The use of very modern nicknames for names from my country is so jarring. Especially when it's set in a fictional ancient India. No one in India calls Kavita 'Kavs' or Rohan as 'Ro' unless they're from a highly pretentious part of the country like South Bombay. Kavita would have been shortened to something like Kavi or Kavu. And Rohan would have had a completely different name as a nickname. I feel like a little details like these are so important for a book. Not that it's a bad book.

Hi P.Bees!

OK, so a few days ago, I made a post asking what the PageBound Public thinks about Dark Romance. And I really enjoyed reading through different opinions and thoughts. So I decided to bring in a new discussion topic: about A.I. in books.

This spans from using AI in a creative process to using its exact words and paragraphs to write the book or to even use AI art as the cover. There are two discussions under this really, bc there is the discussion of how A.I in general is harming our society in many ways, and how A.I undermines the very creativity in writing (and other art forms). Some people think that A.I. has its incredible uses and even when not writing the book itself, can bring in a wealth of information or ideas at the writer's disposal. While some believe that A.I, like I explained earlier, not only negatively affects the general public, but undermines real human creativity, ideas, capabilities, and soul.

So! Feel free to discuss any part of this prompt, whether it's for or against A.I, or an in-between, and give reason why.

Why is my corrupt brain wanting an MM romance between Lazlo and Thyon rn?!?!😭😭—

“Never once did he consider that Thyon might be reading them. That, in a room as opulent as Lazlo’s was plain, with his feet up on a tufted stool and a glave on either side, he was reading long into the night while servants brought him tea, and supper, and tea again. Lazlo certainly never imagined him taking notes, with a swan quill and octopus ink from an inkwell of inlaid lys that had actually come from Weep some five hundred years ago. His handsome face was devoid of mockery or malice, and was instead intent, alive, and fascinated.”

Like ik Thyon is evil and eat the rich and all that but…😗

Y'all I need you! A couple days ago I was deep in PB and passed by a book (I assume a romance) with a shirtless man on the cover. Normally this would be entirely unremarkable but this particular man was wearing a kilt and was showing what could only be described as "butt cleavage". I am destroying my Internet search history trying to prove this is a real cover and I didn't make it up.

Please tell me one of you knows this book!

one of my friends is an undergrad in the lab I work is also a reader. she brought a hardcover copy of psycho with her to work and recently asked if I use bookmarks.

I use bookmarks if I'm reading a paperback or a hardcover that doesn't have a dust jacket; if my hardcover has a dust jacket, the inside flap is my bookmark.

she, on the other hand, dog ears her books.

so I ask you, the wider boundling community, how are we holding space in our books? are you like her and dog earing your books or are you like me and finding some other way to hold your place?

one of the most important things i learned on rotation was from my attending in plastics and reconstruction. i remember we were doing a breast reconstruction case. the patient was getting implants, what's known as alloplastic reconstruction. as i was retracting one of the flaps, my attending asked me: "what are the options for breast cancer reconstruction? walk me through them."

alloplastic reconstruction involves the use of external things to perform the reconstruction. autoplastic reconstruction involves the use of your own tissues, for example, a diep flap where tissue is taken from the abdomen, or a lat flap where tissue is taken from the back.

the third option is no reconstruction. in other words, no treatment.

this is something that people tend to forget about.

Just before thanksgiving, Sara Monopoli, her husband, Rich, and her mother, Dawn Thomas, met with Dr. Marcoux to discuss the options she had left. By this point, Sara had undergone three rounds of chemotherapy with limited, if any, effect. Perhaps Marcoux could have discussed what she most wanted as death neared and how best to achieve those wishes. But the signal he got from Sara and her family was that they wished to talk only about the next treatment options. They did not want to talk about dying.

later:

Her father, Gary, and her twin sister, Emily, still held out hope for a cure. The doctors simply weren't looking hard enough, they felt. "I just couldn't believe there wasn't something," Gary said. For Rich, the experience of Sara's illness had been disorienting: "We had a baby. We were young. And this was so shocking and so odd. We never discussed stopping treatment."

"no treatment will always be an option," my attending told me. "never forget to offer that to a patient."

TIME TO STIR THE POT! Probably not a good thing when my anxiety is kicking my butt but I have things to say.

I'm noticing a lot of books marketed as YA lately have gotten some really mature topics in them. Anybody else noticed this change in the YA genre?

There will be on page spicy time with more adult themes throughout. And I'm probably just old but I've always been under the impression that YA books should be fade to black and any mature themes be muted. When I was a kid YA books were fluffy so to speak but lately when I pick up newer YA books this isn't the case.

For example These Hollow Vows is said to be YA and the sequel had on page spice.

Currently reading Stormbreaker by Nisha J Tuli and there's alcohol use, drug use, spicy content, multiple swearing throughout

I run a book club and we were reading A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid which is said to be YA and a lot had to DNF because there was some really triggering material in graphic detail.

Sunrise on the Reaping had very graphic scenes that had me gasping at the page.

Just for the record; I am not saying teens shouldn't be reading this, they can read whatever. Teens are reading and watching some real messed up stuff lately, and gravitating toward more mature books. So I do get why YA is changing

ETA--Thanks for all of the comments; I've been preparing for a Board meeting, which I'll be in all day today, but I'll be reading through all of the responses. It is fun to get to know more about each of you in the community here!

I have a hypothesis that people who really like reading--enough to be in a community like this and to read a wide variety of books--were not only encouraged to read growing up but had a fair amount of latitude in what they read.

My mother didn't read very much but my father read all the time and the house was full of books. A little of everything, though mostly SF/F/H. We had everything from the Narnia books to LotR to very adult-oriented horror books. It was all open to me and my parents never policed my reading, so I read a bit of every type of book we had going back to at least 3rd or 4th grade.

I'm curious about the rest of you. Not necessarily a no-boundaries childhood when it came to reading, but whether you felt like books were encouraged and you were mostly given the freedom to explore them on your own.

I find it fascinating how love triangles have changed the past years. I grew up with your typical YA urban fantasy and dystopian, and the endgame LI was always the first one introduced in the series. Now it seems like we have the opposite of that in fantasy and romantasy: the first LI introduced is often the wrong choice. They are not good for the FMC, are secretly betraying her or are just a small situationship prior to the actual first LI who will then get replaced by the final LI.

I like the change but it's funny that in both eras it got to a point were it became so predictable, there's not that much anticipation to know who the FMC will end up with.

I'm curious if anyone has any preference of one over the other. I bet in a few years we'll get a book that will start a new trend with LIs, but I'm not sure what it will be.