taup0k

🇸🇬 29 (she/her) Learning how to fall back in love with reading

2901 points

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My Taste

A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2)

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Alchemised

SenLinYu SenLinYu

27%

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11h

narwhalpirate

Edited

Thoughts from 26%

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11h

georgia.b

Thoughts from 25% (page 261)

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12h

whisperingchapters

Thoughts from 22% - Chapter 17

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20h

The Yellow House

Sarah M. Broom

In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant--the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah's birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae's thirteenth and most unruly child. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the "Big Easy" of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.

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20h

Black Cake

Charmaine Wilkerson

We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become? In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves. Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever? Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

taup0k commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

20h

jenniferPagebound

Edited

Upcoming Special Event Readalong: Mardi Gras + Carnival 2026

We're very excited to announce our next Special Event Readalong, Mardi Gras + Carnival! This will run from January 15 - February 15.

This round's selections center stories from Afro-Caribbean + Black New Orleans culture. Check out the Special Events page (in the More tab on the app, or click the purple banner on the Discuss page on web).

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings: An imaginative New Orleans Urban Fantasy exploring the music and magic of NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana).

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson: A touching Caribbean-American contemporary fiction exploring family secrets and the weight of the past. Series adaptation on Hulu!

You Made A Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi: An funny + tender upmarket romance (warning: explicit 🌶️) exploring Afro-Carribean culture and healing trauma though love.

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom: A lyrical + politically sharp memoir chronicling 100 years of love, resilience, and class in NOLA. A clear-eyed account of Black New Orleans, up through the devastating events of Hurricane Katrina.

What's a Special Event? Each quarter, we run a short 1 month readalong showcasing diverse voices in literature. Read one of the selections and comment or post in the forum during the Readalong to earn a special badge. Unlike the Seasonal Readalongs, you do not earn a special badge for reading all the selections.

Excited to see the discussions for this event!

Happy Reading, Jennifer & Lucy

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girlisconfusedalways

Thoughts from 3%

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taup0k made progress on...

Alchemised

SenLinYu SenLinYu

18%

taup0k made progress on...

Alchemised

SenLinYu SenLinYu

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The Everlasting

Alix E. Harrow

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Starling House, Alix E. Harrow, comes a moving and genre-defying adventure through time – as a reluctant lady knight and a not-so-heroic-historian will fight through time and space to rewrite their tragic fates . . . and finally reveal the truths hidden beneath the greatest legend ever told. It begins where it ends: beneath the yew tree – a girl not yet a knight, and a boy without a story. It is where she pulls a sword from the heartwood and becomes a legend. And it is where, more than a thousand years later, he will find her – and lose her – and find her – and lose her again. It is where a new story will be written – but whose will it be?

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LauLeest

Thoughts from 36%

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mairasbookshelf

Thoughts from 52%

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lucepuce

Edited

Thoughts about the writing style - Up to Chap 3

It's bad. I can forgive a certain amount of info dumping about lore and worldbuilding (I actually enjoy what I can understand from it yet) HOWEVER this is all telling and no showing, even for landscape or character descriptions! "There was..." "There were..." make up for almost a quarter of the sentences aside from the dialogues. I hope it gets better, or at least the story picks up enough to make me forget about it

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jinnie

Thoughts from 2%

i am trying to put HP characters into these characters i am reading 🤣

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cescaisreading

Thoughts from 2% (mid Chapter 2)

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taup0k made progress on...

Alchemised