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balkeyeston

bookseller who’s into spec and literary fiction. and learning new things!

202 points

0% overlap
Level 2
My Taste
A Little Life
Babel
Cloud Atlas
The Secret History
The Naming Song
Reading...
Kakigori Summer
0%
Freya the Deer
67%
George Falls Through Time
25%
Heart the Lover
48%
Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
0%

Post from the Heart the Lover forum

11h
  • Heart the Lover
    Thoughts from 45%

    King makes it look so easy to write whole books that cover only a few chapters of one’s life. When we think about forming new relationships, though, we realize that we do the same thing to ourselves.

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  • balkeyeston made progress on...

    2d
    Freya the Deer

    Freya the Deer

    Meg Richman

    67%
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    balkeyeston made progress on...

    3d
    Heart the Lover

    Heart the Lover

    Lily King

    48%
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    balkeyeston started reading...

    3d
    Heart the Lover

    Heart the Lover

    Lily King

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    balkeyeston TBR'd a book

    1w
    Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

    Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

    Yōko Tawada

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    balkeyeston entered a giveaway...

    1w

    Penguin Publishing Group giveaway

    Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

    Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

    Katherine May

    An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down. Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas. Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

    print10 copiesUS only

    balkeyeston wrote a review...

    1w
  • Writers & Lovers
    balkeyeston
    Jan 22, 2026
    5.0
    Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 5.0
    ✍️
    🍀
    🐝

    I haven’t read a book that made me feel this hopeful in a long time. It also helps that, like Casey, I’m 31 years old and in the midst of writing a novel and juggling jobs to get by and cycling through doctors to get to the bottom of my chronic pain. I left Boston last year and didn’t realize I was harboring a nostalgia for all I wanted that city to be for me as an artist. What writer my age wouldn’t crave stability?! I’m so glad she finds her path in a city that hardened itself against grunge and art as life. Definitely one I’ll come back to when feelings of doubt return.

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    1w
    Writers & Lovers

    Writers & Lovers

    Lily King

    79%
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    Post from the Pagebound Club forum

    1w
  • Time-traveling sentences

    “García Márquez presents an alternate conception of time, not simply as something linear, but also as something never-ending.” —https://lithub.com/on-the-iconic-first-line-of-one-hundred-years-of-solitude/

    🧶 I’m looking for book recommendations that play with tenses, specifically time-oriented tenses. Not just past tense in one chapter and present in the next. I’m talking like movement /within/ a sentence itself. I’ve included an iconic example in the link above (“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad…”) but obvis there are more time-tripping artists out there. Share them with me! ✍️

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  • balkeyeston is interested in reading...

    1w
    How to Blow Up a Pipeline

    How to Blow Up a Pipeline

    Andreas Malm

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    balkeyeston made progress on...

    1w
    George Falls Through Time

    George Falls Through Time

    Ryan Collett

    25%
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    balkeyeston made progress on...

    1w
    Writers & Lovers

    Writers & Lovers

    Lily King

    40%
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