2020 reading!

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

thread concept sniped from wt's 2019 reading thread last year!

in 2020 i read:

[/i] by meg haston

*all the light we cannot see by anthony doerr (a new all-time favourite of mine)

*how to make friends with the dark by kathleen glasgow (and after those three heavy-hitters i went to silly YA fantasy to decompress)

*clockwork prince by cassandra clare (the best one)

*clockwork princess by by cassandra clare

*the ballad of songbirds and snakes by one ms. suzanne collins!

*lady midnight by cassandra clare - stopped 2/3rds of the way through and read the rest of the plot synopsis on wiki, oh boy am i glad i saved myself all that time

*midnight sun by stephanie meyer, lmao

*born a crime by trevor noah (bought my brother a copy for his birthday and have just finished mine today, highly recommended!)

*admission by julie buxbaum

[/ul][/div]
i also read a lot of cookbooks (jack monroe's tin can cook and a girl called jack were my go-to's) but i don't count those. if you like cooking, and cooking on a budget, i'd highly reccomend them!

my 2020 to-read was largely untouched, although i started kyoshi and now own a few copies that are still on the to-read. bought a lot of kindle ebooks on amazon for my phone, discovered libby and bought myself a copy of freda+ epub reader for a grand total of $1.25. still can't get into audiobooks no matter how hard i try.

2021 to-read is looking like:

[/i] (i will finish book 1!!) by rick riordan

*rise of kyoshi (ebook i need to finish) by f.c. yee

*slay by brittney morris, purchased this on holiday in june to read and ended up reading kyoshi instead. whoops!

*a song below water by bethany c. morrow, another ebook i purchased still on my tbr!

*passengers by alexandra bracken

*a match made in mehendi by nandini bajpai

*a blade so black by l.l. mckinney

*a few avatar: tla graphic novels i picked up on kindle

*sadie by courtney summers (that i constantly re-loaned on my local library app but never started lol)

*when dimple met rishi by sandhya menon

[/ul]
and everything else on my goodreads want to read. add me! i wanna see what you're interested in!!

i love seeing what everyone else has read this year so pls post below if u feel inclined!! [/blockquote][/font]

[Stare]

Love this! My 2020 list:

Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing by Mar Hicks (super interesting read with lots of good lessons for the industry, though it did jump through time in a way that was a bit jarring for me)

Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the Afronet to Black Lives Matter by Charlton McIlwain (loved the subject but struggled with the style because it didn't attribute quotes and I'm terrible at using context clues)

Good Seeds: A Menominee Indian Food Memoir by Thomas Pecore Weso (enjoyed this one loads and it has recipes!)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (I have to admit, she got me! I did not guess the killer before the reveal!)

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron (cool premise and interesting side characters! the main character felt a little flat to me)

Mirage by Somaiya Daud (loved. beautiful world building, lovely prose)

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (never thought I would have enjoyed this one based on the premise, but I did! great voice)

City Spies by James Ponti (eh.)

Jinxed by Amy McCulloch (the plot was a bit choppy but the world was so fun!)

Song For A Whale by Lynne Kelly (made my heart ache but in a good way???)

Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer (cute, wholesome, lighthearted)

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (solid mystery! the trailer for the new movie is way too dramatic lol)

You Should See Me In A Crown by Leah Johnson (soooooo cute and fun, I sped through this one!)

Truly Devious Trilogy by Maureen Johnson (it was okay, not my favorite. there were several things that I took issue with but the mystery was interesting)

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull (had some solid concepts and I enjoyed the insight into the creative process at Pixar. author was kind of arrogant, but as the guy who invented texture mapping for digital 3D models maybe he gets to be a little full of himself lol)

For 2021 one of my goals is to read 50 books. I very likely won't hit it, but it can't hurt to try! A few on my To Read list that I'm looking forward to:

The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History by Nathalia Holt

Elatsoe by Darien Little Badger

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Smart

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

[Lyn𝛿is]

In 2020 I read:

• Middlegame (Seanan McGuire)
• Dungeons & Dragons Player Handbook
• The Joy of Cooking
• Son of a Witch (Gregory MacGuire) [reread]
• The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)
• Kingdom of Needle and Bone (Seanan McGuire)
• The Wicker King (Kayla Ancrum)
• Come Tumbling Down (Seanan McGuire)
• Pet (Akwaeke Emezi)
• The Lightning Thief (Rick Riordan) [reread]
• Young Wizards series, books 1-4 (So You Want To Be A Wizard, Deep Wizardry, High Wizardry, Wizards Abroad) (Diane Duane)
• All Systems Red (Martha Wells)
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins)

Books currently in progress:

• The City We Became (N. K Jemisin)
• Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
• Record of a Spaceborn Few (Becky Chambers)
• Artificial Condition (Martha Wells)
• Shade's Children (Garth Nix)
• Walden Two (B. F. Skinner)
• plus a lot of DNFs this year since I've been kinda burnt out on dystopia bc of *waves hands at 2020*

[kap]

In 2020 I read:

• The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
• The One and Only Bob by Katherine Applegate
• Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
• The Hunger Games Tribute Guide by Emily Seife
• The Invasion by K.A. Applegate [reread]
• The Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel by Rick Riordan
• The Invasion: The Graphic Novel by K.A. Applegate

In Progress:

• Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
• Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
• The Visitor by K.A. Applegate [reread]

Books I Want to Read in 2021:

• Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate
• Endling: The Last by Katherine Applegate
• -insert as many Animorphs books as possible here- by K.A. Applegate
• The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan
• The Eye of Minds by James Dashner
• Things in Jars by Jess Kidd
• Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
• Girl Crushed by Katie Heaney
• Return to the Castle by Rose Catherine Khan
• Jackaby by William Ritter

If we don't see that here that Katherine Applegate aka K.A. Applegate is my favorite author, there may be something you're not paying attention to.

[WT]

I am SO EXCITED for this omg, I love a good hype train and I've been looking forward to seeing everyone's recs!

