iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Spent a few hrs book painting. It's been good for my soul & also a reminder that I'll never understand ppl who want to be "creative" without doing the actual work, testing things, learning techniques etc I've been slowly trying to get back to where I was when I painted regularly, and it's been fun.

Photo of my Witcher books, all pressed together so I can paint across all five book edges. So far I've managed a blue sky & the outline of mountains in the background. On the left side I have just started to add texture and all the little snow capped mountain tops & darker valleys.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In case you need something unbearably cute on your TL today, my colleague found four abandoned hedgehog babies in her garden, so she and her family are now raising them. Part of that is weighing them to check if they're growing well. And they do it like this. 🥹♥️

Photo of a small hedgehog baby inside a tiny little planting pot on top of the smallest kitchen scale they could find. The little hedgehog is barely big enough to look over the rim of the pot.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Takes like this make me so incredibly furious for many, many reasons, mainly because it's utter bullshit. People in the East didn't "turn" right wing as if it's their natural inclination. First of all, denazification for the whole country was a farce that didn't actually work after 45.

Screenshot of a post saying "The people in the former East block, and that includes East Berlin have turned virulently right wing. It's almost like a blue state, red state situation. Things aren't perfect but society is less fucked up in Munich, Dortmund, Hamburg etc more west."

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

IT IS DONE!!! I MADE IT. (It's not perfect, I cut the scrap off stickers by hand, but I do not care) I *love* it. 🥰🥰🥰

Photo of my poster titled "100 books to read before the world ends", with all the book covers covered by silver scratch off stickers.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Mmmmh, I finished painting the little fake porcelain bowl I made myself and I got the poster for my "100 books before the world ends". Next steps are planning my book painting, the T-shirt painting and making my kitchen nook more cozy now that we aren't in the middle of a heat wave.

Photo of my small self-made bowl. It's not completely round and a little crooked, with a golden trim. I painted the inside of the bowl with red, orange and brown times to mimic autumn leaves.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I'm so incredibly grateful to myself for managing to redo this balcony before summer really started. I don't know how often I've been sitting out here, hiding from the world, over last month & it's the best thing. It's peaceful, quiet & cozy. So everything I'm in desperate need of every day.

A photo I took of my balcony tonight, with my blankets hanging off of the reading chair, my book open on a page illuminated by my reading light. All my little solar lights are flickering in the background, which I've just thrown over the banister & stuck into my flower pots without rhyme or reason.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Oh yeah, picture! Fairytale Forest Green. (Idk if I've shared this before but whatever, I'm proud of what I did there 🥰)

My fairytale forest green kitchen nook with a window and pages on the left side. The back wall is now home to a new open shelf made of blank metal and dark wood shelves, mostly filled with Mr M's wishes, knickknacks, vases, glasses and a shelf full of wine on the bottom. Plus more plants. The right wall is where new chairs are supposed to live sometime in the future, but for now the upper half of the wall is filled with framed prints my best friend made and gave to me over the years.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

IT IS DONE!!! 🙌🙌🙌 Holy shit, I did it.

My completely blacked out and 100% done HRCYED 2.0 bingo board.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Hahaha lolsob CALLED IT

Somebody who blocked Drake on Spotify sent me a screenshot of their New Music Friday playlist that has a picture of Drake as the cover for the playlist.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Witcher inspired bookmark: Achievement 1 unlocked. 🥰

Photo of one side of my hand painted bookmark out of modeling clay, portraying a woodland spirit out of the Witcher universe. It's an ancient spirit that can metaphor & control animals, but hunts woodland creatures & lone wanderers. The body in this form looks like it's made out of ranking plants, tree parts & die leafy bits & pieces. It has an elk skull for a head & collects skulls of smaller creatures on a necklace.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

There were several quotes about history being rewritten. I grabbed those bc we've seen this a lot, and probably will see this a lot in the upcoming years, especially regarding artists and musicians. But my favorite is the one about younger generations being taught not to even ask about allegations.

Screenshot of the quote "This is how history gets rewritten. Not with pulled of documents. With a wide release and a marketing budget."

My favorite quote was the last sentence: "The danger isn't just that a generation grows to not knowing. It's that they grow up having been actively, deliberately, and expensively taught not to ask."

Another quote about history: "History, it is often said, is written by the winners. And sometimes the "winners" are simply people with enough money and institutional power to not only rewrite history but discredit anyone who pushes back - even if the person pushing back happens to be Jackson's own daughter."

