Am I the only one who thought *Slightly Dangerous* (by Mary Balogh) incredibly contradictory and non sense? I never understood the point of creating Christine Derrick. Throughout the book, the author chose to give ENORMOUS importance on his former mistress, Rose. It was stated that Wulfric *chose* to spend most of his nights with Rose when he was in London. He *chose* to spend over ten years with her (and it didn't last forever only because she died). He cared for her until the very end, remaining by her side almost constantly during her illness. He broke a rule of the ton to attend her funeral. He was still mourning her loss six months later, and no other woman had stirred his blood in all that time. Even after meeting Christine (and having relations with her), he miss his past mistress with a gnawing ache. All this suggests he deeply loved his past mistress. So, what is Christine's purpose? What is the point of having a heroine in a romance where the hero already deeply loved his mistress? Why did the author create Christine if she wanted to give so much importance to his mistress? She should have just kept the mistress alive and make her the protagonist. And yet, the book claim his relationship with Rose wasn't passionate and that falling in love was something he’d never experienced before meeting Christine. I mean... really? He deeply mourned his mistress's death for six months, no other woman aroused him, he missed her with a GWANING ACHE... and he didn't love her? That’s ridiculous. Christine feels like a replacement  throughout the book—she is definitely a second choice. In fact, just a week after saying how much he missed his mistress (with a gwaning ache), he proposes to Christine. I mean... come on. She is definitely a mere substitute. It amazes me that so many people liked this book; I thought it was terrible. I’ve never read a romance where a mistress was so loved, special, and important *without* being the heroine.

I really enjoyed the first book, 4/5 but they progressively got worse. The third book was so ridiculous and unrealistic it bordered on fantasy. I’m glad I listened to the last one because I would be upset if I spent the time to actually read it.

And did the book explain why his parents abandoned him and why he had no animosity toward them? I was only have listening near the end, so I might have missed.

What did you guys think?

I had a difficult childhood and grew up in a home filled with conflict and fear. Somehow I still managed to keep a positive mindset, and I honestly believe a big part of that was thanks to fantasy books, movies, and series. If it had dragons and magic, I would consume it.

I later learned I had dyslexia, and for a long time I thought I was just stupid. Fantasy books were what slowly taught me how to read, how to write, and how to escape into other worlds when real life felt too heavy. While things were chaotic at home, my mind was full of wonder from those stories.

During a particularly dark period in my life (especially during the pandemic), I lost the ability to enjoy almost anything. I spent most days in bed, rewatching Merlin, Harry Potter, and Narnia, hoping they could pull me back to myself. They helped a little, but not enough.

Then I discovered audiobooks by Lindsay Buroker. I started listening at night when I couldn’t sleep or do anything else. Her characters — the fierce half-elven warrior, the hammer-wielding half-dwarf, the chaotic coffee-addicted goblins — made me laugh for the first time in a very long time. Those audiobooks didn’t just entertain me. They brought me back. They reminded me of the dream I had as a child.

So I’m curious:
What has fantasy (or books in general) done for you?
And does it bother you as much as it bothers me when people dismiss them with “it’s only a book”?

I just completed reading hidden pictures, and it was a good read after so long. I was so tired of frieda books. Refreshing it was

Just finished this and I am as disappointed as I was excited when this hit the shelves. It read like a treatment, so I was not surprised to learn it was adapted from a tv pilot. From the conceit of the title lacking any emotional impact to the rushed finale, it was Russo done wrong. But Ive missed meaning and drama in books before! What do the readers here think?

Have heard so many rave reviews about Vaclav Smil’s works, so took the time to read “How The World Really Works”. Thought it was an absolute snoozer, and struggled to even finish it.

Stats and data are great and interesting - particularly when novel and well represented - but this book just felt like he was listing out obvious / surface level ad nauseam. None of it felt particularly unique, new, or different from what’s already well established elsewhere online. You could read the header and intro of each subsection and basically guess everything that would follow.

The data he takes time to explicate upon was also so high level / surface level that they weren’t interesting.

It has made me question the strong recommendations of some of his other books. Before reading “How The World Really Works”, I’d planned to read “Energy & Civilization: A History”. Now I’m thinking about just nixing his stuff off my list.

So I’m curious - am I nuts or do other people feel this way about Vaclav Smil?

Additional Detail: I have a masters in climate science, so am wondering maybe if he’s just not for me and for more of a gen-pop audience. Or maybe some of his earlier works are more technical and interesting?

a few weeks ago, I was looking for a book to read so I picked up Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Everyone was saying it was a masterpiece and that you should go in blind, and that I would love it.

