Bundles of thinly-distributed bleached cellulose compound bound with high-adhesive epoxy between graphically illustrated printed flaps of thicker cellulose compound.

Probably about 40 pages in, I think. It was the second book of AA Attanasio’s Radix Tetrad, and after trudging through the first one, I hoped the second would be more enjoyable as I had been led to understood it was much different. It was indeed much different, but not in a manner which made it more enjoyable, so I gave it up.

If someone says it is their favorite book then they probably identify with it too much and missed the point.

How could you possibly conclude that from the simple fact of it being their favorite book?

Why pay any attention to meaningless numerical ratings handed out by strangers?

Conspicuous consumption at best, shopping addiction at worst. In any case it’s your money and life you’re impacting, and no you are not the only one who exhibits this behavior.

Neither. I don’t find much value in reviews from anonymous strangers, and even less from contextless star ratings. As such, I don’t feel a necessity to contribute that kind of information to any particular site. I have considered making a book blog as a personal exercise, but I have never really summoned the effort to get it going.

The average and median are different things. They are calculated in specific ways. To find out what the “average American” is doing in any particular thing, you calculate exactly that value. My point is that the average tells us less here about how people are likely to behave than the average because of the way the average is affected by concentrations in distribution.

I am convinced at this point that “aphantasia” is a problem of language and semantic misalignment, and not a large scale phenomenon of difference in experience.

You are confusing the significance of average and median. To illustrate, consider a sample of three people. If one reads 1 book, one reads 5, and one reads 50, the average person in that group has read 18.6 books. The median person has read 5 books.

In the same way, the average skews higher than the median for all Americans because the average is brought up by a relatively small number of people who read an enormous amount of books. So even though the median American only reads like 6 books a year (i.e. most Americans read 6 or fewer books), the average is brought up to something like 12-15 (depending on the survey) on behalf of a decent number of readers that are reading 40+ books a year.

Unless you know the person’s reading tastes, I wouldn’t. But I probably wouldn’t gift any book without knowing something about the recipient’s tastes.

It really doesn’t matter what you or anyone else does. On the list of books I keep, I also mark ones that I put down before the end.

I mean no offense by this but are you 25 or younger? This guy was one of the biggest authors of the 00s.

Yeah, his name is Dan Brown.

I don’t really spend much time thinking about it at all.

Search for “Trade Paperback.” I know they were all published in that format at some point in the last 5 years, so they are out there.

I think Fellowship is a pretty slow and rough start. I think that once you get through about 2/3rds of it, then things start picking up. However, that means you have to put up with that first part if you want to get on to the rest.

I think Fellowship is a pretty slow and rough start. I think that once you get through about 2/3rds of it, then things start picking up. However, that means you have to put up with that first part if you want to get on to the rest.

I don’t think it’s odd that a child wouldn’t have a particularly diverse book diet. Kids are often pushed towards commercialized series because it’s considered just good that they’re reading, and a series usually provides parents with a reliable source of new books they can draw on to provide their child. Most people don’t really start approaching well known “classics” until high school or maybe junior high at the earliest. And even then, their exposure is limited. Most people who seem to have read “a lot” and widely have done so of their own volition, as the number of books you can read as part of a HS curriculum is necessarily limited.

My favorite trope is when it doesn’t seem like the author assembled their novel from obvious building blocks that can be easily cataloged on Wikia or whatever.

1 - I enjoyed it

0 - I didn’t enjoy it

If an author has decided to write a book about a subject, it’s because they believe it is interesting or important for some reason. If they’re undertaking the writing of a book, then it’s their job to convey that in their writing as well and make it compelling to read.