starminso

indiscriminating enjoyer of the written word!!

231 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

starminso wants to read...

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

Naomi Wolf

In the struggle for women's equality, there is one subject still shrouded in silence - women's compulsive pursuit of beauty. The myth of female beauty challenges every woman, every day of her life. The author exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today, in the home and at work, in literature and the media, in relationships between men and women, between women and women. With examples, she confronts the beauty industry and its advertising and uncovers the reasons why women are consumed by this destructive obsession.

starminso wants to read...

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

starminso finished reading and wrote a review...

starminso

Jul 14, 2025

5.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0

college students find out about intersectionality and it ruins their lives.

Post from the Babel forum

starminso

Thoughts from 99% (page 536)

spoilers

View spoiler

starminso commented on a post

starminso

Thoughts from 76% (page 411)

spoilers

View spoiler

Post from the Babel forum

starminso

Thoughts from 91% (page 492)

spoilers

View spoiler

Post from the Babel forum

starminso

Thoughts from 81% (page 440)

the chapter from Letty's perspective is such a good commentary on white feminism. even though she is oppressed as a woman, she enjoys white privilege. even though she enjoys white privilege, she is oppressed as a woman.

Post from the Babel forum

starminso

Thoughts from 76% (page 411)

spoilers

View spoiler

starminso commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

jenniferPagebound

Dev Update! (07/14/25)

Hi everyone! Here's a quick list of recent quality of life updates + bug fixes: - The most obvious: you probably noticed your feed is flooded with "badge earned" updates. There was a bug where, when a book was added to a Main Quest, those who had previously joined the Quest did not get credit for reading the newly added book. I fixed this bug and earned out badges for everyone (hence the feed getting flooded!). If you see anything still incorrect on your profile, email me at team@pagebound.co - there was a bug where the Edit option for your Reviews did not consistently show up in the ... (three dot menu) on the review card. This has been fixed! You can now edit your review anywhere you see it. - various infrastructure updates to help with server crashes + load times as we've seen a ton of growth on Pagebound over the past few weeks :) and of course, still working hard on the app! Our plan is to release to our first round of beta testers this month and publicly release before the end of the summer. Appreciate everyone's patience on this! On the bright side, there are TONS of updates on the app that address many feedback concerns we've seen lately :) Lastly, it's been so exciting to see all the new readers join us! Huge thank you to everyone who has sent good vibes, welcoming messages, and answered questions. This community is truly the best. Happy Reading 💙💜 Jennifer & Lucy

370

starminso finished reading and left a rating...

starminso

Jul 10, 2025

5.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: Plot:

starminso paused reading...

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1)

Art Spiegelman

The first installment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker). A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.

starminso wants to read...

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Walter Rodney

The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power. Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to defend one's interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which a people survive as a physical and cultural entity. When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of underdevelopment. Before a bomb ended his life in the summer of 1980, Walter Rodney had created a powerful legacy. This pivotal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, had already brought a new perspective to the question of underdevelopment in Africa. his Marxist analysis went far beyond the heretofore accepted approach in the study of Third World underdevelopment. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an excellent introductory study for the student who wishes to better understand the dynamics of Africa’s contemporary relations with the West.

starminso wants to read...

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

Naomi Wolf

Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma – how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this shortened edition you will find the essence of Wolf’s ground-breaking book. It is a radical, gripping and frank exposé of the tyranny of the beauty myth, its oppressive function and the destructive obsession it engenders.

starminso started reading...

Babel

R.F. Kuang

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . . Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

starminso commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

mreads

Edited

which book haunted you after you had done reading it?

in a good way, like you couldn't get it out of your head for a while because it was so engrossing mine have been fiction: a little life (dont like that book very much now but omg it sucked me in) + revolution (when i was a teen!) non fiction: joe saccos graphic novels on palestine (and like in a heartaching way) non fiction

starminso finished reading and wrote a review...