I don't have a goodreads account but I do have a Storygraph account over here if anyone's on that! (and if you're interested I definitely recommend giving SG a shot—it's not as social, but it's got a nice review system and there are some neat themed reading challenges.) my tbr list on that account is just where I keep track of things that aren't on my library account's For Later shelf, so it's, uh... not quite representative. by which I mean it's missing [glances at library site] 171 books. help.

commentary on my list:

• first of all no one drag me for how obvious it's about to be that reading was my Quarantine Coping Method TM lmaooooo
• the list is in chronological reading order
• a title being here doesn't necessarily mean I loved it to pieces, but it does mean I at least found something about it compelling enough to finish it (just because I bounced on a book doesn't mean it won't work for someone else! so my did-not-finish list lives in a metaphorical box)
• italicized titles are in progress
• I can't get into audiobooks either and I wish I could because I sure do love a podcast--I'm listening to No Man of Woman Born (Ana Mardoll) right now because my library only has it as an audiobook, and I'm adoring it but keep having to sigh at myself and rewind because I realize I've checked out. again. thanks brain!
  
• annnnd highlight reel to follow because this post is long enough as is!

Novels, Novellas, & Collections

• The Serpent's Secret (Sayantani DasGupta)
• Game of Stars (Sayantani DasGupta)
• Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (Joy Harjo)
• Science Fiction in Colonial India, 1835–1905: Five Stories of Speculation, Resistance and Rebellion (ed. Mary Ellis Gibson)
• Speaking for Ourselves: Conversations on Life, Music, and Autism (Michael B. Bakan)
• Even This Page Is White (Vivek Shraya)
• I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes From the End of the World (Kai Cheng Thom)
• The Wicker King (K. Ancrum)
• If They Come For Us (Fatimah Asghar)
• La Belle Sauvage (Philip Pullman)
• Nepantla (ed. Christopher Soto)
• North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955 (Sarah-Jane Mathieu)
• Build Yourself A Boat (Camonghne Felix)
• The Best at It (Maulik Pancholy)
• River Hymns (Tyree Daye)
• Dead Astronauts (Jeff VanderMeer)
• Calling A Wolf A Wolf (Kaveh Akbar)
• Every Heart A Doorway (Seanan McGuire)
• The Twenty-ninth Year (Hala Alyan)
• The Mythic Dream (eds. Dominik Parisien, Navah Wolfe)
• Shadow of the Fox (Julie Kagawa)
• What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He & She (Dennis E. Baron)
• With the Fire on High (Elizabeth Acevedo)
• Octavia's Brood (eds. Walidah Imarisha, Adrienne Maree Brown)
• Hurricane Child (Kacen Callender)
• Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Seanan McGuire)
• An Unkindness of Ghosts (Rivers Solomon)
• The Neon Court (Kate Griffin)
• Soul of the Sword (Julie Kagawa)
• Conservation of Shadows (Yoon Ha Lee)
• Like A New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry (eds. Víctor Terán, David Shook)
• Night of the Dragon (Julie Kagawa)
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers)
• The Sun Is Also a Star (Nicola Yoon)
• After Zero (Christina Collins)
• The Minority Council (Kate Griffin)
• Network Effect (Martha Wells)
• Beneath the Sugar Sky (Seanan McGuire)
• Null Set (S. L. Huang)
• Stray Souls (Kate Griffin)
• Call Down the Hawk (Maggie Stiefvater)
• The Glass God (Kate Griffin)
• The Chaos Curse (Sayantani DasGupta)
• What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky (Lesley Nneka Arimah)
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins)
• The Gospel of Breaking (Jillian Christmas)
• Critical Point (S. L. Huang)
• Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers (eds. Elissa Washuta, Theresa Warburton)
• The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia (eds. Jaymee Goh, Joyce Chng)
• Are Prisons Obsolete? (Angela Davis)
• Nameless Woman: An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color (eds. Ellyn Peña, Jamie Berrout)
• Disintegrate/Dissociate (Arielle Twist)
• Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)
• Field Theories (Samiya A. Bashir)
• Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-fi Anthology (eds. Hope Nicholson, Erin Cossar, Sam Beiko)
• So Long Been Dreaming (eds. Nalo Hopkinson, Uppinder Mehan)
• The Bone Witch (Rin Chupeco)
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo)
• Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)
• Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ (Andy Campbell)
• Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (Charlene A. Carruthers)
• The Outside (Ada Hoffman)
• Because Internet (Gretchen McCulloch)
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Ibram X. Kendi)
• Harrow the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)
• In an Absent Dream (Seanan McGuire)
• The Real Boy (Anne Ursu)
• Lauriat (ed. Charles Tan)
• Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (ed. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke)
• The Care and Feeding of A Pet Black Hole (Michelle Cuevas)
• Honeybee (Trista Mateer)
• An Accident of Stars (Foz Meadows)
• Shadow Blade (Seressia Glass)
• The Weight of the Stars (K. Ancrum)
• Love From A to Z (S. K. Ali)
• Handbook for Dragon Slayers (Merrie Haskell)
• Gods of Jade and Shadow (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
• The Heart's Traffic: A Novel In Poems (Ching-In Chen)
• The Heart Forger (Rin Chupeco)
• Mission Child (Maureen F. McHugh)
• The Djinn Falls In Love (eds. Jared Shurin, Mahvesh Murad)
• Come Tumbling Down (Seanan McGuire)
• Moon of the Crusted Snow (Waubgeshig Rice)
• Forest of Memory (Mary Robinette Kowal)
• The Shadowglass (Rin Chupeco)
• The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water (Zen Cho)
• A Good Kind of Trouble (Lisa Moore Ramée)
• How to Cure a Ghost (Fariha Róisín)
• A Song Below Water (Bethany C. Morrow)
• Stand Up, Yumi Chung! (Jessica Kim)
• Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore)
• Oceanic (Aimee Nezhukumatathil)
• Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight (Aliette de Bodard)
• We Have Always Been Here (Samra Habib)
• Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler)
• The Tea Master and the Detective (Aliette de Bodard)
• Survivor (eds. Mary Anne Mohanraj and JJ Pionke)
• Islanders (Teow Lim Goh)
• Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
• The Last Sun (K.D. Edwards)
• World of Wonders (Aimee Nezhukumatathil)
• How a Mountain was Made (Greg Sarris)
• Not Your Sidekick (C. B. Lee)
• The Hanged Man (K.D. Edwards)
• The Space Between Worlds (Micaiah Johnson)
• The Candle and the Flame (Nafiza Azad)
• Love After the End: An Anthology of Indigiqueer and Two-Spirit Fiction (ed. Joshua Whitehead)
• Don't Touch (Rachel M. Wilson)
• Tell Me Who You Are (Winona Guo, Priya Vulchi)
• Inhalations (S. Qiouyi Lu)
• Not Your Villain (C. B. Lee)
• Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year (Linda LeGarde Grover)
• Winter Tide (Ruthanna Emrys)
• Wilder (Claire Wahmanholm)
• A Time to Dance (Padma Venkatraman)
• You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place (Janelle Shane)
• Finna (Nino Cipri)
• Not Your Backup (C. B. Lee)
• The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin)
• Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (ed. Alice Wong)
• Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger)
• No Man of Woman Born (ed. Ana Mardoll)
• Jade City (Fonda Lee)
• Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (Monica M. White)

