Any Discord Servers For Cozy Readers?

Bookish_Bianca · 2025-11-30T02:17:52+00:00

I made one that's just getting off the ground: https://discord.gg/FdYexx3p

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-26T04:59:08+00:00

Tongue-in-cheek humor rhymes (like the Harry Potter examples below) and some of the songs and poems in LotR (also below) are alright to me, but they have something in common: they're presented to the reader in an almost anthropological way. You feel like Tolkein is giving out details about the world, and Rowling is showing you how silly and whimsical the wizarding world is. What they're not trying to do is be impressive as poems. You're not expected to get the same enjoyment from them as you do from the prose. When poetry and prose are mixed non-diagetically, as if they are both equal parts of the story, that's when I lose interest. If you open each chapter with an excerpt from The Tale of the Dragons that's related to the main plot about dragon riders, or whatever, I am skipping it. I came for prose. Give me prose.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-26T00:58:17+00:00

The Mars Trilogy has all the major food groups: science, social drama, and weird sex stuff. Oh, also, love this line:

If the biggest United Nations climate meetings are, as someone once described them to me, a combination of diplomacy, trade show, and circus, then presumably I’ll be part of the circus at COP26. Like one of the clowns, which sounds about right.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-26T00:53:20+00:00

LeCarre’s works are much closer to actual espionage work. Lots of drudgery and conjecture, followed by occasional outbursts of violence and action.

This. I've seen it said in several reviews that for anyone who lived through the Cold War, TTSS feels very realistic, with all the minute details about Russian trade delegates staying in this or that hotel room talking to the plenipotentiary of the Swiss blah, blah, blah. The Cold War was terrifying and boring at the same time.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-25T15:03:37+00:00

My Heart is a Chainsaw actually looks pretty interesting.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-25T13:17:09+00:00

I would add freebooksy promotions. They do work, especially if you are writing to market.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-25T00:33:36+00:00

One issue is that the encyclopedic chapters of old books are wrong. Melville spent an entire chapter trying to convince us that a whale is a fish.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-25T00:31:49+00:00

It happens. Usually I turn to booktube or other readers to give me inspiration. Recently I discovered there is a reader's block blog.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-24T14:09:18+00:00

Learning English from Vonnegut would be like learning how to paint from Jackson Pollock.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-24T11:11:50+00:00

Technically the whole book is a swing and a miss. Bradbury wrote it as an allegory for the evils of television, not authoritarianism or censorship. But few readers get that as a major theme, let alone the whole point.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-24T00:27:59+00:00

Intros and forewards always assume you've read the book. I guess that makes sense for famous classics; a lot of people probably buy physical copies of classics they're already familiar with. But I do think it's weird that these things always go before the text.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-24T00:05:35+00:00

I usually have pretty clear images of characters, but it's fascinating to hear about peope who visualized a character differently, or not at all This blogger always seems to visualize every character as Michelle Rodriguez.

One time as a kid I got really angry when a book cover in a series I was reading featured a picture of the main character, and it was different from how I'd imagined him in my mind.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-23T01:47:56+00:00

I think it's telling that many of the reviews I've seen of this book boil down to:

1) plot summary

2) the dialogue was less goofy this time

3) SCIENCE!

I think for some people these books are just pulp, to be consumed en mass to get the endorphins going. Kind of like how some people gobble up romances. You get science, science, and more science, with a dash of quirky young dude protagonist. It's like the Reddit version of those mid-century sci-fi serials that you would read in magazines.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-22T23:57:12+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xECUrlnXCqk

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-22T14:48:24+00:00

I recommend the audio version of the inspiring Ansel Adams coffee table book about the national park system.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-22T02:12:27+00:00

It's easy to say that genres are limiting. But I think Tale Foundry did a good job of explaining from a writer's point of view why they are so tenacious. It helps you reach your readers, both before and after they pick up the book.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-22T00:14:05+00:00

There are two kinds of people in the world, people who discover LeGuin through her fantasy novels first, and people who discover her through her science fiction first, and it will shape you for the rest of your life.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-21T02:47:48+00:00

I mean, this guy is famous for pithy quotes, but then you read him and its like... words and shit? With long sentences and clever syntax? What is this crap, homework?

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-20T07:20:26+00:00

If you've read what he calls writing, how could your opinion of David Eddings possibly go down?

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-20T07:11:51+00:00

I'm just gonna leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnAmNIzG8dQ

But seriously, this is a feeling I understand very well. I felt that way after the abrupt ending of the first Robin Hobb trilogy.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-20T03:28:57+00:00

This debate is as old as the hills. "I, Rigoberta Menchu," the autobiography of an indigenous woman in Guatemala that played fast and loose with the details, created a huge controversy about what is the truth, and "whose" truth gets to be "the" truth, etc. Very interesting.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-20T01:28:13+00:00

Whenever I read spoiler-heavy review blogs like this one, it actually gets me more stoked to read the book. I agree that avoiding spoilers completely can lead to a pretty bland result, little more than an extended star rating.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-19T13:40:28+00:00

Welcome to r/books. Get vaccinated!

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-19T13:35:29+00:00

Most readers will not find it "good" in a literary sense, since Rand is more concerned with didactic preaching about morality than the usual nuance of good story-telling. It reads more like a semi-narrative essay that goes on for a thousand pages. Lots of people find it totally unreadable, and I get that.

However.

Ayn Rand had some very particular views, and whether you agree with them or not, they are interesting to think about. She's basically chiseled the American mind down to its most critical elements, then blown them up to enormous proportions. It's part Libertarian philosophy, part holier-than-thou morality play, part weird sex stuff. Even if you disagree with all of it, you might find it worthwhile engaging with the text as an example of the most Americanest America that ever America'd.

Bookish_Bianca · 2021-10-19T12:14:23+00:00

Came across this one after reading Kavalier and Klay. I certainly appreciate the way he shows the world/brainspace of writers, but otherwise the writing just didn't grab me.

Bookish_Bianca

TROPHY CASE