#i have read hundreds of these books

[elumish]

I saw something a while ago about paranormal romance/why choose books being basically trad wife fantasies, and I have so many thoughts about that

[blondie-drawings]

Good lord this tomb is full of shitposts 😳😳 pt 1/pt 2

[noirandchocolate]

I. This is not a game.

II. Here and now, you are alive.

—Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods”

[vynnyal]

Making content for all 5 tcf fans out there

Bonus:

[shalom-iamcominghome]

The amount of jews I know who are planning on or are currently running private libraries is a non-zero number. Can't beat the well-read allegations for real 😭

[greenerteacups]

What do you think of jkr as a writer? I for one has always felt like she didn’t treat her female characters well. It felt strange, being critical of her when she was god queen of the earth, and also being 10

I think most of the problems in her books can be chalked up to genre hopping. Books 1-3 are perfectly good and serviceable children's books — great children's books, even! They have compelling, relatable characters and juicy mystery plots. They have problems, sure, but for the first three books someone's ever written — especially someone with little or no background in creative writing — they're really fucking good. So: there's her flowers.

The last four books pivot sharply into much more emotionally complicated and sociopolitically loaded territory, because they're describing a war. And it's hard to write children's books about war. I would venture you can't really do it, at least without dramatically misrepresenting what war is! And so Rowling makes the executive decision somewhere during the writing of Book 4 that she's not going to flinch away from that, she's going to go for dramatic realism, and she kills Cedric Diggory to let us know. People had died in Harry Potter before, of course — Quirrell gets sent to the fucking shadow realm, for example. But children haven't. (It also gives parents who are reading these books with their children a warning shot: shit is about to get significantly more real, think twice before you buy the next one of these for your 10-year-old.) After that, Rowling starts leaning much more into dramatic realism, and the fast-paced mystery-novel plotting of the first few books is replaced by a slow, simmering political conflict that unfurls over the course of about a million words.

The problem — besides the fact that she's picking one of the hardest things to write about, like, in all of literature, war is really insanely complicated and emotionally intense and hard to portray well — is that she's now trying to use characters, plot points, and technologies she developed for a children's series to enact a sprawling war drama among teenagers and adults. So Hermione, who was a reasonably precocious snobby eleven-year-old, becomes this sort of encyclopedic all-knowing savant of the wizarding world, who somehow remains functional and mostly even-headed despite her identity being the chief target of a prolifically murderous terrorist group. Draco Malfoy, a schoolyard bully whose primary tools included 1. namecalling and 2. telling teacher, JOINS said terrorist group (and admittedly does react reasonably, i.e., has a total crashout and takes to sobbing in a girls' bathroom whenever he gets a free minute). Dumbledore, who starts out as "whimsical friendly winky-wink trustworthy grandfather type", ends up being Magical Winston Churchill in a violent game of spycraft and espionage, eventually revealing he's only been keeping Harry at all these seven years because he wants to KILL him! And like, maybe really good technical writing could smooth out these transitions and make the first-order dramatic choices seem more natural, but Rowling is like, a Fine Writer, technically speaking. meaning she's reasonably consistent in characterization, her plotting is well-paced and believable, she has a clear authorial voice, and her prose is readable. personally, that's not enough to get me to buy into some of the changes that happen in the later books, and because she stuffs these things so full with new elements every installment, a lot of stuff ends up getting glossed over.

And like, I still love the books. I think they're wonderful, and they taught me how to read. but i can say that and also say that Rowling probably did herself a disservice by trying to write four giant war novels as sequels to her first three mystery children's books.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: THE AMBERGRIS TRILOGY by Jeff VanderMeer.

Up next! This series is how I'm bridging my current writing/revision project with the one on deck for my personal nano. They're both Weird Stories, but the one I'm working on now is Weird (genre), like VanderMeer, and the one I'm planning for November is going to be Weird (fungus), also like VanderMeer. I hope to get Driscoll vibes AND some New Book vibes out of this!

