angereads

Lover of art, design, museums, plants, & cats 🫀 Mood reader - no rhyme or reason here

209 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)

Reading...

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red

Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

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Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

Rick Emerson

Two teens. Two diaries. Two social panics. One incredible fraud. In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous. But Alice was only the beginning. In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis—adolescent suicide—to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities. In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards. Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed "the fraud capital of America." It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire. Unmask Alice . . . where truth is stranger than nonfiction.

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Dark Places

Gillian Flynn

Libby Day was just seven years old when her evidence put her fifteen-year-old brother behind bars. Since then, she has been drifting. But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared to before. Was the voice she heard her brother's? Ben was a misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm or is Libby deluding herself because she wants her brother back? She begins to realise that everyone in her family had something to hide that day... especially Ben. Now, twenty-four years later, the truth is going to be even harder to find. Who did massacre the Day family?

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Mad Sisters of Esi

Tashan Mehta

Myung and Laleh are keepers of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to an enigmatic figure they know only as 'Great Wisa'. To Laleh, this is everything. For Myung, it is not enough. When Myung flees the whale, she stumbles into a new universe where shapeshifting islands and ancient maps hold sway. There, she sets off on an adventure that is both tragic and transformative, for her and Laleh. For at the heart of her quest lies a mystery that has confounded scholars for centuries: the truth about the mad sisters of Esi. Fables, dreams and myths come together in this masterful work of fantasy by acclaimed author Tashan Mehta, sweeping across three landscapes, and featuring a museum of collective memory and a festival of madness. At its core, it asks: In the devastating chaos of this world, where all is in flux and the truth ever-changing, what will you choose to hold on to?

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We Are Okay

Nina LaCour

You go through life thinking there’s so much you need… Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother. Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend, Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit, and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

angereads finished reading and wrote a review...

angereads

Oct 05, 2025

3.0

Enjoyment: 3.5Quality: 2.5Characters: 4.0Plot: 2.5

🤐

🚩

This is one of the stories that you’re supposed to hate some of the characters, agree with some of their criticism, and feel the cringe the whole way through. Red flags all around. Kinda felt like a r/regretfulparents-meets-r/raisedbynarcissists BORU (ifyky).

Enjoyed the writing style, funnily enough. Killed it in about 90 minutes.

angereads started reading...

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red

Joyce Reardon

At the turn of the twentieth century, Ellen Rimbauer became the young bride of Seattle industrialist John Rimbauer, and began keeping a remarkable diary. This diary became the secret place where Ellen could confess her fears of the new marriage, her confusion over her emerging sexuality, and the nightmare that her life would become. The diary not only follows the development of a girl into womanhood, it follows the construction of the Rimbauer mansioncalled Rose Redan enormous home that would be the site of so many horrific and inexplicable tragedies in the years ahead. The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red is a rare document, one that gives us an unusual view of daily life among the aristocracy in the early 1900s, a window into one womans hidden emotional torment, and a record of the mysterious events at Rose Red that scandalized Seattle society at the timeevents that can only be fully understood now that the diary has come to light. Edited by Joyce Reardon, Ph.D. as part of her research, the diary is being published as preparations are being made by Dr. Reardon to enter Rose Red and fully investigate its disturbing history. (back cover)

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Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is. Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

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The School for Good Mothers

Jessamine Chan

An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781982156121 can be found here. In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance. Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough. Until Frida has a horrible day. The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida — ones who check their phones while their kids are on the playground; who let their children walk home alone; in other words, mothers who only have one lapse of judgement. Now, a host of government officials will determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that she can live up to the standards set for mothers — that she can learn to be good. This propulsive, witty page-turner explores the perils of “perfect” upper-middle-class parenting, the violence enacted upon women by the state and each other, and the boundless love a mother has for her daughter.

angereads finished reading and wrote a review...

spoilers

angereads

Oct 04, 2025

5.0

Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 5.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 5.0

✉️

🚨

🤐

View spoiler

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Plantains and Our Becoming: Poems

Melania Luisa Marte

A rousing, beautifully observed, and tender-hearted debut poetry collection about identity, culture, home, and belonging--for fans of Jasmine Mans and Fatimah Asghar "We, children of plátanos, always gotta learn to play in everyone else's backyard and somehow feel at home." Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens PLAINTAINS AND OUR BECOMING by pointing out that Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record--to build upon the legacies of your ancestors? In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood. Moving from New York to Texas to the Dominican Republic and to Haiti, this collection looks at the legacies of colonialism and racism but never shies away from highlighting the beauty--and joy--that comes from celebrating who you are and where you come from. PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is "a full-throated war cry; both a request for anointment and the responding bendición" (Elizabeth Acevedo).

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The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Bessel van der Kolk

A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing. Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

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How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

Sabrina Imbler

A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature: the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs, the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams, the bizarre Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena), and other uncanny creatures lurking in the deep ocean, far below where the light reaches. Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches is a book that invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live.

angereads commented on ericareads's update

ericareads completed their yearly reading goal of 50 books!

ericareads's 2025 Reading Challenge

54 of 50 read

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Katabasis

R.F. Kuang

Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own. Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.

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A Lesson in Vengeance

Victoria Lee

Felicity Morrow is back at Dalloway School. Perched in the Catskill mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to graduate. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students—girls some say were witches. The Dalloway Five all died mysteriously, one after another, right on Godwin grounds. Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s history. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind her now; all Felicity wants is to focus on her senior thesis and graduate. But it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget. It’s Ellis Haley’s first year at Dalloway, and she’s already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called “method writer.” She’s eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can’t shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks Felicity for help researching the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can’t say no. Given her history with the arcane, Felicity is the perfect resource. And when history begins to repeat itself, Felicity will have to face the darkness in Dalloway–and in herself.

angereads commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Plankton

Edited

Good writing, bad person - opinions on problematic authors - Edited

This is a topic that would likely spark biiig controversy on any other social platform, but I feel Pagebound is a safe space soo here we go - and I am honestly excited for all your opinions and input!

So, the big question: How do y'all deal with authors who turn out to be problematic, if you've really loved their work before, and also thought they in general were a decent person??

To give an example, last year Neil Gaiman turned out to be a piece of shit and I had been obsessed with his work, comics, shows, everything for a solid 2 years. Crowley and Aziraphale from Good omens are literally my comfort characters and it was super hard to deal with. I know for a lot of people the same thing happened with JKR, and same, but it was somehow less bad in the sense that it happened after my big HP craze - so I found it easier to walk away.

What goes without saying is that you should try not to financially support these people anymore, but do you still read their work, if you've bought the books before? Do you still engage in the fandom? How do you handle it?

Getting more familiar w Terry Pratchett's work, I really felt like re-reading Good Omens, but I feel like now it has a bitter aftertaste. I've found fanfiction to be a kind of safe haven cause it's not directly related to NG whatsoever, but I miss the original stories sometimes.

Hoping for a good conversation! Am a bit afraid cause the whole conversation on tumblr about this topic last year got extremely out of hand haha :I But I'm like genuinely curious and I trust in the pagebound community!

EDIT Just wanna say thank you guys for all the engagement and for having such a great and respectful conversation!! Pagebound is rlly the best community! (Imagine a heart here, I have no clue how to use markdown lol)

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Fairy Tale Retellings 🧚🏽‍♀️✨🧙🏽

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Craving "once-upon-a-time" with a twist? These modern retellings conjure the classics & fill them with fresh magic! Mix of grim, cozy, & in-between. 💫

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