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tartarreads

@tartarreads

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📚just celebrating the books in my life
🌍i love a bookish side quest
📍you can find me at the public library

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Hello! 👋 After a year of documenting my reading here and some new follower friends I thought I’d introduce myself.

My name is Heather, I’m a 40 year old mom of three, living on an island in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. I love reading several books at once, so I always have one to fit my mood. I find I read more this way. I love to read outside. I love reading out loud to my kids. I love my local library. I never leave home without a book. I like books that broaden my empathy and understanding of the human condition. In recent years, I read about 100 pages a day which results in about 120 books a year. This account is just fun documentation for me. Thanks for being here🫶📚 by @tartarreads

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a year ago

Book 107 of 2025 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was not what I expected. This was much more than a history of women being labeled as witch. I enjoyed this well written feminist manifesto. I was interested to read about the history of witch hunts in Europe, as I had an American-centric view of witch hunt history. This book turned into a very articulate argument for child less women. Challenging the stigma of childlessness is fascinating.

Quotes I loved:

The witch embodied woman free of all domination, all limitation; she is an ideal to aim for; she shows us the way.

…the Witch is arguably the only female archetype that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else.

You want equality between men and women? Start by not having children.

A pro-birth policy is about wielding power, not about care for humanity.

Women who create things other than children are still considered dangerous by many.

Being a woman is no simple thing, and each of us will make our own decisions- which are always amenable to change. by @tartarreads

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0

3 hours ago

Book 106 of 2026 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(⭐️)

I read this book along with my son’s 6th grade class. A heart warming story about a girl struggling with dyslexia. Themes of bullying, friendship and how one teacher can make a huge impact. Short engaging chapters and I cried at the end. Highly recommend for your middle grade readers. I’m looking forward to helping lead a small group discussion at my son’s school and seeing what the 6th graders think about this one. Highly recommend a buddy read with your older kids. by @tartarreads

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3

2 days ago

Book 105 of 2026 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What a perfect horror book for Halloween. Ok, I knew what I was picking up here, but, whoa, more intense and gruesome for me than I anticipated. The weird girl canabalism trope is wild! I have one more I want to read before I move on…

Quotes I loved:

The things that happen to us change us, Little One.

Our love was rotten.

To me, he was a church. by @tartarreads

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3 days ago

Reading lately… by @tartarreads

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4 days ago

just over here fighting the literacy crisis one library trip at a time - here is my 1st grader’s library haul 📚💫🫶🏻 do you have any recommendations for her? by @tartarreads

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5 days ago

Book 104 of 2026 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(⭐️)

This is beautiful writing. Poignant and wise. Andre Aciman has more than captured sexual tension on the page. This is definitely a summer read, but it helped me hold on to the last of the season. Also was the father your favorite character? Because he was mine. This story left with me with so many feelings and tears.

Quotes I loved:

His humor is nothing more than a way of winning over people he can’t persuade.

Please, don’t hurt me, which meant, Hurt me all your want.

Silence was always light and unobtrusive on those afternoons.

I knew that anything I did now, any movement I’d make, might disturb the harmony of the moment.

He was my secret conduit to myself.

Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.

But I also loved the languor that sat upon the city, like a lover’s tired, unsteady arm resting on your shoulders.

Invigoration is not hard to come by in Bangkok.

Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.

But this thing that almost never was still beckons. by @tartarreads

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4

8 days ago

Book 103 of 2026 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(⭐️)

As a little girl I looked up to Madeleine Albright as a rather lone woman in US politics, so it was easy for me to pick up her book in my quest to read more non-fiction. Published in 2018, this is a well researched, balanced, calmly factual piece from an absolute authority on foreign policy. This book begins as a history book, where so many terrifyingly fascinating facist leaders are covered. Ultimately, Albright leads us to the question we are all grappling with, are we experiencing facism in the United States today?

Quotes I loved:

The United States has had flawed presidents before; in fact, we have never had any other kind, but we have not had a chief executive in the modern era whose statements and actions are so at odds with democratic ideals.

…we crave all the benefits of change without the costs.

The complexity of immigration as an issue begins with a basic human trait: we are reluctant to share.

…but the picture the president paints of America that has been losing in negotiation after negotiation is simply false. His apparent intention, therefore, is not to address and alleviate anger, but to inflame it.

At many levels, contempt has become a defining characteristic of American politics.

The shadow looming over these pages is, of course, that of Donald Trump…Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern US history. by @tartarreads

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0

9 days ago

some Library Joy on my Friday - I’ve been waaaaaiting for these books and they are jumping to the top of the stack 📚💫 by @tartarreads

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10 days ago

Book 102 of 2026 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a great fall book. A novel about parenting in a competitive, affluent community and group of mothers was a fascinating read for me. Bruce Holsinger delivered super relatable characters. I found this highly entertaining and fun to get lost in.

Quotes I loved:

…because in Crystal, whose kid wasn’t gifted? by @tartarreads

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3

10 days ago

Book 101 of 2026 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As someone who lived in China for five years and learned Mandarin, this book was right up my alley. A coming of age journey for Lily, a Chinese-American Yale student who wants to reconnect with her cultural heritage at a language program in Taipei. Although this story was a bit slow, I still appreciated R.F. Kuang’s ability to eloquently put words to this experience.

Quotes I loved:

…and we were no longer so bad at being Chinese.

But I had learned that things were not so simple. Taiwan was not that democratic, and China was not that communist.

Here, text was a barrier to meaning, and I had to slow down every time I wanted to figure something out. I had never thought much about how ability to read lubricated my daily existence.

This terrified me: the possibility that no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn’t even understand what I had done wrong.

..she pronounced words like she wished they were something else.

I’d gotten comfortable with incomprehension, and I felt a looseness in my bones. by @tartarreads

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11 days ago

all thanks to the public library! by @tartarreads

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12 days ago