seekerxr's avatar

seekerxr

avid mostly fantasy reader, though i'll reach for anything that sounds interesting. least-read genres are historical (too much bigotry) and sci-fi (space freaks me out). Free Palestine.

392 points

0% overlap
Sapphic Vampires
Sapphic Across Genres
Level 3
Reading...A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
My Taste
The Hands of the Emperor (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #1)
Fireborne (The Aurelian Cycle, #1)
Anxious People
Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)
Red, White & Royal Blue

seekerxr finished reading and wrote a review...

2d
  • Animal Farm
    seekerxr
    Jul 14, 2025
    5.0
    Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 5.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 5.0

    I mean, this is definitely a classic for a reason. Extremely impressive that this book did exactly what it set out to do in such a short amount of pages. It takes a lot for a short book to impress me because I feel like most of the time people write a short book just to write a short book and they don't really consider if their story is going to work well and do what it needs to do in a shorter form, but that was not a problem with this book. More pages with more info on how the farm was run and how the animals felt about smaller things might've added to it or it might've just put in unnecessary bloat. I think this had exactly the amount of pages it needed to get its point across. As for the messages, well, there were plenty and I'm sure there are numerous essays and thinkpieces on all of them already so I don't need to comment on all of them, but there is one in particular that stood out to me so much and is so relevant today. The particular manipulation tactic that dictators use to keep the people they're in charge of tired, hungry, and busy so they don't have the will to question them when they do things that are obviously wrong or against what they promised. We've seen this time and time again in history and we see it again in this book; take away their will (and sometimes, ability) to fight and they most likely won't. It's done so sinisterly well in this novel. I will say there were a couple moments where it seemed like the narrative was leaning towards a more "revolution is stupid because regular will people will just inevitably end up handing the whip to someone else who's different enough for them to not notice things stay the same" but it ended on a very condemning note for the 'leaders' so I'm happy with it. Can't give this any less than a five. Extremely well done.

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  • seekerxr commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    2d
  • trope advertising is just spoiling the book and it needs to stop being used

    i saw someone make a tiktok on this the other day and it hasn't left my mind since. he was specifically focusing on how advertising a book as enemies-to-lovers not only spoils the book but takes the winds out of the effectiveness of the trope and after thinking about it for a second i agreed SO hard. the best enemies-to-lovers is when you don't know it's coming, when they're fighting and hating each other until you get that 'oh...OH' moment when you realize they're starting to develop feelings for each other. the surprise of it is what makes it so good. this goes for a lot of other tropes too. knowing what half the book is going to be like, to me, takes all the fun of discovery out of the book before you even read it. it's like a watching a plot summary and then going to read the book. you know the broad strokes of what's going to happen so what's the point of taking the time to read it yourself? i know that some people want to read about specific things and the tropes help them find what they're looking for when they don't wanna waste time, but i just wish tropes weren't used in all the advertising for new books. i wish authors treated trope lists like content warnings nowadays: have a list on their website but not obviously listing them. having them easily accessible but not shoved in your face so you get spoiled before you even realize it. this was more just me sharing an opinion/ranting, but i would be interested in seeing what y'all think if you have any thoughts on this!

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  • seekerxr finished reading and wrote a review...

    3d
  • Faebound (Faebound, #1)
    seekerxr
    Jul 13, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    View spoiler

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  • Post from the Pagebound Club forum

    3d
  • trope advertising is just spoiling the book and it needs to stop being used

    i saw someone make a tiktok on this the other day and it hasn't left my mind since. he was specifically focusing on how advertising a book as enemies-to-lovers not only spoils the book but takes the winds out of the effectiveness of the trope and after thinking about it for a second i agreed SO hard. the best enemies-to-lovers is when you don't know it's coming, when they're fighting and hating each other until you get that 'oh...OH' moment when you realize they're starting to develop feelings for each other. the surprise of it is what makes it so good. this goes for a lot of other tropes too. knowing what half the book is going to be like, to me, takes all the fun of discovery out of the book before you even read it. it's like a watching a plot summary and then going to read the book. you know the broad strokes of what's going to happen so what's the point of taking the time to read it yourself? i know that some people want to read about specific things and the tropes help them find what they're looking for when they don't wanna waste time, but i just wish tropes weren't used in all the advertising for new books. i wish authors treated trope lists like content warnings nowadays: have a list on their website but not obviously listing them. having them easily accessible but not shoved in your face so you get spoiled before you even realize it. this was more just me sharing an opinion/ranting, but i would be interested in seeing what y'all think if you have any thoughts on this!

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  • seekerxr finished reading and wrote a review...

    4d
  • Say I Love You, Vol. 1
    seekerxr
    Jul 12, 2025
    4.0
    Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.0Plot: 4.0
    ❤️
    💋
    👫

    i picked this up on a whim and it really surprised me! i've been having trouble getting into manga recently but this one had no problem keeping me engaged! i thought it was really cute and i'm really digging the art style. the romance itself is very sweet and the characters already have some depth that's really interesting. will continue for sure!

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  • seekerxr commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    4d
  • what books do you think should be required reading?

