Tag: book

an image spread with a collection of books and other bookish items, including candles, tea, shirts, bath items, and stickers.

Small Business Gifts for the Reader In Your Life

Maggie5 Comments

Tis the season to stress out about what to gifts to give your friends and family. I can’t help with your whole list, but if you happen to know a book lover (or if you are one yourself), I have just the thing for you.

You might think shopping for a reader is easy – just ask what books they like, click “add to cart” on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and then boom, you’re done! But if you’re like me and you want to support a small business or independent artist, or you want to give something a little more unique and special, I’ve got what you need. The list below covers alternatives to Amazon and other major booksellers, as well as online shops that sell a plethora of bookish goodies.

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A close up of a stack of books. The ones on the left are stacked vertically, while the ones on the right are stacked horizontally.

Book Blurb Wishlist

Maggie2 Comments

Do you ever just look at stuff that you wrote years ago and think, “Wow, what on earth was I talking about?”

I have that experience pretty often. I’ve had this blog for almost five years, you know. But this post isn’t about how cringeworthy I might have been when I first started this blog – in fact, it’s actually about one of my favorite posts I wrote in the early days of Maggie’s Musings.

Even as a high school student, I had a bone to pick with story tropes. Not much has changed in that regard, at least. I wrote a post about my “Book Blurb Blacklist,” 15 things that would immediately turn me off from reading a book. It was a delightfully snarky post, and looking back now, I still agree with pretty much all of it.

However, there’s a question that has gone unanswered for far too long: What are the things – tropes, phrases, whatever – that make me actually want to read a book?

I aim to answer that today.

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A stack of red and green books. Red and gold paper flowers sit at the bottom of the stack. From top to bottom, the books are Catching Fire, Linger, Vicious, and Insurgent

Fictional Festivities | 12 Days of Christmas Book Tag

Maggie1 Comment

‘Tis the season to curl up in front of a fireplace with a good book and a big mug of hot cocoa. Snowflakes are falling outside of your window, and the only sound you hear is the crackle of the fire and the crinkle of pages being turned. It’s just you and the book, no one else around.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it’s a big challenging to get into the “Christmas spirit” when you’re a student. My school wrapped things up particularly late this year, so I didn’t get to go home until December 19. Between research papers on medieval and renaissance literature and politics exams, it was easy to forget that Christmas was right around the corner.

And so I thought, what better way to get ready to celebrate Christmas than crank up my favorite Christmas music and participate in a Christmas-y book tag? This is the 12 Days of Christmas book tag, created by Falling Down The Book Hole, though I learned about it through Paper Fury’s post a few weeks ago. I did my very best to limit my answers to books I read this year, though you’ll see I bent the rules a tad bit…

Without further ado, let’s celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas!

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