: it will probably shock you to the core2 that I haven’t read every book I’ve ever recommended on the HOTS blog3. There are too many books and not enough time. I do read/watch/listen widely, though, so to give proper Secret Santa recs to Sumayyah, everything in this post is something I’ve gone through myself at one point or another. This has the added benefit of improving the recs for the rest of our readers, which is a lovely side effect. So read on for some reading recommendations tailored to Sumayyah, but hopefully relevant to your interests as well.

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Hot Leaf Juice & Firewater

A sequence of images from the TV show Avatar The Last Airbender from Nickelodeon depecting one character calling tea Hot Leaf Juice
©Nickelodeon

It’s that time again! Apparently, it’s been a while since the last one, and I’ve discovered more nerdy cookbooks on our shelves that deserve some time in the spotlight. This time around, I’ve accidentally hit on a theme, and rather than filling your stomach with food, I’ll be quenching your thirst with tea and cocktails1. There will still be some nibbles to start, but I’ll primarily focus on the libations today. Before we get too far into this, I should probably warn my readers that I’m by no means an expert on cocktail mixing or even cocktail drinking. I enjoy a nice cider once in a while, but alcohol has never been something I’ve gone out of my way to partake in, and mixing drinks sounds like a lot of work. That said, I have family and friends who enjoy a nice mixed drink, and just like with making coffee for my wife, I’m happy to pick up a new skill to show off with make their life more enjoyable.

The Official Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea Cookbook

I’ll start sober with one of the tea books. Thanks, Maya, for setting up beautifully for this section with your ways to hide from winter, though I’ll contest that tea is a year-round drink. Admittedly, The Official Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea Cookbook has more to do with food than tea, but given that it’s all food meant to accompany an afternoon tea, I’ll give it a pass. To the surprise of (probably) none of you, I know nothing about Downton Abbey beyond that it was a TV show with a rather large following. Is it particularly nerdy? The audience might prefer to avoid hearing this, but yes. British (and world) history mined for what is essentially late-Edwardian early-modern era fan-fiction? Nerdy as all get out2. So what’s in this book? Surprisingly little tea. Pages 15 and 16 cover Tea at Downton Abbey, including Tea Etiquette, Preparing the Tea, Serving the Tea, and Types of Tea. There’s also some talk of British tea history in the preamble, but most of the recipes are for sweets and treats, which makes me think that tea time was just an excuse to indulge one’s sweet tooth. Dish names here are surprisingly standard; they didn’t name a single one after a character from the show, though pictures and quotes are scattered throughout. Will the book make you feel like you’re enjoying afternoon tea at Downton? Probably not, but does that matter when you’re scarfing down English Toffee Shortbreads or Sticky Toffee Pudding3 in a very un-Edwardian fashion? Not one bit. Before moving on, I want to point to Royal Teas, which also has very little to do with actual tea and is more about the food eaten during tea time. I’m tossing it in here since an obsession with royalty is its own kind of nerdery.

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