Alternatives to Goodreads

If you, like me, are trying to gradually move away from online services that are run by corrupt American megacorporations, then perhaps this overview of alternatives to Goodreads might help you find a new home for your reading journal. I have been using Goodreads since 2009, which was long before it was sold to Amazon. Back then it was the only website of its kind. Goodreads is still the website with the most comprehensive functionality for everything I need to organize my books. The only problem (aside from it being owned by Amazon) I see is that recommendations focus immensely […]

Propaganda and polyamory: Revisiting the Hunger Games

Prompted by having read the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I recently decided to re-read the Hunger Games novels. First of all, I was curious about the prequel – how can a prequel about the villain of the series tie in? The prequel tells the (love) story of a teenage Coriolanus Snow, who later becomes president (dictator would be the more appropriate term) of Panem. What an odd book to read, because how can you make a novel about an entitled narcissist, who treats people like possessions, possibly compelling? While his rise to patriotism is sometimes interesting, […]

A novel development

It’s been a very long time since I read novels out of my own free will. Having been forced to read some pretty annoying stuff during my time studying literature made me lose interest in this medium. Even though some of the books I read for uni were undoubtedly good, I can’t say that they were really my style or my type of book. Margaret Atwood comes to mind. The Handmaid’s Tale is a brilliant dystopian novel, just my kind of stuff, but some of the other things I read from her – nice, but not really my thing. So […]