Secret Santa Part III: Ho Ho Ho and a Pile of Books

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Happy (almost) holidays, readers! There’s just about one week proper to go until family, feasting, and much-needed vacation time (or one of the three) and I, for one, can’t wait. Plus, there’s only one week left in our HOTS month of library-themed gifting and though we’re slowing down, there are still two more people on our team who made the Nice List this year.

I should preface this by saying I have a few different approaches when it comes to gift-giving. One: the thoughtful and thoroughly researched method. Two: the direct technique of “just ask”. And three (and sometimes my favorite): given because it’s just funny, in a very tongue-in-cheek way.    

With that little PSA out of the way, seeing as the number of yet to be revealed Secret Santas is dwindling, it might come as no surprise that as fate would have it the name I pulled out of our festive hat was Adam’s. I promise that there will be no weather-related arguments below. Instead, I’ve gone through my favorite Adam-authored posts and done some sneaky (or not so sneaky) conversational reconnaissance behind the scenes to gather a list of books, shows, and video games that he may enjoy.  So come with me as we get particularly niche and geeky as I share some recommendations that hopefully tickle his funny bone and/or fall in line with his specific brand of Nerd.  

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It’s always a fun time around the library when Adam gets to cooking up some of his nerdy foodrelated posts. There’s always at least one member of our staff he can rope into ooh-ing and aah-ing over some yummy-looking nostalgia and geekery and always makes us wish our lunch breaks could come that much sooner. If you hear very hungry groans coming from the staff room, Adam is usually the one to thank and blame. There is also nothing more delicious looking than the animated feasts and treats in Studio Ghibli’s hand draw-films, and we happen to have several (unofficial) dedicated cookbooks on our shelves. Is this a biased pick out of all the many TV and film-related cookbooks on our shelves? Maybe. But who doesn’t want to see the brightly colored, mouthwatering creations made by Hayao Miyazaki and his team come to life through the hand of our resident library chef? I rest my case. Plus, the one who makes is the one who eats, so I still think Adam is the real winner here. In case he was scratching his head over what to cook for holiday meals, maybe some of the recipes in the cookbook authored by Minh-Tri Vo will inspire him. If anything, the red bean buns (from Spirited Away) and chocolate cake (from Kiki’s Delivery Service) would make excellent editions to any holiday (or general) dessert menu. This particular cookbook also has little tidbits of information on the history of Japan’s culinary scene plus shoutouts to the scenes and films (even the lesser-known Ghibli films) where the recipes are pulled from.         

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As our Digital Specialist, Adam is the go-to person when it comes to most things coding, so I had to fully capitalize on his Game Jam cheerleading post from earlier this year. When the idea for this blog post series started floating around, Adam and I had also joked that if we had pulled each other’s names, we were fully allowed to recommend some video games that would take twelve hours or more to get past the prologue. So here I am fulfilling the punchline with my next recommendation that comes from one of the more niche kingdoms of nerdery: JRPGs. If you were an 80’s or 90’s kid, you may have a video game that was near and dear to your little childhood heart. For me, that game is none other than Tales of Symphonia. While it doesn’t take exactly twelve hours to really get into the game, the prologue is undeniably lengthy, detailing a world in decline after a shortage of a magical resource called mana. You’re almost immediately thrown into the shoes of bumbling and slightly dopey village swordsman Lloyd Irving, accompanying his childhood friend Colette on a church-sanctioned pilgrimage to awaken the world’s spirits and set things right again. But a JRPG wouldn’t be a JRPG without a ton of detours and side quests so nothing, of course, goes to plan. In between the adventuring, monster slaying, and heroic deeds, you (and Adam) can look forward to interparty gaffs, synthesized soundtracks, tragic backstories, and some light social commentary. I’m also going to throw in the latest installment of the Tales series, just in case you or Adam have an extra twelve-plus hours to kill over the holidays. Tales of Arise takes the best of the early Tales series but pushes the envelope on the drama, the social issues, and the emotional intelligence of its characters. Plus, new shiny graphics. Who doesn’t love new shiny graphics?