Graphic Novels & Comics

• The Wicked + the Divine (volume 9) (Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson, Clayton Cowles)
• Wandering Son (volumes 1-2) (Takako Shimura)
• As the Crow Flies (Melanie Gillman)
• Bingo Love (Tee Franklin, Jenn St-Onge)
• Mis(h)adra (Iasmin Omar Ata)
• Archival Quality (Ivy Noelle Weir, Steenz)
• Midas (Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb)
• Sleepless (Sarah Vaugh, Leila del Duca, Alissa Sallah, Deron Bennett) [reread]
• Mooncakes (Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu)
• Sword Daughter (volume 1) (Brian Wood, Mack Chater)
• Blackbird (volume 1) (Sam Humphries, Jen Bartel)
• Our Dreams at Dusk (volumes 1-4) (Yuhki Kamatani)
• Stargazing (Jen Wang)
• Palimpsest (Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom; trans. Hanna Strömberg, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, and Richey Wyver)
• The Blue Road: A Fable of Migration (Wayde Compton, April dela Noche Milne)
• This Place: 150 Years Retold (Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm et al.)
• Afar (Leila Del Duca, Kit Seaton, Taneka Stotts)
• Ascender (volumes 1-2) (Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen)
• Pashmina (Nidhi Chanani)
• The Witch Boy (Molly Knox Ostertag)
• Nightlights (Lorena Alvarez)
• X-Men: Marvels Snapshot #1 (Jay Edidin, Tom Reilly, Chris O'Halloran)
• Hicotea: A Nightlights Story (Lorena Alvarez)

Short Stories & Novelettes

• Copy Cat (K. A. Teryna, Alex Shvartsman)
• The Story of the Woman Who Fell in Love with Death (Chaya Bhuvaneswar)
• How to be Chinese (Celeste Ng)
• Crow's Eye (Sarah Hollowell)
• A Nest of Ghosts, a House of Birds (Kat Howard)
• Spirit of Home (José Pablo Iriarte)
• We Are The Flower (Claire Humphrey)
• Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird (Eric Schwitzgebel)
• The Homunculi’s Guide to Resurrecting Your Loved One From Their Electronic Ghosts (Kara Lee)
• Any Other World (A. C. Buchanan)
• A Cruelty that Cuts Both Ways (Aimee Ogden)
• Home (Martha Wells)
• Difference of Opinion (Meda Kahn)
• Geometries of Belonging (R.B. Lemberg)
• Dégustation (Ashley Deng)
• Gender and Other Faulty Software (John Wiswell)
• Sandals Full of Rainwater (A.E. Prevost)
• Optimizing the Verified Good (Effie Seiberg)
• The Mermaid Astronaut (Yoon Ha Lee)
• As the Last I May Know (S. L. Huang)
• A Series of Steaks (Vina Jie-Min Prasad)
• The Secret Life of Bots (Suzanne Palmer)
• Men on the Moon (Simon Ortiz)
• When This World Is All on Fire (William Sanders)
• The Litany of Earth (Ruthanna Emrys)

Picture Books

• Rabbit Goes Duck Hunting (Deborah L. Duvall, Murv Jacob)
• Shanyaak'utlaax̲ (Johnny Marks, Hans Chester, David Katzeek, Nora Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, Michaela Goade)
• Sweetest Kulu (Celina Kalluk, Alexandria Neonakis)
• Milky Way (Mamta Nainy, Siddhartha Tripathi)
• Caribou Song (Tomson Highway, John Rombough)
• The Raven and the Loon (Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley, Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Kim Smith)
• The Water Walker (Joanne Robertson)
• The Field (Baptiste Paul, Jacqueline Alcántara)
• A Day With Yayah (Nicola I. Campbell, Julie Flett)
• First Laugh: Welcome, Baby! (Rose Ann Tahe, Bo Flood, Jonathan Nelson)
• Ghost Cat (Kevan Atteberry)
• We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga (Traci Sorell, Frané Lessac)
• Wild Berries: Pikaci-mīnisa (Julie Flett, Earl N. Cook)
• Saffron Ice Cream (Rashin Kheiriyeh)
• Baby Goes to Market (Atinuke, Angela Brooksbank)
• The Wooden Camel (Wanuri Kahiu, Manuela Adreani)
• Ojiichan's Gift (Chieri Uegaki, Genevieve Simms)
• Squid and Octopus: Friends for Always (Tao Nyeu)
• Mommy Sayang (Rosana Sullivan)
• A Morning With Grandpa (Sylvia Liu, Christina Forshay)
• Sulwe (Lupita Nyong'o, Vashti Harrison)
• Rabbit's Snow Dance (James Bruchac, Joseph Bruchac, Jeff Newman)
• Bird, Balloon, Bear (Il Sung Na)
• When the Rain Comes (Alma Fullerton, Kim LaFave)
• Kisimi Taimaippaktut Angirrarijarani/Only In My Hometown (Angnakuluk Friesen, Ippiksaut Friesen, Jean Kusugak)
• They Say Blue (Jillian Tamaki)
• The Turtle Ship (Helena Ku Rhee, Colleen Kong-Savage)
• Our Favorite Day (Joowon Oh)
• Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré (Anika Aldamuy Denise)
• Stolen Words (Melanie Florence, Gabrielle Grimard)
• The Fox Wife (Beatrice Deer, D. J. Herron)
• Shi-shi-etko (Nicola I. Campbell, Kim LaFave)
• The Magic Hummingbird (Ekkehart Malotki, Michael Lomatuway'ma, Michael Lacapa)
• Penguin and Pumpkin (Salina Yoon)
• My Footprints (Bao Phi, Basia Tran)
• Shin-chi's Canoe (Nicola I. Campbell, Kim LaFave)
• A Boy and A Jaguar (Alan Rabinowitz, Catia Chien)
• Night Job (Karen Hesse, G. Brian Karas)
• Too Sticky! (Jen Malia, Joanne Lew-Vriethoff)
• 'Ohana Means Family (Ilima Loomis, Kenard Pak)
  

as noted my tbr is a rabbit hole, but the things I have on hold that I'm likely to get to next are Borne by Jeff VanderMeer, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen, Archaeology From Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past by Sarah H. Parcak, and Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo; I'm also hoping in general to read more work in translation.

