Book Rants - Feb 2026

I had set out to read more fantasies and middle grade and ended up reading more grade fantasies with not a murder in sight except in one book which I didn't finish reading. I would like to read more varieties but at the same time, I don't really like to read too beyond my comfort zone so it's a bit difficult choosing what books to read. 
    It's been a snowy, cold February, quite a fast month. The days just zoom on by. It didn't seem like I did anything but I did some work, some blogging, some reading and other things I forgot. If I didn't have a blog where I post some of my activities, I probably wouldn't remember much. Anyway, here are the books I read this month and a few I didn't finish.

Books I Finished:

01 - Totally Psychic (#1) by Brigid Martin
What's it about: psychics, ghosts, school, family, friends, sisters
I guess I would have liked this better if it wasn't so predictable but considering I read many types of these books (boy or girl using their new powers and the chaos that follows and breaking rules or advice they knew they should follow but don't), I would easily know where it will go. This was a good book but the stakes aren't super high and you know things will turn out fine in the end. There's a sequel but I probably won't read it.

Fiction: Dreaming of Bowling Under the Sunshine

The train went on a loop and nobody noticed until it went around a fourth time and by then, the fifth loop had started. A scream escaped into the air but no one claimed it. The twenty-something passengers all paused to look at each other as another loop began. 
    A short man ran to one end of the car and a tall man went to the other end but neither were able to open the exit doors. What's even more strange, they were by themselves and not attached to other cars or even the car with the engine that kept the train moving. Everyone stared out the windows at the passing scenery of trees and buildings under the dull winter sun. 
    The passengers' panicky voices rose and fell. In his corner with his shopping cart piled high with stuff, a man wearing many layers of clothing was enjoying a bowl of something soggy soaked in milk. In between bites, he muttered, "Can't stop. Got to keep going til someone makes a wish."
    Just a few feet away, sitting by the window, Jill heard him but she ignored him. She was thinking if she was late to work, she would be fired. But she didn't panic. She was trained by her firefighter grandfather to stay calm during emergencies. If he was here, he would say, "This is a puzzling puzzle. We'll need to figure this out with our brains, not our emotions." 
    It was the wrong morning to stop paying attention to the train. Normally, Jill read her book and trusted the train to get her to her destination. The train had made its usual stops and passengers got on and off but now it was passing all the stops. What are they to do? Back and forth they went on with the loops and nobody had any answers to this strange predicament. So far, Jill counted nineteen loops. She glanced around her. This was no longer the B train - the sign was now a blank orange circle and not only that but all the advertisements all over the car were missing words. 
    The man with the layer clothing was now reading the newspaper. Jill thought to ask him why was he so calm but he would probably answer with something too wild for her to believe. She glanced at her wrist watch: 8:56. She was already late since it took five minutes to walk to the office from the station.
    The train began to speed up. Loop after loop, it went faster. Jill barely felt the velocity and no one tumbled but the scenery through the windows became long blurs. A little boy screamed that he wished to go home. A few people mumbled their assent. 
    The man with the layered clothing put down his papers. He looked around him. "Who else wish to go home?" he said.
    Everyone raised their hands including Jill. But she didn't want to go home and yet, she didn't want to go to work. She wished she could move to an island and bowl under the sunshine. 
    After a few more loops, the train began to slow down and came to a leisure halt. The doors whooshed open. For a moment, no one moved. Then they all rushed out the doors. Two uniform men appeared and directed them from the station while citing that the train was no longer in service.
    Jill got to work ten minutes late but she was just glad she wasn't looping anymore. Was she wrong that the man with the layered clothing had disappeared from the train? She was sure he didn't get out with them.
    In the afternoon, her boss came out of his office and announced the company would be moving to an island and it will occurred in a month. Jill was enjoying the idea of testing the new pins and bowling under the sunshine to worry about getting fired or having her wish come true.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are posted here. This week's prompts are: train, loop, scream, puzzle, bowl.

Words for Wednesday Prompts - Feb 25, 2026

This February, I am the host for Words for Wednesday. Words for Wednesday is started by Delores and continued by Elephant's Child who sadly passed away. River at Drifting through life is our new coordinator but the prompts are provided and hosted by various people and hosted on various blogs. The aim of Words for Wednesday is to encourage us to write using some or all of the prompts.

