Continuing our new holiday tradition, next up we have my recommendations for fellow blog team member Maya. After conducting extensive research, including scouring Maya’s previously published posts, I’ve come up with some bespoke picks for her enjoyment. For those among you who may enjoy horror with a supernatural/paranormal tinge, graphic novels, Kate Beaton, and the like, these choices just might do double for you. I hope there’s something here that you haven’t already heard of and that interests you, Maya! Since Maya is an undisputed horror fan (with several blog posts in evidence), I had to include a horror novel in my gift of recommendations. This one was on Book Riot’s 2024 Summer Scares List, which is an annual tradition the website has in collaboration with the Horror Writers Association in the US and several other book and/or library-related organizations. What better way to play to Maya’s steadfast and unceasing love of summer and hatred of winter then to pull from this list. It aims to boost the popularity of the horror genre for readers at any age and for all seasons. Too often the spoopy and gothic are linked to Halloween, the colder months, and autumnal vibes. Check out the list linked above if you’re interested! There’s books for adults, young adults, and middle grade. Such Sharp Teeth is about Rory Morris. After a move back to the place she was born and an encounter with a man from her past, she gets in an accident with a wild animal, or so she thinks. Paranormal transformation ensues, along with romance.
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The Anti-Bed Rot Bucket List of 2024
I’ve been writing up bucket lists for a few years now, and while I rarely cross off everything on them, I do find that they’re a great way to remember what fun thing I wanted to do or try…especially when the humidity of summer and the humdrum of working has put me in a fugue state of just wanting to rot in bed on my days off.
While I do think taking some time to yourself to not be ‘productive’ is both healthy and occasionally even necessary…I also don’t want to get too stuck in the rut of mindless media consumption in the guise of ‘resting’ for days on days.
April just so happens to be the month where I get all aspirational about life again, so I thought, why not share some of my bucket list items with you? Maybe this will inspire you to join me in creating your own bucket list, or adding to yours if you already have one! Therefore, in no particular order, here’s a short list of things I would love to do in 2024.
Continue readingCan Country Music Be Cool?

It’s probably obvious that this post is a response to the release of Beyoncé’s new countrified album Cowboy Carter, to which I have been listening religiously. Despite her insistence that Cowboy Carter “ain’t a country album, [it’s] a Beyoncé album”, the album is a self-admitted response to “an experience I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and where it was very clear that I wasn’t.” Fans suspect this is a reference to her 2016 performance with The Chicks at the Country Music Awards, during which they performed Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” to a chilly audience. As (sadly) expected, some folks in the country community still have their hackles raised at (the horror!) a Black woman daring to wade into the country waters, despite being from literal Texas and shouting out Houston every chance she gets (their argument might be that Beyoncé is a pop artist and therefore doesn’t have the chops for country, but I don’t remember any hubbub when the loudly Italian-American pop queen Lady Gaga released Joanne).
When I ask if country music can be “cool”, perhaps I should clarify what I mean by that vague descriptor. Maybe it’s different for the kids now, I don’t know! But for me “cool” indicates that timeless quality of being slightly outside—and, to channel 90s smugness, slightly above—the mainstream, of possessing an effortless je ne sais quoi, of challenging social norms instead of supporting the status quo. It’s by this definition that today’s mainstream country music misses the mark: as a genre (and this is speaking broadly), it is dedicated to upholding the conservative, patriarchal, exclusionary values of a certain racial and social class. It’s not the only popular genre dominated by white (blond, even!), straight, cis men—rock music has that in spades as well, but rock musicians tend to lean more alternative. Not so with mainstream country. Ontario’s annual Boots and Hearts festival returns this year boasting Jason Aldean as a headliner, the singer whose controversial “Try That in a Small Town” has been derided even by a Tennessee State Representative as a “pro-gun, pro-violence, modern lynching song.” It’s the opposite of cool (apologies to Luke Combs, whose cover of “Fast Car” is lovely, and he seems chill enough).
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