as a mood reader, you bet i can jump into either-or but GOSH the way a slow burn romance absolutely Hits !!!!! i can totally get behind (😏) a ONS to start off a book but when its wham bam thank you ma’am with no crumb of emotion, i can get the ick…perhaps its just my longing for emotion, connection and character development that has me leaning to slow burn as of late.

my two cents: the common unrealisticness of an instalust encounter can be so enjoyable simply for the fact that it is so ridiculous it wouldnt happen in real life—and this is why i LOVE fiction. if we compare every scene in a contemporary romance (or other reality parallel) novel to real life, we will be surely disappointed. what do you think?

🎙️ open discussion time. keen to hear your thoughts :)

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edit: Thanks for everyone's feedback! I'm glad this was a subject had opinions about and not one I was just overthinkinh. I'm hopeful we can keep talking about revisiting childhood reads here too!

Throwing this out here because I'm torn about it!

I've got a lot of older books from my middle/high school years on my goodreads (I signed up in 2012! which would have been my 2nd year of university. I was studying secondary English Ed so a lot of these were relevant to my degree!) which I've imported to both here and Storygraph. A lot of them are missing dates since it's been close to 20 years since I read them. I'm torn between trying to clean them up and add them to a shelf for my Childhood Reads or just politely nuke them from my book lists as a whole.

The biggest hesitation I have is that I really did enjoy reading as a child and I have fond memories of a lot of these books. I would love to keep them as a snapshot of what Lil Lon enjoyed, but it's a lot of work to polish these up with some dates and clean up reviews... So I'm curious how other people feel!

Do you keep your old nostalgic books on your lists? Do you draw a line between what you read in school and what you read for fun now? How do you feel looking back at some books that might have been important back then but have lost some of the magic?

If you decide to give this book a try, please pay attention to the trigger warnings! This book does not pull any punches and it is very intense. 🫣

Currently back in the ER so I would love to head your recommendations for books that feature chronic illness and/or disability!

This book feels so darkly poetic and very personal. Am I loving it so far? I wouldn't say that yet but at the same time I can't put it down.