I’m so bummed to be pausing/DNF this right now because I was really excited to get into this after reading Brandon Sanderson’s gloooowing review, but I can’t handle another minute of this freakin narrator… 😭 I feel like she’s doing the book an injustice!! Her inflections for the characters are SO juvenile and it’s killing the viiiiiiiiibe. There’s also a chance I just hate the book itself too. 💀

I feel like whenever I pick up a fantasy or sci-fi book in recent years it is incredibly YA even when written for a more mature audience. The general idea, the blurb on the back, the majority of reviews? Always sound SO good! The execution and delivery? Disappointing pretty much every time. I seem to have bad luck picking books in this genre lol

Maybe I sound too much like a hater, but I don’t know why there are so many five stars when this appears to unabashedly take pieces of other fantasy/sci-fi novels and the dialogue reads like a freakin middle schooler wrote it. (sorry, aspiring middle schooler writers!)

Maybe if I come across a physical copy of Foundryside I will pick it up again, but yeah no this audiobook ain’t it for me.

hi everyone!! i kindly ask that you share your fav books in space! i haven’t read a lot of it yet but i crave outer space so freaking bad and the closest i can get to it is through books so please help lol romance subplot is welcome :) thanks in advance

Hello this is my first time posting on here 😊 anywho do any of you know of some romance books that have no spice or little spice ?

I recently saw the social media that a lot of people only read dialogues instead of the entire text from prologue to epilogue just to hit a reading goal. And that absolutely baffles me because I cannot imagine reading without knowing any plot lines or character descriptions, et cetera.

So I’d like to ask the Pagebound community how do you all read ? Do you read every single word, imagine the scenes, and analyse ?

Hey everyone, my library has a fairly decent manga collection, so I was looking for some recs, I’m really open to anything, and I love trying new things!

So what’s everyone’s favourite manga and why?

Thank you!!!

Hello, all!

I just finished watching "Book reviews are gaslighting us" by Below the Fray on youtube. The central thesis of the video essay revolves around the soulless platitudes in most modern litcrit columns in newspapers and magazines. He brings up a lot of great points, and it made me think about non-monetized book reviews like those here on Pagebound.

My biggest question for you all is do you read (and/or write) negative reviews? I recently started writing negative reviews but have a bad habit of kneecapping my sentences and coddling the author more than I probably should. I am a firm believer that reviews are for readers and criticism is for the authors, though where exactly else are these authors to get criticism from if most modern litcrit is monetized and a bad review could get you fired or blacklisted?

As readers, do you enjoy reading a bad review? Do you seek out alternative, often negative opinions of books you enjoy? Do you feel vindicated by a bad review on a book you hated? What kind of review gets you to read a book most: a raving 5 star or a critical 1 star review that piques your interest?

TL;DR Do you read negative reviews of books (whether you've read them or not), and what do you feel the purpose of a review on a platform like PB is, exactly?

Signed, a ranty reader lol