I cannot believe she's ending this book with another "and everyone clapped" anecdote about winning a linguistics debate against a guy at a party.

"After I finished my little spiel about 'you know,' this guy looked at me with these sort of big, surprised eyes, and said, completely genuinely, might I add, 'Wow, it's cool you know so much about how people talk. You must be the most interesting person in every room!'"

Sure he did, Amanda.

The World Health Organization characterizes "burnout" as feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job and reduced professional efficacy. Such a definition of course assumes that one had mental connection to one's job and positive feelings about it to begin with, only the exhaustion part applies equally to all workers. Burnout in other words is a problem of the age of the labor of love and it's no surprise it is often discussed in the context of nonprofit or political workers. These workers are expected, like Ashley Brink was, to give their lives over to the work because they believe in the cause, but it becomes harder and harder to believe in the cause when the cause is the thing mistreating you.

This part really stuck out to me, because as a librarian who is in the weird liminal space of nonprofit + political work, burnout has been on the library profession quota for many, many years. While I could talk about what causes burnout for my occupation all day and can assume some similarities to related occupations, I would love to ask to others comfortable to share: what is something that has caused burnout in your job, that maybe the collective wouldn't know or think about? Feels very open-ended here, but what I'm learning while reading this is that systems partly succeed in our inaction in discussing and being transparent with one another about our work.

For myself and probably for most libraries (though I'll speak to public), our burnout is really related to being the end-all-be-all place for things that are beyond our scope of abilities, funding, staffing, education, etc. We are constantly inundated with people saying "they went to {X} and they said go to the library, so help me with this thing!", which like... no, 1) we don't do X and 2) i bet that person has never been to a library. Yes, we are a great central point to help the community find other resources, but we cannot be every resource.

This was Jin, her Jin. She was safe. Then he asked, "Are we still fighting?" In a soft and condescending tone, and she wanted to kick him in the shins hard and stamp on his toes for good measure. Of course they were still fighting. They would be fighting until the end of time. How did he have the gall to ask?

I'm loving this book, but I'm finding myself getting so angry. I'm sure some of it is bubbling up of feelings I've already had about the state of everything in this world, but it's hard to explain.

It's nothing the author has said or done, by any means. It's more like as I take in her points and ruminate on them, my brain reminds me of all the ways the systems that be are set against this mindset and I just kind of want to scream at everyone from generations past about losing sight of these principles and letting things get to where they are.

Hi all! After buying several books that seem to share themes I thought, why not jump on the bandwagon and create a personal curriculum for 2026? Then I thought, maybe someone else out there also has similar tastes/interests and would like to read along?

If anyone is interested maybe we create a "book club" post in the forum for each book to discuss or any other way to discuss each book with each other. Not sure the best way to go about it - but if there is interest we could figure something out. I'll leave the curriculum below and if you interested at all lets chat :)

I'd also just appreciate any thoughts of feedback! Thanks!

GLOBAL EMPIRE & THE COLONIZED WORLD, THROUGH LITERATURE 1880–1930

This year-long seminar examines lived experiences of empire during the late 19th and early 20th centuries through literature written by authors from colonized or marginalized communities. Rather than relying solely on state archives, military records, or histories written from imperial perspectives, we turn to fiction and memoir as primary sources of truth, memory, and resistance.

Literature allows us to access emotional, cultural, and political worlds that colonizing powers attempted to suppress. Through narrative voice, symbolism, and storytelling traditions, these texts become sites of historical memory—preserving ways of life, forms of knowledge, and critiques of empire that official documents intentionally erased.

We move in a global arc: the Americas → Africa → the Pacific → Asia → Eurasia → South Asia. This structure highlights how empire operated differently across regions while revealing shared patterns of domination, resilience, and cultural survival.

Texts:

1. January–February — Birds Without a Nest - Clorinda Matto de Turner • Colonial hierarchies after Spanish rule • Race, gender, “internal empire”

March — Noli Me Tángere - Jose Rizal • Spanish colonial bureaucracy & clerical domination • Reform movements vs. revolutionary impulses

April — Cogewea, The Half-Blood - Mourning Dove • Reservation identity under settler colonialism • Mixed-race politics and land dispossession

May — Hawaii’s Story - Queen Lili'uokalani • Annexation, monarchy, sovereignty • Indigenous diplomacy vs. imperial power

June–July — Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe • Missionary incursion, cultural fracture • Masculine authority and communal structures

August–September — The Land (Toji) - Pak Kyongni • Agrarian life under rising Japanese imperialism • Gendered labor, class tension, slow colonization

October — Ali and Nino - Kurban Said • Multiethnic coexistence in imperial borderlands • Nationalism & empire’s collapse

November–December — Coolie - Mulk Raj Anand • Economic imperialism & labor exploitation • Comparative indenture systems

By the end of 2026, I want to be able to:

• Trace how empire reshaped land, labor, gender, and culture in Peru, the Philippines, the U.S., Hawai‘i, Nigeria, Korea, the Caucasus, and India. • Compare settler colonialism, economic imperialism, and military annexation. • Identify shared global patterns of domination, assimilation, and cultural suppression. • Recognize Indigenous and colonized writers’ strategies for resistance, survival, and political critique. • Analyze literature as historical memory that preserves voices empire attempted to erase

okay so i have a one chapter rule- if i start a book i have to at least read the entirety of chapter one. that’s nothing crazy. (this only changes in very rare cases) however if i choose not to continue it after chapter one i wont mark it as DNF, i just quietly take it off my reading/TBR list and call it a day. i mentioned this to a friend and she said i should be logging them as DNF. my pov? i barely even started the book so why muck up my DNF as that’s reserved for books that really disappoint. so your thoughts on it? what are your DNF practices?

I'm coming to you, friends of pagebound, and I'm going to be open and vulnerable and admit that I have a bias against the way male authors write romantic relationships within fiction. I can fairly confidently say that I have never read a compelling romance written by a man. I feel like it often leans toward very quick, in and out type scenes, very physical and unemotional. My husband just read me a snippet from the book he's reading right now (World Without End by Ken Follet) and it made him laugh and me cringe. I'm so willing to be proven wrong about this, and I would love recommendations on books written by men where the romantic relationships are believable and loving. I will admit that the majority of books that I read are written by women, and I want to be able to leave this bias that I have in the past! I want evidence that this prejudice that I have is completely unfounded, and I just haven't read the right books yet.

Editing to add that I'm really hoping I'm not coming off as not being genuine in any way, I'm really hoping for recommendations for books that readers love! I love love, and I love reading about love and romance, regardless of the genre too! Some of the relationships that I have personally found the most compelling have been in historical fiction, sci-fi, or fantasy novels! I'm equal opportunity when it comes to reading about romance 💖