A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions

REVIEW: The Essential Anime Guide: 50 Iconic Films, Standout Series, and Cult Masterpieces (nonfiction book) by Patrick Macias and Samuel Sattin, illustrated by DenQ

2026-09-15T23:03:21.279-05:00

The Essential Anime Guide is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

While there are works that most people with a broad knowledge of anime would agree should probably be listed or at least mentioned in a book about "essential" anime, there will always be disagreements. And different people have different areas of expertise and blind spots - in their introduction, Macias and Sattin mention bringing in some additional writers who could speak with more authority about various movies and series than they could. Even with other authors handling those chapters, Macias and Sattin were presumably still the people choosing the 50 works the books would be focusing on. As someone who's been a big shoujo and slice-of-life fan, there were works I'd have picked that didn't match up with what the authors chose, although in many cases, works I might have featured were at least mentioned in passing in info boxes or during chapters focused primarily on other works.

So yeah, I figured, going in, that I'd find myself questioning some of the authors' choices. I don't recall wildly disagreeing with any of the inclusions (except maybe the choice of Naruto Shippuden rather than Naruto), and all of it made for interesting reading. And boy did the nostalgia occasionally hit me strongly. It's been ages since I last thought about Tekkonkinkreet.

There are no screenshots of anything, so you do miss out on the visual aspect of these series/movies, but overall I thought this was a pretty good read.

REVIEW: Nefertiti the Spidernaut: The Jumping Spider Who Learned to Hunt in Space (nonfiction picture book) written by Darcy Pattison, illustrated by Valeria Tisnés

2026-09-15T22:20:18.949-05:00

Nefertiti the Spidernaut is a nonfiction children's book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I think I might have found out about this book during a period of time when Facebook's algorithms decided that posts about jumping spiders might interest me. Or maybe someone mentioned Nefertiti and I found this book while looking for more information about her? Children's nonfiction is great for interesting little niche nonfiction topics.

This starts with Stefanie Countryman receiving a Johnson jumping spider egg sac in February 2012. Four spiders from that egg sac survive, and Nefertiti is the one selected to go to the International Space Station in order to test a hypothesis that jumping spiders wouldn't be able to hunt in microgravity. There are details about how Nefertiti's suitability for space was tested, what her habitat on the space station was like, how the experiment went, etc. The book continues until Nefertiti's eventual death a few months after returning to Earth.

This was an interesting read that got across all the necessary basic information. The end of the book included slightly more detailed sections about Johnson jumping spiders and the work that went into creating Nefertiti's space station habitat. I particularly liked reading more about the creation of Nefertiti's habitat, since I'd wondered how her fruit fly supply worked.

REVIEW: How to Survive as a Maid in a Horror Game (manhwa, vol. 1) art by SINcere, adapted by SUCH, original story by Kim Yom Yum, translated by KRM

2026-09-15T21:41:23.797-05:00

How to Survive as a Maid in a Horror Game is marked as "romance fantasy" on Tapas and other places I've checked, although in this first volume it's more of a fantasy comedy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The main character of this story is an ordinary woman who's started playing a new horror game, "The Murderer of Pfaltzgraff Manor," one evening while drunk. She'd heard that it was horrible and ridiculously difficult, and now that she's trying it herself, she's kind of considering returning it. She decides to give it one last go but ends up drifting off to sleep...and waking up as Hilda, one of the maids in the game.

In the original game, you play as Adrian, the sickly young master of the manor. Adrian is actually the reincarnation of the devil, cursed to inhabit a sickly mortal body unless he can secretly kill off enough people. Especially at the start of the game, his most accessible and easiest victims are his maids. Like Hilda.

And she can't even avoid Adrian, because she's the maid assigned to bring him his daily medication. Somehow, though, she's determined to survive and escape the manor.

In this first volume, Hilda spends most of her time trying to figure out the game mechanics and how they affect her personally. There are some nice comedic moments as she screws up royally (although somehow not badly enough to get herself killed). We also get a bunch of character introductions, including Adrian's very mentally unwell mother.

It's a little early for me to tell how well this series will work for me overall, but so far I'm at least intrigued by the horror twist in the usual "reborn as a character in a game/book" premise. The "romance fantasy" tag I've seen for this series indicates that this might turn into some kind of twisted love story between Hilda and Adrian, with her saying whatever she thinks will keep herself alive a little longer while he finds himself drawn to her in his own messed up way, which could be either horrifying or potentially fun. I'll probably give this at least another volume to prove itself.

REVIEW: Orbital (book) by Samantha Harvey

2026-09-15T01:33:15.150-05:00

Orbital is literary fiction with a very light tint of science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Orbital follows six astronauts and cosmonauts as they go about one day, 16 orbits of the Earth, in their space station. We get little glimpses of their thoughts and lives, as well as a few glimpses of how things are going on Earth, where a typhoon is developing. The science fiction aspect is very light - as these people on the space station are going about their day, other astronauts are about to land on the Moon a second time (I think? it was either that or a Mars mission - I didn't note down the details).

