Scribblemarks

2026 Book #5: To Be Taught, If Fortunate

Book: To be Taught, If Fortunate
Author: Becky Chambers
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #5 (a book about women astronauts) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #11 (requires suspension of disbelief).

It is the end of the twenty-second century, and human spaceflight is now possible further and further away with the help of technology known as somaforming – synthetic biological supplementation.

This has blown open the arena for space exploration.

Ariadne, along with a few other explorers, is on a mission to explore four worlds around fifteen light-years away from Earth. They sleep in transit and awaken fully set up for the world they arrive in.

However, it seems, partway through their mission, that priorities on Earth have changed. Ariadne starts a detailed log of their exploration, on the off-chance that someone out there is still listening.

This is a short delightful novella about humans who seek exploration and knowledge for its own sake, sacrificing most of their lives in the effort.

It asks questions about science, ethics, and exploration – does there always have to be a profit or gain? Is space important when we have so many problems on the ground? What is our ethical obligation towards any different ecosystem we may encounter?

It does so simply and effectively through a relatively simple journey through four new worlds.

This small book packs a powerful punch, and gives its readers plenty of (earth-based) food for thought.

2026 Book #4: The Yellow Wall-Paper

Book: The Yellow Wall-Paper
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #24 (a book about postpartum) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #38 (domestic fiction)

A woman, diagnosed with a nervous temperament after she gives birth, is shut in a room with garish yellow wallpaper, and slowly loses her mind.

Two newspaper men follow an obsession into some very strange lodgings.

A few young couples rent a summer house that might be haunted.

A woman contemplates the drudgery of housework.

A love triangle takes an unexpected turn.

A poet grows besotted with a woman quite different than him.

A strange town is born – unlike any that has ever existed.

A woman is judged not for the greater good but for what she allegedly didn’t do for her child.

A woman in her early forties finds herself being pulled into a life that she’d rather not live.

And finally a woman does her best to counter the harm her son does.

These stories are all a little unhinged in the best possible way with the literary equivalent of a sucker punch in the last few sentences.

They are full of men trying to convince women they know best when they really don’t, as well as the consequences for such missteps.

Gilman is fiercely and unapologetically feminist in the morals of her story which is delightful.

It is definitely a book worth picking up – if not for the title story (which is sometimes sold as a standalone book) then definitely one of the others.

A great short read which makes you laugh and has very satisfying endings. ✨

2026 Book #3: As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

Book: As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Author: Zoulfa Katouh
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #38 (a book with any type of fruit on the cover or in the title) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #32 (Publisher starting with the letter “B” – Bloomsbury)

The year before the revolution, Salama’s best friend Layla falls in love with, and marries her brother.

But before Salama gets a chance to explore her possible happily-ever-after, the revolution begins, plunging their lives into chaos.

2026 Book #2: The Family Remains

Book: The Family Remains (Sequel to The Family Upstairs)
Author: Lisa Jewell
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

DCI Samuel Owusu (never Sam, always Samuel) finds himself in the centre of a cold case investigation when a bag of bones is discovered in the river. He connects the case back to a strange house where a suicide pact took place years ago.

Rachel Rimmer has just heard that her husband has been found dead in his home in the South of France. But there are questions about her marriage she is not prepared to answer.

2026 Book #1: Mother Mary Comes to Me

Book: Mother Mary Comes to Me
Author: Arundhati Roy
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #27 (A book with a character who has curly hair) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #13 (Bookface)

There are some books that you know you can’t do justice to, no matter how eloquent your review.

Mother Mary Comes to Me is one such book.

Perimenopause & Me

In a few years, as you enter menopause, you’ll start to have all sorts of mood swings, so you should warn your partner to be prepared.

The Pet-Adoption Blues

I didn’t realise I had pet-adoption blues, in fact that I’d had it before, till after I was out of it.

We adopted our older dog Panja, a few months into the pandemic, and our younger one Cookie, just a few weeks ago. With both adoptions we had actually been looking to adopt older dogs, not being too keen on toilet training. In both cases we ended up with pups.

And in both cases, I felt doubt and anxiety at the commitment we’d taken on, and there was despair at the chaos that the new puppy brought.

Saying Goodbye

I’ve said goodbye to this house twice now. The first time was 6 years my parents were moving to Gurgaon, but the house stayed with us and they eventually rebuilt it and moved back.

The second time was this morning. Within the next few weeks, if all goes well, the house will pass to a new family to love.

Netflix’s Maid, and the Slippery Slope of Emotional Abuse

I didn’t expect Netflix’s show Maid, to trigger me the way it did.

The show, based on a true story, is the story of a single mom, Alex, trying to build her own life by escaping an emotionally abusive relationship, trying to take care of a mentally ill mother, and having no qualifications, or money.

She is always steps from homelessness, battling a very flawed welfare system, and every time you think things are going to get better for her, her paper-thin foundation collapses.

Even almost 8 years after my own toxic relationship ended, I realized my emotions are raw and tender to the touch.

On Bidding Fur Babies Farewell

One of the hardest things about being a pet parent is saying goodbye. For those of us who love animals, our fur babies become part of the family, and an integral part of our lives.

I adopted my tortoise shell cat, Penny, from an organisation called Toronto Cat Rescue in 2008. She was 9 months old and every bit as feisty as a tortie should be.

She had been rescued from a shelter where she was to be euthanized – and fostered into a home with lots of other cats.

Like many humans, Penny didn’t like cats.