clackamaslee

My "reviews" are more aptly described as meditations on the strange experience of letting another person's thoughts live in my head for a few hundred pages.

4575 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (Wastelands #1)

Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

Reading...

11%

19%

53%

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes

Egyptian Myths & Legends: Tales of Heroes, Gods & Monsters (Flame Tree Collector's Editions)

clackamaslee is interested in reading...

Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with RSD

Alex Partridge

Your boss asked you for a chat, and you just knew you were going to be firedYou didn't sleep all weekend, and you weren't firedSomeone answered your message with a thumbs-up emoji and you just knew they hated you.So you stopped talking to them, they eventually stopped texting, and now you miss them like crazySomeone went for a bathroom break mid-film, and you just knew it's because they think your taste in films is terribleYou were so upset you missed the rest of the film, and they left earlyRejection is physically painful for you. Even the most minor criticism stings. And why wouldn't it? By the time you were 12, you'd received 20,000 negative messages about yourself, your brain and your unique ADHD way of living life. 20,000.Alex Partridge knows how it feels to live with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), the state of emotional dysregulation experienced by almost everyone with ADHD. Throughout his journey from successful entrepreneur to neurodiversity campaigner and host of the hugely successful ADHD Chatter, Alex has been haunted by the fear of rejection, labelled 'over-sensitive', and fought constantly against the desire to people-please and protect himself from emotional harm.In Why Does Everybody Hate Me? Alex draws on his own experience of RSD, and shares how it's coloured every aspect of his life, from his days as founder of the global social media content brands UniLad and LadBible, to his adult relationships, his mental health struggles and his terrible imposter syndrome. He'll use the insights he's gained from the world's top experts on ADHD to share with you some simple steps to regaining your boundaries, your confidence and your self-belief.You are not 'too sensitive' - nor are you broken. You were always enough.

clackamaslee commented on KittenInACave's update

KittenInACave finished a book

Animal Farm

George Orwell

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here. A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

clackamaslee is interested in reading...

The Colony

Annika Norlin

A mega best-seller in Sweden, with rights sold to over a dozen countries and a TV adaptation underway, Annika Norlin’s debut novel The Colony is the biggest Swedish literary phenomenon since Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove. Winner of the Vi Literature Award and Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize, two of Sweden’s biggest literary awards, The Colony is a gripping portrayal of contemporary society and its alternatives. Burnt-out from a demanding job and a bustling life in the city, Emelie has left town to spend a few days in the country. Once there, in the peaceful, verdant hills, down by the river she encounters a mysterious group of seven people, each with personal stories full of pain, alienation, and the longing to live differently. They are misfits, each in their own way, and all led by the enigmatic and charismatic Sara. How did they end up there? Are they content with the rigid roles they’ve been assigned? And what happens when an outsider appears and is initially drawn to their alternative lifestyle but cannot help but stir things up? A masterful blend of humor, emotion, unforgettable characters, and sharp social commentary, The Colony is a magnetic and deeply touching story about love, community, and the unfathomable power we other others and that others have over us.

clackamaslee made progress on...

11h

No Exit and Three Other Plays

Jean-Paul Sartre

11%

clackamaslee commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

12h

andreareadsalot

Your Anti-Taste

Oh no! Pagebound has had a glitch and all your My Taste books have been replaced with the exact opposite. What (up to 5) books would be displayed to show who you aren’t as a reader? These aren’t necessarily your least favorites, but books that are the opposite of who you are as a reader. Books you would not be found reading because it’s not to your taste.

My Anti-Taste

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Shining by Stephen King
Haunting Adeline by HD Carlton

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clackamaslee wrote a review...

14h

spoilers

clackamaslee

Jul 08, 2026

Ammonite

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 3.5

View spoiler

clackamaslee commented on a post

16h

clackamaslee

Thoughts from 97% (page 248)

"I hadn't believed in a god since I was about ten, and still envisioned Mr. Rogers when I prayed"

My mind is blown. Mr Rogers is exactly who I picture when I pray. I'm not praying to Mr. Rogers; his face is just how I picture Christ (when I picture Christ at all, with full knowledge that there's no possible way they looked anything like each other).

I wonder how many other people picture Mr. Rogers when they think of a good, fatherly figure... I'd say it's probably a generational thing except that Zauner is so much younger than me.

clackamaslee wrote a review...

16h

clackamaslee

Jul 07, 2026

Crying in H Mart

4.5

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.5Characters: Plot:

🤓

If you read this hungry, that's on you. If you read it while going through your own loss, best of luck to ya.

This isn't the best grief memoir I've ever read. That title goes to Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.

It is however, a one of the most honest portrayals I've read of anticipatory grief, caregiving, and all the complicated emotions that come with loving someone whose end you know is coming (C'mon-- The end isn't THAT close... If I'm a good enough person and do everything right, the end won't really come. Right? RIGHT!?).