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Also, I realized that I was using basically none of the books I've read for the magical readathon for HRCYED and that's just... Making things way harder for me than they have to be. So I changed my favorite HRCYED 1.0 prompt to the Genre Challenge and voila, also done. 😌😌😌

The graphic for my Favorite HRCYED 1.0 prompt, all filled out. For the Genre challenge we had to read across genres. I read Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll for Historical Fiction, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Oseman for Mystery/Thriller, Children of Time for Sci-fi, Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett für Fantasy, Of It Makes You Happy by Julie Olivia for Romance, Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo for Literary Fiction, Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H for nonfiction and I doubled up on Burn Down Rise Up by Vincent Tirado for Horror. I already used that once for the Award Season prompt.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Heh, I'm almost feeling like doing a countdown now that I'm so close to finishing this whole thing. Anyways, I've read The Paris Match (what a fucking gem of a book, nobody does it like KC), so the new release challenge is done!!

The same rooster for all the new releases we had to read for the challenge that I posted on the original post, but now with April also filled in with the cover for The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The most challenging thing about the nonfiction prompt for me was deciding what kind of nonfiction my books are because you couldn't repeat the same category and I'm a tiny bit clueless about nonfiction categories. But we figured it out, I think. So I'm happy and also done with that one.

For this challenge I read Fire Island by Jack Parlett (Historiography), German for Everyone by Abbas Khider (Linguistics/Language), The Third Gilmore Girl (memoir), Sisters in Hate (social science) and Death in the Jungle by Candace Fleming (narrative chronicle).

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The new release challenge was great for me. You have 60 days before & after a book comes out to read it & I absolutely loved reading new books to log them. I cut it extremely close exactly once, so this one I'm incredibly happy with & I'm finishing it soon with the Paris Match by Kate Clayborn.

The only square missing here is the April one, all the others I got done in time.
May was Along Came Amor by Alexis Daria.
June was Scotch on the Rocks by Eliot Fletcher.
July was The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst.
August was Alchemy and a Cup of Tea by Rebecca Thorne.
September was The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy.
October was Heartsick by Kristina Forest.
November was the new Three Investigators Christmas edition.
In December I read On Dancer by Annabeth Albert.
January was Last First Kiss by Julian Winters.
February was Get over it April Evans by Ashley Herring Blake and March was Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The BIPOC challenge wasn't hard, but for the next one I'd like to broaden my scope more. For example I'm not happy with not having read Indigenous authors for this, so I'll be working on that if it's part of round three again.

The books I've read for the BIPOC challenge are:
1. Last Gate of the Emperor by Kwame Mbalia & Prince Joel Makonnen
2. A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Man Anna
3. The 7-10 Split by Karmen Lee
4. The Secret to a Southern Wedding by Synithia Williams
5. Blackmail & Bibingka
6. Pretty Girl County by Lakita Wilson
7. The Lesbians Guide to Catholic School
Sonora Reyes
8. Deadly Ever After by Brittany Johnson
9. Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar
10. The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The Queer Alphabet is another one I meant to complete a lot faster and then just... Didn't. Which annoys me a bit, but I am going to finish this next month with The Honeys and Wicked Beauty if all goes to plan.

My Biggest Rainbow prompt is not complete, the books for Polyamory and Genderfluid aren't done yet. For the other prompts I have:

Gay: Heated Rivalry
Lesbian: I'll be Gone for Christmas by Georgia K. Boone
Bi/Pansexual: Love at First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi
Transgender: (Un)Popular Vote by Jasper Sanchez
Intersex: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
Asexual: Want You Back by Annabeth Albert
Nonbinary/A gender: My Name is Magic by Xan Van Rooyen

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The Animal Friends were tricky because I just don't intentionally look for books with animals in it that play an actual role and aren't just on the cover. I do think these books fulfill this, even though we can argue about a dinosaur being an exotic pet. I just decided that it counts for this one. 😅

For this prompt I read two Dungeon Crawler Carl book, the first one for House Pets and Carl's Doomsday Scenario for Exotic Pets. For farm animals I logged Done & Dusted by Lyla Sage, for would animals I used Accomplice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maher and for zoo animals I went with The Ornithologists Field Guide to Love by India Holton.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Become the Avatar became easy once my library stocked more of the Wayward Children series because I decided to go with the cover image option, so I only needed the four elements on the cover. And that worked out fantastically overall.