This book is a poem that was allowed to balloon to 200+ pages. It had occasional nice, lovely moments, and I didn't hate it, but in the end is was a lot of reflection and zero plot. Yes, we got some focus on the characters and their inner lives, but it was all too soft and dreamlike to really stick with me. There were only really six characters, and yet I could just barely keep two or three of them straight in my head - the rest tended to blend together.

I read this in two sittings, mostly because I really needed to get it done in time for my book club meeting. During the first sitting, I nearly fell asleep, which was when it occurred to me that this book was very much like the podcast Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories for Everyone, but in space.

REVIEW: Science Comics: Crows: Genius Birds (graphic novel) by Kyla Vanderklugt

2026-09-15T00:55:01.502-05:00

Crows: Genius Birds is an entry in the Science Comics series, which presents educational content in an entertaining way. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

A mischievous and very intelligent crow convinces Buddy the dog to leave his yard (thereby allowing all the crow's crow friends an opportunity to get in the house and eat Buddy's food) and join him on a snack-finding adventure. Together, the find food in various places as the crow teaches Buddy about crows and the research that's been done on their cognitive abilities.

There wasn't a lot here that I hadn't already read or heard about elsewhere, but I was expecting that, considering this is aimed at a younger audience. This was a delightful read regardless - the street-smart crow was a good teacher, and Buddy was an adorable, sweet cinnamon roll of a student. The information about crows was presented in a clear, easy-to-digest way, and the art was great.

Sensitive readers might be bothered by a few moments - the crow snacks on a dead pigeon in one bit, and there are some panels depicting dead crows during the part about crow "funerals" - but it's all handled in a matter-of-fact way.

REVIEW: Goosebumps: Welcome to Dead House (book) by R.L. Stine

2026-09-15T00:31:40.756-05:00

Welcome to Dead House is the first of the Goosebumps books. I don't think I ever read it.

Review:

Twelve-year-old Amanda and her younger brother Josh are upset to be moving to a house in Dark Falls, four hours away from their old home. It's a bigger place, but it's dark and somehow menacing. Amanda keeps thinking she sees a boy in the house, and her bedroom's curtains billow in a breeze that doesn't exist. Things come to a head when their dog Petey escapes and Josh becomes convinced he went to the cemetery.

This doesn't have as effective a hook as some of the other early Goosebumps books, which was maybe why (I'm fairly sure) I never read it. Still, I thought the build-up for this one had some genuinely creepy moments. My favorite was probably when Amanda realized that every kid in town seemed to have previously lived at their house.

One spoiler for animal lovers: Petey the dog doesn't make it.

REVIEW: Murder in the Age of Enlightenment: Essential Stories (short story anthology) by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, translated by Bryan Karetnyk

2026-09-15T00:11:48.465-05:00

Murder in the Age of Enlightenment is a collection of Akutagawa's short stories. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This book contains 7 short stories. Overall, I found this collection to be very readable and strangely intriguing, even though I wasn't always sure what the author was trying to get at.

My favorites were probably "In a Grove" (in which we see a crime from multiple POVs and are never told which version is the truth) and "Madonna in Black" (a creepy story about a possibly cursed statue).

I can't say I necessarily enjoyed it, but "Hell Screen" (about a painter who insisted that he needed to see horrors in order to properly paint them) was certainly compelling.

REVIEW: Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask (book) by R.L. Stine

2026-09-14T23:51:06.099-05:00

The Haunted Mask is one of the earlier entries in R.L. Stine's Goosebumps horror series for kids. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Eleven-year-old Carly Beth is easily scared, which Steve and Chuck, two boys at her school, take full advantage of, doing things like giving her a sandwich with a worm in it and tricking her into thinking she's being bitten by a tarantula. She's so upset that she decides she needs a super scary costume for Halloween in order to properly get back at them.

I vaguely recall reading some of the first Goosebumps books, including this one, and deciding that I was probably too old for them. As with Christopher Pike's books, the original covers were, in a lot of ways, more memorable than the books themselves. Although this was technically a reread, I'd forgotten pretty much everything except the very end.

The setup for this reminded me a bit of Stine's Hit and Run (which was published only a year prior to this book), just aimed at a younger audience. Carly Beth, like Hit and Run's Eddie, has several really awful pranks played on her and decides to get even. Steve and Chuck weren't quite as terrible as Winks, but that was probably because they were too young to somehow acquire a human corpse for their "jokes."

Overall, I preferred this book's "tormented main character decides to get even" storyline more than the one in Hit and Run. Possibly because I felt more sympathy for Carly Beth? She never intended to hurt anyone, and the mask affected her in ways she never expected.

It did irk me somewhat that Stine couldn't manage to stick to his own rules. Technically, Carly Beth removed the mask twice, which shouldn't have been possible.

REVIEW: I Found Puppets Living In My Apartment Walls (novella) by Ben Farthing

2026-08-31T01:52:42.117-05:00

I Found Puppets Living In My Apartment Walls is horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Johnny and his cousin Brittany are at their grandpa's New York apartment, preparing to clear out his things after he was legally dead due to being missing for a year. The apartment is a renovated TV studio, the place where their grandpa once worked as a puppeteer for a Sesame Street-like children's show.

