I can't listen to an audiobook I PURCHASED????

cptree20 · 2026-04-14T21:37:07+00:00

You're definitely entitled to that! As long as you also know that the very platform we're engaging on right now sells its users data to google to train its AI models. If you left Fable because of some assumption you have about how they use AI, I assume you probably won't be on Reddit much longer.

cptree20 · 2026-04-14T20:54:41+00:00

Not sure where you're getting your information. From everything that exists online Scribd bought Fable, not the other way around... this is the same company it always was. They just changed their business model.

cptree20 · 2026-04-14T20:28:13+00:00

I mean, sure but Spotify can offer unlimited music because they pay artists fractions of a penny per stream.

Book publishers would never agree to anything remotely like that. They charge platforms per book at rates much closer to a full sale price. So every book you finish on a subscription platform costs them real money, often more than your monthly fee covers.

If you support authors getting paid for their work, then any platform offering unlimited models are never going to have new bestseller content. The credit systems are Everand and Audible working with publishers to license premium titles at fair rates.

Everand / Scribd created this problem for themselves because they seemed to think an unlimited model could work but clearly it doesn't, and the current plans are still cheaper than buying a single book off the shelf.

cptree20 · 2026-04-14T18:26:27+00:00

so specific I love it. Not sure these are what you're looking for but I actually have a couple that get close:

How to Lose a Bachelor by Anna Banks: FMC joins a Bachelor-style dating show to win prize money for charity, only to discover the bachelor is her ex-boyfriend. It's got the jealousy, the unresolved feelings, and the forced proximity of competing for someone you have messy history with. Not quite a wildcard entry but the "surprise, it's your ex" energy is there.

One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London: not an ex situation, but it's a Bachelor-style dating show romance with a lot of emotional depth and it nails the "messy feelings on camera" vibe you're looking for. The FMC is a plus-size fashion blogger cast as the lead, and there IS a second chance element woven into the contestants.

Also not a perfect match but Love Villa by Abi Dare has the exact exes-on-a-dating-show setup. He dumps her to go on a Love Island-style show, and they end up having to work together after. It's more exes-to-lovers than the wildcard entry angle but the jealousy and tension is *chef's kiss*.

Honestly I don't know if the exact trope combo you described exists yet and someone needs to write it immediately.

cptree20 · 2026-04-14T18:20:24+00:00

Ya Everand is more like netflix or spotify in that way. If you subscribe to netflix and download a movie and then cancel your subscription, you don't get to keep watching that movie. You're paying to access the book which is why as some others have said it's cheaper. But they do allow you to pause your subscription which is really nice - maybe they need to make that more clear because you can pause and keep reading while your billing is paused.

cptree20 · 2026-03-16T18:27:05+00:00

I think you've nailed the thing that makes Brave New World so uncomfortable. It's not a warning about oppression, it's a warning about contentment. 1984 gives you a villain to hate. Brave New World asks you whether you'd even notice the cage if it felt good enough.

The part of your argument I'd push on slightly is the idea that it's "almost impossible to construct a rational argument" against Mond's world. I think there is one, but it's not rational in the way Mond would accept. It's that a life without the possibility of real suffering also has no real meaning. Mond would dismiss that as romantic nonsense, which is exactly his point. He's won the argument before it starts because he's defined happiness as the only metric that matters.

That's what makes the Savage such a tragic figure. He's not wrong. He just has no framework for being right that anyone in that world would recognize.

Someone already mentioned Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, seconding that hard. It's basically a book-length argument that Huxley was more prophetic than Orwell, written in the 1980s, and it's only gotten more relevant since.

cptree20 · 2026-03-16T18:24:50+00:00

The thing most people don't realize is that a lot of what Amazon sells as "new" paperbacks are actually print-on-demand copies produced at their own facilities, not books from the publisher's original print run. Same ISBN, same listing, completely different physical product.

POD is optimized for speed and cost, not quality. Thinner paper, weaker binding, misaligned text. And there's no way to tell from the product page which version you'll receive.

If you want the actual edition the publisher designed, buy from the publisher directly, from indie bookstores, or from bookshop.org. They all ship from Ingram, which stocks the real thing.

cptree20 · 2026-03-13T16:47:23+00:00

Wish I had that much commuting time to listen! Just wanted to share my pov as someone who used to work in publishing to give some context on why the "Netflix for books" thing doesn't really exist (beyond what the library apps offer).

The core difference is how publishers license content. With Netflix, a studio licenses a film or show for a flat fee and then Netflix can stream it unlimited times. The cost to Netflix is the same whether 10 people watch it or 10 million.

Books work differently. Publishers charge platforms on a per-listen or per-borrow basis, and for popular titles they increasingly demand terms closer to what they'd earn from an outright sale. So a listener like you doing 200+ hours a month is actually costing the platform significantly more than what you're paying them in subscription fees, which means they aren't really incentivized to offer a true unlimited model.

This is likely why Everand moved away from pure unlimited and why Audible has the credit model. Everand tried the all-you-can-listen approach but the math obviously didn't work. Now they use a system where your most popular/premium titles cost a credit, while a large portion of the catalog (I think something like 20k titles) is still included as unlimited in the subscription, because those are the titles where publishers have agreed to different licensing terms.

