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cannons

i love a good review almost as much as i love a good book

2567 points

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Spring 2025 Readalong
Level 5
Fall 2025 Readalong
My Taste
Misery
The Secret History
Blood Over Bright Haven
Pachinko
Girl Dinner
Reading...
Their Eyes Were Watching GodThe Goldfinch

cannons made progress on...

22h
The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt

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cannons commented on a post

5d
  • The Goldfinch
    Thoughts from 13% (page 100)

    lowkey racist undertones? i never like when authors write dialect of non-native english speakers…and i especially don’t like when it’s a white author writing from the perspective of a white character who is frustrated with non-native english speakers. there’s a scene with an asian doorman that made me uncomfortable, especially with the casual way by which it’s mentioned that other workers blame the asian worker for things that go wrong. it had basically no impact to the story, too—i would have slashed it out if i were the editor.

    in general, the passing nature by which the narrator refers to people of color is…weird. it feels like that scene in TSH where bunny (i think it was him?)goes on a racist rant that literally adds nothing to the story; richard doesn’t even react to it. so like…what’s the point of casual racism lmfao.

    aside from that. this book is really wordy. like almost excessively so.

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  • cannons made progress on...

    5d
    The Goldfinch

    The Goldfinch

    Donna Tartt

    13%
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    Post from the The Goldfinch forum

    5d
  • The Goldfinch
    Thoughts from 13% (page 100)

    lowkey racist undertones? i never like when authors write dialect of non-native english speakers…and i especially don’t like when it’s a white author writing from the perspective of a white character who is frustrated with non-native english speakers. there’s a scene with an asian doorman that made me uncomfortable, especially with the casual way by which it’s mentioned that other workers blame the asian worker for things that go wrong. it had basically no impact to the story, too—i would have slashed it out if i were the editor.

    in general, the passing nature by which the narrator refers to people of color is…weird. it feels like that scene in TSH where bunny (i think it was him?)goes on a racist rant that literally adds nothing to the story; richard doesn’t even react to it. so like…what’s the point of casual racism lmfao.

    aside from that. this book is really wordy. like almost excessively so.

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  • cannons finished reading and wrote a review...

    1w
  • An Academic Affair
    cannons
    Nov 17, 2025
    4.0
    Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 2.5

    i really loved the writing style in this book, which alternates between sadie and jonah’s perspectives. in my humble opinion, the writing is superb.

    the most compelling aspect of this story was the deep and complex relationships between sadie and her sister, francesca (chess for short). i really liked that mcalister delved deep into family dynamics - i would argue that the primary conflict isn’t romantic at all, but familial.

    but that’s not to negate the fact that this is, in fact, a romance. and if you like fiery, sharp female characters and equally sharp but down bad male love interests, you’ll enjoy this one. i especially liked how jonah defended and supported sadie even when they were academic rivals. men, take notes.

    my only could’ve-been-better notes are that some of the elements feel slightly underbaked, such as jonah’s strained relationship with his parents and the actual academia setting. i thought we’d see more about them actually in a work setting, but it’s sort of glossed over, and those elements are largely told to us rather than depicted. i thought mcalister’s best scene was the “getting together” scene / “love confession” scene. it was masterfully done.

    overall, a quick, nice read that i plowed through in mostly one day.

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  • cannons commented on a post

    1w
  • The Ministry of Time
    Thoughts from 43%

    someone please tell me it gets better than this, i dont know how much longer i can do this

    9
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  • cannons finished reading and wrote a review...

    1w
  • You Deserve Each Other
    cannons
    Nov 15, 2025
    3.0
    Enjoyment: 2.5Quality: 3.0Characters: 2.0Plot: 3.0

    this is a decent romance to me...after the first half of the book. i fear 20 year old me would have eaten this one up, but after quite a bit of dating experiences/relationships, i found it very, very difficult to care about the main characters - even naomi, who is the sole narrator. i didn't care about their relationship or the conflicts they were experiencing; i found their interactions to be so incredibly frustrating and both characters were equally unlikeable. when it's clear that two people are this unhappy in a relationship, they need to break up and move on.

    i think it could have done a lot better if naomi has a lot more wistfulness/sadness towards the beginning for the relationship they used to have. instead, the story is riddled with juvenile pettiness. and man, are they vindictive. i didn't find any of the "pranks" they were doing funny at all.

    i did enjoy the eventual development (re-development?) of their relationship as they coalesce. i wasn't completely satisfied with the second half of the book as i feel like it could have gone a bit deeper regarding naomi's feelings of inadequacy and how she has a tendency to 'be a ghost', as nicholas says.

    overall this was a solid romance but not anything i'd clamor about. apparently a movie based on this book is coming out and i actually think this might translate better in film format.

