"All that knowledge, the power to make lives better, was shelved away. Reserved for use only by the wealthy, when it should belong to everyone. And that's why I never really believed they'd hurt the library--and why I don't understand why they did. They knew books were power."

i'm honestly confused by her confusion here. the library, by locking up knowledge and resources and only allowing the elite to access it, became a symbol of classism and oppression, even if that wasn't its initial purpose. the people who revolted/overthrew the government did not know what it contained because they never had access to that privilege. they burned it down because of what it turned into. i'm just surprised that as a librarian who valued knowledge so much, kiela never tried to actually learn about the revolution and try to help in her own way? if she thought this knowledge should be shared with everyone, why didn't she make any attempts to do exactly that?

Someone you are still thinking about and searching for vibe references on Pinterest. Xaden and bat boys don't count!🤭 I still think about Blake from Wolf King series and Ryan Shay from The right move 🖤

I wanna know a line you've read that was so painful that it felt like someone stabbed your heart. Please add a spoiler alert if you think it's needed ☺️

I’m just sitting here, and don’t know what to do with myself.

Lyrical and vivid. If you like stories about cities, descriptive writing, and surprising character dynamics, you will enjoy this book. Great for fans of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino or China Miéville's work.

I am a little obsessed with first lines in literature. Do you guys have any favourite opening lines in books? Either because they immediately drew you in or because they were particularly clever?

One of my favourites is from A Darker Shade of Magic: "Kell wore a very peculiar coat. It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two, which would be unexpected, but several, which was, of course, impossible."

Or, a very famous one, from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: "The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

constantly on the verge of reorganising my shelves, but i always struggle to commit to an order! feel free to share how you overcome this aesthetic challenge 🥺🫶🏻

Does anyone want to be mutuals? I’m looking for more people to follow so I have different updates to scroll through on the main page. ☺️ doesn’t matter if we have a high percentage overlap or not. I’d love to see what everyone’s reading/commenting/posting about.

I love the space that Pagebound has created for discussion, but I just wanna gently nudge people to be thoughtful about the language we use to describe books, especially surrounding romance! I've noticed a few people using "clean" to describe romance that is low-spice or closed door and I know some people might not be aware of how that language is harmful, but please use another term!

"Clean" has very sex-negative, shameful connotations because it insinuates that it's wrong or bad to read stuff that's more explicit! Especially in a time of increasing censorship where I'm from, specifically around anything erotic in nature, the last thing we need is to play into the sex = bad rhetoric, whether its intentional or not.

It's more than fine to prefer reading stuff with low-no spice, and it's also more than fine to prefer high spice! Let's try to keep this community welcoming and inclusive 💞💞💞

Edit with a couple notes: I haven't been on SM a lot the past couple of days so I was NOT expecting so many comments, but I appreciate everyone who has mostly kept the conversation respectful! I just want to add/clear up a couple of things:

First off, totally meant to include no spice, and when I was saying low-spice, I generally meant stuff where it's closed-door, vague, or there is no explicit content. As a reader and writer who is on the aroace spectrum, I think distinction on whether there is any sex, implied or otherwise, and how descriptive it is incredibly important, and I didn't mean for it to come across as not caring about folks who don't want any spice whatsoever!

Secondly, just because some people might not have experiences with the flavor of sex-negative, christian-flavored puritanism that is rampant in the USA does not undo the harm caused by the words, and I think conflating a request to be thoughtful about language we are using with censorship, now of all times, is ignorant at best. With how rampant censorship has been here lately, ESPECIALLY in regard to queer authors and stories, the last thing we need is to throw those under the bus and give the people trying to censor these works more fuel.

I also fully emphasize with people who don't love "spice" ratings because tbh I hate the word spicy, and also it's so incredibly subjective, but unfortunately, as a few other people pointed out, words like that are used to dodge algorithms and censorship on social media. Personally, whenever I'm describing books with erotic content, I usually just prefer to call it what it is, or to say high/low heat, but I would love to see a day where it's more widely acceptable to say "yes this work has explicit sexual content/is erotic/has no sex/has no explicit sex, etc."

I made this post in good faith because I know not everybody might think of things that way, but I'm not here for people invalidating other people's discomfort with the word "clean."