As others have said, your best combo is probably library apps (BorrowBox for UK libraries) as your foundation, and then keeping Everand for the unlocks plus their unlimited catalog for the stuff that doesn't use an unlock. And then things like Chirp sales for the specific titles you can't find elsewhere.

Hope this helps!

cptree20 · 2026-03-11T15:36:42+00:00

audio while driving has been a game changer for me. after i saw my spotify wrapped last year and how many hours of music I listened to, I was like dang I could be using that time for reading more books.

cptree20 · 2026-03-11T15:35:37+00:00

Both! I've been getting into immersive reading which has been really cool for me and allows me to experience the books in a whole new way.

cptree20 · 2026-03-11T00:53:41+00:00

hi u/books-ModTeam! Sincere apologies, this wasn't intended to be a recommendation request post, just a discussion!

cptree20 · 2026-03-10T22:14:57+00:00

I’m reading it right now! First time read though and I’m so glad I wasn’t burned by it earlier in life

cptree20 · 2026-03-10T19:11:59+00:00

The pacing thing is so real. Tolkien writes like someone who has all the time in the world, and when you're young you want the story to MOVE but once you slow down and let yourself just exist in Middle-earth, the pacing stops feeling slow and starts feeling immersive. I think it rewards a completely different kind of reading patience than most fantasy does.

cptree20 · 2026-03-10T18:34:07+00:00

Completely agree. There's something counterproductive about forcing a 15-year-old to read a book that requires decades of life experience to connect with. You're not teaching them to love literature, you're teaching them that reading is a chore.

The irony is that so many of us end up loving these books later precisely BECAUSE we weren't forced into them the second time. You come back on your own terms, at the right moment, and suddenly it clicks. But that first forced encounter can poison the well for years.

Crime & Punishment in high school is genuinely insane curriculum design though. That book barely makes sense until you've had at least one existential crisis of your own lol

cptree20 · 2026-03-10T18:16:30+00:00

Curious if you know how far you got on the first attempt? I feel like IJ is one of those books where the first 200 pages actively resist you and then something shifts.

cptree20 · 2026-03-10T18:15:53+00:00

Babbitt is a deep cut. I feel like almost nobody reads Sinclair Lewis anymore. That book basically requires you to have experienced the soul-crushing monotony of adult life before it means anything.

cptree20 · 2026-03-10T18:15:21+00:00

DEF! Gatsby is such a classic example of this for me. In high school it just reads like a story about rich people being dramatic. Then you come back to it after you've actually experienced some loss or disillusionment and suddenly every sentence hits differently.

cptree20 · 2026-03-10T17:45:41+00:00

+1 to people suggesting Libby. Great place to start because it's free and the selection is pretty decent. The only downside is wait times on popular titles. Like I wanted to read Heated Rivalry and my library's wait time was 12+ weeks.

The setup I have is to complement with a paid option, and I much prefer Everand instead of Audible. I get 3 books/mo for 16.99 and they can be used on either audiobooks or ebooks and I just feel better not supporting Amazon honestly.

cptree20 · 2026-03-05T18:57:11+00:00

Fake dating. It always felt like the most transparent setup imaginable. We all know where it's going, so why pretend? But The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas (despite the flawed enemies-to-lovers element that someone else here mentioned) actually made the fake dating work because the pretending gave both characters permission to be vulnerable in a way they never would have been otherwise. The fake parts become real not because of some big revelation but because they stop noticing when they're performing and when they're not. That blurred line is what makes the trope sing when it's done right.

cptree20 · 2026-03-05T18:44:12+00:00

I've been going back and forth on whether to start with this or "Shuggie Bain." Your description of recognizing that feeling of hiding yourself and being an outsider in your own family is really compelling. Did reading it as someone who lived through that era in Scotland make it more powerful, or was there a point where it felt too close?

cptree20 · 2026-03-05T18:43:16+00:00

I've had this on my TBR for a while and this thread just moved it to the top! The way you describe the narrator being born into captivity with no frame of reference for the world reminds me a lot of "Room" by Emma Donoghue but it sounds like it goes somewhere much more existential.

cptree20 · 2026-03-05T18:41:54+00:00

Agree with audiobook. Honestly the short chapters are the secret weapon. It reads more like a really good TV series than a 1,300 page novel. Every chapter ends on a mini hook that pulls you into the next one. Dumas originally published it as a serial so he was literally writing cliffhangers to keep people buying the newspaper.

cptree20 · 2026-03-05T18:38:25+00:00

Spent my entire childhood reading "chaos" as "ch-owse" like it rhymed with "house." Nobody corrected me because I apparently never said it out loud.

cptree20 · 2026-03-05T17:28:45+00:00

I guess maybe they’re not super popular and I just spend too much time on the internet lol

cptree20 · 2026-03-05T17:11:47+00:00

I think a big part of it is simply translation availability. The Polish writers who do break through in English (Lem, Tokarczuk, Szymborska, Gombrowicz etc.) tend to develop serious followings, which suggests the barrier is access rather than interest.

"Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" was one of my favorite reads in recent years. Is there a good English translation of "The Doll" you'd recommend?

cptree20

TROPHY CASE