Johnny wakes up one night to find Swoomie, his grandpa's old puppet, standing over him and watching him. Only Swoomie's right side moves, the side that Johnny's grandpa controlled. Swoomie somehow disappears into the apartment's walls, and Johnny becomes obsessed with figuring out what's going on. Whatever it is, he's sure it's linked to his grandpa's disappearance. Brittany isn't convinced he saw what he thought he saw, but, as a superfan of her grandpa's show, she's excited about the thought that their grandpa might have stored the old puppets inside the apartment's walls.

This was an interesting idea, with some freaky body horror moments and some nicely creepy bits. I was reminded a bit of the nostalgia-based horror in the first season of the Channel Zero horror anthology TV series.

Unfortunately, the execution didn't entirely work for me, especially near the end, and some moments that should have been more horrifying were instead kind of...cheesy? And I'm not wild about the author using what I think is probably an AI-generated cover.

Extras:

There's a short section at the end in which the author writes about his inspiration for this story.

REVIEW: Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six (book) by Lisa Unger

2026-08-31T01:22:07.041-05:00

Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six is a thriller. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This jumps between a few characters and time periods. On the one hand, we have Hannah. Growing up, she was the "sensible one" who cleaned up after her brother Mako's messes and comforted her friend Cricket whenever he broke her heart. In the book's present, Hannah's thoughts revolve around her young daughter, Gigi, and her husband Bruce, who she's worried might be cheating on her. When Hannah's brother, the CEO of a game development company, invites Hannah, her husband, Cricket, and Cricket's boyfriend Joshua to come stay at a luxurious and secluded cabin he's rented, Hannah reluctantly agrees. She's worried about being away from Gigi for the first time, but this trip will hopefully give her and Bruce some much needed time to themselves.

Hannah's chapters alternate with chapters from the POV of Henry, who, years ago, was left an orphan when his troubled and skittish mother was killed.

I had several early theories about how Henry's chapters connected with Hannah's. None of them turned out to be correct. This was honestly a blessing since, for a while there, my theories had me genuinely concerned that this book was going to have surprise incest in it.

There was a whole lot going on here. The cabin itself was kind of creepy, with a more-than-kind-of creepy owner. Multiple people were hiding things, and character relationships were complicated, to say the least. A bad storm made everything worse by trapping everyone right when everything started to fall apart.

Although everything did come together in a way that made sense, I was annoyed when Unger deprived me of one particular character death I'd spent a good chunk of the book looking forward to seeing. Man, I really wanted that character to die.

REVIEW: My Secret Admirer (book) by Carol Ellis

2026-08-31T00:41:25.900-05:00

My Secret Admirer is a YA thriller/horror novel originally published in 1989. I got my copy via interlibrary loan.

This review includes mild spoilers.

Review:

Jenny's parents are adventurous and enjoy living lives that involve moving from one place to the next in a relatively short amount of time. Jenny, on the other hand, would like it if they just stayed put for a while. She'd really like a chance to get to know people, make friends, and put down roots.

Jenny's not really sure that the latest town they've moved to will be a good fit for her - the rimrocks near their new home make her a little anxious, and it seems like everyone at her new school has known each other their whole lives. Still, she does her best to settle in, and it's not long before Sally, a teen who's both an extrovert and a chatterbox, is introducing her to everyone. Jenny instantly finds herself a little drawn to David, the guy she's teamed up with during a scavenger hunt. She's also intrigued by a secret admirer she seems to have acquired, a guy who confesses his feelings for her via a message on her answering machine but who isn't quite brave enough to talk to her in person.

Everyone and everything around Jenny starts to take on a more sinister feeling when Diana, the school's queen bee, is injured in an apparent accident at the cliffs. She doesn't actually know any of these people, their relationships with each other, or what they're really like. Can she really trust her new friends?

As an anxious worrier and overthinker myself, I found Jenny to be a very relatable character. Initially, she wasn't sure whether she was just working herself into a panic over nothing, simply because she was home alone in a new house while her parents were dealing with things back at their previous place, or whether there was actually something to be worried about.

I was, however, a little annoyed that this wasn't as focused on the "creepy secret admirer" aspect as I thought it would be. Jenny's fears were pretty all over the place for a while - her new home was fairly isolated, the perfect place for someone to sneak around at night and watch her (if I remember right, her parents hadn't even had time to get blinds up in most of the windows), and then there was Diana's scarily angry ex-boyfriend, as well as some moments with David and Sally that threw her off.

The motives of the person behind everything weren't well thought out, and it would have made more sense if their aim with Jenny had been to kill her rather than just terrorize her. Now, if Jenny had been an adult who could have chosen to go somewhere else, that would have been another story. As it was, this didn't really work with teen characters.

REVIEW: Bad Men (book) by Julie Mae Cohen

2026-08-12T00:48:35.905-05:00

Bad Men is a darkly humorous thriller. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Saffy Huntley-Oliver is 12 years old when she drowns her stepfather in the pool where he'd been sexually abusing her since she was 5. He'd been preparing to start abusing Saffy's beloved younger sister, Susie, as well, and she absolutely could not let that happen.

