[ SECRET POST #6585 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6585 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.
[Stardew Valley]



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03.
[The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 14 secrets from Secret Submission Post #940.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/itpwBjW.jpeg

[randomdrops]

I feel this, but my "absolutely stunning, no notes" book was Legends & Lattes lol. So while we have drastically different tastes, I definitely get where you're coming from. I keep looking at lists along the lines of "people who loved X" recs and they are 99% trash. It's incredibly frustrating.

I just went and checked the logs, 2022 was the best year in books I had had in forever and every year since has been a disappointment. That year had so many new (or new to me) authors it really set the bar high.

[(Anonymous)]

Your capsule reviews are hilarious. I never want to know what a "me-burger" is.

[(Anonymous)]

i think this is kind of a you problem tbh

like...some of these things are very legitimate quality or preference issues (not enjoying a story with no tension, getting annoyed by Weir's shallow MC) but then you also seem to be ruling out a lot of things for minor points of style and you might actually find a lot of narratives you enjoy if you pushed yourself out of your stylistic comfort zone (first person is often done badly but it can also be spectacular, if the voice is right)

on the other hand very few people who Do Book Reviews And Recs, in my experience, are actually good at it - what they're good at is reading fast

but to make good recommendations you need a really keen eye for tone and craft and theme, and the ability to separate out the different elements, and the wisdom to say "IF YOU liked XYZ about Jade City, other series with THOSE ELEMENTS are QRS. On the other hand, if the thing you enjoyed about Jade city was the ABC part, check out LMNOP."

instead of all recommendations being A Soup Of Things I Like

[(Anonymous)]

This. A lot of your complaints, OP, sound like there's definitely some tropes or writing styles that just aren't for you. Sifting those out is a learned skill, but one probably worth cultivating to find the books that speak to you.

[(Anonymous)]

yes, this. I don't generally read 2nd person, but if I had skipped Harrow the Ninth just because half of it is 2nd person... I would have missed out on an excellent book.

[(Anonymous)]

I dislike 1st person but a lot of books are written in it so I will read it, but I am not sure even the best book on the planet could entice me to read 2nd person, ngl.

I didn't LOVE Legends and Lattes, but...

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it's fair to say there were no stakes. The protagonist was trying to build a coffee shop from the ground up, in a city where people had never heard of coffee, while trying to avoid entanglement with the local thugs trying to shake down her business, and a former colleague who wants to steal one of her treasures. It's low stakes, but they told you that upfront.

Re: I didn't LOVE Legends and Lattes, but...

[(Anonymous)]

DA
This is my take, too. It’s low stakes because the fate of the world doesn’t rest on Viv’s shoulders. But everything Viv has and has worked for is at stake, including her life. That’s not “no stakes.”

Re: I didn't LOVE Legends and Lattes, but...

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. Starting a small business when you have zero business experience, in a market that has NO current demand for what you're selling... that's a stake. It might not be life or death, but that was the whole point?

[(Anonymous)]

Ahhhhh, BookTok strikes again.

[(Anonymous)]

Agree on Legends and Lattes, but the mouse was cute.

Agree on Sanderson. Fuck the mormon church. Also I tried to read one book. The one with the guy in the cage? I was so bored and I got to red-head artist Not Like Other Girls girl and gave up.

I loved The Martian but couldn't get far in Project Hail Mary because of how much the dude pontificated about how "ONG SHREDDED!" he was. But pinnacle of mediocre white guy? You haven't read Ready Player One, have you?

[(Anonymous)]

I love The Martian dearly and the ending still makes me tear up. But mediocre? Babe, have we forgotten the words "Mary Sue"? Because Mark Watney, super botanist engineer astronaut, should have the theme from the Voyage of the Mimi playing as I type his name. Kind of makes me doubt that you know what you're talking about. Like, ok, this 10 year old scifi book isn't for you. Why is this up alongside all these new romantasy books?

[(Anonymous)]

NARYT but you might wanna read the comment again…

[(Anonymous)]

Mormon. Pass.

*snorts*

[(Anonymous)]

Is BookTok how you discovered books? Dropping something for being first-person POV, or having any specific POV you won't read, is kind of a sign that you did.

(I know there's an anon who's always called out here for bitching about this, and no, I'm not them. I've always been too late to that discourse here.)

[(Anonymous)]

God I love it when people complain about books on here because it makes me feel so smart. All of the books on that secret are trash.

You know that old saying...

[(Anonymous)]

If everywhere you go, you keep meeting assholes all day?

Yeah. Why don't you try writing a book instead of just whining about them?

[(Anonymous)]

What DO you enjoy? Maybe start with that instead of tiktok.

[(Anonymous)]

To be honest, it seems like you're an extremely basic reader, not because you won't read these particular books, but because you seem completely unwilling to read anything out of a very narrow comfort zone. It's like you're proud of eating exclusively junk food.

[(Anonymous)]

But most of these books are literary junk food. This is more like someone who doesn't like seafood and keeps getting invited to seafood restaurants.

[(Anonymous)]

yea so it's like listening do someone do a fifteen minute rant on why they only eat cheeseburgers from McDonalds, NEVER wendys or burger king or whatever. Like, sure, have a preference (and indeed I do not care for BK cheeseburgers while liking McD & wendys) but at least acknowledge that all fast-food cheeseburgers are trash.

[(Anonymous)]

First person isn't a dealbreaker for me, but I've definitely had straight romance come into a book that was not billed as such and just... like, make everything worse? It just became the least compelling relationship and the build-up to it was insufficient to say the least.