Category: General

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 24, 2026 by Nicky in General / 39 Comments

Okay, hold onto your hats! This one’s a big ‘un, again already — I’ve had a very bookish week!

Books acquired this week

Last weekend I had my annual vision test and OCT scan, after which I always go to the bookshop. To, you know, prove my eyes still work. Look, I swear it makes sense. So I got myself a whole bunch of books, after saying I was only going to look at the non-fiction, because there were a couple of discounts and I had collected 10+ stamps to get money off as well.

Without further ado, let’s start with the manga, manhwa and manhua I’ve got this week (that’s Japanese, Korean and Chinese comics, respectively!).

I read the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation light novels recently, so it’ll be fun to explore the world more visually in the manhua. There’s a lot more in the series, so I don’t know if I’ll get the rest soon or not — I guess it depends on how much I like it as an adaptation, and maybe whether I can spend my Bookshop.org credit on it. Then there’s the first volume of the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua, which I’ve read online but wanted to own. I hope they’ll bring more of the series out soon.

Finally, the next volume of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa that I didn’t have yet, since I’ve been going through those apace lately, and the new volume of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, since volume six of the manga just released. These should keep me busy a bit! I do get a lot of manga/comics via Comics Plus/Library Pass, but they don’t seem to partner with these publishers, and anyway I’d probably want copies for my collection, so I couldn’t resist the urge to stock up.

Buuut that’s not all. I also got a few other books, a mix of fiction and non-fiction:

I’d been thinking about requesting Daedalus is Dead, Katabasis and Fate’s Bane as ARCs, so picking those up was an easy choice (especially with Katabasis heavily marked down!). Monsterland and A History of England in 25 Poems were more random choices, but I also love “the history of X in Y objects”-type non-fiction, so I’m very much looking forward to that one.

Since we’re on the topic of poetry, I did get a couple of books from the National Poetry Library this week, as I wrote about yesterday. They’re both debut collections, as I understand it, with one of them being native British and the other Ukrainian. I’m very curious about both, and might spend some time digging in this weekend.

This one’s also from the library, but my local one this time. I’ve seen mixed reviews for this but wanted to give it a shot anyway because the idea amused me:

Finally — yes, just a little more — I got a couple more review copies as well, this time via Netgalley. I’d requested them thanks to seeing people enthuse about them in Top Ten Tuesday posts last week, and was a little surprised to actually get them!

Stay for a Spell sounds like a fun cosy concept, while Princeweaver has me a little wary, since one of the blurbs says it is “a lush reimagining of the English conquest of Wales”. That could be interesting and nuanced, or it could be an absolute mess. I guess we’ll find out!

Irritatingly, I’d forgotten to check before I requested it, and it looks like Stay for a Spell is a PDF, and DRM-locked with Readium, so I can’t get it onto either of my ereaders, or even my e-ink tablet, and will have to read it on my PC. I wish publishers wouldn’t do this; I have no idea how readers are supposed to comfortably read these. Maybe on a tablet or something, I guess? But I don’t have one, so suffering it is.

Just a little note…

Related to my earlier references to my annual vision test/scan, let me just pause a moment to emphasise the importance of eye health, using UV protection, and considering getting eye tests every few years even if you haven’t needed glasses in the past. Conditions like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and glaucoma aren’t related to whether you have 20/20 vision or not, and while some of the conditions are often associated with aging, they aren’t always. Early diagnosis can really improve your outlook.

Having volunteered for the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) for some years, and having a potential genetic risk factor (a parent with early-onset macular degeneration), this one’s incredibly important to me. If you’re not getting your eye health checked, please consider it, and tack on the extra couple of quid for an OCT scan if it isn’t already standard at your optician, assuming you can afford to. And make sure to protect your eyes from UV light, even in winter, with sunglasses, hats, etc: UV light is a major contributor to several eye conditions, including common issues of aging like cataracts.

Okay, off the soapbox now, back to the books.

