Review: A Shocker on Shock Street

A Shocker on Shock Street by R.L. Stine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Twin towers reached up to the sky" oh girl

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Oct 2026 Book Stats

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman - Full Universe

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

• My rating: 4 of 5 stars
• Read: Mar 12, 2024

This series was recommended to me by Kaz, so I'll be including links to each of their reviews. Here is their review of the first book! (They have a lot of more interesting & funny reading notes than me, I suggest reading over them.)

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

• My rating: 4 of 5 stars
• Read: May 09, 2024
• Kaz's Review.

The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

• My rating: 5 of 5 stars
• Read: Jun 04, 2024
• Kaz's Review.
• My review:

aHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

(Very authentic, as you can see.)

I agree with Kaz's sentiments that the third book is the best in the series. However, while Kaz's review is mostly about the fantastical aspect of the story, I mostly think that this book shines in its character work. It's wonderful to see the growth Quinten, our main character, has across the decade-or-so this series covers, and giving him a paternal relationship with the secondary narrator of this story was an excellent decision.

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Comics

The Magicians: Alice's Story by Lev Grossman, illustrated by Plus Bak

• My rating: 5 of 5 stars
• Read: Jan 11, 2025
• Kaz has not read the comics

I found this to be one of the most enjoyable entires of the series, rivaling The Magician's Land for my top spot overall. The art is gorgeous, to the point that I have the button art saved as my laptop's background. Alice is the star of this show, and she's never been more interesting. This comic tells the tale of the original novel from her point of view, eliminating the hurdle of Quinten's pov and allowing a more intimate look at her personal journey. This solidified her as my favorite character in the series, and that love was only heightened by her role in the third novel. *chef's kiss*

The New Class

(Yes, it does annoy me that the covers for the five comic issues aren't the same height.)

The Magicians: New Class by Lilah Sturges, illustrated by Plus Bak

• Unrated.
• Read: Jun 10, 2025

I remember being mostly underwhelemed by these comics. I got through all five issues in one sitting, and the only note I left on any of them was me tagging the final issue as "queer lit". The art was beautiful, of course, since this comic run had the same illustrator as Alice's Story, but it didn't live up to it's predecessor.

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Show

I will admit I haven't seen very much of the TV show. I watched the first season before I started reading the books and it wasn't really for me. But that's okay, since Kaz is a much bigger fan of it than myself!

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Other Stuff!

https://www.tumblr.com/utopia-and-broken-cynics/773436009724706816/rank-the-magicians-books

https://www.tumblr.com/utopia-and-broken-cynics/772421264103145472/whats-your-favorite-moment-from-the-magicians

• Kaz's Magaicians fics (via their Tumblr writing blog, as this post is being written during the great AO3 blackout of 2026)
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Blog update! Subscription feed!

I have a very exciting update for everyone! For a few months now, I've had a little "Following" widget on the bottom of this blog's sidebar, because I thought it would give anyone who followed this blog notifications when I posted something new. But! It turns out that

1. It does NOT give you any sort of notification about new posts
2. It forces you to make a Blogger account, which is what this blog was made through.

So that widget is no more! Instead, I took the time to figure out how to make a subscription feed of my own. Please know that I do not have access to anyone who may or may not sign up for it, so you don't have to worry about that. If you want to know when I post new stuff, just put your email into the widget now at the top of the website's sidebar, or down below on this post!

Get New Posts By E-Mail!

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Happy reading!

Review: The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for one instant, in one being, let Your enormous Library be justified."

This story is just as good as you've always heard it is. Ignore how short it is, because its scope spans well into the page space of a reader's own mind. I've previously read A Short Stay in Hell, which directly attributes its inspiration to this short story. While that novella is about 100 pages long, it, too, fails to encapsulate the magnitude of this world. The novella paints this world as a Hell earned through simply worshipping the wrong religion in life, whereas this original story paints the Library as a universe in and of itself, and so takes on a religious meaning of its own. Its infinite books are to be worshipped, to be pursued in a Manifest Destiny-esque race towards a mythic hexagon, to be lusted over by the ignorant. But they are never to be understood, no matter how much weight is put into understanding by the desperate.

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Review: Mary Sue by Meghan Fitzmartin

Mary Sue by Meghan Fitzmartin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I unironically believe anyone in fandom that isn't already aware of the history behind Mary Sues should read this, especially if they're younger or far newer to fandom. Also I NEED A SEQUEL RIGHT NOW WHAT WAS THAT ENDING.

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• Quotes from the comic (I uploaded them!)
• Books releated to fandom topics.

Review: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I, too, would have been harassed by a guy named Bram Bones for trying to gain the favor of a cool historical dress reconstructionist alt girl

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