Quick announcement of some smaller updates -

We have new avatars for levels 3 and 4. Level 3 has two new dragons to choose from, and level 4 has three food-inspired avatars 🥐🌶️🍚

We also have two new feeds on your homepage. You'll see your Main Feed (the normal feed you're used to), a Following feed (just activity from people you follow) and My Books (the feed that is currently on Discuss, this is just posts from books in your library). Many people have been asking for a following feed :)

In your Main feed and My Books feed, you will no longer see posts from TBR books that are marked as spoilers.

We're aware of an intermittent bug on the app when posting in the book forum (from the book page specifically). The feed updates + a bug fix for this is out on iOS, please update your app to see these changes. On Android, we're still awaiting app approval - in the meantime there is a workaround : use the currently reading card on your home feed, which has a "Post to Forum" button, to post rather than going to the book page.

We’re desperately trying to find younger romance books for our library. We have like over 50% 14+ books and a lot of the rest is quite old, think Princess Diaries (as much as they’re fine we’re trying to find some new ones).

Romance content I would say max kissing, but it’s relative.

It’s more about other stuff that is in a lot of YA romances. The usual things we look out for are:

• no swearing
• no relationship abuse (violence or emotional)
• no self-harm (including drug abuse)
• no hate speech (bullying would be fine if it’s not the main plot cause then it’s not romance anymore)

It’s difficult because a lot of romance is aimed at teenagers or relies on these for plot points.

Edit note: Oh I forgot to mention this… we have books sorted into locations based on overall genres and fantasy is separate so we are looking for non-fantasy/non-scifi romance books.

Any suggestions?

Anybody on here know any good reads for the warmer weather? My TBR is looking bland and I'm looking for good books to bring me through the aussie summer without dying of heat stroke.

as a bookworm, I try to build my own collection of books and would love to hear some of your most trustworthy publishers!

it can be for a lot of reasons but i’m looking mainly for: 1. nice, curated selection of books (mostly fiction) and 2. they got beautiful book covers (ofc, I’m also a sucker for pretty books. can’t help it sometimes 🤭)

some of the publishing houses I have my eyes on are: NYRB, Vintage Books, and New Directions.

what’s yours? ✨😌

what’s everyone reading today??

i’ve started it’s different this time by joss richard - it’s one of my most anticipated reads of the year 🧡

I've been reading this on my commute for the last week – when someone asked me about it on the tram, I realised it's hard to be casual and conversational about such a topic :') But it's a wonderful book, truly, hurts on every page.

what’s a trope or a tag you absolutely hate and will not read?

i’ll go first

age gap. i don’t like old men.

insta love. i’m sorry but if a man takes one look at you and says “you’re the only woman for me. i will die for you” that’s called LOVEBOMBING and dude needs therapy

I was talking with a friend about the books I’ve read from this quest, and we noticed how often women characters are written into situations of sexual assault or coercion. In many cases, the story shows them eventually accepting their circumstances, which made us wonder: how should we as readers interpret that? Is it a narrative device meant to normalize it, or a way of showing survival in oppressive conditions? Is there a specific literary term for when characters stop resisting something traumatic because they feel they have no choice? I’d love to hear how others think about this portrayal in fiction.

It's so uncomfortable, why on earth did I pick this out of all my TBR pile ?!!?!?!! 😭😭😭