Posts from this week

There have been posts a-plenty this week, as I went back to working through some of the massive backlog of written reviews that are ready to post, while trying to keep some variety going. First up, the reviews:

Fantasy romance: Swordcrossed, by Freya Marske (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Classic mystery: Invisible Weapons, by John Rhode (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: Like: A History of the World’s Most Hated (And Misunderstood) Word, by Megan C. Reynolds (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Non-fiction: The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned, by John Strausbaugh (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Fantasy manhwa: Solo Leveling, vol 12, by Dubu (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy romance light novel: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, vol 2, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Classic mystery: Death at Breakfast, by John Rhode (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)

There were other posts as well, of course, so here they are:

If you’re interested in poetry and live in the UK, I definitely recommend checking out that last post for more info about how to access the National Poetry Library’s collections! I didn’t know about them and it is a most excellent discovery.

What I’m reading

Given I’ve had the week off, you’d think I’d have managed a lot of reading, but part of the time I really wasn’t in the mood, and part of the time I spent rereading manga — namely, The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, since volume six is out and I’d forgotten where the series got up to. Still, I’ve read a few books in the last week, and here’s the usual sneak peek at the ones I finished and intend to review on the blog!

I’m not sure what I’ll be reading this weekend and into the new week (which is also a week off for me), but it’ll probably include reading more of T. Kingfisher’s Snake-eater, which I started this week. I have a lot to do if I want to get a blackout in the BookSpinBingo challenge this month, so maybe more of those books?

But, as always… it’ll be down to my whim in the moment. Nothing’s as important as making sure I do actually enjoy what I’m reading, or at least the process. (I’ll sometimes finish books that I don’t like per se because there’s some interest in doing so, even if it’s just to write a good review to diss ’em.)

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

PSA for UK-dwellers: National Poetry Library

Posted January 23, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Did you know that there’s such thing as the National Poetry Library? And that you can sign up to borrow from their online collection if you live anywhere in the UK? I learned this yesterday on Bluesky, and I figured it was worth sharing on my blog as well because I’ve seen several people talking about wanting to read more poetry!

Sign-up is super easy: you just need to fill out the form on their sign-up page link, giving your name, email, phone number and postcode. They’ll then send you an email telling you where to send your proof of address: you can’t reply directly to that email, but just copy the email address they send there and send to that, attaching a copy of some kind of proof of address like a utility bill, bank statement, council tax bill, etc. You can black out any financial details like your account number, though they will also delete whatever you send after verifying that you really do have a UK address.

I got a reply back from them in less than 24 hours with my login details for their Overdrive collection. I can borrow up to two books at once, for up to 14 days.

I’ve been poking around the collection a bit and it looks very worth the small amount of trouble: the split by subjects isn’t very useful for this particular library, but the collections are handy, highlighting various prize winners, recent poetry collections, and other such themes, if you have no idea where to start. I’ve started by checking out two from Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize:

There are a small number of books about poetry as well, and a small number of audiobooks. It’s not an exhaustive collection by any means, but it definitely offers a lovely way to explore some new-to-me poetry.

The library also has a physical collection, so if you live in range, you can show up with photo ID to be able to get a library card and access their physical holdings. They run poetry-related events as well! Their physical premises are wheelchair-accessible and you can check their accessibility info here. The info about their collections indicates they have braille and audio resources available for blind and partially sighted users.

All in all, worth checking out if you have a UK address and phone number at your disposal!

Tags: poetry

WWW Wednesday

Posted January 21, 2026 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

I was kinda struggling to finish anything for a bit, but last night I did finish volume five of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa! It’s juuust getting beyond the bit I read in the light novels so far, so things are heating up; I did expect this plot twist somewhat, but it’s fun to see my theories confirmed.

Before that, the last thing I finished was an ARC of Molly Tanzer’s And Side by Side They Wandered, which I found really interesting, albeit very obviously referencing the antics of the British Museum.

What are you currently reading?

