Litsy

Exploring the Open library carousel for the #URC, I was happy to find this charmer from James Stevenson that I'd never seen before. (Though I was also tempted by “Enjoy Amazing Halal Sex!“)

Grandpa's grandchildren had a miserable first day at school, so he tells them about how awful his was! I love how young Grandpa's drawn in his little suit and mustache.

#JustOneMoreChapter #HauntedShelf #ScreamTeam
#Chocolatiers #OneSnackToRuleThemAll

Bookwormjillk, TheAromaofBooks, Faranae

Bookwormjillk 🍫🍫🍫 6d

TheAromaofBooks My father-in-law had a mustache starting right after he graduated high school. Recently we were looking through his HS yearbook from his senior year, and there he was - with pen marks scribbled on his face! To which my husband pointed and said that when he was a toddler his dad looked “wrong“ so he drew in the mustache 😂 6d

willaful @TheAromaofBooks LOL! 6d

Faranae ...I have to admit, I'm morbidly curious about how sex can be halal, but I'm relieved you chose this one instead. I do love how wild OL's carousels can be (it's why I had to share!). 6d

willaful @Faranae I was a also tempted by a poetry collection, but oh my goodness, it was a million pages long... 6d

30 likes5 comments

Lauredhel

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Original) | Toshikazu Kawaguchi

pan

I don't get the hype. The translation was clunky, & it's repetitive & overexplained. Every single story involves women sacrificing themselves and their own lives & interests for others.

I guess that's what I get for breaking my guideline by reading a male author who doesn't come very highly recced by people I trust. And for reading SF by a non-SF author.

It did fill the swap shelf prompt in #urc2025 #URC though! @Faranae
.

Lauredhel ... and it's going straight back out to my little free library :) 3w

LeeRHarry I didn‘t think much of this one either. 3w

Lauredhel @LeeRHarry right? But it also fills "a book from Open Library‘s front page carousels" in #urc2025 #URC @Faranae  AND "aimless" and "spectre" in the #gottacatchemall #gottacatchemallspooky challenge. So no regrets!
@PuddleJumper (edited) 3w

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PuddleJumper Hope the next book is better! 3w

Lauredhel @PuddleJumper it already is!

The Mimicking of Known Successes

Faranae 😂 It does take the sting out of a sub-par book when you can at least mark off some challenge prompts (URC, pokemon, bingos...) There's way better “healing fiction“ out there than this one, for sure. 3w

53 likes1 stack add6 comments

Lauredhel

Iyanu: Child of Wonder Volume 1 | Roye Okupe

This was a rather lovely little graphic novel set in a magical Benin-inspired fantasy world.

With Okupe being Nigerian, that's a wrap on the Formidable Reading Challenge! #urc2025 #URC @Faranae #frc #frc2025

I've put all the other prompts into a grid for the Ultimate Reading Challenge - and have only three to go there.

Faranae Oh wow! Congrats on the first official completion of the FRC2025! Looks like you read lots of good stuff for it. 3mo

49 likes1 comment

willaful

Untitled | Untitled

Hey #QueerBC peeps, May is almost over so here are some discussion questions for our author Neon Yang! (Formerly known as JY Yang.) Answer any or all if you're so inclined!

BookmarkTavern, GirlNamedJesse, Kitta, TheBookHippie, JenlovesJT47, CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian, jenniferw88, maich, Read4life, rwmg, Catsandbooks, Butterfinger, ElizaMarie, flying_monkeys, AbigailJaneBlog, Jari-chan, JudeCC, Kenyazero, PuddleJumper, lil1inblue, peanutnine, Zuhkeeyah, AllDebooks

Kitta I‘m still waiting for the book from Libby! I decided to read Black Tides of Heaven and will come back to this discussion when I‘m done! 5mo

PuddleJumper I started Black Tides of Heaven and then got distracted. I want to finish Her Majesty's Coven and then I'll go back to it 5mo

BookmarkTavern I read Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Wind which was fantasy. And I always love the powerful amount of world building Yang manages to push into a novella. I had also read the Tensorate series before, and I particularly enjoy the queer normative societies they create. I‘m putting The Genesis of Misery on my TBR! 5mo

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lil1inblue I read The Black Tides of Heaven.
1. I enjoy both genres, as well as blends of the two. This one was classified as fantasy, but I think it has sci-fi elements as well.
2. The major themes in this novella involved power and resistance. I found it very timely. I also like the sibling relationship and how it related to the major themes.
5mo

lil1inblue 3. The book had an interesting gender system in which children are essentially non-binary and eventually choose their own gender, which I think is directly related to Yang's identity. I can also see how Singapore's history as a colonized nation may have influenced the political structure in the book, as well.
4. I definitely enjoyed this novella. I bought an edition with the whole series, and I'm excited to read the other 3 novellas. 5mo

willaful @BookmarkTavern Oooo, queer normative society is a prompt for @Faranae's #URC if you're playing... 5mo

