Category: General

WWW Wednesday

Posted June 23, 2021 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Greetings! How’s everyone doing? I ran out of scheduled posts and have been too busy/tired this week to get the queue set up again (there’s plenty more reviews written and ready, fear not!) but that’ll be back soon, I promise. In the meantime, here’s the usual Wednesday post!

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Seashaken Houses by Tom NancollasA whole bunch of things at once, of course! Most notably, I’m most of the way through Thomas Morris’ The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and other Curiosities from the History of Medicine, which is okay but in the end fairly meh. Nothing too surprising, and most of it is about hoaxes or obvious misunderstandings.

I got a new book last week, totally on a whim, about lighthouses: Seashaken Houses, by Tom Nancollas. I picked it up briefly and just felt kinda drawn to it, and I do like indulging my random curiosities, so I went ahead. I started it right away to catch that feeling, and am enjoying it — some of the daydreams about the inhabitants of the lighthouses and the descriptions of things get a bit purple prosey, but I’m enjoying some of the local history and the overaching development of lighthouses. I especially enjoyed the chapter about Haulbowline, which had to be consecrated by priests in 1958 because the keepers were convinced the place was haunted.

What have you recently finished reading?

Bloodline, by Jordan L. Hawk. Once I got past the part where Whyborne was lying to Griffin, I flew through the rest of the book. I wasn’t too shocked by any of the shocking revelations, but it’s an enjoyable addition to the series, and it’ll be interesting to see what comes of it in future — and how it crosses over with K.J. Charles’ Green Men world.

What will you be reading next?

Beats me! There are a ton of books all stacked up waiting for me. I really, really should work on reading What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky, though: it’s this month’s book club read in my capricious book club where all the choices are made by me, so it’d be bad form not to keep up!

What are you currently reading?

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Weekly Roundup

Posted June 19, 2021 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

Saturday again! It comes round so quickly. No real news from me this week, so straight into the book haul that I accidentally acquired…

Received to review

Cover of Velvet Was The Night by Silvia Moreno Garcia

I always enjoy Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s ideas — only one of her books has seriously clicked with me, but I enjoy them anyway.

Stacking the Shelves

Cover of The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel Cover of Seashaken Houses by Tom Nancollas Cover of Never Greater Slaughter by Michael Livingston

Cover of Black Water Sister by Zen Cho Cover of The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri Cover of The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox

Cover of Tears of Pearl by Tasha Alexander Cover of Dangerous to Know by Tasha Alexander Cover of A Crimson Warning by Tasha Alexander

A real mix, as usual! I’m excited about Black Water Sister and The Jasmine Throne, in particular; I’ve been wanting to get my hands on those for a while now, since I first heard about them. Likewise The Fabric of Civilization, actually — ever since I was going on a tear of reading books about sewing and textiles, at the start of the year.

The most impulsive purchase was Seashaken Houses, which would not usually be my thing. Something about the idea of a book about lonely lighthouses built onto rocky reefs got under my skin, apparently. I’ve gone with the whim and started reading it right away!

Books read this week

Cover of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian Cover of The Whole Picture by Alice Procter

Not a big reading week — or a big finishing week, at least: I’m halfway through seven books at once!

Reviews posted this week

And that’s all from me this week! How’ve you all been doing? Have you got any great new books this week, or been reading anything that knocked your socks off?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted June 17, 2021 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

A quick update this week — or hopefully so — since Wednesday snuck riiiight up on me.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Gastrophysics by Charles SpenceA lot of books at once, as ever. Two that jump out at me as worth an update: Bloodline, by Jordan L. Hawk, has unfortunately bogged down for me on the quicksands of I hate it when people in a close relationship lie to each other instead of talking through their problems. Argh, it’s just totally bogged down the story for me; I don’t even want to read it right now, because Whyborne is being a dick to Griffin (and Griffin is being reasonable but without sitting down and talking it out with Whyborne).

On the non-fiction side, I’m greatly enjoying Gastrophysics, by Charles Spence. It’s impossible to trust a scrap of the science, because he says things like he’s heard that certain genes cluster in certain geographical locations and that explains cultural food choices. You’ve heard that? Great, now try sourcing it from an actual reputable, peer-reviewed source before you write about it blithely in your book that’s allegedly popular science. Jesus Christ, how hard can it be?

