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Mid-Year Book Freakout

@dandelion-network tagged me on my main account, so I'm posting it here :D

Number of Books You've Read So Far:

13! Most of them have been in the months of June and July

Best Book You've Read So Far in 2026:

I really enjoyed The Wolf & His King by Finn Longman (a retelling of the Bisclavret story; French werewolf!) and I Will Teach You to be Rich by Rami Sethi (really straightforward financial advice that was also easily actionable)

New Releases You Haven't Read Yet But Want To:

Platform Decay by Martha Wells & Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh

Most Anticipated Release for the second half of the year: I'm not keeping my eye on releases much, but I am on the waitlist for two recent/soon-to-be-released books: Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher and The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley

Biggest Surprise Favorite New Author (debut or new to you): Saou Ichikawa was especially enjoyable. I was laughing way more than I expected at how raunchy Ichikawa would get and then the next paragraph it would be quite serious.

Newest Fictional Crush: Hmm, I've enjoyed several characters, but I'm not sure that it's as strong as Darcy. Faolan from Soulgazer (M. Rapier) and Raksh from The Tapestry of Fate (S. Chakraborty) were fun to read though. Amina's also always given me heart eyes :D

Book That Made You Cry: Soulgazer, Land by M. O'Farrell, The Tapestry of Fate, Glorious Exploits, Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books, and probably all of my books. I'm an easy crier.

Most Beautiful Book You've Bought So Far This Year (or received): I've only bought two books this year and I really like both covers (Land & Platform Decay)

Book That Made You Happy: Murder in Highbury by Vanessa Kelly had some very funny moments

What Books Do You Need to Read By the End of the Year:

I'm not trying to specifically get any done, but I'm interested in reading O. R. Melling's The Chronicles of Faeries before the end of the summer!

If you see this, I invite you to do the mid-year book freak out! :D

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Operation One Piece Delivery went well! My friend was so excited and almost cried. He took out each volume to look at the covers at first and then later showed each volume to one of our coworkers 🥹 He only asked once where I got them from and didn't push when I brushed it off. I'm jus happy he was happy and showin them off. It helped me a lot too. Now I have to try to not look for the later volumes to get caught up lol

dandelion-network

Somehow past-me decided to donate 20 volumes of One Piece a few months ago to my local used book store and I cannot fathom why I never thought to just give them to my diehard One Piece fan friend instead. I had those volumes since high school too, for at least 15 years! In great condition! My friend has done so much for me, I'm upset I didn't think of him at the time. But also why the fuck did I donate my childhood memories like that in the first place?!

Anyways I just bought 46 volumes of OP off of eBay to give to my friend lmao. I was in a spiral last night over my mistake and the math of that purchase comes out to be about 5.50 a volume so how could I say no.

For now I'm never donating a single thing from my childhood, space saving be damned. If I got no room for a new book then I guess I gotta get a new shelf then because no more.

dandelion-network

I didnt mention it before but in my search I learned that my copies were limited edition and can sell up to $50 minimum and if they were first edition (i cant remember if they were) up to $800 and while I would have never sold them for money, I'm struggling wit that fact on top of jus bein disappointed I gave them up rather than just buying more shelves.

Anyways I did buy 2 new Ikea shelves, mostly to switch out the old ones since the new ones will hold more while taking up less space.

I wish I never looked up how much my manga cost lmao but at least it's led to me buying my good friend more volumes than I originally owned.

#heart stills hurt and hope i get over it soon lol #im on my way to work right now and will be giving these to the homie when i get there

A Barnes n Noble opened up on the same street as my job so I went to go check it out because I haven't been in one for over 5 years I think. This one has 2 floors, ground floor and basement. They have a lot of space dedicated to best sellers and popular books on the first floor, along with music and games. The basement had everything else.

And so many of their book's cover were curling up. I don't know what it is, maybe it's jus the location and maybe the humidity is worse there but even in the indie store that opened last year has a problem wit their paperbacks curling up. I'm not paying full price on a book wit a curled cover i'm sorry.

also whats worse is that that building is where a Borders once was T_T

#bein in there also reminded me of how out of touch i am wit the fantasy genre these days #i have no idea whats popular since i stopped watching booktube #but its clear that social media has an a huge effect on books these days #as in all the sprayed edges and even book merch

They have arrived! They came in a too-big of a box and 4 of the volumes were kinda bent. But they all are in great condition, might as well be new. I was watching the tracking like a dog the whole day.

AND I got em for hella cheap too. For the price I paid, each volume was about $4-4.50, a third of their market value.

I can't wait to give em to my friend. He's been lamenting over how he's almost caught up on the anime so hoping this'll hold him over in between the episodes as they come out.