Seventeen years later, Saffy is a gorgeous, wealthy, and outgoing socialite. She's still fiercely protective of her younger sister...who has no idea that Saffy is now an experienced serial killer who targets bad men. Lately, Saffy has found herself drawn to Jonathan Desrosiers, a successful true crime podcaster who genuinely believes in bringing justice to victims and closure to their families. He seems like a great guy. It's too bad he's married.

Jonathan has just wrapped up a signing for his book when he finds out that his wife is leaving him. As if that wasn't bad enough, he wakes up the next morning to find a garbage bag on his doorstep containing a chopped up body missing its head and hands. Jonathan is immediately reminded of the Bin Bag Killer. Unfortunately, his subsequent investigation and discoveries lead to him being scarred both physically and emotionally.

Will Saffy manage to overcome Jonathan's doubts about his work investigating and podcasting about true crime, Jonathan's lingering feelings for his soon-to-be ex-wife, the police suspecting Jonathan of murder, and creepy threats in order to achieve her very own storybook romance with a good guy?

This was a fun read, even though the source of the anonymous threats Jonathan was receiving was pretty obvious. Saffy was a charismatic and enjoyable heroine, despite being very much a killer. The book was low on gore, but Cohen still managed to make it pretty clear that Saffy was a scary woman who would do literally anything necessary to achieve her goals. This included putting a very sweet and trusting dog in peril. Some readers might not be able to get past this - I could deal with it because Saffy never did anything else to the dog, and the dog never trusted her again. Not even Jonathan seemed to be entirely safe - as much as Saffy professed to like him, I got the impression that he was always only one example of bad behavior away from becoming another one of Saffy's victims.

It was amusing, watching Saffy orchestrate things to turn herself into a romance heroine, complete with a meet cute, although I never quite managed to stop feeling nervous for Jonathan, who had no clue what he was dealing with. The weird little dance between Jonathan and Saffy helped make up for how predictable the suspense aspects felt.

All in all, I enjoyed this. It reminded me a bit of Butcher & Blackbird, except with much lower gore and heat levels, and the genre leaning more towards suspense/thriller than romance.

REVIEW: Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea! (graphic novel) by Ben Clanton

2026-08-11T23:24:31.519-05:00

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea is a children's graphic novel. I checked my copy out from my library.

Review:

This includes three Narwhal and Jelly stories, with some miscellaneous stuff in between each. In the first story, Narwhal and Jelly meet for the first time, and both think the other may be imaginary. In the second story, Narwhal learns on the internet that they're supposed to be part of a pod, but, since Jelly has never seen any other narwhals, Narwhal goes around inviting a bunch of other sea creatures to put on a horn (or tusk-tooth) and become part of their pod. In the third story, Narwhal is reading a book...that happens to be blank. Using their imaginations, Narwhal and Jelly turn that blank book into an awesome story about a waffle and its strawberry sidekick.

The miscellaneous bits in between each story include: some narwhal and jellyfish facts and the Narwhal Song.

Narwhal and Jelly could sort of be considered a mismatched pair - not quite grumpy sunshine, but close. Narwhal is goofy, happy, and has a positive attitude about everything, while Jelly is a little more serious and prone to more negative emotions, like annoyance or jealousy. Through it all, though, they get along and stay friends.

This was cute, with a sketchy, simple art style.

REVIEW: Operation: True Love (manhwa, vol. 1) by kkokkalee, illustrated by Dledumb

2026-08-10T03:34:51.103-05:00

Operation: True Love is a contemporary-set manhwa with fantasy elements. I assume there will be romance in the future, based on the title.

Review:

Su-ae has been dating her boyfriend Minu for a while. Even though he's regularly dismissive or even outright mean to her, she's always ready and willing to forgive him. Literally everyone, even Su-ae to a certain extent, can see how toxic this is. For some reason, Su-ae is only really bothered by one person's judgment of her decision to keep putting up with Minu. Minu's best friend, Eunhyeok, always seems to be looking at her like he thinks she's pathetic.

Then one day Su-ae finds a mysterious Jellypop flip phone that keeps sending her snide texts about her relationship with Minu. She assumes the phone is Eunhyeok's and that he's the one who's texting her, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

You know that "flames on the side of my face" gif? That was me while reading this. These characters were horrible. The volume starts with a glimpse of the near future, in which the phone has made it so that Su-ae can see "the amount of love each person will receive in their lifetime." Supposedly, her number is zero. Oh yeah, and somehow she'll end up cheating on Minu with Eunhyeok.

So, I think I'm supposed to be rooting for Su-ae and Eunhyeok as a couple, but at this point in the series I kind of just hate everyone, including the phone.

Minu's a horrible boyfriend. Su-ae knows this, but stays with him anyway because 1) he's hot and 2) I guess some version of "I'm not good enough to find anyone better." Ra-im, Su-ae's supposed "best friend" and kinda sorta foster sister is horrible but hides it a lot better than Minu. Eunhyeok judges Su-ae for continuing to date Minu even though he frequently treats her badly, and yet Eunhyeok is friends with both Minu and Ra-im, so I wouldn't say he's all that great himself.

