Book Rants - October 2026

It seemed like October just flew by. I didn't have much patience for reading so I might have started a couple of books before finishing a few. I didn't list those books I started since I barely read 10% and have no real opinions on them other than they lost my interest. Here are the books I didn't finish and a couple that I did.

Books I Unfinished:

01 - The Inklings Detective Agency by John R. Kelly
What's it about: 1930s Britain, clubs, writers, maybe murder
Quit at: 27%
Reading the synopsis created expectations and real people also created expectations I didn't know I had. This book didn't fulfill them or at least it didn't for me for the bits I read. I expected an intellectual mystery with tidbits about the authors' lives instead of authors getting together and doing a lot of talking. So yes, in solving a mystery, there is a need to discuss things but if the talking is annoying and the characters are annoying, why continue reading? But maybe this book wasn't written for an audience like me. I expected the writing to be more English, not Americanized, since the characters (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie) are English. I really like the idea of famous authors getting together to solve a murder but I just couldn't get into this book.

Draw Something Oct. 26 - Wrap up

Dedicating a month to draw is really the only time I seem to really complete any artwork but I did finish more than usual. It's very time consuming finishing them. My process is draw on paper, scan the drawing in and digitally colored them. I've worked a routine but it's so hard to choose colors when face with so many choices. But I had fun making up traits and adding details and choosing names. I hope you like these cat witches. Maybe when I finish the others, I'll post them. Here's a last one I completed.

Name: River Zudora Summer Garcia
Age: 13
Loves: Tea, ghosts, all things Halloween especially the treats
Hates: Hate to hate, asparagus-flavor candies, maybe chores
Ability: Can see a ghost's true desire
Curious Tidbit: Born on Halloween, River, came into the world just when a bunch of ghosts was habituating her home and causing all kinds of chaos. Her birth heralded the arrivals of spirits from her bloodline who got rid of the pesty ghosts.

Do you like Halloween or do you prefer a more subdue holiday?

Fiction: The Perils of Kidnapping a Tired Witch

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are supplied by Sean Jeating and are hosted at River's blog here. This week's prompts are: death, forward, important, intend, left and/or pleasure, step, touch, things, understand. Another optional prompt is Charlotte's colour of the month - Smoky Rose. 
    The aim of Words for Wednesday is to use one or all of the prompts to write something - ie, a story, a poem, an essay or any forms of writing, fiction or nonfiction, basically write anything you want.

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Fiction: The Perils of Kidnapping a Tired Witch
Della was exhausted from lack of sleep and from all the work to keep her hotel from going kaput. If her stepmother, Hillary, her siblings, Jacky and Didi, didn't fall ill at the same time and then decided to take a month's vacation away and if their housekeeper, maid, cook's helper, assistant manager didn't quit, maybe Della wouldn't have minded it as much. At least their cook, Mrs. Tides, didn't quit but only because Della doubled her salary though she was a cousin of her stepmother's. 
    Even with ten guests, it was hectic. And winter season meant Della had to switch out all the beddings, get the heating working and other matters her siblings, stepmother and employees should have done. Thank goodness for her assistant, Mason. Della wouldn't have been able to getting everything done without him.
    After one exhausted evening, Della was bidding two guests farewell by the front entrance of her hotel, when a van halted. Two men came out, grabbed Della, shoved her into the back of the van and drove off. As she lay on the floor, she fell asleep but was wakened when the van screeched to a stop and she bumped against the wall. The doors clapped open, a fat hand grabbed her and pulled her out. It was nearly midnight, most of houses were dark and the sidewalks were empty. 

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 14 & 15 & 16

Name: Mistress Tulip aka Tullulan Hutch
Teaches: Magic Laws & Regulations
Loves: Order, black tea without sugar, purple hats
Hates: Rule breakers, lawyers, messy rooms
Ability: Make anyone speak the truth with a look or a touch
Curious Tidbit: As a youth, Tulip was a rule breaker until an incident where she and her best friend snuck into the school gym and turned loose the school mascot, a hog of giant proportion, loose and the animal trampled her friend and broke her legs and her parents sent her away and Tulip never saw her again.

