Favorite Fictional Character --- Bugs Bunny

 

Centuries ago, I would occasionally pick a monthly theme for my Favorite Fictional Character posts, and exactly 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 11 seconds ago, I decided to revive that sporadic tradition. Nothing says continuity like randomly deciding to do something you only did occasionally fifteen billion years ago.

And because the first character that popped into my head was Bugs Bunny, it looks like y’all will be reading about my love of four different Looney Tunes characters during the month of January! I can already feel the excitement pouring off of you. As I typed that, I could see Bugs in my mind giving me a blank look, blinking once or twice, and then saying, “Eh… what’s up, Doc?”

For me, as a kid born in the 1970s, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know who Bugs Bunny was or think he was anything other than absolutely, ridiculously funny. He was Loki before Tom Hiddleston was born and is older than Deadpool and Bart Simpson combined. He is a true Trickster in every sense of the word. As a kid, I didn’t understand what a Trickster was. All I saw was a talking rabbit getting one over on hunters, loud mustached cowboys, and whirling devils and witches who wanted to eat him.

He gave perms to monsters, fought a bull, outplayed an entire baseball team, and stuck his nose up at anyone in charge. He was an astronaut, opera singer, knight, barber, and cowboy. As a kid, I thought Bugs could do just about anything.

As an old man (49) past his prime, I may not find him quite as funny as I did back then, but I still appreciate every single second I spent in his company. He entertained the hell out of me, and that’s just about all you can ask of an anthropomorphic talking rabbit.

Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge

 

I realized I had left off a challenge when I wrote about the first two the other day. My friend Carol over at Carol’s Notebook hosts The Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, and since the mystery genre will always be my first love, I’m signing up.

I’m going for the Sherlock Holmes level, which means I’ll need to read and review at least 56 mystery novels. You can head over to the sign-up post for all the details.

Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen

 

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Private Investigator Evander “Andy” Mills’ next case takes him out of his comfort zone in San Francisco—and much to his dismay, back home to Los Angeles. After a secretive queer rights organization called the Mattachine Society enlists Andy to find some missing members, he must dodge not only motorcycle gangs and mysterious forces, but his own mother, too. 

Avoiding her proves to be a challenge when the case leads Andy to the psychological clinic she works at. Worlds collide, buried secrets are dug up, and Andy realizes he’s going to have to burn it all down this time if he wants to pull off a rescue. With secret societies, drugs, and doctors swirling around him, time is running out for Andy to locate the missing and get them to safety. And for him to make it back to San Francisco in one piece.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but for the last four years I’ve started the new year with Andy. Lavender House was my first book of 2023, The Bell in the Fog kicked off 2024, Rough Pages started 2025, and now Mirage City is my first book of 2026. I hesitate to call it a ritual, but I’m not sure what else to call it. Habit? Tradition? Compulsion feels a little dramatic—but honestly, my reading year wouldn’t feel right without Andy, Gene, Lee, and Elise being the first characters I spend time with. It feels like coming home.

I’m not going to recap the plot, mostly because the synopsis already does a solid job. What I do want to talk about is Andy himself. I love watching him work a case. As this series has gone on, Andy has grown—not just as a detective, but as a queer man learning how to love himself and figure out where he fits in the community around him. He was always smart, always observant, but there’s a deeper sense of compassion and justice in how he approaches his work now. That growth feels earned, and it’s one of the reasons I keep coming back to this series.

I went back and forth for a while about how much I wanted to say about some of the themes Mirage City tackles. At one point, I had several long paragraphs written about conversion therapy and the ways our community has been brutalized and killed in the name of “curing” us—aversion therapy, forced commitments to asylums, chemical castration, electric shocks, lobotomies, all of it. This wasn’t ancient history. This happened to boys barely in their teens, and it’s still within living memory. In some forms, it’s still happening today.

Since this is a book review and not a queer history lesson, I’ll spare you all of that—but I think it’s important to say that the weight of that history is very much present in this story.

And honestly, that’s one of the many reasons I love this series so much. Lev AC Rosen has an incredible way of weaving queer history into his mysteries without ever making it feel like a lecture. For example, I’ve known about the Mattachine Society for years, but I didn’t know that the oldest continuously active queer organization is actually a biker gang called the Satyrs. That kind of detail matters. Our history isn’t taught in schools—if anything, it’s erased or glossed over—so I’m always grateful to authors who find ways to pass it along through fiction. So much of who we are as a community was shaped by that history, whether we realize it or not. 

I do want to be clear, though: Mirage City isn’t a heavy, joyless read. The themes are serious, but they never overwhelm the story or the characters. At its heart, this is a well-crafted mystery set in the 1950s that’s just as much about perseverance, self-acceptance, found family, and love as it is about crime. It’s another reminder of why starting my year with Andy feels so right—and why I already know I’ll be doing it again.

Challenges: Mount TBR, Cloak & Dagger 

Mount TBR and Calendar of Crime Reading Challenges

I used to love reading challenges, and at the height of my blogging days it was normal for me to participate in five to ten different ones at a time. I loved how they expanded my reading and nudged me toward books I might have otherwise missed. It was one of the facets of blogging I missed the most.

This year, since I still feel like I’m easing my way back into blogging, I think I’m going to keep it to fewer than five—at least for now.

The first two are both hosted by Bev at My Reader’s Block, one of the best bloggers or people I know. 

Mout TBR Reading Challenge

I think the name is pretty self-explanatory, and the rules are simple. You must commit to a level when you sign up; I’m going for Mt. Everest, which is a 100-book commitment. All of the books must be ones you owned prior to January 1, 2025. You can read the rest of the rules by following the link above.

Calendar of Crime Reading Challenge

I love mysteries, and at one point in my life they were pretty much all I was reading. I’ve missed them, and since one of my personal challenges is to jump back into the genre with both feet, I thought this challenge might be fun. The goal is to commit to one book per month for all of 2026; the catch is that each book must fit one of the categories set for that month. You can read all the details by following the link above.

Yuletide Spirit Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

 

I’m a little late getting this posted, but for whatever reason I’ve been ridiculously tired lately. All I’ve wanted to do after work is crawl into bed and watch a few episodes of Angel. On nights when I’m feeling especially ambitious, I’ll pick up Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen—my first book of the year—which I’m about halfway through. I’m hoping to finish it today, but past experience tells me not to make any bold promises.

When I signed up for the Yuletide Spirit Reading Challenge, I went all in and committed to the highest tier—the Christmas Tree level—which meant reading at least five books with a Christmas setting. It came down to the wire, but I did manage to squeak by and complete my five-book commitment.

The Geek Who Saved Christmas by Annabeth Albert

The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch

Look Up, Handsome by Jack Strange 

Hold My Hand, It's Christmas by K.C. Wells 

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson 

Since I’m a Christmas movie fanatic, I also signed up for the Fa La La La Films side challenge, which simply required watching a whole bunch of Christmas movies. I start watching Christmas movies in early November, and some of them I’ll throw on whenever the mood strikes. What that means, unfortunately, is that a few of my all-time favorites were watched before the official challenge start date. And alas, others didn’t get watched at all, mostly because I was feeling lazy and didn’t feel like messing with the Blu-ray player.

That said, I still managed to watch twenty-six Christmas movies, most of them very much in the Hallmark vein. I also watched twelve of the Rankin/Bass TV specials, during the one stretch where I actually put my Blu-ray player to work.

Challenges: Yuletide Spirit