The art is okay, except Minu, Eunhyeok, and a third guy name Baek Dohwa were occasionally hard for me to tell apart. Sure, their hair styles and colors were all different, but not quite different enough for instant recognition in all scenes.

I don't know that I'll be continuing this series.

REVIEW: Vigilance (novella) by Robert Jackson Bennett

2026-08-10T02:45:54.127-05:00

Vigilance is science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In this near-future America, mass shootings have been monetized and turned into entertainment. John McDean executive produces Vigilance, a game show supposedly designed to keep Americans vigilant against all threats. At unspecified intervals, a public space is selected and several contestants (the active shooters) are set up at various entrances with weapons of their choice and all the ammo they could want. There are monetary prizes for contestants who manage to kill all the civilians and survive, for civilians who manage to kill a contestant, and more.

McDean is a marketing wizard who has all of this down to a science. He knows who his Ideal Person, his target audience is, and he knows exactly what they want. He's so good at what he does, in fact, that his bosses have used his work to train a new AI, Perseph, to do what he does, only better, and Perseph is set to debut at the height of the most recent Vigilance.

The America of this novella is a shambling corpse that doesn't realize it died years ago. It's slowly smothering its remaining inhabitants to death with the rotting chunks falling off its carcass. Based on Bennett's descriptions, it's tough to imagine anyone actually going about and living their lives, much less visiting malls and skating rinks.

Most of this novella is focused on McDean and his efforts to roll out a new Vigilance that strikes just the right balance of fear, anger, and victim blaming in his intended audience. The horror comes not just from his complete lack of empathy, but also from the fact that the technology and techniques he uses aren't all that far off from what can be done now. I was reminded of Facebook's targeted marketing in Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People, and the attitudes of people like Sam Altman in Karen Hao's Empire of AI. The "reporter" and "expert" commentary during the Vigilance (provided by digitally crafted people designed to appeal to McDean's target audience) gave me flashbacks to years worth of active shooter trainings.

McDean's scenes are occasionally interrupted by scenes at a bar, during a young Black woman named Delyna's shift. Initially, I thought this was where the latest Vigilance might be taking place. Instead, this turned out to be just a glimpse at one segment of McDean's audience, a way to see how McDean's work was affecting people (and another way for Bennett to highlight why America's mass shooting problem wouldn't be improved by the addition of more guns). Unfortunately, I didn't think McDean's and Delyna's sections meshed together very well.

This was an incredibly depressing read, where the conclusion was basically "there's no fixing this."

REVIEW: Steven Universe: Too Cool for School (graphic novel) created by Rebecca Sugar, story by Ian Jones-Quartey, written by Jeremy Sorese, illustrated by Asia Kendrick-Horton with Rachel Dukes

2026-08-10T01:04:04.916-05:00

This is a graphic novel based on the Steven Universe cartoon series. I bought my copy used.

Review:

I'm a latecomer to the joys of Steven Universe, so, sadly, all the graphic novels based on the series have since gone out of print. I was glad to come across this one.

In this graphic novel, Steven gets up early for a mission only to learn that all the Gems are too busy to spend time with him and that the mission isn't happening until that evening. With nothing better to do, Steven decides to go to school with Connie. Things are a little rocky at first, but Steven decides he really likes school and wants to bring in a snail shell from his latest mission for show and tell. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned.

The volume wraps up with a few pages devoted to Steven and the Gems going to a yard sale.

This wasn't really a must-read, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who hadn't already seen and enjoyed at least some of the series, since there wasn't much in the way of explanations or introductions beyond Connie's messy attempt to explain Steven and the Gems to her classmates. Still, it was nice and felt like something that could have been a filler episode in the original series.

The one thing that didn't quite work for me was the very end of the primary story. It took a weirdly 1000% positive turn and was jarring enough that I kept expecting it to be revealed that the entire thing was either Connie or Steven's dream.

REVIEW: Victoria of Many Faces, Vol. 1 (book) by Syuu, illustrated by Nanna Fujimi, translated by Andria McKnight

2026-08-10T00:37:26.767-05:00

Victoria of Many Faces is basically a slice-of-life story set in a fantasy world without magic. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

When she was only eight, Chloe was sent to be raised as a spy for the kingdom of Hagl. She would no longer be allowed contact with her family, but, in exchange, she could send them money and other things in order to see to it that they lived comfortably. Chloe's handler, Lancome, took care of the deliveries, and Chloe trusted him fully for 18 years, when she visited her hometown in an effort to catch a glimpse of her family and learned that they'd all died in a fire a couple years ago. She then spent the next year planning her escape.

Using the skills she gained as a spy, Chloe steals the identity of a missing person from the neighboring kingdom of Randall. Now living as Victoria, she then travels to the kingdom of Ashbury with the intention of stopping for only a while and then continuing on. However, not long after arriving in Ashbury, Victoria meets a six-year-old girl named Nonna who has been abandoned by her mother.