(And then sometimes he just fails to research. He reckons that sharp, angular foods are more acidic than soft round ones, and wonders whether cheese is the answer. The answer is, at the very least, “not straightforwardly so” — highly acidic cheeses are often very crumbly, which doesn’t entirely fit with his theory. Sounds nice, ten minutes with Google are enough to prove that you can’t just say that. This is not how science works and I have serious doubts about this guy’s ability to understand how to design a proper experiment or do proper literature searches, Professor or not.)

But… it’s really fun to read, somehow — the writing itself is lively, and just… sucks you in.

What have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing was Food: The History of Taste by Paul Freedman, which didn’t really work for me. It’s too academic and dry. Some of the essays are better than others, but one or two basically regurgitate huge quotations as if that constitutes engaging with the material.

What will you be reading next?

I don’t know, though The Jasmine Throne (Tasha Suri) arrived today, and from everything folks are saying, it’s pretty tempting.

Other than that, I’m vaguely planning on picking up a couple of particular books after I finish books that are already on the go, to fill the same niche in my reading material… but I’m not sure if that will be anytime soon.

How about you?

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Weekly Roundup

Posted June 12, 2021 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

Good afternoon, folks!

General update

As you’ll have noticed, I’ve been queuing up some of my backlog of reviews — mostly written during the Final Fantasy XIV dungeon “The Praetorium”, since you get good items from it at the moment… but it has looooong unskippable cutscenes!

What have I been up to? Mostly playing Final Fantasy XIV, along with the Mass Effect remaster. If any of you play FFXIV, say hi sometime, we can run a dungeon or something! I’m on Cerberus server, and I can let you know my avatar’s name…

I have been reading a bit, though; I’ve gone back to reading a whole bunch of books at once, and I’m using Beeminder to help track them and keep me from putting them down and forgetting about them for ages. Here’s how I’m doing with Maryn McKenna’s Beating Back the Devil, for example!

Stacking the Shelves

This week I don’t have too many new books in — last week’s splurge was actually kind of out of character for me lately. However, I did pick up Tasha Alexander’s A Fatal Waltz in paperback, since it came back into stock, and I’ve just got a new book to review because I remembered one of you guys talking about it recently, and it has a pretty cover.

Cover of A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander Cover of After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang

Books read this week

I’ve actually finished a few books this week, which isn’t so common lately!

Cover of Food: The History of Taste Cover of Two-Way Murder by E.C.R. Lorac Cover of Plain Bad Heroines by emily m. danforth Cover of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa RandallCover of Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Reviews posted this week

So that’s it! What have you guys been stacking up, devouring, or flinging across the room in despair?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted June 10, 2021 by Nicky in General / 3 Comments

Oof, getting too warm to think in my little office in Yorkshire. Gah, summer is here again, apparently.

What are you currently reading?

I’m reading a lot all at once at the moment. This is normally something I’d feel weird and guilty about because I should be finishing books, right? But I’ve given up on that kind of guilting myself, and this is much closer to the joyful, voracious and random reading I did as a child — which is the kind of reading which made me really happy. So I’m sticking with it.

I’m still reading several of the books from last week; I’ve also picked up The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, by Cat Sebastian, because it sounded like exactly the ticket right now. I’ve also started in on the fifth Whyborne & Griffin book by Jordan L. Hawk, which promises to be the same quick-paced fun as the others — and I’m somewhat reassured that while Whyborne is never going to be a confident man, he has developed somewhat and learned to trust Griffin.

Cover of Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha LeeWhat have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing I finished was Phoenix Extravagant, which was very different to Yoon Ha Lee’s series, starting with Ninefox Gambit, which is what really drew my attention to his work. I enjoyed Phoenix Extravagant, but it’s less complex/mind-bending to follow. That’s not to say that’s a bad thing or a good thing; it’s a different thing, and I’m still kind of letting it sit to see what I think when the dust has settled.

I also finished Plain Bad Heroines, which I found to be very lacking in payoff for all those pages of vaguely creepy promises.

What are you going to read next?

As ever, I don’t really know. I have a strong suspicion I’ll be picking up the third Lady Emily book by Tasha Alexander, and I’m quite in the mood to reread some old favourites too — which might be Marie Brennan, Ann Leckie, Becky Chambers, or Vivian Shaw…

We’ll see, as ever. Only time will tell, with my mood-reading and my moods!

What are you reading at the moment?

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted June 5, 2021 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Good morning, folks! It’s been a while since I did any kind of weekly roundup, and I figured I’d get back into the swing of things a bit more gently and just do a Stacking the Shelves post — especially since I don’t really have any posts to highlight yet, though I’m starting to format the backlog of reviews and get ’em ready for public consumption.

