I was curious what people are doing over the holidays as traditions. Some people have such original traditions they like to do over the holidays. Cool foods, fun beverages. specific types of books or shows, specific things they do during the holidays.

You don't have to be religious to answer. I'm not. Just someone you do seasonally at this time of year.im curious to learn about other.

For me, I don't like turkey, meat pie, or "traditional" Canadian Christmas food. I always enjoy eating it while watching a fun uplifting show. Or reality TV (competition style ones like Drag Race or Glow Up) 😂. So I eat Chinese takeaway over the holidays and I enjoy curling up in bed and reading a fun book. Always a feel good book though. Gonna try to get as many books read while I don't have school.

Curious to hear from others.

I haven't been on the app much in the last two weeks due to a mix of school and sickness, and I really missed it.

I just to put it out there that I have a lot of fun on this bookish community. I love getting into a discussion about a niche topic or a scene from a book and I'm really excited to do that more over the holidays.

And I'm excited to make some lists.

What do you guys like most about this app? Are you planning on using it more during the holiday period?

i see vastly divided opinions on this and i’m curious to hear everyone’s thoughts!

i don’t really like receiving books as gifts for a few reasons: i don’t have much space for more books, i mostly get my books from the library, and my taste is expansive but specific and i trust VERY few people to be able to pick out a book for me.

the only exception is when i ask for a specific edition of a book (special edition, international edition, etc) and i emphasize the ISBN! this is only every now and them and usually from my mum or my bf, who both know my book-receiving preferences by now.

i generally prefer bookish things that relate to my favorite books. i’ve had friends give me candles, shirts, sweatshirts, prints, bookmarks, etc that i love and complement my book collection perfectly!!

so where do you fall? do you want books as gifts? do you not? do you also have multiple book themed candles on rotation? tell me!!

I just suddenly remembered that my elementary school had this reading programme thing they were a part of and it really makes me wonder if this was a common experience or not cause I feel like i've never heard anybody else mention something like this. Basically, my school (and maybe the entire district) was worried about literacy rates and so decided that for every grade level it would be mandatory to use a specific website to track every book that you read. Your log-in info was directly connected to your student ID, and you had to read a certain amount of books per week or else your grade average in English would automatically fall. In addition to this, we were also required to leave a review for everything that we read so that our teachers could make sure that we actually did, which I remember was the worst because when you're 9 years old re-reading your Hungry Caterpillar book just to meet your quota, it feels like, what is there to say?? 'Boy, that caterpillar sure was hungry!' Sigh. But anyway, as you continue to read, you would level up on the website. I really don't remember how the system worked, but I do know that the more you read the more avatars you could unlock, and they were all these really ugly early 2000s stock animation CGI things. You know the ones. There was a bit of a clout thing going on also because our teachers would display the statistics in class which would also show people's avatars and badges and turned it into a competitive thing where people would just keep reading baby books over and over so that they could get the most points and it was a whole mess. But back to the point about how if you don't meet the quota they set then your grade drops - the entire time I was in school, and especially in elementary, I was a straight-A student. But I cannot tell you how stressful it was any time I saw on that weekly report that my grade was dropping cause I had forgotten to read, or how many times I remembered that a quota was due and had to scavenge my bookshelves for something short I could read to that I could submit it in time to get credit for that week. And the thing is I don't think this system actually did anything to encourage reading OR to improve literacy. ALL of us were reading toddler books, at ages 7-10, just to avoid being penalized, and I didn't start reading at all again until my last year of middle school just from how bad of an experience all that was and affected the way I saw books, as a source of academic stress rather than just for love of reading. So... did anybody else's schools have similar systems??