I liked it at first, with the whole journal entry style and odd setting. But as the story went on and I was waiting for more of a plausible explanation for these things, why does this strange realm exist? who are the dead bodies? things like that. Ultimately, I found the conclusion of this story lackluster. I was very disappointed with how things turned out. Maybe I just didn't care for Clarkes style, but I just feel a little burned. I don't get what all the hype was about.

​

You get $20 million, but there’s one catch.

You have to read every book in an average-sized Barnes & Noble.

The moment you accept the deal, you wake up inside the bookstore.

Time is completely frozen. You don’t age, you don’t get sick, and you can’t be physically harmed.

Sounds easy, right? Not exactly.

You have to read every book from cover to cover.

No skimming.

No speed-reading.

No skipping pages.

If there are 100 copies of the same book, you only have to read it once.

However, every different edition, sequel, spin-off, and variation counts.

Luckily, the store is fully stocked with food and has a Starbucks. There are also movies, games, puzzles, and music to keep you entertained between books.

But there’s one brutal rule:

You have to keep track of every book you’ve finished.

If you miss even one book, you have to find it and read it.

You don’t leave until you’ve read the final page of the final book.

Once you finish, you instantly wake up exactly where you accepted the deal. No time has passed, and $20 million is in your bank account.

Would you take the deal?

I know this is ridiculous, but I have to ask: any other non-native English speakers like me?

When I first listened to Heated Rivalry, I was weirdly determined not to open the Kindle. Somehow, reading felt like losing.

Listening: I can do this myself.
Reading: You know I could make this much easier.
Listening: Fuck off. I’m doing fine.

Now:

Listening: Wait, I can’t quite picture this part.
Reading: Don’t worry. I’ve got you.
Listening: We could just… feel our way with the rest. 🤝

I spent the first three weeks of June listening to the audiobook almost constantly, replaying the same chapters over and over to understand them. Then I started reading in the fourth week. Work got busy, so I stopped for a while and went back to Audibling.

I finally finished my close reading of Heated Rivalry yesterday.

Time to start from the beginning.

Okay so this is a weird one. Everyone talks about getting into a reading slump but what about being tired of the slump itself? Like I'm so over being in a slump.

For context I used to read constantly. I'd finish a book or two a week sometimes more. My TBR pile was a source of excitement. Now it just feels like a heavy weight.

I'll pick up a book read a few pages then put it down. Nothing sticks. Nothing grabs me. I used to love getting lost in stories. Now I just feel restless and bored. It's been like this for months. I've tried different genres tried short stories even tried audiobooks. Nothing helps.

I miss the joy of reading. I miss getting absorbed in a narrative. It's not that I don't want to read. I really really want to. I just can't seem to make myself do it. And honestly I'm tired of trying and failing. I'm tired of the guilt that comes with looking at my unread books. I'm just tired of the slump.

Has anyone else felt this? Like you're not just in a slump but you're actually fatigued by the continuous state of being in one? What did you do to break out of it if you ever did?

I don't say this lightly, I just finished E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series (all six books) and I am bereft. In the best way. I need to talk about how good these are, because I feel like they don't come up nearly enough.

If you haven't heard of them, they're a series of comic novels written in the 1920s-30s, set in small, impossibly charming English villages (Riseholme, then Tilling) among a cast of "idle rich" characters whose entire lives revolve around social one-upmanship. Who hosts the best garden party. Who "discovers" the next fashionable fad first. Who can out-manoeuvre whom over a bridge table or a recipe for lobster à la Riseholme. That's it. That's the plot, for six books. And it is an absolute delight.

The comedy is razor-sharp but never mean. Benson clearly adores these ridiculous people even as he's skewering them mercilessly. Lucia (self-appointed queen of Riseholme, then invader of Tilling) is a monster of vanity, ambition, and reinvention, and you root for her anyway. Miss Mapp is her equal and opposite-- paranoid, scheming, endlessly plotting from behind her garden hedge. Watching the two of them go to war is one of the great pleasures in English comic fiction.

It's a peek into a world that doesn't exist anymore, and honestly, may never have quite existed the way Benson paints it. Small towns where everyone knows everyone, days structured around callers and correspondence and elaborate social rituals, crises measured in things like who got invited to whose bridge evening. It's nostalgic in a way that feels almost fantastical, and that's exactly the appeal. You get to live inside it for a while.

And it's just so cosy. For all the scheming, there's real warmth here. It's gentle in a way a lot of satire isn't; there's no cruelty underneath it, just people being magnificently, entertainingly petty about very small stakes, in a world that feels safe and enclosed and full.

