starminso

undiscriminating enjoyer of the written word!!

344 points

0% overlap

My Taste

The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age

魔道祖师 (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)

How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

Reading...

Bride: Die unergründliche Übernatürlichkeit der Liebe

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Bride: Die unergründliche Übernatürlichkeit der Liebe

Ali Hazelwood

Misery Lark, Tochter eines mächtigen Vampirfürsten, war schon immer eine Außenseiterin. Mit ihren Reißzähnen weiß sie nichts anzufangen und führt ein anonymes Dasein unter den Menschen. Ausgerechnet sie soll sich nun für eine mehr als brisante Bündnisehe mit einem der Werwölfe, den ewigen Todfeinden der Vampire, zur Verfügung stellen. Dabei scheint ihr zukünftiger Ehemann, der Alpha Lowe Moreland, ebenso erbarmungslos und unberechenbar zu sein wie der Rest seines Rudels. Das beherrscht er allerdings nicht nur mit absoluter Autorität, sondern, wie Misery bald feststellt, auch mit viel Sinn für Gerechtigkeit und – ganz anders als die Vampire – nicht ohne Gefühl. Aber sie spürt, dass er ihr nicht traut – und wenn er nur wüsste, wie recht er damit hat ... Denn Misery hat ganz eigene Gründe, sich auf dieses Bündnis einzulassen. Und dafür ist sie bereit, alles zu opfern, selbst wenn das ein Leben allein unter Wölfen bedeutet. Doch womit Misery nicht gerechnet hat, ist die alles überwindende Ungleichartigkeit der Liebe ...

starminso commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

EatTheRich

Rating by enjoyment vs execution

When you rate a book, do you rate it based on how you liked it, or how good you think the book actually is by literary standards? One of the things I love most about Pagebound is the ability to break down the rating into separate categories. I particularly like the 'quality' and 'enjoyment' ratings. A lot of times, I dislike a book, but can also acknowledge that the book is very well written, I just didn't click with it. I tend to give books I dislike a bog standard 3 star, as to say i didn't like it but it wasn't a bad book. tbh I feel bad rating any book low because of how much work goes into writing a book and how creative authors are. Do you do the same? Or are y'all more brutal?

starminso commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

kathytrithardt

Literary Prizes - yay or nay?

How likely are you to read a book because it was short or long listed for a prize? Which prizes do you follow? Or do you have a feeling of "oh, this piece of ~literature will surely be above my meer mortal understanding" and thus you avoid reading books with prize stickers? I'm excited about all aspects of this discussion. I want to be a reader of prize winning books, but also often gaslight myself into assuming I'm not smart enough for the high brow stuff.

Post from the Bride forum

starminso

just finished a rly dense non fiction book im soooo excited for this!! heard a lot of good things 🫣

starminso wants to read...

Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

Cordelia Fine

A vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and the female brain. That's the reason, we're told, why there are so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room - different brains are just better suited to different things. Drawing on the latest research in the developmental psychology, neuroscience and social psychology, Delusions of Gender powerfully rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, are helping to perpetuate the sexist status quo.

starminso started reading...

Bride: Die unergründliche Übernatürlichkeit der Liebe

Ali Hazelwood

starminso started reading...

Bride

Ali Hazelwood

A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance. Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again... Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was…. Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf.

starminso finished reading and wrote a review...

The Beauty Myth : How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

starminso

Aug 03, 2025

3.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 2.0Characters: Plot:

In 'The Beauty Myth', Naomi Wolf explores how Western women are trapped within their appearances under the unrelenting rule of the beauty myth. While the book considers many interesting aspects, for example the economic origins of many modern beauty standards (hairlessness required for razor sales, etc), I found the lack of any exploration of the racial aspects of our beauty standards to be a gap in the book. I wish Wolf had at least included a disclaimer indicating that she would only focus on 'white' perspectives. In terms of style, it was an overall pleasant read but the author lost me a few times by using long metaphors that made less sense as it ran. At times, less is more. Since writing this book in the 1990s, Wolf has become a conspiracy theorist and spread dangerous misinformation concerning the Covid-19 vaccines in 2021. This book should be read with a sharp critical mind, but it still offers some interesting insights.

starminso wants to read...

What We Owe to Each Other

T.M. Scanlon

How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism. Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.

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starminso

Thoughts from 56% (page 164)

"Images of strangled women, women in cages, do not push any social limits; they are a mainstream cliché of a mainstream social order. Rock music fails to live up to its subversive tradition when it eroticizes the same old establishment sadomasochism rather than playing with gender roles to makes us look at them afresh."

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starminso

Thoughts from 47% (page 137)

"The upsurge in violent sexual imagery took its energy from male anger and female guilt at women's access to power." unfortunately feels VERY relevant at the moment, where women in the west have more freedom and independence than ever before which results in serious misogynistic backlash and crimes. fucked up!

Post from the The Beauty Myth : How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women forum

starminso

Thoughts from 44% (page 129)

"Deferral religions have been the province of women because they keep them occupied with a life that is not this one, and supply them with miniature versions of power that leaves real power uncontested." this is reminiscent of how women get to be "empowered" but seldom experience actual power.

Post from the The Beauty Myth : How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women forum

starminso

Thoughts from 40% (page 116)

"Holy oils [skincare] promise the protection that women no longer get from men and do not yet get from the law." Interesting link made by the author on skincare marketing being based on protecting women from invisible yet harmful forces and women's concrete fears of assault and discrimination. Maybe this marketing IS effective due to women's fears subconsciously manifesting in our consumption habits?

Post from the The Beauty Myth : How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women forum

starminso

Thoughts from 33% (page 97)

"Modern culture represses female oral appetite as Victorian culture, through doctors, repressed female sexual appetite: from the top of the power structure downwards, for a political purpose."

starminso wants to read...

Die unendliche Geschichte

Michael Ende

Bastian Balthasar Bux entdeckt in einem Antiquariat ein Buch, das ihn auf magische Weise anzieht: „Die unendliche Geschichte“. Er liest vom Reich Phantásien, in dem sich auf unheimliche Weise das Nichts immer weiter ausbreitet. Schuld daran ist die geheimnisvolle Krankheit der Kindlichen Kaiserin, die einen neuen Namen braucht, um gesund zu werden. Den kann ihr aber nur ein Menschenkind geben. Sollte Bastian selbst jenes Kind sein, das Phantásien zu retten vermag? Zusammen mit dem jungen Krieger Atréju und dem Glücksdrachen Fuchur begibt er sich auf eine Reise durch Phantásien, in der bald jede Minute zählt. DER Klassiker der deutschen Phantastik über die Macht der Phantasie Weltweiter Bestseller – übersetzt in 41 Sprachen, über 9 Millionen verkaufte Bücher!

starminso commented on a post

movime

First time Read

I'm 27 years old and just now reading this series for the first time 😬 I avoided all the influence of the hype back when I was in high school and highly regret that I never even gave it a chance now lol

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