kdoveeco

something literary this way comes

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13h

kdoveeco

Thoughts from 30%

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kdoveeco commented on ColinJames's review of Half His Age

13h

ColinJames

Jan 29, 2026

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

I am so conflicted. This book spends more time talking about consumerism than it does saying anything about the age gap between Waldo and Korgy. Waldo and Korgy could have been a lot closer in age and I don’t think it would have made much of a difference to the story that was being told. It feels like Waldo is written older - I kept having to remind myself that this was a 17 year old and not someone in their late 20’s/ early 30’s. I get what McCurdy was trying to do, but her execution fell short. <spoiler>The book also never addresses that Waldo technically sexually assaulted Korgy the first time they had sex.</spoiler>

Also, McCurdy uses the R-word and it is incredibly jarring and could be upsetting. It is unacceptable and I’m not sure how her editors and publishers didn’t flag it for removal. Had I been rating this book she’d have lost a star for that alone.

McCurdy’s prose is beautiful as always. I highlighted so much of the book. I don’t like the story that was told, but it was done so beautifully, so poignantly, that I don’t know how to rate this.

kdoveeco wrote a review...

13h

kdoveeco

Jan 30, 2026

4.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 3.0

👨‍🏫

😨

🚩

This was..... well, harro-ween.

kdoveeco finished a book

13h

Half His Age

Jennette McCurdy

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died comes a sad, funny, thrilling novel about sex, consumerism, class, desire, loneliness, the internet, rage, intimacy, power, and the (oftentimes misguided) lengths we’ll go to in order to get what we want. Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn’t? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does. Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles—or attempts to overcome them—in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved.

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16h

kdoveeco

Thoughts from 30%

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kdoveeco started reading...

16h

Half His Age

Jennette McCurdy

kdoveeco is interested in reading...

21h

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Claire Dederer

From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, a passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of #MeToo, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. In this unflinching, deeply personal book that expands on her instantly viral Paris Review essay, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? Claire Dederer asks: Can we love the work of Hemingway, Polanski, Naipaul, Miles Davis, or Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss? She explores the audience's relationship with artists from Woody Allen to Michael Jackson, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.

kdoveeco commented on a post

avery

Thoughts from 9% (page 32)

I have put off reading this and LOTR because men seem to like it so much and i try to avoid things that men like but I know it must be good so im trying.

kdoveeco commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

BookishBastet

Edited

Why are you reading your book?

A bit of an odd question. Why are you reading your current read/s? Something different? Part of a series? Fave author?

My current book is Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross. The universe has been telling me to tell it to read it for ages, appearing on feeds and I've seen the physical copy more than once. It was a quest tgat finally convinced me.

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kdoveeco commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Ishkabibble

Childhood Book Memories

Does anybody have a cherished childhood memory that has to do with reading?

I vividly remember my Dad leaving me to cloister myself in the Border's Children's section for like an hour (bless him, I have no idea what he was even looking at but he let his daughter dilly dally in the books) before he'd let me pick a book to take home. I used to beg him to take me to Borders all the time.

Then I'd hold my chosen book over my head and use the headlights from the car behind us to read the book on the way home! Dad used to fuss I'd ruin my eyes doing this--and I do wear glasses now so oops, he may have been right!

kdoveeco commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

neuro_monster

What’s everyone’s job?

Without doxing yourself plzzz

Some of you are reading so much with full time jobs😭 I gotta know what y’all do and how many hours you’re doing it. I know a few people are lucky enough to get to read on the job! That’s the dream.

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kdoveeco TBR'd a book

White Nights

Fyodor Dostoevsky

White Nights is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, it is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together. A blend of romanticism and realism, the story appeals gently to the senses and feelings.

kdoveeco TBR'd a book

Nineteen Eighty Four

George Orwell

One of a series of fiction titles for schools, this is Orwell's classic novel in which every aspect of life is controlled by the State. Winston Smith thinks he's alone in remembering an earlier time when men and women lived by instincts and loved with passion, but then he meets Julia.

kdoveeco TBR'd a book

On Photography

Susan Sontag

First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images which are continually inserted between experience and reality. Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.

kdoveeco TBR'd a book

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it. "To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

kdoveeco paused reading...

The Secret History

Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

kdoveeco commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Emren

Audiobooks for my functionally illiterate husband

I read 800+ books a year. My husband jokes that he's functionally illiterate. However I got him listening to audio books while he works in the garage.

I have become my Husband's audiobook dealer. I need help with recommending things. He's read and enjoyed Dungeon Crawler Carl Project Hail Mary Illuminae Game of Thrones

He's currently reading Codex Alera by Jim Butcher.

He strongly prefers finished series or standalones. Currently trending towards fantasy but I don't think he's read mystery or police procedural at all. I don't currently have any Monster F*cking books on audio but...... hmmmm.....

Help me with your recommendations please.

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