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birdofpages

Things every reader should know:

1. You don’t have to finish a book you're not enjoying — no matter the price.

2. A beautiful cover doesn’t mean it’s a great book. Many gems are poorly packaged.

3. Reading isn’t a competition. Speed doesn’t matter — impact does.

4. You won’t remember every detail, but the feeling a book leaves behind is what truly matters.

#the sunk cost fallacy on completing a book you dislike really got people in a chokehold #me. im people. but not that often #and the need to meet yearly reading goals for the sake of hitting the number #this one not so much me. i have no problem changing my reading goal to a lower number

I'm currently on volume 9 of Witch Hat Atelier and I'm experiencing a simmering anxiety whenever I pick it up. The ending of volume 8 was a shock and I fear the ramifications already.

Shirahama is an incredible storyteller and I'm enjoying the way she interrogates the complex and dangerous nature of magic existing in the world. It's perhaps the best story with magic in it that I've come across that really tries to think about all the ways magic can have positive and negative effects just by existing at all. (Master Olly's false flame spell).

Even moreso when the lens is turned toward disabilities. There's the ableist belief that all disabled people must be 'fixed' in society and I'm curious if Shirahama will engage with that, with how in the story among the non-witches magic is seen as the great fix to everything.

We have one character who is disabled via injury and wants to be healed. Another disabled character who never talks about altering his body at all and instead is exploring alternatives to make the world more accessible. And a different disabled character is neutral on his disability. So, so far we haven't come across a character that is downright against magic being a cure-all for their disability not because it's against the rules but because their disability is what makes them who they are. (Also would be dope to have a character not identify as disabled; I've known Deaf folk who only ID as Deaf and not disabled.)

maybe this happens later in volumes currently out, idk don't tell if it does

also majority spoiler that i have to talk about because it's about a disabled character

hollycircling

⏾

#witch hat atelier

a patron at my job couldn't understand why her son enjoyed graphic novels so i used a witch hat atelier volume to explain how the art acts similarly to a movie in how the visuals assist in telling the story and showed her some of the art. that helped her understand better. she asked the artwork was a factor to whether or not i read a graphic novel and i was like YES lol

#there have been many a graphic novel and manga that i have put back on the shelf cuz i didnt like the artwork #good story be damned

psychic-waffles

We're at the "JK Rowling is personally funding litigation to try and destroy AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL" stage of rabid UK terf brain.

Screenshot via Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net on bluesky

Tldr Amnesty International, global human rights organisation, published a report called 'A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK'. In it is detailed, amongst others, a whole bunch of transphobic groups and organisations, including Beira's Place, JK Rowling's trans exclusionary sexual violence support service. JK Rowling threw a shit fit and got Amnesty to take the report down by threatening libel. This was obviously not enough, because you can't appease a fascist, so now she's going to bankroll a bunch of lawsuits anyway through the JK Rowling Women's Fund.*

You can read an archived version of the report here, please save it and share it.

*Not so friendly reminder there is no way to engage in the wizard books without enabling this shit.

#amnesty international had to deal wit zionism bullshit over their coverage of the genocide #and now they gotta deal wit her #can she die of natural causes yet?#jk rowling

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quillnqueer

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: International Book Covers

#piranesi #susanna clarke

alphacrone

i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.

three out of the four Hellsing volumes i got from the library sale have stickers from Borders still on them, the bookstore that raised me. the bookstore who felt more welcoming than the fancy ass barnes and noble. real talk i had genuinely felt like b&n was more fancy, more expensive, and alienating than borders. there was also a small borders in our mall that i would read in when my mom shopped at other stores.

and most importantly, neither borders locations ever complained about me sitting in the aisles to read manga. b&n on the other hand....

logarithmicpanda

To celebrate the final volume coming out, I reread the entirety of Heartstopper 💜 it's incredible to see how much is packed in those 6 volumes, from the romance to mental health issues... I will miss Nick and Charlie 🥲

#nice #i only have the first 4 volumes #for me im happy the series is short bc its more gentle on the wallet lol #heartstopper

Continuing the childhood manga collection conversation, do yall wanna see the one of the first manga volumes I ever bought?

It's one of the first because the first time I bought manga, I bought 3 volumes. I bought this, the 2nd volume and the first volume of Inuyasha (no longer have it).

This volume is 23 years old. TWENTY. THREE.

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elumish

My honest advice if you are reading something (especially something academic or non-fiction) that you don't understand is to read it again. And again, if you need to. And again.

I read the same three or four pages of the new network analysis paper probably six times yesterday, and at some point I had the math notation page on Wikipedia open for reference, and I don't have a subject matter expert's understanding but I do get more of it than I did when I started. And the next time I read it I'll understand it more.

Literally work it out sentence by sentence if you have to. You can learn how to understand things, even if it takes a lot of iterations.

#right #usually if im struggling with a sentence or a paragraph i'll keep reading to see if the following paragraph or page makes it make sense #sometimes i'll even read it out loud to see if that helps #also a huge fan of dictionaries #and wikipedia if its a concept only bein referenced and not explained that i'm unfamiliar wit

call-me-moby-dick

#moby dick #but what a weird ass take from the og tweet

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