I just want to say thank you guys for supporting me when I share my thoughts on the various books that I have read on here. These small acts have made me feel loved and supported as well make me feel like I'm part of a small,loving community. I love you guys so much and I hope to engage with more of your posts the way you guys engage with mine 🥹😊❤️. And more rambles are coming soon!

How many of you have a book that you would reread just to experience one sentence/paragraph over again? A sentence/paragraph that just hit your head like a lightning bolt and has never let go. What was the book?

I have a few, but the one that really sticks with me is from the book My Heart is A Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. I will obviously not repeat the sentence because everyone deserves the chance to ride the lightning. I will say it was at the end of the book, where Jones actually revealed what the title meant. It has lived rent-free in my head ever since.

Kind of random but ties into reading I swear.

I have a coworker who confuses me to no end. He spends massive amounts of time watching, walking about, listening to others talk about, and betting on pro football 🏈. I asked him if he was excited for the draft tonight, something I only know about because he spent an entire lunch talking about it and theorizing who will take which players. His response is "I don't care" and then something like "I'm only looking forward to laughing at dumb gm decisions".

He obviously cares about this, and enjoys it but won't admit it for whatever reason. There seems to be a fear of seeming to care about stuff, and it isn't limited to this guy.

That said I don't see this in the book community as much. If I run into a reader in the wild they usually are excited to share (the acception being a woman I work with who left it vague, who I think is reading romance).

Do you see it with readers or not? Why do you think readers are more/less willing to be seen as enjoying things they enjoy?

I’m going to try and stop myself from ranting about this for too long but my god! When people find out I read a lot and enjoy reading, the response I usually get is “oh I haven’t read ten books in my whole life how do you do over a hundred a year?” Or “I haven’t picked up a book up since I was a kid” and I just think???? What? How can you take pride in aiding the statistics that suggest that we, as as a collective, are not as well-read as generations before? I get people live busy lives, but to take pride in just not picking up a book since you were a kid is a horrifying thought to me.

Edit - my GOD y’all came with such good arguments for and against this and all the discussions are so considerate and polite so thank you all for creating a safe place for people to share their opinions on this 🩷

Anyway, rant over 😭

I’ve been reading my entire life, like staying up for days. I mean in elementary school not sleeping for three days to read Junie B Jones or the Magic Treehouse books- my entire life. When I got out of high school I picked up Nora Roberts and ATE THEM UP! But then people started making fun of me as social media became a place for readers to gather. They told me I was reading their grandma’s books and it kinda made me read more of what I was seeing on social media and less of what I had on my shelf. I am turning 30 this year and realize that there is no wrong way to read and honestly, a lot of the insta/tiktok books aren’t for me. And I truly believe there is no guilty pleasure authors. But if you had to say you had one, what is yours??

I wonder if you’ve ever encountered people who say they never read fiction because it has no application in life. Twice in my life I met such people. Their reasoning simply is that fiction is not real, made-up, so they won’t be able to use it in their lives. Therefore, they are not spending their time reading it. At the same time, they both like to read, one of them is a lawyer, another — an academic. They just only read books containing facts. I think it’s a very peculiar type of thinking. As someone who sees so much value in reading fiction, I think they are missing out on so much.

Does anyone use the planning on this website? And how you use it if you do?

I’ve only just started and been using it for the read-alongs, except I really think it should have a seasonal/quarterly part as well as monthly and yearly, cause so much of this website is in quarters. Thoughts?