This week's prompts are: 
1. train
2. loop
3. scream
4. puzzle
5. bowl

Charlotte's color for February is Electric Rose (#f00699) which you can see it better here.

You may write your piece in the comments or post it on your blog. If posting on your blog, please leave a direct link to the post so we can all visit you. Have fun writing!

This is my last week hosting Words for Wednesday. For March prompts, River will be providing the prompts and they will be hosted at her blog, Drifting through life.

Thank you but no thank you

I have gotten a couple of comments with: 'Beautiful blog.' And then another comment followed that at the same instance (I get the email alerts at the same time): 'Please read my post.'  I've seen other bloggers getting the same comments and they left them published and I did the same thing. Then a few months after I got those, I get them again (they come in pairs or triplets with a repetition of one or the other comment) and again, I let them go. Then for about a couple of months, no more of those comments and then they came again just last month - I just couldn't stand them so I marked them as spam.
    As a blogger, I don't think you should beg people to visit you which these messages seemed to say but perhaps other people have a different interpretation. I didn't visit this person because I just didn't feel right to do so. And I couldn't decide if they are spam or not. Why do they leave the same three comments with the same wording over and over? You could say it's because of language constraint but that still didn't explain the repetition. Getting these same comments over and over seemed like spam so why should I respond to them or visit them when they might turn out to be spam?
    Then there's these comments that are weirdly worded, gave no clue as what they are trying to say, like they are quoting song lyrics or talked as if they belonged to a different century or planet and they didn't seem like real comments even if they did use my name. No idea what was the point of these comments. Besides that, they get marked as spam by Blogger so I left it.
    Then there are those one-word comments. I think if you cannot think of at least three words to say, just don't do it. Actually, it is just better not to leave a one-word comment because they'll be marked as spam by Blogger but I got sick of marking them as not spam so I sometimes left it.
    And then there were a few bloggers who left generic but nice comments but they had commercial blogs/websites so I didn't return a comment. I don't believe readers have to return comments on commercial blogs or any blogs that didn't interest them.
    It shouldn't matter what readers say in their comments but I guess I'm a picky blogger but also Blogger somehow marked most the above comments as spam so if I don't check, they stay there in that little space until I delete them (which probably never happen because I loath to check that space.)  I like comments to make sense and that I don't have to decipher them or wonder if they are spam or not. Maybe there should be some rules for commenting? I don't know. There's no right or wrong way to leave a comment but common sense should to be something to consider, right?

If you're a blogger, do you think it's right to mark certain comments as spam even when you're not certain they should be? 

Fiction: Ghost Aunt

Katie didn't like to clean so she was happy to let Aunt Margo do all the cleaning around her small home. But Margo had no sense of time so she could have the vacuum on at 3 in the morning or 11 at night. But what was worst was, Margo could make things disappear if it didn't please her. Two months ago, Katie's microwave went missing for a week before Margo told her she had given it to Katie's neighbor who needed the appliance since her stove didn't work and she couldn't afford to get it fixed. Katie didn't know how Margo did anything but she always had a good reason so Katie never questioned her actions. Not until Nick.
    Nick, Katie's boyfriend of almost six months, came to her place for dinner. After Katie confessed she wanted to break up with him, he got furious and overthrown the table and then he started pounding on her until she was unconscious. When she woke up, Katie was in the hospital. Her neighbor had called an ambulance. 

Words for Wednesday Prompts - Feb 18, 2026

This February, I am the host for Words for Wednesday. Words for Wednesday is started by Delores and continued by Elephant's Child who sadly passed away. River at Drifting through life is our new coordinator but the prompts are provided and hosted by various people and hosted on various blogs. The aim of Words for Wednesday is to encourage us to write using some or all of the prompts.

This week's prompts are: 
1. kerplunk
2. erase
3. meek
4. plead
5. tenacious

Charlotte's color for February is Electric Rose (#f00699) which you can see it better here.

You may write your piece in the comments or post it on your blog. If posting on your blog, please leave a direct link to the post so we can all visit you. Have fun writing!