Circumstances lead to her essentially adopting Nonna. She finds a place for both of them to live and gets a job as a maid and assistant to an elderly historian named Bernard. It's a quiet life in which Victoria finds herself making more and more connections with those around her. Leaving behind her life as a spy isn't quite so easy, however. Even though she knows she needs to keep a low profile so that Lancome doesn't find her, she can't bring herself to just stand by while harm befalls others around her.

This was a particularly refreshing read in the vast sea of "reborn in another world/otome game/book I was reading" light novels out there. Victoria was pretty much perfect at everything she did, which could have been annoying but wasn't, I think because she still had to operate within certain boundaries. Her decision to never abandon Nonna meant that, if Lancome found her or others uncovered that she was a spy from Hagl, she couldn't just slip away - whatever she did, she had to take Nonna into account. Also, the longer she stayed in Ashbury, the more emotional attachments she gained towards those around her.

There was a nice light romantic storyline involving a man named Jeffrey Asher. I liked that he was smart enough to figure out that there was something going on with Victoria, and that, despite his interest in her, he took the time to consider whether she might be using him in some way. I enjoyed the way their relationship developed.

I did question Victoria's decision to help a prisoner who'd been trying to avenge his sister. It underscored her strong sense of justice, but it was also a pretty risky thing to do considering her own situation, and it wasn't anywhere near as quick and simple as, say, an earlier decision on her part to trip an escaping thief.

Reading this kind of reminded me of Violet Evergarden - the setting, the slice-of-life pacing plus occasional action scenes, and the hypercompetent heroine who isn't used to living an ordinary life. The romantic aspects of this book weren't as problematic, though, and, while certain characters did have tragic backstories, I didn't feel the need to keep a box of tissues at hand.

Extras:

A map, black and white illustrations throughout, and a few color illustrations at the front.

REVIEW: I Deliver Parcels in Beijing (nonfiction book) by Hu Anyan, translated by Jack Hargreaves

2026-07-13T01:46:46.591-05:00

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is basically a work-related memoir. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This starts off with an in-depth look at a couple of the author's work experiences, first working the night shift at a vast logistics warehouse, and then working as a courier delivering parcels in Beijing. After that, the author went backwards in time in order to cover basically every one of his work experiences from his school days onward, including working at restaurants, working at a bike shop, and owning his own clothing store, before finally catching up with the experiences that started the volume off.

I didn't know anything about this book before going into it. This is one of those cases where I was hooked by the title and cover. The first part of the book was more what I expected I might get, based on the title. I definitely did not expect the author to cover his entire life's work experiences, so I floundered a bit there, not sure where the author was ultimately planning to go with the book.

The author ended up talking about his personal philosophies about work (which, unfortunately, didn't interest me much), as well as his gradual development of fairly severe social anxiety. By the end, I felt like I had a decent grasp of what sort of person the author was, but very little idea of what his day-to-day life was like beyond work.

The book starts with a translator's note that I later found myself wishing had been more than just a couple pages. For example, the translator talked about the concept of "neighborhoods" in cities in Beijing, but I also found myself wishing that this section had contextualized Hu Anyan's work experiences more. I could and did compare the author's accounts to my own work experiences (more differences than similarities), but I had no idea how his work experiences might compare to those of others throughout China. Heck, I'd have loved to know a little more about how his experiences compared in those working similar jobs in other areas of the world.

All in all, this was an interesting enough book that occasionally got to the point of outstaying its welcome.

REVIEW: Gamer Girls: 25 Women Who Built the Video Game Industry (nonfiction book) written by Mary Kenney, illustrated by Salini Perera

2026-07-13T01:01:09.399-05:00

Gamer Girls is nonfiction. I bought my copy used.

Review:

In addition to the 25 women that this book covered in more depth, there were also short "side quest" sections that mentioned additional women. This covered several women I already knew something about (Robert Williams, Jane Jensen, and, in a "side quest" section, Christine Love), but also many, many that I'd never heard of before.

This was an engaging read, but also a little depressing, since it seemed like most of the women mentioned ended up leaving the video game industry for one reason or another, some more quickly than others.

I was delighted at the mention of otome game history and the Nancy Drew games. I think I've seen mentions of the Nancy Drew games in other video game history books I've read, but this is the first time I've encountered anything that talked about otome game history.

I didn't count how many women were actually mentioned in this, but, if you counted the "side quests" it was definitely more than 25. That said, some of the women mentioned in those "side quests" weren't actually involved in video game development but rather more broadly game development - the precursor to Monopoly, and Jenga, for example.

All in all, a good read that touched on aspects of video game history I haven't seen mentioned in some of the other video game history books I've read.

REVIEW: Platform Decay (book) by Martha Wells

2026-07-13T00:41:46.479-05:00

Platform Decay is the 8th entry in the Murderbot Diaries series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In this latest entry in the series, Murderbot is leading a rescue mission into corporate territory, with Three acting as a distraction. The mission isn't taking place on a planet, but considering the size of the station (a massive ring that encircles the decaying remains of a planet), it might as well be on a planet, and Murderbot isn't happy about the difficulties this causes. Honestly, Murderbot isn't happy about a lot in this particular book.

