APRIL 25, 2021 ~ A. SIEGELSTER

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Prince and the Dressmaker is about two young individuals: Frances, a seamstress with dreams of becoming a designer, and Sebastian, a prince who feels more comfortable as a girl. The two meet and give each other the opportunity to make more of themselves, and perhaps find themselves in the process.

This is an amazing graphic novel, and such a cute story! I loved Wang’s art style — very fluid and colorful, but also putting so much expression into the…

APRIL 1, 2021 ~ A. SIEGELSTER

The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes is a story about a girl, Aveline, who goes to a seaside town to stay with her aunt while her mom is visiting her grandmother. In this town, Aveline, a firm and eager believer in ghosts, finds an old bookshop with a book of local ghost stories. However, this book unearths a mystery and a haunting past that Aveline is not prepared for.

I absolutely loved this book. It’s the type of…

Dear Readers,

You might have noticed that I have not posted many reviews for a while, and that they have been few and far between. I do have an explanation, and that it is all getting better.

The explanation:

For this I need to go a bit back into last year. I graduated from my M.A. program in Classical Studies in October 2020. Up until then I had had no breaks in between my schooling. I had seven years of undergrad (it lasted a while due to mental illness and finding what I really wanted to study), and then another…

MARCH 25, 2021 ~ A. SIEGELSTER

The Hobbits of Tolkien by David Day

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have pretty much all of David Day’s Tolkien guide books, and The Hobbits of Tolkien is the newest addition to my very extensive Tolkien collection. In this illustrated guide, Day gives us the history of Hobbits from their creation by Tolkien, to their own fictional history, all the way up to the Lord of the Rings. …

MARCH 2, 2021 ~ A. SIEGELSTER

Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kiki’s Delivery Service is about a young witch named Kiki who, at the age of thirteen, leaves home for a year to train and come of age. She leaves home with her black cat Jiji and finds a town by the sea, where, after some trials and tribulations, makes friends, starts a business, and leads a happy life.

Kiki’s Delivery Service is my favorite Studio Ghibli film, and it was only last year that I discovered it was based on this book…

There is an article going around from the New York Times about Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Classics professor at Princeton (specifically history of Rome).

In my opinion this NY Times article about Padilla is very well written and displays a well-rounded observation of Padilla’s history in and views on Classics as a field. I don’t know much about Padilla personally, but to this classicist, the things he says rang true — that Classics should cease being dominantly white, Christian, and solely focused on Greece and Rome. That the systemic racism and prejudice must end.

There have been many who have…

Today was not what I wanted.

I watch all these YouTube videos of talented people living wonderful lives,

with daily routines of writing, working, doing things that seem so lovely and wholesome.

Oh the serotonin that fills my brain to see it.

How come I can’t feel the same way about my own days?

I really shouldn’t worry about it that much now, I am in quarantine, pandemicized as it were.

And it is Winter — a frigid, Winnipeg Winter. No going out into the world for a while.

I want a life that makes me feel all that serotonin…