Fiction: Postcards from the Afterlife

Dulce Avery was spending too much time at the park, the place he named the long rider, a long stretch of land that took over two hours to walk from start to end. 
    In his forty-six years on earth, Dulce had spent almost all his time in the office and inside stuffy buildings, sitting at meetings and making more plans for more meetings. And now that he is dead, he should be traveling all over the world. But each time he thought to go elsewhere, he came back to the long rider. He preferred being here surrounded by trees, the scent-filled air and the sometimes familiar faces that came and went.
    Not once did he imagine he would get a second chance. His afterlife had certain limits and he couldn't talk to the living but he didn't mind it. He got to do what he never got time for and stay hours lingering at a place or beside someone.
    It was right after his third wife left him that he began to believe in the afterlife. Her death was immediate and sudden and he never got to see her for the last time. But a night after her funeral, he had a dream that she was living her afterlife doing the things she wanted and she assured him she was well. His daughter, Ivy, was only four then and he told her her mother left but she was living her afterlife.

We Love Fairy Tales Week - Tag

Rachel at Hamlette's Soliloquy is hosting a We Love Fairy Tales Week (February 9-14). Feel free to join in and answer these tag questions.

1. What's your favorite fairy tale?
In the past I would say Beauty and the Beast but now I prefer East of the Sun and West of the Moon which thought to be the inspiration for Beauty and the Beast but instead of a beast, it's a bear which I guess is like a beast.

This book (above) version has a frog instead of a bear but it's a children's book.

East of the Sun and West of the Moon is about a man (perhaps a prince) cursed to be a bear until a girl (maiden) lives with him for a year while he's in his bear form but he cannot tell her he's cursed or let her see him in his human form. Somehow, he begins to share her bed but he comes into her room in total darkness so she never sees him as a human. Later, being curious about who her bedfellow is, she somehow gets a candle to light the her room and finally sees him in his human form which ended with him being taken to the troll palace (which is located east of the sun and west of the moon) to marry the troll princess. The girl travels to the troll palace with the help of various wind beings and sort of recuses him with some trickeries and somehow breaks the curse and they live happily ever after. (I have no idea if the original story is like this but this is the version I like.)

2. If you could cast any actors and actresses ever in a movie version of that fairy tale, who would you pick?
I don't know who to pick but definitely actors/actresses who are not well known because I prefer the characters to stand out and not the actors. But then again, I probably prefer an animated version so the faces are not anybody in particular.

3. Do you have a favorite fairy tale movie?

Disney's Tangled (which is a Rapunzel retelling) which is a musical which I don't like all that much but for this movie, I didn't mind it. Also, I'm sure if I have more time to think it over, I would come up with some other title but I guess it would still be a Disney movie as I maybe watched a bit too many Disney movies growing up.

4. Do you have a favorite book that retells a fairy tale?
I have made a list of favorite fairytale retelling books here.

5. If you got to be in a stage or film production of a classic fairy tale, what fairy tale would you want to be in, and who would you like to play?
I can't pick a tale but I would play someone wicked, one of the villains maybe, not a good guy because I think playing the bad guy is more fun but definitely someone with magic/powers.

6. Do you like fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen or the Grimm Brothers best? Or someone else's?
I like both Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers - combined, they give you a more complete types of tales but I'm sure there are other fairytale storytellers that I don't know about out there.

7. What more obscure fairy tale do you think more people should know about?
The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye? I don't know if it's considered a fairytale but it reads like one. I don't think it's obscure but I don't hear about it much.

Feel feel to answer the tag questions. Check out We Love Fairy Tales Week at Hamlette's Soliloquy > 

Words for Wednesday Prompts - Feb 11, 2026

This February, I am the host for Words for Wednesday. Words for Wednesday is started by Delores and continued by Elephant's Child who sadly passed away. River at Drifting through life is our new coordinator but the prompts are provided and hosted by various people and hosted on various blogs. The aim of Words for Wednesday is to encourage us to write using some or all of the prompts.

This week's prompts are: 
1. heartbreak
2. cheeseburger
3. postcard
4. afterlife
5. beachcomb

Charlotte's color for February is Electric Rose (#f00699) which you can see it better here.

You may write your piece in the comments or post it on your blog. If posting on your blog, please leave a direct link to the post so we can all visit you. Have fun writing!

Some of My Favorite Fairytale Retellings

Rachel at Hamlette's Soliloquy is hosting a We Love Fairy Tales Week (February 9-14) and I thought I list my favorite fairytale retellings (not in any particular order) with a few honorable mentions. For more about We Love Fairy Tales Week, go here.

