dyedviolet

20's | she/her | urge to talk about books vs. intense shyness, fight!

2062 points

0% overlap

My Taste

The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel): Volume 1

Reading...

46%

Post from the The Coffin of Honey forum

dyedviolet

Thoughts from 34% (page 102, start of ch. 17)

It takes a truly good writer to make a thematically resonant poop joke.

dyedviolet TBR'd a book

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be. As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies, Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh and even hilarious relief. Suspenseful and sardonic, narrated in a voice that takes in the symphonic range of the American language, black and white, Invisible Man is one of the most audacious and dazzling novels of our century.

dyedviolet made progress on...

11h

The Coffin of Honey

Geoffrey D. Morrison

46%

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12h

dyedviolet

Jul 18, 2026

Keeper

5.0

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

dyedviolet is interested in reading...

12h

Notes of a Crocodile

Qiu Miaojin

Set in the post-martial-law era of late 1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon. Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend. Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

dyedviolet is interested in reading...

13h

Kin

Tayari Jones

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedyVernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Atlanta at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and marries into an affluent family. Annie, abandoned by her dissolute mother as a child, and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, and culminate in a battle for her life.A novel about mothers and daughters, about friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.

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15h

dyedviolet

Jul 18, 2026

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

5.0

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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15h

dyedviolet

Jul 18, 2026

The Blue Clerk

5.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: Plot:

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16h

The Girl With A Thousand Faces

Sunyi Dean

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Book Eaters comes The Girl with a Thousand Faces, a Gothic tale set in a historical Hong Kong that meshes ancient myths and local legends into a haunting story of ghosts, grief, and women who will not forgive. When Mercy Chan washed up on the shores of Hong Kong with no family, no money, and no memories, she was thrust into the horrors of World War II. She only survived by hiding in Kowloon Walled City, an infamous, ghost-infested slum full of lost and traumatized civilians. Since the end of the war, she has rebuilt her life and found work with the local triad as a ghost-talker, dealing with the angry and bitter spirits who haunt this place. These days, the filthy gutters and cramped alleyways of Kowloon feel like home. But the past she can’t remember won’t let her go. An unusually powerful ghost has infested Kowloon’s waterways, drowning innocents and threatening the district. Unnervingly, it claims to know Mercy―and her forgotten childhood. As Mercy is drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with this malignant spirit, she begins to realize that the monster she fights within these walls may well be one of her own making. 33 years before, mere days ahead of the Japanese invasion, Sung Siu Yin and her mother flee Hong Kong, intending to hide out on her mother's ancestral island home. It’s beautiful, tranquil, and remote. . . but also inhabited by ghosts ever since the entire village drowned in a storm many years ago. Still, it’s better than living under occupation. But as the war drags on and isolation sets in, Siu Yin is increasingly drawn into the island's grim past―a past that may still have a hold on the present. There is a darkness lurking beneath that idyllic ocean, and it has been waiting many years for someone to return. "The Girl With a Thousand Faces confirms Sunyi Dean as one of the most interesting voices in genre fiction.”―Gareth Brown, USA Today bestselling author of The Book of Doors

dyedviolet is interested in reading...

17h

Burn Down Master's House: A Novel

Clay Cane

Inspired by true, long-buried stories of enslaved people who dared to fight back, a searing portrayal of resistance for readers of Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward, and Percival Everett, from Clay Cane, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Grift. In the midst of the Civil War, another war brews among the enslaved who are living and enduring in the shadow of the plantations—imposing monuments to power and tyranny. Their interconnected journeys of rebellion and kinship unite them in a long-seething need for justice. In an ultimate act of revolution, they will get it. Luke, intelligent and literate, and Henri, a man with a strong and defiant spirit, forge an unbreakable bond at Magnolia Row in Virginia. Both seek escape from unimaginable cruelty. And sure as the fires of hell, Luke and Henri will leave their mark, sparking future uprisings. Like Josephine, a young, sharp, and observant girl who wields silence as her greatest weapon. She listens, watches, waits. Her vow is They gonna remember us. Also, Charity Butler has successfully fought for her freedom, but battles against a deeply unjust system and a future abolitionist. Then there is Nathaniel, a Black enslaver whose existence disturbs the very nature of bondage. His rule is both fragile and contradictory, setting off a collision of resistance that will shape their fates. When these souls and those of others—oppressed and oppressors alike—collide, a visceral and indelible portrait of love, brutality, betrayal, and identity comes unsparingly to life. Inspired by the true stories of the profoundly courageous men and women who dared to fight back against the barbarism of the era, Burn Down Master’s House is a singular tour de force of a novel—breathtaking in scope, compassion, righteousness, and timely defiance.

dyedviolet commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

ratpop

Please send me recommendations for YouTubers with good book content

Hi PageBound!