As I write this, I'm packing up my own life to move to Oregon to spend an indeterminate amount of time caring for elderly family members who are in decline. Like Zauner, there was never really a question of whether I would go. It is the right thing to do.

The right thing can still be a loss.

You're grieving the life you're leaving behind while beginning to grieve the people you haven't lost yet. Those emotions don't cancel each other out. They just... coexist (messily). And then, because your brain wants to keep things interesting, caregiver burnout arrives with its faithful companion, guilt. You're tired, and then you feel guilty for being tired. You miss your old life, and then you feel guilty for missing it (why did I sign up for this again?).

These feelings don't mean you love someone less-- they mean you're human (that's what I'm telling myself, anyway).

Back to the book: The food described is wonderful (seriously, don't read this hungry), but it isn't really about the food. It's about memory, identity, culture, and the impossible task of trying to preserve pieces of someone you know you're going to lose (and pieces of yourself you don't even know about fully because that version of you has only ever existed in relationship to the person you are losing-- the only person on the planet who sees those pieces of you and OMG... will I even be possible in the same way if they aren't there to poke at those parts of my psyche occasionally?!).

[Big breath] [Slowing the spin]

This isn't a memoir that tells you grief gets easier. It just reminds you that there is nothing strange about feeling love, sadness, gratitude, exhaustion, anger (yes, even at other people who are helping), hope, and loss all at the same time.

Being where you're supposed to be is sometimes heartbreaking.

clackamaslee finished a book

17h

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner

A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Post from the Crying in H Mart forum

17h

clackamaslee

Thoughts from 97% (page 248)

"I hadn't believed in a god since I was about ten, and still envisioned Mr. Rogers when I prayed"

I wonder how many other people picture Mr. Rogers when they think of a good, fatherly figure... I'd say it's probably a generational thing except that Zauner is so much younger than me.

clackamaslee commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

17h

MindlessMoose

📖 The Mid-Year Freakout Tag 2026 📖

Time to do the mid-year freakout tag again.

Someone slow time down please, I hate it here.

Best book you’ve read so far in 2026? Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2026? New release you haven’t read yet, but want to? Most anticipated release for the second half of 2026? Biggest disappointment? Biggest surprise? New favourite author? Newest fictional crush? Newest favourite character? Book that made you cry? Book that made you happy? Most beautiful book you bought so far? What books do you need to read before the end of the year?

Can't wait to see what you've loved and hated so far this year!

clackamaslee commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

18h

teddydee

Edited

What kind of books do you collect?

A year or two ago I learned of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, which is exclusively open to young women (30 & under, in the US). Frankly I had never considered that building a personal book collection might be something other people would notice and care about, but when I read about the contestants' collections, I get it!! I love that they explicitly do not care about the collections' monetary value, it's all about "their originality and their success in illuminating their chosen subjects."

link

This is not a prize I'm eligible for, but I found it interesting. I "collect" books in the sense that I've been building and curating my personal library for 25+ years, but what percentage of those books would rise to the level of a specific Collection? Because my interests and therefore my books are all over the place... Reading about this prize made me think about my own collection a little more and start noticing more themes emerging in what I've been curating! Here are some of the micro-collections I've identified so far within the larger number of books I own:

— instructional books on mending/clothing repair, and more general sewing books that include information on mending — different versions of The Three Billy Goats Gruff (I was the Littlest Goat in a kindergarten production and am still disproportionately fond of the story) — books on gender in the French language/le langage inclusif/queering French — vintage horror paperbacks (paperbacks from Hell) — fairy tales & folklore from around the world — different editions of Peter Pan — my own personal Moby-Dick curriculum for further reading — big ol' artist retrospective coffee table books (these are exorbitantly priced if you buy them new but I pick them up for pennies all the time at library sales. Imo after visiting museums/seeing artwork in person, this is the next best way to experience it. Exponentially better than the internet) — old DK Eyewitness/Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections/Where's Waldo?/I Spy-type books (my inner child flips their shit over this kind of stuff, lol)

There are also obviously certain authors/anthologists/series I collect (vintage Agatha Christie, old Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, Nancy Drew, etc)

I am curious, what do you collect, and why??

clackamaslee commented on a post

22h

halfagonyhalfhope

Music as comfort

THE FOO FIGHTERS AHH😍 Oh how I love when authors drop seemingly random personal facts and they just resonate in every way!

“Into the vacuum of my disinterest, music rushed to fill the void. It cracked a fissure, splintered a vein through the already precarious and widening rift between my mother and me; it would become a chasm that threatened to swallow us whole. Nothing was as vital as music, the only comfort for my existential dread. I spent my days downloading songs one at a time off LimeWire and getting into heated discussions on AIM about WHETHER THE FOO FIGHTERS' ACOUSTIC VERSION OF "EVERLONG" WAS BETTERH THAN THE ORIGINAL.”

Also LOL how did it take me so long to connect the dots between Michelle and Japanese Breakfast!

clackamaslee is interested in reading...

23h