Last night I started a bunch of books at once trying to find something that fit, and I think I found some winners! I’m first going to finish up C.L. Clark’s Fate’s Bane, which is a novella; I’m curious where it’s going, and the shortish chapters are really tugging me through it. I also started T. Kingfisher’s Snake-eater, which is likely to be a quick read for me because I find most of Kingfisher’s work pretty compulsive.

I also started volume one of Priest’s Guardian, though I don’t have a good sense for where that’s going yet, so I need a bit more time to get sucked in, and Nicholas Jubber’s Monsterland, which I’m probably going to read a bit at a time, since it’s non-fiction and structured in a way that lends itself to that, with separate chapters for different kinds of monsters/superstitions/etc.

I’m also slowly working my way through Helen Gordon’s The Meteorites, and would like to finish that soon, and I have a volume of the Solo Leveling novels part-read. Clearly I’ve been a bit flighty lately!

What will you read next?

I’m not entirely sure. I’m likely to read more of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa quite soon, and I picked up the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua as well, which is high on my list. Seamus Sullivan’s Daedalus is Dead is looking tempting too, since it’s a novella and maybe suited to my current attention span.

But as ever, it’ll be wherever my whim takes me in the moment!

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: 2026 Goals

Posted January 20, 2026 by Nicky in General / 44 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about goals for 2026 — bookish or not. I’ll keep things mostly bookish (that’s what you’re all here for, after all, and I have so many bookish goals, always!)… so without further ado, let’s take a look.

Read (or not!) according to my whim. It’s easy to get caught up in reading for a reading challenge, or because I have a review copy, or because a book’s due back at the library. And sometimes that’s fine and fun, but whenever it’s not fun, I stop. Or try to: I can’t say I’m perfect yet at this!
There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure. It’s kinda sad when I see people talking about “guilty pleasures”, or deriding their reading as “trashy” (though sometimes I think people mean “trashy” in a fun, positive way, I think that’s often still caught up in popular disdain for certain genres or tropes). If it’s fun for me, then it’s worthwhile. It doesn’t need to be any deeper than that.
There’s no such thing as cheating. Reading novellas, reading manga, reading children’s books, rereading a favourite, all of it is valid toward stuff like reading goals, most challenges as long as it meets any prompts, etc.
I won’t do book-buying bans (or book-borrowing bans, or bans on requesting ARCs, etc). I have limits (discussed below) to help ensure that I’m not just stacking up books I don’t plan to read… but if I really want some new books, I’m not going to make that a guilty feeling. It’s a joy to support authors, to have good stuff to read, to get a nice stack of books and devour them. Provided I have the budget, I’ll make it work.
I won’t buy from Amazon if at all possible. In general, but especially books: that’s what indie bookshops and Bookshop.org are for. Sometimes they don’t have something in stock, and there can be relatively few places to turn in that case, but for the majority of what I read there are plentiful options to avoid supporting Amazon.
I want to have no more than 20 books at a time bought in 2026 that I haven’t started. This sometimes results in me having a few books on the go at once that I turn out not to be in the mood for, but broadly speaking it’s been really great at helping me read review books on time, start books when I feel like it instead of waiting for “the right time”, etc. I worried I would find it overly restrictive, but I did this last year and really liked the nudge to read books while they’re relevant/exciting/exactly what I’m interested in, because I just got them.
I want to start all the books I bought in 2025. As mentioned above, I had the same rule last year (a limit of 20 books not started), but at Christmas the total rocketed up, ahaha. So I currently have 32 books from 2025 that I haven’t started yet. I’m hoping to get them all started (at least) by June, always provided that’s the way my whim takes me.
I want to read at least 100 books from my backlog (counting 2025’s books). I did great last year at weeding out my backlog — sometimes by just recognising I didn’t want to read something after all, but also by reading 100 books that had been on my backlog since the end of 2024 or longer. I’d built up quite a backlog for a bunch of reasons, and it was great to explore my shelves more and push myself to poke around in the depths of my Kobo, get to books I meant to review when they came out, etc. I’d like to keep going!
I want to read 400 books again this year… or even more? I managed to read 400 books last year and the year before, while still studying on top of full-time work. I don’t have any new course or class lined up, so maybe I have more time for reading? Maybe not, if other priorities crop up, but I still figure that 400 books is a reasonable goal to start with.
Any goal can be changed if it’s doing more harm than good. I set reading goals as a way to remind myself that I want reading to be a priority, because reading makes me happy, because talking about books on my blog makes me happy, etc, but if it’s not making me happy then it needs to change. There was a point last year when I dropped my goal to 300, gradually increased it back to 350… and then I eventually ended on 400 exactly. Flexibility is important.

