Bookblr @read-alert - Tumblr Blog

Figured I should get around to making an introduction post! I'm Ellis, and I use any pronouns.

I read across genres and try to read pretty diversely. Starting in 2025, I post reviews of everything I read, and other than that most of what I post is monthly TBRs and wrap ups, as well as the occasional themed recommendation post. Most unique thing about my blog is that I include comic books and picture books in my reading and reviews.

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Reading challenges:

Read the World

No more white authors in 2026

Read 20 of the 100 books that have been on my tbr the longest

My 2026 bingo (Original prompt list)

Batmanisagatewaydrug's bingo

Currently reading:

How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity by La Marr Jurelle Bruce

Girlfriends by Emily Zhou

May Wrap Up! My favorite of the month was Lucy, and A Girl is a Body of Water and Unmarriageable covered Uganda and Pakistan for my Read the World Challenge!

#bookblr #monthly wrap up #may wrap up

aliciadreaming

We have until June 5th yo make out voices heard for libraries

The American Library Association is leading the charge for libraries. Librarians, information professionals, and everyone who loves them mus

Don't just vote this primary season also call your congressppl!!!!

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

This is a novella following Lucy, an Antiguan woman who has moved to New York to become an au pair for a wealthy couple and struggles to adjust to such a different world and with the lingering issues from her strained relationship with her mother.

This was really good! Obviously, Kincaid is an excellent writer and though short, her books all pack a punch in their critiques of colonialism. I liked how this one paralleled the abusive mother-daughter dynamic with that of the wealthy white couple exploiting her labor and the colonialist nature of the relationship between England and Antigua and Barbuda. Lucy's struggle to become independent of all of these forces resulting in her mother calling her the devil also draws an explicit connection in how the enforcement of Christianity on colonized nations was and is used as a tool of control and to demonize anyone who does not submit to authority. To that end, Lucy also further deconstructs her relationship to these entities by so thoroughly flouting Christian morality in her casual sexual relationships with men, her laissez faire attitude towards abortion, and the intense homoeroticism in her relationships with women.

The book also works on a simple character study level as well, with Lucy being an enthralling, living character, but as with all of Kincaid's work, it truly shines in its thorough deconstruction of colonialist forces and attitudes. 5⭐️

#bookblr #dedicated review #lucy

I need to write a review for Lucy but I'm so sleepy. So instead I'll keep mindlessly scrolling tumblr for another hour

I think I'm gonna DNF Role Playing. Obviously it's a given that pretty much every romance novel is going to have a degree of amatonormativity to it, but it hits different when both protagonists repeatedly say that they are not interested in dating and everyone around them acts like that makes them broken- which should be a setup to say that you can live a perfectly happy life without romance, except this is a romance novel, so everytime they have that conversation, I get hit with the dread of knowing they are going to be proven wrong and that they will be happier with each other

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat Volume 5 by Sakaomi Yuzaki trans by Caleb Cook

This is the fifth volume of a slice of life series where neighbors bond over their love of food and eventually fall in love with each other. In this one, Kasuga and Nomoto move in together and begin building their life as a couple.

This was so cute!!! As is typical for this series, it can be really corny, especially when it is very clearly actively trying to avoid being even slightly ProblematicTM, but luckily it is adorable enough to make up for that. It also continues the thread of addressing more serious issues like housing discrimination, heteronormativity, and the psychological impact of being closeted, which it incorporates well into the romance. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that this volume isn't the end like I thought it was. I definitely picked the right time to get into the series though, because it looks like another volume is set to release this summer after a two year hiatus, and I'm glad I didn't have to wait that long! Cheesiness aside, this series is very fun and I look forward to continuing it! 4⭐️

#bookblr #dedicated review #she loves to cook and she loves to eat

read-alert

I'm gonna give it one more chapter to try to grab me before I decide whether to DNF, but I'm not digging the writing style of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls so far

read-alert

So clearly it took more than a chapter to decide, but I am DNFing it

I'm gonna give it one more chapter to try to grab me before I decide whether to DNF, but I'm not digging the writing style of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls so far

Behind My Doors: The Story of the World's Oldest Library by Hena Khan and Nabila Adani

This is a picture book told from the perspective of Al-Qarawiyyin Library, the oldest library in world, founded in 859 in Morocco. It tells the story of its founding, how it fell into disrepair, and how it was recently restored.

