Kanashimi68

Book loving himbo, currently living in Taiwan 🇹🇼

1290 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)

Reading...

35%

Placeholder 001

23%

17%

15%

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

laras._.library

Offer some bookish advice

I’m curious on what other people’s minds are thinking!

Personally my peice of advice is to not get caught up trying to be a ‘real’ bookfluencer. Just enjoy it!

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

15h

celinewyp

Do books make you cry?

Alright, Boundling fam, am I a fake reader if I've never cried while reading a book?

For legal reasons, this post is a joke.

Kanashimi68 TBR'd a book

15h

Eat Bitter: A Story About Guts, and Food

Lydia Pang

From a dazzling new writer, a stirring and gorgeously written memoir rooted in Hakka culture about the lesson to accept both bitterness and sweetness in life. Eat Bitter is a memoir about guts and feelings. In Eat Bitter food is not fuel. It’s a vehicle for us to digest reality. A pause for us to pick a truth from our teeth. It’s a belly full of contemplation. It’s an ode to food as a material for conversation and connection. This book is a story told through the lens of Hakka culture, the unique cultural identity of a Han Chinese subgroup that has migrated across Asia and the Americas. As a result, their cuisine has been swallowed up in the monolith of broader Chinese traditions. Indeed, hakka literally translates to “guest families,” and since they have experienced the most forced migration in China, they have had to forage off the land, ingenuity thereby becoming one of their defining characteristics. As such, the process of cooking and the endurance of such things is a significant part of Hakka traditions. In Hakka culture, “eating bitter” means to endure pain alongside sweetness, in both food and life. Lydia Pang applies this ethos and mindset to those modern-day issues we all face. Whether it’s losing a parent, navigating pregnancy, pushing her marriage to the brink, or coming face to face with the fact that she's unhappy with the life she's built, Lydia learns to take the bitter with the sweet, the challenging with the rewarding. She offers a renewed appreciation for food as a medium to process emotions—one that's heartfelt and tender, witty in all the right places. Comprising the satire and darkness of Netflix's Beef, the tender insight of Crying in H Mart, and the distinct magic of Ella Risbridger's Midnight Chicken, Eat Bitter is a very special book from a brilliant new voice and creative talent.

Kanashimi68 TBR'd a book

19h

A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell, #1)

Deanna Raybourn

London, 1887. As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry—and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as with fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime. But fate has other plans, as Veronica discovers when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron who has ties to her mysterious past. Promising to reveal in time what he knows of the plot against her, the baron offers her temporary sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker, a reclusive natural historian as intriguing as he is bad-tempered. But before the baron can deliver on his tantalizing vow to reveal the secrets he has concealed for decades, he is found murdered. Suddenly Veronica and Stoker are forced to go on the run from an elusive assailant as wary partners in search of the villainous truth.

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

19h

dorouu

The Amazing, wonderful, diverse reading interests of PB

I love checking out the library updates and seeing such interesting books on my feed. Only on PB do I get to see such a diverse collection of titles many that are super niche and on topics I never would have come across in my own or on any other platform. The science of colors, monster smut, textiles, two-spirit indigenous practices, etc...

I've been reading so much more this year. Y'all have really diversified my books and also helped to increase the number of non-fic books read by a whole lot (I've been trying to for years but never have been as successful as I am rn).

Just a shout out to you all.❤️. Y'all are so cool. Your tastes are so cool. I wish I could yoink them all without getting overwhelmed 🤭

122

Kanashimi68 wrote a review...

Kanashimi68

May 30, 2026

4.5

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.5Characters: 4.0Plot: 4.0

🍑

For a book written in the 90s, this novella still mostly felt modern and relevant to today (I also just find older sci-fi books so fascinating, all the predictions they get right and wrong about the future). The gender/sexuality of the main character, and our understanding of it, slowly unravels throughout the novella, which was very well done. I do feel like some of the conversations regarding race and colonialism fell a bit flat, probably because they weren't explored in enough depth. It also did drive me insane that the book kept referencing "the AIDS vaccine", like, AIDS is a syndrome, you can't make a vaccine for a syndrome, that's not how science works 😩 But I'll cut it some slack because it's from the 90s, I guess. Anyway, I could have happily read this as a full length novel, but as a novella it definitely didn't feel "too short". 4 stars for the book, and an extra half a star for the essays at the back of the book that gave additional context.

Kanashimi68 finished a book

The Membranes

Chi Ta-wei

It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she's too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city's best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality. First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes--heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies--into a sensitive portrait of one young woman's quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader's own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich's translation brings Chi's hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

sevenwonders

dos and don’ts

long story short, i’ve been able to read a lot of books lately and it’s really inspired me to get back into my writing phase! i was obsessed with wanting to write when i was younger but as adulthood/reality hit (womp womp), i haven’t been able to tap into my creative side as much but that’s starting to change.

i’ve already seen some good posts on here about the writing process, but looking at other reviews of books that i’m reading has me wanting some personal opinions! i feel like im leaning more into a fantasy inspired book - so what are general things that you all love vs “hate” or don’t like about fantasy novels? i feel like it’s so saturated lately, but maybe that’s my own personal opinion. is there something you haven’t read or seen in a novel that you’d love to see incorporated? plot twists? world building related?

reading is subjective so i know not everyone likes the same thing obviously, but in a world building, fantasy inspired story: what are your favorite or least favorite things to YOU?!

