Do you guys have any theories as to why most people seem to prefer mlm over wlw? Especially considering that most romance readers are women and if you are reading gay romances you would be more on the progressive scale so one wouldn't immediately sus you out for misogyny. Any ideas?

To all the people who annotate their books, how much is too much? I‘m reading the secret history by donna tartt and it‘ll be the first book i annotate. I‘m highlighting what feels like every second word and 3 pages in i already have 8 different colours in my color guide. I don’t have any experience with annotating as no one around me does it, so any help and advice is highly appreciated 🫶

Do you guys have any theories as to why most people seem to prefer mlm over wlw? Especially considering that most romance readers are women and if you are reading gay romances you would be more on the progressive scale so one wouldn't immediately sus you out for misogyny. Any ideas?

Hello guys!

I'm in need of very specific recommendations and I hope some of you can help me out🫱🏻‍🫲🏼

My german mother (54) has been learning english as her second language on duolingo for years now and she's gotten sooo good and it's given her such confidence, I love it so much.

I'm home for the holidays and she told me today that she picked up my current book that was lying around (Iron Widow) and read a couple sentences and that she even largely understood them. That gave me the idea to perhaps gift her her first english book to read! But 99% of what I read is fantasy and - as far as I know - that's not my mums taste. Shes not the biggest reader as a whole, mainly she just reads a bit on her summer vacation every year, so shes not DEEP in the book game either. The most recent books I've seen lying around at home were darker romance books tho (namely things like 50 shades of grey) which is a genre I'm sooooo lost in too 😭 I do think that I have seen her read other genres before like mystery too? Im not too sure though.

So, do you guys have recs for books that are:

• easy language
• short (novellas or short story collections are fair game too!)
• not YA (it needs to read somewhat adult-y even if the characters are in their 20s)
• romance? Perhaps dark-ish and spicy-ish? (But keep in mind that it's for my MOTHER😭 My family is chill but I do have s o m e boundaries😭)

That's it I think, honestly your recs don't even have to be solely romance, it can have mystery or thriller aspects maybe, but it needs to stay relatively easy in language and content!

I hope you guys have some ideas for me here!🙂‍↕️ (and that asking for smut recs for my mother to read is not too weird a concept ahahahah)

I listen to a lot of audiobooks, which means I don't know the pages in the book nor do I know the percent I am through a book. When updating my progress I have to look up how many chapters are in said audiobook, then divide the chapter I'm on by that number to then find the percent I'm through the novel and plug that into the % tab.

I know, it's not that bad, but it's unnecessarily tedious when I could just plug in the chapter I'm on and the total chapters (similar to the pages feature currently) and have PB auto-save the number of chapters so then I can just put the chapter I'm on and not have to worry about it.

Does this make sense? Does anyone who is a mainly audio listener feel similarly? I would post this in the feature request forum since there doesn't seem to be anything like it, but unfortunately I don't have that kind of money right now to buy PB royalty 💔

I was thinking about this today, cause it /really/ pisses me off. I find it insane how certain books/authors will literally use literally the most ridiculous workaround to portray raw, no condom, no nothing, sex in the main plotline

My worst example for this is love hypothesis, and before trashing the sex scene, I have to say i actually liked this book. So Adam and olive are making out and getting in the mood, AND THEY GET TO THAT PART WHERE HE'S LIKE, WAIT, I DON'T HAVE A CONDOM and instead of literally doing anything else olive turns around and tells him, SHE IS ON BIRTH CONTROL????? mind you, Olive is self proclaimed demisexual, and for a while outside of a relationship, an academic working for quote unquote inhumane hours, SHE DOES NOT HAVE AN ACTIVE SEX LIFE. Olive also doesn't have any forms of pcos or any other complications, her randomly being on birth control, WHEN IT IS NEVER MENTIONED BEFORE IN THE BOOK, is insane to me, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S ONLY THERE SO ADAM DOESN'T HAVE TO WEAR A CONDOM Edit: Bc my point for this came off wrong, I'm editing to say ik birth control has many uses, my main issue was that it felt as just an excuse for said unprotected sex to happen, which is the trope in intimacy scenes that I'm complaining about. The fact that there's no other basis for it and she just blurted it out was what irked me, not the fact that she might, hypothetically, take it. I have to mention here that's not the only just thrown there characteristic that I didn't enjoy in the book, as an aroace person I disliked how her demisexualness was explored and also just blurted it out, in the first few chapters, but that's a whole different matter. I just dont think it was nuanced or ernest

And it got me thinking, just how many romance books/eroticas pull strings like these to portray this fantasy Edit: I'm not shitting on ppl enjoying this trope, I mention later on I've had my run with it as well, just from the broad selection of spicy books I have encountered, I think its over glorified and way too common. To compare, just as I expect a book with bdsm elements to do it in a safe, consensual, not necessarily educational but good way, from a similar pov I find it frustrating that unprotected sex is often shown as more 'sexy' and has no reprecautions whatsoever, not maybe even a little mention. My main issue is sexual health, not conception

I think this is annoying especially in /way/ too much about having to wear one and the measures of protection from pregnancy fall only on the woman (my girls birth control isn't always effective). And that aside why are we glorifying std spreading? I can understand a scene where after a while they don't have one at hand and they use it as a "I need this so bad do whatever" but this is totally different

I'm not gonna say that books have to be a hundred percent textbook accurate cause some of these are just for fun too, but it's getting to a /point/ yk. Idk what's your opinion on this, do we like the rawdogging?