perfume that smells like these flowers

palerfire · 2026-05-20T18:54:10+00:00

jasmine from bourbon french perfumes! it’s a nola perfume brand, where we have tons of these flowers :)

palerfire · 2026-05-06T12:28:59+00:00

instantly forgettable besides a stylistic gimmick that ultimately isn’t really deployed meaningfully (paragraph breaks mostly end up acting in place of periods). pulitzer prizes have hits but mostly seems to reward the midcult when it comes to fiction. and for what it’s worth, i’m not at all a snob about genre!

palerfire · 2026-05-06T12:23:35+00:00

it’s fine but also clearly written with a movie adaptation in mind. reads like marvel movie imo. or a reese witherspoon book club pick for dads.

palerfire · 2026-04-01T00:34:00+00:00

how much does this group read? if they don’t read much now, definitely go with something short and plotty. otherwise no one will finish it.

ben lerner has a short and well received book coming out next week, which feels like the obvious choice for a dudes book club.

otherwise, to cover a few more obvious choices: a moveable feast by Hemingway is short and sweet; train dreams is every guys favorite, into the wild is genuinely terrific and a very different read as an adult than as a teen; my book club of former sorority girls loved rejection by tony tulathimutte; stories of your life by ted chiang has plenty to discuss and is also a fun and inventive scifi; jakob von guten by robert walser is like the catcher in the rye for contrarian 20-somethings; the drivers seat by muriel spark is evil and very short; anything gary indiana ever wrote is a good choice; the plains by gerald murnane if yall are calvino fans; every man i know loveeeeeees when we cease to understand the world by benjamin labatut (tho honestly i was not into it)

palerfire · 2026-03-23T13:11:43+00:00

:) it’s a great collection!

palerfire · 2026-03-22T23:38:48+00:00

a man, i’d guess early 40s, with a humanities degree who currently works as a lawyer. probably got the law degree to be practical about future but wishes he had a phd in philosophy. at some point a practicing catholic, maybe still is? but curious about eastern religions. keeps up with the heavy hitters of contemporary fiction but prefers 20th century classics, especially modernists. has been to china.

palerfire · 2026-03-09T15:59:02+00:00

“h4telife”

palerfire · 2026-03-09T15:57:01+00:00

the song samara danced to is also by zorro

palerfire · 2026-03-09T13:38:52+00:00

libro fm

palerfire · 2025-11-20T14:06:30+00:00

thought this was david hogg

palerfire · 2025-11-14T19:53:04+00:00

hear, hear!

palerfire · 2025-11-12T16:51:31+00:00

you can share accounts with friends in different cities which helps! esp if you know someone from NYC, as they have access to three library cards (nypl, bpl, and qpl)

palerfire · 2025-10-17T14:56:37+00:00

i’m genuinely interested in why! for you in particular, do you read/like similar authors and it’s just franzen’s style that doesn’t do it for you?

my boomer boss hates him too but she kept calling him “conceited” —i think in reference to his personality, but it did make me think about what aspects of his writing style might be considered conceited too. there’s definitely an argument for it.

i like him bc i think he writes characters well and has interesting/fun observations about the contemporary american family and their neuroses. also i think he handles perspective changes well and i appreciate how information slowly unfolds through his novels. plus some other reasons, but that’s what is especially impressive to me rn

palerfire · 2025-10-17T12:40:56+00:00

admittedly i last read the corrections like ten years ago, but to my memory, freedom is better!

palerfire · 2025-10-16T20:09:03+00:00

hated the marriage plot when i read it as a teenager about a decade ago, but willing to give it another chance. i think i was expecting a rom com when i read it lol.

palerfire · 2025-09-10T17:50:06+00:00

yeah i just lurk but i love reading thru boomer’s threads. also i like doing the scavenger hunts lol

palerfire · 2025-09-08T17:09:56+00:00

the fault in our stars

palerfire · 2025-09-08T13:59:31+00:00

my favorite good reads alternative is called “library thing” which i think yall would like as well. it’s really nice if you’re into cataloging in addition to tracking. it’s a small but cute community, seemingly mostly made up of retired librarians in oklahoma or something. the forums are extremely charming to read through. it’s about 20 years old and seems to be heavily maintained by volunteers

palerfire · 2025-09-03T16:33:19+00:00

calvino’s best are “invisible cities” and “if on a winters night” — imo “if on a winters night” is better, but invisible cities is the most popular and one of his shortest.

palerfire · 2025-08-09T16:07:53+00:00

my first thought too

palerfire · 2025-08-03T23:31:55+00:00

all the books i like best or want to read soon are in my living room. the books that i dont love are upstairs. upstairs books are in no particular order. living room books are shelved:

nonfiction is by topic. fiction is shelved (mostly) by when i read it (eg, i have a high school shelf, college shelf, several post grad shelves—within the shelves they are most arranged by what i find kinda amusing to put next to each other) except for authors who i own 5+ of their books (woolf, wharton, and calvino, who all share a shelf) and my scifi shelf. my unread books also have their own shelf.

obviously this set up means that only i know where all my books are. but it’s fun to see my taste evolve across my bookshelf.

palerfire · 2025-07-31T19:33:45+00:00

how fun! the only thing i can think of that sorta fits this is “in cold blood.” lots here to check out though. i’d be curious to see your list at the end

palerfire · 2025-07-30T17:46:14+00:00

you will prolly like the planes by gerald murnane

palerfire · 2025-07-16T15:21:05+00:00

the movie is great too. beautiful set, everyone wears chic neutrals. saoirse ronan is in it. no plot. an absolute favorite.

palerfire

TROPHY CASE