mariangello
🌱🌷🐝 🔞 30s 🧚♀️✨ur chaotic bi-fairy godmother✨🦀 Ruled by the 🌙 I change my avi like my moodreads 🌗 Don’t put me in a 📦 I won’t fit ❣️vibes: moody.magic.psych.love & <{~*YEARNING*~}>
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If I owned a copy of this book, the margins would have to be a mile wide and the pages would be red with ink for the amount this book makes you think and digest.
Morrison, wow. Thank you for penning this, thank you for reading this out loud to us- she is who everyone says she is. A Nobel Prize winner is not even enough to describe the importance of her work and craftsmanship, but it will have to do. Her words and narration were so poignant, profound, devastating, horrible, real, true, imagined, all of it.
The repetition and themes, the poetry and metaphor, the diverting rivers and ripples of the trauma of Slavery through time and each character’s experience - similar and different in so many ways.
The incoherent timeline and shifting perspectives in the storytelling creating confusion, being thrust into the beginning and the end and the middle all at once is disorienting and exacting.
How the terrible things lived through don’t ever leave, how even when you try to leave them, they keep their clutches on you, the grip so tight they choke and cut you.
And even if they didn’t remember or didn’t experience it, it lived on through the blood, and the mind, and the heart. From parent to child, from friend to lover, from places in town to the house they can’t escape.
Morrison crafted this story to explore all of this. It’s painful, it’s real, it’s fiction but it’s not.
“The heroine would represent the unapologetic acceptance of shame and terror; …the terrain, slavery was formidable and pathless…to invite readers (and myself) into the repellant landscape (hidden but not completely; deliberately buried but not forgotten) was to pitch a tent in a cemetery inhabited by highly vocal ghosts” -Forward by Toni Morrison, 2004; ‘Beloved’
This book feels like a testament of what happens when you pray a little too hard to make America great again.
The 10th day of the Eighth month of the Weekend I spent Reading Piranesi
A remarkable story that feels like an illusionary magic trick created by a masterful magician.
Part of why I love magic so much is that it is because you do not understand what is happening that makes it so invigorating. Part of the joy in reading this book IS the mystery, the confusion, the wonder, the curiosity and that is why I loved it so much.
Clarke is a master at leading you down paths and forming understanding that continuously shift and change, like the ebbing tides of water on a sandy beach - creating dunes of insight and meaning, that instantly change the second you learn something new. And she doesn’t drop it upon you until you are ready.
Don’t go mad fighting it, just go along with the journey of experiencing it one page at a time.
Once upon a time, there was a seasonal readalong (Fall 2025) that included the book: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst.
Consequently, an intense and heated discussion about tomatoes arose from a post made by @Fantasy here: Spellshop Forum Post
And then after that, it entered into the PB zeitgeist and became immortalized by @Jenniferpagebound’s list: Unofficial Tomato War Side Quest
Well, needless to say, it was an entertaining moment in time in which there was a divide amongst the people. Either Yay or Nay. Tomato or no tomato.
Obviously, I HAD to tell Sarah.
Sarah is from my home state, and she was doing a small tour for her new books coming out The Sea of Charms and The Faraway Inn (which are delightful if you get the chance to read them!)
My book club and I had read both The Spellshop and The Enchanted Greenhouse last year, so we thought it would be super fun to meet her and get our books signed! I had a plan to share with her both the Tomatogate discussion and resulting hullabaloo, as it was good fun and I had a feeling she would get a kick out of it.
I told her about the Pagebound Lore, which she took great delight in, and I asked her where she stood on the issue: With a mischievous gleam in her eye, she smiled and said “You can tell them that I eat Tomatoes like a villain”
So, I hope you enjoy this fun lil tidbit of a story!
Below are some wonderful things Sarah shared during her talk about her writing process and reasons for her series. I feel like these words will speak to many in our PB community and hope that you gain something from it!
Sarah wanted to write about an escape “because you can’t keep throwing yourself against a brick wall”. She wanted to write a book about healing, and first came up with the idea for Spellshop in March 2020. She ‘“started with a feeling, how the reader would feel, like it was a hug and everything was going to be ok, and you are not alone”.
One of the first things she wrote was “libraries make me happy”. She noted "Kindness is a strength, and connection with others makes you stronger.”
She said about ‘Cosy Fantasy’ that “we are not saving the world, we are saving a heart, and we are saving a soul”. Cosy Fantasy “can be about ordinary people, it can be a breath instead of a gasp”
She spoke about libraries (as the talk was organized by our community library organizations): “Libraries are home”. They connect you with all these stories as a part of your future. Anyone can access any story. “Libraries guard the heart of society”.
