catbitesback

they/them. my tbr is my personality. talk to me about books!! my discord is pema007

1137 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)

Reading...

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

catbitesback made progress on...

The Juniper Tree

Barbara Comyns

11%

catbitesback commented on catbitesback's update

catbitesback started reading...

10h

The Juniper Tree

Barbara Comyns

Bella Winter has hit a low. Homeless and jobless, she is the mother of a toddler by a man whose name she didn’t quite catch, and her once pretty face is disfigured by the scar she acquired in a car accident. Friendless and without family, she’s recently disentangled herself from a selfish and indifferent boyfriend and a cruel and indifferent mother. But she shares a quality common to Barbara Comyns’s other heroines: a bracingly unsentimental ability to carry on. Before too long, Bella has found not only a job but a vocation; not only a place to live but a home and a makeshift family. As Comyns’s novel progresses, the story echoes and inverts the Brothers Grimm’s macabre tale The Juniper Tree. Will Bella’s hard-won restoration to life and love come at the cost of the happiness of others?

catbitesback started reading...

10h

The Juniper Tree

Barbara Comyns

catbitesback commented on a post

10h

catbitesback

Thoughts from 47% (page 137) (Chapter 5)

Chapter 5 has made such an excellent point of what I hoped this book would touch on: that when race is brought in as a key factor to class struggles, and used as part of the weapon against the violence of a minimum wage that doesn't support it's people, it hits harder.

I am too often around people who believe that the issues they care about do not need to include discussions of race. Whether it be class, or feminism, or the current political climate in the USA (I am almost impressed by the levels of ridiculousness that white people who oppose the president but don't think race is worth mentioning in the topic. How does that even happen, and why are so many people like that?), race needs to be brought up. If you care about class, but don't know (or don't care) how it oppresses people of color and why that matters, you won't see the same progress in your actions.

As much as validation as this book brings me, it also brings a larger fear. Is racism stronger than the force of progress? I haven't gotten to the part of the book where McGhee tells me how to tell white people that they're doing it wrong in a way that reaches them and maintains my sanity.

catbitesback commented on displacedcactus's review of Lord of the Butterflies (Button Poetry)

12h

displacedcactus

Jan 09, 2026

5.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: Plot:

🦋

🏳️‍🌈

💔

Are you not a big poetry reader? Do you only read poetry books when you absolutely have to due to a reading challenge? Do you just not get it?

If so, you might be me!

I read approximately one poetry book per year, for book bingo challenges, and usually, I just don't get most of the book. One or two poems will speak to me and the rest will result in a "meh" or head-scratch.

I found this collection incredibly approachable. While Gibson does use different forms and styles of poetry, they're all parse-able for a less-experienced poetry reader. Nothing felt too opaque for me.

This being a collection published by a queer American poet in 2018, there are a lot of heavy themes in here, including Trump, gun violence, the Pulse shooting, the carceral state, suicide, and more. But there are also beautiful poems about love, so it's not all doom and gloom.

I highly recommend checking this out whether you're already a poetry lover or if you are, like me, trying to figure out what the deal is.

-11

Post from the The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together forum

12h

catbitesback

Thoughts from 47% (page 137) (Chapter 5)

catbitesback TBR'd a book

13h

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

Mikki Kendall

Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?

catbitesback made progress on...

13h

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

60%

catbitesback commented on hatsunemiku's update

hatsunemiku TBR'd a book

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Heather McGhee

Heather McGhee's specialty is the American economy--and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm--the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to functioning schools--have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world's advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can't do on our own. McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint a story of racism's costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy's collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.

catbitesback TBR'd a book

18h

The Isle in the Silver Sea

Tasha Suri

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Tasha Suri comes The Isle in the Silver Sea, a heart-shattering standalone romantasy of sapphic longing, medieval folklore and a love that spans the centuries. In an England fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes. Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen’s court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other? As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?

catbitesback commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

19h

archimedes

Question for the crocheters and knitters!

Last year, my reading-adjacent goal was to crochet granny squares for each book I read. I had such a fun time with this that I'm doing it again this year so I can have enough squares to make a cozy blanket.

My question: do you have a favorite place to buy yarn that 1) isn't Amazon or a big box store, 2) can be accessed in the US (e.g., online), and 3) offers sample packs or small bundles?

catbitesback made progress on...

