Dr. Margrit Talpalaru
LightNews LightNews
banner
memargrit.bsky.social
Dr. Margrit Talpalaru
@memargrit.bsky.social
98 followers 54 following 270 posts
Mostly here to talk books & stories.
Posts Replies Media Videos
memargrit.bsky.social
Back to my regular #BookSky posting:

I loved Woodworking by Emily St. James for its loving portrayal of different White trans women’s experiences, and the reversal of the generational flow of wisdom.
Audiobook player for Woodworking by Emily St. James
June 8, 2025 at 3:30 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
“What stories can you read that change you and how you operate?” Asks @jaelrichardson.bsky.social at the Care of Togetherness Big Thinking as a way to practice care. #Congressh
Kai Cheng Thom, Jael Richardson, and Kisha Supernant sit in red chairs and above on the wall is the projected image of Billy Ray Belcourt participating online in the Big Thinking panel Care of Togetherness
June 3, 2025 at 10:03 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Michael Hirsh underscores the similarities between the experimental film culture of the 1960s-1970s and the YouTube creator culture of the past decade, in terms of DIY methods and finding an audience #congressh
Michael Hirsh in conversation with Mark Jones with their respective books Animation Nation and The Starving Artist Myth in the background
June 1, 2025 at 7:55 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
“Putting people at the centre, putting culture at the heart, that’s where the humanities and social sciences intersect with the trades”: @gbcollege.bsky.social’s Michelle McCollum #Congressh
Congress 2025 @George Brown College; The bridge between: Humanities, skilled trades, and the Future of Work
May 30, 2025 at 5:06 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
ETA on spring, #Toronto?
Midday cloudy darkness on a Toronto street with the foggy top of a high rise in the distance
May 22, 2025 at 10:55 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
My long weekend read is all sorted!

At 3% in & Natasha Pulley’s The Mars House is very promising—precise language, plausible world building, compelling protagonist.

Reserving judgment on the refugee system which reads a bit like atonement for nation’s colonial history.
#SpecFic #BookSky
Audiobook player for Natasha Pulley’s The Mars House
May 17, 2025 at 2:21 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
A delightful comfort read is always welcome these days, and Olivia Atwater’s Small Miracles delivers: fallen angels, flawed and well-meaning humans, gender fluidity, and generalized lovely mayhem. #BookRecs #BookSky
Screenshot of the audiobook player for Olivia Atwater’s Small Miracles
May 10, 2025 at 1:16 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Busy times lead to my savouring every 10 minutes I get with KD Edwards’s The Last Sun, and relish that feeling of having a couple of more books in this Tarot Sequence to look forward to. #SpecFic

Since it never hurts to add more to my TBR, what books are you enjoying, #BookSky?
Ebook cover of KD Edwards’s The Last Sun—The tarot sequence: Book One
May 9, 2025 at 3:01 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Possibly the best place in #Toronto to eat your lunch.

Can’t wait for #Congressh attendees to experience it, too!
A picture of the sunny waters of Lake Ontario with the Toronto Islands in the background and a lunch bag in the unfocused foreground. Pic is taken from inside George Brown College Waterfront campus.
May 7, 2025 at 3:29 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
On a short walk, I took pics of all the blooming trees, and hoped they’ll entice #Toronto folks to come out and vote.
Two yellow signs with arrows directing people to the voting station Blooming magnolia tree with narrow white-to-pink petals A tree branch with a lot of near-to-bursting flower buds Blooming cherry tree with white flowers
April 28, 2025 at 5:55 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade is witty and irreverent and a total riot. Highly recommended for cutting satire and literal LOLs.
Shoutout to Ms. M, my eldest’s English teacher for assigning it and thus teaching me something new, too.
#BookRecs #BookSky
E-book cover of Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade
April 28, 2025 at 11:53 AM
memargrit.bsky.social
Looking forward to delving into Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Firebreak, because I always trust @pookacrafts.bsky.social’s #BookRecs to be just what I need.
#SpecFic #BookSky
Hardcover library copy of Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Firebreak on a wide table with a window in the background and a pen and sunglasses on the side
April 26, 2025 at 6:52 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Very much enjoying Sunastara and the Venusian by Jess K Hardy: a funny #SciFi #romance with a bit of hurt/comfort and some political machinations aboard a pleasure spaceship. (Don’t laugh at my tired 🧠 for going through half the book b/f learning that Venusian is the demonym for Venus) #BookSky
Screenshot of audio player for Sunastara and the Venusian by Jess K Hardy at 53% through the audiobook
April 24, 2025 at 12:21 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
I love a good Bildungsroman that grows into a saga, and I was not ready for this series to end.