So here we go, the fruits of my post-statistics-exam shopping spree!

Cover of Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes Cover of Gastrophysics by Charles Spence Cover of The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth by Thomas Morris Cover of Elephants on Acid by Alex Boese

Cover of Burning the Books by Richard Evenden Cover of How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett Cover of Ancestors by Alice Roberts Cover of We Are Not Amused by David Crystal

A rather random-looking selection, I’ll admit, and all non-fiction this week — but my non-fiction stack was getting a bit threadbare, while my fiction stack seems to grow and grow and grow.

Look out for the Stacking the Shelves linkup over on Reading RealityAnd do drop a comment here if you’ve read any of the books above; I’ve heard mixed things about one or two!

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WWW Wednesday

Posted June 3, 2021 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Technically it’s still Wednesday, right? I haven’t slept yet, so it must be.

Anyway, I’m all done with writing the reviews I had in my backlog, and I’m all done with my exams… so it’s time to start queueing them up to post! …Tomorrow.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha LeeFiction: A whooole bunch of things, as ever! More every day, it feels like. Two-Way Murder by E.C.R. Lorac was a definite “my brain is a potato” choice; her Golden Age crime mysteries always work very well for me in terms of evoking a place/community and a detective who is not a douchecanoe. Also still reading Phoenix Extravagant and Plain Bad Heroines, neither of which are quite grabbing me lately. This is certainly in part because my brain is a potato.

Non-fiction: I just picked up Beating Back the Devil, by Maryn McKenna — you’d think I’d hate reading about epidemiology since that was my exam topic, but actually it kinda reminds me what I’m here for in the first place. Not that the Epidemic Intelligence Service is my idea of a fun time, since they have to get very hands-on at times, but… broadly speaking, figuring out that one specific batch of a specific manufacturer’s vaccine is causing an outbreak of polio is exactly what I sometimes think I’d like to do.

I’m also still reading Food: The History of Taste, which I think I was reading last week and which is very slow, and Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, which is slowly beginning to get to the point. I also picked up Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, partly as a comfort while I was waiting for my exam to be available for download.

What have you recently finished reading?

Finishing books? What’s finishing books, precious?

More seriously, I did recently finish reading The Cheltenham Square Murder (John Bude), which was fun enough but not a standout — a very typical Golden Age crime novel, without Lorac’s fine touch, basically.

What will you be reading next?

Well, I need to get round to What It Means When A Man Falls from the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah, so that’s high on the list. I think The Story of Silence by Alex Myers is starting to wiggle to the top of my list, too; I like the original medieval poem, and I’m curious what this modern retelling does with it.

What’re you currently reading?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted May 26, 2021 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Here we are again, it’s Wednesday already. I think it’s my fault: I have an exam coming, so time is doing weird things.

At least I’m close to being caught up on my backlog of reviews to write! 26/28 done… (I won’t be posting them all at once, don’t worry.) Anyway, for now let’s stick to the usual Wednesday update.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha LeeFiction: Let’s see… quite a few things at once. I’m still reading Plain Bad Heroines (emily m. danforth), and I’m now onto the second Kate Daniels book, Magic Burns (Ilona Andrews). I’ve also picked up Phoenix Extravagant (Yoon Ha Lee), which I’ve been meaning to read forever — yes, okay, I even had the ARC, this is a peril of being a mood-reader — and am enjoying so far, though I’m not very far into it. I’m also reading The Cheltenham Square Murder (John Bude); I normally find Bude’s books solid but not remarkable, and so is proving to be the case with this — but a little Golden Age crime does hit the spot right now.

Non-fiction: I’ve started on Food: The History of Taste (ed. Paul Freedman), which… I have some mixed feelings about, given the first essay-writer got some stuff wrong (there is no area of your tongue dedicated to tasting sweet things), and just… made me worry about the quality of their other research and whether they leaned too much on received wisdom. I’m still reading Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, too, which has finally got round to some dinosaurs.

What have you recently finished reading?

I finished a couple of the other books I’ve been talking about for a bit, like The Invention of Murder, but also went off-piste a bit and read the fourth Whyborne & Griffin book by Jordan L. Hawk. I’ve been meaning to for a while, and it was a very satisfying Saturday read — it was my day off, so I could start the book in the morning and polish it off by night.

