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jackie 🐻 📖

@nightmarebees

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📚fantasy | romance | horror | lgbtq+
🏫librarian in training
📍US - kickapoo & potawatomi land
🎨pfp: @j.sgrey

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✨free yourself from anti-DNF rhetoric✨

had some thoughts when i was supposed to be working on a paper. i think about this a lot, but especially seeing that 6-5-4-3-2-1 trend where a lot of people were putting 1 stars and DNFs on the same page. they’re just not the same thing, imho.

have you ever made yourself finish a book, or pushed through a “hate read?” did it feel worth it at the end? for me, it usually doesn’t. drop your thoughts and most obscure DNF reasons below.

🏷️
#booksta #bookstagram #smallbookstagrammer #bibliophile #booklover #bookworm #dnf #dnfbooks #dumpthatbook #readerthoughts #bookishthoughts #bookish #bookedit #fantasybooks #YAbooks #fantasyreader #horrorreader #romancereader #unpopularopinion #booksbooksbooks #bookrecs by @nightmarebees

🎶oh yeah / you need / some super graphic ultra modern books like these🎶

i keep seeing reels of her STUNNING costumes from laneway in nz and i was inspired to do another one of these. i had so much fun last time with looks from sabrina’s eics tour, so i should really do these more often. maybe with collections from some designers i like? idk. girls and clothes are pretty.

books pictured:
Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare
A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera
A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid
The Mask Falling by Samantha Shannon
House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin E. Craig
Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
Fireborne by Rosaria Munda
Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri
Bone of My Bone by Johanna van Veen
Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens
The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem
A Long Time Dead by Samara Breger
Furysong by Rosaria Munda
The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
The Fractured Dark by Megan E. O’Keefe
Lightning in Her Hands by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
The Cottage Around the Corner by D.L. Soria
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

#chappellroan #bookrecs #bookish #bookworm #booksta
chappell roan | book recommendations | fantasy books | queer books | sapphic | sapphic books | book aesthetic by @nightmarebees

tagged some buddies, but if you’re seeing this at all, consider yourself tagged!

Q: what’s your current tbr count? mine is sitting at 437.

this is one of those post formats that i might try and do like once a month bc it’s easy to complete and will probably have most of the categories change on a 4 week basis. this is excellent bc i have very few consistent ideas and i want people to know i’m alive, even if this app is determined to exaggerate rumors of my (social) death.

i have my copy of The Last King of Faerie earlier than i thought it would get here, and i’m honestly hesitant to start. the beginning of the end, yknow? i’m procrastinating by going through Secrets of Blackthorn Hall once again and also dipping around in Better in Black. i’ll start soon, though, because the fomo will get to me eventually. by @nightmarebees

tuesday reflections:

🗳️walked over to my polling place at 6:04am, done and back home by 6:20. i’m incredibly lucky to have that process as easy as i do. US peeps, go before the end of the day if you haven’t already.

🏫met with my graduate advisor on the actual campus, taking the time on my day off to make the 25 min drive over and walk around. part of me wishes i had just gone here the first time i tried college at 18, but i know that 18 yr old jackie had a lot she needed to figure out before she even knew what field she wanted to be in. wandered around the library and realized how much i need to learn about the library of congress system. happy to see my small catholic university bought a copy of a queer frankenstein retelling with under 400 goodreads reviews.

🧻out of toilet paper so i made a stop and ended up getting new incense as well. it matches my book and my sweater, so i’m taking that as a sign.

☀️it is far too warm out for november in chicagoland. i’m scared for the planet and i’m also sweaty. by @nightmarebees

Q: what 2026 release do you absolutely need to get to before the end of the year?

i debated just returning the pile of novels i have out from the library bc my oldest checkout is from 9/28, but that’s quitter talk and i still have renewals remaining. i got my total checkouts back under 10, so that’s decreased my anxiety significantly. still, i feel bad having them checked out for that long without starting, even if there aren’t any other holds.

overall, i wanted to prioritize the fall tbr i made for myself earlier this year and follow through with past planned commitments—like checkouts, eARCs, preordered releases. i think this is manageable and i’ll be so relieved when my grad semester is done in about a month!

