#book opinions

[olskuvallanpoe]

I hate when people say that the only thing to get out of literature is romance and sex. Like people who think that haven’t experienced literature enough. There are so many important things that literature can do, and boiling it all down to romance and sex just diminishes the other work that it does.

[belle-keys]

My 2024 bookish predictions:

The Dragon Renaissance - With more Fourth Wing sequels in the works and season 2 of HOTD coming out in the summer, I think there's a good chance dragons and dragon-shifters could become the next big thing. Maybe they'll replace the fae as the "big" fictional creature?

The Percy Jackson Renaissance - It will be in full swing, accompanied by a noticeable Greek Mythology Renaissance among locals on Twitter whose knowledge of Greek Mythology is limited to... Percy Jackson. The Hunger Games renaissance will see its last days in January/February or so.

(Poorly written) military fantasy will become popular. Again, I think this will be an unwanted side effect of Fourth Wing's popularity. But I think the Gaza Genocide and institutions endorsing Zionism will play into this as well. I thinks we're about to see a lot of military propaganda in the book world and military-themed books trending.

Dark academia will enter into the beginning stages of its flop era. I say this as someone whose blog is largely dedicated to dark academia, but with Kuang not publishing anything in 2024, with Olivie Blake's Atlas trilogy coming to an end, and ST Gibson's An Education In Malice being... not that good, I can see people moving away from dark academia by the end of the year.

Colleen Hoover will release something. I don't particularly care for this, but I can easily see it happening. She didn't release anything this year so it makes sense she may have a 2024 release (and maybe one designed to improve her reputation).

The ACOTAR series adaptation will get chopped (officially, that is).

People will become less open about enjoying smut and dark romance with all the Twitter radfem discourse and backlash against poor quality romance ruling publishing. There will also be more "discreet" book covers. There will be a lot of anti-erotica discourse.

The Nobel Prize winner will be a POC.

Rivals-to-Lovers will replace Enemies-to-Lovers as the top trope. Less hate and more competition. More academic rivals, magic rivals, popularity rivals, etc. I can see people vibing with this in 2024 instead of the "I hate you but I wanna make out with you" vibes of full-on Enemies-to-Lovers.

JK Rowling will accidentally get herself arrested and/or indicted and she'll be all White Woman about it.

George RR Martin will announce that he "intends" to publish The Winds of Winter before the end of 2025.

A former Disney/Nickelodeon/child star/boyband member will write a memoir describing their trauma and they'll thank Jeannette McCurdy for giving them the courage to do it. The revelations will be insane and unprecedented.

[burningvelvet]

more rambling thoughts about wuthering heights now that i've finished my re-read

1 wuthering heights is basically the looney tunes if the looney tunes were goth. 90% of the novel is people arguing, dying, and running around threatening to kill each other, and often all three of those at once.

2 love how it's filled with dark humor. "he's such a cobweb, a pinch would annihilate him" is such a camp thing to say about the terminally ill child you abhor and who you spend weeks trying to set up on dates with your dead lover's child so you can steal her property when your son finally dies. heathcliff lecturing his son on Seduction 101 right in front of cathy 2.0, trying ridiculously to play cupid and compel them to fall in love with each other before giving up and just kidnapping her instead... surely he's the most insane brontë man?

3 i can't remember what i had for dinner last night but nelly dean can remember what the weather was like on any given friday twenty years ago (love her and her snarky comments)

4 love how after nelly finishes telling the story to lockwood she's like "any way. so you know cathy 2.0 is single right ;)))" and then cathy 2.0 shows zero interest in him. so then he's like "oh i just remembered i have somewhere to be :/" then fucks off to london for nearly a year then when he comes back nelly is like "nvm as it turns out cathy and hareton are actually soulmates lol who knew! gee, it's a good thing she didn't like you!" and he's just silently suffering. emily was just fucking around here. hindley was the only linton/earnshaw/heathcliff who was wild enough to marry someone who didn't share either his gene pool or his neighborhood.

5 i imagine joseph to look like smeagol from the lotr films but taller

6 [heathcliff, after stabbing his alcoholic arch nemesis and then pushing his servant into the puddle of the blood] "Wash that stuff away; and mind the sparks of your candle—it is more than half brandy!” LMAO

7 this opinion list is just turning out to be a list of the most insane heathcliff moments but truly the novel should've just been called "heathcliff"

8 heathcliff's weird paternal feelings for hareton, saving hareton's life, him saying he would truly love him if only he wasn't hindley's child, basically giving hareton his blessing to love cathy 2.0 toward the end... so oddly endearing

9 heathcliff walking out just before the "i am heathcliff" part of her speech. why WHY

10 hindley protecting isabella from heathcliff before she flees was nice and i wish we saw more of their dynamic around the heights. honestly aside from the child neglect (which is par for the course in wuthering heights) hindley is a pretty sympathetic character; his rivalry with heathcliff was fueled by both sides and truly the fault of their father for pitting them against each other by letting heathcliff usurp hindley's place of favoritism as a boy. hindley's gambling and drinking, his general dissipation and failure to secure his son's future, are all tragic.

