i exist here sometimes and i enjoy it always. i am never not reading. ya, cookbooks, middle grade, fantasy, romance, picture books, and ocean related things are prone to catching my attention. occupation: mailing things and getting distracted in used or the cookbook section.
This is brutal and dark and violent and terribly gloriously beautiful. It is intense and full of the right kind of representation where that's just who someone is. It is quieter metaphors and screaming in anger. It is incredibly visceral and every piece of it roars into the world with fury and fire.
An absolutely incredible read with the ultimate ending to a love triangle that some of us have been dreaming of with an entertaining twist at the end. Full of anger and passion and mystery and a cliff hanger to kill.
A super neat cookbook featuring different recipes from across African regions, accessible and fun for those with little to no experience with cooking African cuisine. I loved going through this book and learning to cook the various different recipes and would love to make them all someday.
A queer holiday romance with the perfect mix of anti and pro holidays vibes.
An adorable and beautifully illustrated children's book about a little bunny who jars up all his feelings into neat little containers and what happens when he does.
A hair more supernatural than its predecessor it's just as spectacular. Alex is still up to her regular menace shenanigans except everyone else is gamely following behind this time instead of being dragged and it makes it all the better.
It is short and silly at times. Imaginative and lovely. I find that it has all the heart it needs and it's full of more than a little bit of hurt too. I haven't stopped thinking about it since the first time I read it. Recipes for Constellations and All Your Fragile History are my favorites from this collection.
A memoir/belle lette style collection of moments written through the lens and with the aid of deep sea biology. A perfect blend of humanities and sciences with a compelling look into the life of the author and equally fascinating glimpses of the deep oceans. Super interesting to those with an existing knowledge of the science broached and accessible to those with no familiarity. It is a book about science, queerness, family, culture, trauma, but most of all identity.
A super cute and funny book about an underground book club started in a stuffy restrictive town. Full of community, self discovery, and creativity. Light hearted and lovely but doesn't ignore important topical things that come up but also it isn't only about them or romance. Maggie Banks is her own story and she owns it!
A deceptively devastating book. A wonderful, painful, colorful story that deals with the struggles of Chinese immigrants in the 90s specifically but also just immigrants in general. The author approaches these delicate and nuanced topics with a bluntness and honesty that gives credit to children's understanding and ability to learn and also the brightness and naivety of a child who just still believes in the best of the world and always has hope for better. It is equal amounts of heartbreaking and hopeful across every page.
A neat way of creating and looking into a world. Kawakami creates a lovely mosaic vision of a strange and slightly mystical Japan adjacent world within. It's fascinating and catches just right as you read and the pieces interconnect and weave together but it leaves just enough openness for the imaginative and inquiring.
This is such a wonderful story, sweet and sad and a little devastating as an adult, but a good way of introducing these topics to or starting a conversation with a child or even helping them understand a friend better. It also mentions recipes that would be fun to learn to cook with someone too!
I wish things like this had existed for me when I was a child! Such a beautifully illustrated and comprehensive book! Meant for children but can be enjoyed by anyone. It doesn't baby or condescend and is the kind of book you could read over and over again and learn or see something new everytime!
This is more memoir and less nonfiction. It's nice to learn more about jellyfish and cool to follow someone's life as they hyper-fixate on something so interesting. If you're looking for purely a nonfiction this might not be for you but it's a lovely memoir with some interesting science weaved within it
This is so cute! The art style is lovely and the story is fun and wonderful! I adore that it's about a little girl who loves a tropical fruit.
Cats really, truly do as they please; sometimes that even includes re-homing themselves or taking a meandering half a mile adventure to see their friend, it's adorable and so funny!
A story about a woman driven slightly mad in her desire to uncover her wife, X after her death. It's an objective story told by a vaguely unreliable narrator told to the background of a reimagining of United States history and its repercussions. It's easy to forget that this isn't a true biography, stylized perfectly like one with images, references, and sources it engages you with it's nuances and realism. It's steady but feels like you're almost to the edge of something and it's ending feels like the ending to any true biography.
Nostalgic and complex it feels so true to the experience of coming to know yourself in these ways, in grief, sexuality, adulthood, and self. It's slow yet frantic, retrospective yet somehow still a little unexpected. Things don't always end perfectly or how we imagine them but sometimes they still end well. Where everything will be okay even if it's not what you wanted or expected. It paints a picture of bittersweet memories you just can't bring yourself to regret or forget.
It's a sharp, witty, jagged-edged story about two sisters who are always at odds. They grow to understand each other but they never completely lose their bitterness. It's a memorable and interesting and will remind you that things aren't always the way they seem.
I loved this book so much. It feels like a film or a television show. Reading it is like living the dream of what your twenties should feel like. It feels like coming home.
The first WLW YA romance book I ever read. I loved the representation and the way the leads are unapologetic about who they are and what they deserve: they're brave and daring girls, brash and bold and talented. The representation, the enemies to lovers, all comes together to make an amazing love story that's not just about romantic love and just as much about self love and self confidence and courage. It's also just so fun to read.
This book feels like every reader's dream, the adventure you always wanted as a kid reading books full of adventures and secret worlds but thought you would never find or had grown out of the possibilities for it to find you. This book makes you feel the way you did the first time you discovered a secret universe when you were a kid, like adventure is around every corner and there's someone waiting to take you away around every corner. It's a story wrapped up in a story and a parable in a legend in a myth. The prose is lovely and artistic and dramatic and suits the plot and characters perfectly.
This book follows development of Eliza, a regular depressed teen who is secretly the author of an extremely famous webcomic. The book features pieces of the comic and various webpages associated with the comic. It's creative and wonderful and heart breaking in the best kind of ways. Zappia writes Eliza's feelings so true and so real it just takes you back to a time when you felt like that too and you just want to tell her it's all okay.