A friend and I realized we both read and loved this as teens, so now we (plus my husband) have formed a book club for a re-read. So far, just as fun as I remember interspersed with more awkward writing than I realized. Definitely excited to read more. I'm collecting every played song in a playlist on Spotify (skipping ones just mentioned unless also implied that it may have been played).

The stakes in this volume feel much higher than other volumes as Natsume draws the attention of a terrifying clan of exorsists. Very interesting developments and setting the stage for later conflict. I adored the bonus chapter where Natsume tries to teach the yokai human games. #Manga

We get to see more growth from Natori, who as usual pushes growth in Natsume as well. The episodic nature of each chapter is starting to drop off a bit more in this volume for something more cohesive, which I'm delighted to see. It was also fun having the bonus chapter about Reiko. #Manga

This continues to be a charming manga exploring LGBTQIA+ and new ally experiences alongside in-panel baking and dessert recipes. Toshi continues to grapple with the concept of coming out, and his staffer continues to delve into what it means to support the queer community. #LGBTQIA #Manga #Baking

While I enjoy this series over all, this volume was just alright to me. I didn't quite fall into the drama with Bishamon and her family, didn't understand the transformation of her clothing at any stage, and wanted more of a look at Iki's situation. I also felt like Bishamon's strength was undervalued here. #Manga

One of my favorite things about this series other than how pretty and fun to read it is would have to be the way Natsume builds friendships everywhere he goes. It feels like there are two Book of Friends--the one from his grandma and the manga itself. #Manga #Friendship

Marlene's mom says she has bad hair and has it straightened at the salon every Sunday, but Marlene hates the salon and just wants to wear her hair natural. This was a lovely book exploring self-confidence, hair care, family, identity, and Black Dominican joy. The illustrations are lovely and do such a good job of conveying emotion. The author also takes care in handling mom's hesitance toward natural hair. #BIPOC #Comics

Somehow the adventures in this book were much more high-stakes than usual, and the storytelling was a bit more solid. We got an excellent look into Reiko's past, Nyanko Sensei's motivations, and Natsume's relationship with his foster family. #Manga

Another delightful set of adventures. Always fun to have returning side characters. The arm reaching through the ceiling definitely made me laugh but I would probably panic if that happened to me 😆 #Manga

It took me a bit to get used to the episodic chapters from this series being serialized in a magazine first. This was another adventurous volume and I enjoyed the yokai and human friends Natsume meets along the way. It was very fun seeing him meet Hinoe. #Manga

What a fun way to experience my favorite Shakespeare play! The art style is charming (but all the characters are weirdly sexy) and the modern English version was interesting to experience. This would definitely be a good companion for anyone having a bit of trouble understanding the story in its original form. #Manga #Classics

Take a deep dive into different aspects of bird intelligence. I enjoyed learning about many birds native to my area from blue jays and chikadees to crows, and many I am not familiar with as well. The author takes a look at intelligence in birds' natural habitats, as well as intelligence shown for human purposes. #Birds #Nature #Nonfiction

Two of the apprentices team up to take on the next test in their academic journey: get their chosen bird creature through an ancient stone tunnel. This absurdly beautiful and adorable manga took a bit of a Full Metal Alchemist turn in this volume. #Manga #Magic

Our library brought in Jonathan Case as part of our big community read. It was an interesting and powerful talk taking us on an adventure through the twists and turns of his career and the difficult cur balls thrown at him by life. He seems like a charismatic illustrator and author and I look forward to continuing to follow his work. #Comics #Library #AuthorTalk

Chika's idea of dating is different from her friends or the guys she dates. She chases the idea of being normal as she enters college and soon discovers a word that changes everything: asexual. I really enjoyed this manga. I definitely felt similarly to Chika before learning about asexuality and fell on researching it as soon as I discovered it. I like how the side characters help her expand beyond definition into deeper understanding. #LGBTQIA

What stories are told through implication and subtext alone? Haunted by her family's secrets, Temim chases this question, as well as seeking connections with her Jewish and queer identities. I enjoyed this fairly abstract but vividly told book. I wish we had a bit more closure but given everything else I think that wouldn't have been true to this story's nature. I enjoyed the connections with Polish Jewish ancestors, that's my family's story.

We recently aquired a 3D printer and are having some fun printing various items. I found a file for this cute book tracker for my bookshelf. (Tagged is my 113th book this year) #BookCounter #Bookish

A girl and her scientist guardian travel around making medicine from monarch butterfly scales to survive against a sun sickness that wiped out Earth's mammal populations. This was one of my library's community reads this year and I really enjoyed it. The art is beautiful, the characters are delightful, and the world is vividly imagined. Loved Elvie's journaling throughout, and they even stop at nearby Cave of the Winds! 🤩 #Nature #Comics

Like any short story collection, some stories were more enjoyable than others. I definitely had fun reading this and getting to know or re-experience so many wonderful authors, and I love a good collection with trans and nonbinary characters. My favorites might be the one with the storm lighthouse and the one narrated by the magic school. #LGBTQIA #Magic #ShortStories

Enjoying an author visit with Meg Long hosted by our library district today. I read the book so I could promote it better for the library (where I work) and it was both hit and miss for me, and this author talk is such a delight. Meg seems like such a delightful person and genuine author (and definitely ADHD cognitive style). Give her a read if you like adventure, tough girls, wolves, and planets that will chew you up and spit you out.

