November 2025

 

November 2, 2025

I'm back! I haven't been as consistent as I think I want to be, but this is still a good start. I don't want to put too much pressure onto this and drive myself away from something that could be good for myself- and besides I think updating every couple of months with maybe a few special in between will be more fun for anyone else who happens to read this. This post is mostly an update but there are also a couple of recommendations somewhere in the middle as well. It gets a little ramble-y and maybe a little repetitive at the end but like I said, this is nothing fancy or special. Just a little update as we get closer to the end of the year.

    I am officially on my third term of my master's program! I've taken three classes so far historiography, comparative history and research, and historical research methods. So far I think I enjoyed the historical research methods course the best, but I have gotten a lot out of each. Those three are just the most basic prerequisites for most of the other classes that are offered in the history program. This next term (November through January) I'll be taking classes on the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era and one on archival management.

    I know ahead of time that I will have to be patient and put in effort to the archival management course because I already work in that sort of field, so I will probably be prone to getting frustrated with the pacing and the readings. I am however looking forward to the class and getting to learn more specific techniques since I am still young in the field. I am most excited for the Gilded Age class though, as I think that there is a lot of material that can be covered that I haven't had the opportunity to in other courses that I've had previously. I am already being asked to think about what I want to do for my master's thesis so I've been reflecting on what kinds of topics I've been drawn to in my academic career. My ideas are currently leaning into more occult themes, which if you know me is nothing new, and I've been reflecting on a few different topics that branch from there, Witchcraft/magic is one idea, mourning/grief practices is another (and is one that I am incredibly interest in), I am also interested in potentially looking into something to do with women's history either in the UK or in France. I don't have it completely figured out yet but I think I've got a good start on brainstorming. 

    Recently I've been listening to the podcast National Park After Dark; hosted by Danielle and Cassie, it's a podcast centered around national parks (US based and international) and the strange, mysterious, and dark things that happen in them. I just love the ambiance of this podcast, the first episode aired in January of 2021 so I'm a bit late to the party- but as of writing this I'm like sixty episodes in and loving it. I also wanted to recommend a podcast called Someone Lived Here. It's hosted by Kendra Gaylord and it's about the places people called home. She covers biographical information of people relevant to the episodes topic and uses vivid descriptions of each house to bring history to life and give us a window into various different pasts. It is a very challenging thing to describe a place and get across the image of it without relying on actual images but Kendra does it wonderfully.

As of late I have been in a bit of a reading slump so I only have one book review for a book called Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston. Let me tell you, if she has no fans, it's because I am deceased. I love her books so much. I've been half way through Sounds Like Love for a few months now (thank you reading slump and grad school sucking my energy like a vampire) and only just sat down and finished it the other night. It was such a sweet story, and I loved the character development that we see from the main love interest. Our main character is going through growing pains and dealing with grief and change which gives such a realistic impact to the plot of the book. I did cry towards the end of the book (all of Ashley Poston's books make me cry), and if loss of a parent is triggering or a touchy subject for you then this might be a book you can skip (SPOILERS?TRIGGER WARNING- our main characters mother has been diagnosed with alzheimer's and passes by the end of the book). There is a theme of memory and paths not taken throughout the book and it leads to surprise connections that weave our characters together. There were also small details that connected this book to another of Ashley Poston's books, The Seven Year Slip (which is my personal fav). Because of how long it took me to finish this book and how disconnected that made me feel from the story I'm giving it a 3.5 out of 5 stars, but it would probably be a 4 out of 5 if I had managed to read it in one sitting.  I would totally recommend this to someone looking for something cute and sweet and fairly easy to read. 

Now I do also have a TBR for the next few months The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, All Our Yesterdays by Joel H. Morris, and Yellow Bird by Sierra Crane Murdoch are all on my list. I want to give myself space to be more of a mood reader so that I don't feel like I'm being pressured and keep falling back into the slump. That being said, I have not read any of the books my friends and I have meant to be reading together for the past few months but they've been so sweet and understanding about it.

My next round of classes doesn't start until November 10th, so I have about a week of free time of my hands. It's been like two or three days of not having anything related to homework to do and it's already driving me halfway up a wall. I've thrown myself into planning for a potential bookclub and doing research on the 1930s film and Hollywood culture, which is also taking me down the rabbit hole of organized crime. I've also been spending a lot of time thinking about the topic for my master's thesis and spending time researching gravestones and cemeteries. Slowly, I'm starting to think that that might be my topic for the thesis.

    Speaking of gravestones, I pretty recently joined the Association of Gravestone Studies and am planning on participating in the yearly conference next summer; I've been keeping up with the newsletters and I've ben doing some digging into the source material and the subject. Today I took a little trip to find a small graveyard in the middle of a shopping center with a very cool history and link to the county's history. I plan on digging into that story more and using it to help launch myself into what that kind of research is really like and how to go about it. I think that it'll not only be good for my personal interests but also that it will provide experience for my academic and professional career.

    I think that's everything that I have to share for now. Not a whole lot but not nothing. Just a little bit to keep us going through to the end of the year. I'm hoping to maybe get one more post out before the new year, maybe one of my research based ones I'm not sure. I've got a few ideas that I've started working with so we'll see.

Until next time, keep learning and exploring!

Anne