And that’s it! The main goal, of course, is to keep on having fun with it. If I’m not, then for me there’s no point.

How about you?

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 17, 2026 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

Happy weekend! And happy start of my time off — I won’t go back to work until 2nd February. I don’t often take chunks of time off, so this is nice.

Books acquired this week

This week has been kind of busy, between some review books, some more manhwa from my wife to keep me occupied, and my British Library Crime Classics subscription book! Let’s take a look — first the new manhwa…

Next up, my review copies, thanks to Hachette (who sent me a finished copy of Nightshade & Oak in the post) and Tor (via Netgalley):

I’m a little hesitant about both Wolf Worm and The Poet Empress, because I’ve heard the former is genuinely pretty scary, and the latter is pretty dark… but ultimately I was tempted enough to request them anyway.

Finally, here’s the British Library Crime Classic for this month. I’ve enjoyed a couple of Gilbert’s books before, so I’m curious!

Hopefully this should be more than enough to keep me busy during my time off!

Posts from this week

Alright, that’s enough of that! Now for the roundup of what I’ve been posting this week…

Fantasy manhwa: Solo Leveling, vol 11, by Dubu (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy: Greenteeth, by Molly O’Neill (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Classic crime: Henrietta Who? by Catherine Aird (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language, by Adam Aleksic (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: Roses for Hedone: On Queer Hedonism and World-making through Pleasure, by Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Romance/post-apocalyptic manga: Loving You When the World Ended, by Gene (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)

And other posts:

Recommend Reading Challenges — I’m feeling in the mood to take on some new monthly/yearly challenges, got recs?
Top Ten Tuesday: 2026 Releases (First Half)
What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading

Amongst all that busy work, I haven’t been reading a lot this week, but I did get a couple of things finished and read a few manga. Here’s a peek at what I read this week and intend to review on the blog:

Not sure what I’ll be reading this weekend — maybe I’ll get stuck into the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa, or one of the books I’ve received to review.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

WWW Wednesday

Posted January 14, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

I haven’t actually been reading a lot, it’s been a pretty bad start to the year on that front — I’ve been busy, preparing for some time off I want to take by working ahead, and cleaning the house for a landlord inspection, and starting the new raid tier in Final Fantasy XIV! But I did make some time last night to read the seventh volume of the Cat + Gamer manga, which was cute as ever.

What are you currently reading?

I have a few books on the go concurrently, but mostly the same as last week because things aren’t really moving. The last in-progress book I actually opened was Helen Gordon’s The Meteorites, which I’m finding interesting but a bit slow, and also kinda anxiety-making just because thinking on the scale of meteorites and deep time makes me feel very, very small.

I do have a volume of Solo Leveling on the go as well, and I suspect that’ll be my best route back into settling into books again, since I find it very soothing. (Despite, you know, all the monsters and battles.)

What will you read next?

My wife got me a few more volumes of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa to keep my brain occupied while awaiting a dental appointment for a broken filling (I have a phobia of dentists), so that’ll probably give me some easy reading while I’m coping with the busy time! Other than that, I don’t know for now what I’m likely to read, though Dungeon Crawler Carl is past due at the library…

(I find it funny how similar the premise is to books like Solo Leveling and Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. Clearly my reading is themed lately, despite the different cultures the books come from and different formats!)