I read three Wayward Children books for this challenge: Where the Drowned girls go for water on the cover, In an Absent dream for Earth on the cover and Beneath the Sugar Sky for air on the cover. For fire on the cover I read The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reid.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Spooky Creatures was super fun, especially during the spooky months last fall. The only stipulation was that the creature had to have a significant role in the book, not just be mentioned on the side. And it was actually a lot of fun to complete in autumn.

My fully filled out Spooky Creatures list is:

Vampire: Zom Rom Com by Olivia Dade
Shifter: Cry Wolf by Charlie Adhara
Magic User: In the Company of Witches
Fae Folk: A Wild and Ruined Song by Ashley Shuttleworth
Spirit: The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish
Merfolk: In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens
Zombie/Undead: Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McQuire
Other: The Reaper by Jackson P. Brown

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Read a Quote was challenging in the sense that I don't have one single favorite quote. But I wanted one that I love, use often & could find books for, so I decided to use Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde. I'm going to read Bury Your Gays for 'Your' and Radio Silence for 'Silence'.

The Quote sheet is not done yet, because I still need to read for the first two words but I read WILL by Will Smith for 'will', That's Not my Name for 'Not', His to Protect by Sharon C Cooper for 'Protect' and The Shots You Take by Rachel Reid for 'You'.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The Even Bigger Rainbow was a little tricky, mostly because I kept questioning if I know what colors are and what majority color a cover has. I'm happy with it now so if somebody sees a color that might not fit, just don't talk to me about it. 😂

I'm the first half of the rainbow I used The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook for Red, Deja Brew by Celeste Martin for Orange, First Comes Like by Alisha Rai for Yellow, That's Not my Name by Megan Lally for Green, The Voyage of the Damned for Teal, Black Boy Joy anthology for light blue and Blackmail and Bibingka for blue.

In the second half of the rainbow I used The Raven Scholar for people, First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison for pink, The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson for black, The Third Homie Girl by Kelly Bishop for white, the special edition of The Threads that's Bind by Kia Hatzopoulou for Silver and Queerly Beloved by Susie Dumond for 7+ colors.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Around the World on the other hand was pretty easy overall, and also I'm not doing Antarctica because I don't need the extra points AND none of the books I've seen yet that are set there actually interest me.

For around the world I read a book for every continent except Attractive. For North America I read You With a View by Jessica Joyce, for South America The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno Garcia, for Africa Black and Female by Tsitsi Dangarembga, for Europe The Re-Write by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn, for Aia The Vegetarian by Han Kang and for Australia & New Zealand I read The Meaning of You by Jay Hogan.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Translations I knew I wasn't going to be done with early. I'm really not good at reading translations unless you count German translations of books written in English honestly. I also have more than a few translated books originally written in Korean, but you could only use a language once, so.

For the translations I used the first Witcher book which was translated from Polish, Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim (translated from Korean), Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (translated from Japanese) and Heart Lamp (originally written in Kannada). For the last prompt I'm going to use My Brilliant Friend which was originally written in Italian.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Heritage Month is one of those I'm a little annoyed about not having finished yet. I didn't try to read them in the actual heritage month, but I still wanted to have finished this one already. Oh well. I will finish this next month tho, I'm reading Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko in May.

The only empty square in this sheet is the Indigenous Heritage Month, the others I have completed. For Disability Pride I read Knowing You by E.M. Lindsey, for Hispanic Heritage I read A Dish Best Served Hot by Natalie Cana. For Black History I logged The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, for Women's History I used Human Rites by Juno Dawson, for Arab Heritage I used I'll Have What He's Having by Adib Khorram. My AAPI Heritage read was I Did Something Bad by Pyae Moe Thet War, for Jewish Heritage I read Homegrown Magic by Rebecca Podos and Jamie Pacton and for LGBTQIA+ Pride I read Cash Delgado is Loving the Dream by Tehlor Kay Mejia.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Disability Rep was interesting because you couldn't use books with the same disability for this prompt. I think I could still use a ton more books for this but these were the first five that fit the prompt and I remembered to log there.

The five books I used for the Disability Challenge were Saving You by EM Lindsey (deaf MC), Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner (MC is an amputee), Aniana del Mar Jumps in by Jasmine Mendez (juvenile idiopathic arthritis), There's Pumpkin About You by Athena Carstairs (LI is autistic) and the Co-Op by Tarah DeWitt (MC is dyslexic).

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

All the Adaptations... Was not the prompt for me. Which you can see bc I switched from the Adaptations to the source material halfway through AND used 500 points to short this by one prompt, namely web series. I'm not an adaptation person, tbh. I could use HR for the TV adaptation now, but eh.

