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bell is Currently Reading

bell is currently reading

Winter’s Orbit

by Everina Maxwell (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: lgbtqia, fantasy, romance, opl-ebook, 2022-favourites, sci-fi, slow-burn-me-so-good, adult-high-fantasy-sci-fi-romance, debuts, queernormative, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in August 2022

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bell said: " 4.5 stars

This book gives me butterflies, or the heart-swells, as I like to call them. I finished this book this morning and it’s still giving me heart-swells just thinking about it.

What a beautiful, breathtaking love story, and I know these character 4.5 stars

This book gives me butterflies, or the heart-swells, as I like to call them. I finished this book this morning and it’s still giving me heart-swells just thinking about it.

What a beautiful, breathtaking love story, and I know these characters aren’t real, but I feel quite lucky that I was able to share their love story with them.

Reading this book also made me realize something about why I don’t generally gravitate towards sci-fi books. The parts of this book that were the most thrilling and compelling and heart-swelling for me were the parts that built the relationship between Jainan and Kiem. There was so much world-building that was very well done and detailed and scientific and technological and I’m always so impressed with authors who just… make up whole-ass worlds for their characters to live in. And while I am very impressed, as it is indeed, very impressive, intricate world-building is not why I read books. I think it’s beautiful and definitely enhances stories in a fascinating way, but with this book, like with so many others I’ve read, I found myself almost skimming through the world-building bits because I just didn’t really care about it very much. I still read it all; there’s often key details in the world-building that comes into play later in the plot, but I’m not eating it up. It’s a means to get to the end; the end being the characters interacting and their relationships progressing.
This reflection is also making me realize perhaps why I love romance books so much. The parts of books and stories I love the most are the developments of interpersonal relationships between the characters (not exclusively, but largely), and the kinds of stories that tend to have the strongest, most intense characters relationships are usually romances. It is the only “main” genre of storytelling that directly hinges on the relationships between the characters.
With this in mind, it is rather sad that there are not other large genres that focus on interpersonal relationships that are not romantic ones. (i.e. “Found Family” is a trope and not a genre; most of the media I’ve consumed that focuses on friendships like a buddy comedy or certain “chick flicks” are either films or YA books. My point is that there’s not nearly as much to choose from, and there’s often way more misses than hits.)
I read books for the heart-swells, if I’m being honest, and 9 times out of 10, I get them from romance books.
And this book 1000% gave me heart swells, so mission accomplished, from my point of view. ...more "

progress:

(page 166 of 432)
"tell me how 50 pages in these characters are already making me emotional" — Aug 04, 2022 09:33PM

Aug 06, 2022 11:07PM · see review

bell is currently reading

Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class: Dimensions of Inequality and Identity

by Susan J. Ferguson

bookshelves: currently-reading, feminism-gender-studies, race, sociology

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May 19, 2026 08:39PM

bell is currently reading

Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity

by Chandra Talpade Mohanty

bookshelves: women-are-amazing, feminism-gender-studies, currently-reading

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May 19, 2026 08:38PM

bell’s Quotes

“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

tags: art, haunted, house, nature

1042 likes

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
― anaïs nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974

tags: inspirational, journey, quest, seekers, travel

1904 likes

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

tags: travel

2969 likes