All posts by Maya

About Maya

Maya is an Information staff member at Vaughan Public Libraries. If she isn't scratching her head over the next sentence in her writing, she's making art and stretching her creative legs. She's a huge film buff and loves weird, fantastical fiction.  |  Meet the team

My Quick & Easy Guide to Curing Housework Boredom

, , , ,

If you’re anything like me, there’s always one thing that you end up dreading throughout your week: the ever-growing mountain of household chores. Whether it’s the dishes staring at you judgmentally from the sink or the endless piles of laundry, it’s just always there and it’s tough to find any fun in it. It’s why it usually stays that way, at least until Mount Housework decides it’s time to have its weekly avalanche. Plus, add in either a move or a renovation like I am next month, and it just makes things worse.

A-black-and-white-cartoon-of-a-cat-sitting-in-a-chair-with-headphones-on

I sometimes try to fill the time with music, but you need to be in the right sort of mood to listen to it. Plus, after the tenth time of having a verbal struggle with Google Home where it’s determined to send you to the abyss of YouTube’s repository for strange cover bands, you end up wanting to listen to anything but. That’s where I found myself when I stumbled upon the wonderful world of podcasts (ironically, thanks to YouTube. Sometimes the algorithm knows what it’s doing).

The great thing about podcasts is you can take them pretty much anywhere no matter what you’re doing, so long as you have a phone and some headphones (hooray for mobile entertainment!). There’s such a wide range of podcasts too, from self-help to science lessons to my personal favorite, the fiction stories. I think there’s something to be said about how full circle these kinds of podcasts are, taking so much from radio theatre from the 1920s. But that’s another blog post for another time. I’m here to introduce you to my go-to for making housework anything but a pain and a bore: the fun world of aural storytelling.  

Continue reading →

What’s In A Comic?

, , ,
Collaged-image-of-Marvel-comic-covers-throughout-the-years

What’s in a comic book or a graphic novel? What is it about the illustrations and the stories inside their covers (or their covers!) that keep bringing readers back for more? Well, that’s a loaded question, isn’t it? But I am nothing if not overly ambitious and I just so happen to be a giant nerd (and self-proclaimed graphic novels aficionado), so to break in my first shiny new blog post I thought we could get into it a little. Plus, it’s a big month for the comics industry, at least in North America. It was Free Comic Book Day on May 4th and, on the Canadian side of things, several comics arts festivals will be running in major cities across the country including Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, which I’ve visited a few times myself. It’s always such a fun surprise to see what indie artists have been cooking up and you never know who you might run into (Ryan North in 2010 was a big highlight for me).   

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe we should start at the beginning. After all, what’s in a comic, a graphic novel? What is a comic, really? After a Google deep dive (and a scouring of several encyclopedia listings, all hail Brittanica), here’s what I’ve got for you.

Continue reading →