01 - Kiss of the Spindle by Nancy Campbell Allen
Retelling of: Sleeping Beauty
With: steampunk fashion & technology (such as airships, an android that is sort of amusing, shifters, a surprise creature (which I will not name because it's a spoiler)
I really like the ending with a surprise (to me anyway) creature. (This is part of a four-book series but it can be read as a standalone.)

Fiction: The psychic at the park

Will's friend said he would find Miss Rose at the local park just west from the entrance and beside the duck pond. Within moments he spotted the old woman sitting alone on the bench beside the pond. Her short, gray hair was covered with a white winter cap with her electric-rose colored coat standing out among the gray winter landscape. 
    With his hands in his coat pocket, he walked toward her. "Hello Miss Rose," he said, trying to keep his voice low as not to disturb the quietude of the park.
    "Hello Mr. Will," she said, her eyes on the pond. "Sit, please." She patted the space on the bench on her left. On her lap was a small, black leather book
    Will sat down and looked toward the pond. The frozen surface was covered with fallen debris and one of them appeared to be a small, stuffed bear.
    "How did you..." Will's friend said not to be surprised by her knowledge of things she shouldn't have known.
    "Let's begin. If I say marrying Shelia will make you the happiest man on earth, you would marry her but if I say marrying Shelia will make you miserable as hell, you will reject her. So, how should I answer?"
    Will was, again, surprised by her. He swallowed and said, "Truthfully. I need an honest, real answer. Should I marry Shelia?"
    "Then I have to say, Shelia will make you happy but not the happiest on earth and she will make you miserable but not enough for you to regret marrying her."
    He waited. Shouldn't there be more? "That's it?"
    "What? Oh, you want some detailed foresights? Do you want me to tell you will get a black eye the moment you said your vows? Or that you will spend most of your money on car washes? Or that Shelia will hate mud baths but take them anyway? And that on your forty-fifth birthday, you will choke on jelly beans? Or that when your daughter is four, she would duct tape you in your basement and forget you but you would sleep through the days because of the cold medicine you have taken and your wife will call the cops and you will become a missing person for a week before they thought to search the house? Is that the kind of details you want to hear?" She turned to face him. There were a few faint lines on her smooth skin. If she was supposed to be in her early sixties, Will couldn't believe it.
    "I don't know. But those details would be nice to know. Does my future daughter really leave me in the basement and forget me? Do I die on my forty-fifth birthday?"
    Miss Rose chuckled. "I could not say. I made them up. The future comes when it comes, you don't control it. You can only make your decisions and handle the consequences later. But do avoid jelly beans and whatever you do, don't give gift certificates for mud baths as anniversary gifts." She grinned.
    Will couldn't help but smiled. He came to her knowing whatever she would say, he would still marry Shelia because he believed his life was with her. But he hadn't been certain until she spoke. 
    "Mr. Will, I do not know why you came to me when you already know the answer. Now, if you are done here, would you mind leaving? I like to have these early mornings to myself. If you please." She turned back to facing the pond.    
    He nodded. "Thank you, Miss Rose. I hope you have a good morning." He got up and walked away but after awhile, he paused to look back but she wasn't there. He looked around the park but couldn't see her bright colored coat and there was no one around. She must walked really fast, he thought. He shook his head and went on his way and reminded himself to avoid jelly beans.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by me. The prompts are posted here. This week's prompts are: black eye, car wash, mud bath, jelly bean, duct tape. And Charlotte's color for February is Electric Rose.

60 Reasons why I'm a bad blogger & 500th Post

I was not going to do a post about reaching 500 posts on this blog but then decided I should make a note because it really is a new accomplishment. You may not know but I moved to new blogs a lot so most of my blogs reached over 100 posts but rarely near 500. At least, not that I can remember. It's not that I abandoned blogs but more like I move to a new place like you would a home to find the best one. And the best one right now is this blog. 
      In a previous post I said, Blogging is not my life but it's part of my life. And it's still true now. Without blogging, I would probably procrastinate more, have more listless days and basically put off almost everything. Having a blog is something to keep my mind active enough to do other things. If that makes any sense. So I'll keep on blogging away.

I'm serious about blogging...

To celebrate this little occasion, here's a list - 60 reasons why I'm a bad blogger.  I don't think I'm a bad blogger but sometimes I am a bit too lazy to blog.  I don't think I'm a bad blogger but sometimes I am a bit too lazy to blog. This list is edited from a previous list (that had 59 reasons) which also came from a previous list and that list is also from a previous list so I did some alterations to sort of freshen it up. (Also, because I'm lazy, I'm using the same art - mouseover to see a changed expression.)

