All posts by Maya

About Maya

Maya is an Information staff member at Vaughan Public Libraries. If she isn't scratching her head over the next sentence in her writing, she's making art and stretching her creative legs. She's a huge film buff and loves weird, fantastical fiction.  |  Meet the team

An East Coast Book List for the Newfie Newbie (and more!)

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It’s nearly the end of summer (and if you’re hearing some sort of sound in the background, that’s probably my distant wailing) which means I finally get to go on a much-needed vacation. I guess there is no better way to wave au revoir to the more palatable Canadian season (and I will remain unconvinced Cold, Extreme Cold, or Rain with a Side of Gray is better than summer no matter what you say), than a road trip tour through part of the country I’ve never seen, guided by my very best friend. Please send thoughts and prayers to him so that his sanity may survive the hours upon hours of backseat shenanigans I will no doubt get up to with the third friend of our intrepid traveling troupe.

It is a good thing though that I’ve got someone taking the lead on where to go and what to see because I know basically nothing about our shining East Coast other than Anne of Green Gables, potatoes, endless seafood, and what I learned in grade school. But if you’re like me and you’re making a last-minute summer getaway by car or by plane to the nature-filled landscapes of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or Prince Edward Island, then let me take a page out of my colleague Adam’s recent posts and scour our library shelves for something that may help you not look like a total Newfie (and East Coast) Newb. I know I need it.   

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I Went to the Joe Hisaishi Concert

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If you know me well there are probably a few facts that come to mind. One: I love a good cat nap. Two: my archnemesis is Canadian Winter, and three: Spirited Away is my favorite movie of all time. Since childhood, I have seen this film an embarrassing number of times (which I’ll admit now is probably somewhere upwards of twenty) and if I’m being honest, it probably won’t stop there. It’s my guilty guiltless pleasure.

Part of what keeps me coming back to this masterpiece of animation is, of course, the hand-drawn marvels, from the soot sprites to an adorable mouse companion barely the size of a hand. Part of it is also the weird, strange, and somewhat nonsensical Alice in Wonderland-esque storyline in which our main character finds herself whisked away to the Spirit World with a mysterious bathhouse. But oddly enough, the thing that always sticks with me the most after watching it and the thing that makes me return is the soundtrack. It’s the perfect backdrop to, if you’re arguing with me, arguably the perfect film. It’s full of lilting whimsy, forlorn mystery, and nostalgia. So, last year when my friend told me that not only was the composer of my favorite film coming to town, but he was coming to town to perform his work on Spirited Away (among others) I couldn’t say “take my money!” fast enough.

There are a few more things you should know about me. Four: I am exactly the type of person to fangirl over a 73-year-old Japanese composer. Five: at the height of pandemic boredom my friends and I had a PowerPoint party (which is a lot more fun than it sounds when your presentation is allowed to be as unhinged as possible), where I decided said 73-year-old Japanese composer was going to be the thing I forced my friends to listen to twenty minutes of hyperactive rambling about (and I still have that presentation laying around somewhere in my Google Drive). So, fair warning, I’m about to fangirl for an indeterminate number of words. Get ready.

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My Quick & Easy Guide to Curing Housework Boredom

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If you’re anything like me, there’s always one thing that you end up dreading throughout your week: the ever-growing mountain of household chores. Whether it’s the dishes staring at you judgmentally from the sink or the endless piles of laundry, it’s just always there and it’s tough to find any fun in it. It’s why it usually stays that way, at least until Mount Housework decides it’s time to have its weekly avalanche. Plus, add in either a move or a renovation like I am next month, and it just makes things worse.

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I sometimes try to fill the time with music, but you need to be in the right sort of mood to listen to it. Plus, after the tenth time of having a verbal struggle with Google Home where it’s determined to send you to the abyss of YouTube’s repository for strange cover bands, you end up wanting to listen to anything but. That’s where I found myself when I stumbled upon the wonderful world of podcasts (ironically, thanks to YouTube. Sometimes the algorithm knows what it’s doing).

The great thing about podcasts is you can take them pretty much anywhere no matter what you’re doing, so long as you have a phone and some headphones (hooray for mobile entertainment!). There’s such a wide range of podcasts too, from self-help to science lessons to my personal favorite, the fiction stories. I think there’s something to be said about how full circle these kinds of podcasts are, taking so much from radio theatre from the 1920s. But that’s another blog post for another time. I’m here to introduce you to my go-to for making housework anything but a pain and a bore: the fun world of aural storytelling.  

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