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imie kent-muller

@mythicreader

5.1K

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2025

following

📖 chronically ill | chronically bookish
📚 resident fangirl shouting about my latest 5 ⭐️ hits
☕️ give me coffee & a book to obsess over
📍Berkshire UK

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January scavenger hunt 🔎📚

I saw @lovetoread42 do this one first and it looked like fun - so I’ve tagged a few more people to join in the hunt ☺️

Get over to your shelves and find:

A book with a one word title
🧚‍♀️ Faebound by Saara El Arafi

An author whose name starts with J
🐏 The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon

A blue cover
⚰️ I Bet You’d Look Good in a Coffin by Katy Brent

A book set in Scotland (because burns night)
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The Maiden by Kate Foster

A cover showing someone exercising (new year’s resolution in book form)
🏊‍♀️ The Lido by Libby Page

A book on your TBR that’s a new to you author that you will read in 2026
🥀 The Scarlet Veil by Shelby Mahurin

A book with a bird on the cover
🦜 Still Life by Sarah Winman

It’s been ages since I did a good book challenge and it’s always so fun to get searching on the shelves 😍

Obviously there’s no pressure to join in, and if you’ve read this far consider yourself tagged too 🥰

#januarybookchallenge #bookscavengerhunt #bookstagramchallenges #bookstagram

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What a year so many ups and downs , so many awesome memories and a lot of friends that I’m forever grateful for . I have so much already planned for 2026! To think I only started posting content about books in May and how by doing that I’ve literally found a place filled with so much love from new friends , so many amazing stories and authors and going to so many exciting events that past me would have dreamed of ! 2026 will definetly be the year where I truly focus on content creation and my love of reading to its fullest ! I’m so excited to go on this journey with all the people I’ve met along the way this year !
I ran out of tags before I could tag everyone but just know I’m thankful for ALL OF YOU !!
Until next time 🥂
#booktok #booksta #reading #newyear #2026

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November’s meet up at the Classics book club was all about The L Shaped Room, a novel published in 1960 that delves into some tough subjects - single motherhood, class prejudice, social isolation and more.
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Personally, I enjoyed the writing style and the overall storyline, thought I also found parts of it challenging. Some of the racial attitudes felt dated, sevel characters are presented as stereotypes rather than having fully developed personalitied and the ending struck me as rushed and somewhat unrealistic.
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That being said, it was a great book to discuss with the group! Have you read this one? And has anyone read the next novels in the series?
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Thank tou @thehoxtonhotel & @rondoldn for sharing your beautiful space with us! 💖

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🖤Shirley Jackson 2024🖤

Shirley Jackson composed over 200 short stories, and about 120 of them are readily available today. And I’ve read them all!

See my highlight for my thoughts on THE LOTTERY AND OTHER STORIES (1949) and COME ALONG WITH ME (1968) – both are phenomenal.

JUST AN ORDINARY DAY (1996) was published 26 years after Jackson’s death, after a crate of her files was discovered in a barn. The collection is diverse in theme, including not just the macabre pieces that Jackson is most known for, but also humorous and even lighthearted stories of the type that were popular in the women’s magazines of her day.

LET ME TELL YOU (2015) offers yet more unpublished and uncollected stories, as well as essays and lectures. Published as a response to Jackson’s rising fame, there is some filler in here, but they also unearthed some really good stuff!

DARK TALES (2016) collects many of Jacskon’s more famous and more sinister stories from her four previously published collections into a “greatest hits.” If you’re going to read just one compilation, DARK TALES is a great choice.

One doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to connect the themes that run through Jackson’s stories to her real-life marriage and her role trapped as a stay-at-home professor’s wife in a small town. Some themes include:

THE SAD GIRL PRECURSOR STUCK IN A FEVER DREAM

A girl is being chased and it feels inevitable that she will be caught. A girl runs away from home and when she returns her parents don’t remember who she is. A girl is forced to get off the bus at the wrong stop and terrors ensue. Over and over again, no one believes this girl, no one takes her seriously, and no one helps her.

LACK OF AGENCY/50S GENDER ROLES

A woman finally decides to leave her husband, only to become paranoid that a sign will fall on her, so she returns. A husband flirts with his daughter’s friend. The only thing a wife feels she can do to get even with her husband is to serve him vegetable soup again for lunch.

LACK OF BELONGING/SOCIAL EVILS

Neighbors are nosy and gossipy at best, deliberately hostile at worst, exclusionary and phony!

I have run out of space! What is your favorite Jackson short story? 🎃

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A very wholesome day off visiting Strawberry Hill House, the home of Horace Walpole - author of the first known gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto - with @mythicreader.

