ChengBogdani

I like dark, twisted, gory, smutty and/or humorous: cyberpunk, space opera, splatterpunk, modern fantasy, erotica || not a fan of YA or cozy || BOYCOTT Kindle/Unlimited!!

1139 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Reading...

Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water

98%

15%

One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One

50%

63%

ChengBogdani commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

13h

untrustworthy

Edited

What is the appeal of "gross" horror?

I'm not trying to yuck your yum, I'm just curious about what you like about it. 😊 I know it's a big subgenre of movies and books--body horror, gore, etc. I know the fans are out here and I'd like to hear it from an expert.

ChengBogdani is interested in reading...

13h

Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch

Andrea Freeman

The first and definitive history of the use of food in United States law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control, a Fast Food Nation for the Black Lives Matter era In 1779, to subjugate Indigenous nations, George Washington ordered his troops to “ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.” Destroying harvests is just one way that the United States has used food as a political tool. Trying to prevent enslaved people from rising up, enslavers restricted their consumption, providing only enough to fuel labor. Since the Great Depression, school lunches have served as dumping grounds for unwanted agricultural surpluses. From frybread to government cheese, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground draws on over fifteen years of research to argue that U.S. food law and policy have created and maintained racial and social inequality. In an epic, sweeping account, Andrea Freeman, who pioneered the term “food oppression,” moves from colonization to slavery to the Americanization of immigrant food culture, to the commodities supplied to Native reservations, to milk as a symbol of white supremacy. She traces the long-standing alliance between the government and food industries that have produced gaping racial health disparities, and she shows how these practices continue to this day, through the marketing of unhealthy goods that target marginalized communities, causing diabetes, high blood pressure, and premature death. Ruin Their Crops on the Ground is a groundbreaking addition to the history and politics of food. It will permanently upend the notion that we freely and equally choose what we put on our plates.

ChengBogdani is interested in reading...

13h

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

Ruby Hamad

This explosive book of history and cultural criticism argues that white feminism has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women and all colonized women. It offers a long-overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Taking us from the slave era—when white women fought in court to keep "ownership" of their slaves—through the centuries of colonialism—when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics—to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars</i< tells the story of white women's active participation in campaigns of oppression. Examining subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and nineteenth-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad builds a powerful argument about the entrenched systems of white supremacy that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.

ChengBogdani commented on a List

13h

Black Horror

by aliyahmk

35 books

horror fiction from Black authors featuring Black characters

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🥩

🦷

ChengBogdani joined a quest

14h

Mermaids After Dark 🌊🦈🧜‍♀️

💎 // 1265 joined

Not Joined

This isn't Disney's little mermaid! A collection of horror, dark fiction, and gothic romances featuring mermaids.

ChengBogdani is interested in reading...

14h

A Master of Djinn (Dead Djinn Universe, #1)

P. Djèlí Clark

Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns to his popular alternate Cairo universe for his fantasy novel debut, A Master of Djinn Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage. Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city -or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems…

ChengBogdani commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

14h

alienshe

Science-fiction or horror?

Which genre would you pick?

ChengBogdani commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

14h

neuro_bunny336

What’s everyone’s job?

Without doxing yourself plzzz

Some of you are reading so much with full time jobs😭 I gotta know what y’all do and how many hours you’re doing it. I know a few people are lucky enough to get to read on the job! That’s the dream.

123

411

ChengBogdani started reading...

20h

At Dark, I Become Loathsome

Eric LaRocca

From Eric LaRocca—Bram Stoker Award–nominated and Splatterpunk Award–winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke—comes At Dark, I Become Loathsome, a grim yet gentle, horrifying yet hopeful, intense tale of death, trauma, and love. “If you’re reading this, you’ve likely thought that the world would be a better place without you.” A single line of text, glowing in the darkness of the internet. Written by Ashley Lutin, who has often thought the same—and worse—in the years since his wife died and his young son disappeared. But the peace of the grave is not for him—it’s for those he can help. Ashley has constructed a peculiar ritual for those whose desire to die is at war with their yearning to live a better life. Struggling to overcome his own endless grief, one night Ashley finds connection with Jinx—a potential candidate for Ashley’s next ritual—who spins a tale both revolting and fascinating. Thus begins a relationship that traps the two men in an ever-tightening spiral of painful revelations, where long-hidden secrets are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light. Only through pain can we find healing. Only through death can we find new life.

ChengBogdani wrote a review...

21h

ChengBogdani

Jan 27, 2026

4.0

Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 3.0Plot: 4.0

🩸

❄️

🦌

This is one of those books that's going to occupy a disproportionate space in my mind for a long time. Themes of rage, grief, atonement and self-acceptance resonate through this ode to multi-generational trauma. SGJ's writing is as evocative as ever, and his characters come to life with little effort from the reader. I feel like parallels to the Vampire Lestat are inevitable and SGJ pays subtle homage to Lestat via Cat Man. This book uses a similar epistolaric style, where a hundred year old journal containing conversations is framed inside a modern narrative arc. The whole thing gets awfully meta on itself; I believe a straightforward narrative style could be as effective and still leave enough room for unreliability.

I had some problems with Arthur Beaucarne's wildly unreliable POV though - SGJ did a great job of capturing the style of the time and made his voice feel authentic, but I just don't like that style of writing (1850-1915) for purely aesthetic reasons. It doesn't help that I didn't like the character either; I was never able to develop enough sympathy for him to feel anything about him at the end of the story. Another issue I had was the lack of agency by women's characters. The narration was between men and about men; women were treated as incidental brooding mares and cooks. The only woman that actually gets to have her own thoughts is only there to suffer for what men before her had done.

