Category: Let’s Discuss

Sometimes talking with your kids about an important subject is hard. Depending on the kid, a conversation might be brushed off or misunderstood. This was the case with my youngest when it came to having conversations about the fact that his sister is transgender. My youngest was the last one in the family to consistently use proper pronouns and call his sister Jade—it’s not like he was willfully rebelling. Noah has a cognitive disability that makes certain concepts harder for him to grasp, especially abstract concepts (time is one example—it’s never come easily to him). For him, the idea that the person he always knew as his brother was actually his sister was more than a little confusing—he’d lost that childlike ability to just go with the flow, but he also didn’t have the immediate ability to grasp concepts of gender vs. sex either. Luckily, Jade never held it against… Read more »

Okay, this is just going to be a post where I reveal my complete and utter confusion over something technological in regards to the blog. Can you all please enlighten me—what the heck is the deal with the WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor? Will my editor eventually change? A couple of years ago, people started talking about the block editor (lots of people saying that they hated it, but some people do seem to love it), and everyone seemed to be under the impression that WordPress would be switching to the new editor completely soon. I was curious at first, but nothing seemed to change in my WordPress editor, so I just did what I do best … I ignored the problem, knowing that I would inevitably be confused at some point when my editor magically changed. Except, it hasn’t. My WordPress still looks the same as it always has. Honestly,… Read more »

I’ve been in a bit of a blogging and reading slump lately, and I started to think about a post I could write that would just feel plain fun. I landed on covers because I am one of those people who unabashedly judges a book by its cover, and I find it so fascinating how people are drawn to different aspects of a book cover and how my tastes vary drastically with some other bloggers’. So, what draws me to a book cover? I decided to analyze some of my recent favorites and came up with a few categories: Illustrated Covers! I actually came back up to the top and added this after I was done with the rest of the post because I realized that every single cover that caught my eye for this post was illustrated. Which isn’t to say that I don’t like covers that aren’t illustrated,… Read more »

I’ve been struggling with what to post lately, so I’ve just been sort of frozen with indecision. Posting randomness as if nothing horrible is happening in our world feels wrong. And disappearing seems strange too. (Especially in light of the fact that silence=being complicit in racism. I went to a local protest, but being silent here still isn’t right. I want to do more!) I feel like I should be supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in some way, but suddenly pulling out all my Black books and showcasing them seems icky somehow.  (I’m very honestly not judging anyone else who’s chosen to do this—for me, it just doesn’t feel right. Instead, I’d rather focus on making sure I’m covering diverse books all the time and be as mindful as possible of that.) But one thing I DO feel good about doing is spreading the word about Black-owned bookstores and… Read more »

So, this morning, a friend of mine contacted me on Instagram and asked if my account got spoofed. He sent me an image of my Instagram account… except it wasn’t! At first glance, it looked like me … my profile picture, my name, even the last five images I’d posted. The only slight difference (which is basically unnoticeable unless you looked hard) is that they added an underscore after my Instagram handle (so they used @nicolefictionaddiction_). IF YOU GET A FOLLOW FROM THIS PERSON (with the underscore after the name), PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW BACK! My first reaction was shock—what was this person doing impersonating me? And then worry … wait, what was this person doing while impersonating me? I mean, they couldn’t have had good intentions, right? Thankfully, my friend had noticed right away and let me know (thanks Malcolm!) and only 14 people had followed at that point. It looks like… Read more »

My two daughters went through a long spell where they just weren’t really reading, and I cannot even tell you how sad that made me. I mean, these are MY kids; they can’t go around not reading books! I blamed it on teenagerism. But lately … they’ve been reading again!! My oldest is funny. She has all these qualifications, like she has to let me know she’s not really a reader. She’s a huge fan of anime and she’s always read a bit of manga, but lately she’s been reading light novels. In case you’re not aware (I wasn’t), light novels are Japanese books aimed at a YA or MG audience. They’re usually relatively short (around 250-300 pages) and they typically have at least a few manga-style pictures. They’re often made into anime (which is what got my daughter into them—she wanted to find out what happens in some of… Read more »

So, the other day, I noticed that Celesta Rimington, author of the upcoming The Elephant’s Girl followed me on Instagram. Since I had recently announced my receipt of a review copy of her book, that didn’t seem excessively odd, but I hadn’t posted anything to Instagram about it (since it wasn’t a physical copy), and it made me wonder how she found me. For some reason, I randomly Googled her book to see if my blog somehow came up from just this one mention. I don’t even know why, but I clicked on the Images tab and found something that sort of shocked me: Relatively close to the top of the search results were two random images from my blog. One was the graphic for my February 2019 Wrap-up(???) and the other was a random Bite-Sized Reviews post. None of the reviews had anything to do with this book. Or… Read more »

Bloggers, do you ever write down a post idea as a draft? Do you ever actually go back and write a post to go with that fabulous idea you had or does it sit in your drafts folder … forever. Not long ago, I was looking for a little inspiration for a post, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might have some ideas squirreled away as drafts. From time to time I’ll have a great idea for a post, but no time to write it. So, I’ll write down a title and save it as a draft. Sometimes I’ll even write a bit more than a title. Problem is, I almost never remember to go back and look at those drafts. And by the time I do, the flash of inspiration I had when I wrote that idea down has fizzled away, and I’m just no longer interested. (I’m… Read more »