dnzie

lover of Black feminist literature, the speculative, Black radical imagination, and stories for a liberated world

250 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Slow Guillotine: A Novel (Zero Street Fiction)

Reading...

23%

dnzie is interested in reading...

Big Swiss

Jen Beagin

Greta liked knowing people's secrets. That wasn't a problem. Until she met Big Swiss. Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. She's a including the heads of infants and dogs. Well that's how Greta imagines seeing her; they haven't actually ever met in person. Nor has Greta actually ever been to Switzerland. Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room, or even the same building. Greta is miles away, sitting at a desk in her own house, wearing only headphones, fingerless gloves, a kimono, and legwarmers, transcribing this disembodied voice. What Greta doesn't know is that she's about to bump into Big Swiss in the local dog park. A new - and not entirely honest - relationship is going to be born. A relationship that will transform both of their lives.

dnzie finished a book

Sky Daddy

Kate Folk

Cross the jet bridge with Linda, a frequent flyer with a dangerous obsession, in this hilarious and provocative debut novel by the acclaimed author of Out ThereI glimpsed many fine planes resting at their gates. A beefy Boeing 777 pulled back from F4, pivoting on his slender ankles, with surprising grace for such a big fellow. I spotted an old friend who went by the tail number N78823, an Embraer 175. I’d accompanied him to Salt Lake City a few months ago, and found him to be a playful lover, teasing me with a round of turbulence as we descended. To outside observers, Linda’s life might seem drab. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless room she rents in a garage on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges her true taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. Linda's secret is that she's sexually attracted to Their intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages and powerful engines make her feel a way that no human lover ever could. She believes her destiny is to someday “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, a catastrophic event that would unite Linda with her soulmate plane for eternity.Linda is used to hiding her true nature, but when her coworker, Karina, invites her to a quarterly Vision Board Brunch, Linda sees a chance both to get closer to her work friend, and to nudge the universe on behalf of her destiny. However, as the vision boards seem to manifest items more quickly—and more literally—than Linda had expected, the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of her control, and she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy or launching herself headlong toward her greatest dream.A subversive, unforgettable tale of the distances some will travel for true love, Sky Daddy examines desire, fate, and the longing to be accepted for who we truly are.

dnzie earned a badge

Level 3

250 points

dnzie made progress on...

Sky Daddy

Kate Folk

32%

dnzie started reading...

Sky Daddy

Kate Folk

dnzie finished a book

Lagoon

Nnedi Okorafor

When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself. Told from multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself. ‘There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.’

dnzie made progress on...

Lagoon

Nnedi Okorafor

100%

dnzie started reading...

Lagoon

Nnedi Okorafor

dnzie TBR'd a book

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity

C. Riley Snorton

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible. Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.

dnzie finished a book

Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)

Jeff VanderMeer

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy. When the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature. And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast—before Area X was called Area X—had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem? Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

dnzie made progress on...

Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)

Jeff VanderMeer

59%

dnzie made progress on...

Beasts Made of Night

Tochi Onyebuchi

23%

dnzie started reading...

Beasts Made of Night

Tochi Onyebuchi

Packed with dark magic and thrilling action, Beasts Made of a Night is a gritty Nigerian-influenced fantasy perfect for fans of Paolo Bacigalupi and Nnedi Okorafor. In the walled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts – lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt. Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj’s livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but 17-year-old Taj is cocky and desperate to provide for his family. When Taj is called to eat a sin of a royal, he’s suddenly thrust into the center of a dark conspiracy to destroy Kos. Now Taj must fight to save the princess that he loves – and his own life. Debut author Tochi Onyebuchi delivers an unforgettable fantasy adventure that powerfully explores the true meaning of justice and guilt.

dnzie finished a book

Bitter (Pet #0.5)

Akwaeke Emezi

Bitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the town of Lucille. Bitter's instinct is to stay safe within the walls of Eucalyptus . . . but her friends aren't willing to settle for a world that the adults say is "just the way things are. Pulled between old friendships, her creative passion, and a new romance, Bitter isn't sure where she belongs - in the art studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the revolution while being true to who she is, she must also ask: at what cost?

dnzie made progress on...

Bitter (Pet #0.5)

Akwaeke Emezi

27%

dnzie started reading...

Bitter (Pet #0.5)

Akwaeke Emezi

dnzie commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Callisto

Feminist dystopia recs?

Heyy, unfortunately im in a reading slump and need something to pull me out of there. I've been craving feminist dystopian books, that really make you question everything, with kinf of the same vibe like "Tender is the flesh". Plus points if it includes intersectionality.

I would be so grateful for some recs!!!

dnzie commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Batfield

Edited

finding bookish friends through mutual hate 🤝

It's great when you meet people who love your favorite books. You know what's even better? Finding people who hate the same books as you do!

I often go find one-star reviews of books I despise and give the reviewer a follow. It's funny to me that mutual hatred is more often a better predictor of shared taste than mutual endorsement :))

Here are some popular books I cannot stand or found underwhelming (apologies if this offends anyone here):

First and foremost, the star of the show: A Little Life ✨: this is easily one of my MOST HATED books of all time. I could make a five-hour video explaining why that is, but others have already done that. I hate it so much I'm using it as a coaster just to be disrespectful.

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson: I know, I know, this is a favorite among many. This one I don't "hate" tbh, I just didn't care for the writing, the corny dialogue, the characters, and some plot points I found ridiculous. The world-building and the magic system was cool though. (I had this feeling it would be a much better experience as a video game!)

The Jade City: yes, another very popular fantasy, but I disliked it so much I DNF'd it after 100 pages. I really hated the objectification and over-sexualization of female characters, and I didn't care for the male characters or the plot either.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tart: I'm a sucker for big, slow-paced books with good writing so I had high hopes for this one but good grief this one KILLED ME. It was SUCH A DRAG. loved the prose but this did not have nearly enough substance to justify this much yapping. I might read her other book though.

The name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss: I read this many years ago in farsi and I don't remember much except the main character was very clearly the writers' self insert and utterly insufferable. Some say this has good prose, but I read a translated version so this had no redeeming qualities for me.

What are your most hated books? Name them in the comments and see if you can find friends:))

122

dnzie is interested in reading...

Bunny

Mona Awad

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision. The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

dnzie joined a quest

Supporting* Women's Wrongs 🔪💄🚬

🏆 // 5933 joined

Not Joined

Whether you love to hate or hate to love 'em, these literary bad girls are anything but well-behaved. *Disclaimer: we do not literally support the illegal and oft cruel behavior of these protagonists (usually); we support the authors bold enough to write them (always).

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