afuaa
she/her
947 points
afuaa is interested in reading...
The Paper Boys
D.P. Clarence
0afuaa commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
Be honest with me for a second.
Are you actually reading books right now … or are you collecting them?
Is your TBR a carefully curated reading plan, or a beautiful tower of good intentions? Are you finishing what you buy, or are you chasing the thrill of the next preorder?
No judgment. This is a safe space for the “I own it and I’ll get to it eventually” crowd.
Tell me: 📚 How many unread books are currently staring at you? 📖 And what’s stopping you from starting them?
Confessions encouraged.
101afuaa commented on afuaa's update
afuaa TBR'd a book
The Darkness Outside Us
Eliot Schrefer
2afuaa commented on afuaa's update
afuaa commented on hoppipolla-the-love's update
afuaa commented on afuaa's update
afuaa finished a book
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
7afuaa finished a book
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
7Post from the Wuthering Heights forum
afuaa commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
I’m just curious as to where people get their digital content from!
I mostly use Libby whenever I can because I read a LOT and do not have much money 😭😭 But for books that aren’t on there I’ll find them wherever I can - Kindle, mostly. Audible sometimes, though that’s also pretty expensive so I usually save that for long books I know I want to own. I’ve found some very old books on Google Play Books which I did not realise even existed and seems like not a ton of people use?
I also use discount websites like Chirp and Bookbub on occasion and just started picking up titles off NetGalley.
So I’m curious what everyone else uses! Mostly from curiosity but Especially if there are other alternatives to Amazon, especially for free or cheap books (I’m not looking to pirate I still want people paid!) I’m willing to pay full price for books I really love but truly if I bought every book I read I wouldn’t be able to afford food. 😭
40afuaa TBR'd a book
The Darkness Outside Us
Eliot Schrefer
2afuaa is interested in reading...
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
Clint Smith
0afuaa TBR'd a book
A Tale for the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki
0afuaa commented on a post
I really liked the tech world (with the god Hack). I could read an entire novella set in that world. It’s the way that the pilgrims dressed/were described and the wired implants they had. It reminded me of Clamp’s works (Chobits, Tsubasa) and brings up so many questions. I could’ve gone without the Apple references (implying that Apple took over that world or I guess it’s an expansion on the Apple bro cult? If so, that would be really contradictory given how closed off the Apple ecosystem is, how could they worship a god that stands for open source and anarchy?).
I also enjoyed London Next, though only in wanting to see how different it is from London irl. Parallel universes/our world but different/magical realism is one of my favorite settings/genres.
6afuaa commented on ennuibee's review of The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
The first book, while uneven and sterile, delivered big concepts and cosmic dread. The book unsettled me bc it made humanity feel so small, like insects. This book was mostly meh, until about 60% in, when it genuinely pissed me off.
People like to divide readers into “plot driven” vs “character driven”. And while I feel that’s a little reductive, here it doesn’t matter bc the sequel, for me, failed both.
The characters are flat. The book gestures at defeatism, escapism and what might drive humanity to unite against extinction, but it never digs in deep enough for it to resonate. Luo Ji is introduced as a selfish man who has not known love except for his imaginary girlfriend (Seriously, the book goes on about how beautiful she looks in front of a fireplace, with her adoring and childlike eyes, blah blah blah). We’re meant to understand that he’s selfish because he doesn’t want marriage or children or even care about humanity’s survival.
The book wants to say that love is uniquely human, the one tool we have that can defeat Trisolaris. In that framework, Luo Ji would fall in love and begin to care about humanity. Instead, we get an adoring and innocent mail-order bride, a time skip, a baby, and then she’s fridged (literally). We get more interiority from his imaginary girlfriend than any actual woman in this book. Every female character functions as a device for a man’s development.
Then there’s the plot—or lack of one. The premise is interesting: an enemy that can observe everything, but can’t read thoughts or understand deception. That should create a high-level tense psychological chess match between humans and aliens, right? Nope! Rather than exploring collective human ingenuity engaging in large-scale deception, the solution is to hand 4 random men unlimited resources and tell them to independently do whatever they want. That’s right, the responsibility of outsmarting a whole advanced alien civilization is given to four men who can’t even work together. So then, it’s no surprise when we get long stretches of plans that won’t work, with long monologues about why they won’t work. I was even more frustrated bc the plans were obviously ridiculous, so it felt like a waste of time. Almost half of the book is devoted to doomed strategies that are later dismissed as being stupid from the get go.
This setup could have delivered some fun commentary on desperation, on hubris, on futility, on humanity scrambling like children before an incomprehensible force. That would deliver so much cosmic horror! But instead it just gestures at grand ideas, and doesn’t deliver much of anything. I will read the synopsis for book three and just be done.
27afuaa commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
hi friends, i’m curious if you have any books that you absolutely loved but wouldn’t necessarily recommend to anyone (and if so, why?)
maybe they’re a little weird and experimental, or polarising, or they scratch a particular itch in your brain that you don’t think the general reader would understand.
a couple of mine are:
- The Waves by Virginia Woolf - so beautiful but possibly her most unconventional. has put more than one friend into a reading slump lol
- The Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent - very dense nonfiction, very complex even with a background in neuroscience, but one of the most ambitious and mindblowing books i’ve ever read
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara - personally i read this at a time when it was very impactful and eye-opening but understand it’s extremely heavy and has come under a lot of (valid) criticism
p.s. if you are a fan of either of the first two let’s be friends
58afuaa commented on a post
Post from the Wuthering Heights forum
The love Edgar has for Catherine (as well as the love Hindley had for his wife) is sweet. Even if Catherine is manipulating him. Stark difference to Mr. Lockwood referring to his wife and children as his “human fixture and her satellites”.
I’m gonna have to go back and read chapters 1-3 or so to compare and also because I had no idea what was going on in the beginning.
0Post from the Wuthering Heights forum
