simonlorden's reviews
1280 reviews

A trans woman's visual diary from the beginning of her transition, with a little comic strip for each day. It's all about small, everyday moments and occurences, but that's why it's interesting. It shows the joy and relief of finally being yourself, but also that transition isn't lineral, and you can still get people misgendering you even when you're full time as your gender and most people gender you correctly.

I read this for a book club but it gave me nothing except depression. It's all about religious homophobia and horrible hate crimes, and how gay people are just people, etc. Obviously in the country where it's set those are radical thoughts, so I'm not saying the book itself is bad, but I don't feel like I personally gained anything from it.

I think I might have liked this better if I read it at once. Somehow, every time I put it down and picked it back up, I liked it a little less. I wasn't vibing with the humour, especially Fanny's name and her little nicknames. (Whoever names their kid Fanny Pack OR Wolf Pack should be arrested for child abuse, honestly.)

The base concept is interesting: it's all about software testing, only the software involves sex toys. A mix of professionalism and sex, which leads to awkward, funny, and probably super inappropriate workplace interactions. I also liked the videogame-developer plotline, and the guinea pigs were probably my favorites.

New Wayward Children book!

Nadya is a Russian girl who was born with one hand, and she never felt she lacked anything until she got an awkward prosthetic arm she didn't want. It's a good lesson that sometimes you genuinely want to help someone, but you're offering something that doesn't actually help them, and you should maybe ask them what they want. Also, sometimes parents have this image of what is appropriate for a kid and they don't care what the kid actually wants, like when you want a turtle and your parents get you a cat and you don't even like cats.

Nadya's world is a world of rivers and lakes and talking foxes and giant turtles carrying ships. I love water-y worlds, so I liked this one a lot, and I also liked Nadya. But now I can't help wondering what will happen when she returns, since growth happens differently on the two sides of the door.

I received an ARC through NetGalley and this is my voluntary and honest review.

Maya is a comic book artist who is struggling to finish a comic about a girl saving the world from aliens. Then suddenly, the aliens attack, and she has to save the world with the help of a friendly alien, Soma. There's also Maya's friend Juu who gets caught up in the chaos and has to survive in the city under siege by aliens.

There's a lot of fight scenes, and some of the pages were too busy for me to really see what was going on. But the character designs were nice, and I liked the ending.

Overall a nice way to spend an afternoon.

A slice-of-life manga about two gay men living together, one of whom is out at work and the other is not. There's some discussion of LGBT rights and gay people in Japan, and looots of baking.

I saw other reviews call this book fatphobic because Toshi makes low-calorie snacks for Gonta and scolds him when he eats too much. I don't think Toshi is being controlling - I think Gonta is trying to lose weight and Toshi is actually being supportive by taking that into consideration in his baking. That being said, it was pretty uncomfortable to read all the calorie talk, and equating calories with health, so there's definitely some fatphobia here, but I don't think the relationship itself is toxic or that Toshi is doing it on purpose. 

Megan moves to a new place where her new house floods, her shop gets broken into after one day, and someone gets murdered. And she still has time for a love triangle.

I liked that Megan was initially afraid of dogs, but she still ended up bonding with and adopting a stray. It was an okay book, though I found it a bit slow, especially the beginning. Also, Megan as an amateur "detective" definitely does a few stupid things that she could have gotten killed or arrested for.

Really cool treasure box of a book, with mysteries, riddles, maps and more. Beautiful illustrations. I like that it emphasizes that dragonologists should work to protect and preserve the remaining dragons instead of hurting or killing them.

My least favorite part is the spells at the end, since some of the ingredients there promote animal cruelty, which goes against the rest of the book.

An interesting POV on selkie stories.

Enemies-to-lovers couple with a kid on the run? LIE CAT? Grumpy assassin saving a little girl from prostitution? I want to keep reading but these volumes are expensive af