I always feel a little iffy about marking a comic as 'read', thereby adding it to my yearly reading goal. I'd be the first one to tell you that comics are just as valid as literature as any novel, but they still feel like distinct mediums to me. On top of that, finishing a comic book never takes as much effort for me as reading a book, and as such, it doesn't have the same sense of ackomplishment when I mark it as finished. On the other hand, they are both books in essence and are available on pagebound for a reason. Less effort isn't no effort either, most of the comics I read are very text-heavy, and stat-damaged that I am, I find that I'm less inclined to read something if I can't add it. The middle-ground I've settled on is that if I own a comic in a collection, I'll only add the collection book rather than every single issue, and I don't add comics with little to no text. I also still aim to reach my yearly reading goal in novels only, even if I read comics on top of that.

Does anyone else do something similar? Or am I just overthinking this? I'm curious what you think!

Although I generally think it is best when an author can explicitly state that a character is neurodivergent, I understand that we have only had terminology that allows this for a few decades — and even that terminology is ever-changing as we understand what neurodivergence more. After reading Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, whose main character resonates with many neurodivergent readers, I started to wonder about other books with neurodivergent “coded” characters, especially those which were written in times when we did not have terms like autism, ADHD, and OCD.

I’m thinking maybe I’d like to make a list of such books, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for said list?