Luckily, it’s a spinoff of Archer’s Steele and Glass, so if you’re into mystery, romance, and a diverse found family in an alt-historical setting: #BookRecs
#fantasy #BookSky
Screenshot of audiobook player for CJ Archer’s The Journal of a Thousand Years, book 6 of The Glass Library
April 21, 2025 at 2:07 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Julian Winters’s I Think They Love You has been my #BookSky sunshine over the past few days in the absence of the real thing. Truly, good stories are what keeps me going in the last, dark days of this prolonged winter.
#BookRecs #Romance
Screenshot of the audiobook player for Julian Winters’s I Think They Love You
April 16, 2025 at 7:57 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Repost with a photo of seafront/shoreline/beach that you took.
Frozen shore of Lake Ontario extending past boating docks, providing sanctuary to tens of seagulls, and giving way to unfrozen water on the right;
April 12, 2025 at 2:53 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
It’s put-on-your-SAD-light and blast-some-Chappell-Roan-on-repeat kind of weather out here, #Toronto.
Rainy corner of King St E and River St in Toronto with red street cars traveling in both directions
April 11, 2025 at 1:46 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Today in comfort reads: CJ Archer’s Secrets of the Lost Ledgers—book 5 of The Glass Library. A little bit of mystery, a dusting of magic, a sprinkling of romance: so grateful for stories to keep me sane and functioning in *this* world.
#BookSky #BookRecs
April 11, 2025 at 1:36 AM
memargrit.bsky.social
Just started Someone You Can Build a Nest in by John Wiswell, and as much as I *really* want to get on the horror bandwagon, esp of the queer variety, idk. Never been good at reading horror, but I keep trying.

What did you all think of it, #BookSky? #BookRecs
Audiobook player for Someone You Can Build a Nest in by John Wiswell
April 9, 2025 at 2:45 AM
memargrit.bsky.social
Wonderful to see so many folks enjoying the rare #Toronto sunshine. Here’s to more of it as spring takes hold.
People walking on a sunny sidewalk with a building on the left and cars parked on the right
April 4, 2025 at 10:02 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Looking for a little bit of beauty outside today to survive #Toronto end-of-winter
Tiny raindrops clinging to thin branches Rainy sidewalk with a high-rise engulfed in fog in the distance.
March 30, 2025 at 10:49 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
I went out and found not just sunshine, but also signs of spring #Toronto
A photo of a patch of snowdrops in an otherwise empty garden crisscrossed by sunshine and shadows
March 26, 2025 at 8:10 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
This gloomy Monday’s sanity saver for me is Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Assistant to the Villain.

What’s yours, #BookSky?
Screenshot of audiobook cover for Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Assistant to the Villain
March 24, 2025 at 4:42 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
It seems 2 of my peer-rev papers were used in training Meta’s AI. This may not seem like much, but each was months of direct work in research, thinking, & writing on top of years of education for me to get the skills necessary.
How about you,
#WritingCommunity?
www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
The papers are: “Blake Mycoskie, TOMS, and Life Narratives of Conspicuous Giving” published in the journal Biography; and “Don’t Eat Anything that Can Play Videogames”: Deleuze-Guattarian Alternatives to Corporate Capitalism in Scarlett Thomas’s PopCo
March 23, 2025 at 9:23 PM
memargrit.bsky.social
Signs of spring! Rejoice, #Toronto.
Snowdrops emerged among last year’s dead leaves near a grey stone
March 21, 2025 at 10:45 PM