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: 2026 Releases (First Half)

Posted January 13, 2026 by Nicky in General / 36 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is about the books we’re looking forward to in the first half of 2026. I’m not always great at keeping an eye on this kind of thing, but it turns out I do have some books I really, really want.

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, by Heather Fawcett. I actually have an ARC of this one, so I have to get round to it as soon as possible! I’ve enjoyed Fawcett’s other books, though this one basically had me at “mystical cat shelter”, to be fair.
Nightshade & Oak, by Molly O’Neill. I really liked Greenteeth, so I’m quite hopeful about this one too, especially since it sounds like it has similar roots. I just got a copy of this from Hachette yesterday morning, so I’m going to dig in soon!
Strange Buildings, by Uketsu. I enjoyed Strange Pictures and especially Strange Houses, so I expect to have fun with this one as well. Maybe I’d better see if I can wishlist it at the library, because Strange Houses was in high demand when it came out.
Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes, by Eleanor Houghton. I’m not interested in fashion or clothes per se, but more in what clothes and fashion can tell us about the people who wore them, the times when they were fashionable, etc. I like some of the Brontës’ work, and especially Jane Eyre, so I’m interested both as someone mildly interested in the Brontës and as someone interested in the history of clothes.
Star Shipped, by Cat Sebastian. I love Sebastian’s work (and feel it seems to keep on getting better), and I’m very amused by the setting of the two characters being stars in a sci-fi show. Looking forward to this!
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die, by Greer Stothers. I know comparatively little about this one, but it sounds like a fun romance.
The Lost Book of Lancelot, by John Glynn. It was high time someone played with ‘The Book of Galehaut’ (there was a retelling that was almost a translation, which I don’t count), because Lancelot and Galehaut’s relationship in the Vulgate Cycle is heckin’ intense, and it’s quite the addition to the Arthurian legends… but sadly ignored. I’m not sure how close a retelling this is going to be, but I look forward to seeing what the author does with it, all the same.
Solo Leveling (manhwa), vol 14, by Dubu etc. This contains side stories for Solo Leveling, so I’m verryyyyy curious. As people on my blog know, I’ve got very into both the manhwa and the novels, though I’m close to finished with the novels, so it’s nice to have something new to look forward to from the manhwa.
After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, vol 1, by Li Gou Hua. This danmei isn’t from one of the authors I’ve read before, so I don’t know a lot about what to expect, but I like the idea of the premise (professor ends up transmigrating to the past and discovering that a weird thesis he read is true, and he’s living it). It’s a familiar sort of theme for light novels and I’m enjoying the many permutations of it immensely.
Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (novel), vol 3, by singNsong. I’m reading both the manhwa and the novel, and I am very excited to dig in and get to the next bit in the novel. By that time I think I’ll have read just past it in the manhwa, but it’s always interesting to see how manhwa adapts the stories and sometimes places slightly different emphases. And of course, sometimes there are slightly different translations or notes on translations too.

Quite a weird mix, I’m sure, and also no doubt I’ve missed loads of stuff I’d be interested in. Looking forward to seeing everyone’s lists!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Recommend Reading Challenges

Posted January 11, 2026 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

Hey folks! This post is pretty much what it says on the tin: can you recommend me some reading challenges?

I’m a little bit picky: because I read based on whim, I don’t like anything with too many prompts that would constrain my reading to certain themes, so broad categories work best: prompts like “read a book you’ve owned for more than a year”, “read a book in translation”, “read a book from the library”, etc, rather than “read a book published in [year]” or “read a book with a character from your hometown”. That said, some such challenges work for me if they have a limited number of prompts or you can swap prompts around.

Monthly/yearly/one-off challenges all potentially work.

Challenges I’ve enjoyed in the past include @TheAromaOfBooks’ BookSpin, @Puddlejumper’s Haunted Shelf and Gotta Catch ‘Em All on Litsy, Runalong The Shelves’ TBR challenge, and my own ComicsBingo on Litsy/StoryGraph. You can assume I’m already in on those.