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    1w
  • You Deserve Each Other
    Thoughts from 70%
    spoilers

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    1w
  • You Deserve Each Other
    Thoughts from 37%
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  • cannons made progress on...

    1w
    You Deserve Each Other

    You Deserve Each Other

    Sarah Hogle

    20%
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    cannons commented on a post

    1w
  • Gone Girl
    gaslight, girlboss, go missing

    he deserved it and she deffo made sure he knew it

    16
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  • cannons commented on a post

    1w
  • You Deserve Each Other
    Thoughts from 7%

    no bc i’m def not cut out be a rom com mc bc if a man tried to tell me to bake HIS COWORKERS cookies while he’s TAKING A SHOWER there would be no romance story to share bc the relationship would be over

    7
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  • cannons commented on a post

    1w
  • You Deserve Each Other
    Thoughts from 10%
    spoilers

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    6
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  • Post from the You Deserve Each Other forum

    1w
  • You Deserve Each Other
    Thoughts from 7%

    no bc i’m def not cut out be a rom com mc bc if a man tried to tell me to bake HIS COWORKERS cookies while he’s TAKING A SHOWER there would be no romance story to share bc the relationship would be over

    7
    comments 3
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  • cannons commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    2w
  • Question For Emily Henry fans and/or Ali Hazelwood fans!

    If you had to recommend an order to read the author's books in, what would you recommend and why?

    So far, I've only read one EmHen book (Book Lovers), and I'm not sure which to try next. Like, obviously I can read whichever one I want, but I was just curious if anyone had any thoughts on a potential reading order. Like, maybe certain ones have certain vibes? Most serious to least serious? Least well-written to most well written? Best MMC to worst?

    With Ali Hazelwood, I've read Deep End and PSR, but I'm curious about her other works too!

    Feel free to share any thoughts! (This is my first post on here teehee)

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  • cannons commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    2w
  • deleted
    Edited
    First Impressions of Pagebound | what works and what doesn’t

    first off all I want to say, that the aesthetics of this app are 100% me, and as someone who made their own gameified reading tracker in notion, I love the direction this app is taking + I think it has amazing potential. but, sadly, it loses me in the actual execution of its UI & features. here's some constructive feedback to the devs 💕

    UI:

    • Homepage is too focused on your social feed and not enough focused on your reading. I know that this is a social reading tracker, but it is still a book tracker. We have the ability to make TBRs, plan our reading, and our yearly goals, join quests (all amazing features) but the information is hidden behind menus, and not visible anywhere else on the app. This makes the features, at least imo, fall short in execution. The homepage should give me an overview of my activity, as well as my social feed, and not only the book I'm currently reading. Suggestion: Show yearly goal, let us select if we want to see our yearly or monthly planned books, and how much of these we've read (and cherry on top would be how many pages/ day I would need to read in order to achieve my goal of reading my planned books). Optionally you could let the user choose what information is being displayed on their Homepage, so everyone gets a tailored experience to their needs.

    • Quests: one of the features that made me download the app, sadly the one I'm most dissapointed with. a) as a free user I can't make my own quests. sucks, but ok. b) no filter function! this makes it basically unusable, sorry. This is such a basic functionality - I should be able to filter quests by: a specific book/ genre/ books on my TBR/ books on my interested shelf. c) the algo doesn't show me relevant quests either, so I'm left with doomscrolling until I find something that could potentially sound like something I'd be happy to engage with

    • Library: planning function is cool, but I wish the UI was better here. Instead of going to plan > to month > and see your monthly plans I would suggest 2 buttons on top (+ monthly plan; + yearly plan), and then underneath show a visual of your planned books (similarly of how the homepage shows all your current reads)

    • Discover: similar users are NOT shown by order of % similarity. how can it be that my first suggested person has 6% compatibility, and I need to scroll 10 users down to see someone whos reading tastes are 30% similar. please, I beg, make a sort function.

    Misc. Features:

    • Readalongs: cool, but wish we had community driven readalongs, and an ability to make our own.
    • Profile: a) again, I dont see my planned books anywhere here either. b) let us choose our own profile pictures c) if on the profile of someone else it makes sense to see 'my taste' first, and the currently reading list second. but if I click on my own profile, I think those two should be switched.
    • Library: I don't think 'reading' and TBR should be exclusive shelves. Let me see if I read a book that already was on my TBR.
    • I don't think this app needs a daily reading tracker or whatnot, but I do think it would be nice to have a yearly breakdown of books/ month and genre distribution.
    • The downvote feature is, I think, a bad decision. With how incredibly biased people are about some of their favourite books/ series I do think that it will silence a lot of nuanced discourse about said very hyped series/ books from authors that have huge fanbases. I can see this feature being abused very easily to shut down negative discourse.

    anyway, that was all, I wish the devs all the best, and am interested to see how this app will improve in the future ✨

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