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JOMP BPC || July 3 || Bookmarks:

"It's Not Hoarding If It's Bookmarks!"

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JOMP Book Photo Challenge

July 03 - Bookmarks 🔖

Bookmarks I've made during work calls while disassociating...

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🌺🗡☀️💀 Summertime Reading 💀☀️🗡🌺

“If you look just right then perhaps they won’t ask you any tricky questions. They may not discover that the cavalier of the House of the Ninth is an illiterate peon. Hold your mouth closed.” Gideon held her mouth closed and, once Harrow was done, said: “I object to illiterate.” “Pinup rags aren’t literature, Nav.” “I read them for the articles.”

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"A glimmer of fish scales.

A splash from a colorful fin.

The echo of a mysterious song across the water."

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queerlybelovedbooks on Instagram

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“In a different story, would we still have been enemies?”

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Blue Flag was the perfect book to end the year on. The manga follows a third year high schooler named Taichi Ichinose. One day he decides to help the shy girl from his class, Futaba Kuze, even though he doesn’t like her because she reminds him of himself. That leads to him finding out she has a crush on the popular guy in school, Toma Mita, who happens to be his childhood best friend that he is no longer close with. After seeing how determined she is, Taichi agrees to help her and as he helps her he starts to fall for her. Unbeknownst to both of them though is that Toma actually has a crush on Taichi and Futaba’s best friend, Masumi Itachi, has a crush on her. I absolutely loved this story. I was invested from beginning to end. All of the characters were so lovable. Taichi was a great protagonist. He’s a little pessimistic, but I like seeing negative people become more positive. Futaba was so adorable. Her eagerness to grow and achieve her goal was inspiring. Toma was a sweetheart. Watching him try so hard to continue to be friends with Taichi, who believes they live in two different worlds, made my heart ache. He has such a good heart for a jock. Masumi was admittedly kind of a jerk, but I still ended up liking her because of how protective she is of Futaba. I hope she’s as prominent in the story as the other three. For someone who doesn’t like love triangles I’m enjoying this one so far. It helps that it’s not obnoxious and that I like all the characters. The way I would prefer it to go is Taichi ending up with Toma (that bus scene!) and Futaba ending up with Masumi (I’m a sucker for protective characters). I would love to see two queer couples be the main relationships in a shoujo manga. I’m gonna keep my expectations low though because I’m sure with Taichi already falling for Futaba they’ll end up together. Both of them are great too, so if they are endgame I won’t be too salty. The art was great. I liked how most of the character designs felt original. After reading a lot of shoujo manga it starts to seem like there are many similarities between the main characters of each, but this manga managed to avoid that. Both Futaba and Taichi were such little cuties. Futaba was often compared to a hamster and it definitely worked. I loved the height difference between them and Toma because he is a giant. I’m glad this was the last book I read in 2021 because it had everything I wanted. I want to read volume 2 right away but only if I can get my hands on a physical copy. Why am I only reading manga that my store doesn’t have volume 2 of? This is the second one this month. Why am I doing this to myself? I definitely plan on snatching it up as soon as it comes in though.

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Title: Babel | Author: R.F. Kuang | Publisher: Harper Voyager (2022)

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Pov: you grew up reading weird fantasy in the early 2000s

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My first read of 2023 was a dnf which sucks. It was Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor. I know I’ve never been a big fan of literary fiction, but I still found the premise really intriguing. I only got 70 pages in before I had to call it quits though. For a book that long it was starting way too slowly and I didn’t like any of the characters. I skimmed the rest of it to see if it got any better and it didn’t. The plot seemed way too annoyingly convoluted so I’m glad I called it quits. Still disappointing though since I was excited to read it. Not a great start to my reading year.

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Blue Phobia

Tsuruyoshi Eri

18 chapters (completed)

action, supernatural, psychological, horror

“Numerous prisoners were sent to mine a mysterious ore which lies underneath a certain island in the middle of an ocean, but after some time turns out there's something strange about the ore. The more you touch it the more it changes your skin and bones into a blue-ish color, and in the end, your entire body will turn into a strange ore.

The people who sent the prisoners, set up a research facility to do various experiments on them and treated them like test subjects.

The story starts when one of the researchers Kai, tries to help one of the patients escape.”

(Source: AniList)

Story: 8/10

This was a really good story. I love this type of setting, where the protagonists are in a laboratory/ prison type of place and the antagonist is always somewhat linked to the government. I don’t really know if there’s a name for this genre, but I enjoy it a lot. It made me think of Shokuryou Jinrou in a way. Although I got the impression that the end was a bit rushed, it was still pleasant.

Art: 8/10

The art was really pretty!! Everything looked really clean and the background was also detailed which is a good point. The monsters were creepy and made me uneasy, I really enjoyed that!

Cast: 6/10

The story and the art were good and I loved them a lot, but the casting was not up to the expectations. The main character was okay-ish but the female protagonist? She was literally absent from the story. She was useless in a way, that is very sad because she could have contributed so much to the plot. Unfortunately, the protagonist overshadows her.

Enjoyment: 7/10

It was a very good read. I feel like the ending was hastily. It seems that the mangaka was planning to release more chapters, but it got canceled. At some point we get this interesting character with a charadesign that might belong to the main cast but he ends up never speaking? When I first saw him I really thought he would join the protagonist but absolutely not. There are a lot of little details like that that make me think that the author must have written the ending very quickly and it's really sad. With a few more volumes this manga would have been 10/10.

Overall: 7/10

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Completely forgot about this post but I ended up watching The Sandman before reading the comics, oops ��� The show was absolutely amazing though and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a new fantasy show. All the actors played their roles terrifically and had great chemistry with each other. The story started off strong and kept getting better with each episode. My second favorite show this year after Our Flag Means Death. Can’t wait for the next season!

For the first time in a really long time do I feel the urge to read the source material of a new TV show that’s being adapted from a book, and that is The Sandman. I think the last time I felt this way was when Love, Simon came out, and even then I didn’t feel the urge to read the book before I saw the movie. The trailer for The Sandman just looks so awesome and I’ve always been on the fence about reading the comics that seeing that trailer finally made me want to pick them up. I definitely want to read the comics before I see the show though.

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I really shouldn’t start another book seeing that I’m currently in the middle of four and I’m trying to finish them all before the end of the year. Not to mention the fact that I’ve been in a year long reading slump which has slowed my reading pace significantly. Despite all of that, I just really want to read a book that I’m excited about but if I start another book I’ll stress myself out more so I better not. 

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Jonathan my good friend Jonathan Harker

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“I mean, most people want to escape. Get out of their heads. Out of their lives. Stories are the easiest way to do that.”

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Lucian Darnay

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Most of the books I read May-August!