#So then first book in the series done

[vebokki]

besties

[rhiangalaxy]

The besties~

[ID: A TGCF drawing. Xie Lian walks alongside Shi Qingxuan who is in their female form. XL looks down at them with a gentle and slightly amused smile, one eye opened and the other closed in a wink. SQX has her hand wrapped around XL's arm, the other hand holding a closed fan up under their face. She is laughing/talking exuberantly with both her eyes closed in a large smile. End ID]

[tangents-within-tangents]

Just some things I think deserve a super accurate movie/show adaption in a beautiful 2D animation style:

The How to Train Your Dragon series

Gregor the Overlander

Artemis Fowl

The Adventure Zone

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (fr so much was left out of the 1939 film!)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

The actual Little Mermaid story (there are a ton of adaptations I haven't seen yet so maybe it exists somewhere but we all know Disney’s didn’t even come close)

[firelise]

Only Friends (2023) as Clueless Quotes ✧･ﾟ

[asexualbookbird]

25 in 2025

Sigh. I've been bullied. I guess. I did a big swing and a miss on last years list, but I have a Plan this time. A Theme. A Goal. This will be mostly comprised of my Illumicrate books so I can decide if it is in fact worth it to keep my subscription going until the Alecto edition gets announced. If I don't actually enjoy the majority of the books in these boxes then what's the point, yknow?

So here's this years color key:

Green - Carry over from last year (not carrying over every missed book, which probably means I should just get rid of them huh)

Purple - Illumicrate books

Blue - I own these in physical form, but they're not from Illumicrate

Labyrinth's Heart by MA Carrick

The Faithless by CL Clark

The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

City of Bones by Martha Wells

Witch King by Martha Wells

After the Forest by Kell Woods

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen

The Phoenix Keeper by SA Maclean

A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft

Until We Shatter by Kate Dylan

Mistress of Lies by KM Enright

Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher

The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart

The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker Chan

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault by James Alan Gardner

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

In the Ravenous Dark by AM Strickland

A Conjuring of Light by VE Schwab

PHEW. Okay. A fw things to note. A Dark and Drowning Tide is an Illumicrate book, but I didn't pay for it. A friend gave it to me after I skipped that month because she wasn't interested. I always look up book spoilers and skip if I'm not interested and if I'm uninterested in any of the stuff I'll skip even if the book seems neat. That month the box was full of fandoms I didn't care about, so my friends said "here, take my copy" and I said "yay! Free book!"

The Last Hour Between Worlds I think was also an Illumicrate book? They do fanart for it so I assume it was at some point. I did not get it. This is not the IC edition. I was not thrilled about The Tethered Mage so I was going to get this out of the library. Then my mom bought it for me for the holidays. So yay! Free book!

I think I would also like to keep track of books I purchase this year. I'd like to cut down on buying books that I won't love. So I'd like to utilise my library more. Win win, I think! And that seems easier than a full out ban since yeah sometimes I do enjoy little treats! Books purchased for other people do not count, obviously.

There are also some books I'd like to reread this year, mainly The Bone Maker because I've been saying that since I read it the first time. And honestly, I've been chasing the same vibes and haven't been able to match it (Godkiller got close!).

As usual, I reserve the right to pretend this post doesn't exist, but I think I've set myself up for success here :)

I don't know who hasn't done this by now @logarithmicpanda ? Have you?? Consider yourself tagged >:3c

oh right I was bullied tagged by @bigcats-birds-and-books

[somewhereincairparavel]

i usually just casually go about my day until I remember that jason has a humongous eagle tattoo on his arm and I'm suddenly no better than leo valdez...

[dualquille]

(Mistborn: The Final Empire spoilers)

Me when Kelsier died: Nah there’s no way, this is probably all part of his plan. He’ll emerge from the shadows before we know it, good as new

How was I right but also so, so wrong…

[benevolenterrancy]

if you're not reading the last book of SVSSS right now do you mind me asking what you are reading? I'm just curious!

Definitely! (though I warn you, I'm fundamentally incapable of reading only one thing at a time)

For physical books, I'm currently reading The Warden by Daniel M. Ford, the novelization of My Neighbour Totoro, and trying to keep up on Dracula Daily (i am failing this)

For audiobooks, I've been relistening to The Series of Unfortunate Events (because I never actually read them all when they were originally coming out) and I juuust finished This Census-Taker by China Miéville and Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky this weekend. I'm about to start A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

[leonstamatis]

god the public library is so beautiful. catching up with a series I only own half the books for and now I can read the last two without paying anything at all. they’ll literally be available tomorrow. we stay winning.

[vulpinesaint]

I just started reading locked tomb because you've talked about it before (and you have such good taste) and I need to know if anyone in this god forsaken planet is gonna be nice to Gideon :((

the world is terrible and everyone is mean to gideon but at least there is dulcinea... my darling girl the light of my life dulcinea...

[michameinmicha]

Can yall throw a coin into your local well and make a wish for me that the 5 audiobooks i have on hold in the library app get returned very soon so i can listen to them pleease i cant wait another 2-4 weeks i need them now :(((

[notsoprocreations]

The show really reignited my childhood pjo fixation at the worst possible time <3

[hussyknee]

If you aren't reading KJ Charles's books I sincerely do not know what you're doing with your life.

[firelise]

Only Friends (2023) 🍪 a.k.a gave me cookie got you cookie

[falderaletcetera]

because I'm partway through a reread and queueing up a bunch of reblogs about it, and it seems only fair to recommend it first:

Jack Farris doesn’t want to save the world, just every person he knows, encounters, or hears of. It’s a bit of an issue. S. Grey doesn’t want to save anyone but himself. He wants to know everything and majoring in sagework at the Academy is the best way to do that. Laney Jones left her home to avoid the constraints there, only to find different barriers holding her back at the Academy. Eager to learn, to excel, to escape, she has far from given up. Rupert Willington Jons Hammerfeld the Seventh would just like everything to be orderly, thank you very much, but it seems the only way to make monsters and myths (and malicious but mundane men) stop rampaging through his world is to go out and do some hero-ing himself. They are put together as an unwilling study group, but they become something more.

this is Beanstalk. It's first in a trilogy, all self-published, all free on the author's website, and the series is one of my favourites. It has:

– found family, with platonic relationships front and centre

– an adventurer's academy with a complicated legacy, where "hero" means a coloured armband and a diploma

– worldbuilding (appreciative), featuring an interesting magic system and monsters of all kinds, many of them people

– a red-headed boy named Jack, seventh son of a seventh son, who left the forest and grew like a beanstalk. You may recognise parts of his story. You may recognise others down the line.

– there's a whole cast I don't want to spoil except to say I'm currently rereading the first book and really looking forward to reaching the rest.

– there's definitely casual queer rep though. what do you take me for.

– honestly the writer (hi @ink-splotch!) writes all these characters with a complexity and love that I really admire. Some of the chapters that affected me most aren't even about the main cast.

— you may know the writer from her fics, the interactive games Stay? and More a Haunting than a History, or the podcast Second Star to the Left which she co-created with Aysha Farah. I can highly recommend most of the above and will get around to MaHtaH eventually.

If anyone's interested, I'd advise you don't go looking for spoilers. There most definitely is angst, but less so in the first book - hit me up if you want content warnings!

[dyna-myght]

I think the Emily Wilde series as individual books have such well done pacing. I think as a series tho, the pacing comes out to be maybe too quick.