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BittersweetBooks

BittersweetBooks

Joined May 2016

only time is ours, the rest we'll just wait & see
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Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
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BittersweetBooks
Still Missing | Beth Gutcheon
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Every step she took in the direction of a normal life was a step away from her lost child.
💔
What I‘m trying to say is, there may come a time when you will have to consider…accepting…
Accepting what? That it‘s too painful to go on hoping, so I should give up on him? I should cut him off to save myself the inconvenience of missing him?

LeahBergen Isn‘t it well done? ❤️ 1w
CarolynM 💔 1w
BittersweetBooks @LeahBergen so well done! I can‘t believe it took me so long to find it and read it. 7d
jlhammar Heart-wrenching read, but so very good. 7d
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How Can I Help You | Laura Sims
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The problem with this is that it can‘t go on forever; books end 📚🔥

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You, Again | Kate Goldbeck
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Maybe there‘s no such thing as soulmates. Maybe there are only people who trust each other enough to begin something without being assured of the end 🫶

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The Burnout: A Novel | Sophie Kinsella
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Infinite waves. Infinite chances. You can‘t dwell or think about what might have been. There‘s always another wave. Although you have to be looking the right way to see it 🌊

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The Breakaway: A Novel | Jennifer Weiner
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Life hurts. It‘s full of heartache, loss, and disappointment, and even the best things come salted with sorrow. But you can‘t leave yourself open to the good things—happiness, true love, real connection—if you aren‘t willing to risk being hurt 🚲🛣️

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One True Loves | Taylor Jenkins Reid
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I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I‘d come to realize that extraordinary was everywhere 💫

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The Rachel Incident: A novel | Caroline O'Donoghue
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The problem with genuine memories is that you know too much. It ruins everything 📚🍷🇮🇪

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Yum 😋 can‘t wait to read this one! 2mo
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Yellowface | R F Kuang
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Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much ✍🏻📓

SWill960 Are my eyes deceiving me or is there another face on the cover? Loved this book! (edited) 4w
BittersweetBooks @SWill960 ha! Good catch 👀 4w
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Pack Up the Moon | Kristan Higgins
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He wished he‘d been able to know all the last times so he could have enjoyed them, taken in every detail, every molecule of each moment ⏳

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BittersweetBooks
Demon Copperhead: A Novel | Barbara Kingsolver
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My favorite 2023 reads! 📚

I read a total of 30 books this year. This is the fifth year in a row that I haven‘t met my reading goal, but that‘s okay. I still enjoy reading, which is the most important thing, and it‘s my favorite past time. My almost 2-year-old seems to enjoy books and reading just as much as me, which makes my heart so happy ❤️

But I have feeling 2024 is my year, and I might just meet my goal again!

ChaoticMissAdventures I always like to say it isn't the number but the quality. As long as you are picking up books you love to read you are winning! And 30 is so much more than most people. That is over 2 a month! Some people don't read 2 a year 2mo
dabbe #ditto what @ChaoticMissAdventures said. You came, you saw, you read! #yahooyou! 🖤💙🖤 2mo
BittersweetBooks @ChaoticMissAdventures @dabbe thank you both for the reminder!! 😊 2mo
dabbe @BittersweetBooks 🤩😍🤗 2mo
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Maame | Jessica George
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We always think we‘ll see death coming and that we‘ll have more time, until we‘re reminded otherwise 😢

It‘s an ordinary week within the most extraordinary circumstances because apparently—and this is what everyone fails to mention about the grieving process—I still have to live 🌱

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Bright Young Women | Jessica (Author) Knoll
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Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do, and it‘s a messy one, at that 💔

ShyBookOwl Couldn't agree more 3mo
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BittersweetBooks
Demon Copperhead: A Novel | Barbara Kingsolver
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The falls were a tame trickle and the pool itself a deep, easy blue. Taking art classes on repeat, you learn a lot about color, but I can‘t explain that blue. My eye kept going back to the turquoise middle. You so rarely see that, but children will color water that way every time, given the right choice of crayons. Like they were born knowing there‘s better out there than what we‘re getting 🩵

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Meet Me at the Lake | Carley Fortune
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Our relationship wasn‘t traditional. We were best friends, and sometimes we were…partners. I always wanted more than Maggie could give, but I figure I‘m lucky I got as much of her as I did 🌅

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The Three of Us | Ore Agbaje-Williams
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Doubt and truth are so close that it‘s sometimes impossible to tell them apart 🍷

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Our brains are hardwired to want resolution, to want the answer 🧠

Optimism is like ice cream: as much as I try to remind myself it‘s bad for me and I should stay away, I‘m human, can‘t help a tiny taste, and the next thing you know, I‘m digging into the whole carton, gulping it down, and it always ends with me feeling sick and wanting to throw up 🍦

