All hail the audiobookÂ
By Sydney Marchand
I miss the days when I had enough free time in my schedule to sit down and read a good old-fashioned book. Remember those things? A few hundred pages or so of pure fiction. Not a biology textbook or an eighteenth-century poetry collection for a literature course; an actual book that I chose to read for fun.Â
Donât get me wrong, I take a lot of writing courses, so my education is packed full of novels. I simply miss having the mental capacity to pick up a book for leisure and binge-read adventure tales and page-turning thrillers over a weekend. Admittedly, I hadnât picked up a book that wasnât on an assigned reading list for a while. I simply just didnât have the time.
As my âTBRâ list grew bigger, I turned to audiobooks, and it has reignited a spark in me that I missed so much. Now I can listen to books when I am in the shower, on walks, making dinner, cleaning the house, or driving to school. Many audiobooks have different people narrating the characters, and some have background noises or music attached to high tension scenes, which all make the story just that more engaging to listen to. So if you are in a reading slump like I was, try giving audiobooks a try. They are a glorious thing for bookworms who are simply too busy to read.
My emails are turning British
Danaye Reinhardt
Lately, Iâve gotten in the dreadful habit of signing off my emails with âCheers.â I donât know whatâs gotten into me. Up until recently, I would sign off with âThanksâ or even âBest regardsâ for the more formal emails, but these days I find myself repeating âThank youâ throughout the message of the email, so it seems too much to add another one at the end.
The problem is that âCheersâ feels too casual for any formal emails and too British for everything else. Itâs not like I say âCheerio!â when Iâm walking down the street (although I have found myself saying âBrilliant!â way too often). I guess Iâm just looking for another way to spruce up my email game. I think next time, Iâll sign off by saying âToodle pip!â Letâs keep up the chaos.
The joy of borrowing
By Maecyn Klassen
Oddly enough, working in a library kind of takes all of the joy out of borrowing things from the library. Couple that with the lack of reading willpower that comes with being a full-time history undergrad, and you get exactly what happened to me: almost nothing read (at least for my own entertainment) for nearly seven years. The good news is that Iâm newly graduated, so Iâm treating myself to a 50-book goal for the year. Iâve finished 19, which is slightly behind where I should be by now, but Iâm working on The Waste Lands and The Long Walk â and yes, Iâm going through my mid-twenties Stephen King phase. I welcome all judgment. My other treat to myself is going to the public library and just checking out a huge stack of movies, something I also havenât done for years. I went along the shelf and just pulled everything that looked remotely interesting â everything from Grey Gardens to Akira and The Passion of Joan of Arc. Iâm even checking out ebooks! This is a brand-new era of book and movie consumption for me: Iâm an adult with no bedtime and no borrowing limits.
Dozer versus wheels
By Andrea Sadowski
I met a cute boy on Bumble and he owns a cute dog named Dozer. Overall, Dozer is a very good boy. He was adopted from the shelter about four months ago and has been settling into his new life handsomely. Thereâs just one thing that causes Dozer to stumble out of his good-boy ways and morph into a vicious beast on four legs: wheels. Itâs as if wheels somehow hurt him in a past life and now he has a vendetta against all round objects that are used to transport people. It doesnât matter if itâs guys cruising around on motorcycles or bicycles, children riding on Razor scooters, eldery people voyaging on mobility scooters, or any car/truck/vehicle that passes by; Dozer lunges at each of them, barking viciously while shaking his tail in rapt pleasure. Weâre trying to teach Dozer that itâs not polite to attack people just because they choose to travel via wheels, but this lesson has yet to bury into his thick noggin.
Sydney is a BA English major, creative writing student, who has been a content contributor for The Cascade and is now the Opinion editor. In 7th grade, she won $100 in a writing contest but hasnât made an earning from writing since. In the meantime, she is hoping that her half-written novels will write themselves, be published, and help pay the bills.
Danaye studies English and procrastination at UFV and is very passionate about the Oxford comma. She spends her days walking to campus from the free parking zones, writing novels she'll never finish, and pretending to know how to pronounce abominable. Once she graduates, she plans to adopt a cat.
In between horror movie marathons and arthritis-inducing embroidery sessions, Maecyn likes to correct the grammar of unsuspecting journalists. Sheâs currently pursuing a BA in History and a career in library science, which makes her the official ambassador for cardigan-wearers everywhere.
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.
