Definitely in my top three worst books of all time.

What!

So disappointing.

It’s such a small thing isn’t it and yet it speaks volumes.

That is so terrible.

I watched Battlefield Earth in the cinema and I’m still angry about it. Didn’t have a clue about L Ron Hubbard and scientology angle, just thought John Travolta had made a Sci-fi movie.

Yeah, we have spent years honing the knowledge and skill which is buying books for ourselves and those amateur’s think they can spend five minutes in a bookshop and come out with the goods. I stuck it out for years and then I begged them to stop and they did.

The carrot cake thing is a douchebag move. But at least your Dad bought a cake. It wouldn’t even have occurred to my father. My mother was the definition of a married single mom.

John Boyne, what a shitehawke.

I hate candles too, but because I witnessed a candle fire once, the apartment (not mine) went from fine to gutted in ten minutes so I only have emergency in case of black out candles.

I’m a late Gen-X and everyone I know read those books way too young.

Yuck!

I can see the self-satisfied smile on their face as they did it to, the monsters.

God I hate that shit. I’ve had my own mental health issues and getting angry on my own behalf has dragged me out of more depressive holes that positivity ever did. I might do a self help book of my own. How to get angry and set boundaries by I Jackdaw.

Very glad you survived your dangerous illness.

I think you are very much stuck in your own bubble. The biggest issue Dostoevsky would have faced today is how dominant English language publishing is in Europe. How few books are translated from non-English to English, compared to the opposite. How anyone writing in a non-English language needs to find an academic niche because publishing doesn’t pay. That is before we look at the sanctions against Russia, very deserved, but nonetheless I’m sure they would have a negative impact on the Arts.

The Raksura series by Martha Wells. I was a huge Murderbot fan but the first time I tried to read the Raksura I bounced off because it was soo different. But then I came to it with a fresh mind and I was hooked. One of the nice things about it the protags are non-human and they frequently sleep by all cuddling up together in a big warm heap. As I was pretty touch starved at that point that really appealed.

It is dense.

I personally also class The Heart of Darkness as one of those classics which benefit from being a bit older reading them. I don’t know how old you are. It may not be relevant. I just engaged with the story better in my 30’s or 40’s. I still hate the ending, I can’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t hate the ending. But I appreciate the first 75% more now.

I read it as an adult, as did my sister and we both enjoyed it. It is a largely well executed, well paced, character driven story. I didn’t think much of the worldbuilding but I just kind of closed my eyes and concentrated on the characters.

Whatever skeleton crew Amazon has left running Goodreads made a huge error. Both in the categories they chose to cut and the timing of the announcement. I was watching a livestream on youtube by bookslikewoah and Jess Evans which had a number of other booktubers and lots of Goodreads target demographic. We all came in pissed at the cuts and it poisoned any good will we still had left towards the awards.

As someone said they could have cut Humour and it would have been fine because most of those books could easily be absorbed into the memoir and autobiography category. The fact that Graphic novels were cut and none of them redistributed into categories like Sci-fi or fantasy was noticed. But MG well, the anger was palpable.

My feeling is that this was a spineless attempt to avoid culture wars in the USA. As the latest Heartstopper book was sure to win Graphic Novel and MG just seems to be the latest battleground for the loud and the stupid. Rather than fight for children’s right to diverse books, they chose to cancel the category, like the useless quivering quislings they are.

Janice Hallett is really working her way into my heart as one of my favourite authors. I thought The Appeal was ok, I really liked The Twyford Code and The Mystery of the Alperton Angels.

Wrong place, Wrong time - Gillian McAllister Was my mystery of the year so far.

Little Ghosts - Gregg Dunnett

Was advertised as having an amazing twist and I was like, ‘we’ll see about that’ but I was totally gobsmacked by a very well executed twist.

Kenny’s bookshop in Galway have a large selection. I know they ship internationally but of course that comes at a price. It might be worth sending an email to check if there was a way of bundling a group of books together to make it as cost effective as possible.

https://www.kennys.ie/leabhair-ghaeilge