[WT]

highlight reel, following as promised! top 15 of novels/novellas/collections, top 5 each of picture books, graphic novels, nonfiction, poetry, and short stories; again, ordered in chronological order rather than ordered by favorites because I'm way too indecisive for that.


Novels, Novellas, & Collections
Dead Astronauts (Jeff VanderMeer); Wayward Children (series) (Seanan McGuire); The Wicker King (K. Ancrum); With the Fire on High (Elizabeth Acevedo); After Zero (Christina Collins);
Conservation of Shadows (Yoon Ha Lee); The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia (eds. Jaymee Goh, Joyce Chng); Nameless Woman: An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color (eds. Ellyn Peña, Jamie Berrout); The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo); Gods of Jade and Shadow (Silvia Moreno-Garcia);
The Real Boy (Anne Ursu); Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight (Aliette de Bodard); Sidekick Squad (series) (C. B. Lee); The Space Between Worlds (Micaiah Johnson); Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger)

• Dead Astronauts (Jeff VanderMeer)
  
  Weird ecotragedy, set both pre-and-post-apocalypse, ft. astronauts of the usual and/or dimension-hopping sort, telepathic bioengineered foxes, and a trio of furious and determined and caring rebels. This is probably going to be the most divisive title on my list on account of being nonlinear, wildly bizarre, and really dark in places, but I loved it for the surreal ecology, for the triad who emotionally ground the main narrative part of the book (the entire first third of the book said m/f/nb polyam rights and I said thanks), and for the way that instead of leading readers to give up on hope and joy, it asks us to look ecological crisis in the eye, remember why we care, and refuse to back down.
  
• Wayward Children (series) (Seanan McGuire)
  
  A series of novellas, beginning with Every Heart a Doorway, about a boarding school for children who have returned from adventures in other worlds and no longer feel at home in the world where they grew up. Sometimes eerie, sometimes glittery, always adventurous and empathetic. Every time I pick up a new installment, I'm impressed by the way McGuire handles children's POVs, writing them with clear and consistent respect for children's intelligence and abilities without tripping into writing them as exactly like adults. If you've ever read a book with a teen protagonist and wanted to give them a damn break, wished portal fantasy spent more time dealing with emotional fallout of traumatic experiences, or been a kid who felt out of place in ways you couldn't explain to the adults in your life, this series is for you.
  
  
• The Wicker King (K. Ancrum)
  
  Feeling like they can't turn to any of the adults in their lives for support, August struggles to support his best friend, Jack, as the latter develops increasingly alarming hallucinations about a quest only the two of them can fulfill. I put this book down to take a break halfway through because I felt like I couldn't emotionally handle it anymore, and I lasted about ten minutes before I had to pick it back up and read through the rest in one sitting. This is a hard read—it's a deep dive into the mental health of teenagers with too much on their shoulders and nowhere near enough support—but an incredibly and compassionately written book (with a likewise deeply compassionate afterward that had me sobbing). The formatting is also unique in a way that I thought was a nice touch, with multimedia elements like playlists and hand-drawn maps.
  
  
• With the Fire on High (Elizabeth Acevedo)
  
  High school senior Emoni knows what she's doing; she's used to making tough decisions and putting in the hard work to balance caring for her daughter, supporting her abuela, and keeping up in school. But when her love of cooking brings her to a culinary arts class and she finds herself cautiously befriending the new boy at her school, it starts to look like her future might include dreams she hadn't yet considered. Emoni has one of the most vividly rendered character voices I've read in a while, and the book moves along at a brisk pace without sacrificing time for the emotional complexity of every character on the page.
  
  
• After Zero (Christina Collins)
  
  Not talking at school was intentional at first—a way to keep herself from saying something wrong—but months later, Elise isn't sure anymore if she could stop if she tried, even as her best friend drifts away and Elise stumbles into a family secret that shakes her world. I read this book in one sitting and cried my eyes out; I wish it had existed when I was eleven and I'm very, very glad it exists now.
  
  
• Conservation of Shadows (Yoon Ha Lee)
  
  Speculative fiction short story collection featuring beautiful prose and intricate, varied worldbuilding, with magic and technology from living ink to weapons tuned by music. Many of the stories draw on mathematical concepts in interesting ways (though you don't need to actually understand the math for the story), and the collection as a whole circles themes of the impact of war, the importance of art and language, and difficult choices. The standouts for me were "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" (about the guardian of a strange and storied gun that doesn't work) and "Iseul's Lexicon" (a novella-length piece about linguistic imperialism, magic, spies, sacrifice, and two women risking their lives to destroy a tool of occupation).
  
  
• The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia (eds. Jaymee Goh, Joyce Chng)
  
  By turns whimsical, serious, and both at once, this short story anthology winds through alternate histories where resistance fighters wield technology that borders on magic, Southeast Asia was never colonized at all, airships fight rampant volcanic eruptions, music powers flight, or wood comes to life. My favorites were Alessa Hinlo's "The Last Aswang" (about a diwata and her liaison in an uncolonized Philippines receiving a visiting ambassador and her entourage) and Pear Nuallak's "The Insects and Women Sing Together" (about two Thai Khorat girls coming of age in two generations, each balancing secrets, dreams, and ambitions in the shadow of war).
  
