Candy Bunny Reader

Nicola Traveling Around the Demon's World by Asaya Miyanagi is a cozy fantasy manga series that is 4 volumes long. I read the first two so far! Nicola is a sweet and naive human witch who accidentally finds herself in the Demon World. She forms a bond with a somewhat grumpy but kindhearted demon named Simon, who is a traveling merchant. There isn't much of a plot--it's mostly slice of life just in a fantasy world. Nicola and Simon travel from place to place, meet new people (or reunite with old friends), and get into shenanigans. Simon is almost always trying to buy or sell something, and Nicola learns more about the demon world and practices her magic.  It's very funny and heartwarming! It gets surprisingly emotional at times, too. I gave both books 5 stars. I need to find and read the last two volumes!

  This book was a part of the 12 books 12 friends challenge.  Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man about the Natural World by Christian Cooper is a memoir about various parts of the author's life: growing up in New York, his family, finding out he was gay, his time working at Marvel, traveling the world, and many more. Everything is tied together through his love of bird watching. As he tells us stories about parts of his life, he also drops facts on different kinds of birds and how you can be a good birdwatcher, too. It's a cool memoir! I especially liked the parts where he talked about working at Marvel, and how it was like growing up as a gay black man in the second half of the 20th century. I also have a mild interest in bird watching, and I had no idea so many things went into trying to find birds.  I do have to give it 4 stars though, because the book did feel a little disjointed at times. There were some chapters I felt that the author was trying ...

  The little frog in the corner is not part of the book. It's just a candy wrapper of mine that I saved.  The first volume of Our Not-So Lonely Planet Travel Guide by Mone Sorai is about two guys who are boyfriends who plan to travel to different countries around the world before getting married. One guy is named Asashi, who is very practical and serious. The other guy is named Mitsuki, and he is more laid back and cheerful. In this first volume, they visit Thailand, India, and Georgia (the country), in that order. They meet some interesting people along the way, as well as an old friend. Each person they meet shows them something cool about the country, from landmarks to food. Sometimes things go qrong, but at the end of each day Asashi and Mitsuki have fun!  I am so glad I decided to finally pick this up! It's such a simple but sweet story so far. The queer representation is great, and you do get to learn some things about other countries along with the characters. The ...

TW: Parent dying, toxic relationships   (Pic was found on Google Images) Another huge disappointment... Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch is about Lina, who just lost her single mother. Her mother's final wish was for Lina to visit the country she went to college, which was Italy. Apparently Lina's birth father is in Italy, too, and Lina can't believe she's finally meeting him. His name is Howard and he lives and works in a cemetery, much to Lina's surprise. Howard's coworker Sonia gives Lina her mother's journal when she lived and studied in Italy. Lina decides to read through it, as her mother didn't talk much about Italy and her father. One thing that stands out to her is her mother wrote down on one of the pages "I made a terrible mistake". Line tries to figure out what mistake her mother made living in Italy that made her go back to the US. While this is all happening, Lina then meets and starts hanging out with a guy her age who lives...

  This was awesome! I think Becky Chambers is now a new favorite author of mine. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers  is set on Panga--a distant moon that has been settled by humans. The humans on this moon are living in a new age where they are no longer dependent on technology, and things made during the "Factory Age" such as humanoid robots, have disappeared into the wild. The story follows a young monk named Dex. Their title as a monk is "Sibling Dex" since they are nonbinary. They've grown bored with their monastic living and decide to become a tea monk. Tea monks travel around and  listen to help people with their problems while sharing cups of teas. On their travels they encounter a humanoid robot named Mosscap, who wants to understand humans better by asking Dex "What do humans need?" From then on out, Mosscap and Dex travel together across Panga trying to understand humans--and each other--better.  The story gets very philosophical, b...

Just like the last book I reviewed on here, you don't know how long I've been wanting to get around to this book. Bicycling with Butterflies by Sara Dykman is a memoir about the author's true story of how she charted and followed the migration paths of monarch butterflies from Mexico to Canada and back to Mexico again. She completed the whole journey via biking! Every chapter of the book recounts every place Dykman biked through and stopped at. She found lots of monarchs, but all sorts of other wildlife too, most important of them all being milkweed, which is what monarch butterflies need to lay their eggs. She also talked about how and where she would find places to camp out in her tent for the nights she was on the road. It wasn't always easy! During her journey she would sometimes go to schools and universities to talk about her journey and scientific research and facts she knew about monarch butterflies. She also talked about all of the people she met along the way...

  You have no idea how long I've wanted to read this memoir. I finally got to read it this past month! My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme is Julia Child's memoir. It is her story on how she got into cooking after she and her husband Paul Child moved to Paris, France. They moved there because of Paul's job at the US Embassy there. In her first few years in France, Julia learned to cook all sorts of French dishes and desserts at a world famous cooking school, and she met two of her long-time collaborators there: Simone Beck (nicknamed Simca) and Louisette Betholle. Julia then got the idea of making a cookbook with French recipes, but for an American audience. Aside from talking about her everyday life in France, she also gets into details on how she, Simca, and Louisette wrote there first and most famous cookbook: Mastering the Art of French Cooking . It was not an easy process! But their book became super-successful overseas (in the United States), to ...

An underrated manga by THE Hayao Miyazaki . It's only one volume long! It was actually published back in the 1980s but it didn't get an English translation until now (well, 2022). Shuna's Journey follows Shuna, who is the prince of a small valley in the mountains which is experiencing a famine. One day Shuna meets a traveler who has some small golden seeds that are unable to be planted, but the traveler tells Shuna that he can find a giant field where golden grain grows to feed his people. The field is in the far west where the moon resides.  On his journey he runs into some slave traders, and rescues two girls from them. One is named Thea and the other girl is her sister. They are supposedly fallen princesses. Shuna tells Thea his plan, and she is happy for him and tells him if he succeeds, she should meet him in a village in the north.  But Shuna then hears from another traveler that the place Shuna needs to get to so he can find the all the golden grain is hard to rea...

  This book, People we Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry , only came out last year, but ever since it did, the bookish community has been obsessed with it. And I finally read it a while ago! Funnily enough, I started reading it a little bit after it was announced it was getting a movie. What a coincidence. This is a Adult Contemporary Romance book. It's about a young woman named Poppy who likes traveling with her best friend, the stoic but kind English teacher Alex.  Unfortunately, Poppy and Alex had a falling out in their friendship when something happened to the two of them when they went to Croatia several years earlier, and Poppy, feeling unfulfilled with her life working as a journalist for a travel magazine in New York City, decides to rekindle her friendship with Alex through a new trip. She decided that they go to Palm Springs, California. At the same time, it's a business trip for Poppy to write about Palm Springs for the upcoming issue of the magazine she works fo...