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#Immigration
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Hooked_on_books
Good Girl: A Novel | Aria Aber
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Panpan

I am beyond frustrated by this book. It has such rich material—fish out of water, racism, stranger in your own land—and it‘s just kind of a mess. Plus, there‘s an explosive event near the end that was so gripping, I really wish the book had been set around it, but instead it‘s squandered. What is this doing on the #WP25 short (or long) list?

squirrelbrain I thought that event was a bit deus ex machina - an excuse to bring her home. It would have been much better to have been suggested or signposted earlier in the book. 5h
Hooked_on_books @squirrelbrain If that event had been about a third of the way in after the stage was set about her struggles and the rest of the book explored the aftermath and how it upended her, her community, and her sense of identity, I would have loved that. Instead it was plopped in without really exploring it. I don‘t get it. 4h
37 likes2 comments
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Graciouswarriorprincess
The Arrival | Shaun Tan
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Books 45-51 read for the year.

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GatheringBooks
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Cupcake12 I love the Groot plant holder, so cute x 4d
Eggs Great photo👏🏻 3d
42 likes2 comments
review
Tamra
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Pickpick

Policy of preventative deterrence = death by Sonoran desert.

Funneling migrants through the desert is intentional and cruel. Common sense suggests until the root causes of the migration are addressed it will not end. When migrants say they would rather die on the trail than remain in their home countries it speaks volumes.

Jason‘s second book focusing on human smugglers is even better because it really lays bare the complexities of the issue.

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GatheringBooks
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Pickpick

#CoverStories Day 29: #Music that transcends borders is what Yo Yo Ma, United Nations Messenger of Peace, creates - and this is a fantastic picturebook biography that shows exactly that. My full review including a video of Yo Yo Ma‘s historic musical performance that took place at the Rio Grande also known as the US-Mexico Border: https://wp.me/pDlzr-quq - A very timely book.

Eggs So lovely🎶 4w
41 likes1 comment
review
charl08
Good Girl: A Novel | Aria Aber
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Mehso-so

I usually enjoy books about wandering Berlin, but this one not so much.

A bildungsroman featuring a lot of drugs, bad sex and bad choices, I winced for the protagonist as she made one awful decision after another. Lots of interesting individual elements, but I never felt I really understood where the author was going (and in placed desperately just hoped it would all just Stop!)

#WomensPrizeLL25

squirrelbrain It was unremittingly bleak, I thought - too many drugs and bad decisions. 1mo
charl08 @squirrelbrain so many bad decisions... 1mo
49 likes2 comments
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charl08
Good Girl: A Novel | Aria Aber
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I was home neither in Rosenwald nor in Gropiusstadt. And like so many children before me, I became my own exile.

At school, the girls wore padded down jackets and boots I had seen only in equestrian ads. They knew how to ride horses and drank expensive water and used Dr. Hauschka products, which felt so expensive back then, I believed only millionaires could afford them. Longingly, I used a pump of their creams, inhaling that herbal scent.

BarbaraBB Dr Hauschka. She (somehow I‘ve always thought she‘s a woman) had been around for a long time! I used to love her rose hand cream 1mo
33 likes1 comment
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ChaoticMissAdventures
Good Girl: A Novel | Aria Aber
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Pickpick

Book 9 #WP25
This is a low pick for me. The last 100 pages were a bit of a struggle, I didn't want to pick it up and read more about her self destruction, but I was still interested in her life as an Afghani-German and what it was like as a German immigrant with so much hate that we don't talk about.
The writing throughout is solid, and the perspective is one I don't see a lot of in English Lit so it makes sense why this was chosen for the WP

ChaoticMissAdventures I might have had more patience for this if I wasn't reading Nesting at the same time, so many terrible men.... 1mo
BarbaraBB Great review. I‘ll wait a bit with this one. Nesting I do have on my shelves though 1mo
squirrelbrain Great review - this has just arrived for me at the library so I‘ll pick it up in the next day or two. 1mo
46 likes3 comments
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charl08
Good Girl: A Novel | Aria Aber
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She turned on the radio in the mornings, dancing when rock songs filled the kitchen with bygone delight. Recited poetry in an old, formal Persian-lines that I didn't understand but whose cadences imprinted themselves onto my brain-and took me to local libraries, where I was allowed to read as much as I wanted, the weight of the laminated library card like a luxurious treasure in my hand, my own name written in blue ink underneath: Nilab Haddadi.

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charl08
Good Girl: A Novel | Aria Aber
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...as if to signal to us idiots that reality still existed...

(How do you let someone know the party's over?)