I'm in a reviewer group on Goodreads and while I never interact, I sometimes just read though. There's some netgalley staff on there, and a bit ago there was a discussion about how to make a disclosure for netgalley copies. Everyone, of course, said they put something akin to "Thank you netgalley/pub/author for a free copy in exchange for an honest review" but one of the NG staff members pointed out.... Copies are not given in exchange for a review, honest or not. There is no requirement to write a review for netgalley books!! Star rating, yes. But written review, no.

Now yes, you'll probably get less acceptances if you only give star reviews for books, but that's not on netgalleys end, and you still upheld your end of the deal.

So I've amended my disclosure now to "Thank you to Netgalley for a free eARC without expectation of review. All opinions are my own." Which seems like the most accurate.

What's your disclosure? Are you also going to change it after reading this?

Heyo non-Brits!

A lot of people are using imgur to host images and GIFs on here it seems, and while for 99.9% of the world that's fine, here in the UK Imgur is entirely blocked for like 9 months now 🥲 means whenever we come across any Imgur post online, all we see is this purple image of doom:

I know many people are still going to use it, but it would be nice to be able to be more involved with knowing context or whole messages on here! I know I'm far from being the only Brit on here too 😄

For alternatives, I've had a great time with imgbb! It's been my main image upload site now since Imgur pulled out and it's been solid.

Is the pirating books debate all over anyone else’s social media?

I’m very against pirating books but there are more people defending it than I thought, and more of my irl friends do it that I thought… Am I being privileged by saying you shouldn’t?

Edit- I am not anti piracy, I’m pro piracy for most things, books have always been an exception for me! I also know there are exceptions within books as well, as with everything, but the vast majority of book piracy isn’t that.

Lets all of us mention one book or more which we really dislike ( or hate) because it promotes something very toxic, lays out a very obviously wrong narrative. I am not talking about, 'this book was cringe and boring', I am talking about, 'the idea that was promoted in this book could be proved very dangerous if taken seriously.

A book that I genuinely dislike is Ugly love by collen hoover. This book has a male lead who has no sense of respect for the female lead, a female lead who has no sense of self respect and keeps on returning to that emotionally immature boy who cannot for the love of God get over his ex and handle his emotional baggage himself. I have read It ends with us and it starts with us. I disliked them both but my problem with them does not align with the topic of this post, they were not promoting abusive relationships (she does end up getting away from that abusive guy). Never read anything else by that author again, and never will.

It’s a new month yk what that meanssss

What are you planning to start/finish this month!? I’ll start!

Books: Dune Assasins apprentice The fellowship of the ring The two towers good girl bad blood The promised Neverland vol 2 bury our bones in the midnight soil ninth house

Games: Hollow knight Expedition 33 Deltarune Horizon zero dawn NieR: Automata

Tv/anime Frieren season 2 Witch hat atelier Attack on titan Umbrella academy Wednesday

Of course I may not finish all these things (most likely not) but I hope to start/finish the majority in July 😌✨🪷 (doomscrolling will not win)