a response to "new book topics to argue about"

19 Sep, 2026

weather: ☀️ TGIF
critters: my cat i guess

i'm in agreement with the general book blog consensus that we've trodden the same few topics with the same few people way too many times, as discussed by frances--who, conveniently, has proposed some new topics over which we might spit righteous fire

the arguments

i rolled a pair of bone dice and they say "comestible" should be used only twice in an average book. i'm below a certain age so i can't not hear the word yelled by plankton from spongebob

for books that stay at home, the ideal bookmark is a piece of legal paper tender of small but not insignificant denomination. it'll be a nice surprise for later

for books that travel around, a sticky note is a good secure bookmark that can survive being carried in a bag, or dropped in the sand

the fine for having over 3000 TBRs should be the oubliette and an unabridged notre dame. at 3000 you have it on there anyway

i never want to forget things, so if there were a button to make me forget a book so i could read it over again, i don't think i'd ever press it. picking up the foreshadowing on a second read is the best part

author annotations would be awesome for some nonfiction that doesn't have many author notes already. i'm less interested in the idea as it could apply to fiction because i kinda just want the story to stand by itself, unless the annotations are part of the story (hi, house of leaves)

ann patchett recently did an annotated edition of bel canto. maybe more of that will appear in the future--if it interests people and the author wants to do it, why not? i probably won't read them but i'm not mad at their existence

translation notes are fucking great. i read a lot of manga as a kid and the notes often interested me more than the stories. everything i've translated myself has a lot of notes attached

there are specific translators i super want to read notes from because i'm baffled by their decisions and want them explained

i like fake author blurbs.¹ for me that's an evergreen joke format

i don't care about blurbs on lit fic covers, but on genre covers, i'll pay attention. there's a newish fantasy book on my TBR (once was willem) cuz the guy who wrote between two fires gave it a cover blurb

but because i'm also a bit of a hater, i've used blurb names to decide what not to read. for example, if becky chambers' name is anywhere on the cover, i'm gonna put it back on the shelf. and i was never like illusioned with jeff vandermeer, but i'm disillusioned enough that his endorsement can be a point against a book

i really don't care for how blurbs look, though. they can make a cover look noisy. i wouldn't be sad to see the them go, but it is easier to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of author blurbs

if i may propose a new book topic to chew the fat about: what was the ugliest decade for book cover design, and for what genre(s)? i think the 00s had some of the worst for lit fic and certain memoirs--bland stock photos and blander typefaces abounded. but fantasy bestseller covers are currently BLEAK. they look like they were "designed" in two minutes and i can barely differentiate them