Books (+etc) to Warm Your Heart
Hello friends! I hope you are all staying healthy and indoors – and relatively sane (as sane as we can be). I don’t know about you, but my reading has drastically slowed down because of everything happening. In March I only read 3 books, and April hasn’t been much better. I’ve been focusing on doing things that make me happy! And obviously reading makes me happy, but I’m finding it hard to concentrate and read sometimes.
As I said I’ve been trying to do things that make me happy – and by that I really mean reading or watching or playing things that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Like, all the cute feels. So I’m here to recommend a variety of things that make me feel that way, in case you also need recs for things like that!
Book Recs!
MY NUMBER ONE HEARTWARMING BOOK REC: The House in the Cerulean Sea. Hands down, you all gotta read this one. A group of orphaned kids who have magical powers? Found family? YES AND YES. I swear, it literally felt like my heart was melting while I read it. My review for it is here if you wanna see that.
If you’re in a fantasy mood, then obviously I’m gonna recommend anything by Tamora Pierce. Lady knights, animal magic, badass lady spies, you name it. She’s got it. I also recommend The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. The book is just so pure!!! And Neil’s writing is magic itself.
If you’re in a sci-fi mood, I recommend The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and the Murderbot Diaries. The former is an amazing character driven spaceship adventure, and the latter is about a robot who was originally a kill bot, but it hacked it’s own programming and now just wants to sit and watch soap operas.
If you just want a good ol’ romance, look no further than Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating. I mean just the title right? You know it’s gonna be a good time. Disastrous dates, confident and hilarious and goofy characters, and just all around happiness. I love it.
WEBTOON Recs!
If you don’t know what WEBTOONs are, don’t panic! They’re just free serialized comics that you can read through this specific app callled WEBTOON. They have TONS of comic series, basically anything you could ever want. Some are completed, and some are ongoing. One episode is released per week, and I think there’s some mechanism where you can pay money to have early access to some number of episodes.
My two favorite comics are Lore Olympus, and Brimstone and Roses. Lore Olympus is basically about the lives of the Greek gods, goddesses, and other figures in a somewhat modern day society. It explores a bunch of different relationships and gives them more dimension than in the myths we have remaining from ancient times. It’s so cute!!! Brimstone and Roses follows the MC Bea. At the beginning of the series, she summons a demon to be her date to a wedding – because her ex will also be at the wedding! The demon is hilarious and ends up sticking around a lot longer than Bea would like…hehe.
Podcast Recs!
My ALL TIME favorite podcast is The Adventure Zone. It’s three brothers and their dad playing Dungeons and Dragons together, and they’re hilarious! It’s like listening to a fantasy story too, so I think it can really appeal to fantasy readers.
Those same three brothers also run an “advice” show called My Brother, My Brother and Me. I put advice in quotes because occasionally it’s real advice, but most of the time it’s just them joking around and giving terrible advice. It’s great if you need a laugh.
I’ve been playing a lot of the game Stardew Valley which doesn’t take a whole lot of concentration, so I started listening to the podcast Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! while playing. AND THEN I FINISHED ALL 133 EPISODES OF THE PODCAST!!! I got that sucked in. The host just basically tells you a different Greek myth each episode, and she’s really funny and feminist and great. I was already interested in Greek myths, and this podcast is helping me learn a lot more about them, and about ones I hadn’t really heard of before. I love it but I’m also sad I’m caught up and can’t binge listen to it anymore haha.
Movie and TV Recs!
Let’s start with movies first. Hayao Miyazaki has create some WONDERFUL heartwarming movies. Howl’s Moving Castle is my ultimate favorite (it’s actually based on a book, which is also amazing). Wizards and fire demons and cute kids and a magical scarecrow and a girl who has a spell on her that makes her old! Sorry I just love this movie. Ponyo is also by Miyazaki and it’s cute AF.
Pretty much any Disney movie is very happy, but my go-to’s are Mulan and The Emperor’s New Groove. Hilarious and wonderful, the both of them. Plus Mulan is a badass babe. What more do you need?
Now for some tv shows! Probably my top rec is Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show can definitely get a bit dark and serious, but mostly it’s just about a bunch of kids having adventures while trying to save the world. Gotta love the boomerang gang.
Two new shows for me have been The Mandalorian and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. I mean we all know about Baby Yoda right? Every time I see a photo of him my heart!!! Just goes *squishhhhhhh*. The show is wonderful and I think can be enjoyed even by non – Star Wars fans. Kipo is an ADORABLE animated show about found family, and a girl making her way through a world of mutant animals to find her dad. There’s fun music and great characters and really cool animation.
I hope you check some of these things out! What are some of your favorite warm and fuzzy things to read/watch/listen to?
Ahhh, this is definitely a perfectly timed post for a lot of us! I can see why people would gravitate towards heartwarming things right now. I think my ultimate recommendation for this is Heartstopper because I was literally like the 😍 and 🥰 emojis basically the whole time, haha.
Cerulean Sea is high on my TBR because of how much everyone has been raving about it! I’m waiting for an audiobook at the library but maybe I’ll just take the plunge and buy a Kindle copy (I got some Amazon vouchers as a prize at work recently, haha – I won the Easter photo competition 😂).
I’m excited to see your WEBTOON recs! I keep meaning to read some things on there after I got two recommendations from @tender.curiosity on IG! I’ll have to check out your recommendations too. 😄
My podcast recommendations are from Crini but I recommend them as much as she does! They’re Girl in Space and The Strange Case of Starship Iris. I’ve just finished listening to Starship Iris for the second time, and I recently finished relistening to GiS too. 😍
OOooooo yes I 100% need to get Heartstopper. I think I’ve only ever seen like 5 star reviews for it hahaha everyone loves it.
Easter photo competition?? what was your photo? you should show us on the discord hehe. I mean I’m in favor of buying an ebook copy, clearly haha.
Yes!! I’m looking for some new WEBTOONs because I just love the comic format haha. I love being able to binge them though, the wait each week is so hard.
Omg yes I love Girl in Space. I need it to come back!!! I need to listen to Starship though. Hopefully soon!
Haha, I hope you love it!
Ah, well, I sort of cheated because I submitted a video of those ducklings along with a blossom photo, so you’ve already seen the video! I must admit I think that’s what cinched my victory. 💁🏻♀️😂
I’ve got a few Webtoons lined up to try and will hopefully do that soon! For now though, my current reads are keeping me nicely occupied.
Same! And I hope you love Starship Iris too! It’s just so good.
ahah well I’m glad you won, those ducklings were cute. and blossoms are always a winner.