60 Reasons why I'm a bad blogger:
01 - Late at commenting
02 - Late at replying to comments on my blog
03 - Have a vivid avoidance to social media
04 - Refuse to use hashtags in my post titles
05 - Refuse to use hashtags in my post labels
06 - Spend too much time worrying why people don't visit my blog and doing nothing about it
07 - Write posts that may be way too long
08 - Change my blog's header often 
09 - Sometimes move to new urls for no reason
10 - Have short attention span
11 - Keep saying a blog is a form of social media so that I don't have to do social media
12 - Do not blog on Mondays. And Sundays. And sometimes not even Tuesdays or Fridays. Or even the coveted Wednesday.
13 - Sometimes avoid blogs that are a bit too challenging for the eyes (light color text on black or dark background is still very daunting)
14 - Refuse to blog after 8 p.m.
15 - Waste a lot of time trying to perfect the look of my blog but ends up putting it back exactly as before
16 - Do not have an email subscription service for my blog
17 - Sometimes refuse to accept that bloggers can also do social media
18 - Do not have any type of blogging schedule
19 - While blogging, wonder too often why I'm not doing something else
20 - Awkwardly but not too often, tell people there's something wrong with their blog
21 - While reading blogs, sometimes skim long posts if there are no indents or line breaks
22 - Do not often get along with bloggers who leave one comment and never come back again
23 - Join a lot of memes/challenges/blog events so I don't have to think up things to post
24 - Refuse to have a sidebar
25 - Sometimes have no understanding of time
26 - Post erratically or not at all
27 - Post a lot list posts
28 - Do not have a blog niche or any sense what my blog is about
29 - Take too long to update anything on my blog
30 - Waste time stalking old blogs that are not being updated
31 - Do not leave comments for blogs using disqus
32 - Do not leave comments for Wordpress blogs that requires signing only into Wordpress/Twitter/Facebook
33 - Do not have a Wordpress account
34 - Edit/correct/change posts long after they are posted, sometimes even years after
35 - Do a lot of over thinking before hitting the Publish button
36 - Do not know how to spell procrastinate but practice it all the time when blogging
37 - Often feel bad about not commenting enough but does nothing about it
38 - Does not read blogs through feeds or readers or email subscriptions
39 - Recycle posts ideas
40 - Spend too much time worrying about what I have said in my comments on other people's blogs
41 - Post a lot of rants and ramblings that may or may not be too negative
42 - Have short thinking span
43 - Post things nobody cares about or have any interest in
44 - Is often a bit too honest and then regret what I post or comment
45 - Make a lot of last moment decisions when it comes to what to post
46 - Ask a lot of dumb questions when commenting
47 - Only blog when I'm in the mood
48 - Really don't like to leave a comment just to leave a comment
49 - Very bad at checking for replies on blogs I leave comments on even when I ask a question that I'm interested in getting an answer
50 - Write a lot of post drafts but don't post about 99% of them
51 - Have a habit of reverting posts to drafts
52 - Takes a lot of unannounced blog vacations (where I just don't post)
53 - Do a lot of regretting for some posts that I had posted
54 - Repeat myself a lot but often doesn't realize it until later
55 - Always making excuses not to blog
56 - Mostly don't care to be up to date on anything related to blogging
57 - Do a lot of drive-by-hopping where I read blogs and don't leave comments
58 - Sometimes forget I have a blog
59 - Still don't know why I'm still blogging
60 - Still don't know if copying a previous post from a previous post which came from a previous post is considered a bad way to blog

Do you have any reason to believe you're a bad blogger?

Words for Wednesday Prompts - Feb 4, 2026

This February, I am the host for Words for Wednesday. Words for Wednesday is started by Delores and continued by Elephant's Child who sadly passed away. River at Drifting through life is our new coordinator but the prompts are provided and hosted by various people and hosted on various blogs. The aim of Words for Wednesday is to encourage us to write using some or all of the prompts.

This week's prompts are: 
1. black eye
2. car wash
3. mud bath
4. jelly bean
5. duct tape

Charlotte's color for February is Electric Rose (#f00699) which you can see it better here.

You may write your piece in the comments or post it on your blog. If posting on your blog, please leave a direct link to the post so we can all visit you. Have fun writing!