sooooo what are some of your controversial book opinions? don’t be shy, tell meeee !!! this is a safe space 🧐

for me: i hate when the cover of a book is a man/ person, when the playlist of a book has taylor swift, & when a book is extremely long for no good reason. ( I will dnf or skip a book if I see these )

even though my tbr is literally 340+ books, here i am, looking for some more because apparently all 300+ books don’t fit the criteria of my moon right now. i want something that gives the vibe of babel (academia, subtle bl but not necessary, long and thick to keep me entertained for hours, etc). something that from the beginning hold you down like the feeling you get when you open the third book in a really good series. characters seem familiar (eg, mistborn, stormlight archive, etc), you know the world and its system, there’s tragedy, there’s some yearning (not specifically romantic yearning) and something that’s suitable for audiobooks. i usually only read YAs as audiobooks and im not particular about who narrated it or how the quality is, as long as i can understand the words, im not picky.

is this too big of an ask? im a heavy mood reader and hate rereads. so i can’t even reopen a familiar book while i wait out my decision fatigue. 😭😭

long story short: i’ve been reading so much Kindle Unlimited stuff (edit: cozy fantasy novels) that i really think that it’s affected my ability to read other genres of novels. i hope to change this tide but thinking about approaching it by reading shortlist books for awards.

do you? do you feel like “correcting” any reading habits?

It was the first time we realized that the cosmos did not make “sense” and could not. It wasn’t made only for us. This is when “space” became the “black sea”—when we learned to see what we considered empty as full and unfathomable, similar to oceans. It is so long ago now, hardly any of us remember it. We call our universe the black sea as if it is the only name it has, as if planets have always been “islands” and we always saw ourselves as sailors. But once in a while, it is valuable to think of where that name comes from. The wonder in those words, our terror and awe. The name marks a moment of recognition: when we realized that what seemed empty was simply not for our eyes, and what appeared story-less was only unknown.

There are some modes of thought where such unfathomable depth, such unknowable-ness, is accessible to us (I think fairytales are among them) and some where it’s not. It’s wonderful and fascinating that here, the author is using two forms of writing and thinking that normally don’t interact at with the unknowable — an academic paper and a museum — to discuss it. It brings the beauty, the terror and awe, into stark relief and, I believe, intensifies it.