All posts by Alyssia

About Alyssia

Alyssia is an Adult Services Librarian at the Vaughan Public Libraries. Nothing makes her happier than a great book and a great cup of coffee. She loves fiction in all formats - books, movies, television, you name it - and is always on the lookout for awesome new music.  |  Meet the team

The Oscars: A Watchlist

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If you’re an Oscars aficionado, make sure to join us on the evening of Thursday, March 24 for our Oscars Trivia Night!

It’s that time of year again! Time for stars to strut down the red carpet and for the rest of us to watch from our couches with a glass of wine and sweatpants. Yes, the Academy Awards are upon us, and unlike last year’s sad, weird COVID ceremony, this year promises to return the glitz and glam we’re all looking for.  

The limbo period between the nominees being announced and the ceremony proper is always fraught for the film fan. We love to celebrate our favourites getting a nom, but we also love to rant and rave about who, in a just world, should really be getting them. Ostensibly an award ceremony recognizing the best in the craft, the Oscars are notorious for things like name bias (bestowing awards on big name actors), age bias (Adrien Brody is the only man to win Best Actor under the age of 30, though plenty of young women have won Best Actress—after all, Hollywood likes its men old and its women young), and playing catch-up on overdue awards (see: Leo DiCaprio finally winning for The Revenant instead of, like, anything else). Then there’s the Western, English language bias of it all—as Bong Joon-ho put it, the Oscars are a “very local” award show.  

And of course, the Oscars wouldn’t be the Oscars without a full list of snubs for people to rage about on Twitter. Every year there are some headscratchers, people or movies that seem like locks for nominations, only to be shut out. There was palpable shock when Lady Gaga was ignored for her House of Gucci performance (although, with that accent? I don’t know). Don’t Look Up’s Best Picture nom sparked highly annoying discourse from both fans and detractors.  

Since we all love to share our opinions on who is most deserving of these esteemed, slightly silly awards, below you’ll find my picks for the best films in the race this year—whether or not they were nominated for Best Picture (and a necessary caveat: I have seen many of the nominees, but not all!). And I, of course, have my own list of snubs that I would have liked to see get some recognition. Some of these are already available at VPL; for those that aren’t, keep an eye on our catalogue!  

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A Different Kind of Valentine

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Every year, Valentine’s Day rolls around with its parade of pink hearts, boxes of chocolate, and silly cards being passed between the hands of elementary school students. It’s a lovely holiday, no matter what the anti-Hallmark crowd would like you to believe (is it a nonsense corporate holiday that encourages materialism? Sure! Should we be expressing affection to loved ones year round, rather than hyper-expressing it on one day? Also sure! But is it really a bad thing to spend some extra time on that affection once a year? Eh, I don’t think so). But not all of us can over-indulge in the saccharine without feeling a little woozy. Some of us might have had our fill on sweets—and some of us don’t have much of a sweet tooth at all. By industry standards, a book can only qualify for the romance section with a fundamental requirement: a happily-ever-after. And there is certainly an explosive market for that! But what if you’re bored of happily-ever-afters? What if your taste runs a little…darker? 

If you feel like being put through the wringer emotionally, or you enjoy Suffering, you will probably have to get your thrills in the general fiction section. There is a wide, wide sea of love stories—or “love stories”—that don’t meet genre requirements for romance, but that doesn’t make them any less about love. It’s just that they might also be about toxic relationships. Or social class. Or obsession. Basically, the ugly underside of love; the ways it can go wrong. The romance genre might be the titan in the publishing industry, but sad, messy, and downright upsetting love stories are no slouch, either. We’ve already discussed the TikTok obsession with books like Song of Achilles; Colleen Hoover’s books are impossible to keep on the shelves; A Little Life is still sparking fierce debate on the literary value of endless trauma (author Hanya Yanagihara’s newest novel, To Paradise, is again causing a similar stir). People love to have feelings, even when they hurt! 

Below are some recommendations that would never make it into the romance section of your local bookstore. In them you will find people in love, but it’s love that fails in one way or another—and they’re people we might not necessarily be rooting for! Arranged in order of least to most toxic, I give you: a different kind of Valentine’s book list! 

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Wintering

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Post-holiday season, it’s tempting to let the winter blues get the best of us. Particularly in the wake of yet another covid winter and yet another sombre New Years. There’s something particularly, poignantly sad about canceling the celebration of a new year, isn’t there? Before the holiday season began, as the days got darker and the weather grew colder, I checked out the audiobook of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by British writer Katherine May. I listened to it as I walked through a wooded path after the first snowfall of the season. 

The UK focus of the book did give me pause, I admit. “Oh, my sweet summer child,” I thought, quoting Old Nan, “what do you know about winter?” But May’s concept of “wintering” transcends the season itself and is also applied to the dark, low “winter” periods of life. Just as winter is an annual, perhaps unwelcome visitor, so too are these low periods. Wintering was written before the pandemic hit, but its timing could not have been better. Published in December 2020, the ongoing pandemic has given the book a striking relevance that May could not have anticipated while writing it. 

May’s quest to learn the wintering habits of cultures with harsher climates than that of mild England takes her to neighbouring Nordic countries like Iceland, Norway, and Finland. Countries whose people, while far from rejoicing in the waning light, have found ways to embrace the darkness (the Danes introduced us to the concept of hygge, after all). There are passages dedicated to Christmastime rituals like Sweden’s candlelit Sankta Lucia ceremony, as well as neo-Paganistic rituals closer to home like the Druid celebrations at Stonehenge, ringing in the new year by watching the sun rise over the ancient monument. The chapters are structured according to the calendar, from October to March, with subheadings such as “Metamorphosis”, “Midwinter”, “Epiphany”, and “Thaw” as guideposts. Throughout these chapters, May discusses sometimes her own personal crises (how should one adequately prepare for recurring bouts of depression?) while also taking meandering dips into nature writing, looking to the life cycles of beehives and the hibernation habits of adorable, disappearing dormice for inspiration on how to handle the ups and inevitable downs of our own lives.

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