Our Blog

Our world is filled with quintessential pairings. Bacon and eggs. Bert and Ernie. Peanut butter and jelly. We seek out wine pairings to complement our meals; we set up our friends because they’re sure to be the perfect pair. But here at Quirk Books, we spend our time coming up with book pairings. And today — because we’re so wonderful and generous — we’re sharing those pairings with you.

Anime as a genre isn’t always known for its strong female characters. In fact, it may be better known for its scantily clad female characters and their impossible anatomy! However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of incredible badass women in this world. From warriors to princesses, classic film to new series, we’ve got some of the strongest (and best loved) female characters in the world of Japanese animation for you.

Anime as a genre isn’t always known for its strong female characters. In fact, it may be better known for its scantily clad female characters and their impossible anatomy! However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of incredible badass women in this world. From warriors to princesses, classic film to new series, we’ve got some of the strongest (and best loved) female characters in the world of Japanese animation for you.

Image by Klári Cseke from Pixabay

This summer’s Christopher Robin features 47-year-old Ewan McGregor in the titular role. The young boy from A. A. Milne’s classic book is long gone. In his place is that same beloved character, only with decades of life behind him and an ever-waning imagination ahead of him. It’s a fun concept, but it really got us thinking about other favorite literary characters from our childhood – characters whose adult selves we would love to meet.

Photo by Julian Myles on Unsplash

We loved Lady Bird – like, really loved it. Laying on car hoods with your best friend listening to Dave Matthews Band, having the football coach take over the drama club, learning that Timothee Chalamet’s character is a grade A jerk. (Why, Timothee? Why?) Greta Gerwig has a knack for tapping into the volatility of the teenage experience, so we couldn’t help but wonder what our favorite teen issue books would look like under her lens.

[source: Warner Brothers]

The next time you complain about having a terrible birthday, whether forgotten or not going according to plan, please stop and think: is this birthday better or worse than a Harry Potter birthday? Unless you too are dealing with an all-powerful Dark Lord trying to kill you at every turn, your answer will be “oh, so much better, I can’t believe I was complaining, accio cake, please.” As if The Boy Who Lived wasn’t already dealing with enough, he couldn’t even look forward to July 31st, the one day a year that was supposed to be celebratory. Once at Hogwarts, not all of his birthdays were completely terrible, since you know, people actually remembered them, but even the best ones were filled with some sense of doom and/or gloom. But of the seven birthdays readers got to celebrate with Harry, which was the worst? From merely not terrible to angsty to his life was in mortal danger, here’s all of Harry Potter’s birthdays ranked from best to worst. Happy Birthday, Harry…we guess?