
Reperios commented...
1d
Ohoho 👀 thank you for bringing this to my attention, it looks so good! RIP to your reading but it's still cozy spooky time 🙂↕️

strawberrymilk started reading...
1d

The Faraway Inn
Sarah Beth Durst
After a devastating heartbreak, a teen girl decides to spend her summer helping her eccentric great aunt manage her quaint Vermont inn--but this fixer-upper is hiding a magical secret--in this cozy and irresistable new fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop. Sixteen-year-old Calisa is desperate for a change of scenery after her lying ex ruins her perfect Brooklyn summer. When her parents suggest she head to rural Vermont to help her great-aunt run her cozy bed and breakfast for a few months, she jumps at the chance. But when Calisa arrives at the B&B, she's shocked to find a rundown inn with only a handful of guests. And to make matters worse, upon meeting with her great-aunt it quickly becomes clear that Calisa was not invited. Auntie Zee is determined to keep anyone from messing with her beloved inn…even if it is clear she needs the help. To earn her keep, Calisa sets to work fixing up the inn, enlisting extra help from the groundskeeper's (handsome) son. But the longer she stays, the more it becomes evident that there is something strange about the B&B—and its residents. Something almost…otherworldly. The inn is keeping a magical secret—but to protect the place she's come to love, Calisa must unravel the truth of it, and her aunt, before it's too late.

I am not entirely convinced I got everything I needed to get out of this book. Not even sure I got 50% of it if I'm being fully truthful.
I don't think it was because the book was lacking something; I more so think a lot of the elements just flew right past me. Listening to the audiobook was not a good idea, I highly recommend eyeball reading for this one. Pedro Paramo is a non-linear narrative, and it contains a lot of timeline shifts and many characters, so the listening experience was a rough one.
The magical realism was very nicely done though. It just kept pulling me to it despite me not comprehending any of it. The atmosphere is really strong; nobody loves surrealism more than Mexico. Latam magical realism just hits so differently.
And even with the confusion, this book felt homely in a sense. I listened in Spanish, so I don't know how well the cultural context translated into the English version, but the way Juan Rulfo speaks about death and ghosts is just so intrinsically Mexican. There are a lot of soft moments between the haze, much like you would feel about communicating with the dead.
The brief for this book states, "To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955," and I believe overwhelming is a really good word for this reading experience.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch the movie and a few video essays cause my brain needs more in order to comprehend this story. I will also probably re-read it later in life with a different set of eyes and ideas.
“Short: No! We’ve never used AI and never will.
Long: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! We have never and will never use AI in any way for any creative process. That includes writing, editing, and any art. (We actually don’t do the art, but our publisher Penguin RandomHouse hires real artists. Our cover artist is Perry de la Vega and he is truly fantastic. He also does the maps inside!). We're very serious about our work, and the whole point of writing and sharing stories is to connect with other people. Art is a uniquely human endeavor and there is no way a LLM can offer the same experience, because a Large Language Model like ChatGPT only reshuffles existing words based on an algorithm. It cannot create. In addition, LLMs (or AI, or whatever you may call them) are based on the STOLEN WORK of human artists. As writers, we will never condone stealing the efforts of our past and present colleagues.
So we can promise that every word you read of Shady Hollow (or indeed, anything else we write) is 100% human, brought to the page by massive amounts of caffeine, sleepless nights, and highly advanced procrastination techniques like rewatching whole seasons of Murder She Wrote while nomming lots of salty snacks.
You're right to be concerned about the increasing prevalence of AI-generated books. It will not slow down or stop as long as the slop-creators believe they can make a buck or two by doing it. We wish there was an easy way to identify such works, but the fact is that unless a prompt is left in the text, there will be no clear “tell”. Because LLMs were trained on existing works, they mimic those works. So that’s why elements like em dashes show up — because hundreds of writers like Emily Dickinson used them, and writers still use them. Look! we just used one to honor our girl Emily!
As you clearly know, the only real way to tell if a book was written by a person is to do a little research and see if that person seems real. However, we know several authors who are very private and rarely online, so even that may not work. If it helps: Books published before 2022 are almost guaranteed to be human written, because most regular people didn’t have access to tools that could quickly generate text until around 2023.
We appreciate that you care about what you’re reading and want to be sure that you’re getting what is advertised. Again, while there are no humans IN Shady Hollow, we can promise that Shady Hollow was written BY humans. So go forth and read about Vera and Lenore and Orville and Joe with confidence. May you have many happy hours in Shady Hollow.
Cheers, Jocelyn Cole and Sharon Nagel w/a Juneau Black”


crybabybea started reading...
2d

Happy Place
Emily Henry
Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t. They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends. Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most. Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best? A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
Hello monsters, vamps and ghosts 🖤
I'm looking for horrorbooks that feature POC MCs and written by POC. Any good recommendations for getting into the mood for halloweeeen?
Thanks in advaaaaaance!

Reperios commented...
3d
Confusing as shit!!!!! In a good way? I think?! I need to digest it for a bit. It's a very surrealist book so all the elements in it are enveloped in the magical realism. I thought that was nicely done, however, I did struggle to get fully into it. I got really confused with the non-linear narrative cause I was listening to the audiobook so if you are reading I suggest the eyeballs! So many characters and timeline changes to keep track of. The atmosphere is really strong, classic latam magical realism
(If you are reading/listening in english @LaDonnaQ's review has some good audiobook info:))

Reperios finished a book
3d

Pedro Páramo
Juan Rulfo
A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer. Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.




Mad Sisters of Esi
Tashan Mehta
Mad Sisters of Esi
Tashan Mehta
Can I just say I am thrilled by the amount of academic paper and diary entry excerpts we’ve gotten. I was worried they were only for the beginning of the book but we got so many after 30%!! Very happy, it felt like coming home.


Mad Sisters of Esi
Tashan Mehta

Reperios finished a book
3d

Pedro Páramo
Juan Rulfo
A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer. Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.