One of the things that struck me about the beginning of this book was how "off" Murderbot seemed, which I should have learned, by now, means that it's dealing with a lot of stress and emotions. Similar to previous entries in this series that have taken a little while to clue readers in on the full scope of whatever is going on, it takes a while before readers learn exactly who Murderbot is trying to rescue and how this situation came about in the first place.

I enjoyed this, although not as much as some of the previous entries in the series. Part of the issue is that I have been waiting for what feels like ages for Murderbot to finally be stationed on ART and dealing regularly with ART's crew only to, once again, get something else. Any Murderbot is better than no Murderbot, for sure, but...yeah.

This has no ART and also not much in the way of quiet, stress-free downtime in which Murderbot can just sit and watch serials. It does, however, feature Murderbot dealing with several children, including one who spends a good chunk of time clinging to Murderbot while it tries and fails to think of a way to gently remove it. There was something oddly adorable about that.

REVIEW: Home Office Romance (manga) by Kintetsu Yamada, translated by Matt Treyvaud

2026-07-13T00:16:30.922-05:00

Home Office Romance is a contemporary romance one-shot manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is technically set during pandemic lockdown times, but there's no sense of strict restrictions and very little talk of the pandemic itself - the time period is mostly just an excuse for Nokoru to suddenly be asked to work from home and for Natsu to find herself stuck in Japan, unable to go on digs due to travel restrictions.

Anyway, this manga is told from the POV of Nokoru, an exhausted and overworked systems engineer. When his company tells him he needs to start working from home, he's faced with the realization that he's spent so little time at his place that, even after living there a year, most of his stuff is still in boxes. He does his best to make his home, now his new work space, more livable, even going so far as to create an Angkor Wat-like paradise on his balcony.

It's during this time of working from home that Nokoru meets his neighbor, Natsu, a grad student in archaeology. Nokoru soon finds himself thinking about Natsu a lot, looking forward to opportunities to talk to her and spend time with her, and trying, in his awkward way, to figure out if she's as interested in him as he is in her.

Oof, I loved this! Nokoru was very serious, prone to overthinking, and very analytical in his approach to everything. Meanwhile, Natsu was more relaxed, although she had some worries of her own. She tended to be bolder, for example, initiating their first kiss.

I had avoided this volume for a while because the description made it sound like more of a pandemic story than it actually was. Nokoru and Natsu's developing romance was such a delight to read, thankfully, that I found myself going back and rereading it immediately after finishing it. You could see the exhaustion gradually melting from Nokoru's eyes as his relationship with Natsu deepened and he began rethinking his priorities.

One of my favorite bits involved Nokoru trying to figure out how to arrange a date with Natsu without getting in the way of her studies or research. The result was PreliminaryProposal.xlsx, simultaneously the nerdiest and most adorable thing ever.

And it certainly didn't hurt that the art was great, too. Man, this makes me want to dig up my Sweat & Soap volumes and finally finish that series. Yamada's romances are so good!

Extras:

Translation notes and an afterword by the author that talks a bit about the creation of the volume.

REVIEW: This Inevitable Ruin (book) by Matt Dinniman

2026-07-12T23:34:58.830-05:00

This Inevitable Ruin is the 7th book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In this book, it's time for the 9th floor, the Faction Wars, in which the Syndicate corporations and governments can take direct part in the game, fighting against each other and conscripting crawlers to their teams. This time around, however, both the crawlers and the NPCs have their own armies and have a chance at winning as well.

This is guaranteed to be a book of gut-wrenching and emotional developments, as Carl finally gets the opportunity to meet former Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook authors (although he still can't talk about the book, which leads to some confusing moments for his fellow crawlers), and Katia and Donut must finally deal with the consequences of those warnings on the Enchanted Crown of the Sepsis Whore.

As good as some developments in this book were, this is probably my least favorite in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series thus far. I read this series for the individual characters and their journeys, the creative floor setups, Carl's (and others') ingenuity, and the chance to one day hopefully see Carl and Donut take the entire World Crawl system down. Unfortunately, the first half (large chunk? I didn't keep track of when, exactly, things went a bit more back to "normal") of this book was more of a war novel, with lots of troop movement information and larger actions that Carl and Donut weren't necessarily directly involved in. Thankfully, the "war novel" aspects did eventually let up some, allowing the book to get back to the stuff I cared about more, but it was the closest I've come to finding anything in this series to be a true slog.

In one of the earlier books, Carl got a peek at what battles can look like on the later floors, and it was such a titanic clash of combatants that he had a hard time imagining ever getting to that point himself. I'm somewhat concerned that, as the in-game fights get bigger and the scope of everything gets broader, the series will start to lose the charm and fun of the earlier books. Plus, there's the issue of just how dark Dinniman is going to go. I don't really want to see both Carl and Donut die, but I also don't want to see them become broken shells of their former selves like several other surviving former crawlers we've seen.

Crossing my fingers for the next book.

