Like the people whose birthday falls on or near a holiday, they’re often overlooked (but not always!) Books hit readers at opportune times or speak to an experience that connects to their life in a meaningful way. Here are a few that I wanted to give a little extra love to.
The creative juices flowing in these stories in how they’re told and what focus they took were what made these stellar additions to the top books of 2023 for teens.
You’ll notice the only format I didn’t focus specifically on was manga. I read widely in this format as well but often the series have been longstanding and thus not specifically published in 2023. There are always new series coming out as well but it’s hard to pinpoint publication when they are published in the United States. Yet I couldn’t not talk about my favorites of the year that may or may not have been published in 2023, but were read in 2023.
The day before Thanksgiving I turned the page to chapter 40 (a bookish pun I couldn’t resist). Coming up on the day, I thought about the fun little things I could do to make it special because I was excited about moving to another age bracket. So I came up with a list of 40 books that I would reread this year– generally books I own because books I own are books that I had previously read and knew I needed to own.
But I admit that I rarely reread books. It’s either a committee assignment that forces a book reread, an upcoming author visit, or in the case of Saga, a comfort read during the pandemic. It’s still rare. Yet, I wanted to recapture the feelings I had years or decades ago with this retrospective over the course of this upcoming year.
These books have changed my thinking, warmed my soul, or hearken back to another time in my life. I’ll be updating my journey periodically on Instagram. Here were the books I settled on.
In a recent professional development, the portmanteau romantasy was dropped and in the last 48 hours I’ve used it and seen it used in publisher emails. With the publication of certain new titles that are making book nerds swoon, it has officially entered the lexicon heavily. Then there are the romance titles which have been heavily requested for the last several years. And happy love stories that lay on the cuteness. Here’s a short list of some favorites in the three categories:
A First Time for Everything by Santat– cuteness
You Bet Your Heart by Parker– romance
Always Never by Lafebre– romance
Julieta and the Romeos by Andreu– romance
Horimiya by Hero– romance
The Princess and the Grilled Cheese by Muniz– cuteness
Finally the boxes arrived! We had a teaser box come the day before- the final box of the order arriving before the first set of boxes were shipped. Of all of the books in the boxes, I’ve been looking for one in particular– volume three of Fangirl: The Graphic Novel who has had an eager reader asking daily about when it will arrive. So my first free moment today, I started tearing into the nine boxes. Can you guess which box had the book in it? You’re right, the LAST box I opened.
Knowing that we have a set of ninth grade classes coming in tomorrow for their second round of books for independent reading, I wanted to try to get as many stickered as possible so we can lend as many as we can. Simply because nothing beats that new book smell.
Among the newly published, repurchases, and additional copies– some of my favorites that I spied in the boxes include:
Anatomy by Dana Schwartz
Promise Boys by Nick Brooks
The Hate U Give and On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Death Note volumes 1-13 by Tsugumi Ohba
The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson AND Carrie by Stephen King
Yesterday during Japanese Culture Club, after the opening “what’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish?” and general announcements, we wanted to share out our favorite manga- manga we’re most thankful for. These were just a few–
Today I finished Elise Bryant’s 2021 Happily Ever Afters after being introduced to her work when I read the lovely Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling and immediately knew I needed to go back to read Bryant’s previous books.
This one celebrates the friends to lovers trope that is just as juicy as an enemies to lovers. In this one Tessa finds that Sam has all the elements of a good companion including being compassionate to her disabled older brother, being an amazing baker, and a caring guy willing to stand up for her and be wholly himself.
In addition, here are few others that are both enemies to lovers and friends to lovers tropes to check out if you’re interested. Which trope is your favorite?
Local indie bookstores are the best. It’s a place where community events celebrate reading culture, books and tangential reading items can be purchased for personal delight or as a gift, and everybody knows your name? Yes, well there are a few booksellers at my local bookstore that I’ve known for years both in a professional capacity and a personal one.
I was delighted during a recent visit that Cheryl remembered my love for the manga series Witch Hat Atelier and she mentioned that the spinoff series Witch Hat Atelier Kitchen was coming out. She said she’d order one for me if I wanted. Absolutely!
Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. In chilly upstate New York weather I drove on over after getting the call and I’m now the proud owner of the first volume in the new series.
Thank you to The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza for being a friend! Plus, for the cheap seats in the back, local indie bookstores are the best.
Amassed several weeks ago, I had five manga recommended and/or selected that have to do with witches that I decided to read Monday through Friday of the week prior to Halloween to get in season. Here’s a mini review of each of the five.