11 i think hindley/edgar/heathcliff are all interesting foils for each other; they each lose the women they love and are left to be single fathers, and each responds to the task totally differently. if we include mr. earnshaw, all the fathers in the story essentially fail their children after all the mothers die. hindley and heathcliff have a special parallel through their lifelong brotherly competition, the women they love both dying in childbirth, and in their own deaths. hindley slowly kills himself while ignoring everyone around him; heathcliff also kills himself, but only after trying to systematically ruin the lives of everyone around him. they also say that they want to kill each other but fail when they try; heathcliff nearly kills hindley but ends up saving his life at the last minute.

12 heathcliff jr. is so terrified of heathcliff sr. and so traumatized and petrified by fear and he doesn't deserve the hate he gets for being annoying. he's been sheltered his whole life, his mother just died, he was sent to his uncle/cousin only to be immediately torn away from them to be abused by a stranger who treats him horribly, he's terminally ill, he's still a kid, he's threatened into marrying someone he barely knows, etc.

13 if any of you have seen the british comedy show "the young ones" that's literally hindley's household in wuthering heights when joseph/hareton/hindley/heathcliff/isabella all live together. the filth, the slop for dinner, the petty games, the violence, the fierce hatred yet weird loyalty to each other, etc.

14 i really wonder how cathy would have reacted to heathcliff's treatment of everyone else if only she had known the full details (ie his harsh abuse of isabella, his son, cathy 2.0, etc.)

15 heights was my first brontë novel but i think i like jane eyre and tenant better now that i've read them all back to back! next on the list is likely agnes gray. anne, my underrated queen!

[arson-09]

A court of frost and starlight is (subjectively) the worse book in the sjm world. Especially when it comes to mental illness

The first half of chapter 11 is fucking disgusting. I think i geniunely hate sjm a little after this chapter.

Rhysand is literally kicking a man while hes down. Tamlin is depressed. Hes not taking care of himself or his home and is clearly at rock bottom. His home is empty and as stated at the end of the chapter theres no wards around his manor to protect him

"But as I winnowed away, the dark wind ripping through me, a strange sort of hollowness took root in my stomach. Tamlin didn't have shields around the house. None to prevent anyone from winnowing in, to guard against enemies appearing in his bedroom and slitting his throat. It was almost as if he was waiting for someone to do it."

I can quote the entire chapter to point and say HEY THIS IS FUCKING GROSS WRITING! She worte a clearly depressed and ill man but hey! its okay rhysand said really bad shit to him because we LOVE rhysand in this house! to qoute feyre hes usually the bigger male so hes entitled to a slipup!

except hes not. thats not a slip up thats purposefully trying to trigger a man you know has anger issues so you have an excuse to kill him. That is quite literally what kids used to do to me when i was younger, thats being a fucking bully. Rhysand is not a good person, quite the opposite actually. Rhysand also states that "he had been given everything and squandered it." which is not completely true! (Given tamlins backstory and how he feels about being high lord so *loud incorrect buzzer*) Rhysand is an extremely unreliable narrator. Example from this chapter? Rhysand asks where "his dear friend" lucien is and Tamlin tells him hes hunting and the following happens

“Hunting for our dinner.” “No taste for such things these days?” Tamlin’s eyes remained dull. “He left before I was awake.” Hunting for dinner- because there were no servants here to make food. Or buy it. I couldn’t say I felt bad for him. Only for Lucien, once again stuck with being his crony.

Where did this come from? Tamlin said lucien left before he was awake. He didnt ask him to do that.

Rhysand proceeds to purposefully say stuff to make Tamlin angry so they can fight and is surprised when Tamlin just tells him to leave. Then chapter 23 does nothing to help this. Wow tamlin has completely isolated himself after rhysand fucked him up more. But its fine cause rhysand made him dinner and got people to patrol the border.

It really hurts. I have so many of the same mental health issues as Tamlin. Seeing sjm do nothing with this but add more stigma just sucks. Yes Tamlin fucks up in acomaf (even if i cant fully comprehend that one sjm) but that isn't excuse to do this horrific mental health shit.

I am open to discussion about this more! if we have opposite opinions that okay! if you love this series to death that's great for you! as long as your at least somewhat polite I'm chill with it. If your rude i will be mean on the internet.