  
• Nameless Woman: An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color (eds. Ellyn Peña, Jamie Berrout)
  
  This is a difficult book to describe, because it's all over the board in terms of tone, genre, and style; there are apocalypses and slice of life, fantasy and scifi and realism, poetry and prose, happy endings and trauma and ambiguity. Which is part of why I love it, but know going in that this will almost definitely includes at least one piece any given reader is going to deeply love and at least one piece they're going to have a hard time with. On the whole, this is an incredibly powerful collection, sharp and beautiful and uplifting voices that are sorely underrepresented in publishing.
  
  
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo)
  
  The story of an empress in exile overthrowing the dynasty that wronged her, as related to a historian cleric by a former handmaiden who helped her. Each chapter opens with Chih, the cleric, chronicling descriptions of items at the Empress' former estate, before Rabbit, the now-elderly handmaiden, tells them the story behind those things. This is a quiet, evocatively written novella that reads like a puzzle box unfolding.
  
  
• Gods of Jade and Shadow (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
  
  Casiopea Tun, eighteen and dreaming of a brighter life but as yet unable to break free of her grandfather's household, stumbles across chest where said grandfather has been keeping Hun-Kamé, lord of the Maya underworld, captive. With their lives now magically tangled together, she has little choice but to travel with him on a cross-country trip to regain his throne. Set primarily in Jazz Age Mexico and occasionally stepping into Xilbalba, this is a lavishly written, well-paced adventure story, and seeing Casiopea come into her own was an absolute joy.
  
  
• The Real Boy (Anne Ursu)
  
  Oscar—assistant to his town's only magician, Caleb—just wants to do his job, read, look after his cats, and avoid getting harassed by Caleb's apprentice. But after a series of strange events leaves a panicked Oscar in charge of Caleb's shop, he turns to the town healer's apprentice, Callie, for help, and together they unravel the connections between patients with a strange new ailment, disappearing magic, and the unexplainable happenings outside of town. This book wormed its way into my heart on contact; while not explicitly named as such, Oscar is heavily coded (in! complex and relatable ways!!) as autistic, and his journey toward learning to be kinder to himself struck a major chord with me (this is another one I'm very glad is out there for today's kids). I could also wax poetic about how lovely his and Callie's friendship is but this is getting long enough so please just know that they are mutually supportive and I love them both with my whole heart.
  
  
• Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight (Aliette de Bodard)
  
  Speculative fiction short stories, largely set in de Bodard's Vietnam-indluenced far-future space opera series Xuya and largely centering on stories of survival under colonialism, the impact of war on everyday life, and intergenerational grief. Stunning prose, vivid worldbuilding, and compassionately crafted characters. My favorite was "The Waiting Stars," about cousins breaking into a derelict ship ward to restore a ship who is also their aunt while, elsewhere, a girl grows up in an institution designed to assimilate her into the culture that took her from home as a child.
  
  
• Sidekick Squad (series) (C. B. Lee)
  
  Jess Tran, daughter of Andover's resident superhero team, lands an internship with her parents' villainous rivals. As if that's not complicated enough, her longtime crush Abby greets her at her new workplace, her best friends Bells and Emma are acting strange, and her supervisor M begins to suggest that something much larger than hero-villain rivalries is going on. This series is a little heavier than it sounds, dealing with corruption and propaganda in a country that steadily reveals itself to be fairly dystopian, but the superhero antics and character dynamics generally keep it from feeling too dark; the romance (or lack thereof, as one character's arc involves settling into aromantic identity) is sweet without overwhelming the story, and the team that Jess and her friends wind up building is grounded in a friendship that feels very real.
  
  
• The Space Between Worlds (Micaiah Johnson)
  
  Cara is dead on 372 worlds, which makes her a valuable traverser; professional universe-hoppers can only collect information from worlds where their doubles have died, as a universe will reject duplicates. Once a child of the wastelands around the walled city she now calls home, she's a survivor who's built a life for herself on being good at dying—until the death of her 373rd alternate self opens up a world whose secrets have implications for her own home. An adventure story that's deeply conscious of race and class and asks questions about how circumstances affect us and what it means to be yourself, and a protagonist who absolutely doesn't want to deal with any of this bullshit but can't bring herself to turn away (a character archetype I have a soft spot for); also, Cara's relationship with her younger sister is entirely delightful.
  
  
• Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger)
  
  Just before he dies, Elatsoe's cousin manages to warn her in a dream that whatever it looks like, his death was a murder. Expecting no help from police oh behalf of a young Lipan Apache man whose death has already been ruled accidental and whose murderer is a well-connected white doctor in insular small-town Texas, Ellie—with her parents, her best friend, and her beloved ghost dog Kirby—sets about the investigation herself. A solid mystery, a strong dash of adventure, and elegant worldbuilding, with magic (from Ellie's ability to raise animal ghosts to vampires to cross-country transit through fairy rings) woven neatly into a world otherwise much like our own; also features occasional lovely greyscale illustrations by Rovina Cai.
  

Picture Books
Sweetest Kulu (Celina Kalluk, Alexandria Neonakis); They Say Blue (Jillian Tamaki); Shi-shi-etko (Nicola I. Campbell, Kim LaFave); My Footprints (Bao Phi, Basia Tran); 'Ohana Means Family (Ilima Loomis, Kenard Pak)

• Sweetest Kulu (Celina Kalluk, Alexandria Neonakis)
  
  A new mother tells her baby, in the form of a bedtime poem, how the beings of the Arctic greeted them with blessings and well-wishes at their birth. The language is a little more sophisticated than you'd generally expected out of a board book so I'm not sure how it would actually go over with babies, but it's a sweet read, and the soft colors of the illustrations are lovely. (Example page.)
• They Say Blue (Jillian Tamaki)
  
  Exploration of colors across a year's seasons and through the young narrator's imagination. Playful, poetic, and evocative, with dynamic paintings. (Example page.)
  
  
• Shi-shi-etko (Nicola I. Campbell, Kim LaFave)
  
  In the days before she has to leave for her first year at residential school, Shi-shi-etko soaks in the last of her time with her family and does her best to fold every piece of home around her—songs and scenery, plants and animals, prayers and family meals—into her memory. On its own, this probably lacks the context to be an ideal introduction to the concept of residential schools (though it may work as one in combination with the sequel Shin-chi's Canoe, about Shi-shi-etko and her little brother at the residential school itself), but it's a beautiful story in its own right, balancing celebration of the things Shi-shi-etko loves with the heartbreak of their loss. (Example page.)
  