BookmarkTavern @willaful How cool! I didn‘t know about that! 5mo

Butterfinger I hope it's okay to answer one by one so I can go back and see the questions. I'm in the third novella of the Tensorate series and I have really enjoyed the world building they created. Like @lil1inblue I see it as a blend of fantasy (Naga riders) and sci-fi (new technology-dream recordings). I lean more toward fantasty. 5mo

Butterfinger 2 - definitely revolution toward a dictator. Sibling love. Overcoming grief. 5mo

Butterfinger 3- yes, children confirm their genders at any time they wish. One character, Rider, confirms but decides not to go through the process of change so they remain fluid in their life. The whole society is that way. No discrimination at all. How freeing!!! Wait a moment. When Akeha confirms as a male, his mother, who is the dictator, calls him a waste. 5mo

Butterfinger 4 I do enjoy being in this world. I would like to read some nonfiction. The LGBTQ+community has fought so much, and through so much abuse, I want to learn more history. 5mo

Butterfinger Wonderful, reflective questions @willaful @PuddleJumper thank you. 5mo

willaful @Butterfinger I suspect even in a SF setting, Yang tends to incorporate fantasy elements. Perhaps speculative fiction would be the best category. Thank you for your thoughtful answers! (edited) 5mo

25 likes13 comments

willaful

Paladin's Strength | T Kingfisher

I liked this even more than Paladin's Grace, because the characters are such delightful gentle giants.

More at my blog: https://willaful.wordpress.com/2025/05/22/tbr-challenge-paladins-strength-by-t-k...

#SeriesLove2025
#URC rodent on cover. (The main one -- this is an alternate.)

Andrew65, TheSpineView, Faranae

TheSpineView Fantastic! 5mo

Faranae The failure of the new covers to feature the White Rat is a sin and a shame. I also didn't like that they went with “fantasy“ covers, so none of the couples look at each other, but none of the secondary characters are depicted. Earstripe is too important in Paladin's Hope to leave out if you aren't going to have Piper and Galen all over each other (but then I don't like the way Piper is drawn anyway...). 5mo

willaful @Faranae Yeah, aesthetically this sucks and doesn't really give a sense of the books, but I did like seeing Clara drawn large. 5mo

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Faranae @willaful It's definitely nice to see Clara drawn right! Istvhan isn't as big as I imagined in my head, so I'm sticking to my own imagination and not letting this cover override it. 5mo

willaful @Faranae 👍

(And people don't get why I don't want to see the Murderbot show....) 5mo

Andrew65 Excellent 🎉🎉🎉 5mo

34 likes6 comments

TieDyeDude

The Librarianist: A Novel | Patrick DeWitt

pick

A quiet book about a quiet man. Bookended by a year in his old age, we examine different eras of Bob's life. I think Patrick deWitt is one of the finest modern authors, so I really enjoyed reading this novel, but I think I lost the thread when it flashed back to Bob's runaway. Still, Bob is probably one of my favorite main characters I've read about in a while.

TheBookHippie I read this as an ARC, I agree. It lost the thread a bit. 5mo

willaful I'm probably going to read this for the #URC “library related cover“ prompt. 5mo

53 likes2 stack adds2 comments

willaful

Someone You Can Build a Nest In | John Wiswell

Such an intriguing book, and an intriguing theory. A good time to be reading books that help me understand monsters of the human variety.

This was the #QueerBC book from, what, October? Also my choice for “featuring a cryptid“ for @Faranae's #URC. I can't imagine a more interesting cryptid!

30 likes

willaful

Untitled | Untitled

I made this bingo card for people doing @Faranae's #URC. This is *only* prompts related to the title and cover, to make it easy to check for them. (I had to leave out the “rhyming in title“ prompt to make the board even.)

Faranae This is amazing! Next year I should make sure there's only 16 title and cover prompts so they fit perfectly. 😂 You misspelled my name (Maybe I should switch to HarpGriffin here too?) but I follow you so I saw it anyway~ 9mo

willaful @Faranae whoops, sorry. I had to get up super early and am not at my best today. 9mo

30 likes2 comments

willaful

Here We Go Again: A Novel | Alison Cochrun

I wish I'd read this last year, because it's exactly what I had in mind for @Farnae's #URC prompt for a book set where being queer is dangerous. Books where, despite everything, queer people are everywhere.

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