My spotty all the Adaptations prompt sheet looks a little wild. I used Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa as a Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice. For the Musical I watched/listened to repeatedly the Romeo & Juliet Musical that was playing at the Theater of the West on Berlin at the Time. And the graphic novel I read was Kite Runner. And then I left the adaptations behind and only read source material, Alice in Wonderland for the Play, Network Effect for the TV show, Frieren vol. 1 for the Animation and 4:50 from Paddington for movie. And the Web series just has a big -500 points because I couldn't do it.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The Last Ten Years was also fun, mostly because I have such a longstanding tradition of throwing things on my digital TBR shelves that finding books for this was pretty easy. I could add a 2026 book to it but don't really need the extra points, so these are enough. 😂

Books I used for the last ten years:
2015: A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
2016: Ghost by Jason Reynolds
2017: An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington
2018: There There by Tommy Orange
2019: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
2020: Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby
2021: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
2022: Queerly Beloved by Susie Dumond
2023: Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore
2024: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli Clarke
2025: Wild & Wrangled by Lyla Sage

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Award Season I just finished. I didn't just use one award, I jumped around bc you needed at least one entrant, semi-finalist, finalist and winner each, which I struggled with tbh. I actually forgot what was what and where, but I double checked before I made the TBR so I'm positive I got it all.

For the award season prompt I used Burn Down Rise Up by Vincent Tirado and A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers as winners. For finalists I used Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Orbital by Samantha Harvey and System Collapse by Martha Wells. As a semi-finalist I used The Pairing by Casey McQuiston and The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed as an Entrant.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The series staircase was scary bc you couldn't use a series you already started before HRCYED began. So brand new series to finish was intimidating and I'm especially proud of getting this done and with amazing books too bc there are some absolute bangers in there.

The filled out Series Staircase prompt.
For the solo book I picked Ghost Squad by Claribel Ortega. The duology I read was the Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas. The trilogy I read is the Destiny trilogy by Beverly Jenkins, so Destiny's Embrace, Destiny Surrender and Destiny's Captive. And for the 4 books or more series (which you didn't have to complete, only read 4 books in the series) I read the German translations of the first 4 books in the original Witcher series, so Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire and Tower of the Swallow.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Subgenres of Choice was fun bc you could pick any genre & then just read 5 subgenres for it. I ended up picking fantasy instead of romance & it went really great overall, especially bc some of those subgenres I don't read a ton of. (Being allowed to double up also helped with this one tbh.)

The filled out fantasy subgenre prompts. I picked Blood at the Root by Ladarrion Williams for Paranormal, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook by Matt Dinniman for LITRPG, Swordcrossed by Freya Marske for Romance, Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood for Cozy, The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett for Crime and The Light of All that Falls for James Islington.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Let's go by squares. By the 100s was one of the easier ones for me personally bc it's just reading a book with a matching page count in the 100s. I most struggled with the short & long end of the stick so to speak, but we got it done. 😌

The filled out By the 100s prompt. For 100+ pages I was Lost Ark Dealing by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. 200+ was The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. 300+ was B.K. Borison's Lovelight Farms. 400+ was A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. 500+ was Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse. 600+ was Oathbound by Tracy Deonn and 700+ was An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

So. My bingo board is looking pretty fucking good, If I'm allowed to say so myself. I'm a little annoyed about a couple of the ones I haven't done yet since starting the challenge in July since I feel like I should've gotten them already. But overall, this is looking great.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Adding a little whimsy to your TL: I've been painting a little cottage on some leftover modeling clay the kids didn't use for their magnets and I keep working on it whenever I listen to audiobooks. I think it's turning out really cute. 😌

A small oval shaped disk of modeling clay that I painted with a base layer of green acrylic paint and then added some brighter tree branches at the top and a tiny cottage in the middle, with one bigger and one smaller room, so it looks a bit like an L-shaped timber framed cottage. Both have pointed roofs and a chimney where they both connect, with some pink tinged smoke coming out of it. The foreground just has some grass and a winding path going through it for now.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

I filled it out! I now have a rough draft of what the poster might look like without the scratch-off stickers. I'm a little worried about space when it comes to adding titles to the squares. I'll try out different ideas & see if I like any of them. But I'm really happy with all the choices for now.

