#book discussions

[lexsreadingcorner]

Yall should tell me what non-genre elements will make you pick up (or strongly consider) a book.

Los míos por ejemplo:

magic circus/carnival settings

mc that uses blood magic, especially if treated or revealed to be morally neutral in the end

disabled magic users or scientists (no cure mf)

[borednurse]

Starting to read: "Cathedreal of the Sea" by Ildefonso Falcones

I have zero idea what the premise is, I grabbed it at the library while being possessed by a greedy ghost of I need everything here. Tbh I'm scared it's not gonna be the best thing but oh well

[annafromuni]

the Gentleman Bastard Sequence - The Best Adult Fantasy Series To Date

I have been reading The Gentleman Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch over the last six months, and I honestly feel like my perception of fantasy and writing has changed thanks to his works. From the filthy Camorr origins in The Lies of Locke Lamora, to the deadly swashbuckling adventures of Red Seas Under Red Skies, and the high-stakes political chess match of The Republic of Thieves, there is so…

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[bookworms-and-bluestockings]

Hiii everyone! Back when we just started our blog, we had a Through The Pages of Narnia discussion series. It took us more than a year to finish it, and we really wanted to share it with you all, because we're really proud of it.

Basically, the way it worked was we would read two chapters of The Chronicles of Narnia every week and discuss it - we discussed what happened, what we thought of it, and what we thought it meant; we analyzed it and discussed the symbolism it had, as well as the Biblical parallels, what we understood about them, and what they mean to us as Christians (most of us who discussed are young Christians, as well as Homeschoolers).

This blog series is very close to our heart. As Christians, these books really spoke to our hearts and touched us in ways no books have ever managed to so far. And besides getting to talk about one of our favorite book series ever with my friends, re-reading Narnia and writing these posts truly benefitted our spiritual life. We were hoping we could share our experience with you guys.

Here's the link to our last discussion, where we discussed the series as a whole:

Through the Pages of Narnia #53: The Chronicles of Narnia

Clarisse: Hello everybody! Welcome to our discussion on The Chronicles of Narnia. Eliza: Eyo, everyone! This is it! This is actually it! The

And, if you would like to read from the very beginning, here's the link to the very first post we had in our discussion series:

Through the Pages of Narnia #1: Behind the Attic Door

Clarisse Inkling, Jr.: Welcome to our Narnia read-along! We’re going to be reading two chapters a week from The Magician’s Nephew, and discu

The rest of the posts in the series can be found here!:

Through the Pages of Narnia – Bookworms and Bluestockings

Posts about Through the Pages of Narnia written by Clarisse Inkling and Aaron Took

[hannaslibrary]

sigh, why do i even try to read books by male authors? i tried reading Nevernight by renowned author Jay Kristoff, and it could have been good if it wasn't suffering from Written By A Man Syndrome. the female protagonist seems to just be the embodiment of a male fantasy; badass, sexy, 16-years-old, and Not Like Other Girls. she gave a whole speech on why using the word "cunt" as an insult is actually empowering to women, which in turn made the male lead fall in love with her instantly! then we go on to depicting graphic sex scenes (why is a 50-year-old man even writing smut about a 16-year-old girl?) and then she gets a fucking boob-job. because that makes one a better assassin, apparently?? weird how none of the male assassins had to get boob-jobs. just the sheer amount of times the author mentioned the mc's breasts (again, she's 16) in this book gave me the creeps. ugh

[imogenlefay]

So, I read this book... Daisy Jones & The Six

so, i've been thinking about doing a thing, and maybe someone finds it interesting, or maybe it's just for me to order my thoughts and i'll get bored to it before march, but we'll see. basically, for the last two years i've been keeping track of the books i read (or audiobooks i listen to) bc i felt like i'm not reading enough (except for fanfiction). and while i'm far behind people who actually read a lot, and woefully behind how much i used to read when i was a teen, i'm actually pretty happy with the progress. made it to 34 in 2022 and 40 in 2023, and hope to get more done this year. 2024 is starting off strong, just finished my first book of the year, and usually when i do that, i have thoughts. so what's the point of blogs if not to put that out there, so it stops haunting my head? or maybe even get someone else's thoughts on things? so i decided to blog about the books i read (unless i forget or don't feel like it), starting with general feelings and then going into spoilery feelings. so, yeah, this is what this is going to be. let's go.

Summary: a look back on fictional rockband The Six rising to fame, where they meet It Girl Daisy Jones, leading to the collab of a century, until the band breaks apart after one show in Chicago. Told completely in interview snippets.