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These next recommendations are probably things that normally wouldn’t belong on this list, but as Adam also renovated his home this year and is one of my only colleagues who truly understands the horrors of such an undertaking, I thought there would be nothing more appropriate to talk about than some things in our collection that detail our shared suffering (because misery with company can sometimes be funny). Is house renovation as bad as either of these stories say? No, probably not. But while you’re in it, it certainly feels that way. The typical constant delays and confusion of redesigning a home plague Eve, the lead character of Marcus Kliewer’s psychological thriller We Used to Live Here, with a supernatural twist. She and her girlfriend Charlie spend their time flipping houses, looking to make some big cash from a new killer deal (though based on how much of a money sink home renovations can be, you really start to question the sanity of their plan). But when there’s a knock on the door and Charlie’s nowhere to be found, people-pleasing Eve is forced to open the door to a man who says he used to live in the very building she’s currently ripping apart to put together again, and would she mind if he showed his family around the place before it changes for good? What ensues are some house guests incapable of taking a hint to go and increasingly paranormal encounters that start making Eve question everything, which is probably a good thing, considering she’s renovating a house.

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I also can’t help myself from getting on my soapbox regarding any of Mike Flanagan’s masterpieces, so if We Used to Live Here gets too far away from horror about homes and renovating them, how about a story about a house that actively doesn’t like you (like most houses do when you start trying to remove their innards). I’ve mentioned it enough times before, but I’m going to give The Haunting of Hill House a brief shoutout in the hopes I can rope Adam into gushing about the show with me. The story takes place in the past and present, with the Craine family dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy that has them fleeing the titular house and their lucrative house-flipping deal in the middle of the night, until Nell, the youngest daughter, is called back to it for mysterious reasons. It’s an expertly written, expertly filmed dramatic ghost story (its sixth episode is comprised of just five long takes and feels like an award-winning stage play) and while the paranormal is ever present, Flanagan focuses more on the very real things that tend to haunt relationships and turns them into masterful metaphors. But, besides that, the simpler moral of the story is maybe just stop flipping houses.

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Adam and I have had a few conversations about Randall Munroe’s What If?, a silly book of scientific hypotheticals, and other popular webcomics turned books, so I’d like to end my library-based ode to him with some related (or tangentially related) recommendations. With What If? in mind, through my extensive shelf spelunking I came across Ryan North’s How to Take Over the World. No one’s better suited to tell anyone how to rise to levels of maximum villainy than a comic book author with a science (computer science, but that’s being pedantic) degree from UofT who devises evil schemes and eviler characters on the daily. The book is filled with North’s quick-witted humor while taking some wild bad guy schemes to their most serious extremes. There are also some very tongue-in-cheek illustrations, (questionably) detailed charts, and little footnotes that I hope our resident footnote user will enjoy. Now, am I suggesting that Adam start a nefarious side hustle while masquerading as a librarian by day? No, but I do think his cat Loki would make an excellent yet tiny evil henchkitty. Still, if Adam doesn’t want to give his cat any smart ideas, I’m going to recommend he start with North’s (technically prequel) book How to Invent Everything.

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Lastly, I have two webcomics turned delightful page-turners that take all of life’s hilarious ups and downs and gives them an even more funny twist, which I hope are right up Adam’s alley given his love for witty, simply drawn comics like Revenge of the Librarians. In Emotions Explained With Buff Dudes, writer and illustrator of Shen Comix Andrew Tsyaston compiles a selection of his Owlturd comics from Webtoon. If Tsyaston’s talent for naming things isn’t enough, then maybe the personified mushy, lumpy and/or oddly buff versions of Life, Problem, Emotion and more will be enough of a draw. Part of the charm of Tsyaston’s illustrations is their simplicity, from the snappy, often four-panel scripts to the bright, flat coloring. I first came across Owlturd through Twitter (yes, I know it’s now called X but I have staunchly refused to call it that on principle), and I’m lucky all the best of them are neatly packed into one little book because it is an internet rabbit hole you’re not soon to leave.            

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Speaking of internet rabbit holes, I could spend hours going through Nathan Pyle’s Strange Planet, originally posted to Instagram in 2019. Humans are inherently weird little creatures that do weird little things, and if we were to explain why we do any of the things we do to, let’s say, some sort of alien, we’d probably seem like the oddest species in the cosmos. That’s the fun of Strange Planet. Pyle does a fantastic job of describing the most mundane tasks like watching a movie, suntanning, or placing children’s drawings on the fridge in the most straightforward, technical way but also manages to make it sound absolutely absurd. I hope it will make Adam laugh out loud as much as I have over the years.   

I still have an endless number of recommendations for Adam, but I’ll wrap things up here. I hope for you readers that any last-minute gift-getting has already been done. But if you’re down to the wire and need an emergency present helpline, look no further than our tailored Shelf Picks services. Just fill out the form with your loved one in mind and our library elves staff will get to work on finding you that perfect book/video game/movie-related gift idea that you might not have thought of.

Check back next week for our last Secret Santa post and our very last HOTS blog post of 2024 (time flies!). With that, I wish you and Adam some very happy holidays and a happy New Year!

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