After years of never having time to read for pleasure, my return into literature has been joyous. I’m feeling so accomplished with the reading that I’ve done and so inspired to take on more stories. However, sometimes I find myself disappointed by a book. I can be totally captivated by the plot but feel so much lacking from the actual writing. I’d really like to know others’ thoughts about the reading levels that exist within adult literature. Is this something that bothers you? How you do figure out if a book is the right “reading level” for you? Have you ever been disappointed or overwhelmed by the writing in a book that you thought was the right fit? Do you think this is even about “reading levels” or more about the talent of the author or individual taste in certain components of prose? How you do think the concept of “reading levels” fits into the complex relationship that a lot of people have with the trope-ification of many fiction genres? I’m so curious to see what you guys think!

Tell me if you could have one of your hyperfixations or interests turned into a quest, what would it be?

Share 5 books that you would put on the quest or share a list if you've made one already!

Mine would be: Sports Manga and Light Novels that are Gayer than Real Yaoi Prince of Tennis Ace of Diamond Tsurune Days Kuroko no Basket

Edited for clarity because I wrote this in a rush and I realise it could have been worded better.

I've been ruminating over how some older books are very different, and I don't seem to see that kind of vibe anymore. Perhaps this is just the sort of nostalgia that comes naturally with books I read in my childhood, so I'd like to open this up to the Pagebound floor! I've been rereading some favourites and have spotted some aspects that make me uncomfortable or there are darker themes, and I thought (likely erroneously), "This probably wouldn't be published in this day and age!"

Now, I'm not saying that books can't be like this, or that authors don't or shouldn't get criticism for what they write. But it does feel sometimes like, with the internet and social media, there's discourse and calls to cancel/boycott books/authors quite often, whether deserved or not. I believe that discussions about books should be nuanced and that something can be good but also flawed.

But I'm not really here to start a serious conversation about that! I'm more curious about books that stand out to you as different that you don't think you'll see again.

Some examples of stuff I feel like I don't see anymore:

Animorphs by K. A. Applegate. Gritty, violent, but also silly at times. It has some serious body horror and messaging about child soldiers and is just so much you don't expect in a book marketed at kids. These kids are dealing with school and an alien invasion and just trying their best to handle homework and still have time during the weekends. There's also a very distinct 90s/00s feel to it.

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. Idk if most people have read the books vs. watched the movies but Mia is very annoying and makes the worst choices in these books. More power to her tbh, but I feel like these days everyone would call her out for being whiny and just a dumb kid? And consider those as reasons to rate the books lowly. I'd say I didn't like her very much, but her viewpoints and choices were very interesting!

And then there's the books that got me thinking on this again.

The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce. This is one of my favourites, but it's so clear now to me that there's some strong white saviourism in the plot. It's giving me very mixed feelings and I feel that I might be more dismissive of this series if I'd read it now, at my current age.

That said, the author definitely does grow from here and tackle her themes with more nuance. Would I have kept reading and loved all the author's books had I read it now? Would I have given them a chance? It's kind of hard for me to think about but also makes me feel lucky to have had the experience I had.

Anyway, yes. Is there a specific vibe you don't see in books anymore, or do you still reliably find books in that niche? What are they? Please share your loves, your recs, your thoughts. Thank you in advance and have a great Friday and weekend ahead!

Good morning Bookaholics!

My question for you all today is for the inner writers/imagineers in all of us... 📖✍️

Since the phrase goes: 'Write the story you would want to read', what story would that be? 🤔

Sheeeeeesh. I am new here still and I don’t mean this negatively at all, but some of the quests are so incredibly long and unachievable for some people. Have yall ever thought about making some smaller ones for us that struggle to read multiple books a month? 👉🏼👈🏼

One quest is sometimes my years worth of reading lol. I would love to have cute badges but daaaang I ain’t gonna be able to get any with the level of commitment a lot of them take.

Hello everyone!! I thought it would be really interesting for everyone to share 1 or 2 list made by themselves that they're really proud of and that they find their most interesting lists! I'll put mine in the comments too! Excited to see everyone's creativity 'cause I know people here don't lack of it!! 😌

Happy Tuesday, PBs! It's that time again -- time to share something fun you've learned about the world or yourself from this week's reading.

I've been learning a whole lot by reading Insect Anatomy by Julia Rothman & Michael Hearst, and this morning I came across a really cool fact. The Antarctic midge lives in Antarctica year round! If you read a lot of nature or science books, you've probably come across lots of things that live "on every continent except Antarctica." What other species saw as a challenge, midges must have seen as an opportunity.

Have you come across anything as unexpected as an insect at the south pole?

(Hat tip as always to the wonderful @acidicchaos for starting this tradition)

One of the things I have noticed more and more whenever I go to the bookstore when I peruse the new books section and then move onto the used ones is that fantasy novels over the course of the last maybe ten or fifteen years seem to be becoming more and more "normal" as a whole. Titles are similar combinations - we all know the Um, Actually game on Dropout of A __ of ___ and ____ game they play, cover designs and artwork sometimes have very similar poses, a lot of them are these colossal tomes full of lore and worldbuilding and maps and more.

None of this is to say that that is bad, it is absolutely amazing to see the genre exploding in a way that I feel like when I was growing up in the late 2000s/early 2010s wasn't really there - or if it was, it was relegated to the YA section. It feels like an amazing time to be a fantasy lover right now, you have so much to pull from. But, my original point is this: fantasy doesn't feel as weird anymore, weird in that there are those moments where you go "Hold on...are we still in fantasyland?"

The book that specifically comes to mind is Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara, and after that the entire Four Lands and various other series Brooks' did in that setting.

When I first read The Sword of Shannara at the wee age of 12, I think, at first I was very excited cause I was like "Oooh, Dad read this one and said he liked it so now Dad and I can have a book we both like together!" Little did I know that as I read more and more of the story of the Ohmsford boys and Alannon the druid, explored more of the Four Lands, that this fantasy-on-the-surface-setting was in truth an absolute genremash of things that I was not prepared for. The books that follow in the original trilogy - Eflstones and Wishsong being books 2 and 3 - only serve to amplify that as we get more lore about the Four Lands as well as their ancient past, transforming the series from a simple sword and sorcery tale into a majestic post apocalyptic saga for survival.

To me, Shannara sits very much alongside stuff like Dragonriders of Pern, He-Man, Thundercats, and Voltron for just a few options, because while some of them might lean into more sci-fi themes, you could still make a super strong argument that they are all fantasy at their core. And that's what I mean when I say that sometimes it feels like fantasy isn't weird anymore, that the need for marketablility and influencer draw pushes stuff to be more palatable, easier to fit into boxes. That in of itself is a much larger discussion that could have an entire college economics class about it, but, sufficeth to say, I miss it.

If there are those of you who haven't read the original Shannara trilogy, I highly recommend it - some of the later entries in the world get a little confusing, I won't lie, but the first three are absolutely amazing, and I think truly deserve to get more love alongside the big names of today and then.

Here's to more weird fantasy in the future, or, is there a fantasy title you think falls into that fun genremash weirdness? Share below!