Does it shock anybody else's parents that you're reading spicy novels even though you're an adult?

I'm 29 and today my mum discovered that Heated Rivalry (my current book obsession) is spicy. She full named me with a really dramatic gasp. Saying "I thought you were picking up clean romances, I did not realize you like spicy books."

And I'm like "And? I'm 29"

She's even bought me other spicy novels as gifts for birthdays and Christmas. Mostly Romantasy novels. Now I'm wondering if she thought those were clean romances too and did not realize they were spicy (some are very spicy).

I know for certain she'd be mortified to see my Dark Romance obsession. Some of things in there are... yeah....

I just don't get the big deal... 🤔

Hello PBees 🐝🐝🐝!

What do you think about books where there is no or little physical description of the characters?

I'm currently reading Hekate by Nikita Gill, and I haven't come across many descriptions but because I have read Lore Olympus, I tend to visualize the characters as drawn there. I was wondering if it would disturb me more if I had no visual image of them at all.

Have you come across books like that? Do you like it? Does it maybe help you identify yourself more? Do you hate it cause it doesn't help you anchor the story in your mind? Bonus point for book recommendations where you found the lack of characters' descriptions brought something more to book.

I read this a long time ago but I'm returning here to record it for the Intro to Poetry quest :) This was a formative collection for me as a young transmasc person, and I associate it with a period of my life in which I was extremely depressed, increasingly politicized, and reading with the urgency of someone who had a precarious commitment to being here. Yanyi's words circulated in the Twitter feeds and Instagram stories of queer Asians I knew and loved/know and love, and it is a disorienting and bittersweet experience to sit in my living room revisiting them now.

When I open the pages of my water-damaged and dog-eared copy, I'm transported back to a personal and collective moment that held a level of stridence and sureness that felt so necessary to me then, and so foreign to me now. "You tell me that the old you is dead. I am also not who I used to be...The revolution is that I care about my own safety, that I believe my life is valuable and worth pursuing" (57). It's true, the old me is dead, and I am not who I used to be. I do not believe in this definition of revolution and maybe I never did, but I am so glad I survived 2019 and that I had trans Asian writers and young artistic elders to show me a way through.