"The tower of sea towels threatens to topple as Tova adds another to the top."

This alliteration is just delicious

hi friends :) i love reading people's life updates on here and esp this past week, i felt so much love and support after a rough wknd from my pb friends. i want to share some of that warmth. feel free to share a few words or a few paragraphs, i'll read everything. sending love and warm fuzzies to you all!

So there's this huge post here for readers around the world, but It's lagging so much for me and I seem to mostly see people from the USA and Canada, so here's one for my European fellows🌟 Which country are you from/live in? I'm from Lithuania!🇱🇹🦅🦅🦅

I always struggle with this. If I don’t like a book, I either soften my thoughts too much or avoid posting altogether because I feel bad. I never want to tear down authors or hurt anyone’s feelings, but at the same time sometimes a book is just bad or doesn't work for you and that’s okay.

So how do you go about it? How do you phrase criticism in a way that feels fair but not mean?

A not so simple question for you all Pagebound. Who turned you into a lifelong reader?

A teacher, a family member, a librarian? Can you remember what book it was that turned the light on?

My main reading influence was my maternal Grandmother and Aunt who used to read to me when they looked after me as a child and teen (to help with writing and language issues). The book that made me read as a teen was eitherPeeling the Onion by Wendy Orr or The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

Edit: I wish I had time to respond to everyone but there have been so many fantastic responses.

”I can almost feel my mitochondria doing a happy dance when I eat them.”

I laughed with delight reading this line. This is how I feel when I eat deeply nourishing and/or ancestral foods, like autumn delicata squash or corn that’s never known Monsanto. Are there any foods or body experiences that make your cells vibrate happily?

I am home sick today, so figured I'd think of a fun question to keep me entertained!

If you could have any fictional job, what would it be?

For me, I think I would be some sort of herbologist. Either a teacher or someone who runs a store! You can take me out of the real world but you cannot take me away from plants haha!

Studying business administration makes it really clear how far away the world is from this kind of thinking. The concept of gift economies is foreign, alien, counter-productive even. Everything is profit, profit, profit. To give something away without exacting a price is foolishness, sacrilege even.

Do you trust their perspective right off the bat? Are you automatically on their side? Do you identify with them?

I’m reading a book right now with a narrator that sloooowly reveals herself to be unreliable. I don’t mention the book so I don’t spoil anything. Reading it feels like the floor is tilting in imperceptible and then balance-shifting ways. I’m so quickly all-in on the narrator that it’s disorienting to find out they’re intentionally misleading!

This experience got me wondering if some people start out more skeptical or objective. And what can our orientation towards narrators tell us about our perspective in the world?