Lauren 🏹📖🌿
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illustratedlauren.bsky.social
Lauren 🏹📖🌿
@illustratedlauren.bsky.social
🌷 Librarian, reader, nuisance
📌 Oxford
🫧 Mostly weird, literary & translated fiction
💌 illustrated.librarian@outlook.com
🔗 illustratedlibrarian.carrd.co
These stories dip into the lives of ordinary Nigerians and examine the mundane madnesses they try to keep at bay.

An eloquent and polished debut collection thrumming with life. It was full of tiny humane moments that haunted me days after finishing!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Full review: tinyurl.com/4jmjer43 💙📚
January 30, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Huge day to be a weird girl
January 29, 2025 at 1:35 PM
What a unique, compelling gem! Bear Season asks which matters most — the stories we live, those we tell, or the ones we dream up for ourselves — and probes the boundaries around each until they fold in on themselves.

⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

Full review: tinyurl.com/4xfe7eey
@wildhuntbooks.bsky.social 📚💙
January 29, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Haha fuck yeah
January 27, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Current read // current view 📚💙
January 27, 2025 at 9:06 AM
💙📚 New to my shelves

Here's a peek at some new things I've added to (read: jammed onto) my shelves recently — a mixture of Christmas gifts and purchases with gifted book tokens!

Anything here from your tbr? What should I be prioritising?
January 26, 2025 at 3:14 PM
I love checking my Blackwell's wishlist because very occasionally they have something for a wacky price and I must pounce
January 26, 2025 at 1:14 PM
The winter light filtering through these dried wildflowers is so beautiful to me ✨
January 21, 2025 at 10:09 AM
This mug is how I, a non-tiktok user, look following the current drama
January 20, 2025 at 10:01 AM
A wildly imaginative story of family trauma, sibling bonds, & identity.

For all that some parts were disjointed, never once did I doubt that these siblings loved and infuriated each other, or that their bonds had been forged in something darker than blood.

Full review: tinyurl.com/4z8npvhz

⭐⭐⭐
January 20, 2025 at 8:52 AM
The fact that this manuscript has survived for over a thousand years and also was previously owned by Henry VIII short-circuits my brain every time I see it. Just look at that gorgeous velvet binding!
January 14, 2025 at 3:36 PM
A quote on the cover calls this 'discreetly sublime' and it truly is: tiny and yet towering, almost too beautiful to really take in, containing feelings and histories too huge for its unassuming physical dimensions.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Full review: tinyurl.com/29twrkya 📚💙
January 12, 2025 at 3:56 PM
A frosty morning in Oxford 🌨️🌞
January 10, 2025 at 9:52 AM
I love this slice of spire and garden 🌤️
January 9, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Slowly being eviscerated by this today. What a burnished little gem of a novel. 📚💙
January 9, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Sprawling fantasy series are great, but there's something to be said for a self-contained quest story where the stakes are high, but not world-ending. Nettle and Bone was the perfect gentle, engaging read to start the year off with!

Full review: tinyurl.com/k4uh3fbz 📚💙
January 8, 2025 at 6:19 PM
The little scattering of snow on the medieval walls is so precious to me ❄️
January 7, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Sometimes creatures walk across the library skylight and I just think that's neat
January 4, 2025 at 7:11 PM
My top ten books of 2024 ✨🏹🫧🩷
December 31, 2024 at 4:23 PM
A sharply observed literary coming of age that grapples with how we make meaning in a difficult world & how those things fall short. There was a distance and loneliness to this where I wanted a beating heart, but the accomplished prose was a joy to read.

⭐⭐⭐💫

Full review: tinyurl.com/bdzbxm82
December 30, 2024 at 5:55 PM
Recent read // Victorian Psycho was a gleefully demented, unapologetically gory, and strange satire of Victorian propriety where the events culminate on Christmas day. If you're looking for an unconventional festive read for 2025, this is it 🩸🎄🔪✨

Full review: tinyurl.com/2zumff7w 💙📚
December 29, 2024 at 12:31 PM
Recent read // delicately balancing truth and fiction, this is a quiet novella filled with beauty and looking and love. Moving between present-day Amsterdam and Vermeer's studio in the 1600s it muses on the intersection between artist and viewer.

Full review: tinyurl.com/3ymrt5hr 📚💙
December 29, 2024 at 12:02 AM
Recently reread my favourite book in the world. A story that cuts to the heart of what we value and why, and how transcendent it feels to love beautiful objects that exist on timescales outside of human lifespans

Have you read this? ✨
December 21, 2024 at 4:35 PM
Thinking about how I spent the whole of yesterday vehemently denying I was getting ill and claiming I was actually doing fine to anyone that would listen, but then upon waking up had to admit defeat and send this email
December 13, 2024 at 3:18 PM
Oh I do love it when a blanket of fog descends on this city #Oxford
December 13, 2024 at 1:46 PM