I just saw Avatar: Fire and Ash on theaters and 🥲 I forgot how much I love seeing a project this ambitious on film. There's nothing more impressive to me than seeing a whole new world come to life, animals, plants, alien eco-systems and peoples gajskahajsjdksllxbs It's not a perfect movie and the franchise hasn't gotten better with each installment (I especially hate the military unit of a family Jake Sully's got going on??? you used to be cool man, I was rooting for you we were all rooting for you) but I gotta give it to them, they built a world. Every time I see these movies I'm awestruck, especially in the first one, I could swear I could just reach out and touch Pandora, it kinda inspired me to become a biologist actually, and let's not even get into how amazing astrobiology sounds to me.

TLDR I'm in love with the planet of Pandora and I need more of that energy in my life. Does anybody have any good sci-fi recs or even fantasy recs with expansive world building? Dune by Frank Herbert would be an excelent example, that man even got the ecology of Arrakis figured out he thought of everything. The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams is another one I constantly think about.

Hi! I've been wanting to further my knowledge on queer history, and so I looked up some lists here on PB, but they're quite long, and I don't really know where to start. I was wondering if you guys had any good introductory recommendations to this topic, especially if they're not just centered on the US. I know it's a bit hard to say where to start, but it's better than looking at a list and being overwhelmed 😅 So I'd love to see what you can recommend! edit: Academic-level stuff and methodology-related books are also appropriate 2nd edit: Thank you for all the recommendations! Will be looking into each and and every one of them 🥰

so i've been wondering if any of you have tried to read and then dnf'ed or paused a book more than once. my example is Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. i started it twice (once in english, once in german) and both times i got through more than half of it but never finished reading it 🥲 the second time i started from the beginning again because the pause was so long. it bored me both times tho, so i am not inclined to try again.

i'm curious to hear some other cases of this!

How do y'all find the self control to stay away from tik tok and actually read your books. I feel like every time I sit down it's just easier to sit and doom scroll than it is to read and I want to get away from that. I'd delete tik tok but it's so hard since I get so many good book recommendations there.