This is a moment both validating and horrific. While many of us suspected the abuses of power and cover-ups on a grand scale, I don’t think any of us foresaw the avalanche of abhorrent acts and complicities revealed in the Epstein files. Rape, murder, abuse, kidnapping, torture, child abuse, and molestation, all seen and kept…
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Nova’s Reading Roundup 2025
It’s been a long year. Whether that is from the news cycle (the worst dystopian fiction I’ve ever read), the barrage of AI slop that literally makes Mars sound like a vacation, or from the sheer number of visits made by my in-laws this year, my January reads feel like five years ago, not one….
We Need To Stop Taking Swag
I have many branded items on my desk. I have a squishy blue whale stress ball from AT&T, a pink stress ball from an A/V company, a phone holder from Purple, a hand sanitizer from a local auto shop, and the list goes on. My husband picked up most of this at conventions. He loves…
Eco-changes I made in 2024
Even with the Earth’s temperature currently flirting with the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold of “no return,” Americans ranked climate change 21 on the list of issues they thought were most important in the 2024 election. That’s behind distribution of wealth, abortion, and the federal budget deficit among others. While the other issues are not unimportant,…
Nova’s 2024 Reading Roundup
This year arrived for me with a heap of emotions and challenges. After being fired from my bookstore position (yeah, can you believe that? Me. Fired.), I hobbled along to find another job. At the start of the year, we also found this obnoxiously cute and innocent-looking puppy we named Nadja (after Natasha Demetriou’s vampiress…
A good place to start supporting intersectional communities
I think my political opinions can be seen in much of my work, my feminist essays, the themes of the books I am writing, and my love of the earth and sustainability. I don’t need to express what disappointment I experienced to the 2024 election results. Or, further, the fears I have for the future….
The Watchers: How to turn a great book into a terrible movie
The Watchers was on my bookshelf, so when I saw the first movie preview, the familiar premise piqued my attention. A woman and a yellow bird are saved from the dark woods by a mysterious woman, taken into a mysterious house. There, they are safe from watching monsters. There’s nothing to spur me to read…
Furiosa: A study in undermining your strong female character
Furiosa started strong, but the movie didn’t ultimately know what to make of its title character. It starts with a chase. Like all Mad Max films, Furiosa mostly happens on the move. Furiosa is a preteen girl harvesting peaches in a hushed wooded oasis in the middle of the Wasteland. When bikers find the…
Let’s Flip Book Cliches!
I can be cynical when it comes to popular things. I was the girl when everyone started to like something, I pointedly DIDN’T like it. Harry Potter? I resisted until the movie came out (then fell in love). Lord of The Rings films? Held out until my late 20s. Leggings? Definitely should’ve tried them 10…
Meet My New Favorite Feminist Film: Polite Society
It’s the end of 2023 and I can’t let it pass without sharing the best film I saw in theaters this year. It’s feminist, it’s feisty, and it’s hilarious. Forget Atomic Blonde, Promising Young Woman, and every other violent female rage plot you think you know. Polite Society gets to the core of what we…
