As I near the half way point I am reminded, and also a little astounded, at how much Tolkien influenced fantasy as a genre. His world building set the standard to this day. He is simply a master. The world is so complete. It feels so lived in. In a great fantasy book your job is to transport the reader without making them think about what you are doing. The best writers do it effortlessly. Reading this again reminds me what a giant shadow Tolkien still cast over the fantasy genre.

A few students in my class stayed back after school today to talk about their current reads, and it turned into one of those conversations you wish you could bottle up.

One student is reading a nonfiction book about Hawaiian fishing traditions with his dad. The others are reading a mix of fiction. Naturally, we started going over what they’re getting out of their reads, and the student reading nonfiction mentioned it was taking him so long to get though because the text is dense with facts, history, and ideas that send him down rabbit holes of further research, unlike his classmates reading make-believe.

The fiction readers quickly pushed back on the idea that they were “just reading make believe.” It sparked a really thoughtful back-and-forth where they started listing all the things they’ve learned from their fiction reads. Things like, perspective, empathy, and vocabulary to name a few.

It turned into a surprisingly rich discussion about what it actually means to “learn” from reading, and whether fiction and nonfiction are really doing different kinds of teaching rather than competing ones.

It made me curious to hear from other readers:

What do you think fiction does better than nonfiction when it comes to teaching or understanding ideas?

And on the flip side, what does nonfiction offer that fiction can’t fully replicate?

Rocky saying “I make now!” Radiates the same energy as Wesley saying “as you wish”. Or Sam from Holes saying “I can fix that”.

Hello! so sorry I didn’t post a question yesterday, college decided to take up any spare time I had 😅 The question is..

• What is something that makes you want to DNF a book or makes you immediately DNF it? •

I’ll go first, something that makes me want to DNF a book is if it has false promises. And by that I mean when the book is promoted as a ‘perfect enemies to lovers romantasy with fiery tension!’ but then in reality they only slightly hated each other for 52 pages and then fell in love by chapter 8, and the worst thing he did was call her a bitch 🙄 For me personally a good enemies to lovers has to be dragged out over to the second book in the series. The reason why this makes me want to DNF a book is because it ruins my whole mood when I’m anticipating a trope/plot just to get the complete opposite shoved in my face 😩

I want to confess that I've been downloading books since I got access to the internet for the first time. I grew up in a tiny town and we didn't have a lot of new books here even in the closest big city. And if I wanted to read something out of library stock I had to search for .txt files and read it on my mp3-player.

Now, there are so many things available to me: tons of bookshops, online shopping, huge libraries. Still I pirate some books because I don't think it's right to buy them if they aren't available in my local library. I mean mostly the books written by celebrities and rich people (or rather written by ghost writers for them): those people certainly don't need my £20 if they can afford tickets to Met Gala, for instance. I don't want to support them with my scarce money; I'd better support some indie author or charity. Also I buy physical copies of books that I pirated and loved because I want to thank the author.

So my question is: do you think it is ethical to pirate certain books? Textbooks, nonfiction, fiction, whatever?

I suppose it makes sense that a man who only comes into being when a sword is unsheathed would be this incredibly down bad. the ultimate boob guy fr

"I hope it's not an invasion of your privacy." Says Theo after invasing her privacy every chance he gets