Reading and writing are wonderful because “we have the ability to fall in love with something that is never going to exist”.
Anyway, I hope that this brings a little smile to your face, and a warm spark in your heart. I love how something like a simple post on a forum can bring people together (even in its dividing nature) and that it expands beyond the technical magical coding of a website into the heart of readers and writers alike.
Thank you J&L for creating Pagebound and for the 🫛 🐝 community - you are a special home for many, just like our libraries, and just like our books. ETA: Apparently it's a happy pbbday to PB too! Even more fitting 🥳
pictures of the talk and the conversation for proof hahaha
For the Fans
Nyla K.
Omg I cannot wait for this total asshole to become a complete simp.
Every book we just get more and more confirmation that YES INDEED he did lap milk from a cat's teat.
And no we didn't make that up.
#nocontextistbestcontext
mariangello commented...
📝✍️it’s been 2 hrs since i last accessed the website of my wildest dreams and fantasies, I know not yet how long i will go with out my latest fix and pray that i make it through this long cold dark night, winter is coming….
I’ve never been more thankful in my life to not be in the middle of a long standing epic fanfic rn, cause wym the site is gonna be down for WEEKS??
I’m so sorry to be deliverer of this sad and anxious development- and if you are a writer on there, be strong!!
If you are a reader, godspeed and good luck, thank the internet gods for PB book recs to keep us busy and hold fast.
😔🙂↕️😫
mariangello commented...
This is a super cute idea!!
My starter pack: -the Princess Bride- silly, fantasy, romance - ⚔️the trifecta origin story to my personality (did I mention pirates??) (fun fact in middle school drama class I acted out a scene from the movie where I was actually the elusive Dread Pirate Robert with a home made wooden sword and those black floppy role down boots that were so popular circa 2000s lol)
-Pride and Prejudice - a bookworm girl who is witty and too cool for the “marriage thing ugh” ends up falling in love and getting married with a stoic tall dark handsome type 💕 (oops that is me)
-Sabriel -theme of death and dying but make it magical and part of life- with a female protagonist (in a fantasy?!!!) the macabre, the mystical; the mystery, and a dash of romance; add in “absent father” and you get 🧚♀️ (Bonus read: The Golden Compass)
-Get a Life Chloe Brown- modern romance featuring a lead with a realistic chronic health issue AND a red head that is SEXY AND a little bit edgy? Now you’re talkin’.🥵
-When the Tides Held the Moon- NYC, multicultural, queer, found family, mermaids, circus, THE MOON, - literally cannot say more and how much these sum up so much of my identity lmao 🌓
All this for a special badge: 🧚♀️💫 (imagine these layered) on a background like this 🌌
The new update reminded me of an idea I had a while ago and never posted. The starter pack quests are introductions to each genre and the same concept could be applied to us. Instead of an intro to a genre, it's an intro to the user and who they are as a reader whether it's our favorites or books that impacted us. So if you made a starter pack about yourself, what books (and emojis) would you include?
© 2025 Pagebound
mariangello commented...
AHHH it’s my 365 day streak of reading!! IM SO EXCITED!!!! and that means it is probably been about 1 full year (and change) of being on PB!! Which means I also get to be super sappy now toooooo!!
It's no surprise to anyone that I really like it here. Like a lot. PB has been a huge escape and emotional support crutch for me during a really, really, like REALLY challenging year. Through major loss and emotional lows, reading and the online Boundling community has brought SO much respite, laughs, learning, and growth.
I love how we can really embrace our personal authenticity, engage in our own unique range of sub-interests, and exploration. I have read SO much more than I EVER have. Like an insane amount multiplied – from less than 10 books a year to practically 16x that.
Thank you ALL for your continued positive vibes, your heartfelt encouragement, and the development of TRUE friendships on here. It’s so WILD to me!??
Aaaaand I am SO SO excited to share with you some really fun and engaging secret projects sooooooonnnn 😼😽 KK I LOVE YOU ALL BAIIIII 🧚🏼♀️
(p.s. as a PB anniversary gift, if you so desire can you please share something fun/memorable/interesting/thoughtful/silly/sincere about our time shared on this funland called Pagebound?! I would love that and so would my silly impostersyndrome brain, I don't usually ask for things like this but honestly it would fill my heart cup up so much!!! THANK YOU 🫶🫶!!!)