is the book good? i have to read it for one of my uni courses and have to write an assignment about it.

I think some books would do well in other mediums/format, and it really shows how (1) creative people can be and (2) how adaptable these stories can be. For example, there was a YouTube series in the style of 2010's vlogger format for Pride and Prejudice called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. We also have Epic: the Musical which is a musical adaptation of The Odyssey.

What book would you want to see in a different medium/format? It doesn't have to just be film. It could also be a musical, TV series, telenovela, podcast, YouTube series, stage play, anime, audiodrama, blogposts, video game, puppet show even 😂.

I think I want to see a musical stage adaption of When the Tides Held the Moon by Vanessa Vida Kelley. Babel by R.F. Kuang could be found footage audiodrama (like found tape recordings?). Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum as a podcast would be so comforting.

Something I’ve noticed, especially since I started spending time in bookish spaces (booktok, bookstagram, etc.), is that my standards for books don’t really seem to align with most people’s. I DNF a LOT of books, and the most common reason why is that the quality of the writing isn’t good enough in my opinion. From what I’ve seen though, writing quality seems to be a fairly low priority for a lot of readers. Like, a lot of people seem to value other things more (which is fine), so much so that they’re willing to look past poor writing. For me, no matter how interesting a premise is, or how juicy a plot seems, or how likeable the characters seem like they’ll be, I can’t look past poor writing (spelling/grammar issues, repetition, inconsistencies/plot holes, etc.). I feel like people rarely ever mention writing quality in their reviews though! Even when I check the negative reviews, I feel like it’s rare for people to attribute their dislike to the writing quality. It kinda makes me feel a little crazy. Like no one else is seeing what I’m seeing, or like I’m overly critical, but at the same time, if I were truly overly critical I wouldn’t have ANY books that I like, but I do.

Anyways, I’m not sure if I properly expressed what I’m trying to say, but does anyone have any thoughts?

Sometimes I like to scroll through the user pages to try to find new people to follow, and so far I think the highest amount of overlap I've ever encountered was around 30%. Curious, how much overlap have you guys had with others? 👀

i am struggling

Finally getting around to what is ostensibly a sci-fi classic, and feeling very much like I just listened to Stevie Wonder’s “Key of Life” for the first time — realizing how many of my favorite sci-fi novels have been “sampling” this single novel. Curious if I could trace the influences further back to Borges, but for now — China Mieville all over! “The City and The City” for the unseeing, the unthinking, but the Appendix of this book (describing how crimes are made impossible by the limitations of language) makes up the fundamental premise of “Embassytown.” Such a fascinating premise — that without the language to articulate certain ideas, we’d be liable not to think them. Makes you wonder what ideas lay out of reach to us now (only all of them, if you subscribe to Lispector or Nabokov or any other sign and symbol fanatic), or what ideas might be better accessed in another language. On the verge of going full Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, so will refrain, but curious if anyone else is a fan of Mieville and has connected the two in similar ways?