I’m interested in SF/F, classic mysteries, romance, danmei and other light novels, non-fiction, comics (including manga/manhwa/manhua), … there are few genres I actually avoid, though I’m not keen on memoirs/biographies, self-help or gory horror.

I don’t know if I’ll join anything new, but seeing other people’s posts about 2026 challenges makes me both curious and a bit overwhelmed… so I’m essentially asking people to filter it all a bit for me! Selfish, I know.

Which means, yes, please tell me about things you’ve sure I’ve seen already and maybe explain why you think it’d suit me. Please include links and maybe even explanations if it’s a bit complicated. And yep, feel free to boost your own challenges.

Thank you in advance!

(Obviously I may or may not join any or all of these challenges, depending on how the mood strikes me. Please don’t be offended if I don’t/can’t join your favourite challenge or participate in something you run, or if I don’t stick with it if I do join. It all depends on my energy levels and the fact that I am enthusiastically whim-driven in my reading. I try not to add anything that ends up feeling like a chore or like it stops me reading whatever I feel like.)

Tags: challenge

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 10, 2026 by Nicky in General / 21 Comments

Happy weekend! Yep, it’s that time again already.

Books acquired this week

After the frenzy of Christmas, you wouldn’t think I had any more room for new books (nor my friends and family any room in their budgets), but here we are: my wife got me the next two volumes of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa, I assume to assuage my whining that the next light novel isn’t due out in translation until March.

I’ve read them already, so more volumes will probably be acquired soon, one way or another.

Posts from this week

As per usual, let’s do a little roundup! Reviews first:

Romance manga: Love in the Palm of His Hand, vol 2, by Rinteku (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy romance (danmei): The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, vol 3, by Xue Shan Fei Hu (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Classic mystery: Still Waters, by E.C.R. Lorac (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Non-fiction: Spinosaur Tales: The Biology and Ecology of the Spinosaurs, by David Hone & Mark P. Witton (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Non-fiction: The Far Edges of the Known World, by Owen Rees (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

Also as usual, these are reviews from my extensive backlog of reviews that I’ve written but not yet posted (something like 80 in the bank at the moment).

What I’m reading

Now for the preview of books I’ve read in the last week and plan to review on here! I haven’t done as much reading as I hoped, but I still made a decent start to the year!

As for this weekend, I’m not sure. More Solo Leveling, probably, and resuming reading John Rhode’s Death at Breakfast, which is a classic mystery. Other than that… who knows?

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

WWW Wednesday

Posted January 7, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was the fourth volume of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa. It’s almost caught up to where the light novels are, so I’m kinda looking forward to getting the next couple of volumes and getting a bit deeper into the story. This one featured the start of the Cinema Dungeon, which is a favourite part of the story for me (so far).

What are you currently reading?

I’ve got a few books on the go due to indecisiveness, but I guess the headlines are Cat Tales: A History, by Jerry D. Moore, which looks into the archaeology and anthropology of the bond between cats and humans (which has by no means always been harmonious). I’m not learning anything that surprises me, but it is filling in some of the details and evidence, which is always fun. I started reading Megan C. Reynolds’ Like: A History of the World’s Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word, but I found her style a bit overly wordy for my taste in the moment, so I’ve laid that aside for now.

Fiction-wise, I’m reading the sixth volume of the Solo Leveling light novel by Chugong, and having a blast as always. I want to read over the last chapter again for some of the explanation of Monarchs vs Rulers, because honestly, half the time in the manhwa I was just going “big fight! Jinwoo strong!”… I’m also reading Death at Breakfast, by John Rhode, which is a classic mystery and very soothingly so.

What will you be reading next?

I don’t really know. Depends whether I get more Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, I guess! Though probably volume seven of Solo Leveling is high on the list. Can’t believe I’m running out of volumes so fast…

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday