pinkjaguar60
-- “Hell is a campus.” ~R. F. Kuang -- When I’m not selling my soul to the academic gods, you can find me attempting (often unsuccessfully) the delicate balance of reading while crocheting
2845 points
4.03 average · 103 reviews
Click a segment to filter
I just finished A Tale for the Time Being for the cherry blossom quest, and I'm kinda sad I listened to the audiobook versus reading a physical copy -- the book is so poetic and I wish I could actually see the words and sit with them in a way an audiobook is less conducive to, and it got me thinking how there's a clear difference between what audiobooks versus what physical books I gravitate towards.
Typically, I listen to (what I endearingly refer to as) "silly little thriller novels" that are super plot-heavy with easily digestible prose. I'm typically doing something else when I listen to an audiobook, like pipetting or knitting, so that could account for some of it, but even when I try and just listen, I still find my brain wandering unless it's an action-packed story. (Also, they're often not silly nor little, I've listened to some very good thrillers that I thoroughly enjoyed)
The books I eye-read? Exact opposite. I loooooove flowery language and poetic imagery, and I have recently found myself in quite a classics reading kick. But as much as I want The Picture of Dorian Gray tattooed inside my brain so I could read it forever and ever I could never listen to it. I've tried listening to some Jane Austen novels I've already read, and I just couldn't do it.
Anyways, does anyone else find such a large discrepancy in what they listen to versus eye-read?
If you can remember whats your first ever book you read or just something you remember impacted you into reading or just you in general?
Let me go first. I think the first book I picked up was The Vampire Academy. I mean, obviously we read books in school, but this was the first book I actually chose to read on my own, and I legit think it changed my life. More in the way of like, “wow… books are actually GOOD and damn I want to consume more" I'd legit go to the library like weekly lmao ”
But also in a way is that I used to have a really bad learning disability as a child I ( still have it but is like low maintenance now ) and would act out a lot growing up, and I genuinely think picking up books and reading helped shape me into who I am today. I like to say it was almost like a switch went off in my brain. Like suddenly I wanted to try in school and the disability that held me back felt like it didnt impact me as much.
So yeah, Vampire Academy legit paved the way for my love of reading 🥹 Sorry, I rambled a lot lmao.
I just wanna know people orgin stories on discovering books lmao.
© 2025 Pagebound
pinkjaguar60 commented...
Ok so Allegiant completely destroyed a preconceived notion of books for me. Let me explain:
In my childhood brain, if a character was telling the story in first person, they could not die. I'm not totally sure where this came from, the closest reason I can think of is the Kane Chronicles (Rick Riordan's Egyptian-based book series). In that book, the two main characters are recording their story after the events have taken place, and what we're reading is like a transcript of the recording (if I'm remembering correctly). Therefore, they had to survive the events of the book, because how else could they be telling this story? For some reason I then got it in my head that if we have a first-person narrator, they are either 1 - telling the story after the events have happened (meaning they survived them) or 2 - telling the story as the events unfold, but like that doesn't make sense in many cases -- wdym the main character is pausing mid-fight to write down the story? (yeah I actually visualized the main character writing the book) As an adult, I totally see how flawed my reasoning was BUT as a child it seemed ironclad. So every time I read a book with a first-person narrator (or narrators) I took solace with knowing they would not die. I genuinely thought it was like this unspoken rule amongst authors that a first person character cannot die while they are actively telling you the story.
Enter Allegiant. I'll keep it vague for spoilers, but let's just say something happens that completely destroys this belief. Also doesn't help I read the ending at like 3 in the morning because I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep and figured I'd try reading to help me sleep. So like imagine childhood me silently sobbing so I didn't wake my sister as a piece of my naive innocence dies. Honestly was more upset by the realization that yes, first person narrators can die than the death of the actual main character in question (Allegiant is a weird book).
Anyways, Allegiant has always stuck with me for that reason.