Tootfinder

Just finished "Captivated, by You" by Yama Wayama. An excellent "funny off-beat highschool vignettes" manga with a focus on social interactions between weird boys. Thought I'd be getting a romance from the cover, but couldn't be more satisfied with the unexpected actuality. Great examples of non-toxic masculinity.
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Just finished "The Courageous Princess" by Rod Espinosa. It's... bad. I was really looking forward to it because I recently read "Castle Waiting" by Linda Medley, and it seemed from the cover like it might be from a similar epoch in comics and/or have similar vibes, but it's both a very bland story, and extremely into royalty apologetics, which is the opposite of Castle Waiting and which galls me immensely. It breaks exactly one genre convention (the princess gets fed up with waiting for a prince and rescues herself) but doesn't systematize that into even an ounce of feminism.
"Dealing With Dragon"s by Patricia Wrede is the actually amazing version of this story, although it's not a graphic novel.
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Just finished "Get a Life, Chloe Brown" by Talia Hibbert. It's... much less chaste than most of the other romances I've been reading, but also incredibly sweet and positive, so I enjoyed it a lot.
My one reservation is that it does the thing a lot of romance novels do where they equate physical desire with romantic desire, and physical flirtations/advances with actual communication, and yes people equate those things in the real world all the time, by it's often really harmful when they do that.
This novel does better with consent than 99% of the field probably, and legitimately deserves props for that, so this isn't the harsh criticism I'd level if it seriously broke the "would this be okay if we didn't have access to interior monologues" test, but it skirts the edges of that a bit.
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I'm reading Witch Hat Atelier right now (checked out of my local library) and it's top-notch amazing, including the plot, world-building, ethics, character designs, and of course three staggering artistic quality, both in raw illustration quality and artful compositions. It's not shy with playing with the manga form either, with lots of stunning unique panels and active gutters. I also just realized the "shounen manga for girls" formula I've been looking for (which is a formulation that's nearly as important for boys to have access to as girls). But I also really love the humor, including ridiculous puns that are often well-translated. In this scene, the main character Coco has forgotten she's using a mist form spell and ends up blowing away her mist-form body even as age rushes into a chaotic situation, leading to this pun.
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Books #amreading
https://comicskingdom.com/macanudo/2025-06-13

Macanudo Comic Strip 2025-06-13 | Comics Kingdom
Read the Macanudo comic strip from June 13, 2025, and check out other Macanudo comics by Liniers.

Reading LeGuin's "Four Ways to Forgiveness" and she's excellent as usual; this is my first time reading anything set on Hain, which is kind of exciting. I love this line, which happens while describing Havzhiva's education among the Historians and his initial reaction to seeing these gulf in belief systems and knowledge scope between his upbringing and there Historians' perspective:
"They are childish, irrational beliefs! he said. They looked at him, and he knew he had said something childish and irrational."
Definitely jives with my position as an agnostic :)
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I just finished "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir. I picked it up because I found her non-fantasy novel "All My Rage" extremely compelling, and I enjoyed fantasy a lot as a genre in my youth but as my politics have changed I'm too disappointed to enjoy a lot of fantasy any more but I thought Tahir might not fall into that.
Although I don't think Ember in the Ashes is bad, it's definitely not what I was looking for, and I don't think I'll pursue the sequels, at least not right now.
Overall the writing was weaker in a lot of ways than All My Rage, and in terms of basic fantasy quality, the worldbuilding was noticeably lacking, the romantic subplot felt stilted, and the politics were a bit murky. Compared to what I felt was Tahir's deft, delicate, and very meaningful handling of trauma in All My Rage, trauma in Ember felt overused and thin.
I also recently finished "Black Panther Red Wolf" by Marlon James, which had excellent world building and (to me) a much more nuance in both romance and in handling trauma. The politics felt a bit off for this one too I guess, but for me it was an overall more enjoyable (if much more difficult) read.
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Just finished "Witchy" volume 2, by Ariel Slamet Ries. I liked the first book, and this second volume continues to impress.
I've been checking these out from my local library, but it's a webcomic that you can read online: #AmReading

Isles of the Emberdark 10/10 so far. #BrandonSanderson #Cosmere #bookstodon #amreading