[bayofwolves]

Yeah I am mad about how the authors treated their sweet angel Abeke actually.

Bad things that happened to Abeke:

Mom, only person to understand her, died pre-series

Dad and sister are emotionally abusive

Tricked by her enemies and roped onto the wrong side

Distrusted by the rest of the Four and believed to be a spy

Targeted by Meilin in particular

Kidnapped by obnoxious pre-teen boys

Gets frostbite

Gets concussed

Gets stabbed

Gets captured

Gets beaten up by Meilin

Lied to and betrayed by her dearest friend

Meanwhile dad DISOWNS her

Understandable depressive episode

Makes up with dad because he apparently decided he wanted to keep treating his daughter like shit

Mauled by cougars

Loses Uraza to arch-nemesis Zerif

Another extremely understandable depressive episode

Nicknamed "hollow-girl" which tells you a lot

Almost killed by Uraza on two separate occasions

Friend* killed by Uraza

Denied proper resolution with said friend

Doesn't get to kill arch-nemesis Zerif

Doesn't get to use her Rain Dancer powers a single time

Attacked by ants

Mid bond token

Can't even keep her cat

Justice for Abeke.

[labelma]

Men need to STOP bringing up Thrawn to me on a first date unprompted it’s making me crazy 😭

Most recent guy asked me who the blue guy is to test if I knew who he actually was??? And I had to refrain from being like “you should see my fucking Google docs”

[mxtxfanatic]

Do you have any recommendations for danmei novels that are at all like SVSSS in tone? Or MDZS?

I have already read TGCF, but while I enjoyed it, the extended downward spiral without as many mental breaks from cutting to happier times proved to me a bit much for me.

I also tried 2ha but bounced off it hard as the POV character is just too unlikable at the start (even knowing why he's like that courtesy of tumblr spoilers couldn't save the unpleasantness of his POV).

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think I’ve read any book that quite hits the same spot as svsss while having similar quality. The only novel I can think of is that’s similar in feel is Peerless Immortal Surrounded by Demonic Disciples, but the writing quality kinda sucks. Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know feels like it has a similar comedic tone to svsss, but that’s about it with the similarities. For mdzs recs, First-Class Lawyer, Copper Coins by the same author, and Record of the Missing Sect Master comes closest. These have MCs that are most similar in personality to Wei Wuxian without also having that extended downward spiral with minimal breaks that you mentioned.

The thing about mxtx’s writing is that I think her most unique skill amongst the writers of cnovel I’ve read with serious topics is her ability to weave humor into dark moments of the story to give reprieve from the pressure without completely breaking the momentum. A lot of stories either end up dropping the humor as the plot gets serious or adding too much humor, causing the somber moments to seem goofy and unserious. However, if you want stories that are mostly humorous with a few moments of somberness expertly woven in, then I’d suggest Ascending, Do Not Disturb and The Times Spent in Pretense.

[bubu0h]

How I Manage my personal AO3 e-library Archive

Download everything I want/hope to read in EPUB format. I try to anyways... if I notice I got too many tabs open on my browser, time to download If multi-chapter remember first to press 'Entire Work' and then 'Download'

2. I use Book Story (Android App) to manage the mess that is my downloads folder - this app is a great book database manager AND scroll reader with Big letters as well - The app has this fantastic feature that allows me put the books into 'Reading' 'Already Read' 'Planing' 'Dropped' categories; I move the books around and it helps me keep a visual tab on them - , plus if you like scroll reading this one is fantastic at that as well.

Periodically I update the BACKUP of the folder(s) were the copies of books live. KEEP A BACKUP OF YOUR BACKUP , if you mess around and don't got no backup is really painful and irreversible.

