Oh, and one more thing that was a really nice finishing touch: along with my books came a set of bookmarks--again with a common trade dress--for the books. Just lovely.

8/8

The site also has the ability to browse or search the yokai entries online, if you want to see the kinds of information and illustrations that makeup the books.

A few more selections from the slipcase art.

7/n

I've spent several hours over the last couple of days just flipping through these, reading the entries, and studying the details in the artwork.

If this is at all your kind of thing, these editions as well as two more moderately priced versions, are available at yokai.com.

6/n

While the outside packaging of these books is really lovely, it is, of course, what's inside that matters. Here are a couple of sample page spreads from that first volume, and some artwork details.

5/n

Each of the books is a jacketless hardcover, and again there is matching design across the set. Here's what the first volume looks like coming out of the slipcase.

4/n

Let me say, first of all that they are so pretty before you even open them. Beautiful slipcases with art on both sides, foil stamped titles on the cases, and a specially designed spine on each (matching design across the books of course).

3/n

While I was looking into it, I found out that Matthew Meyer (@yokai.com on here) had done 5 previous "field guide to yokai" books & they were all up on his site.

I quite liked the images of the collectors' editions of them, so I ordered all 5, and had them shipped around the world from Japan.

2/n

They are! I know lots of people collect them. If you can take them down safely you can sell them for a decent amount too.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. It seems futile considering how easy it is to make block lists on Bluesky. But those people have different concepts of what amounts to a waste of time and money than regular people do...

That is one glorious chonker!

So bizarre... I guess they're counting on people to blindly follow them back to build up some kind of appearance of being real... and then, what? Sell the account to a scammer? Like on Reddit?

It's crazy how much time and effort is spent on manipulating free social media profiles...

I don't get it... so bots just follow everyone on these starter packs? For what purpose? Is it a way to artificially pad follower numbers? Or is it a way for bots to seem legit if they're following thousands of users?

There aren't really any hard or precise rules, but raw emotion tends to be enough in most stories.

If you remember what book it was, I'd love to know!