My 100 Books to Read Before the World Ends poster idea with a 10 x 10 grid filled with all the book covers I chose. I'm using a dark background, reading from dark now into dark grey for now. I'll list the titles and authors in the following posts, there's not enough space to do both in ALT text.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

I don't do discourse about opinions anymore, but saw this and immediately reacted with no.

Screenshot of a post that says "They shouldn't teach history at all until 12th grade, because the fairy tale nationalist version kids get before that colonizes most of their brains forever. Forget deprogramming college freshmen, people go to their graves believing that. Just move language classes earlier and history ones later."

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

I don't want to interact with the post directly or the people who liked & shared this happily bc I disagree on such a fundamental level that it's hard for me to stay calm while talking about it. Because this is NOT a real conversation to be had. There's no respectful version of any of it, imo.

Screenshot of a post that says: "There's a respectful version of this conversation. You could say: "This woman may have a genetic trait that congers a competitive advantage, and we should figure out how to handle that fairly." That's a real discussion. Have it."

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Y'all, I have finished the front of the Parachute inspired shirt (I've decided to stop messing with it, more like it) and have moved on to the back. This is probably 20 hrs of work and I'm really proud of it, even with the improvised "falling stars" or fireflies on the right side. 🥰

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I have to get back to working on this Parachute inspired shirt but it keeps fighting me every step of the way. 😤

Photo of a black shirt I've started to paint in with bleach. The left shoulder and sleeve look like they're covered and some kind of plant with a ton of differently shaded leaves. The sort itself has a falling human figure with long hair on the right chest, with the silhouette of trees and maintains beneath. But I got bleach drops all over the mountains and haven't decided what to do with those yet because they were definitely not planned.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Not engaging directly but I want to say: That's one hell of a North American perspective and I disagree with it. And I don't think you can watch all the skiing events and actually believe this, unless you don't pay attention to their demographics and/or global politics at all.

Screenshot of a reply to a post about The US hockey team that says "hockey is probably the single worst olympic sport in terms of player demographics and politics tbh"

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Look at this beautiful thing we made. I fucking love my job some days.

Photo of a new mosaic table the teens and I did at the center. It's an old, simple IKEA table we sanded down and then used tiny square quartz stones to build a mosaic that basically consists of colorful circles that remind me a tiny bit of mandalas. There might be an actual name for it but we just washed to use as many colors as possible in the best combination we could find and ended up with a table full of rainbow colors mosaics.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Done. In case anyone wants to see the shelves with some pretty lights on. I think I want to get more lights for the SFF shelves too, they look too dark now. But overall not too bad for two days of work overall.

The new lit fic/ nonfiction/ crime fiction/ they've shelves with all the little trinkets and candles added. All but the button shelves have white and colorful fairy lights because we don't want the cat to play with all the cables.

The science fiction shelves didn't really have lights, but I added more trinkets and got the ivy ranks back in place so they can keep growing along the top shelves.

The fantasy shelves only have a single strand of white fairy lights running along the top two shelves, but I got the ivy back in there too for now. Parts of them don't look too healthy, so I might cut them back later.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Okay. I think I have all the books on the shelves. Of course there wasn't more space, but for now everything looks kinda nice. Not sure where I'll put all the TBR books once I've read them but I at least tried to leave a little wiggle room here & there. I should add the decorations & lights now.

Photo of the two big bookshelves on the left, holding mostly epic fantasy and the few romantasy books I own, plus all the old books Mr M loves.

Photo of the big Billy bookshelf in the middle of the rest of them. There's more middle grade fantasy on the bottom, the rest is mostly urban fantasy, some fabulism and magical realism, and the top shelves are cozy fantasy and some fantasy romance.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I can't spend any time online today. I really just can't. Okay. Progress is being made on the sff shelves. I'm still not sure I'll get this done tonight, but we'll see.

Photo of the second smaller bookshelf done and it's really a mix of portal and time travel stories, horror, alternate realities, urban fantasy, superhero books, dystopian and some middle grade fantasy classics on the lowest shelf.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I only have today to finish the SFF shelves, and I'm trying to listen to an audiobook too. Not sure how well this will go. But the first one is done, so there's that.

Photo of the first of the smaller bookshelves, filled with hard Sci-fi books, one whole Star Wars shelf, space operas and sci-fi romance. Plus all the first contact with aliens books and my wood burning masterpiece, a portrait of Prices Donut next to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Everything I want to say out loud right now is ugly, sharp, feels like chewing on glass, so. The romance bookshelf. Something beautiful & beloved. I'm not sure it'll stay this way, but for now this is good. This is good. The goal is to add lights and decorations once I'm done with the SFF shelves.