On my computer I then make a copy of my messy ass downloads folder from my phone into my computer. While looking at the visual information the app provides me I delete books that I 'Dropped' and I move 'Already Read' books into my computer E-Library Data Base (I use Calibre) that's my main book hub where I will quickly notice what books need covers and I take my time working to finding an image I like for the book , so I can recognize them books by just looking at the covers I am terrible at remembering book titles

If you are curious this is what Calibre looks like - this is just AO3

3. To read EPUB books I use Libera FD Is frankly the best reader I have tried because I prefer page turning. If you like scroll reading Book Story is much better option for scroll reading.

Libera FD can customize pretty much EVERYTHING and is very very feature rich ( it can be overwhelming) HUMONGOUS FONT SIZE , you can download any font you want to use, replace words if I want to , it has OLED dark mode for reading at 3 am, you can configure it so it reads to you (using TTS) , several reading modes including auto scroll and speed reading mode, and so much more; the dev(s) are still updating and adding functions to it is kind of amazing I am probably not using it to its full potential You can sort books by 'Genre' which is how the app recognize the tags from the website.

Here some visuals of Libera FD (I wrote in the ALT of pics, click on it)

Book Story is a neat app , less overwhelming and the UI is a lot more intuitive. It looks like this for me , you can configure the essentials to your preference. Is a fairly new app be patient with it (sometimes just give two minutes to cook) , it is still being updated. The dev is very active if you got suggestion or present bugs.

4. How to provide enrichment to glorious magnificent authors , that share their passion with us for free. When you open any ao3 .epub on either of these apps the links are underlined. I tap on the link it leads back to the original posted website page at the beginning of every book you get from A03.

Tap the link, keep it open in your browser and star reading.

Open a note taking app.

I usually take notes about my silly musings as I read, copy quotes and whatever else I want to leave in the comment section of the chapter I am on. Cut and paste and that's it. I load the next chapter in the website and then continue reading the next chapter on the reading app (I comment on all the chapters if I have something to comment, sometime I don't have anything to say so I don't . Figure it makes authors happy and i find it very fun. Sometimes they answer back it feels nice) remember to leave kudos and comments specially if you are rereading.

I use Quillpad (android app) the most important feature of any note taking app you choose, in this case in particular, is that it saves your notes automatically (I used some apps that didn't it was devastating losing all my notes like that. I though that as long as I didn't close the app it was fine turns out not - some you have to manually save - and sometimes it would timeout and gone , all my notes gone. With Quillpad I haven't lost notes)

I haven't taken the time to figure out if Librera has a feature for annotation that could be useful for commentary note taking

I think that's all I can think of sharing on this topic. I am open to questions and adding things to this post with visual aid and whatever I can do to help , do let me know.

Keeping a copy of books safe and easy to find KEEP BACKUPS OF YOUR BACKUPS

-Updated Nov. 11 , 2024.

[why-is-it-always-autumn]

Why is my mom asking if I've read Worm?

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Sword of Kaigen

standalone fantasy set in a rural mountain village at the edge of an empire that still holds traditional values, with families of powerful water/ice magic warriors

follows a powerful young heir who begins to question his beliefs about the empire when a new boy comes to his village from the city

and his mother, a housewife who has tried to forget her youth as a warrior and vigilante in the city since she moved back home to a loveless marriage

when there’s a violent attack on their village that they’re unprepared for, everything changes, and she has to embrace her old skills to protect her family and people

[morganbritton132]

Me, at the beginning of 2024: No buying books! We’re on a book buying ban this year until you read the ones you have.

Me, right now: I wanna buy booooooks

[deoidesign]

Dang it... They sent me gloss books instead of matte 😭😭😭 I want the whole set to match...

I'm going to go through customer service about this, but I think their solution is to send me new books... But I have no idea what I'll do with thesw 300 extra books if they do that!!!

Any ideas???

[callisteios]

9 books to read in 2025

thank you for the tag emma @hauntedbythenarrative <33

tagging @mashmouths @waltzingbi @theflowerunicorn @superhell @soupteeth @apeirotilio and everyone else i missed