  
• My Footprints (Bao Phi, Basia Tran)
  
  Thuy, upset and frustrated after being bullied at school, spends her walk imagining herself as animals that could escape notice or scare her bullies away. When she gets home, her moms join in, helping Thuy open up about her feelings and find creatures that bring out the best of herself and their family. Poignant and loving, with charming art (Thuy's expressions are fantastically emotive). (Example page.)
  
  
• 'Ohana Means Family (Ilima Loomis, Kenard Pak)
  
  A cumulative rhyme about a family preparing for a luau, zooming out from a bowl of poi to the cooks to the harvest and ultimately to the Hawaiian landscape, then focusing back in on the luau. Pleasantly rhythmic, and the landscape images in particular are gorgeous. (Example page.)
  

Graphic Novels
Sleepless (Sarah Vaugh, Leila del Duca, Alissa Sallah, Deron Bennett); Mooncakes (Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu); This Place: 150 Years Retold (Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm et al.); X-Men: Marvels Snapshot #1 (Jay Edidin, Tom Reilly, Chris O'Halloran); Nightlights (series) (Lorena Alvarez)

• Sleepless (Sarah Vaugh, Leila del Duca, Alissa Sallah, Deron Bennett) [reread]
  
  Two-volume fantasy romance about Poppy, technically-illegitimate but beloved daughter of the recently-late king, and Cyrenic, a knight under a spell to not need sleep, featuring assassins, court intrigue, and an adorable fox. I reread this as a pick-me-up sometime around April, and loved it just as much as the first time around; despite how compact the story is, Poppy's relationships with the people around her are compelling and the happy ending feels earned and fulfilling. The art is lovely and gently colored in a way that suits the light fantasy vibe (which is what originally convinced me to give the series a shot even though court romance is not even sort of my genre). (Example page.)
  
  
• Mooncakes (Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu)
  
  Teen witch Nova Huang follows reports of a wolf in the woods near her New England town and finds Tam Ling, her childhood crush, battling a horse demon. Tam has been wandering for years and, short on both support and options, enlists Nova's and her grandmothers' help dealing with the horse and the forces behind it. A sweet, fast-paced, and just plain fun read. (Example page.)
  
  
• This Place: 150 Years Retold (Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm et al.)
  
  A graphic novel anthology exploring post-Contact Indigenous Canadian history, opening with a piece on Annie McDermot Bannatyne and ending on an image of the future; an ambitious collection, immensely varied in tone, style, and topic. Each entry includes an introduction with historical (and sometimes personal) context from the creator(s). (The publisher has a "View Inside" available here, though you'll likely need something like Newgrounds Player to view it until they get their website converted from using Flash.)
  
  
• X-Men: Marvels Snapshot #1 (Jay Edidin, Tom Reilly, Chris O'Halloran)
  
  Oneshot (the #1 indicates it's part of a collection, not an ongoing series) about Scott Summers as a teenager, struggling to figure out who he is while feeling lost and out of place and sorting through memories that dokn't fit together. This is less a story about how Scott becomes a superhero, and more a story about why—about deciding that helping people matters, and in a lot of ways about making sense of a confusing and overwhelming world through stories. (Example page.)
  
  
• Nightlights (series) (Lorena Alvarez)
  
  Stories about Sandy, a young artist who brings her dreams to life through drawings; in Nightlights, a new classmate who covets her ability starts to pressure her to draw what Morfie wants, and in Hicotea, she falls through a turtle's shell into a museum where wetland creatures recruit her help. Nightlights was a good read—lightly eerie but uplifting—and the art is stunning, with rich colors and incredible detail, but Hicotea was what really landed this series on this list. (Example page.)
  

Nonfiction
Palimpsest: Notes on a Korean Adoption (Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom; trans. Hanna Strömberg, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, and Richey Wyver); Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha); Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer); You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works
and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place (Janelle Shane); Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (ed. Alice Wong)

• Palimpsest: Notes on a Korean Adoption (Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom; trans. Hanna Strömberg, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, and Richey Wyver)
  
  A graphic-novel memoir about Sjöblom's experience as a transnational adoptee and her fight, through agencies with missing and changing answers, for information about her birth family and early childhood. Sjöblom is open and frank about the difficult emotional complexities of the entire experience, and her art style suits the book without overwhelming her story, drawn in muted sepia tones and incorporating actual records and correspondence from the agencies she spoke with. (Example page.)
  
  
• Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)
  
  Essays on community, advocacy, intersectionality, survival skills, collective access, and building a world where none of us leave each other behind. I've thought about this book easily weekly since I read it, and if nothing else—and there is much, much else—I would recommend it specifically for the insights on how to integrate accessibility into planning and how sustaining community is an active practice, especially when communities built of marginalized people often struggle with the ways our conflicting needs and traumas can make it easy for us to hurt each other. And on the tension between the truths that care webs are necessary and wonderful things, but that no one should have to rely on their charisma for survival. And—look, I told you there was a lot, this book covers a lot of incredibly important ground.
  
  
• Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
  
  Essays examining plants, ecology, and humans' reciprocity with our environments through both Potawatomi teaching and Western scientific methodologies, with a dash of memoir and an eye toward unraveling the effects of colonialism in North America. Lyrically and emotively written; if you're worried this sounds like a dull botany textbook, don't be. This book fundamentally shifted the way I think about and interact with my environment, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
  
  
• You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place (Janelle Shane)
  
  Exactly what it says on the tin: an accessibly written introduction that breaks down how AI works, what it can and can't do, and some of the ways it can go wrong (or go right in unanticipated ways). Shane shows some of the ways that a troublesome AI can be hilarious, like physics-defying simulation glitches and robots that would rather spin around or fall over than learn to walk, but also how they can be incredibly dangerous, like when algorithms that handle hiring or parole decisions learn to replicate racist and sexist biases in their training data. Newcomers to the field will probably get more out of this than established AI enthusiasts, but either way it's a fun read.
  