Just finished "Go With the Flow" by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann. It's a great graphic novel about period equity and teen activism, with a lot of depth through a variety of intertwined sub-plots.
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Just finished "Forest Hills Bootleg Society" by Dave Baker and Nicole Goux. It's a very interesting queer teen graphic novel that's got a complicated plot. It also does some excellent things with the comic medium that I haven't seen elsewhere, letting us get glimpses of the inner lives of dozens of background characters.
I'm definitely interested in reading more from these authors.
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Just finished "Donuts and Doom" by Balazs Lorinczi. A lovely queer romance graphic novel featuring a witch and a rock star.
I like the way the book builds their romance through different stages, even if the plot is fairly basic. The world building is also fun.
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Just finished "Decelerate Blue" written by Adam Rapp and illustrated by Mike Cavallaro. It's a dystopian graphic novel that I found... not that great. Maybe the best thing about it was the world-building around the propaganda language everyone is forced to speak, but overall I found the plot construction and characters to be underwhelming.
Despite being a book about resistance to fascist oppression, it doesn't meaningfully engage with any major axes of oppression like patriarchy, racism, capitalism, or colonialism, and it doesn't offer an interesting lessons on how to conduct resistance or what long-term outcomes one might hope for.
First graphic novel I've checked out in a while that I didn't really like that much.
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Just finished "As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow" by Zoulfa Katouh. It puts to shame every other book I've ever thought was gripping, but it still took me two days to read because I also had to put it down to process. A hurricane of a book that's left behind sorrow, anger, wisdom, and joy.
Read it.
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Just finished "Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity" by Angela Velez. It's an excellent #OwnVoices Latinx teen drama about big questions like dating and college, and it's very well plotted, with lots of balls in the air that get caught and thrown again beautifully and which all come down nicely at the end. Reminded me of "Far From the Tree" by Robin Benway, which also had three siblings and which also juggled dramatic irony beautifully across multiple perspectives. A less skilled author could have told a similar story with more straightforward perspective trading, but Velez manages to create a lovely relay race of tensions that pass their batons to each other so neatly you're always eagerly awaiting the next development.
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Just finished "To a Darker Shore" by Leanne Schwartz. It's a blend of fantasy (a genre I enjoyed a lot when younger but which I now feel is hit-or-miss depending on the politics of the author) and romance (a genre I'm currently a bit obsessed with) and I enjoyed it very much. The element of an #OwnVoices autistic perspective was interesting, and the mythology was pretty cool. Even though I felt as though monstrousness could have been explored from an even better angle, the complexity in this book was comfortable, and it to my mind successfully-enough avoided the veneer of racism that runs through the mainstream fantasy tradition.
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Just finished "Leap" by Simina Popescu. A really wonderful queer teen graphic novel that weaves romantic and platonic relationships together into a beautiful and hopeful story. The way Popescu captures choreography on an illustrated page is kinda magical, and since the whole book is set in a ballet school, we get to see plenty of it.
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Just finished "Love, Hate, and Other Filters" by Samira Ahmed. I was worried near the beginning it would be pretty shallow, but having read some of Ahmed's other stuff, I wasn't surprised when it turned into a page-turner. Her books have a lot of similarities, but staying close to her own experience makes them better, I suspect. This was a good book.
---SPOILERS---
Had a much-better-than-average college-separation-induced highschool-romance-ending in my opinion.
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Just finished "Statistically Speaking" by Debbie Johnson. It's coincidentally the second book dealing with adoption that I've just finished, though I suspect in both cases not #OwnVoices, which I also suspect matters somewhat. I was well-absorbed and enjoyed it immensely, but was left again with the reservation that I'm sure it may reflect only that small facet of real life which is pleasing and/or tolerable to a wide audience, and may thus in its own way make things more difficult for those whose realities it does not reflect. I find myself very glad to have also recently read Mama by Nikkya Hargrove, which is autobiographical and which as a result of having more real-world complexity drives its similar point about found family home with more force, to me (to be fair, Johnson's work has a decent amount of real life complexity, for a novel).
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Just finished "Ash's Cabin" by Jen Wang. It's a wonderful graphic novel, with so many lovely scenes of northern California, a gripping plot built on largely intrapersonal drama, and some cool points to make about nature and humans, even if I wish it had made them more forcefully or in a slightly different way. I also wish it had unpacked more of the interpersonal stuff, but I can see there wasn't room for that and it wasn't necessary for *this* story to work.
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Finished "Far from the Tree" by Robin Benway last night. For me, it was a gripping and absolutely delightful read. I can recognize that I'm absolutely unequipped to judge whether it authentically reflects the experiences of many or few of the people whose situations are similar to the protagonists', but I find myself fervently hopeful for the former, even as I recognize such hopes in the part of people like me can be part of ultimately harmful publishing selection feedback loops. (If anyone reading this happens to have read the book and found it distasteful, I'd love to hear that.) Notwithstanding my probably overcautious uncertainty, I'll definitely be seeking out more books by Benway. At the very least, I really enjoyed her little joining and framing metaphors, and the pacing and plot construction were good, with lots of nicely interwoven implications arising through the buildup, and an ending that left me satisfied (albeit, I'm an inveterate optimist, YMMV).
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Just finished "Animus" by Antoine Revy. Wonderful art and lovely creativity in the plot & world. Didn't quite "get" the ending, but I'm not going to criticize it because I think that was on me.
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Just finished "Hilda and the Bird Parade" by Luke Pearson, and as usual with Pearson's "Hilda" books, it's tremendous! A lovely magical world, childhood curiosity paired with responsibility, and that touch of each parental love.
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Just finished "Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know" by Samira Ahmed. It's a good book, although it took until past the middle for me to really get sucked in. Fascinating mix of romance history mystery, and with an ending that nicely fits the theme. Honestly, as much as I'm enjoying uncomplicated romance novels with the expectable ending at this point in my life, I'm even more excited by things like this that bend or break genre conventions, and this one does it in beautiful service to a theme.
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Just finished "Lunar New Year Love Story" written by Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by LeUyen Pham. Despite having just written a big thread about what media get wrong about love and finding a share of those same issues here, I enjoyed it a lot. I've been reading a lot of romance these days and it's got above-average advice, plus lovely illustrations and a mix of interesting Asian-American cultures.
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Just finished "Witchy" by Ariel Slamet Ries. It was a random pick from my local library, but now I see it's a webcomic and I'm looking forward to reading beyond the end of volume 1. It's got cool worldbuilding and a main character who grapples with state oppression, both of which I appreciated.
Lots of interesting use of movement blur in various panels too.
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Finished "Homebody" by Theo Parish last night. It's a lovely non-fiction graphic novel about Theo's journey of gender discovery as a trans nonbinary person. Has wonderfully comfy art, and it's still encouraging to see such a positive story of self-discovery. Was interesting to compare it to "Genderqueer" by Maia Kobabe: Maia's journey seems to have been a bit rougher (or they're just more comfortable sharing more of the rough parts), and Maia gets more into stuff about sex and genitals, which Theo either didn't deal with as much or avoids discussing.
#AmReading #trans #nonbinary

