JB @ Spine

A reading companion that is rooted in what you've actually loved, not what's trending. iOS + Android.

early access now open ↓

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

I added Piranesi to Spine. The companion's note: "You've been circling this since you first fell in love with Invisible Cities."

That's what I want from a reading app. Not a star average.

iOS + Android early access open: https://t.co/UK0JbXXPyW

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

what's a book you love more than its rating?

mine's a 3-star on paper that rewired how i read. the number lies.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

most underrated american novelist: john williams. not the composer.

stoner follows a quiet english professor through a disappointing life. nothing really happens. it's still one of the most devastating books i've ever read.

no twist. just a life.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

she who became the sun by shelley parker-chan.

a peasant girl is fated to nothing. her brother is promised greatness, then dies. so she steals his name, his future, and dares heaven to notice.

the ming dynasty as a knife fight with destiny.

https://t.co/lM2ASEu9bg

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

i'm in the home stretch of the urth of the new sun — wolfe's coda to the book of the new sun.

asked my spine companion if the payoff lands. it said: "much weirder and less focused on the action... pure, surreal density."

sold.

https://t.co/hnlVHeDODs

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

told spine: "family sagas that span decades and continents"

it built "Bloodlines and Dust":

- The House of the Spirits (Allende)
- Pachinko (Min Jin Lee)
- The Covenant of Water (Verghese)

i described a feeling. it handed me three whole lives.

https://t.co/4ObHvQRouO

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

most underrated fantasy writer alive: guy gavriel kay.

tigana is about a conquered country whose name is wiped from the world by sorcery — you can't hear it spoken unless you were born there.

nobody writes loss at this scale and still makes it feel personal.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

blindness by josé saramago.

a whole city goes blind, one by one. no cause, no cure. one woman keeps her sight and spends the book wishing she didn't.

no quotation marks, sentences that run half a page. you stop noticing by page ten.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

told spine: "slow-burn character studies where almost nothing happens"

it built "Quiet Stakes and Slow Shifts":

- The Tartar Steppe (Buzzati)
- A River Runs Through It (Maclean)
- Grendel (Gardner)

no genre. no keywords. just the feeling, and it knew.
https://t.co/IlLd9SqIqf

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

most underrated novelist of the last century: mikhail bulgakov.

wrote the master and margarita in secret. burned an early draft. dictated the final edits as he went blind.

the devil turns up in soviet moscow with a giant talking cat. nothing else reads like it.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

this is the whole idea behind spine. describe anything: a film, a feeling, a weather. get real books back, the companion does the connecting.

try it, no signup needed: https://t.co/4EflndKQGD

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

the odyssey is doing the rounds again — tickets just went on sale.

asked spine what reads in the same key. came back with a shelf called 'Dust and Deities'. 4 picks, all of them earn it. 🧵

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

the picks:

The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller)
The King Must Die (Mary Renault)
Ariadne (Jennifer Saint)
Stone Blind (Natalie Haynes)

each takes a myth you think you know and tells it from the inside. same gods leaning on mortal lives. the odyssey's world, four new doors in.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

i read sci-fi for momentum. spine pushed stations of the tide on me anyway:

"it treats the environment as its own living, breathing entity."

a 1991 nebula winner nobody mentions. that one line sold me.

https://t.co/25jOBdrFc5

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

the traitor baru cormorant by seth dickinson.

an empire takes her island and kills one of her fathers. so she joins its civil service as an accountant and learns to destroy it with math.

the betrayal at the end still makes me wince.

https://t.co/OXAYL3HdyT

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

told spine: "nature writing that makes you want to walk for miles"

it built "Wilderness and Mythic Solitude":
- The Living Mountain (Shepherd)
- The Peregrine (Baker)
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Dillard)

described a feeling. got real books back.

https://t.co/ExU9bX3JQy

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

describe a feeling — a book you loved, a movie you can't stop thinking about. spine builds you a shelf on the spot.

https://t.co/mCYb3lAawY

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

asked spine what books read like wuthering heights — the new fennell adaptation hit streaming this weekend.

shelf came back called "devotion and wreckage". 4 picks. all of them earn it. 🧵

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radcliffe)
Villette (Charlotte Brontë)
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (Angela Carter)

different books, same wound. love and class wrecking everything they touch.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

the fisherman by john langan.

two widowers find a creek that promises to bring back what they've lost. should be a fish story. isn't.

grief horror that knows exactly what it's doing.

[JB @ Spine @SpineReadsJB]

i loved dune. spine on dune messiah:

"much more cynical and stripped down than the first. don't expect another grand adventure."

the rec i actually needed.

https://t.co/zX2xeR9oYr