Photo of my first ever, full size romance bookshelf with the historical romance and mass market paperbacks at the top, queer romance on the two middle shelves and then rest of the contemporary romance and romantic suspense on the lower three shelves.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Am I 100% happy with this yet? I don't know. But we've gotten two whole shelves transferred and there's at least a tiny bit of space behind some of these to stuff some more books on there. And I am looking forward to doing the romance shelf next, which is the one that really needed more space. 😌

Photo of the other wall of Billy book shelves. The one on the left is filled with history books, historical fiction and nonfiction. The one in the middle is now gone to my contemporary YA books and all the crime fiction. The one on the right is still empty, that's where all the adult romance books will go.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

This morning we're listening to the Sinners soundtrack and continue to clean out everything. Getting the plants and fairy lights off this shelf was an adventure. But it's going, I just have to tell myself to trust the process here.

Photo of three of my white Billy bookcases that used to have all the classics and historical books on it. The left one is a temporary storage place for the fantasy books I'm transferring over from the other shelves, the one in the middle of finally empty and cleaned out. The one on the right is up next.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Chronicles of a complete overhaul of the bookshelves. 1) I am, in fact, my father's child. Most of the books in this corner he got out of closing libraries in 1990. I later stole them from my grandparents out of the house I grew up in, mostly one by one.

Close up go-to of the very old, leather bound books on my shelves. This particular shelf is mostly Marx, Engels & Lenin.

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Mx M @mxmreads.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

I never did my best of lists of 2025 anywhere, and who would've thought I'd be desperate to remember the things I liked last year once week into the next godforsaken year. Anyways. Favorite books I read in 2025. (No. I'm unable to do a top ten out of almost 300 books. I don't want to. ♥️)

Collage of book covers of books I loved. Titles are:

- Thorn
- Down Asking the Sticks & Bones
- Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World
- Her Good Side
- Surgery & Small Magics
- Everything We Never Had
- QUEER: History of Queerness in Germany in the 20th Century
- As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow
- Piranesi
- The Magic Fish
- The Faithful
- To Catch a Raven
- Those beyond the Wall
- The Chandler Legacies
- ISSA
- Stormsong
- My Sister the Serial Killer
- Paola Santiago 3
- The Message
- Men Who Hate Women
- Seven Devils
- A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
- Heir
- Goddess of the River
- The Other Side of Disappearing
- The Shadow of What Was Lost
- Before I Let Go
- Long Division
- The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
- That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon
- Amari and the Nichtbrothers 3
- The Attic Child
- Crown chasers
- Razorblade Tears
- Goliath
- Bookshops & Bonedust
- Emily Wilde 3
- The Reformatory
- Little Rot
- The Improvisers

More favorite books of 2025 all in a collage. Titles are:

- Most Ardently
- Lost Ark Dreaming
- Mama, bitte lern Deutsch
- The Raven Boys
- Aniana del Mar Jumps In
- Psalm for the Wild-Built
- Truly, Madly, Deeply
- When Grumpy Met Sunshine
- Scotch on the Rocks
- Black Boy Joy
- Alchemy and a Cup of Tea
- The Ex Hex
- The Last Wish
- A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
- The Ex Vows
- Along Came Amor
- I think They Love You
- Remain Silent
- Dungeon Crawler Carl
- The Weight of Blood
- A Desolation Called Peace
- Come Tumbling Down
- Ocean's Echo
- Oathbound
- Holy Terrors
- The Eyes of Gaza
- Der Spurenfinder 1 & 2
- The Lotus Empire
- The Mimicking of Known Successes
- Mooncakes

Third collage of my favorite reads of 2025. The titles are:

- Black and Female
- Love at First Fright
- the Wedding People
- Ghost
- The Ones We're Meant to Find
- The Dead Cat Tail Assassins
- The Third Gilmore Girl
- The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy
- Rewitched
- First Time Caller
- Pretty Girl County
- Cash Delgado is Living the Dream
- The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love
- In the Company of Witches
- A Day of Fallen Night
- The Enchanted Greenhouse
- Ghost Squad
- The Black Kids
- The Reaper
- The Sunbearer Trials
- Out of the Woods
- The Tainted Cup
- Left of Forever
- Savor It
- A Language of Dragons
- Death in the Jungle
- In the Dreamhouse
- Network Effect
- Tea You at the Altar
- Lovelight Farms
- Fire Island: A Queer History

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