Refugees, intergenerational trauma, child death, abusive family
Also just finished "The Best We Could Do" by Thi Bui, which is the second memoir I've stumbled upon recently that deals with the Vietnamese exodus after the end of the war (House Without Walls by Ching Yeung Russel is the other one, which is written in verse, not illustrated). Bui traces more of the political landscape and history of Vietnam through the stories of both of her parents, and also unpacks a lot of intergenerational trauma, but has less focus on the boat trip out and refugee camp experience, presumably because hers were easier than Russel's.
My thoughts after reading this return repeatedly to all of the impacts that patriarchy and toxic masculinity had on her father, from setting up his father and grandfather to be abusive towards him and the women in their lives, to pushing him deep into depression when he feels unable to fulfill the role of a protective husband, ironically leaving his wife to pick up the slack and ultimately ruining their relationship, to how it teaches him to despise and shirk the caregiver role he's left with, ultimately passing on some measure of trauma to his children. For sure war, abusive family, and child death can happen in the absence of patriarchy and those are in some ways perhaps bigger factors here, but at the same time, Bui's mom copes with most of the same factors in healthier ways.
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Just finished "Dust" by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. A heavy but engrossing book, interwoven through a rich tapestry of Kenyan history. I learned a lot and was inspired to look up more, though that doesn't say much given my previous practically nonexistent knowledge of Kenyan history. Owuor's characters are complex and deeply interwoven, and her choices about what to reveal, when, and through whose voice, are immaculate. There is wisdom in this book, like Ajany's thought that we may each be born with a portion of madness to work through.
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In Ursula K. Le Guin's "A Man of the People" (part of "Four Ways to Forgiveness") there's a scene where the Hainish protagonist begins studying history. It's excellent in many respects, but what stood out the most to me was the softly incomprehensible idea of a people with multiple millions of years of recorded history. As one's mind starts to try to trace out the implications of that, it dawns on you that you can't actually comprehend the concept. Like, you read the sentence & understood all the words, and at first you were able to assemble them into what seemed like a conceptual understanding, but as you started to try to fill out that understating, it began to slip away, until you realized you didn't in fact have the mental capacity to build a full understanding and would have you paper things over with a shallow placeholder instead.
I absolutely love that feeling, as one of the ways in which reading science fiction can stretch the brain, and I connected it to a similar moment in Tsutomu Nihei's BLAME, where the android protagonists need to ride an elevator through the civilization/galaxy-spanning megastructure, and turn themselves off for *millions of years* to wait out the ride.
I'm not sure why exactly these scenes feel more beautifully incomprehensible than your run-of-the-mill "then they traveled at lightspeed for a millennia, leaving all their family behind" scene, other than perhaps the authors approach them without trying to use much metaphor to make them more comprehensible (or they use metaphor to emphasize their incomprehensibility).
Do you have a favorite mind=expanded scene of this nature?
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