[bookcub]

🙄 and ☕ for the bookish asks ? :)

🙄 what’s a popular book that you dislike, but you’ll get crucified if you say it?

I mean, I've been not shy about disliking Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree but I do try to tone down my posts about it. It had so much potential and delivered on absolutely nothing! And yet, it is social media's darling book and I cannot understand.

☕️ drop a HOT unpopular opinion about a book/character. be savage.

gwen and art are not in love was a hot mess. the characters were super annoying, it had not idea what genre it was and not savvy enough to play with expectations in a satisfying way, and said absolutely nothing of interest. overhyped and overrated

send me an emoji!

[catching-thefire]

My hot take is that it’s soooo obvious when authors run out of plot material but won’t give up the series and that’s when they put in constant REPETITIVE smut. And LISTEN! I love smut I’m an avid smut reader, but it’s so boring to have the same characters, doing the same scene, saying the same things over and over and over. If the smut is different everytime and changes a lot then I’m all in.. and y’all aren’t going to like this but I’m primarily thinking of ACOTAR (specially ACOSF) 🫣 I’m sorry but it was just clear to me she didn’t know what else to do with them :/

Two books I DIDN’T get that vibe from was the FW//IF series and the veiled kingdom ✨💞

[doraisalive]

im a hater and a hypocrite with no shame

the way I absolutely hate on colleen hoover and any of those nasty ass dark romance books that romanticize r-word/misogony/sa/abuse

acting all repulsed and shocked over how people (women mostly) enjoy this kind of "crap"

knowing damn well im giggling and kicking my feet reading PENOLOPE DOUGLAS books??!

who I will say with a hand on my heart has managed to make me okay with liking a fictional s-assaulter (idk how tumblr censors things im kind of new at this)

cause lets be fr rn... thats what Damon Torrance is

like its been months?! DECADES EVEN (like 6 months maybe) since I finished all the books and I havent read anything else after it.

nothin has grasped my interest as much as the devils night series did and that makes me soooooo mad

what managed to make the devils night series "peak" in my brain

so if anyone has any recommendations over books with like a similar premise? maybe even more likable men (my fav guys were kai and will.. damon too but like less disgusting)

smut isnt even that relevant, I just want toxic couples

im aware that im clearly not the target audience for dark romance cuz im literally 16 and a child

but nothing else is doing it for me like these sluts are

and to be fair I was raised early on by wattpad (my wattpad account dates back to early 2018 😀 like girl I was 10)

[hatetolove-lovetohate]

I'm not going to name characters or anything but I want some people to know that judging characters is completely okay. I understand that you love said character and that they went through some pretty tough shit but come on... not everything they do is "girlbossy" and badass. Some of the choices they made were not okay and they shouldn't be praised for that.

Also, lovely little question. Why do some people get offended when they see someone hating a character? "Since when did you all get on the hate train for (insert character)?" That train we're talking about should have existed in the first place! They are a red fucking flag even in their own fictional world.

Anyways feel free to discuss with me

[mantequillabooks]

Not much of a romance (as a genre) reader. Romance as a subplot in a fantasy book on the other hand tho..................I'm definitely there.

[dxhxe]

Reading fourth wing for the dragons!!! So far i dont like violet, or xaden. Xaden reminds me so much of Rhysand…

[omgwhatchloe]

if its possible to get the ick for a book, i definitely did when they had at least 2-3 paragraphs describing how uncomfortable she was of the homeless, and generally just putting them in this awful light, like they were actual evil threats towards her.

oh im sorry that you feel uncomfortable and scared when you see a homeless person, lola. it must be awful, when you’re walking around in your clean clothes with fresh food you can afford, knowing theres people looking out for you and youve got a stable life, im so not surprised those evil homeless people ruined your day.

but can you just imagine how absolutely dehumanising that is? like when she got scared of a homeless person, her boyfriend gave her all the sympathy and put his arms around her. THE HOMELESS PERSON DIDNT DO ANYTHING.

seriously ive been meaning to talk about it because just reading it made me so mad and ive been thinking about it since. undeniably the worst in the series.

[belle-keys]

Which books you find overhyped?

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but here's 5 of them that come to mind:

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Far too much "God Bless America" and romanticism of American and British institutions for me to not laugh in this book's face. The ship dynamics don't make up for the shitty political commentary.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. It's kind of a cookie cutter "gritty fantasy". That being said, this is YA and I feel like I'm judging it by adult standards so I'm being unfair. But it's a little too moralistic... or something, idk.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Lit critics were absolutely salivating over this book but I found it the most dry and boring way possible to comment on the relationship between technology and people.

