Jasper Was Here

Here's the thing. I read a lot of books meant to introduce people to the concept of modern witchcraft. And most of them are trash.   So I made a tier list about it! S Tier - Unironically Recommend Wholeheartedly Grovedaughter Witchery | Bree NicGarran of witchcraft and whimsy: a beginner's guide to witchcraft | Rose Orriculum A Tier - Fine Enough, May Have Some Issues Kitchen Table Magic: Pull Up a Chair, Light a Candle & Let's Talk Magic | Melissa Cynova Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins | Cassandra Snow Spells for Change: A Guide for Modern Witches | Frankie Castanea B Tier - Passable It's Witchcraft: a beginner's guide to secular & non-secular witchcraft, Second Edition | Jamie Weaver Rebel Witch: Carve the Craft that's Yours Alone | Kelly-Ann Maddox Witchcraft For Everyone | Sam Wise C Tier - Oh No   none applicable D Tier - OH NO Casting a Queer Circle: Non-Binary Witchcraft | Thista Minai F Tier - Throw The Entire Thing Away The Hou

So here's the thing. I've read a lot of books this year. 130, to be exact. But not all of them were...good. I read a bunch of books that I consider "good with caveats" books, a bunch of middling books, and then some absolute shits. But we're not here about the dumpster fires, we're here about the ones I actually like.   This is a great place to kick off 2024, considering I'm diving into a reading challenge for January and February. Each book is broken down into a personal category that I use on my spreadsheet, which does not reflect every genre a book could fall under (e.g. Legends & Lattes falling under both "second world fantasy" and "romance" or Snow White with the Red Hair also falling under both). I chose what I believed to be the stronger presence of any particular category to determine where the book goes. Every book here has earned either a 9 or 10 on my spreadsheet. NONFICTION 101 Kinky Things Even You Can Do | Kate Sloa

One of the most difficult parts of reading comes from burning yourself out. I keep track of all of the books I've read recently in a spreadsheet, where I break them down into columns based on the final rating I give them and color the squares according to the broad-stroke genres or settings I've categorized them under. During the month of October, I read 30 books. That's basically one book a day for the whole month, minus a Halloween cheat day. That was 7236 pages across them all. And then I burned out. In November, I only made it through 7 books. 1641 pages. 6 out of 7 were graphic novels, which are easier for me to get through, even through problems like "crippling migraines" and "brain fog". The last was an anthology, which is also pretty damn easy to dig through. So I'm easing the pace on myself for December. I'm taking my time and even reading more Juvenile-level fiction for my own entertainment. My current project is reading through all of

One of the things that are exceedingly common in Magic: The Gathering deck building communities is the idea of "deck archetypes" - like the Spellslinger deck or the Aristocrats deck. Some websites will elaborate more on different kinds of archetypes (like EDHREC's list of themes, which separates similar decks into different categories). Some archetypes center around similar play patterns, getting you into a familiar loop. Others focus on particular kinds of cards, such as generating Treasure Tokens or creating copies of things on the board. The purpose of a deck archetype is to make the struggle of building a deck and, in effect, summarizing what your deck does much easier. It's a whole lot faster to say "I have a Black-Red Aristocrats deck" than it does to explain in detail what an Aristocrats deck does: "Sacrificing things to a sacrifice outlet in order to gain some sort of advantage, often in the form of buffing creatures that have escaped the sacrif

I cannot be held accountable for my actions. If you take a librarian to a bookstore, you can't be surprised when they leave with books... The three books currently printed of the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, in paperback form. From the top of the stack down is Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, and Nona the Ninth. Hardcover versions of the Penguin Classics printings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Hardcover versions of the Penguin Classics printings of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and Around The World In Eighty Days. Hardcover version of the Penguin Classics printings of Virgil's The Aeneid and the hardcover and illustrated version of Samuel B Griffith's translation of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War.      

What Is LEGO Legends Of Chima?: A Look At A Dead Theme Legends of Chima was an original LEGO theme that ran between 2013 and 2015. It was, to be frank, doomed from the start: It was pitched as a replacement for LEGO Ninjago, a theme introduced in 2011 that is still going strong in 2023. Like most themes from this time, Chima had a special subtheme within its theme: Speedorz. This minigame was played with one-wheel motorcycles powered by a ripcord, used to surpass obstacles and complete challenges to earn Chi crystals. It also featured an Ultrabuild subtheme, representing some of the characters when they "Chi up" - this subtheme is built in the same style as the Bionicle and Hero Factory sets, using the CCBS system from Hero Factory. These cropped up around summer 2013 for six of the Season One characters and returned in summer 2014 for a handful of the Season Three characters (two of which had Season One Ultrabuilds). Legends of Chima takes place on the continent of Chima, u

Is Anybody Out There? 15 original stories about the quest to find intelligent life in the universe. edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern Since this book is one of those short story collections, I'll be giving my thoughts on each story individually. The Word He Was Looking For Was Hello by Alex Irvine: This story follows a man who does not have his life together, as protagonists often don't, while the aliens arrive to take over the planet and subjugate humanity. It's fascinating because it reads more as if the aliens are something the man's mind is making up to feel something. I felt pretty neutral about this story, but it was well-written and kept me engaged anyway, so it gets a 6/10. Residue by Michael Arsenault: Set up as two people in a close relationship laying on the ground beneath the stars, this is basically a dialogue-only story about different theories one speaker has about why alien contact has never been made. This story was fascinating, though I may ha

The House Witch : Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home by Arin Murphy-Hiscock This book was a roller-coaster. And I mean one of those cheap ones that are set up for one day and disappear the next. One that is built to be quick to put up and take down. One that is low-quality and you’re half-certain you’ll die while riding it. There are not enough words in the English language to convey just how much this book sucks and how high my hopes had soared for it. The worst part of this book was the squandered potential for a book about one person’s practices. But no, the author must place themself as the sole authority on every subject presented, even when those subjects include four whole pages of out-the-ass appropriation. I used this book for annotating practice. I went through and I marked it up, down, and sideways with highlighters, shoved in post-it notes, and made many comments on Discord to some friends about it. Most of