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Great photo 🍂🍁 5mo
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BittersweetBooks
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The world is full of lasts, she thinks…And with all these moments you don‘t know that this will be the last or you would be overwhelmed by the poignancy of them, hang on to them like someone unhinged, bury your face in them, never let them go 👠

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The Celebrants | Steven Rowley
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Everyone was on the same ticking clock. They might fool themselves into thinking that more time affords them opportunities to do more things, that the future is open-ended. But the world is simply too big. We weren‘t meant to see everything, we weren‘t built to do everything, we aren‘t capable of knowing everything. At a certain point, peace has to be found with the choices we‘ve made ⏳

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Magpie | Elizabeth Day
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She is his mother, she keeps telling herself. She would do anything to protect him. She has come to realize that the ferocity of this kind of love is enough to drive you mad, that the tragic flaw of parenthood is that you equip your child to leave you. But what if you never want to let them go? 🧸🩵

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The Drowning Woman | Robyn Harding
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There is more than one way to play the game. And there is more than one way to win it 🔪

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Birnam Wood | Eleanor Catton
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Like, no one ever actually knows what the right thing to do is. I mean, you can think that you know what‘s right, and you can tell yourself that you know, but at the point that you make your choice, like, in the moment, you‘re never really certain. You just hope. 🌱🍄🌲

SamAnne As an environmental activist, I had all the feels for this book. 6mo
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Romantic Comedy | Curtis Sittenfeld
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Because how could anyone deserve you, let alone me? But I‘m also really grateful because I always wanted to feel disbelief at my own luck 📺🌃

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She‘d heard enough regrets in her lifetime to know that dreams don‘t always die because of something terrible, but more often because of something that‘s merely acceptable 🍽️🛶💛

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Well I have a lot of experience with nice people…and it‘s always the nice ones that have something to hide 👀

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Trespasses | Louise Kennedy
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Will you stick with it? he said.
Yeah. I hate not finishing a book.
That‘s a good policy. Although sometimes I think life‘s too short.
📚🥃🚬

Suet624 A great read. 7mo
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If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are 🏃🏽‍♀️💬

AmyG This book was heartbreaking. 8mo
BittersweetBooks @AmyG yes! I finished it last night and could not sleep just thinking of Maddy and her family and friends. A tragic ending for such a bright light. 8mo
TiredLibrarian @BittersweetBooks @AmyG This one stuck with me for a long time; so tragic. 8mo
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…no matter what happens, and I‘ve seen some things happen to some people, no one that I know has ever regretted starting a family ❤️

Picturing her little house made her realize her homesickness. It struck her that this was good, this idea that she would be happy to get back to her life…Maybe it wasn‘t self-protection or self-sabotage; maybe it wasn‘t that she was afraid of change. Maybe she had just built a life she liked 🫶

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BittersweetBooks
Lake Placid Public Library | Lake Placid, NY (Library)
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Lake Placid Public Library 🛶

Amiable That‘s so adorable! 8mo
BittersweetBooks @Amiable The cutest! Wishing I lived in this idyllic little lakeside town. 8mo
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…so I should always remember that I must never let sentiment get in the way of necessary action ♟️

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I don‘t know if that‘s love, to need the sensations produced by the body more than the body itself. Not the kiss, but the taste of celery that came after. Not his hands, but the sound of his hands making art. Not the fact that he was here for only this summer, but the fact that I might find reminders of him in surprising places for the rest of my life 🩶

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Carrie Soto Is Back | Taylor Jenkins Reid
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My older self knows that you must stop—in the middle of the chaos—to take in the world around you 🎾🏆

AileenRR Loved this one despite not being a tennis fan 10mo
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Killers of a Certain Age | Deanna Raybourn
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It was dark in the garden, just before dawn, when the air is grey and the nightbirds are singing. They were tired, those nightbirds, and their song was quieter now. But they were still singing, and they went on singing until dawn broke over the trees 🐦‍⬛🔪

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Small World: A Novel | Laura Zigman
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And yet: reacting feels involuntary. As long as we‘re both breathing, we‘ll probably forever misread each other‘s faces; second-guess and misinterpret each other‘s thoughts, feelings, and motives in the worst possible way 👭

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Factory Girls | Michelle Gallen
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Will you miss nothing about the town when you‘re gone?

She wasn‘t going to admit that she was scared she‘d miss everything and terrified she‘d miss nothing.

