All posts by Sumayyah

About Sumayyah

Sumayyah is an Information Assistant at the Vaughan Public Libraries. She's also a bookworm and author, constantly dreaming up a multitude of different stories and wrestling with finishing them.  |  Meet the team

November Nostalgia & Movie Marathons

I don’t know what it is about November, but for me it’s a very nostalgic month. Something about the cold and snow sweeping in on the heels of a vibrant autumn, the enveloping gloom, the time change, and the burgeoning anticipation of the holiday season all conspires to make me want nothing more than to be cozy and re-watch all my favourite action/adventure movies.

I’m not sure why action/adventure is specifically the genre I go for. Maybe to counteract the urge to hibernate? While the natural world slows down and beds down, we as a society keep grinding, and so I suppose I seek out some fun and adrenaline to revitalize me in this nippy, busy time without…actually exhausting myself by doing more*.

*Fittingly, a lot of these movies take place in warm, sunny tropical or desert climes, so it only makes sense that I want to watch them when everything’s grey and freezing outside.

If there’s one uniting thread to experiencing winter around the world (for those who have winter, anyway), it’s that it’s a time of story telling. After all, what better way is there to pass the long cold nights than to gather with friends, family, and community and entertain ourselves?

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Type Talk: Fanfiction

Welcome to the last post in this series created in honour of VPL’s ongoing Reading Challenge and this year’s Summer Reading Club. Today I wanted to talk about fanfiction! The name itself is basically self-explanatory, but for clarity’s sake: it’s fiction inspired by someone else’s source material. This can be anything under the sun, including movies, tv shows, video games, books, other fanfiction, art, and even people (which is a subgenre known as RPF, or Real Person Fiction) and can feature bands, celebrities, historical figures, and more.

Fanfiction is not just about written works, either. It belongs to the broader category of fanworks, which include fanart, fan videos, fan music, etc.

Sometimes, fanfiction’s connection to the source material is clear and obvious. Other times, were it not for the names of the characters, you might never know what original work inspired it.

You may be wondering how legal this is, and the answer is…complicated. It depends on the source material’s copyright restrictions, how relaxed the original creators are about derivative works (see Anne Rice, who was famously ruthless about it), and whether any profit is being made off it (short answer: no profit means it’s usually fine).

Here’s an article on that aspect of fanfiction, as well as how it relates to censorship and free speech, if you’re interested in learning more.

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September Reading Challenge

September Reading Challenge: Read a book by an author you’ve never read before

You know at first, I was pretty stumped on how to make a list and post for a challenge so…subjective. After all, no matter how well-known a book might be, there are always plenty of people who’ve never read it before, which means theoretically, I could talk about any book.

Thankfully my coworker had the fantastic suggestion to list books by debut authors as well as newly translated books, so here we go! As per usual, all the titles featured in this post will be available at Vaughan Public Libraries, though as they are new, many are on order. Get your holds in now!

DEBUT AUTHORS

Cover of When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

A mythic love story set in Trinidad & Tobago, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.

A masterwork of lush imagination and immersive lyricism, shot through with the rhythm of the island, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding novel about inheritance, loss and love’s seismic power to heal.

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