I enjoy watching YouTube videos about books, but lately I’m having trouble finding channels centred more around reviews and reading wrap-ups rather than internet drama. (The only book YouTuber I’ve been watching recently is Newlynova.)

Do any of you have recommendations?

dyedviolet paused reading...

Hemlock & Silver

T. Kingfisher

From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes Hemlock & Silver, a dark reimagining of “Snow White” steeped in poison, intrigue, and treason of the most magical kind. Healer Anja knows little of politics but much of poisons. When she is summoned to treat the mysterious illness afflicting the king’s daughter, she finds herself against the clock, desperate to track down the source of the poison killing Princess Snow. But the chance discovery of a strange alternate world inside a magic mirror leads Anja to darker discoveries, including what really happened to Snow’s dead sister, Rose, and why their mother seemingly went mad and cut out her heart. Aided by a taciturn bodyguard, a narcissistic cat, and a late Renaissance understanding of the scientific method, Anja must navigate the mysteries of the mirror world before the dark queen that dwells within rises to threaten them all.

dyedviolet commented on a post

acidicchaos

Recommendations?? Step right up!!

Have a recommendation for this quest?? I wanna hear them all!! But please read this first!

As I mentioned in the Welcome & Introductions post - I'm keeping the specific criteria for this quest close to my chest until other similar quests drop and I don't want to potentially ruin the surprise! However, I will say this quest is multi-genre, so don't worry about trying to stay in a specific niche. If it feels like a fever dream (surreal, absurd, dreamlike), I would to know about it so I can consider it! Please be patient with me as I make my way through the recommendations!

You can suggest as many books as you like, but please submit one book per comment so other Boundlings can upvote the books they'd love to see on this quest tooo! Your comment should include the book title, author, and a link (or just the url) to the book's page on Pagebound so I know exactly which book to check out!

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dyedviolet made progress on...

The Coffin of Honey

Geoffrey D. Morrison

35%

dyedviolet is interested in reading...

My Body Is A Resource I’m Willing To Expend

Katie (Tom) Walters

My Body Is A Resource I Am Willing To Expend is a story of becoming: of learning what it means to care and be cared for, to love and be loved. In 2016, Katie (Tom) Walters caught fresher’s flu and never quite recovered and developed a severely disabling, incurable disease. This debut collection exposes the process of acceptance, reconfiguring their relationships and finding their place in an increasingly inaccessible world. From their bed, they rebel in a world of sprawling plants and transcendental tenderness, where righteous crip pride collides with rage, grief, and mourning.

dyedviolet commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

spnflower

Drop some horror/mystery thriller suggestions please!🖤

I am currently debating quitting my bookseller job at Barnes and Noble…so I’m trying to figure out what books I should cash out on with my employee discount before then if I end up going through with it. 😅 Also open to sci-fi/fantasy! I just looove a good horror book that’ll scare the shit outta me.

Post from the The Coffin of Honey forum

dyedviolet

Thoughts from 4% (page 12)

spoilers

View spoiler

dyedviolet commented on dyedviolet's update

dyedviolet started reading...

The Coffin of Honey

Geoffrey D. Morrison

Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation in this poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism. At the end of the twenty-first century, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, a minor Marxist politician’s speech is interrupted by the arrival of an iridescent, pill-shaped object. It brings him, briefly, to another world, and to a state of ecstasy he will struggle to interpret upon his return. Soon, many others will be offered the same incantatory opportunity. Rival states attempt to capitalize on these developments, and a cynical spy sets an elaborate psychological operation in motion. Thousands of miles away, on an agricultural commune near the Caspian Sea, a young poet spends her nights troubled by prophetic dreams. The politician, the spy, and the poet will be ineluctably drawn into one another’s orbits, as will the mysterious Bell Letterist, author of a text about “the interdimensional will to the aesthetic” – a powerful motive force that requires human solidarity in order to thrive. The Coffin of Honey is inspired equally by apocryphal stories of Alexander the Great, Bolaño-esque tales of literary vanishings, thousand-year-old Persian poems by exiled princesses, and the fever-dream conclusions of every parapolitical conspiracy theory that might just be true.

dyedviolet started reading...

The Coffin of Honey

Geoffrey D. Morrison

dyedviolet commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Halcyon_War

Book Buying Personal Restrictions

I somewhat recently cajoled my way into inheriting a library from a step-family member they were going to sell, so now have a library with aprox. 800 books I have not read.

I, unfortunately, have FOMO, and most of these books are classics or other (very fun don't get me wrong!) books. Which means I have a wishlist of something like 2k more modern books I'm slowly trying to acquire/borrow/read in general.

The point is, my rule is that I'm not allowed to buy more books unless I read more books than I buy that month.

Any tips for what to do when the urge to just pop online to buy "just one" hits? I downloaded libby and am reading a chapter of whatever I have downloaded when I get the urge but thought I'd see if you all had tips or just wanted to commiserate on your own personal book buying restrictions.

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