shannon

566 points

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My Taste

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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

shannon started reading...

10h

Playground

Richard Powers

A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment. Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough. They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away. Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

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shannon's 2026 Reading Challenge

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shannon

Dec 14, 2025

2.5

Enjoyment: 2.0Quality: 3.5Characters: 2.0Plot: 2.0

🏛️

🌊

🗽

Everyone seems to love this book and I didn't enjoy it 😞

shannon commented on a List

Authors reading their own books

by HaventReadIt

29 books

Audiobooks where the author narrates themselves (or is apart of a cast, not just some preface type stuff) Open for suggestions

🎧

🗣️

🔈

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

shannon commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Vasilissa

book hype vs your opinion

I'm curious to hear your thoughts, what are the books that everyone read and seem to love and when you started it - it turned out to be something totally not for you? or you just don't understand the appeal of it? or the other way around - what are the books you love despite other people not liking it? for me it's Babel by R.F.Kuang - everyone seems to love it, and as a linguist, i thought this book will be one of my favourites, but i dnf'ed it after around 1/5 it was just so bad, I didn't care about one thing happening there 😭😭😭

162

shannon TBR'd a book

Interesting Facts about Space

Emily R. Austin

Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she’s not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she’s serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she’s trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her. As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun—herself. Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.

shannon started reading...

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

shannon finished reading and left a rating...

shannon

Dec 09, 2025

3.0

Enjoyment: 2.5Quality: 4.5Characters: 1.5Plot: 2.5

🐦

Not one single likeable character 🙃

shannon TBR'd a book

The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)

Viet Thanh Nguyen

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

shannon commented on lucyPagebound's update

lucyPagebound started reading...

The Safekeep

Yael van der Wouden

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. A house is a precious thing... It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.

shannon TBR'd a book

Sorrow and Bliss

Meg Mason

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.

shannon commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

hawkguy

Seasonal Desire for Kitschy Crime… but where’s the snowed in cabin?

Anyone else get the desire to read one of those wonderfully corny Christmas crime books? A family that dislikes each other, a big inheritance, a snow storm, making it impossible to leave the luxury cabin! Oh, and then the next morning… someone is missing, and found dead! So close to Christmas! Thankfully we surprisingly invited the best detective of the country who can now solve the mystery!

And I can’t find a book like this. I don’t know why. Hours spend in front of the shelves reading every blurb and just feeling — Meh. Any recommendations?

If you’re looking for one, that’s a bit different from the usual, with some exquisite 4th wall breaks and creativity, I highly recommend “Ghost Hunter’s Adventure Club” by Dr. Cecil H. H. Mills (wonderful pen name).

shannon TBR'd a book

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

shannon TBR'd a book

Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good--her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits--all the family has to live on--on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her--even her beloved Shuggie. A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Edouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.

shannon commented on a List

navigating family dynamics and siblings

by tbr-forget-me-not

6 books

you can throw a party full of everyone you know and not invite your family. Open for recs!

🫠

❤️‍🩹

🧘

shannon paused reading...

Want

Gillian Anderson

What do you want, when no one is watching? What do you want, when the lights are off? What do you want, when you are anonymous? When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet for many reasons – some complicated, some not – so many of us don't talk about it. Our deepest, most intimate fears and fantasies remain locked away inside of us, until someone comes along with the key. Here's the key. In this generation-defining book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous letters of hundreds of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous letter). Want reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous.

shannon started reading...

The Book Club for Troublesome Women

Marie Bostwick

Four dissatisfied sixties-era housewives form a book club turned sisterhood that will hold fast amid the turmoil of a rapidly changing world and alter the course of each of their lives. By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new "planned community" in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that "all" doesn't feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson--the eccentric and artsy "new neighbor" from Manhattan--and read Betty Friedan's just-released book, The Feminine Mystique. Controversial and groundbreaking, the book struck a chord with an entire generation of women, helping them realize that they weren't alone in their dissatisfactions, or their longings, lifting their eyes to new horizons of possibility and achievement. Margaret, Charlotte, Bitsy, and Viv are among them. But is it really the book that alters the lives of these four very different women? Or is it the bond of sisterhood that helps them find courage to confront the past, navigate turmoil in a rapidly changing world, and see themselves in a new and limitless light?

shannon finished reading and left a rating...

shannon

Dec 01, 2025

4.5

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

💔

shannon commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

lonmower

Edited

Favorite Book Of The Year

Alrighty nerds, we're near the end of 2025

What's been your absolute favorite book(s) of the year?

Mine is The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez...Genuinely the most lyrical and beautiful story I've ever read. Picked it up in April and I still think about it daily

I'm picky on what I give 5 stars, but I did not need to second guess my rating at all

Honorable mentions are Legendborn by Tracy Deonn The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White 🥰🥰

Please share any book recs for the start of my 2026 tbr 👁👁

225

shannon commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

bookdragon00

Audiobooks at night

Does anyone listen to audiobooks to help them sleep? 😅

For as long as I can remember, I’ve listened to ‘The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me’ by Roald Dahl to help me sleep. It might be unconventional but it helps 😂

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