I was meant to visit on a field trip as part of the gothic literature module at uni, but it got cancelled due to covid. Despite living 20 minutes down the road, I've only just rescheduled my visit. But, it was so worth it! To visit with someone who also loves gothic literature and appreciates the architecture and significance made it even more worthwhile.

Life feels increasingly hectic and fast-paced, so spending an afternoon wandering around gothic houses and talking about our favourite gothic novels with an old friend is the perfect antidote!

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Haunted book club anyone?💀🫣

Thank you @bookbreakuk by Pan Macmillan for such a fun night!

Sorry @libraryofcalcifer for all the scares🤭👻

#Bookstagram #bookbreak #hauntedplaces #bookclub #oxfordcity #exlibrisjessica #bookishevents #oxfordcastle #spookybooks #horrorbooks

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“Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave.”
[…]
“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
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This September, we went all dystopian at the Classics Book Club 👀 I’ve always wanted to read Brave New World, but it felt very intimidating, especially knowing that a plot written in 1932 could still feel so relevant today. Our reading experience was very similar: everyone had a slow start due to the lenghty scientific descriptions, but soon we were immersed in a world where everyone is healthy, never bothered by anything and assigned a very well defined role - page by page, it became impossible to put it down!
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Thank you @everymanslibrary for gifting us the copies! 💫

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It’s the ‘ber months book challenge 🍂🧡☕️

I saw this one on @ellanna_reads page and it looked like fun so I thought I would give it a go 😍

🎃 Pumpkin bread: books on the autumn TBR - Immortal dark, the courting of Bristol Keats, One for my enemy

☕️ Hot chocolate: cozy read to snuggle up with - can’t spell treason without tea

🥧 Pecan pie: sweetest MMC - Noah from the Cinnamon Bun Bookstore

🫖 Chai tea latte: an FMC with attitude- Juliette Cai from These Violent Delights

🍪 Gingerbread cookie: autumn to winter transition - one dark window

🍎 Apple cinnamon cider: red book you love - ink blood sister scribe

🔥 Toasted marshmallows: gooiest cutest couple - Stella and Luka

🌶️ Slow cooked chilli: slow burn couple - Paige & Arturus

🍹 Cranberry margarita: a book everyone needs to read - heavenly bodies

I’ve tagged a few people to take part in this one but no pressure and, as always, if you’ve read this far consider yourself tagged too 🥰

#bookstagram #booktag #bookchallenge #falltbr #fallvibes #autumn #autumnvibes #bookgirlies #romancereader #fantasybooks

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Another classic at the Barbican! 💫 love how different the covers are, always fun to see what each of us can find. What other classics should we put on our list? 📝

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✨Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle- a review and a giveaway!✨

Review:
Reading this magical realism journey, through food and the way it connects us to memory and grief, is the equivalent of fine dining!

I loved entering the depths of the New York food scene and watching Konstantin work his way up in the industry whilst battling his (literal) ghosts through the tastes and flavours that call to him, through the spiritual realm.

There is so much flavour in the descriptions and characters. Even the people that are only there for a couple of paragraphs stay with you (like the waitress who was desperate for the job because she wanted a chance to see her mum again). I felt my heart being pulled so many ways.

Looking back after finishing, I remember so many little details that were sprinkled through delicately (like fleur de sel!) and that stuck out to me. Such clever writing and attention to detail. So much research has gone into food, ingredients, places; it’s really inspired!

This was so satisfying but now I’m hungry for more of Daria Lavelle’s books! Such a good one for fans of books like Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Dallergut Dream Department Store but with a little more edge to it. I highly recommend!

Thank you so much to Bloomsbury publishing for sending me an ecopy in return for my reading and honest review!

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I had the most wonderful lunch last week with @bloomsburypublishing at their book club at @maderalondon to celebrate Aftertaste by @daria.lavelle.author !! Such a beautiful themed meal with lovely people!!

Because I loved the day (and the book!) so much, I thought one of you might like a copy!! All you have to do for a chance to be sent a hardcover is follow me and comment your favourite meal of all time! (UK only!) 💕🍽️

Bon appetite!🥳

#bookstagram #freebook #bookreview #aftertaste #amreading #bookishevents #bookflatlay #bookclub #lighacademiaaesthetic

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Happy release day Queen @veschwab

You guys picking this one up?

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Massive thank you to @bloomsburypublishing for inviting me to my first ever book event! At Madera at treehouse London @maderalondon Had such an amazing time, and am so grateful for being able to chat to @daria.lavelle.author about aftertaste in person ! I met some other incredible people from the Bloomsbury team as well as other creators and I cannot wait to do more events like this in the future ! #booktok #bookstagram #bookish #bookrec #pr #bloomsburycreatorcircle #booksbooksbooks #bookstagrammer #bookish #aftertaste #magicalrealism

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