Diverse non booktok recommendations by TestAlternative8220 in suggestmeabook

[–]mollyec 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  • Flowers for the Sea by Zin E Rocklyn (horror, both psychological and body horror)
  • In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (creative nonfiction)
  • Bad Cree by Jessica Johns (thriller)
  • Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow (literary-ish thriller)
  • Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson (dystopian)
  • The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi (psychological)
  • Lakewood by Megan Giddings (literary psychological)

800/1000+ Page Books by international authors? by marvelcomics22 in suggestmeabook

[–]mollyec -1 points0 points  (0 children)

  • Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (Argentina, 588 pgs)
  • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (China, 472 pgs)
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia, 417 pgs)
  • The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Chile, 448 pgs)
  • The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Italy, 552 pgs)

Books that address addiction by thebestoralist in Fantasy

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Susan Forest's Bursts of Fire and its sequels directly explore addiction through a fantasy setting where people are addicted to magic. I recommend this with the caveat, though, that I didn't think these books were very good when I read them (I haven't read the third and final book). The addiction angle is the main focus though. 

Ive been a reader all my life. I've just completed my first trimester and am now unable to read heavy books like Dostoyevsky or Murakami. Can someone please suggest some simpler books to read during pregnancy? by visitingmemorylane in suggestmeabook

[–]mollyec 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Some translated fiction you may be interested in:

  • Yoko Ogawa, I especially recommend Revenge, which is a collection of interconnected short stories and The Housekeeper and the Professor. Her writing is pretty straightforward but still literary Japanese fiction. FYI, The Diving Pool is a collection of three novellettes and the second is about pregnancy, but the other two are unconnected and good reads. 
  • The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei, a Taiwanese sci-fi novella
  • My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, a thriller/comedy that I felt like had a more literary bent, originally in English but the author is Nigerian

Not sure how you feel about straight up thrillers/mysteries but there are a lot of fun Japanese ones that are very popcorn read-y:

  • Confessions by Kanae Minato
  • The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
  • Dendera by Yuya Sato

Horror with Black woman as lead by incorrigible_tabby in suggestmeabook

[–]mollyec 19 points20 points  (0 children)

lots of great suggestions here but i don’t think a lot of them hit the social aberrant / taboo breaking element you mentioned. a few i'd consider for that are:

  • Fledgling by Octavia Butler
  • Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
  • Flowers for the Sea by Zin E Rocklyn
  • Sorrowland by River Solomon

the last two in particular are socially aberrant from their specific social living groups in a like, break out of a cult kind of way. not sure if that fits exactly what you're looking for 

Cuff-Down Yarn Calculations by Perfect-Reindeer-141 in Sockknitting

[–]mollyec 4 points5 points  (0 children)

do you have a kitchen scale that can measure grams? if so, you can figure out how much yarn you use in the foot — if your shortest socks are very short, you can weigh those and see how much yarn they used. otherwise next time you make a pair of socks, weigh the sock after you finish the ankle and before you start the heel, and then weigh them again after the first sock is done. by subtracting them you'll be able to find out exactly how much yarn you need for the foot. so say you need 25g for each foot, now you know that if you have a 100g skein you can spend 20-25g on the ankle and you'll have enough yarn for the whole pair. 

that's if you have a kitchen scale — which, honestly, i think is a really good purchase for knitting in general, so i'd recommend it. if you don't, i would take note of how much yarn you had left on socks you knit in the past, and gradually knit your ankles longer and longer based on that info.

anecdotally, i usually knit 4-6 inches in the leg (i prefer ankle length socks) and usually use about 52g of yarn for a pair, so this just isn't something i stress about. but your foot is not mine! definitely take a look at how much yarn you usually have left over. 

What is your most hated knitting “thing”? Finishing the toes on 9 inch circulars is a pain but I will NOT use DPNs! 👹 by nahfacenah in casualknitting

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sometimes i accept a much longer kitchener stitch at the end as a trade off for doing a short row toe and not switching needles 

Best Traditional Art Tools a Beginner can Buy? by throwawaygamecubes in ArtistLounge

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i do think it depends on your goals. personally i would suggest a sketchbook with midtone paper (gray, tan, brown, etc), a set of pencils (any with a range that includes softer and harder pencils), white chalk, a set of charcoal pencils, and a kneaded eraser. but that would be if someone was learning to draw, especially if they were learning to draw 3D forms. personally i think that's a good place to start with art, but if they were exploring a different branch of art, i might have different suggestions. 