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Heather McGhee

42%

catbitesback TBR'd a book

Adapt: How Humans Are Tapping into Nature's Secrets to Design and Build a Better Future

Amina Khan

Amina Khan believes that nature does it best. In Adapt , she presents fascinating examples of how nature effortlessly solves the problems that humans attempt to solve with decades worth of the latest and greatest technologies, time, and money. Humans are animals too, and animals are incredibly good at doing more with less. If a fly’s eye can see without hundreds of fancy lenses, and termite mounds can stay cool in the desert without air conditioning, it stands to reason that nature can teach us a thing or two about sustainable technology and innovation. In Khan’s accessible voice, these complex concepts are made simple. There is so much we humans can learn from nature’s billions of years of productive and efficient evolutionary experience. This field is growing rapidly and everyone from architects to biologists to nano-technicians to engineers are paying attention. Results from the simplest tasks, creating Velcro to mimic the sticking power of a burr, to the more complex like maximizing wind power by arranging farms to imitate schools of fish can make a difference and inspire future technological breakthroughs. Adapt shares the weird and wonderful ways that nature has been working smarter and not harder, and how we can too to make billion dollar cross-industrial advances in the very near future.

catbitesback TBR'd a book

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

Jason Hickel

The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we must face up to its primary cause: capitalism. Our economic system is based on perpetual expansion, which is devastating the living world. There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: degrowth. If we want to have a shot at surviving the Anthropocene, we need to restore the balance. We need to change how we see the world and our place within it, shifting from a philosophy of domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity with our planet’s ecology. We need to evolve beyond the dusty dogmas of capitalism to a new system that’s fit for the twenty-first century. But what about jobs? What about health? What about progress? This book tackles these questions and offers an inspiring vision for what a post-capitalist economy could look like. An economy that’s more just, more caring, and more fun. An economy that enables human flourishing while reversing ecological breakdown. By taking less, we can become more.

catbitesback commented on a List

educate and liberate

by catbitesback

25 books

nonfiction and fiction list. context on today. everything you do is political, give yourself a voice in that

@celinewyp helped me with this list!!!

⚖️

🗺️

📢

The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs

If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

catbitesback TBR'd a book

Give People Money: The Simple Idea to Solve Inequality and Revolutionise Our Lives

Annie Lowrey

A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income--a stipend given to every citizen--and why it might be necessary for our age of rising inequality, persistent poverty, and dazzling technology Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your checking account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy, but it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists, child-care workers, welfare recipients, and politicians from India to Finland to Canada to Mexico--all are talking about UBI. In this sparkling and provocative book, economics writer Annie Lowrey looks at the global UBI movement. She travels to Kenya to see how a UBI is lifting the poorest people on earth out of destitution, India to see how inefficient government programs are failing the poor, South Korea to interrogate UBI's intellectual pedigree, and Silicon Valley to meet the tech titans financing UBI pilots in expectation of a world with advanced artificial intelligence and little need for human labor. Lowrey examines the potential of such a sweeping policy and the challenges the movement faces, among them contradictory aims, uncomfortable costs, and, most powerfully, the entrenched belief that no one should get something for nothing. She shows how this arcane policy offers not only a potential answer for our most intractable economic and social problems, but also a better foundation for our society in this age of turbulence and marvels.

catbitesback TBR'd a book

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1)

Shannon Chakraborty

Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend. Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural. But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will. Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.

catbitesback commented on catbitesback's update

catbitesback made progress on...

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

50%

catbitesback made progress on...

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

50%

catbitesback commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

AliTheGamingHag

Non-Quantitative Reading Goals

Hello! 🐈‍⬛

I know a lot of us have yearly reading goals about reading X amount of books, but I’m curious to know your reading goals that have nothing to do with numbers! Here are some of mine:

💜Finish any fantasy series (I read the first book of like ten series last year LOL) 💜Read more nonfiction - I’m a fantasy & sci-fi nut, so I’m hoping to break out a little bit this year! 💜Find a new favorite poet - I love poetry, and want to find more poets that cut to my core

Feel free to share!🥰

Gift Pagebound Royalty Merch Store Roadmap Founder Announcements

Support

FAQ Contact Us Report a bug

team@pagebound.co

Company

About Us Terms of Use Privacy Policy Content Policy

Gift Pagebound Royalty Merch Store Roadmap Founder Announcements