Monday— Wandering Witch by Jougi Shiraishi had an intriguing premise of Elaina journeying across towns and countries encountering unique people and living situations. However, each felt more like a vignette than a cohesive story.
Tuesday— Burn the Witch by Tite Kubo which was less about witches and more about dragons and a shadow realm called Reverse London. It was a bit of a bait-and-switch and therefore disappointing.
Wednesday— Daily Report About My Witch Senpai by Maka Mochida had an adorable love story between Shizuka and Misono. Manga is always fun when presented as a romantic comedy then throw in some magic with witches flying on brooms and I’m taken away. Plus, when I crush on a character’s style, I know it’s a manga I enjoyed.
Thursday— Little Witch Academia by Yoh Yoshinari, Keisuke Sato, and Trigger was much better as an anime having watched it several years back. There was a brightness to Akko in the anime that isn’t as pronounced as in the manga however I did fall back in love with her new classmate friends Lotte and Sucy.
Friday— Witch Hat Atelier volume 11 by Kamome Shirahama I purposely waited until Friday to read after picking it up from the bookstore two weeks ago after it finally came in after publishing pushed it back a little. I own the series because I love the world of the atelier and witches, specifically the effervescent Coco who I cosplayed at an event last year. As the series continues, there is a darker angle and this one was more filler for the subsequent action that will come in future volume. Nonetheless, there were some full page spreads from Silver Eve that remind me of the magic of previous volumes.
Do you have any favorite witchy manga for my TBR for next year?
More than a decade ago, I took on our high school’s Anime Club not knowing much more than I loved many of the students since they were library regulars and needed an advisor. This is when it was simply a club of otakus watching anime and needing a place to hang.
It has morphed more times than I can count over the last fifteen years including a name change last year to Japanese Culture Club. We were watching less anime and spending more time on other pursuits such as drawing, attending cons, and gaming. But there were years with plenty of Pokemon and others where we borrowed the gym to do some epic cosplay. We even survived a year and a half of virtual club during the pandemic (hello, Among Us).
During this time, my reading life morphed as well, as it does with most readers over time. I was reading more nonfiction for sure, but also diving headlong into graphic novels and manga mixed with YA fiction and children’s books. I have always enjoyed manga more than anime and like the best attempts at making a movie out of a fantastic book, I often do not watch the anime of manga I love for fear of the same issues that rear their head with books to movies. And in presentations with other librarians, I talk heavily about giving manga a chance for those that just “don’t get it.”
Enter my teenage son, Max. Both of my teen sons are bookish, but in different ways and this is evident in their divergent reading choices. Newfound friends, his love of origami, and a more popular culture lean toward anime and manga have driven him to copiously consuming both. He’s borrowing stacks of volumes of manga and squeezing in episodes of his favorite anime. He’s buying tshirts with iconography from his favorites as he moved into high school this year. He attended a Comic Con last year when I was there with a group of my Japanese Culture Club students. He wanted me to take pictures of our library’s manga collection to see if there are series he hasn’t read. He sought out the manga section of all thirty-six libraries that we visited this summer as part of a local expedition challenge in our area. And he’s definitely got thoughts on his high school library’s selections.
What matters the most are the conversations he and I are having about what we’re reading. If I borrowing a first volume of a series, I usually slide it over to him before I return it. He’s doing the same for me. And it benefits me in more ways because my clientele at school is now my son, just at a different school. I am indebted to him for making me look cooler than I am because he’s borrowing manga that I am now being asked to buy for my library. Plus, it’s the shared moments of dinner time or random conversations about plot, character, romance, or gore that I’m discovering more about him than I would simply by asking him how his day was.
I am a manga reader more than an anime watcher, which is only half useful for understanding all of the references my students have in Japanese Culture Club, but that’s okay. Reading is my jam so it’s natural to lean on manga more than anime.
For several reasons since school let out for summer, it’s become manga summer. I’m still reading many books for my committee work and plenty for preparing for upcoming presentations, but also plenty of manga. Thank God for the public library– several intensely stocked libraries who I lean on for filling up my TBR queue.
Here are three things I have learned about manga from the thirty I’ve read so far this summer:
The sheer volume of manga publications means that just like any genre, subgenre, or type of book, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly. I won’t like them all and that’s okay.
It’s rare to find standalones, but when I do, there’s something a little special about them that I cherish more than the serialized manga.
Fa-SHUN. I basically want the closets of more than half of the characters in the stories.
Readers Be Advised 