When Shrike is crowned Oak King and fated to be killed by the Holly King to preserve the change of the season, he scrys for someone to help him and is lead to a mortal man. This was a fun but wandering read. There were a few things that felt like if cut, the book would be no less ritch. Due to this, the climactic battle feels very short. Overall, though, a fun fantasy story. I'd read more in this universe. #LGBTQIA #Fantasy #Birds

A girl or teenager secretly takes a study abroad in Vietnam to find her mother's family and meets the writer/food vendor of her dreams. This was pretty cute and there was a lot of attention paid to the culture and setting. Both characters' fears and griefs were well explored. I couldn't decide if the characters were Middle schoolers or high schoolers though. I think high school? They often felt much younger. #LGBTQIA #AAPI #Vietnam #Food

Here are my final points for this year's #HauntedShelf @PuddleJumper

🎃From midway checkin: 774 pts
🎃pre points: 60 pts (forgot to add to midway)
🎃word scavenger hunt: 30 pts
🎃book cover scavenger hunt: 465 pts
🎃book chain game: 880 (forgot to add to midway)
🎃cluedo: 190
🎃time reading: 260
🎃posts: 12
And not a single bingo line complete 😆

👻total: 2,671 for #BlackCatCrew @BookwormAHN

Thanks to the tagged author who encourages people to do so, we always put out free used books (which we buy at the annual big book sale from our library's Friends org) for Halloween alongside the treats we hand out. This year we also did food for folks in need. Both were a huge hit! 📚🎃🍬 #Halloween

These should be my last book cover scavenger hunt finds for #HauntedShelf #BlackCatCrew!

📚The House in the Cerulean Sea: building
📚Kilt for Christmas: tartan (the only find that was not on my shelf)
📚Venom: scream (thanks random dude in the corner!)

@PuddleJumper @BookwormAHN

A few more of my finds for #HauntedShelf book cover scavenger hunt! #BlackCatCrew

📚Wayward: Supernatural
📚Saga: bloody
📚Tea Dragon Society: unputdownable
📚 Descender: red

@PuddleJumper @BookwormAHN

Lewis does some interesting storytelling in this graphic memoir. I like the way he represents his anxiety, and uses the man points and character selection to convey his dysphoria. Moving through your late teens early 20s while also transitioning can definitely be complicated and I'm glad he shares his story here. #LGBTQIA #Nonfiction #Comics

Another fun continuation of this story. I am enjoying seeing the characters slowly grow through their relationships. I wish we saw a little more growth through their music like we did in the first two volumes, but that's my only tiff. #LGBTQIA #Manga

Tan's work is always to visually and conceptually compelling, and these three short stories are no exception. They tackle the bigness of depression, the lost feeling of not fitting society's expectations, and the process of colonization. This is a pretty quick read since it is formatted like a picture book. #Art

Another set of book cover scavenger hunt finds from my shelves for #HauntedShelf #BlackCatCrew

📚Dreams of Gods and Monsters: cursive
📚Hell Followed with Us: frightful
📚The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet: atmosphere
📚Inkheart: smoke (probably)
📚Strange the Dreamer: yellow
📚The Hobbit: possessive

@PuddleJumper @BookwormAHN

Each page features gorgeous illustrations of houses and floor plans, plus the skeleton of a story about the building and its occupant. This is such a fun and imagination-focused picture book. I especially loved that in the end, the artist shows off his own studio and talks about how he develops his projects. #PictureBook

A few more book cover scavenger hunt pics for #HauntedShelf #BlackCatCrew
I decided to hunt for the cover prompts on my own shelves.

📚Guard in the Garden: embrace
📚Moloka‘i: grey
📚Flesh and Spirit: single
📚Revelation: landscape
📚The Wolf‘s Den: moon
📚Quaint Creatures: boots

@PuddleJumper @BookwormAHN

Activist and advocate Alecia Weigel shares about her experiences as an intersex woman and talks extensively about the inequities intersex people face, especially in medical practice. A thoughtful read, and a good place to start if you are not familiar with the issues intersex folks face. Content warnings for medical mispractice, sexual assault, and gaslighting. #LGBTQIA #Intersex #Memoir

Another round of book cover scavenger hunt for #HauntedShelf #BlackCatCrew!

📚Bad Blood: AI/CGI
📚The Graveyard Book: graves
📚Practical Rules for Cursed Witches: cozy
📚Shopping All the Way to the Woods: trees
📚City of Laughter: eyes
📚A Raisin in the Sun: real people

Hopefully the goal wasn‘t to use only autumn and spooky themed books 🤭

@PuddleJumper @BookwormAHN

I‘ve been listening to this for an hour and still have no compelling reason to care about anything and continue reading. When does the so-what factor hit? Also, having a prologue followed by the start of book 1, followed then by the start of part 1 some time later feels beyond presumptuous.