Great Stab's character is monumental; he deserves a place at the highest tier of the vampire lore pantheon. Even when he was doing horrible things for horrible reasons, I did feel sympathy for him. Obviously he is the center of the story and his arc - including the same three rebirths I just read in Clive Barker's The Damnation Game - is intriguing and very well articulated. The arc of the Beuacarne's feels a bit hasty, especially at the end. The finale, like so many books of this scope, lined up all the players exactly where I expected them - and then just takes way too long for them to play out their endgame.

Bechdel test? NO Mako Mori test? NO Vito Russo test? NO Latif test? NO

Reading Level: adult Romance: No Smut: No Violence: yes TW: child endangerment, domestic cat endangerment, torture, military massacre

Kindle only? NO

ChengBogdani finished a book

21h

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Stephen Graham Jones

A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

ChengBogdani commented on SkywardStrange's review of We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys

21h

SkywardStrange

Jan 27, 2026

4.5

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

😔

🏫

🚸

This was really good, but also incredibly heavy - I would expect nothing less.

What stands out to me, beyond the utter horror of the school's history and the disgusting level of self-serving coverups and failures of the system at every level, is how much Erin Kimmerle cares about the boys she unearthed during this project. I get the sense that she would do the same level of remarkable work no matter what the circumstances were, but she also takes so much care to emphasize that these were children, little boys with loved ones and dreams and the right to have lived. She doesn't dwell on the stories or sensationalize them, but rather simply lays them bare for us, holding space for them as she works tirelessly to uncover them and return as many as she can to their families. The title is piercingly accurate - she regarded it as her duty to carry the bones home, to do something to acknowledge this dark corner of history.

From a stylistic perspective, this book was beautiful. Kimmerle has a straightforward, almost spartan way of writing that is no less lyrical or moving than more complex prose. Her academic tone comes off respectful and reverent of the weight of the subject. I liked that she included her personal feelings and thoughts without letting them overtake the narrative completely - it would have been easy to turn herself into the hero of this tale, but Kimmerle seems to regard herself as more of a vessel, a tool to do what needs to be done.

I cried ugly throughout reading this, but I would highly recommend it.

ChengBogdani is interested in reading...

21h

We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys

Erin Kimmerle

.Forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle investigates of the notorious Dozier Boys School--the true story behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys--and the contentious process to exhume the graves of the boys buried there in order to reunite them with their families. The Arthur G. Dozier Boys School was a well-guarded secret in Florida for over a century, until reports of cruelty, abuse, and "mysterious" deaths shut the institution down in 2011. Established in 1900, the juvenile reform school accepted children as young as six years of age for crimes as harmless as truancy or trespassing. The boys sent there, many of whom were Black, were subject to brutal abuse, routinely hired out to local farmers by the school's management as indentured labor, and died either at the school or attempting to escape its brutal conditions. In the wake of the school's shutdown, Erin Kimmerle, a leading forensic anthropologist, stepped in to locate the school's graveyard to determine the number of graves and who was buried there, thus beginning the process of reuniting the boys with their families through forensic and DNA testing. The school's poorly kept accounting suggested some thirty-one boys were buried in unmarked graves in a remote field on the school's property. The real number was at least twice that. Kimmerle's work did not go unnoticed; residents and local law enforcement threatened and harassed her team in their eagerness to control the truth she was uncovering--one she continues to investigate to this day. We Carry Their Bones is a detailed account of Jim Crow America and an indictment of the reform school system as we know it. It's also a fascinating dive into the science of forensic anthropology and an important retelling of the extraordinary efforts taken to bring these lost children home to their families--an endeavor that created a political firestorm and a dramatic reckoning with racism and shame in the legacy of America.

ChengBogdani commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

21h

LivMayRead

atention span and sceen time

Guys I need help. A while ago, around December or so, I decided to cut my screen time in half, I was spending way too much time on my phone, it was taking time off my hobbies, and I wasn't even having fun, spending that much time on the internet was more stressful than anything. I was successful with it, in less than 2 weeks I went from 10 hour screen time (no judgment please) to around 4 hours or less.

But then things went south, I had problems with health in my family, problem with work, travelled and got my lost in the chaos of things and now my screen time is atrocious again and my attention span us shorter than never. Any tips to fix it again?

ChengBogdani commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

21h

zzaii

Book Youtubers

Hi all! I'm trying to find more creators worth watching on Youtube as I've moved away from other social media platforms and want more long form content. I was wondering if anyone had some recommendations on youtubers who are doing book deep dives/reviews, giving recommendations, etc. I'm super into fantasy and sci-fi, though I'm open to diving into other genres if the book is well-written and fun. (I also would prefer to watch creators with progressive views that create a diverse, inclusive space)

ChengBogdani commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

21h

andreajimmoon

Reading font

If you have an e-reader, in what font do you prefer to read? I had a friend tell me that my font looks uncomfortable, but it actually helps me A LOT to focus... It's OpenDyslexic.

Am I dyslexic? Not that I know of, but this font works wonders for me.

ChengBogdani commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

21h

theuncomfypotato

Unhinged Book Cover Icks

What are your unhinged book cover icks?

I'm not talking stickers or people covers. I want the unhinged reason to not like a cover

For example: It gives me the biggest ick when it's a silhouette cover, and the designer has to include the name of who the silhouette is on the cover like we'll know who they are 😂

ChengBogdani commented on AsiminaTriloba's update

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