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GatheringBooks

GatheringBooks

Joined May 2016

Book reviews at GatheringBooks.org
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GatheringBooks
Mina's Matchbox | Yoko Ogawa
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#CoverStories Day 3: #LargeAnimal - hippo it is, then. 💕

Eggs 🖤🧡🖤 2h
35 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#CoverStories Day 2: #EveningGown - a Big Bad Wolf book haul. 📚

Eggs Excellent 👌🏼 24h
38 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
Moomintroll Sets Sail | Tove Jansson, Cecilia Davidsson, Alex Haridi
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#CoverStories Day 1: #2SimilarCovers sort of - one is an Arabic book gifted to me by a student. 💕

Eggs Awesome 🌊 2d
42 likes2 comments
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GatheringBooks
Beautiful Darkness | Fabien Vehlmann, Kerascot
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#FeelinTheLove Day 28: Despite the heated-oven ending where the narcissistic [ #Narcissism ] villainess supposedly got her comeuppance, I found no redemption in this tale, the creators had none to give. The reader is left to find scraps of those from the occasional vacuous kindness for the beautiful darknesses to sneer at in its vapid naivete.
My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-akB

Eggs Great choice 👏🏻 3d
39 likes1 stack add1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 27: #BrotherLove between Black and White in what Fats calls in her review “a Disney-esque, neo-punk version of Japan. There is so much violence in Tekkonkinkreet. However, do not let it stop you from reading this book. It talks about brotherhood, faith, courage, the fragility of life, and the co-existence of light and darkness, that one cannot exist without the other.” Her full review here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-aBx

Eggs Excellent 👌🏼 4d
43 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
Our Sister Killjoy | Ama Ata Aidoo, Aidoo
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#FeelinTheLove Day 26: #SisterLove - This shared womanity or sense of girlhood is evident in the tagged book I read for #DecolonizeBookshelves - irrespective of one‘s skin color, to be female is to belong to “the ranks of the wretched.” One of the really great titles I read from the list of “Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books.” My full review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-opq

Eggs Sounds good 👍🏼 5d
36 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
Merchant of Marvels and the Peddler of Dreams | Chronicle Books, Frdric Clment
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#FeelinTheLove Day 25: It is not unlikely that the merchant of marvels and peddler of dreams also make #LovePotion(s). See my full review of this magical and hard-to-find book here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-6FL

Eggs Beautiful 😍 6d
47 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 24: the #Lonely Londoners was one of my greatest reads from our decolonize your bookshelf reading theme. Sam Selvon, who published in the 50s couldn‘t care less about pandering to a White audience, and what a liberation it is. My full review here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-pjL

Leftcoastzen On my TBR ! 1w
Eggs Perfect 👌🏼 1w
45 likes2 comments
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#FeelinTheLove Day 23: There is #ParentChildLove in this novel that, I feel, tries incredibly hard to be so “woke” and “current” - it comes across (at least to me) as performative and sometimes in poor taste. I am referring especially to their family photo that the author likened to a family in the West Bank. That soured my experience of reading this book. Will still give it a chance though for #ToB25.

Eggs Excellent 👌🏼 1w
Reggie I think she sets all this up for what happens to her in the end. I hope you read the rest of it. I loved this book. 1w
45 likes1 stack add2 comments
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GatheringBooks
Fractures | Carlos Andrs Gmez
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#FeelinTheLove Day 21: Heard the poet perform in Dubai and read his poems aloud overlooking the Persian Gulf last December as organized by Emirates Lit Fest. I assume this collection of poetry has #LoveOnTheRocks - maybe not with a lover, but with the larger society, and the universe - as Gomez explores race, violence, and what it‘s like to raise Black children in America.

Eggs Great cover👏🏻 1w
48 likes1 comment
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#FeelinTheLove Day 20: relocating to a small town to heal a #BrokenHeart is the premise, apparently, of these novels. Bought the first three in the series during the big bad wolf book sale in Dubai. Are they binge-worthy? Haven‘t watched the series yet - waiting until I have scoped the books first. Any thoughts about the series?