(also if anyone has tips for starting to write, ill take them! maybe this will be one of my fleeting obsessions as an aries idk, but i would still like to hear from people on what they love or don’t love with fantasy novels!)

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

kieva.x

Question of the Day!

Aloha Bookaholics!!

My question for you is... 🥁

What is the minimum point you aim to reach before DNFing a book? 🤔

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

thereadingdaisy

Book recs

Hey bookworms!! ☺️ What’s a book that had y’all laughing so hard you were actually tearing up? I’m in the mood for something genuinely funny and would love your recs!!

Kanashimi68 made progress on...

The Membranes

Chi Ta-wei

63%

Kanashimi68 started reading...

The Membranes

Chi Ta-wei

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

iluvhockeyplayers

GUIDE THIS DUMMY PLEASE!

Hi guys, im in need of dire help rn! the thing is, i read 200 books a year, but not a single one of them had been non fiction or a classic or LITERATURE in general, it was all romance and fantasy and sci fi and basically a lot of fluff, which i am all for, but i really want to diversify my reading so could yall please please please recommend some classics for begginers!!!!

Kanashimi68 paused reading...

Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)

Fonda Lee

JADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu. The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities. The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion--but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection. When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.

Kanashimi68 paused reading...

Gods of Want: Stories

K-Ming Chang

Startling stories that center the bodies, memories, myths, and relationships of Asian American women, from the National Book Award “5 Under 35” honoree and author of Bestiary In “Auntland,” a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughter “Dog.” In “The Chorus of Dead Cousins,” ghost-cousins cross space, seas, and skies to haunt their live-cousin, wife to a storm-chaser. In “Xífù,” a mother-in-law tortures a wife in increasingly unsuccessful attempts to rid the house of her. In “Mariela,” two girls explore one another’s bodies for the first time in the belly of a plastic shark while in “Virginia Slims,” a woman from a cigarette ad comes to life. And in “Resident Aliens,” a former slaughterhouse serves as a residence to a series of widows, each harboring her own calamitous secrets. With each tale, K-Ming Chang gives us her own take on a surrealism that mixes myth and migration, corporeality and ghostliness, queerness and the quotidian. Stunningly told in her feminist fabulist style, these are uncanny stories peeling back greater questions of power and memory.

Kanashimi68 paused reading...

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

When Mr. Earnshaw, master of Wuthering Heights, returns from a trip with an unkempt orphan in tow, he announces that the child, Heathcliff, is now a member of the family. While young Catherine Earnshaw becomes close with Heathcliff, her older brother, Hindley, sinks into bitter resentment. As Catherine and Heathcliff mature, and their affection blossoms into desire, Hindley’s resentment boils over into hatred, setting the stage for a tragic drama whose aftermath will shake the foundations of their world.

Kanashimi68 TBR'd a book

Associate Professor Akira Takatsuki's Conjecture (Manga), Vol. 1

Toji Aio

Naoya Fukamachi is a university student whose ability to infallibly detect lies has left him friendless and isolated. When a paper of his piques the interest of his folklore studies professor Akira Takatsuki, a handsome and eccentric man, he soon finds himself dragged into Akira’s research. Now, as the assistant in charge of common sense, he must help his professor interpret an array of unexplainable phenomena…

Kanashimi68 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Kanashimi68

Edited

How to tell if it's a reading slump...

I'm kinda new to reading books (in the sense that's it's a hobby I regularly do), so I've never been in a "reading slump" before, and so wondering how people work out if they're in one. What are the symptoms? 👩‍⚕️🔍🩺 Because lately I haven't really enjoyed any of my books, and I can't quite figure out if it's the books fault or if it's a me problem 🤷

Edit: Forgot to clarify, by "new to reading" I mean I've only really been reading books consistently for the past year

Post from the Pagebound Club forum

Kanashimi68

Edited

How to tell if it's a reading slump...

Edit: Forgot to clarify, by "new to reading" I mean I've only really been reading books consistently for the past year

Kanashimi68 TBR'd a book

The Midnight Train

Matt Haig

When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop?No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice. Before he gave it all away.He wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything . . . A magical, time-travelling love story, from the world of The Midnight Library.

Gift Pagebound Royalty Merch Store Roadmap Founder Announcements

Support

FAQ Contact Us Report a bug

team@pagebound.co

Company

About Us Terms of Use Privacy Policy Content Policy

Gift Pagebound Royalty Merch Store Roadmap Founder Announcements