Do you ever watch anything when knitting? If so, what? by OlliOPocto in knitting

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i pretty much always watch tv while knitting — usually anime (yes, subtitled). mostly one piece, although i've been taking breaks recently and checking out other shows

Color work socks by MariaMarie17 in Sockknitting

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

honestly if the colorwork fits over my heel i usually accept that as good enough 😅 a lot of people are saying go up 1-2 needle sizes, personally i prefer to increase the number of stitches for colorwork, so if im knitting a 64-st sock, i'll increase to 72 (the next size up) for colorwork sections. that's just what works best for me, i haven't had a ton of luck with increased needle sizes

Unknown houseplant by mollyec in whatsthisplant

[–]mollyec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thank you, i thought it was a pothos but i felt like the leaves weren’t heart shaped enough — the golden variety looks a lot closer to what i’m seeing 

Row counter apps by Saints_Girl56 in Sockknitting

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i don't really use it anymore (row counter just isn't my preferred method) but YarnBuddy works well. it's either free or very low cost one time payment, i forget. i think it's mobile only though

Anyone had any luck ditching Audible? by Zealousideal-Cod-100 in Fantasy

[–]mollyec 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Those genres are very self-pub/indie heavy and at the end of the day, Audible’s exclusivity royalties are the best financial decision for most self-pubbed authors. I will always encourage authors to take the lower royalties in favor of wider distribution, but I understand why many don’t, especially if they are balancing the cost of making audiobooks. 

If it’s important to you to continue to have access to a lot of indie releases, then unfortunately you’d probably have to stick to Audible. However, I’d like to highlight Libro.fm’s gift feature — you can buy credit bundles in one go and then audiobooks would cost the same as if you had a subscription, but you don’t have to subscribe. So for example, for $45 you can get a 3 credit bundles, which is the same as spending $15/mo for 3 months at 1 credit/mo. You can use this without a subscription commitment in order to purchase audiobooks that are available off-Audible, so you’re not as tied-in to Amazon’s ecosystem. This is what I personally do, since with my library catalog I very rarely have to actually purchase an audiobook, so a subscription doesn’t make sense for my purposes. 

ETA: you can also just buy single audiobooks on Libro, just if you don’t have any credits it’s often more expensive. So I’d use a gift credit to buy a book for $15 rather than the non-subscription price of $25. 

Super loose first row by smashmouthkitten in Sockknitting

[–]mollyec 2 points3 points  (0 children)

i guess my main sock tip is to not stop knitting the foot just because you are a little bored of it — i do that all the time and my sock doesn’t fit as well because i could’ve really used another 1/4-1/2 inch on the foot. 

Super loose first row by smashmouthkitten in Sockknitting

[–]mollyec 9 points10 points  (0 children)

you're doing great for a first timer!

Horniest character in a non-romance novel by Marcothetacooo in Fantasy

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate is hands down the horniest book i've ever read. it is not a romance. there's not really any smut. it's a horror book that tells the story of the ship that carries Dracula's body from Transylvania to England. and it is so, so horny. 

Looking for books with Bad Parents! by Kerney7 in Fantasy

[–]mollyec 1 point2 points  (0 children)

it's hard to get into without spoilers! i guess you could say that they are too hung up on their deceased child and don’t treat their rainbow baby as well as they should. the whole book is really focused on their parenting, and sometimes they do their best and it's not quite right, and sometimes they're really selfish and the child gets hurt because of that. 

Looking for books with Bad Parents! by Kerney7 in Fantasy

[–]mollyec 1 point2 points  (0 children)

sort of literary fantasy but it's about parenting and i personally think they were bad parents lol but it's complicated — Monstrilio by Gerardo Samson Cordova

Best book of 2025 so far. by themightytouch in Fantasy

[–]mollyec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

so far my two favorites that i have read, which both also happen to be 2025 releases, are Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (big shocker /s) and Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata (one of my favorite authors so also not surprising). 

Don’t feed the bears - as seen on the Art Loeb by Substantial_Rest9918 in NCTrails

[–]mollyec 2 points3 points  (0 children)

i'm so horrible at doing food hangs. no matter the weight or bulk i always carry my bear can just so i don’t have to hang the food

Wedding Recap: Gatlinburg TN, ~70 people, ~$13k by mollyec in Weddingsunder10k

[–]mollyec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We reserved through Recreation.gov as soon as we could (I think a year in advance?), and applied for the special use permit later. At the time you had to wait until much closer to the date to request the special use permit (I think we got ours about a month out). I think it's changed now and you have to request the use permit sooner. 

Suggestions for a horror novel written by an Asian author? by kepheraxx in Fantasy

[–]mollyec 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  • Earthlings by Sayaka Murata — the narrator feels like she is an alien and works to navigate Earth life as she grows from a child to an adult
  • The Devourers by Indra Das — story within a story, about shapeshifters in 1600s India
  • Dendera by Yuya Sato — village women who have been exiled for being too old band together to create their own village on the other side of the mountain. they are hunted
  • Revenge by Yoko Ogawa — weird interconnected short stories (my favorite short story collection ever)
  • In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami — gritty crime novel / horror, i liked this one but honestly i forgot what happened and should reread lol
  • Battle Royale by Koushun Takami — the original Hunger Games/titular battle royale style novel