Damn, whatever book would I- Harry Potter.

Can we rip out the pages and recycle?!? My kids doing all their Harry Potter books this week actually.

The short answer is: they are very angsty books with a lot of drama (domestic violence, death, missing kids, dead kids, assorted trauma) and people really like to go through all these feelings plus have a happy romantic ending.

It wasn’t my thing but it seems to get people into reading so that’s something I guess.

I’m a Pagan witch and run a blog on Tumblr, and I see posts about stuff like this so often it makes me sick. Not even alternative medicine — stupid things like putting straight up poisonous rocks in your water bottle cause they look pretty. Personally, I practice some herbalism and various aspects of mindfulness but I also take meds daily for mental health issues and I go to therapy, and I go to doctors when nothing else works.

What people don’t understand is that herbalism and witchcraft or whatever is just a supplement that’s meant to be used in conjunction with modern medicine. Witchcraft itself started out as science — herbalism, midwifery, and dream interpretation which is rooted in psychology and symbolism. The rest of it is basically asking for advice and hoping for the best.

I’m really sorry for all the hardship you’ve experienced and I’m really sorry about all the assholes in the Pagan and New Age communities that made these thing happen.

I wholeheartedly support the literal burning of 50 shades of grey. No one should EVER have to be subjected to that affront to language.

Does Ready Player One count?

Atonement by Ian McEwan, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Stardust by Neil Gaiman

I’ve read 4, so I think I’m allowed to have an opinion. Writing is overall pretty bad, very cliche and if you enjoy fancy prose this is not it. They are very quick and easy to read tho.

It ends with us is imo her worst book, verity had a lot of abelist aspects which makes me too uncomfortable to properly recommend it (tho I did enjoy it before that part solely based on how absurd the romance is). Her latest book reminders of him was ok but nothing special, if you’re gonna read one I would probably suggest this one

Overall I would probably recommend just reading other better books with similar themes unless you want to read colleen hoover for the sake of it. Which if so go for it I guess

There are a lot of books I have loved, but these two I would love to forget about and read again for the first time: A Prayer for Owen Meany Flowers for Algernon

Everyone has really good answers! I'm in a four person book club at my local library (me, my best friend, and two librarians, we also met online), so it's probably a lot different than your meeting lol.

We're friends at this point, and the founding librarian of the group doesn't even work with that library now, so she's just a regular attendee.

But after we catch up on personal stuff, we chat about what we liked, disliked, other books/media it reminds us of, maybe some cultural or social aspects of the book (we read sci-fi & fantasy, with an emphasis on women, BIPOC, and queer authors/plots/characters, so we usually have something to say about how that works into the story).

I sometimes wish we had a little more structure, but I imagine your book club will have someone with some set questions to lead the discussion.

The final Wheel of Time book if I can't redo the whole series. Simply put the last book of series would be the only one that made sense and it is such a satisfying conclusion

Copious consumption of box wine, ‘eh?

I like to listen to books but the narrator drives me nuts. I wish they selected them better.

❤❤

Haha! I'm really glad it's the right one!

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. You are a hero.

You are my newest hero. Thank you so much.

I'm happy to help!

I'll try to find the last one too, if I can.

Probably between Lord of the Rings The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova Pratchett Discworld (not sure which one- I haven't read all of them yet so there's some I have still have the opportunity to experience for first time)

My experience as someone who also has social anxiety has been very positive. Just remind yourself that you are there to have fun and learn.

Thank you so much, I just looked that title up and it is the one I was looking for.

I know about the last one but I can't remember very much about it since I read it over a few decades ago. I can remember that he took her around the world to try and protect her and the baby and even met a friend who also had gotten someone pregnant so she could learn that she wasn't alone. I think that before they became a couple that he had a struggle of getting her off drugs and getting her to love herself.

I only sell them in my store because they sell well. I’ve read a couple and I wish I could get that time back.

I’m going to be honest with you, it’s not necessarily the best look to “discuss your disagreements with Sanderson.”

It’s one of those things, sadly, that so many people here seem to love him and recommend him. He’s truly the Coleen Hoover (Tik Tok) but of Reddit.

I completely agree with your points — 100%. I think Sanderson’s naming conventions in nearly all of his stories fall flat. They’re very poor linguistically. And he spends so much time outlining and plotting that his characters just fall flat — seeing as he “discovery writes them — but they don’t cohesively flow like a tapestry into the plots he’s created.

The same goes for his prose. To me, Sanderson doesn’t like writing — telling a story. He likes gotchya moments, he likes hard fact, and rules. His prose and stories are never about immersion to me and sweeping me off my feet — but more like a DND Manual. Which kind of sucks cause he has some cool ideas!

Overall, I don’t think it’s worth “discussing” here with anyone as — seen above — you’re only going to state your opinions so that other people can tell you why you’re wrong about Sanderson, lol.

It might even be a more healthy discussion if you were to just post this on r/bookscirclejerk where most people aren’t infatuated with Sanderson like the second coming of Fantasy lol

I used to enjoy reading the introductions - I found them especially helpful on Kafka translations - but then I took out a Scarlet Letter ebook on Libby and the introduction was a 5 minute summary of the entire book. It wasn’t even a literary analysis, which I would’ve been fine with because the social context of an old America may have been helpful to me as a UK reader, but it was literally just a Spark Notes synopsis. I knew nothing about the book at all before going in so it ruined it entirely and I gave up because I didn’t really see what else I had to learn from it…

I’ll probably avoid them on classics going forward after that, or only bother with introductions on physical or ebooks so I can just drop it and get reading the book proper if it gets too exposition-y.

You definitely misunderstood OP’s point.