🧵🚬🍺

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BittersweetBooks
We Are the Light | Matthew Quick
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…every healer is a wounded person first 💔

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The Love of My Life | Rosie Walsh
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But there was always a negative space, a shadow on the sand. That is the way with loss: you can‘t undo it, no matter what you have gained 🖤

…but that‘s the thing with memory: it makes up its own stories. They harden and calcify in just the same way as facts, and most of the time we have no idea which is which 🦀🐚🌾

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She remembered being happy. Right? She hoped she had been happy. What she didn‘t know was if she had been happy since. But nobody‘s happy all the time. It‘s no way to go through life. If you‘re happy all the time, you don‘t appreciate anything. You have to have contrast, to have low moments to bring out the high moments in relief 🦞

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Small Things Like These | Claire Keegan
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Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn‘t come back around. And wasn‘t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come 🌨️

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BittersweetBooks
The Lifeguards: A Novel | Amanda Eyre Ward
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There is a space, I think, between understanding that we are all alone—unknowable—and acknowledging this lonely truth. Some of us live forever in this space. I certainly tried 🛟

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Every Summer After | Carley Fortune
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His eyes are the clear blue skies they always were, but so much else is different. The edges of his cheekbones and jaw are harder…His hair is shorter than he used to wear it…his arms are thick and corded. He was beautiful at eighteen, but adult Sam is so devastating I could cry. I missed him becoming this. And the grief of that loss—of seeing Sam grow into a man—is a fist squeezing around my lungs 🛶

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Meant to Be | Emily Giffin
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It was all going to be fine. Or maybe it wasn‘t. Either way, I would survive 💍📷✨

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BittersweetBooks
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My favorite 2022 reads! 📚

I read a total of 29 books this year, my lowest total that I can remember in a long time but I have the best excuse — I became a mother to a baby girl in March. She keeps us happily occupied most days, but I try to find time to read when I can (during naps, before bed, lobby waiting, road trips, etc.).

My 2023 reading goal is to make the most of the quiet moments ✨

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 1y
Kristin_Reads Congrats!! Time for reading *will* return eventually 🤗 1y
BittersweetBooks @Kristin_Reads thank you!! And that‘s so good to hear. I wouldn‘t trade the moments with my daughter but I sure do miss reading as much as I used to. 1y
Jensol77 Audio is a good option for busy moms. 1y
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BittersweetBooks
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Being a parent is a lot like having a dream. Some of it isn‘t very nice. Most of it, even when it‘s ugly, is beautiful 👶🏻❤️

I will say that one of the most useful developments in my personality…has been a generalized giving of way fewer fucks, especially about what I look like; a stubborn, feral sense of being too focused on keeping a little totally dependent person alive allows me to mostly disengage from concerns about my own appearance 🪞

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Having a baby, Elizabeth realized, was a little like living with a visitor from a distant planet. There was a certain amount of give and take as the visitor learned your ways and you learned theirs, but gradually their ways faded and your ways stuck. Which she found regrettable. Because unlike adults, her visitor never tired of even the smallest discovery; always saw magic in the ordinary 🧪🔬✨

mamareading I sent this quote to my early reader today: “And that was the problem. Because while musical prodigies are always celebrated, early readers aren‘t. And that‘s because early readers are only good at something others will eventually be good at, too. So being first isn‘t special—it‘s just annoying.” 1y
tpixie Great quote 1y
tpixie @mamareading ah, sad 😞 1y
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tpixie Also- love your big sink! I have one now and never want 2 sinks again! I love that pots fit in it!! 1y
BittersweetBooks @tpixie thank you!! We just upgraded to this sink and I absolutely love it. Much more practical than what we had before. It took a little convincing for my husband to come around but now he agrees too 🤣 1y
BittersweetBooks @mamareading I definitely feel like reading is undervalued, instead it should be one of the most important loves you can pass on ❤️ I hope I can share it with my daughter as she grows 1y
tpixie @BittersweetBooks I totally agree about the importance of reading. It opens worlds! 1y
tpixie @BittersweetBooks I‘m happy for you and your sink!! 😀 1y
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Oh William!: A Novel | Elizabeth Strout
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When does a person actually choose anything? Once every so often—at the very most—I think someone actually chooses something. Otherwise we‘re following something—we don‘t even know what it is but we follow it 🌱

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The Family | Naomi Krupitsky
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There is nothing that cannot fall apart 🖤

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BittersweetBooks
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Maybe that was the trick to life: to notice all the tiny moments in the day when everything else fell away and, for a split second, or maybe even a few seconds, you had no worries, only pleasure, only appreciation of what was right in front of you 🧡

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BittersweetBooks
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She made a wish because she was lucky enough to wish for things and think they might come true ✨

Leftcoastzen ❤️ 2y
Leftcoastzen 😄👏❤️ 2y
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The Swimmers | Julie Otsuka
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You may at times—dusk, Sunday evening, the middle of winter—find yourself suddenly overwhelmed by an intense physical desire to go home. All you want to do, you tell yourself, is sit down in front of the TV with your husband on the ugly brown couch and eat cold lo mein noodles one last time. And that would be enough. Just one ordinary day 🛋📺🍜

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The Maid | Nita Prose
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That‘s the trouble with pain. It‘s as contagious as a disease. It spreads from the person who first endured it to those who love them most 💔

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