Name: Madam Ma aka Melinda Ma 
Title: Vice Head Mistress
Teaches: Poisons & Cures
Loves: Reading, timely things, tea
Hates: Lateness, sloppiness, lazy people
Ability: Can cure or make any poison
Curious Tidbit: As a child, Ma was almost always sick so her parents abandoned her to be raised by a woman living in the countryside. The woman cured Ma and took her as an apprentice and taught her everything she knew.

Name: Mistress Nine aka Nikita Wallpapers
Teaches: Magic & Math Mythology
Loves: Numbers, organization, eyeglasses
Hates: Messes, being late, peanut butter sandwiches
Ability: Can read someone's fortune with what number they choose
Curious Tidbit: Nine had hated math as a youth until her mother taught her what math could do and since then she was a lover of math and numbers.

What subject did you love or nearly love when you were in school?

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 12 & 13

Name: Mistress Cue aka Martha Caroline Curlicue Coats
Teaches: Spiritual Communications
Loves: Home cooking, broken things, pop quizzes
Hates: Time travel, cruelty, storms
Ability: Can find ghosts even the ones thought to be invisible
Curious Tidbit: Cue first encountered a ghost when she was four. She told her family she spoke to her dead grandmother who foretold an earthquake but no one believed her. When the earthquake happened, they all thought it was a coincident.

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Name: Mistress Queue aka Elizabeth Queue Quad
Teaches: Cookery & Wok Methodology
Loves: Symmetry, spicy soups, woks
Hates: Bad cooks, alcohol except when it's for cooking, the scent of garlics
Ability: Shrink or enlarge any inanimate objects
Curious Tidbit: Queue learned her cooking skills from a nun in a monastery where she had been banished by her father for refusing to marry. 

Do you cook? Do you enjoy home cooking?

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 10 & 11

This particular character is based on Luna from The Harry Potter series.

Name: Lula Jasmine Hart
Age: 12
Loves: Human nature, unusual creatures, radishes
Hates: Spinach, people who lies, math
Ability: Power to persuade people to change their minds
Curious Tidbit: While pregnant, Lula's mother was on a return trip on an airship when a mechanical failure caused it to fall but when her mother went into labor and Lula was born, the ship gently floated down to the ground and just as her mother carried Lula off the ship and onto land, it fell to pieces.

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Name: Baijing 'Baba' Ma
Age: 12
Loves: Simplicity, pink bows, human nature
Hates: Nightmares, stairs, spinach
Ability: Blend into the night or anything around her
Curious Tidbit: Baijing's parents left her at age two on the back doorstep of a farm during a storm and no one noticed she was there for two days.

Do you sleep with some lights on or do you need complete darkness?

Fiction: The Ghost in the Library

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are supplied by Sean Jeating and are hosted at River's blog here. This week's prompts are: countenance, favourite, once, pillow, regret and/or bags, faces, machos, steps , swearboarding (makeup but related to waterboarding or skatingboarding and cursing). Another optional prompt is Charlotte's colour of the month - Smoky Rose. 
    The aim of Words for Wednesday is to use one or all of the prompts to write something - ie, a story, a poem, an essay or any forms of writing, fiction or nonfiction, basically write anything you want.

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Fiction: The Ghost in the Library
No one knew who the ghost was in Madam Maxim's manor library but all were certain there was one. Madam's housekeeper, butler, maids, relatives and visitors to the manor all claimed they saw it.
    At the beginning of the spring season, James Washington Maxwell, a friend of Madam's granddaughter's friend's cousin, was invited for a long visit at the manor. Ghosts to him were all nonsense and catawampuses. He had no fear of encountering them. 
    After two evenings of behaving himself, James faked a buggy stomach and turned in for the night. When all was silent, he snuck into the library.

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 9

Name: Lauralucia 'Lala' Catalina Ramirez
Age: 13
Loves: Mending clothes & things, cupcakes especially the strawberry-vanilla variety, acorns
Hates: Being late, hard cookies, the scent of lavender
Ability: See future events seven minutes before they happen
Curious Tidbit: Lala was blind at birth until her fairygodmother gifted her a pair of magical glasses and she was able to see.

Do you wear glasses? Do you think people look smarter wearing glasses?

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 8

This particular character is based on Hermione from The Harry Potter series.

Name: Hermony Eloise Redhart
Age: 13
Loves: Cafe latte with whip cream, history of anything and everything, time travel
Hates: Sour candies, bullies, unfairness
Ability: Make herself invisible whenever she wants
Curious Tidbit: When Hermony was five, she accidentally turned her baby sister into a walrus but they didn't find Hermony for a week so they didn't know if she had done anything and she was never punished.