Now to avoid waiting so long to read the fifth…

Cover of Behave by Robert M. SapolskyWhat will you be reading next?

I don’t know, as ever. However, I have been trying to line up some possibles and just keep them well in sight. So that list includes Tasha Alexander’s third Lady Emily book, A Fatal Waltz, and Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, which I’ve had for quite a while… though as always, I’ll let whimsy be my guide as well. Possibly even literally Wimsey, since I do need some beloved books to pamper my brain through this exam. Medical statistics, bleechhh.

What’re you currently reading?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted May 20, 2021 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Hey folks! I’ve been spending the unskippable cutscenes of a particular dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV to catch up on my reviews, and I should soon start scheduling those. Right now, all my energies are focused toward my exam… but maybe I’ll be around here more soon, at this rate! In the meantime, though my arm is sore from my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine, I can still wield a keyboard, so here’s the Wednesday update!

Cover of Magic Bites by Ilona AndrewsWhat are you currently reading?

Fiction: Magic Bites, by Ilona Andrews, for a start. It’s a reread, but I’ve had a lot of joy from this series, I’d really like to read the more recent books someday, and it felt like ideal light reading while my entire body stresses out about my upcoming biostatistics exam. I’m also still reading Plain Bad Heroines, and I’m finding it super awkward-feeling right now with the apparently deliberate baiting of Merritt. I’m intrigued about where it’s going, but also apprehensive that it’s going to be annoying.

Non-fiction: Still on both The Invention of Murder (Judith Flanders) and Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs (Lisa Randall). I’m enjoying the former, and probably planning on finishing that next; the latter is still doing Planet Formation 101, and there’s very little new to me, so I’m biding my time and finding it a bit slow.

What have you recently finished reading?

I just finished The Library of the Dead, by T.L. Huchu, and I wish I loved it more than I did. The narrative voice doesn’t work for me, and the cover puts me too much in mind of Ben Aaronovitch’s books not to (fairly or unfairly) compare it to those books. Not so much in terms of overall quality, where I don’t particularly feel Aaronovitch is one of the genre’s great craftspeople, but in terms of plots, themes and settings.

I also finished Murder’s a Swine, by Nap Lombard, which was pretty fun.

Cover of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky ChambersWhat will you be reading next?

I’m in the mood for lots of rereading, but as usual, I’m really not sure what I’ll actually pick up. Maybe The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Becky Chambers) again(!) because playing Mass Effect is kinda giving me that urge. Or even Ancillary Justice (again again).

What are you currently reading? And how are you all?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted May 13, 2021 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Welp, haven’t written any of my backlog of reviews yet, but I’m still here, and I just handed in my assignment — meaning I’ve got an exam left, on 1st June, and then I’ll be free for a while. Maybe that means either now or once the exam’s done, I’ll have a bit of time to catch up on blogging.

Whatever happens, the reading never totally stops, though.

Cover of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa RandallWhat are you currently reading?

Non-fiction: Still reading Judith Flanders’ The Invention of Murder, and now also reading Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, by Lisa Randall. I’ve heard good things about it, but I’m distracted by the title and wondering where the dinosaurs come in. Right now I’m in the middle of my umpteenieth explanation of the Big Bang, none of which ever make the details stick in my head.

Fiction: I’ve picked up Plain Bad Heroines, by emily m. danforth. I had not realised she was also the author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which I’ve always meant to try, but it sounds like this is very different in a lot of ways. I’m very curious to know to what extent there’s a supernatural element here… (don’t spoil me.)

Cover of Snowball in a Blizzard by Steven HatchWhat have you recently finished reading?

I feel like I have the memory of a goldfish, and could not honestly tell you right now what — ooh, that’s a nice bridge, I’ve never seen that before.

Okay, family jokes about goldfish/three-second memories aside, I finished up Snowball in a Blizzard by Steve Hatch, which had some very good insights into both how uncertain medicine actually is (there are few certainties, just probabilities and sometimes mere possibilities, even in established, commonly-used medicine) and how to handle that.

(Ooh, that’s a nice bridge, I’ve never seen that before!)

Cover of Magic Bites by Ilona AndrewsWhat will you be reading next?

I don’t really know. I’m kind of tempted toward a reread; I stopped reading the Kate Daniels series for a bit too long and lost my place again, so I think I might start that series again — why not? It’s fun. Then I’m also tempted to reread Made to Kill, by Adam Christopher, since I don’t think I ever did read the third book in that series.

So that’s me. What are you reading?

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