I'm a huge believer in gifting books, especially to children, to help build literacy. So my question today.

What was the last book you gifted and to whom?

I haven't gifted any since December to my cousin's young daughter's for her birthday. I gave her Swan Lake from The Story Orchestra series by Jessica Courtney-Tickle. She's 9 now and a dancer, not a massive reader. Apparently, she loves it.

The last book I was gifted was my Christmas collection. I asked everyone to give me a book, no limits. Most interesting choice, Empire of the Dawn by Jay Kristoff.

Hello! I have a sense that my reading tastes are shifting, and so I am looking specifically for books that feel timeless - no social media, no modern technology, nothing super contemporary. Classics are not my wheelhouse lol so looking for recs there but also looking for recs for novels written more recently that feel timeless. Thank you all!!

Has anyone else named their avatar (or am I getting too attached to my little digital dragon)? If so, what did you pick? Is it from a book?

I've started calling my dragon Remi, purely based off of vibes🙂‍↕️😄

(Do they have "official" names? I don't know.)

getting frustrated by the influx of posts and comments in this forum about not understanding joseph, and how his dialogue is 'gibberish' and how you can just skip all his dialogue because it's not 'relevant'. firstly, you're not reading it properly if you're skipping great chunks of dialogue. secondly, he's not from the moon, he's from yorkshire; this whole book is set in yorkshire. I know it's hard to read, especially if english isn't your first language or you're unfamiliar with the yorkshire accent, but I wish people would at least try, rather than trying to skip his bits or laughing at them. one google gives you a webpage that 'translates' every bit of joseph's dialogue, it's very easy to find. (https://wuthering-heights.co.uk/josephs-speech). and at least try and think a bit about why bronte might have chosen to put down his dialogue (and ONLY his dialogue, by and large) this way.

wuthering heights is a narrative which is about class and privilege to a huge degree. accent and dialect is a massive class indicator in the UK and making fun of someone's accent or dialect (especially / largely the northern or rural accents, or irish/scottish/welsh accents) is a very common classist sentiment to this day. I know people don't mean badly but it rubs me the wrong way to see people laughing and acting as if it's totally unintelligible. lots of people still use those words and those pronunciations; the yorkshire dialect has modernised and become less common but it does still exist! yorkshire people still exist! please google some context when you're reading classics and try to engage thoughtfully. it's fun to have a laugh while reading and make little jokes but just think about what the jokes are based on maybe?