What would you do (incriminating or not) if you can't be punish for it?

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 7

Name: Mistress Lucky aka Lucia Landers
Teaches: Nature Magic
Loves: Polka dots, growing mini trees, taking walks in forests
Hates: People who mistreats animals, the smell of pickles, losing things
Ability: She can touch people and knew their true desires.
Curious Tidbit: Lucky spent most of her life living in a forest because her witch mother believed nature is nurturing for a child's growth. Even now, she still lives at the edge of a forest.

Have you ever experienced a lucky moment (or moments) when things went smoothly?

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 6

Name: Splendor Goodman
Age: 13
Loves: Swimming, napping, gabbling
Hates: Nicknames, running, cleaning
Ability: Can turn any liquid to water
Curious Tidbit: When Splendor was born, she disappeared and for five hours no one could find until her father returned home on his flying ship and spotted her sleeping on a cloud just above their house.

Do you like swimming or other water-related activities?

Fiction: The Helper Witch

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are supplied by Sean Jeating and are hosted at River's blog here. This week's prompts are: children, couple, emancipated, fun, idyll and/or happen, just, moment, peaceful, things. 
    The aim of Words for Wednesday is to use one or all of the prompts to write something - ie, a story, a poem, an essay or any forms of writing, fiction or nonfiction, basically write anything you want.

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Fiction: The Helper Witch 
Lucia was emancipated from her parents, husband, siblings, friends and yet, her life was not idyll nor peaceful. Doing everything herself was something she had never done before but she was willing. When she brought the broken down house, she had hoped to turn it into a bed and breakfast to maybe make a living and restart her life without everybody interfering. About a year into the renovation, she broke her leg and all her plans went kaput. 
    That fateful night, Lucia was just tidying up the livingroom after the workers had finished for the day when one of the scaffolds collapsed on her. It took four painful minutes before she mustered the will to call which ended in a shouting match with one surly building contractor before she was taken to the hospital.

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 5

Name: Dora Somewhere
Age: 11
Loves: Dogs, home cooking, flying houses
Hates: Evil witches, tornadoes, waking up early
Ability: Create wind funnels that could move things of great bulk such as vehicles, houses, castles, etc.
Curious Tidbit: When Dora was seven, she was lost in someone's dream and was having such a good time that she stayed for two days.

If you can go anywhere (real or make-up), where would you go? 

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 4

Name: Mistress Tippy aka Tourmaline Tipper Fan
Teaches: Magic & Accidents Study
Loves: Tea, books, trips to the library
Hates: Noise of all kinds, defacing books, jokes about librarians
Ability: Freeze anything 
Curious Tidbit: When Tippy was an assistant librarian at a private school, one of the students accidentally toppled a couple of bookshelves in the school's library but Tippy reorganized/put back every book in under an hour while battling the flu and a sprained ankle.

Do you like libraries (public or private) and have you ever visited one?

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 3

Name: Elizabeth 'Tiny' Snicklenoodle
Age: 9
Loves: Sweets, baking, all things pink and yellow
Hates: Homework, cleaning, bullies
Ability: Transport from place to place with a thought
Curious Tidbit: When Tiny was six, she woke up in an air ship full of pirates but they were kind to her and she went home full of cookies and milk.

Do you love sweets? What are your favorite desserts or sweet treats?

Fiction: Meet the Family

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are supplied by Sean Jeating and hosted at River's blog here. This week's prompts are: contemporaries, easily, life, met, never and/or one, say, sentence, who, within. Another optional prompt is Charlotte's colour of the month - Smoky Rose.
    The aim of Words for Wednesday is to use one or all of the prompts to write something – ie, a story, a poem, an essay or any forms of writing, fiction or nonfiction, basically write anything you want.