REVIEW: Down a Dark Hall (book) by Lois Duncan

2026-07-06T00:09:02.534-05:00

Down a Dark Hall is YA horror. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

Kit is about to go to an exclusive boarding school, Blackwood School for Girls. Ordinarily, she would have been excited, but she'd found out that her friend Tracy hadn't been accepted and had been dreading going ever since.

The school, which used to be a private residence, is impressive-looking, but Kit can't help but think of the word "evil" when she sees it. There's just something about it. She's one of the first arrivals, so she hopes that it'll feel more welcoming once the other girls are there. It's a shock when she learns that there are only three other students besides her: Sandy, who Kit instantly bonds with, and Ruth and Lynda, who'd previously gone to school together.

What makes the four of them so special that only they were accepted to this school? It's only the first of many questions Kit has about the school as more and more strange things happen.

I Know What You Did Last Summer may be Duncan's better known work, but I thought that this was a better book overall. I enjoyed the creepy atmosphere, and, while the ghost bits weren't unexpected, things did go in a different direction than I expected.

I didn't have the musical knowledge necessary to guess which composers Duncan might have been referencing, but I did have a few guesses as to authors, which added to the overall horror of the story.

One thing I should note: Kit had a crush on her piano teacher, who seemed to be developing feelings for her in turn. He was the youngest of the teachers, but still, he was an adult and her teacher, so there were a few red flags there. However, nothing ever happened between them.

REVIEW: Hit and Run (book) by R.L. Stine

2026-07-05T23:30:45.232-05:00

Hit and Run is YA horror originally published in 1992. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

This stars a group of teens: Cassie (a girl who has a sorta kinda crush on Scott, although she hates the way his laugh sounds), Scott (an all-around kind of guy, more of a follower than a leader), Eddie (timid, poor, and often picked on), and Winks (a prankster).

The group decides to go practice driving - illegally, since none of them have their licenses, but they figure it should be fine since they've picked a fairly empty stretch of road. It goes mostly okay until Eddie is behind the wheel and Winks pulls a mean prank on him, making him think something is in the road. The experience is clearly upsetting for Eddie, and yet it's Eddie who, not too much later, suggests that they all go out and practice again. It seems he wants to prove that he wasn't too scared that one time, although he does make Winks promise to behave himself.

When Eddie takes his turn driving, however, he really does hit someone this time. They drag the man to the side of the road and try to pretend it never happened, but then everybody but Scott starts to getting calls and messages, apparently from the dead man. Has he come back to get revenge, or is there something else going on?

Stine's efforts to hide the truth weren't very effective - I didn't guess how things were done (because who would do that, it was insane!), but it wasn't hard to tell who was likely behind it all.

Man, literally all the guys in this book were horrible human beings. Their "pranks" were all more examples of a gruesome lack of empathy than anything actually funny.

This was like I Know What You Did Last Summer, but with extra jerkishness. Also, this really did feel enough like Lois Duncan's book that I felt like R.L. Stine should have credited her as an influence.

REVIEW: Sōseki Nasume's I Am a Cat: The Manga Edition (manga) retold and illustrated by Chiroru Kobato, translated by Zack Davisson

2026-07-05T22:33:29.168-05:00

This is a manga adaptation of Sōseki Nasume's I Am a Cat, originally serialized between 1905 and 1906. I bought my copy new.

This review includes spoilers.

Review:

The whole thing is told from the point-of-view of an unnamed cat, who was found as a kitten and taken in by a teacher named Kushami. The cat observes the various goings on of Kushami's household. There's Meitei, a friend of Kushami's who likes to make things up just to see if Kushami will believe him. There's Mizushima Kangetsu, a former pupil of Kushami's, who has supposedly caught the eye of Kaneda Tomiko, the stuck up daughter of a businessman. Tomiko's mother has a nose so large that Kushami has nicknamed her Lady Nose.

The situation between Kangetsu, Tomiko, and Tomiko's parents is a bit of a mess, with Tomiko's mother only willing to accept Kangetsu as Tomiko's husband if he gets his doctorate. Meanwhile, Kangetsu is cheerfully dragging his feet. There is much joking about Tomiko's mother's large nose (and efforts to convince Kangetsu not to marry Tomiko, since her nose may eventually grow to match), not that Kangetsu seems all that interested in Tomiko in the first place.

I haven't read the original novel. From what I can tell online, it's considered a classic and is a satirical work that pokes fun at the lives of middle-class Japanese people during the Meiji era.

Unfortunately, Tuttle Publishing just let the work stand on its own, with no additional translator's notes or cultural notes. Just based on what I've read about the original novel on Wikipedia, I think this was a mistake. An additional section contextualizing the work and explaining certain sections would have been helpful.

Taken on its own, it's a manga with passable art (although the cat occasionally has legs short enough that he looked a bit like a Munchkin breed), a mildly ridiculous and also kind of boring story, and a few weirdly tragic moments. While the humans are off joking about noses and talking about marriage, one cat passes away from a sudden illness, and the POV cat gets drunk and drowns to death.

I suppose I like cats too much, and reading this for the cats is a bit like reading, say, Animal Farm for the animals. At any rate, I wasn't left with an urge to try the original book.