robotrock04

Lifelong bookworm. English Language & Literature BA and English Literary Studies MA.

167 points

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robotrock04 TBR'd a book

45w

The Country Girls Trilogy: The Country Girls; The Lonely Girl; Girls in their Married Bliss

Edna O'Brien

ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD'As dramatised on BBC Radio 4, Edna O'Brien's iconic trilogy of novels - The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl and Girls in their Married Bliss - depicts the lives and loves of two girls in rural 1950s Ireland. Edna O'Brien's debut novels revolutionised Irish literature in the 1960s. Banned by the authorities as 'indecent and obscene' and burned by the clergy, they were instantly notorious for their frank portrayal of sexual desire: but scandal soon became fame, and made this coming-of-age story a bestseller and instant classic. Caithleen 'Kate' Brady and Bridget 'Baba' Brennan have grown up in the repressive atmosphere of a small Irish village after World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a reckless survivor. After being expelled from convent school, they dream of conquering the bright lights of Dublin - but are rewarded with bad faith, bad luck, and bad sex; marry for the wrong reasons, then betray for the wrong reasons; and fight - in their unique ways - the expectations forced upon young 'girls' of every era that dictate the women they become. Published in an omnibus edition with a new foreword by Eimear McBride, Edna O'Brien's portrait of innocence and youth, love and despair, hope and reality, continues to inspire new generations of readers with its bravery, lyricism, humour, and courage. Edna O'Brien's stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019: available for pre-order now.

robotrock04 finished a book

45w

A Silent Language: The Nobel Lecture

Jon Fosse

The essential lecture delivered by the 2023 Nobel Laureate in Literature, published for the first time in a collectible edition. “If there’s any metaphor I would use for the act of writing, it would have to be listening,” says Jon Fosse in A Silent Language, the lecture he delivered after being awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. When he writes, Fosse explains, he listens for texts that exist somewhere outside of himself in order to transcribe them before they disappear. With reverence and humility, Fosse traces his relationship to writing and celebrates the capacity of language to embrace the mystery, complexity, and existential uncertainty of the human experience. “It is only in the silence that you can hear God’s voice,” he says, offering a key to his beloved works of drama and fiction. “Maybe.”

robotrock04 finished a book

45w

After Midnight

Irmgard Keun

'I cannot think of anything else that conjures up so powerfully the atmosphere of a nation turned insane' Sunday Telegraph Nineteen-year-old Sanna just wants to drink her beer in peace, but that's difficult when Hitler has come to town and his motorcade is blocking the streets of Frankfurt. What's more, her best friend Gerti is in love with a Jewish boy, her brother writes books that have been blacklisted and her own aunt may denounce her to the authorities at any moment, as Germany teeters on the edge of the abyss. Written after she had fled the Nazi regime, Irmgard Keun's masterly novel captures the feverish hysteria and horror of the era with devastating perceptiveness and humour.

robotrock04 started reading...

46w

Eat the Ones You Love

Sarah Maria Griffin

A twisted, tangled story about workplace love-affairs, and plants with a taste for human flesh During a grocery run to her local shopping center, Shell Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents’ house. She has to make a change and bring some good into her life, so she goes inside and takes a chance. Shell realizes right away that flowers are just the good thing she's been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist who wrote the sign asking for help. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine. An orchid growing out of sight in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. His name is Baby, and the beautiful florist belongs to him. He’s young, he’s hungry, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats – nobody he eats – can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He adores her and wants to consume her, and will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves. This is a story about possession, and monstrosity, and working retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow.

robotrock04 paused reading...

46w

King: A Life

Jonathan Eig

The first full biography in decades, King mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs

robotrock04 TBR'd a book

47w

Uprooted

Naomi Novik

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.” Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood. The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

robotrock04 TBR'd a book

47w

The City of Brass

S.A. Chakraborty

Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles. But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound. In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences. After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for...

robotrock04 joined a quest

47w

Fantasy Starter Pack Vol I 🐉🧚‍♂️🏰

💎 // 7587 joined

Not Joined

An introduction to the Fantasy genre, these books are part of the cultural zeitgeist or the 'canon' that many would recognize. Look for more niche titles in later Starter Pack volumes.

robotrock04 earned a badge

47w

Fantasy Starter Pack Vol I

Champion: Finished 5 Side Quest books.

robotrock04 commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

47w

jenniferPagebound

The App is live!!

I am over the moon to share that the app is officially live on both iOS and Android!!

We've quite literally poured our blood, sweat and (lots of) tears into the app development over the past 9 months and we could not be more thrilled for everyone to experience it!