Normal People by Sally Rooney. This book literally made me want to tear my eyes out of my face like I'm sorry for being dramatic but I don't *get* whatever it is people claim to get. Like, I kind of loathed the writing and dialogue.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I only have incredibly mean things to say about this book, so I'll keep it short, but this book stupid and not even in the fun way, idk. From the dialogue to the characters? Yeah, no. It's beyond me what booktok loves about it.

[burningvelvet]

36 chapters into moby dick. some thoughts:

- take a shot every time he expresses his love for nantucket or whaling trivia

- i know everyone said it was queer and usually i've come to expect that as hyperbole but this time they weren't joking

- CHILDE HAROLD REFERENCE?!?!?!?!?! BYRON QUOTED?!?!?!?! not surprised bc it is the romantic genre which byron & chp helped inspire & he was the best selling writer in early 19c usa & is noted for his oceanic refs & he & esp childe harolds pilgrimage esp are both noted on wikipedia's "nautical fiction" page but like. i had no idea they were immortalized in moby dick

- "Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

- does gay cannibal tumblr know about queequeg & ishmael?

- utterly obsessed with captain ahab for numerous reasons but does anyone else notice how similar he is to captain flint from black sails? like he's literally him but a bit older & combined with silver's leglessness.

- the part where ahab calls stubb a dog lmao

- ishmael getting worried for queequeg when he couldn't find him omg...

- "Where's that girl ? — there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with — 'no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;' — might as well kill both birds at once." MRS. HUSSEY!!!!

- i'm sure that all the focus on queequegs spirituality & his consultation with his god yojo wherein he was informed that ishmael had to pick their boat bc yojo demaded it TOTALLY won't prove to have any prophetic and symbolic consequences later on or anything

- love how the chapters are nice and short but on the flip side that means theyre tricking me into thinking i have less to go than i actually do... as long as i get more ahab i'm good i guess

-melville, at random: and now we take a break from our regularly schedule programming to give you . . . WHALE FACTS! [whips out multiple books on the history of whales and whaling, begins to recite]

[arson-09]

maybe an unpopular booktwt/booktok/bookstagram opinion but buying limited special editions of a book or book series you havent read is so odd to me. Like theres people who have actually read and want that limited limited edition but you just buy it to look pretty on your shelf. Yeah you can buy books you plan to read but i have seen so many posts of people buying DOZENS of books and just having them on their tbr or displayed on their shelf.

its a big part of the growing issue of overconsumption on booktok/bookstagram/booktwt. Theres nothing wrong with buying a book you like but these people doing expensive book hauls, especially off of amazon (which has tons of its own issues to unpack) are so weird to me.

Support libraries!!! read a book from the library before you buy it!! this benefits way more people in the long run and is much more sustainable.

[krisx10-reads]

Smash & Grab (RELIC #1) by Maz Maddox

I was haphazardly scrolling through the list of books on Romance Bookworms for the September 2023 Stuff Your Kindle Day when I found this gem. I immediately told my friend I was going to read it.

It's an MxM Shifter Romance, but the shifter happens to be a dinosaur. I admit, I was a little scared at first, considering the last Dino book I read was Wet Hot Allosaurus Summer by Lola Faust... and if you know... you know...

The cover of the book (I know we aren't supposed to judge, but I've noticed some cover trends while looking through Stuff Your Kindle Day books sooo...) is beautiful. It's simple, but it definitely captures the fact that there is a punk rock vibe going on.

How much of it did I read? : 110% (there's even a nice little bonus story on the author's website

I will 100% be reading more from this series, and the author... I'm just going to put more of a dent in my weird reading quest first.

P.S. I squealed every time I read the words 'Pretty Simon'.

Also the author has an awesome website

[scorbleeo]

Unpopular Opinion: Long Chapters

Despite scrolling BookTok content (maybe) everyday, I am still constantly flabbergasted at the things I see there, such as what's good, what's bad and what's heavily recommended. I do not condemn them but I always take what I see on BookTok with a grain of salt. However, I always stay to watch those who make videos about bookish things they hate.

One thing I always see is how much the BookTok "girlies" hate long book chapters. Like, why? I simply cannot relate since the only times I complain about chapters being too long is when I highkey did not enjoy the book. Yet, it seemed hating long chapters is the common consensus shared among readers over at TikTok.

Here's my unpopular opinion, I guess. I freaking love long chapters. Long chapters are usually so alluring; I get hooked onto them easier than shorter chapters. And, I find myself reading a lot faster when the book has long chapters which I think is because I get distracted and procrastinate a lot despite the need to read. With long chapters, I am not given as much opportunity to pause reading for the day or the hour. I don't know who shares the same sentiment as me but please feel free to tell me why are short chapters loved more.