KadaGul The TV series is definitely worth binge-watching! I've heard it strays from the book a little. 2w
LiseWorks Love the series as a show. I wish I still had Netflix to still watch it. Never knew there were books. 2w
Eggs Have not read or watched💔 2w
AnneCecilie I‘ve only watched the Netflix series and love it (edited) 2w
44 likes4 comments
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GatheringBooks
Belle Greene | Alexandra Lapierre
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#FeelinTheLove Day 19: There is #IllicitLoveAffair between Belle Greene and a famous married art historian. That was pretty toxic. Come to think of it, she had several #IllicitLoveAffair(s) with married men. My full review here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-r26

Eggs ❤️💚🖤 2w
55 likes2 stack adds1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 18: Look at all those #Hearts in this understated book cover. Finished reading this last night. Definitely one of my #ToB25 favorites, thus far. What a delight. Review is forthcoming.

Megabooks Loved this one, too! 2w
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Loved this one! 2w
Eggs Me three! 2w
Suet624 Surprisingly good. 2w
61 likes4 comments
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 17: #GalentinesDay feels especially during the bridal shower bonding of the women and the revelations that ensued. Nearly finished with this #ToB25 title - why wasn‘t this novel given more love last year? It‘s brilliant!

Eggs I enjoyed this one! 2w
sarahbarnes I agree! It really is brilliant. 2w
49 likes2 comments
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 16: Quite the #LoveHatePairing with this #ToB25 title with Phoebe‘s cheating ex-hubby. I can see this being made into a series. Set against the desert last night as husband and I watched a Chinese concert pianist and Chinese dancers perform with the Jebel Hafeet Mountain (UNESCO heritage site) as the backdrop. Perfect post Valentine and CNY celebration. A good open-air wedding venue too. My sky cashmere shawl matches book cover.

Eggs So beautiful 💕 2w
squirrelbrain Lovely! ❤️ 2w
55 likes1 stack add2 comments
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 15: #TimelessLove vibes in these interconnected short stories especially the first and last one. Sparse and atmospheric, this #ToB25 title leaves a mark. Review is forthcoming.

BarbaraBB Glad you enjoyed it! 2w
squirrelbrain Such a good book! 2w
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Looks good! 😊 2w
Eggs Looks wonderful 2w
58 likes4 comments
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GatheringBooks
Transfer: Poems | Naomi Shihab Nye
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BarbaraJean This is one of my favorite poems!! 2w
Eggs This is brilliant 👏🏻 2w
32 likes1 stack add2 comments
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GatheringBooks
In a Jar | Deborah Marcero
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#FeelinTheLove Day 13: When Llewellyn meets Evelyn, Llewellyn hands her a jar filled with cherry light. Since then, Llewellyn and Evelyn collect things together. One day, Evelyn tells Llewellyn that her family is moving away. What will happen to their friendship? In a Jar is a beautiful reminder that friendship knows no distance. #LongDistanceLove - Fats‘ review here: https://gatheringbooks.org/2020/04/27/monday-reading-bunny-stories-parting/

Eggs Lovely 🥰 3w
51 likes1 stack add1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 12: A lot of #LoveLost in these short stories - a #ToB25 title that I finished reading over the weekend. Review is forthcoming. Paired with my non-alcoholic strawberry mojito.

Eggs Beautiful pairing 🩵 3w
59 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 11: #CrazyLove or maybe the infamous doomed love of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera - one of the many loveletters in this fascinating book. You can find more here in my feature: https://wp.me/pDlzr-7hF

Eggs Love this💕 3w
49 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 10: This one is Ludwig Van Beethoven‘s letter to his Immortal Beloved – who this is remains a mystery until now. This is a fascinating book that contains amorous and heartfelt #Loveletters of famous people: from Vita Sackville-West and Viriginia Woolf to Franz Kafka‘s letter to Felice Bauer. More here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-7hF

Eggs Excellent choice 💕 3w
40 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 9: #Chocolate chip cookie in a hot skillet with vanilla ice cream paired with an edited book where my chapter co-authored with an Emirati colleague is found, specifically: “From Mahmoud Darwish to Shakespeare, Naruto to Tintin Comics: Reading Preferences and Identities of Emirati Adolescents from the UAE.” Came out last month! 💕💕💕

Butterfinger That's very cool!!!! Congratulations!!!! 3w
Eggs Excellent 👌🏼 🤎 🍪 3w
47 likes2 comments
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GatheringBooks
Liars: A Novel | Sarah Manguso
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#FeelinTheLove Day 8: Would much rather be #Loveless than be in any sort of relationship with the protagonist‘s husband who, for lack of a better word, is a world-class jerk. A #ToB25 play-in title, which I finished reading last week. Review is forthcoming. Still need to read The Wedding People.