    Just curious about what books you think everyone (or most everyone) should read at least once? For me these are books that are thought provoking or give me a worldview different from my own. Ex I often think Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas or Fahrenheit 451 should be required

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  • seekerxr finished reading and wrote a review...

    6d
  • Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and the Broken, #1)
    seekerxr
    Jul 10, 2025
    2.5
    Enjoyment: 2.5Quality: 4.0Characters: 1.0Plot: 3.0
    🐉
    🥚
    ⚔️

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  • Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and the Broken, #1)
    Thoughts from 73%
    spoilers

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  • Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and the Broken, #1)
    Thoughts from 66%

    i am sooooo tired of this mini-trope where a character uses a power they just barely realized they had to literally SAVE THEIR OWN LIFE IN A FIGHT and the mentor/older character shakes them and is like "what the hell were you thinking you idiot??" um i was thinking i didn't want to FUCKING DIE?????? HELLO????

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  • Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and the Broken, #1)
    Thoughts from 20%
    spoilers

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  • seekerxr finished reading and wrote a review...

    1w
  • Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
    seekerxr
    Jul 06, 2025
    4.0
    Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.5Characters: Plot:
    ✝️
    📖
    🖋️

    Religion is a special interest of mine so this book was pretty fascinating! I got the recommendation for this book from Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (another incredibly interesting book, highly recommend) and it definitely lived up to the rec! I was hoping this book would spotlight possibly newer cults that have formed in the past few decades or maybe the resurgence of pagan religions or paganism as a whole, and while it did touch on the broader modern witchcraft movement, it focused more on the wellness industry and the modern passionate political movements. Still very interesting, but I was a little disappointed. I thought it was fascinating that most of the movements highlighted in this book aren't what you would think of when you traditionally think of 'religion'. I can see the similarities now that I've read this book that does a great job of pointing them out, but when you think about SoulCycle or the 'red pill' communities on reddit and 4chan, my immediate thought definitely wouldn't be "that's a religion", so props for making me see it in a different way! Also learned a suprising amount of history about certain subcultures (such as the Snapewives and the state of the queer BDSM community specifically after major wars) than I expected from a book that is focused on modern movements, but I found it very entertaining and informative as well! I would note that there's a lot of dense and academic language used in this book. Not complicated to the point that I couldn't understand what it was being said, but it definitely slowed me down and made the reading experience not quite as smooth as it would've been otherwise. Just something to know before you read!

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  • seekerxr commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    1w
  • Looking to get into YA/Romance hype

    Hey community and friends, I'm looking to get into the Romance or "YA" fiction books that are super hyped. They must be good if they are so famous, right? Stuff like Maze Runner or Song of Achilles. Are they worth reading? I usually read heavy old classics like Crime and Punishment, Les Misérables and Emma. Can anyone recommend a modern, chic and popular novel that's so hyped but the quality is superb (I enjoyed Funny Story).

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  • seekerxr commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    1w
  • sveni
    Edited
    Your Most Hated Books

    Sure, it's nice to find people with similar taste in books, and PageBound, due to the Favourits List on users' profiles, is amazing for that. But I fear I am a hater at heart, it's just so much fun. Also, I've found that most people (me included) find it easier to pinpoint what they dislike about a book. And sometime, things people hate about a book is exactly what I like. So I would love to hear your (preferably controversial) books you hate and why. I'll start (feel free to disagree and change my mind but please don't lynch me, though!) (Friendly reminder that you can hate a book but shouldn't shame people who enjoy them or the authors - except if it's people like J.K. Rowling, of course. Feel free to shame her) - One Dark Window because (to keep this spoiler free) the story more or less ends where it started. And it read like a first draft to me. But mostly because I wanted to bang my head against the wall because of how often I had to read how Ravyn's callused fingers caught on clothes/skin/hair. and, probably more controversially - A Little Life because (1) I'm sick of reading about tragic queer characters (2) I find it extremly over the top just how much trauma the MC went trough (3) I'm sick of books being praised as a literary masterpiece when they really are just traumatic (4) I habe a huge issue with the author's statement that she basically just tried to make her MC suffer as much as possible

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  • seekerxr earned a badge

    1w
    Level 3

    Level 3

    250 points

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    seekerxr commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    1w
  • June’s reading wrap up

    Why not make it a post while it does not have an official dedicated thing yet? I’m curious to see everyone’s monthly reading wrap up! This is my personal reading wrap of June: ˖*°࿐𝒥𝓊𝓃𝑒 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑: 7 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑: 2.854 ↠ Black Tide Son 4.5✩ ↠ Swordheart 3✩ ↠ The Little Prince 3.75✩ ↠ Ruin 4.75✩ ↠ Yellowface 4.25✩ ↠ The Voyage of the Basilisk 4.5✩ ↠ The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue 5✩ 𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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  • seekerxr commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

    1w
  • Looking to get into YA/Romance hype

    Hey community and friends, I'm looking to get into the Romance or "YA" fiction books that are super hyped. They must be good if they are so famous, right? Stuff like Maze Runner or Song of Achilles. Are they worth reading? I usually read heavy old classics like Crime and Punishment, Les Misérables and Emma. Can anyone recommend a modern, chic and popular novel that's so hyped but the quality is superb (I enjoyed Funny Story).

    1
    comments 7
    Reply