Tuesday Update: Language Progress, Short Story Setback + Guest Hosting!

Hey everyone, how’s it going?  This week I made some great progress on my goals for the month! My Duolingo Ukrainian tree is now to red + (so I’ve got through all the lessons at least three times each; the ultimate goal is to get through all the bubbles 5 times, turning tge tree to gold).  I finished the second section of stories in 100 Easy Ukrainian Texts (these all involved “things” like pens and keys and stuff).  I started another story in Short Stories in French. And I passed the 6th Duolingo checkpoint in French!

I did experience a slight setback though where it comes to editing my short story for the month.  I’ve talked before about choosing the stories I wanted to work on for the remainder of the year.  Unfortunately, I came to the realization that one of the stories isn’t really a short; there’s so much more going on in it, that I think it needs to be a longer work of some sort (perhaps a novella or even a novel?)  A lot more work will need to be done on it than I initially expected because there’s so much more going on. So I made the decision to put it aside for now. 😦

So instead I’m going to see if I can whip the other story I choose into shape. I’ll also have to choose a second story for editing in the hope that I can still make that goal!  I don’t know if I’ll have time to edit two stories now, but I’m still going to try! Wish me luck. 🙂

Oh, and on Friday, I was once again a guest host on Thunder Bay Public Library’s weekly show Read This Next.  Nicole and I talked about the Massey Lectures (which I had been reading when we filmed).  We thought this was really topical as the 2020 Massey Lectures aired this month!  If you’re interested, check it out! 🙂

For this week, other than looking over that other short story, my main plan is to fit in more reading in Ukrainian, French, and English. What about you?  How’s November going? 🙂

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#WriteTuesday: The Return!

Happy September everyone!  Did you have a good weekend?  This weekend was Labour Day here in Canada; I was very happy to have an extra day off (although I mainly spent the time reading The Huntress by Kate Quinn – I needed to get through it for a book review that’s due this week)!  I am happy to say though that I also fit in some editing time.  I actually pulled out the notebook I use to break down my goals for the week into manageable chunks (I haven’t used it since February! 😮 ) – I used it just to plan out what I needed to do over the weekend (mostly reading and editing). I’m happy to say that I managed to get through pretty much all of my goals. 🙂

Oh, and earlier in the week, I was also a guest host on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s weekly show Read This Next, which airs on Fridays. Nicole and I chatted about video game books – we gave highlights based on games that are coming out this fall, talked about our personal video game book recommendations, and just generally chatted about video games.  I had so much fun!  Check it out here:

Other than that, I’m still working on French and Ukrainian, mainly on Duolingo.  I tried watching a movie in French without subtitles about a week ago; I couldn’t follow the dialogue, but thankfully I was able to follow the story thanks to the visuals.  Then a few nights ago I watched a movie in Ukrainian, but with English subtitles; my Ukrainian isn’t as strong as my French, but I was happy to be able to pick out a few words on my own here and there.  Oh, and I was really excited: while reading The Huntress, one of the characters has a tattoo on her foot in Cyrillic.  Even though it was in Russian, I was able to understand what it said (it was the numbers for six hundred and sixteen)!

So how’s your week been?  Anything new and exciting? 🙂

My 20th Library Detective Article

Two weeks ago, my 20th Library Detective article was published in the Chronicle Journal!  To mark the occasion and to highlight the library’s blog, I decided to write about the author interviews I have been doing for the last nine months.  Because that topic gave me a lot to talk about, I ended up focussing on the books all the authors I’ve talked to recommended.

If you’re interested in reading it, you can find the article here.

Another Article Published

Today my 19th Library Detective article was published in the Chronicle Journal (my local newspaper). While this is may be my 19th Library Detective article, it’s also my 20th published article (not counting book reviews)!

This time I wrote about all the books and eBooks on game design the Thunder Bay Public Library has available. If you don’t have access to the Chronicle Journal but would still like to read it, you can find it here.

Since I haven’t really blogged about them all, I should also mention that there are links to my other Library Detective articles here. I’ve written about a diverse range of topics since “A Renewed Interest in Archery,” including zombies, procrastination, screenwriting, and the Tudors (which ended up the library’s first and only two-part article).

“A Renewed Interest in Archery”

Today my eighth Library Detective article was published in the Chronicle Journal. With the popularity of Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games, I thought that exploring archery would make an interesting topic. I’d heard that the books have inspired many people (particularly younger girls) to give the sport a try, so I tried to highlight some of the library’s resources for experts and beginners alike.

If you’re interested in giving my article a read you can find it here on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s Library Detective Blog.

“Spring Photography”

My seventh Library Detective column was published today in the Chronicle Journal under the title “Picture-perfect photography books.” This time I decided to talk about my photography hobby, linking photography with spring because there are so many amazing things to photograph this time of year. But while I was writing that article we had a large snowstorm, making spring seem much further away than it really is; that prompted me to open with the line “The signs are everywhere: the lakes and rivers are melting, the trees are sprouting leaves and we know the flowers are eventually going to bloom.” While we still don’t have any flowers blooming, the large snow fall has pretty much disappeared so I know blooms are immanent!

If you’re interested in giving my article a read, you can find it here on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s Library Detective blog.

“National Hat Day”

Yesterday my sixth Library Detective Article was published in the Chronicle Journal. This time around I wrote about National Hat Day. While I was looking for a topic, I consulted a list of rather crazy national holidays. Finding that January was National Hat Day, I decided to run with it. I consulted a friend in the Reference department, and he couldn’t find it listed on any official lists of holidays. But rather than scrap the idea altogether, I decided to run with it as an unofficial holiday. From knitting, nonfiction and fiction, there are quite a few books on hats to choose from, which helped make this column a lot of fun to write. If you’re interested in giving it a read, you can find it here on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s Library Detective blog.

Response to my Type 1 Diabetes Article

Someone posted a response to my latest Library Detective article (“Library Books for Diabetes Awareness Month”) in the Chronicle Journal! They make a really good point – all of the Canadian Diabetes Association cookbooks have been updated and include the nutritional information for all of their recipes.

I recieved an email from the Canadian Diabetes Association in regards to this – I know Richard – prior to seeing the response in the Chronicle Journal. As I told him in my response, after he mentioned it I actually do remember seeing the nutritional information in their other books that were at Chapters. I’m just a rather picky eater, and wasn’t really interested in the other books, being quite happy with the Kids cookbook (which has easy recipes that anyone can enjoy). So that’s why I chose to highlight that book rather than their other cookbooks. But if you’re looking for other cookbooks with the nutritional information in them, be sure to check out the others by the Canadian Diabetes Association. The Thunder Bay Public Library is also going to get any of the ones we are missing.

You can find the response here.

“Library Books for Diabetes Awareness Month”

My fifth Library Detective column appeared in Thunder Bay’s local paper the Chronicle Journal today! November is Diabetes Awareness Month according to the Canadian Diabetes Association, so I thought that would make an excellent topic for my article. I knew right away that I wanted to focus on Type 1 diabetes rather than type 2 for the article; for those who don’t know, I have Type 1 diabetes, so the topic is rather dear to my heart. But because there is an epidemic of Type 2, I made sure to address that form of the disease a little bit as well. If you’re interested in reading the article, you can find it here on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s Library Detective blog.