General Feelings: say what you want, it's a fast read, and it's fun. the style of writing with everything being interview snippets, aka the band members' and friends' memories, works really well, especially the parts where one person remembers things, and the next person directly contradicting their memory. it's a quick way to give you everyone's point of view, and sowing the seeds of miscommunication and conflict. the story is easy to follow, and it's also easy to feel for most of the protagonists. the characters are likable enough, and their conflicts are mostly realistic. the final show in chicago and the general fall out unfortunately fall kind of flat for me. like... this is it? it's not much of a bang, tbh... which maybe sums up my feelings about the whole thing. it's a fun ride, but at the end, it's like "huh, guess that was it?" it is fun, but it's just not very deep, i guess. although the way they describe the songwriting process and the songs that result from it really was cool to read. another fun fact, i totally forgot there's a show until i googled the book cover. and since i was reading and caught myself wanting to check out the songs, only to remember they're not real... well, that might be enough motivation to check out the show. Recommendation: yes, i'm doing that before the actual feelings part cause i can't discuss those without spoilers. so, if anybody cares, rec first. Daisy Jones & the Six is a casual read. like, vacation book. for the beach, for train rides, for flights. it's fun to breeze through, but i doubt it'll really grip most people. so yeah, not a must read, but can be fun, light reading.

Spoilery feelings:

(consider yourself warned)

there are a few things that really didn't work for me.

i never really got into the whole daisy/billy thing. like, his instant antipathy, the weird rivalry, and then her oh so deep love for him, and at the end, him finally kinda sorta loving her but loving his wife more... maybe that's part of the format. both of them looking back at it from the future, where it's just not that present anymore. but it didn't ring that true.

my biggest problem was probably drug use and how it was handled. it just felt so trivial and meaningless. like sure, for both billy and daisy it's supposedly the central struggle, but it just fell so flat for me. i know part of that is that early december i read Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, which (in germany) is a famous non-fiction account describing the fall into heavy drug use of an extremely young girl (starting at 12, i think), and it's the bleakest thing i've ever read, with the girl herself describing how she fell into heavier and heavier drugs, paid for by prostitution. so it's dark, and it's heavy, and compared to that the drug use in Daisy Jones feels almost offensive in how little weight it has. the comparison is super unfair, i know, i'm primed and biased, sure. but after that, the book may say a million times "oh yeah, that was a bad time for daisy", but it just doesn't ring true.

i'm not sure if the identity of the interviewer is supposed to come off as a twist? like, sure, i didn't see it coming, but it didn't really have an impact, either.

lacking impact is probably my final point. while the book, especially with the format of the interviews, is really good at painting the conflicts within the group, i didn't feel like these paid off in a significant manner. like, eddie's whole growing resentment never went anywhere except being a red herring. the show in chicaco wasn't that special in the end, was it? nothing happened at the show himself. just, the band broke at many different places at once, but they barely impacted each other. billy's struggle with addiction toppling over, daisy having a breakdown and camila helping her through it, pete getting married, the karen/graham thing exploding... like, you could see them coming, but the resolution all at once felt kinda random. like, it didn't feel like there's this big bang setting off all the dominos (yeah, mixing metaphors, i know), but more like "oh yeah, that's all happening now, i guess". sure, there isn't always a big bang, but i feel like they teased one, and then there was nothing. so i guess the end feels a bit anticlimactic, like it just fizzled out.

it was still fun to read, but more like meaningless fun, i guess. definitely preferred "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo", which was super fun. interesting writing style, but story is a bit shallow. okay, now i talked enough about a book i kinda sorta liked but wasn't super impressed by. anyone else thoughts about it? did you read it? did you watch the show? do you or did you have feelings about it? seriously would love to hear them!

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

Hiii oh I saw your tags about Heart of Darkness ohhh yes that's how I feel about it too, great observations. With all problems said, it really marked me when I read it, amazing prose

Hi back lovely,

I'm so glad you're visiting me for a little book talk. :)So happy too that you share the same conflicting feelings about this book. It's sometimes a burden to like certain books when you don't know what to think about their bad sides, and it helps a lot when a book friend says, "me too."

It is a testament to the strength of my feelings for this book that I managed to write these tags in my current state of apathy.

My memory is poor and I tend to easily forget the books I read if I don't keep track of them, but this one haunts me. It's like a symphony with its narrative centered on the darkness of the human soul and the descent into the abyss of these characters driven mad with despair by their greed and quest for gain, which keeps repeating like a pattern in my head.

It's a strong experience that's not for everyone but I would still recommend it to everyone, because it's a test of maturity to be able to appreciate a book like this, which can be a threshold in your reading life, depending on how and when it hits you.

I really want to read more of Conrad's books. Do have you a recommendation for his work? Or any recommendation at all: something you read recently, loved and want to share and support?