January 2024 Wrap Up 2

I'm so glad I did that wrap up in the middle of the month! I feel like I read a LOT of books since then.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett - I will most likely read the second book that just came out, but mostly I was bored. Emily Wilde is boring. The secondary characters are great! She's boring.

James by Percival Everett - This one knocked my socks off. I already posted a whole review of it, so I won't carry on here. Just know that it is fabulous.

Lovely Muco! The happy daily life of Muco and Mr. Komatsu by Takayuki Mizushina - This was cute. Muco is a Shiba Inu who lives on a remote mountain with Mr. Komatsu. She barks a lot and chases toys and stuff. She's cute, but I don't care about continuing the series.

Ascendance of a Bookworm by Miya Kazuki - On the first page a bookish college student is killed by an avalanche of books in her room during an earthquake. She is reincarnated as a 5 year old girl in a world with no reading. She is desperate to get books, but there are none. Even the store signs are just pictures. The idea is great, but the girl is annoying. She yells a lot and makes mountains out of every little molehill. Some of this is just manga, in general, but I'm not a fan.

The Evil Secret Society of Cats by Pandania - This is cute. Each page is a comic strip about the cats and how they are effecting the takeover of the world by controlling humans. Like lying on their laps so they can't get up and be productive. Showing their belly so the humans stick their faces on it and get addicted to kitty fur. There is the evil mastermind, the scientist with all the experiments, the Destroyer (massive cat who is the muscle), Queen (who is secretly a model for cat food and treats brands and keeps them all stocked with food), and Robocat (one of the scientist's experiments who looks like a cat.) It's cute. I chuckled a few times. The print was really small (i.e. I need reading glasses).

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden - I did manage to finish this last night. This story is told in two timelines. In the past, Mia fell in love with a girl at boarding school. Then the girl was taken back home to her isolated planet. (This is set in space, in case you couldn't tell by the cover.) 5 years later, Mia has joined a group of women who go around and repair abandoned ancient buildings to prepare them for habitation. Mia convinces them to go find her lost friend on the isolated (read: dangerous) planet. I had some trouble working out what I was looking at in some panels. It just looked like swirls of colors and I didn't know what they signified. The story was great, though.

And there we are. I read 11 books in January. What a way to start the year! I actually read more than that if you count all the picture books I read for the Youth Media Awards stuff.