  
• Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (ed. Alice Wong)
  
  Multi-author personal essay anthology, from a tremendous array of perspectives, on joy, connection, struggle, resilience, and other rich nuances of disabled life. Some of the topics covered here are painful and infuriating, like audism in prison and medical mistreatment of disabled indigenous people; some are celebratory and loving, like creative collaborations, reimagining dance, and the legacies of historical disabled icons; the book as a whole looks toward, in contributor A. H. Reaume's words, a world and a future where we can be loved and cared for and held not just despite but because of our disabilities. This is a beautiful and vital book.

Poetry
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (Joy Harjo); The Twenty-ninth Year (Hala Alyan); The Gospel of Breaking (Jillian Christmas); Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (ed. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke); Islanders (Teow Lim Goh)

• Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (Joy Harjo)
  
  Lyrical and incisive, the poems here are grounded at once in the past and in the present, grieving losses and reaching to passed ancestors while celebrating resilience and looking for collective ways forward.
  
  Favorite line, from "Charlie and the Baby": Every word that's ever said tries to find a way to live.
  
  
• The Twenty-ninth Year (Hala Alyan)
  
  Sharp poems full of both grief and everyday beauty, focusing on living through chaos and building a life and a home on the other side of it.
  
  If I had to pick one full poem to recommend it’d be "Aleppo"; my personal favorite lines were from "Dear Layal" (A girl unloves her house, but it is too late. The house is her eyes and her ears and the wind she pins her hair by.) and "Upstate I" (This is how the clouds convert you, replacing one future with another, and the whole car ride back is quiet and unheated, you are crying because you nearly forgot, because the car is good, the fog is good, the dream is good.)
  
  
• The Gospel of Breaking (Jillian Christmas)
  
  Reflective, simultaneously intimate and expansive, and gorgeously vivid, focusing particularly on family and diaspora, loss and love, and identity and experience as a queer Black woman. Christmas' voice as a slam poet comes through even on silent pages; her poems carry the reader forward from start to finish.
  
  Favorite lines come from "soft-bellied beast":
  
  even amidst the grinding heartbreak and
  the disappointing alarm clocks
  there were nights of unassuming magic
  
  and from "do not feed":
  
  this world thinks me sweeter with my jaw
  clenched shut […]
  
  I keep trying to finish poems about black joy
  
  
• Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (ed. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke)
  
  A multilingual anthology of work from more than eighty poets of indigenous nations across the Americas, including both established names and emerging voices. The scope of this book and the variety of perspectives is fantastic; as is often the case with multi-author anthologies, not every poem will land for every reader, but the ones that landed for me took my breath away. (Poems not originally in English include translations.)
  
  Favorite lines, from "Leaving Tulsa" by Jennifer Elise Foerster:
  
  and I imagine a land I come from still,
  a pocket under roots to return to,
  that I am not just another lost American
  smashing butterflies on her windshield,
  addicted to the open range and the highway
  that crosses it like a perfectly straight seam
  hemming up all the broken dreams
  we come from.
  
  
• Islanders (Teow Lim Goh)
  
  A tribute to Chinese immigrants detained at Angel Island Immigration Station in the San Francisco Bay from 1910 to 1940, reimagining the voices of women on the island whose poems were lost when the women's quarters burned down (along with their families on shore, the staff at Angel Island, and a number of people at the San Francisco riot of 1877). Goh also has a few connected essays linked at the book's page on her site; I've only read "The Dehumanizing Politics of Likability," but it was well worth the read and I'm looking forward to the others.
  
  Favorite lines, from "The Walls Speak":
  
  Each time
  I pick up the knife,
  
  ready to etch my words
  into the wood,
  
  my hands tremble
  and I step back.
  
  *
  
  At night I lie awake.
  Will I always be a secret?

Short Stories
A Nest of Ghosts, a House of Birds (Kat Howard); The Homunculi’s Guide to Resurrecting Your Loved One From Their Electronic Ghosts (Kara Lee); Difference of Opinion (Meda Kahn); The Secret Life of Bots (Suzanne Palmer); How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls (Kai Minosh Pyle)

• A Nest of Ghosts, a House of Birds (Kat Howard)
  
  Luna moves into her late grandmother's home to find it full of strange birds that no one else seems to see, and in learning to care for them learns more about herself and her family. There's a melancholy to this story, but a gentle one.
• The Homunculi’s Guide to Resurrecting Your Loved One From Their Electronic Ghosts (Kara Lee)
  
  A step-by-step guide, by ghosts formed from the amalgam of people's digital traces, to rescuing one of their number from the wires, and what to do when you can't. A deft blending of magic and technology, and a beautiful exploration of grief that eviscerated me with love.
  
  
• Difference of Opinion (Meda Kahn)
  
  Keiya wants to do her job, be left alone, and listen to her favorite singer. Morit wants to know her perspective on eugenics. This is a story about autistic advocacy and community, abled co-optation of disability justice, and how ableism paints nonspeaking people as at once empty and dangerous (they see you big and looming like a monster and they take your keyboard, last kernel of defense you've got left); it is, most of all, about Keiya wanting to be who she is and the powers that be around her deciding that that's unacceptable.
  
  
• The Secret Life of Bots (Suzanne Palmer)
  
  A crew pulls an old ship from a junkyard for a last-ditch military maneuver. Meanwhile, Bot 9 pursues a rattish-buggish animal through the ship and makes friends. This story manages to be both high-stakes and a lighthearted, genuinely fun time that made me laugh out loud.
  
  
• How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls (Kai Minosh Pyle)
  
  (Collected in Love After the End, edited by Joshua Whitehead.) Nigig, a girl coming of age in Anishinaabewaki after border wars that reshaped the world, writes down observations and advice as she grapples with the meaning of Kinship and pushes for answers about her missing best friend, Migizi, who everyone else seems to believe is gone for good. This story mulls over its themes the way you might turn a stone around in your hands to see it at different angles, examining ideas of community and belonging and explicitly asking Nigig, and through her the readers, to always remember who is being excluded and what that exclusion means.

[Tom]

I guess this is the time to look back on what I have and havent read this year, though tbh this year blends a lot with last year for me, so we'll see what I can remember. I will preface this by saying that despite loving to read, English Lit classes in college have burnt me out hardcore from reading!

