Gentle and sweet, but I wanted so much more! I want to know what happens with Hana’s illustration career, whether Morimoto ever brags about her wife to her coworker, and if Morimoto’s parents ever have a change of heart. But the art and the slice-of-life tone are perfect, and I’m always happy to read yuri with adult characters.

I was happy to see that this series is being released in print, because I had wanted to see what the hype and great cosplays were all about, but I'm not a huge fan of reading comics on my phone. The art style is gorgeous, filled with lush colors, and the plot was more interesting than I was expecting it to be. Looking forward to reading more.

The first line of Hailey Piper's Twitter bio is "Make horror gay AF," so I suspected that she was an author I could vibe with based on our shared sensibilities alone. Even so, I ended up enjoying The Worm and His Kings more than I expected to from the first disorienting chapter. Piper drops you into Monique's search for her missing girlfriend with little context, but as you read on, you catch glimpses of backstory and lore that weave cohesion out of the weirdness, only to unravel everything in a breathtaking conclusion.

Rewatching Carol is a Christmastime tradition for me, and this year I decided that I should finally get around to reading the novel that inspired what I consider to be the swooniest holiday movie ever.

The plot follows seasonal shop girl Therese as she becomes entangled with Carol, a glamorous thirtysomething in the midst of a contentious divorce. Though Carol gets top billing in the retitle, the story is Therese's: her growing consciousness of what she wants from life and relationships, her varying states of dependence and independence, and her coming into herself as a woman. Book Therese was significantly more interesting to me than movie Therese, likely because although she is physically passive for a lot of the things happening to and around her, she's internally processing everything, and the book grants the reader access to those thoughts and conflicts.

I related a lot to Therese, to her insecurities and doubts and realizations. There were multiple instances where I thought, "Yes, that's exactly how that feels, that's exactly what it's like." And I love moments like that, when I feel kinship to queer history.

I also love that Highsmith flouted the conventions of her time to give this novel a hopeful ending. And that the prose is so well-crafted, each detail selected so carefully. I just really love this book. It makes me want to wear a fur coat at a Christmas tree stand and go on a cross-country road trip.

I read this for the (somewhat controversial) microhistory prompt in the 2021 Reading Glasses challenge. While it's unlikely that I would have sought this book out on my own, I found it much more interesting than I expected to. On the one hand, there's something timeless about the appeal of scandal, and there's a good deal of scandal here. On the other, there's some intellectual pleasure in seeing Davis take the sources available to her, speculate about what might fill in the blanks, and examine tensions and contradictions among versions of events. Somewhere between a 3- and 4-star read for me.

It's Always Been You caught my attention when I was looking for wintry romances to help me make the yuletide gay. I liked the ace representation and thought that the enemies-to-lovers relationship between Courtney and Sophie had a lot of potential, but I couldn't connect with any of the supporting characters or the whole prank war plot. I felt like there were too many extraneous details and unrealistic moments, and I just wanted the book to settle down and focus.

Grumpy/sunshine dynamic, fake dating that becomes something real, and the slightest hint of Christmas make this wlw rom-com a charming escape. Bellefleur does a good job balancing heavy emotions and lighter moments, so you get a sense of the real emotional stakes without it being a bummer. And I ended up with such a book crush on Darcy.

Took an unexpected turn for me, focusing mostly on Maekawa's efforts to draw manga again and relegating Shimizu almost entirely to a supportive role, which I didn't love. It was difficult for me to see why Shimizu's level of investment in Maekawa's success is justified, when Maekawa doesn't treat her very well. However, I enjoyed this volume more than the first because at least Maekawa seemed a bit more reflective and aware of Shimizu's feelings than she did in Volume 1.

Yeah, I decided to go ahead and finish the series, despite my earlier ambivalence about doing so. What can I say? They're quick reads, and I wanted closure. I like the ending, but I still am no fan of Maekawa, and I wish that Shimizu's interest in creating doujinshi had gotten more than a sentence or two of space in the plot. Shimizu was the star of the series for me all the way through. And while her relationship with Maekawa did grow into something better than what it started as, I couldn't shake the feeling that Shimizu deserves a girlfriend who's less selfish.

In Hogfather, Death steps in to save Discworld's version of Christmas when the titular Santa analog is taken out of commission. On the one hand, it's a funny story about a skeleton flying around giving out presents and trying to play his new role well. On the other, it's a meditation on belief, and the ways that fantasy and storytelling add meaning to humans' experience of life, in all its messy and illogical beauty. I'm glad that I read it in 2021, when I've been struggling to figure out what I want Christmas to mean for me separate from my family of origin, and what it realistically can look like given certain life circumstances. It was a huge comfort to read this book and realize that it's going to become a new holiday tradition for me.