Hey Everyone, Happy Friday! I don't really have anything to discuss. I've been in a Mood all week and could use a positive distraction. SO what's everyone reading this Weekend and what do you like about it? I'm currently Babylonia by Costanza Casati. I like historical fictions that focus on histories and cultures I know pretty much nothing about. Also, I just love the cover art and how it mimics the art style of that period.

Idk about anyone else but it would be super fun to be able to see how many other people are currently reading a book 👀

I'm asking this purely out of curiosity. I tend to look up reviews after I've finished a book already because I want to know what other people think of it. I RARELY look up reviews beforehand; I don't want them to influence my impression of a book, since I know tastes are subjective. The only exception to this is monthly roundups people do of their reading, where they share little reviews of what they read throughout the month, but I think that's different since I'm not going out of my way to look up reviews of a specific book.

I'm interested in hearing why you read reviews!

I‘ve seen this scattered around the internet before, and almost exclusively have a great time reading these kinds of ‚bad’ descriptions. I couldn’t find something like this on pagebound, so I thought we could try. (be aware that this might end up kinda spoiler-y for one book or the other)

so, the idea is: you break down the plot as simple as you can, for example in a single sentence, and let people guess what book you’re talking about.

I‘ll start: woman sparks revolution by acting like she’s about to unalive herself.

I recently saw someone say they can’t imagine the setting within the book and they read like they are “watching a movie” which got me intrigued. Personally for me when I read, I might get “flashes” of imagery but I think I’m more focused on interactions and actions! So it’s a bit like I imagine the two characters but the background is blank? I often also don’t really have the full image of the characters so it’s just two mannequin like figures. If there are paragraphs of description about the environment I may take a moment to kind of piece it together but afterwards it’s more of the feeling and atmosphere and doesn’t stick around as an image.

How do you experience stories and does it take effort if you “watch it like a movie?” Do you have a soundtrack playing in the background or is it just environmental noises? Do you even imagine how the character voices sound like? How much detail is there?