In 2020 I read:

Let's start with the obvious and easy section, gonna call this DND guides/books:

• Volo's Guide to Monsters (Learning more about the monsters of DND and adding some monstrous races and out there races to my knowledge)
• Xanathar's Guide to Everything (More subclasses to make NPCs out of, Lots of new DM tools, Spells, Magic Items, and even a fun Character Names section)
• Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (The brand new DND book that added more subclasses, magic tattoos, Features, and some fun traps, Definitely was over hyped in the DND community) [Also why the hell does a druid of wildfire not get freaking Fireball?
• Explorer's Guide to Wildemount by Critical Role* (An excellent world to do DND in, do I think new players would do well with it, probs not, but if you get the right DM who has experience it'd be a good time. I really like a lot of the worldbuilding that Matt Mercer and the others of Critical Role have done in it and the subclasses/classes are very unique and well thought out. I am very very excited to possibly dive into this campaign at some point.)
• Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (I've skimmed it mostly because I am currently playing in a Waterdeep campaign and it's got too much info about Waterdeep so I'm avoiding bits of it, but it's definitely a good tool at coming up with something after some of the set campaigns that have been made by the creators of DND)
• Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (A great addition for a Dungeon Master as it expands on the known races people know of like Elves/Dwarves/Gnomes/Halflings/etc, adds more diverse enemies to the game)

Fiction (It's probs going to be short):

• Alex in Wonderland by Simon James Green (I read this book probably at the start of the year in a depression episode, it's cheesy, gay, and very predictable, but not the worst read I've had. With a little mystery to the entire novel, it's about a shy boy named Alex who has to get a summer job and finds himself working at an arcade on the beachfront and slowly begins to come out of his shell.)
• The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (This is a reread as I am planning to read the entire series eventually)
• Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (Another reread, but it's a slowburn and it's cute. Got the whole rivals/enemies to lover vibes but between a prince of England and the Son of the President of the USA. Very cute, but also understand how it can be a bit much after the politics of this year lol)
• Of Mice and Magic by David Farland (This is a book I read as a kid, basically this kid who is neglected by his mom and friends really wants a pet, he ends up getting a mouse who ends up changing him into a mouse with magic. She asks him to join her on a reckless quest against an evil bat named Nightwing who is obssessed with world domination. I got a lot of nostalgia from this book also gave me some "what the hell did I read as a kid" vibes)

Comics/Webtoons:

Before I make a list on these, I will say a lot of these are still in progress and I am still reading them to this day lol!

• The Croaking by Echorise (A story of secrets and people with wings, has lgbt characters and lots of secrets that I am still figuring out. The basis of the plot is surrounding these three teens who are going to an academy. One of them is a Raven who are typically looked down upon in the society as the problems of the world. One is a Osprey who are typically known as coastal people, but he's found himself in one of the most elite schools in the world, which leads to some interesting questions. I'm still :eyes: about this one and have been keeping up with it)
• The God of Highschool by Yongje Park (There's now an anime for this one which I've watched and they did a fantastic job with it. The whole story surrounds three teens who are invited to a tournament called The God of Highschool which is a fighting tournament, whoever wins gets granted one single wish and it could be anything in the world...)
• Omniscient Reader by Sing N Song/Sleepy C (This webtoon comic is spicy, it gives me SAO vibes. The premise is that this guy named Dokja reads an online novel and by the time he finishes it, the world is transformed into his novel. He gets given the ability of Omniscient Reader and has to survive. It's got video game leveling systems and all sorts of interesting things, still fairly new too, but I am loving it)
• DICE by Hyunseok Yun (I've dropped this every so often, but the premise is also very interesting. The basis of it is this boy who has been bullied his entire time in highschool wants to be popular and attractive and what not, but gets caught up in a game where collecting and rolling dice allows him to up his stats like a video game character. I won't spoil anything, but it's definitely interesting)
• Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythie (Fair warning there's some difficult topics in this, but plenty of warnings about them from the author who hands the subject matter well. This is basically a retelling of Persephone and Hades with a bit of a modern twist? I love the art of it and it is a great read.)
• Room of Swords by Toonimated (My absolute favorite webtoon right now. It's gay. It's got scifi and fantasy elements. Gyrus the main character wakes up for the 34th time in a world ruled by monsters, but he has no memories of the 34 other times, but little does he know, he's asked to collect something called the boss sword and bring it to the room of swords. And things just get wild from there tbh, definitely rec if you like scifi and lots of unanswered questions. The art is amazing and there's some great breaking of the fourth wall even)
• Castle Swimmer by Wendy Lian Martin (A cute story about a merman who's life is ruled by being the "choosen one" which entails helping other merpeople of the sea, he eventually finds a teenage prince of a shark kingdom and is asked to save them from their curse. Definitely dont want to give too much, but it's very cute and a bit gay :cuddly: I still like the subtleness of it)
• Solo Leveling by Gee So-Lyung and Jang Sung-Lak (This one is both a light novel and a manga, but it's great. Another sort of like video game world with humans, but the basis is the world starts having portals open up randomly and people who are called hunters enter these searching for ways to close them and come back with riches. This guy who wants to be a hunter, but his ranking is one of the lowest, until he stumbles into a dungeon with a secret room and is given a special ability that allows him to level up unlike the rest of the world. Definitely is an interesting read, also just found out they're making an anime for it and I'm pumped)
• Tower of God by SIU (This was also made into an anime and has one of the best plot twists imo. Anything you desire is here in this tower, all you have to do is reach the top. A girl named Rachel talks about how she dreams of the stars after finding a boy named Baam locked away in an underground hole. Rachel ends up going into the tower and Baam follows along, wanting to follow Rachel to the top.)

I guess I will end it with my currently reading or going to be read 2021 list below:

• Six of Crows Series by Leigh Bardugo (I swear I will finish this series Stare, I am almost through the first book)
• The Raven Cycle Series by Maggie Stiefvater (I swear I will finish this too Dars lol I am like 3/4ths the way through the last one
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by You Know Who (I got very bored during a certain part, eventually I will get through it)
• The rest of the Chaos Walking Series by Patrick Ness (I am hyped)
• Percy Jackson and the olympians Series by Rick Riordan (I havent read them all, but I definitely have picked them up again)
• The Eye of Minds series by James Dashner (I am a little late to this series, but it's by the author of the maze runner and has AIs so I was intrigued)