BkClubCare Whoa- not to give you high expectations but did you save the best for last? 3w
Megabooks The wedding people was my favorite of the three. Liars was a bit painful to read! 3w
Eggs 🩷💔❤️ 3w
41 likes3 comments
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Eggs So enthralled with Popova! 3w
38 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 6: Set in Lima, Peru, the author introduces us to young Marito who fell in love with an older woman, a 30-something divorceé, who found Marito‘s teenybopper infatuation amusing until she herself became enamoured by the innocent and untoward and forbidden romance of it all. #SteamyLove with the Mrs Robinson vibe. More here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-dt9

Eggs Perfect ❤️‍🔥 4w
mhillis Nice! This book is good! 4w
57 likes2 comments
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 5: #WeirdLove - The story opens with the beginning of the “weird” world, reminiscent of Nordic/Greek myths of gods and goddesses. All the men in this story are philandering, too full of themselves, and thoroughly self-serving. They are also threatened by women‘s intelligence or crippled by their burning love for them. My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-hkG

Eggs Brilliant 👏🏻 4w
57 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
The Mother's Tongue | Heid Ellen Erdrich
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Eggs Exquisite 🌹 4w
40 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 3: There are #LoveIsBlind elements here between Daniel and Susannah as I find the latter insufferable at 200 pages in. I finished two other titles for the #ToB25 while reading this and I haven‘t even reached a third of the book - does it get better and is it worth slogging through? The characterization is on point but not in love yet with any of the characters.

LeslieO I love everything about this picture! 1mo
Megabooks I enjoyed this book, but I think it was how much I love the narrator of the audiobook that really pushed me through parts I enjoyed less. Love the picture!! 1mo
squirrelbrain I enjoyed this more then I expected but it did feel very long so if you‘re not enjoying it at one third through…. 🤔 1mo
See All 9 Comments
Eggs Beautiful photo and dessert! 1mo
lynneamch Yum! 1mo
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Beautiful 😍 4w
BkClubCare Yes, beautiful photo! I ended up liking this story, just roll with it? 💖 3w
BkClubCare @Megabooks yes! Maybe audio was the best way to experience this? 3w
Megabooks @BkClubCare I think it was! 3w
49 likes9 comments
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GatheringBooks
Anxious People: A Novel | Fredrik Backman
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#FeelinTheLove Day 2: My #FaveLiteraryLove is Estelle‘s “affair” - unconsummated though it may be - with her neighbor as they exchange books with their own personal scribblings/markings in them. Imagine an illicit love wrapped up in book exchanges, so pure and so beautiful.

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks 🧡🧡🧡 1mo
Eggs Enticing idea❣️ 1mo
42 likes2 comments
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GatheringBooks
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#FeelinTheLove Day 1: #LovePoem or its failure, ostensibly.

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Thanks for sharing ❤️ 1mo
Eggs Perfection ❤️‍🔥 1mo
28 likes2 comments
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BkClubCare Oh 1mo
26 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
A Court of Mist and Fury | Sarah J. Maas
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#25Alive! Day 31: These were our Jolabokaflod #Gift(s) - college kid and myself‘s - last Christmas. Book #Gift(s) are the absolute best.

Eggs Brilliant ❤️ 1mo
38 likes1 comment
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Tears Across The Earth | Danabelle Gutierrez
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The First State of Being | Erin Entrada Kelly
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#25Alive! Day 30: What a glowing #Bright cover for this Newbery Medal awardee and National Book Award Finalist. Haven‘t seen this book at all anywhere here in the Emirates. I must find myself a copy soon.