We're still being indexed in app store search so you may have to scroll to find us, or type in Pagebound: Social Book Tracker. Here's links to iOS and Android: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pagebound-social-book-tracker/id6751526412 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.pagebound.app

There are quite a few improvements and new features in the app, including:

Book Journeys (click the map icon on the book cards in your library and other user's library to see their posts, comments, and updates for a specific book)
Quick access to "add to plan"
Filtering your activity on profile
Save posts
upgraded Read Dates editing

This is the first release, so there will be many more additions and improvements to come. (PS for Android users: we're aware of two bugs related to library imports from Goodreads/Storygraph, and issues with editing read dates - these have already been resolved and are pending Google approval for release.)

We owe a huge thank you to our beta testers who worked diligently over the last month to report hundreds of bugs and help us get the app prepared for release. A huge round of applause to them.

We hope you love the app as much as we do; it definitely makes engaging on PB so much more convenient and fun. If you have a great experience with the app, we'd love if you'd consider supporting us through Pagebound Royalty; Lucy and I have worked for $0 over the past year to bring the app and website to fruition, and have been covering business costs with our savings accounts. Your contribution means we can continue to work full-time on Pagebound without influence from investors or advertisers, and keep Pagebound 100% for readers by readers. Thank you so much to all the Royalty who have already contributed; it truly means the world to us and keeps Pagebound online!

ok now go download the app and tell us what you think!

Happy Reading, Jennifer & Lucy

PS - leaving us a review in app stores also helps tremendously :)

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robotrock04 started reading...

47w

The Country Girls Trilogy: The Country Girls; The Lonely Girl; Girls in their Married Bliss

Edna O'Brien

robotrock04 finished reading and wrote a review...

47w

robotrock04

Sep 30, 2025

The Outsiders

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 4.0

One of the strongest depictions of teenagers I’ve ever read. I will certainly be rereading this one!

robotrock04 started reading...

47w

King: A Life

Jonathan Eig

robotrock04 started reading...

47w

The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton

The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser. Librarian note: This record is for one of the three editions published with different covers and with ISBN 0-140-38572-X / 978-0-14-038572-4. The records are for the 1988 cover (this record), the 1995 cover, and the 2008 cover which is also the current in-print cover.

robotrock04 finished a book

48w

Hunger

Choi Jin-young

Romeo & Juliet meets The Vegetarian in the record-breaking instant classic which sold a quarter of a million copies in KoreaHow should I proceed after I wrap up this story. What should I do. I could go to the police station and confess. I could find a priest and confess. I ate a person. Is that a sin?This story begins with death. When Dam finds the body of her soulmate, Gu, bruised and battered on the street by a gang of government debt collectors, she is paralysed with grief. As she cradles his corpse in her defeated arms, Dam begins to tell it a story.In a fragmented sequence of monologues and meditations, this unexpected novella slowly builds into a panoramic portrait of two like souls who have passed a lifetime in utter devotion to one another. It's a story that snakes between past and present where, as she narrates, Dam is committing one final act to the tale of their undying love. Dam is slowly eating Gu, whose body she has lovingly washed, embalmed and elected to preserve in her own - where he will rest - for all eternity. At once romantic and horrific, HUNGER is a modern fable of metaphysical love cutting to the very heart of existence, loss, and how ferociously we rage - tooth and nail - against our own mortality.

robotrock04 finished a book

48w

Shankill Butchers by Martin Dillon(January 1, 1990) Paperback

Martin Dillon

Excellent Book

robotrock04 commented on Devin's review of Katabasis

48w

DNF

Devin

Aug 17, 2025

Katabasis

DNF

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

My TBR is filled with books I have deadlines for, this was not one of them (NetGalley arc).

Kuang writes beautifully and this was a very easy read. I think it's an interesting exploration of academia as a whole, but not enough that I want to continue.

The book felt plotless after the first few chapter, it started strong, the magic system was very interesting, and the theme of going into hell and talking about the different philosophical views on reincarnation I actually enjoyed... At first.

The issue is I felt like absolutely zero connection to the characters, Alice felt like a vessel to relay the academia part of the book. She had moments where I empathized with her struggles, but it just wasn't enough. The other issue is it feels like the plot is laid out clearly in the beginning, the goal is set, and we go into hell. Then the plot is barely an after thought, it's there, it gets mentioned, but then it's just kind of left behind in favor of using hell as the framework for the academia.

I think if that is your thing, you will really enjoy this one! Maybe one day I'll come back, but for now I just can't do it.

robotrock04 created a list

48w

Irish Literature recommendations

by robotrock04

5 books

Irish literature is one of my great passions, so here's some recommendations from me!

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robotrock04 TBR'd a book

48w

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers’ final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.

robotrock04 commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

48w

jellyzdairy

The app is coming!!🤭🤭

Ahhh idk which day but the app is coming!!Im so excited 😭😭Beta readers pls tells us if the app is good🥹From what l have seen from screenshots the app looks gorgeous and cute😻I can't wait till it drops 🙂‍↕️

->How about you?Are you excited for the app?🫣

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