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Fiction: Meet the Family
Like his contemporaries, James wanted to make a good impression when his would-be bride meet his family but he knew they were not the kind of normal people would expect.
    The instant Sophia stepped into the entry, she was greeted with a bloodcurdling scream. "It's the clock," said James. He had forgotten to tell his father to change the sounds but it was October and his family loved Halloween. His eldest sister Mercy, who had opened the door, smirked. Sophia's eyes widened but she was smiling. He ushered her into the livingroom and introduced his father, Pat, his mother Eliza, his other elder sisters, Savor, Grace, his three uncles Stuart, Arthur, Clay and their wives Sandy, Amelia and Caroline and each of their teenager, Samatha, Arthur Jr. and Clara.
    In the dinning room, Sophia sat between James and Mercy. His mother usually sat at the head but she went to the kitchen to fetch more food though the entire dinning table was already covered with victuals that you couldn't even see the table.
    James tried to smile away his nervousness. He couldn't help but noticed Sophia's hesitant smile. Was it necessary for his uncle Arthur to ask how was her last menstruation? He was a gynecologist but she wasn't his patient. Did Savor had to inquire if Sophia was allergic wolf fur? Did Caroline needed to know if Sophia's family had a history of insanity?

Draw Something Oct. 26 - 2

Name: Song Na
Age: 12
Loves: Music, air symphonies, sour candies
Hates: Tubas, white noise, talkative people
Ability: Enchant people with music and persuade them to change their minds & spontaneously make people dance
Curious Tidbit: Song once stayed up until 3am in an hot air balloon to catch a concert she couldn't get tickets to.

Do you love music? Have you ever played an instrument?

Draw Something October 2026

It had become a habit to dedicate October as a month to draw something so that's what I'm going to do again. Last year, I had a theme so this time, the theme is witches, mainly, cat witches. These are students with a few teachers of the Sisterhood of Magical & Culinary Arts - a traveling school for magic, mayhem & culinary - at least, that's what I came up with. Here is the first one which I sort based her on Matilda by Roald Dahl.

Name: Matila Elizabeth Waterbaker
Age: 12 & 1/4
Loves: Discovering boring things about the universe through books and information curated by the librarians of the world, chocolate, riding her bicycle
Hates: School works, walking in the rain with wet socks, people who do not mind their manners
Ability: Moves things with her mind
Curious Tidbit: Matila was once an apprentice to a haughty librarian who turned Matila into a mouse for a week.

What are you doing this October?

Book Rants - September 2026

I've only managed to finish four books and half of them started last month. I think I've been picking the wrong books to read but I guess there's no fix for that. Here are the books I managed to finish and a couple I didn't.

Books I Unfinished:

01 - The Summer War by Naomi Novik 
What's it about: a curse, a witch/mage, gay people, something about a war, 
Quit at: 44%
This was a novella (under 150 pages) but somehow it drags. First, the main character puts a curse on her brother and getting her powers (and her period - I have always hated this association - a girl gets her period at the same time she gets her power, a sign of maturity, blab, blab...) follow by a ton of back stories and then supposedly she tries to un-curse her brother but she (and another brother) was mostly reading books, doing math and listening to songs that tells happenings we don't get to witness and then something happens, the end. 
    I always read spoilers when I decided not to read a book. Click to Show/Hide Spoilers > In the end, there is an orgy (although not described in detail) which the main character watched on her wedding night and she was only 15 years old. She needed to be saved at the end which irks me. What was her power for anyway? And the cursed brother ended up coupling with the jackass who had been treating her like crap and almost killed her - both of these would would have pissed me off so I'm glad I didn't finish this. End Spoilers >

A Refresh

Born to be tidy, 2026

I like to organize, make lists, basically make my blog as tidy as possible. And I like refreshing it now and then, changing or adding something new to sort of give something new to look at.
    As of today, I had updated the hello page, writing page and added a list of the all the books I sort of reviewed but mostly ranted about (titled book index) and even changed the header. Sadly, I was too lazy to update my blogroll or anything else.
    The book index is sort of my way of organizing and listing all the books I read but of course, I don't have the previous books from my previous blogs. This is mostly for me because it's just a list so it's not all that useful unless you are looking to read some book rants about books you may never have heard of know or care to know about. (All page links are below the header).
    I was going to make the above artwork another 'Spot the difference' but decided it wasn't a good idea, too many elements that can be changed and it's kind of hard to spot things. Though I did work on this piece for months. As much as I like an office all to myself, I don't have one but I do like one that is something like that but probably without all the papers scattered around but I do seem to have paper messes every few weeks. Generally, I'm messy unless I had sudden urges to organize and clean again which happens often. Maybe it's why I keep trying to tidy this blog.

Are you a naturally tidy person? Do you like to refresh your blog once in a while?