I know I only have 46 minutes left but I realized this book is irritating me. I‘m not sure if I just suddenly started noticing the writing was rough or if the writing took a bad turn at 70% (it was passable before, not amazing but not the worst). I maybe should have bailed way back when the characters were laughably thirsty all the time or when the author used the sound of stirring wet macaroni as a description in a sex scene 😐

Here‘s my first round of Book Cover Scavenger Hunt for #HauntedShelf #BlackCatCrew!

📚Natsume‘s Book of Friends: green
📚Ash‘s Cabin: weapon (Ash is holding a bow)
📚Go Luck Yourself: gold (gold coins by the Y)
📚Twistwood Tales: monster
📚Most Ardently: fake sticker (I am not sure if printed on versions of awards counts since they used to be stamped in)
📚Be Prepared: group (in the background)

@PuddleJumper

Follow Ash as they prepare to run away and live in a cabin their grandpa built in the woods (if it exists). Beautifully illustrated and told. My adult perspective on this book (worried about the logistics of Ash‘s safety and their family‘s fear and grief for their missing teen) is probably a lot different than how teens would experience the book. #Survival

If I‘m doing this right, I have built up this many points for #BlackCatCrew in #HauntedShelf so far:

🍁Word finder in my reading: 12 words found, 180 points
🕰️29 hours read, 435 points
📖5 books read (non-tbr, non-seasonal): 50 points
📚4 books read (tbr): 100 points
📷9 Litsy posts (including this one): 9 points
(And I‘m not reporting guessing game points yet so I don‘t lose track!)

Total: 774 points
@BookwormAHN

12 words found in my reading so far for #SpookyStacks counting toward #BlackCatCrew! I think the ones that surprised me most were owl (because I thought “hm, that may be a pretty specific word I‘ll have to actively look for” and turned the page and there it was in a short story in Amplitudes!) and mischief (found in the tagged while talking to mischief the inn caused).

I‘m working on tallying points now. @PuddleJumper @BookwormAHN

A teen forms an unexpected bond with a wolf and a team of scientists and tries to survive her death trap of a world. I read this because it‘s one of my library‘s community reads this year. I didn‘t care for it. It‘s an interesting book, and well told, but the main character‘s self-blame pity parties got really old and so did the author‘s shortening of words to sound futuristic and edgy (predator? Pred. Corporation? Corpo. Transport? Transpo. Etc)

I don‘t always enjoy short story collections, and this one was no exception. These shorts depict a pretty stark image of queer and trans futurity (which maybe I should have expected with Mandelo as the editor😆) and felt more like scifi than futurist works. Most of the stories also seemed to use sex specifically to be edgy and uncomfortable, but maybe it was just my Demi brain missing the point. I had to skip a few. #ShortStories #LGBTQIA

I wound up missing a volume or two because of the confusing way this manga is structured, and it really showed up in this volume because I missed some important character introductions 😆 otherwise, another excellent volume. I liked the way we lean about Taichi‘s past in-chapter instead of in a chapter all its own. #LGBTQIA #Disabled #Manga

I am still loving this series. We get to see the characters continue to grow in their relationship and in their professional lives in this volume, and dove into the lives of some side characters as a fun aside. #LGBTQIA #Manga

A witch who lost her powers after casting a resurrection spell as a child uses her now minimal powers to manage her chaotic inn and the wayward folks it brings in. I enjoyed this cozy tale and all of its charming characters. I wish Posey and Clementine got to be more character than a plot device though. #Cozy #Fantasy

Two guys who work together decide it would be convenient to get married. The concept behind this one is pretty weak. LGBTQIA+ marriage becomes legal, and suddenly everyone is trying to secure marriages regardless of who it's with. I don't get it and it seems to be fueled by the fearmongering tactics of people who argue that marriage equality will lead to people getting married just to cheat the system instead of for love.

Mimi discovers the art of magical baking while preparing for a baking competition at a local cafe and chaos breaks out within her family. This is a fun adaptation borrowing from A Midsummer Night‘s Dream. I enjoy books with kitchen magic, and Mimi is a charming character. This is middle grade, but it did feel like she was a little more clueless than I would have expected. #Magic #Baking #MiddleGrade #Adaptations

This was definitely and interesting adventure into speculative evolution. The author takes the time to explain different adaptations on Earth in detail and why those adaptations formed, and poses thoughts on why we might expect to see similar (or different) features in animals on another life-sustaining planet.

Two cybernetic supersoldiers battle in a hyper-sensationalized war where they are treated like pop idols. This was unsettling and I found it hard to follow. I don‘t think I got out of it what the author was going for. #comics #war #LGBTQIA

A few hand-drawn bingo boards, prompts written on a series of notecards, and an old unused October calendar from two years ago to track my reading points. All ready for #HauntedShelf! @BookwormAHN