This was really fun! I had never heard of this library before coming across this book, but the history contained in it is really interesting, and I find the choice to narrate the book from the library's perspective so charming. I also love that the library continually highlights the community it is a part of, and all of the artwork is absolutely gorgeous. Like all picture books, it's a bite sized read, but I loved it and definitely recommend it! 5⭐️

#bookblr #dedicated review #behind my doors

The Tear Collector by RM Romero

This is a fantasy middle grade novel where after climate change has flooded the world, the residents of a mountain-turned-island believe themselves to be the last people on Earth. The despair they feel has caused a disease called the Sorrow to take hold, transforming people into animal-like creatures. Siblings Malka and Ezra have been taken in by a doctor on the island who hopes to cure the Sorrow by researching tears, an increasingly pressing need, since Ezra has the Sorrow. When an airplane crashes on the island bringing news of other survivors, the siblings start to hope again, but while they repair the plane, the sinister Mr Gray who rules the island begins working against them.

This was alright. It's my fifth RM Romero book, and unfortunately none of the subsequent ones have quite lived up to the magic of The Ghosts of Rose Hill, including this one. I've still enjoyed my time with Romero's work, but I do always find myself a little disappointed when they don't reach the heights of that first experience. That said, Romero certainly knows her niche and has succeeded in crafting yet another melancholy, intoxicating fairytale. She's very talented in weaving together a desolate yet dreamlike tone throughout her novels that really capture the loneliness of childhood.

This one may be the most successful in illustrating the violence of the way children are treated and dismissed, thought of as extentions of their guardians rather than their own people. All of Romero's works feature a sinister man preying on neglected children left to fend for themselves by adults too busy, too wrapped up in their own grief, or too cowardly to protect the children, but this one features two such men who leverage the power they have been given over the children to try to make themselves more important. Whilst the fantastical circumstances mean the ways these men hurt Malka and Ezra never quite crosses the line into realistic child abuse, that's clearly the central idea of the novel, and I think it handles it deftly for its age range- though it doesn't get quite as radical family abolition, it does make clear the issue of adults having such power over children.

The central theme of preserving hope through the darkest times and how hope and love cannot be forcibly created but rather reinforced by the presence of one another ties in well with how the children are held down by such painful circumstances but always support each other. The cli-fi elements also tie into this refrain of hope by positing that the best way to take care of the planet is to look towards the future and plan to manifest what you want it to look like, even if that means radically readjusting the world as it is in the meantime. The Tear Collector isn't my favorite of Romero's works and it doesn't get quite as radical as I would prefer in terms of youth-lib or climate preservation, but I nonetheless think that it succeeds in its goals and that it was an enjoyable enough read. 3.5⭐️

#bookblr #dedicated review #the tear collector

gabibookworm

Today is the start of Latine Heritage Month and Independence Day in El Salvador (and other Central American countries). Growing up, I never had any books about El Salvador and I'm glad there are books now that can connect me to the country of my heritage!

Blood Orange by Yaffa As

This is a poetry collection written in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, centering Yaffa's experiences as a trans Palestinian.

This was a phenomenal collection, to the point that shortly after finishing it, I went back and reread the whole thing again. However, it is also incredibly short, and without more material to really pull apart, I can't say much more for the collection than simply: read it. 5⭐️

#bookblr #dedicated review #blood orange

On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard

This is a sci fi novella. Linh is the magistrate in a galactic empire forced to flee from her planet and seek refuge on Prosper Station, a station run by her distant relatives, with day to day operations being overseen by the artificial intelligence recreation of one of their ancestors and by Quyen, a cousin by marriage whom Linh sees as inferior. With missing memory implants recording their other ancestors, the Honoured Ancestress AI failing, and more issues plaguing the station, the two cousins must fight to keep the station functioning despite their hatred for each other.

This was fun! I really liked Quyen and Linh's dynamic, how much they hated each other, and the clusterfuck of chess moves they try to make against one another. That said, the actual plot felt pretty slow for a novella, and the short length means that some of the more intriguing political aspects aren't delved into too deeply. Regardless, it's definitely a fun introduction to this universe that I know de Bodard has expanded greatly upon in other works, and this one was certainly compelling enough to get me to want to read more of the series. 3.5⭐️

#bookblr #dedicated review #on a red station drifting