Eggs 🧡❤️💛 1mo
38 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
Anxious People: A Novel | Fredrik Backman
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#25Alive! Day 29: There was much #Laughter as college kid and I read this aloud in our book club of two during the December holidays. As noted in my review: There is a tenderness to his writing that feels almost like a hug – but more perhaps like clinging to a liferaft, the act of writing the words his way of preventing himself from sinking – that he holds on to the reader – in beauty, in supplication, in wonder. More here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-qZ0

Suet624 Lovely review. 💕 1mo
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks I need to move this one up! 1mo
Eggs Accurate description of his writing ✍🏻 1mo
52 likes3 comments
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Collected Poems | Robert Bly
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lil1inblue 💚 💚 💚 1mo
32 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#25Alive! Day 28: The Universe in Verse to give us #Hope in these dark dark days.

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Pretty cover 🖤 1mo
52 likes3 stack adds1 comment
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TheSpineView 🤩🤩🤩 1mo
25 likes1 comment
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Spotify For Dummies | Kim Gilmour
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#25Alive! Day 27: #FaveNewSong is any new discovery from this Spotify playlist.

Eggs Excellent 👌🏼 1mo
36 likes1 comment
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Good Monster | Diannely Antigua
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TheSpineView 🤩🤩🤩 1mo
23 likes1 comment
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#25Alive! Day 26: My #GuiltyPleasure that I have not even started reading yet since practically all of the young people I know have been raving about #Acotar. Is it really worth all the hype, fellow readers?

LMJenkins I enjoyed it! When I read it, it was not my typical genre, but it really sucked me in and what can I say? It was a pleasure to read it. Best literature, I‘ve ever read, no. But that doesn‘t matter. I had fun and it was a fantasy and I liked it. 1mo
GatheringBooks @LMJenkins that is really good to know. Being lost in books is the best feeling. I enjoy fantasy and world building so i hope i can get to this series soon enough. 1mo
Butterfinger I'm not one who likes graphic spicy scenes, so i usually only read YA fantasy.. There's a lot of spice, but I love the characters. I never thought I would cry while reading a fantasy, BUT I bawled during the very last book of the series. 1mo
See All 6 Comments
GatheringBooks @Butterfinger this is rapidly moving up my TBR stack thanks to your recommendation. 💕 1mo
Eggs Beautiful💖 1mo
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks ❤️🌶️ 🖤 1mo
48 likes1 stack add6 comments
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TheSpineView 🤩🤩🤩 1mo
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#25Alive! Day 25: A sense of deep #Gratitude washes over me as I read this book. Had to discontinue though for awhile as I go through the #ToB25 titles.

Eggs Lovely 🥰 1mo
45 likes1 comment
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#PoetryMatters Day 24: #Wake - this was one of the poems I asked family members to read during my mother‘s cremation service and my college kid read it aloud again during the December break when we finally released mother‘s ashes into the Persian Gulf. Found the poem in the exquisite tagged book that gave me comfort during my time of grief.

TheSpineView So sorry for your loss. Love this poem. ❤️ 1mo
34 likes1 comment
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GatheringBooks
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#25Alive! Day 24: A great deal of #Positivity all around as my co-authored book chapter is finally published in this important edited book by good friend and former colleague from Singapore. Received a physical copy from the publisher yesterday. How amazing that our 2025 professional development text is listed here on Litsy! Awesome!

TracyReadsBooks Congratulations! It must be very exciting to hold the physical book in your hands! 1mo
Eggs 🙌🏻👍🏼👌🏼👏🏻 1mo
mhillis Congratulations 🥳 1mo
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Awesome 👏🏻 1mo
Eggs Congratulations 🎉 that‘s wonderful ❣️ 1mo
38 likes5 comments
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Still Falling: Poems | Jennifer Grotz
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TheSpineView 🤩🤩🤩 1mo
32 likes1 comment
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Headshot: A Novel | Rita Bullwinkel
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#25Alive! Day 23: The #Dreams of teenage female boxers are on display here with their feints, jabs, hyper-self-awareness. Gradually going through the #ToB25 shortlisted titles.

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Perfect 👌🏻 1mo
48 likes1 comment
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Hush | Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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lil1inblue 🌿 💚 🍃 1mo
TheSpineView 🩵🩵🩵 1mo
37 likes2 comments
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#25Alive! Day 22: Each day we find ourselves breathing is a reason to #Celebrate. I adore Maria Popova‘s bird divinations - unfortunately they don‘t ship here in the Emirates. So sad. 😭

Eggs Beautiful 😍 1mo
41 likes1 comment