eminesque

I crash in my bed, grab my books and pop some benzos to feel better. thanks.

2284 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Reading...

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (The Neapolitan Novels, #3)

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makhfi

Thoughts from 32%

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Summer 2026 Readalong

Read at least 1 book in the Summer 2026 Readalong.

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eminesque

Thoughts from 30%, Drive back home

People really believe that whatever a guy who calls himself "Humbert Humbert" is saying about a 13 year old child and her deeds is true huh? There is not a single thing in this man that's honest.

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eminesque

Thoughts from 30%, Drive back home

People really believe that whatever a guy who calls himself "Humbert Humbert" is saying about a 13 year old child and her deeds is true huh? There is not a single thing in this man that's honest.

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22h

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.

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crimsoncuppa

Thoughts from 8% (page 36)

As someone who consumed way too much true crime way too young this intrigued me. After reading the first (and most horrific first twenty pages) I am delighted to see that it digs at true crime etc. The writing has already sucked me in and I think I'm going to enjoy this a lot.

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eminesque

Thoughts from 25%

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The Kind Worth Killing

Peter Swanson

A devious tale of psychological suspense involving sex, deception, and an accidental encounter that leads to murder. Fans of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train will love this modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train from the author of the acclaimed The Girl with a Clock for a Heart—which the Washington Post said “should be a contender for crime fiction’s best first novel of 2014.” On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché. But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . . . Back in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda's demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth. Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.

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eminesque

Jun 02, 2026

3.0

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Reads more like a history book than a novel, and does not take a stand on the morality of the people it's talking about. The prose is nothing to write home about and the story, though interesting from a humanist perspective, is too fragmented and lost in itself. The two halves connecting two timelines do not make sense existing together in the same book. The only value this book had for me was the historical aspect, for which it has the rating as seen.

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The Maniac

Benjamín Labatut

From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale. A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake. The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control. A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.

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eminesque

Thoughts from 70%

if Neumann was alive today he'd totally be a doomsday cult AI bro trying to sell me a new future

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eminesque

Thoughts from 40%

Its these kind of Books that make me feel pathetic in my capability of achieving something big, like all these scientists were somehow born wise and I was already losing the day I was concieved.

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eminesque

Thoughts from 40%

Its these kind of Books that make me feel pathetic in my capability of achieving something big, like all these scientists were somehow born wise and I was already losing the day I was concieved.

eminesque started reading...

The Maniac

Benjamín Labatut

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VioletPeanut

Thoughts from 15%

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eminesque commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

theolbooknook

Do you read negative reviews?

Hello, all!

I just finished watching "Book reviews are gaslighting us" by Below the Fray on youtube. The central thesis of the video essay revolves around the soulless platitudes in most modern litcrit columns in newspapers and magazines. He brings up a lot of great points, and it made me think about non-monetized book reviews like those here on Pagebound.

My biggest question for you all is do you read (and/or write) negative reviews? I recently started writing negative reviews but have a bad habit of kneecapping my sentences and coddling the author more than I probably should. I am a firm believer that reviews are for readers and criticism is for the authors, though where exactly else are these authors to get criticism from if most modern litcrit is monetized and a bad review could get you fired or blacklisted?

As readers, do you enjoy reading a bad review? Do you seek out alternative, often negative opinions of books you enjoy? Do you feel vindicated by a bad review on a book you hated? What kind of review gets you to read a book most: a raving 5 star or a critical 1 star review that piques your interest?

TL;DR Do you read negative reviews of books (whether you've read them or not), and what do you feel the purpose of a review on a platform like PB is, exactly?

Signed, a ranty reader lol

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