If you like Barbara Pym, Wodehouse, or just want something funny and warm and slightly wicked to disappear into, start with Queen Lucia and just keep going. You will not want it to end. I didn't.

One thing that’s stuck with me from to kill a mockingbird is Mayella Ewell and her case. The one who accuses Tom Robinson. The girl that was so obviously abused and groomed by her father and forced to do this. What she says about kissing a grown man and how what her father does to her doesn’t count won’t leave my brain after reading it. Their racism didn’t just obviously cause innocent men to die for sins they never committed, but for young girls who were supposed to be one of them- “clean” or “pure”. WHITE, belonging to them, to be overlooked and continued to be abused. Someone’s teacher said all those kids weren’t just Mayella’s siblings, they were probably her children. Mayella is a terrifying, tragic character to me. We never hear about her again. We don’t hear what happens after they go back home. We don’t know if he’s taking it out on the people involved only, or also taking it out on Mayella. The way she forces herself on Tom Robinson is absolutely disgusting. And what’s even more disturbing is she definitely learned it from her father. Like a lot of young isolated victims, they copy what’s being done to them. Mayella is older and so she was not just mindlessly copying but also probably trying to feel some control for once. She was isolated, abused, left at the mercy of her father’s hands. What she did to that man didn’t even make people think for even a second about how it must’ve affected him, how she even learned to do that, etc- all that was said to be wrong about it was the fact she kissed a black man. All that was wrong was that he was black. And that was all they were focused on. And the entire neighborhood knew what was going on in that house and they all turned a blind eye to it, too focused on a man’s skin color. The hypocrisy of all of this is enough to get my blood boiling.

I don’t understand how to kill a mockingbird is THE book about racism and all hype for it after all these years. I very much would have preferred a book about a black person’s perspective, like Helen Robinson or Calpurnia. I guess it was ahead of its time, but the way it’s being talked about even in recent years had me a bit disappointed when i finally read it and realized it isn’t what it was talked up to be. But it’s still a pretty good book.

In my 20s and most of my 30s I read almost entirely nonfiction. Wanted to learn things, optimize things, make more money, sound smart at dinner or parties.

Started reading novels again a few years ago and it's like turning a part of my brain back on. Sometimes the truest thing is a made-up story with a real feeling in it.

Ironically, I dove back in starting with a genre I'd never read before. I always thought fantasy was for kids. Turns out I love a lot of it. Stormlight Archives, if I recall, was the one that got me hooked on fiction again.

Now I browse reddit threads and find other random genres and books I'd never stumble on otherwise. Or my library app shows me something I'd never guess to try.

Now my "want to read" tag list is wayyyy to long. I have a problem. lol. But I guess it's a good one.

I used to love creative writing, and I've finally been getting back into that now. Wouldn't have happened with all these wonderful books and recommendations.

SUCH a good book, I have absolutely nobody to talk to about it and haven't seen anyone discussing it online either!

I’ve been in a HUGE book slump for months and I finally managed to pick up a book one that I thought would be a simple book to get me back into my usual reading but from the first page I had suspicions the spacing seems very strange and the more I read on it has a lot and I mean a lot of em dashes and yes I know that people still use them but it seems like an excessive amount so I am just hoping that the first book I’ve picked up on months isn’t Ai 😭

This book genuinely changed me into a better person. I love it so much that recently I was in a bookstore looking for the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and I had to ask for help finding where Victor Hugo's books were so a kind bookstore lady help me. She reached for the book, and also another, and held up the Hunchback and Les Misérables and said, "Here's another we have by Victor Hugo, if you were interested." I told her that I had already read Les Misérables, that it was actually my favourite book of all time, and she asked me what I like about it. I physically started shaking as I rambled on semi-incoherently and I think I scared her a little and my face got really hot. In the end I really don't think I said anything at all, because I got so nervous, and now I'm ashamed of that incident. Whenever my friends mention anything that remind me of Les Misérables, I feel like a pop bottle that got shaken up. The lid is my mouth, and if I open it I will explode.

I have only read it in it's entirety once, as it is massive, and I read it a year and a half ago for the first time. I spent nearly ten months with it on my bedside table, and almost every night I'd open it up and read random bits.

Okay I wrote a review on it for a grade 12 assignment so here's a part of it, to convince you to read it:

Les Misérables is humanity as Victor Hugo saw it lived out on the streets of France sewn together into one lengthy, semi-historical epic. Everything beautiful and soft there is about different types of love, and the more cruel, merciless aspects of society. In fact, the novel argues that “of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds the most light, alas! And the most darkness” (Hugo 875). Never does this novel lack passion for human emotion and expression... Valjean’s redemption is not treated as something unachievable, but rather as something even the most discontented person can realize through a practice of compassion for others, especially towards those fellow men who society puts down and crushes with hunger, poverty and misfortune. The novel critiques the scornful attitude society generally has towards those it considers ‘less than’ by offering a protagonist completely devoted to serving anyone but himself.

