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Miriam

@hapennybooks

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Bookstagram | fantasy and lit fic

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What this week: finished reading and annotating East of Eden by John Steinbeck. An absolute masterpiece, deserves its place among the classics.

What this week: finished reading The Lion and the Deathless Dark by Carissa Broadbent. This series is so consistently good. I cannot wait for the concluding book.

What this week: started Yes, Chef by Grace Reilly as a little palate cleanser after multiple 600+ page books. It’s doing this job.

What this week: got this Porcelain sweater off my needles while listening to Good People by Patmeena Sabit. Loving the book and can’t wait to block this sweater and wear it!

What this week: 7th wedding anniversary dinner in The Ivy 🥰

And then: here’s the ankle I destroyed by missing a step in the Powerscourt Centre. Found myself facing into a few days of solo parenting while hubby was in Lille with one functional leg. Very grateful for the friends and family who helped with childcare and who traversed Dublin to lend me a boot.

And also to the colleagues who built me a tower to rest it, endlessly facilitated me, bought me my coffee and generally just minded me.

What this week: my new favourite addition to my son’s roster, a dreamy read. by @hapennybooks

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a month ago

I apologise for slide six in advance xo also for my hatred of Cathy Ames, even @thetwirlonthetrain couldn’t convince me on that front! by @hapennybooks

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a month ago

Don’t worry, the universe has already punished me by twisting my ankle. ⁣

#PerformativeReading by @hapennybooks

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a month ago

And just like his dad, when I chose one book in the bookshop, he said, “but Mama should get two books.” 🤍 by @hapennybooks

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a month ago

Cathy, what is wrong with you by @hapennybooks

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2 months ago

Seen all those “books you couldn’t pay me to…” posts? Well, here’s a book that’s paying… quite a few people by the look of things. by @hapennybooks

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2 months ago

@lauraeweymouth knocked it out of the park with this one. Motherhood, intrigue, twists and turns, I was TRANSFIXED. by @hapennybooks

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2 months ago

If you’ve been on bookstagram at all, you’ll certainly have seen the term “literacy crisis” bandied around quite a lot, especially by Americans where their literacy has unfortunately plummeted. And of course declining literacy is a problem. ⁣
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But a lot of creators are using this term in bad faith. ⁣
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One of the examples regularly pointed to is a young Black man on Love Island who mispronounced “epitome” on camera. And this hit home for me as somebody who mispronounced that word until the age of 22/23. It seemed like an incredibly unfair attack given he was on a reality TV show (hardly the epitome of intellectualism!). Similarly, I’ve seen countless reposts of videos of teenagers struggling to pronounce certain words — did you get consent from their parents before publicly shaming them? ⁣
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But it’s also being used to support every take under the sun. One woman doesn’t like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library ostensibly because the books have too few words on a page and this “contributes to the literacy crisis”. The Atlantic (my current enemy apparently, this is the second time I’m putting them on blast this month) links it to the rise of Romantasy and cites Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm — a book I incidentally hate, but I’m not blaming it for declining literacy rates. And plenty of creators start videos by saying they are “passionate” about the literacy crisis — well, they seem to be pretty passionate about internet pile-ons and intellectual snobbery, at least. ⁣
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So before you make a video about “the literacy crisis” ask yourself: what are you doing about it? Are you giving books to little free libraries and charity shops? Are you donating time or money to adult literacy resources? Are you supporting your local library? And most importantly, because that’s where literacy starts, are you reading to the kids in your life and bringing books into their life on a regular basis?⁣
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Declining literacy is bad. But you won’t improve literacy rates by bullying people for reading Freida McFadden or buying books based on a list of tropes. Sure I hate those things too. But let’s stop couching opinions th by @hapennybooks

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2 months ago

Was Daggermouth written by AI? Computer (my brain) says no. by @hapennybooks

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2 months ago

Shops mentioned are Hollyhocks Bookshop in Cirencester and Toppings & Co in Bath. Also visited Persephone Books. ⁣
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And @camilla_reads provided the recommendation. ⁣
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I will never TBR-ally recover from this. by @hapennybooks

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2 months ago

I realise that a delayed Ryanair flight and a bookshop visit do not a weird day make. I left out “eating lunch on a Finnish train carriage surrounded by Morris Minors” and a brief attendance at a medical emergency 😅 the shop is @hollyhocksbookshop 🥰🥰 taken in Cirencester, Cotswolds, UK by @hapennybooks

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2 months ago

THE UNICORN HUNTERS by Katherine Arden. Very very slow to start and if I didn’t trust Arden I would have DNFed after the first 100 pages. But the ending, layers of magic and mystery, a secondary world that doesn’t quite make sense, and a love story you really root for, is Arden at her very best. ⁣
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Here she asks: but what if, in real life, that young, witty, headstrong duchess had all the opportunities as a princess in a fantasy tale? What if all it took was gumption, magic, and a handsome knight willing to carry you when your shoes give out, to save the day?⁣
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Medieval life is depicted so well here — biphasic sleep is one of my favourite fun facts so I loved to see “the watch” depicted here, as well as courtly love, and period-accurate dressing. I also liked the characters, and how truthfully none of the humans were exactly evil though they were at odds with each other. Anne was a lovely protagonist, open hearted and fearsome in equal measure. ⁣
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The themes here are all about leadership, and what it really means to be a sovereign. Arden even challenges the concept that self-sacrifice is noble above all else. Sometimes — just sometimes — everybody wins. by @hapennybooks

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3 months ago