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Hello everyone! I hope you had a great weekend and have a great week ahead of you! I decided I wanted to start doing monthly wrap-ups, so here is my first one for January!

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Reading

This month I actually was able to read quite a bit because I didn’t start school until the second week of January.

A Conjuring of Light by V. E. Schwab: 3.5 stars. I just thought this was too damn long. I had no desire to pick it up and read it. BUT there was a ton of action and I liked the story and everything. I think if it was 200 pages shorter, I would have loved it.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: 5 stars. I loved this graphic memoir. It was so good and I related to Marji so much. I highly recommend it! A full review will be coming eventually, but here’s a link to the one I did on my global health blog!

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: 5 stars. I loved this book. I loved the writing and the characters and everything about it.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: 5 stars. I buddy-read this with Rebecca and we both loved it! I loved his writing and all the anecdotes he includes. I think it’s a super important read.

So pretty good overall! Three 5 star reads! I also started reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo and 1Q84 by Haruki Marukami. I’m really enjoying them both and hope to finish them in February!

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Reviews posted

 the sun and her flowers by Rupi Kaur: 4.5 stars

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis: 5 stars

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From around the internet

One of my goals for 2018 was to read more opinion pieces, and I’ve been doing just that! I thought I’d highlight some of my favourites.

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The Female Price of Male Pleasure by Lili Loofbourow: This is a super interesting piece about how we view sex and women, and I highly recommend reading it. Here are some of my favourite quotes to convince you:

“The world is disturbingly comfortable with the fact that women sometimes leave a sexual encounter in tears.”

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“[…] we’re only comfortable with movements like #MeToo so long as the men in question are absolute monsters we can easily separate from the pack.”

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“PubMed has almost five times as many clinical trials on male sexual pleasure as it has on female sexual pain. And why? Because we live in a culture that sees female pain as normal and male pleasure as a right.”

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“But next time we’re inclined to wonder why a woman didn’t immediately register and fix her own discomfort, we might wonder why we spent the preceding decades instructing her to override the signals we now blame her for not recognizing.”

If that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

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133 People Publicly Confronted The Doctor Who Sexually Abused Young Women. Here Are Their Most Powerful Quotes: this one is from Buzzfeed, but I promise it’s worth it. If you’ve been following the Larry Nassar case, or have any doubts about rape culture, or just want a good cry, give it a read. I also recommend watching Aly Raisman’s statement (I cried ugly tears) and the judge read Larry Nassar’s letter.

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Halsey’s speech at the Woman’s March: I love Halsey. I love her music, but I also think she’s such a great person and role model. I’m sure you’ve seen this video shared a million times, but it’s definitely worth it.

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Canada must rethink health spending strategy: André Picard, who’s the public health journalist in Canada, wrote a great piece on why we need to spend less on healthcare and more on social programs. This is what my whole degree is focused on, and his article is very on-point. We also had the chance to talk to him in one of my classes, which was very cool.

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Forget about oil. Alberta is poised to become the province of marijuana: More niche, but my boss wrote a great article on marijuana legalization in Alberta!! Go read it because she’s great and kickass!!!

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How a ‘Perfect Storm’ in New Hampshire Has Fuelled an Opioid Crisis: From the New York Times. It’s a super interesting look at why the opioid crisis is so bad in so bad in some places, and also why investing in social programs helps the health of addicts.

“Another [reason] is New Hampshire’s low per capita spending on services to help drug users break free from addiction. Nationally, the state, which has no income or sales tax, ranks at the bottom in availability of treatment programs.”

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Other news and highlights

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Posts

I did a discussion on my favourite children’s books, which was a lot of fun. I liked going back and looking at my favourite books from when I was a kid and seeing what were everyone else’s.

For Woman of the Month, I highlighted Pauli Murray, who was the first African American woman ordained Episcopal priest. Go read about her, she was pretty badass.

I also gave some recommendations for people who don’t like reading YA romances, which had some great discussion in the comments!

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Personal highlights

• I told my friend that I had a class Wednesday from 9:00-11:30 and she thought I meant 9:00 pm
• My horse Jack was really good in lessons all month and I love him
• Auston Matthews was a petty bitch in a Leafs vs. Avalanche game
• I made plans to go visit my best friend over reading week!
• My school won it’s hockey game against the rival university in town
• I learned in my Psychology and Law class that I fit Ted Bundy’s victimology 100%
• I listened to Post Malone for the first time and learned that he’s actually pretty good

AND

I GOT INTO MY TOP CHOICE FOR LAW SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭😭

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That’s all for this month! Thank you everyone for reading and commenting! It really means the world to me!

Ally xx