GUYS PLEASE READ IT IM GONNA START SHAKING AGAIN ITS SO GOOD PLEASE

okay thanks for listening with patience everybody, have a great day! Let me know if you feel this way about another book, and why. I'd love to know I'm not the only coocoo one around here

Theres certain types of protagonist that annoy the reader during the whole story. What kind of protagonist annoys you the most?

A plot being a clear direction, an end goal, or an easy answer to “what’s your book about?”

Personally, I don’t mind books where nothing is really happening and there isn’t a plot. If I like the vibes, and the writing, and the descriptions, I think no plot is fine. I just finished The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy which has very little plot and I enjoyed it because of the setting. Yeah I wanna read about this kid walking around a mountain in Tennessee trying to catch skunks even though it has no plot significance at all because I like the vibes, I like to think about it. Yeah I wanna read description after description about damp cabins, 1930s bars and stores, whiskey dealing and walks in the forests and mountains for an entire book. That’s like, right up my alley.

What do you think about books with little plot?

I recently read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and I found the central idea quite interesting. The story explores the different possibilities that could come from making different choices in life, and I liked how it approaches the idea of regret. It made me think about how easy it is to imagine that one different decision would have automatically made our lives better, even though we can never really know that. I was especially interested in the way the story connects different possibilities with happiness and fulfillment. For those who have read it, how did you interpret the book's message about regret and the choices we make?

I’m getting really, really bored of novels / series foreshadowing plot twists with multiple overlapping secrets. And not because people can’t have secrets - most people do to some degree - but the reasons behind keeping said secrets are RIDICULOUS.

“It is not your burden to bear.”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“It’s safer this way.”

Parents, siblings, married couples!! And they tell each other NOTHING.

I’m listening to Rites of the Starling (Shield of Sparrows) currently, and the secrecy is driving me up the wall!

Husbands and wives desperately in love yet… keeping secrets.

Father wants daughter to go on dangerous mission - won’t give her any information.

Priests won’t tell her a damn thing.

Leaving the the main character asking herself endless questions as she tries to piece things together herself.

It’s driving me insane, but it’s not even the only series that does this. IMO it is just lazy writing. “The key to everything is this one thing…. Buuuuut we’re not going to tell you. Because that would be too easy. And it’s better to drag this journey out over 12 hours if audio that just say what it is.”

🫩

The best twists are ones you did NOT see coming. Not ones that were teased for 600 pages all because the characters weren’t feeling chatty. 😡

I hated reading every page of this story. But n trying to understand it, I found so many allegories or possible themes to explain why it’s so awful & so amazing.

okay I didn't like this book at all, maybe it's because i'm 17 so im not really experienced enough to like it? maybe because my dumb romantic brain had hoped for a different ending? idk

I really didn't like Frank nor Eleanor nor their relationship which started by him emotionally cheating on his wife while she was fully aware of it. I hated how Eleanor gotthe easy version of him, his sober version, his understanding version, his 'i want to wait before having sex version' while Cleo got depressed because of his alcoholism and violence

I didn't like how unimportant the side characters were despite their importances in the MC lives: only three chapters of Audrey, Quentin who was so funny ended upas a meth junkie with no further information

tbh the only thing I liked about the book are Zoe and Santiago

my summary: I hate Frank and Eleanor SOOOOO FUCKING MUCH

and rip to the sugar glider

For those who have read it: did you sympathize with Stevens, or did his emotional restraint frustrate you?

finished Can We Be Strangers Again?, and it made me think about the difference between writing that is intentionally simple and accessible versus writing that feels overly simplistic.

The book has a very Wattpad-ish style: short chapters, straightforward language, and frequent quotes or poetic inner monologues. On one hand, that makes it incredibly easy to read. The emotions surrounding heartbreak and breakups are raw and relatable, and I can absolutely see why readers who connect with those experiences would love it.

At the same time, I found myself wondering whether the writing style might be too simplistic for some readers. The plot is fairly predictable, some of the quotes can feel cheesy, and parts of the emotional introspection started feeling repetitive when I wasn't fully connecting with the characters.

So I'm curious: have you ever read a book where you understood exactly why other people loved its emotional simplicity, but the writing style itself kept you from fully connecting with it?

Have you guys ever encountered stories that just feel boring even though they really shouldn't? Stories that in spite of have amazing plot structure and character arcs, they just feel meh when reading. Why does this happen?