All hobbies are ridiculous in one way or another but if it fits in your budget and it makes you happy, do it.
Signed, the person who gets her favorite books in fancy hardback editions and then reads the ebook version on her Kindle instead
I’m fully aware I’ve overpaid for some fancy special editions with sprayed and stenciled edges.
There are some scenes involving a cat’s corpse in Suffer the Children by John Saul that have stuck with me for 40 years. I could really do without that memory.
I had this book called Soonie and the Dragon. It was about a girl who lived on her own and used her smarts to save Princesses from a dragon when everyone else failed. Now like 40 years later I’m reading books with dragons in them again!
I think it’s a muscle like anything else and it takes practice and the right setting. It’s perfect for something tedious like chores. I space out when I read a regular book too so I’m not too hard on myself when it happens with an audiobook. I just go back :30 or whatever.
I usually mention it in my recommendations but Red Rising I probably wouldn’t. Red Rising is marketed as adult Sci Fi. If you felt it leaned into YA that’s totally up to you but people don’t necessarily need to say it’s YA if that wasn’t the intention when he wrote it. The later books in the series definitely aren’t. The character is in his thirties (if I remember right) in the later books.
5 star: perfection, wouldn’t change a thing, can’t wait to tell everyone about
4 stars: liked it a lot
3 stars: it was average/ok/alright
2 stars: did not like it/not enjoyable, forced myself to finish
1 star: hate it, scourge on the face of the earth, who green lit this garbage?
I review about 80+ books a year on my blog and social media (I read more but only write reviews for the copies the publishers send me) and I’d say most books fall in the 3.5-4.5 range for me.
I’m not really a comforting read person so when it first hit I read Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant because I wanted to be distracted and nothing like killer mermaids to get the job done
If I just sorta liked something or it was average/good I can barely scrape up anything to say. But if I loved it or hated it I can go on forever. Same with book club meetings. If everyone is just neutral about it we move on to talking about something else.
It’s a ridiculous book but at least it was a fast read for me. If you find it slow then don’t bother because that’s it’s saving Grace.
I had a couple:
The Maze by Nelson DeMille- the main character devolved into a massive jack*** and the actual crime was just an excuse to get him around a bunch of women who would throw themselves at him
Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong- I don’t know what this book was besides a mess
Icebreaker by Hannah Grace- corny and pointless
I’m 50 and all my co-workers (elementary school teachers around my age) all read and loved Fourth Wing too. I’m unapologetic about reading what I love. No one does this for tv or movies. We aren’t expected to all watch black and white French films or classic movies. People are like “did you see the new Marvel movie?” and everyone is cool with that. I read what is personally interesting to me and if it’s all bestsellers, YA fantasy and genre fiction from the last 10 years I’m fine with that.
Whatever is free with my card(s): Libby, Hoopla and CloudLibrary
I also buy from Chirp sales and get books under $3.
Or free borrows for being an Amazon Prime member