Lone Women by Victor LaValle
Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
A Howl: An Indigenous Comic Collection of Wolves, Werewolves, and Rougarou ed. Elizabeth LaPensée
The Last King of Faerie by Cassandra Clare
Love, Witches, and Wahala by Christine Cowan
The Flowers I Deserve by Tamara Jerée
Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow by @nightmarebees

👻🦇happy halloween!🍫💀

every adult should have a few wardrobe staples. among them should be a big black cloak.

i was going to commit to my OoT Link costume from high school, but i couldn’t find my dang hat. so we get this instead. had my coworker at circ say i should wear a cloak more often bc “it just suits you.” so i’ll be floating on that for the rest of the day.

#booksta #bookishhalloween #publiclibrary #halloweencostume #spookyseason by @nightmarebees

🌹red but still unread🥀

Q: what book on your physical tbr are you most excited to get to right now? not which one you should want, or the most recent, but which one makes you excited thinking about picking it up?

for my it’s probably The Flowers I Deserve. i’m finishing up my Dark Artifices reread first, but after Last King of Faerie, i feel in the mood for something romance-forward but still dark and gothic. morally questionable f/f/f sounds perfect right about now.

pictured:
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
The Flowers I Deserve by Tamara Jeree
The Bird and the Blade by Megan Bannen
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
Chocolate Chip City by Be Steadwell

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#tbrpile #redbutnotread #bookchallange #booksta #booklover by @nightmarebees

🎃👻🦇🩸💀🎃

it’s time! i present to you the culmination of a couple weeks of my free time. i really genuinely believe that there are so many people out there who would love horror books, they just don’t know it yet. horror reading is even easier to delve into than horror films (in my opinion) because reading allows you a little more control of pace, to some degree.

i hope this is a helpful clarifier for longtime ghouls and baby goblins alike! please feel free to DM me with questions or other resources recommendations. i love NoveList in particular and i highly recommend seeing if your local public library has access.

#spookyseason #horrorbooks #booksta #bookstagram #bookrecommendations

“but i’m a scaredy cat” that’s okay! that doesn’t rule out the entire horror genre! can you imagine saying you don’t read fantasy at all because you don’t care for romantasy?

what makes it a horror book? an explicit effort to be scary/unsettling. everything else is fair game.

i could write another whole essay on cataloging and miscategorization! incidentally, lmk if you’d be interested in reading that. basically, when you have people entering data who aren’t able to actually read every single book, or incomplete subject/genre info from publishers put into a machine readable format, things get lost. we’ve all read a jacket copy that didn’t end up being an accurate reflection of the actual book. now imagine that game of telephone multiplied by the number of different library catalogs across the world.

there are a lot of books i could’ve covered here, but i think this one makes my point the most effectively.

genre trends are constantly shifting, so there are a LOT more i could get into here: folk horror, ecological/plant horror, splatterpunk, soooo many more. this is just the starter pack.

have you been thinking about the cuticle scene in Black Swan for the past 18 years? check these out.

The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
The Troop by Nick Cutter
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
The Eyes are the Best Part by Mon by @nightmarebees

shadowhunter sunday? or something. i wasn’t even gonna post anything today but then i got back from my run and the windows were making rainbows, so i was compelled.

sometimes you need some solid chunky YA urban (sort of?) fantasy to revive your average pages per day. cannot believe the first book of this trilogy is now 10 years old, and i read for the first time 8 years ago. i’ve known these characters longer than 3/4 of my niblings.

cassie clare just has a talent for throwing a big cast at you and making you invested in everyone. we didn’t see julian raising the other blackthorns in the 5 years since TMI, but we feel the weight of his responsibility so clearly in these pages, along with the deep and often ruthless love.

once again i am reminded that friends (especially childhood best friends) to lovers is the superior trope and i will die on that hill. part of why the “forbidden” element here works so well is that both emma and julian understand what’s at stake for the whole family, and however much they love each other, they understand that protecting that family means sacrifice. like damn, i KNOW it’s all gonna be okay, but i still had my heartstrings tugged reading the end of book one.

Q: what was the last book you re-read? did it hold up? by @nightmarebees

i love my job and i love my field!

but also the PUBLIC library means interfacing with….the public. on the whole, library users are a far nicer bunch than i encountered during my 9 years in retail (but i worked at a whole foods so that’s a low bar). there are better and worse days but ultimately the point is that this is a community resource and a space where everyone should be welcome.

#bookishmemes #librarymemes #booksta #librarian #publiclibrary library love | library user | book club | bibliophile | bookish | bookstagram | reader life | librarian problems | support your public library by @nightmarebees