Review – Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, volume 1

Posted April 14, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon

by Shio Usui

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 170
Series: Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon #1
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Uno Hinako throws herself into makeup, fashion, and falling in love, hoping that will make her seem normal to the other people at her job. But no matter how hard she tries, she's a self-doubting mess inside, and her attempts at normal romance with men just keep failing. When she starts to think she might be alone forever, a new normal presents itself in the form of her relationship with Asahi Sato, a level-headed woman who works at her company, which starts as respect until it becomes far more intimate.

Shio Usui’s Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon is a cute story about two coworkers who appear not to have much in common, who start to find they have more in common than they thought, and that they enjoy one another’s company. It’s obviously heading toward romantic territory, but the author doesn’t rush the gate and have them jumping there: in this first volume, they’re just becoming friends, and starting to see that they’re not alone.

The main character, Hinako, is trying hard to be the perfect woman: approachable, pretty, accommodating, and willing to try dating just about anyone her friends suggest in the desperate effort to find a man she can fall in love with. Her insecurity and confusion is obvious and painful as she tries to figure out why she doesn’t want what she thinks she “ought” to want — and what she might want instead.

We see less of Sato’s point of view, but she’s a slightly older woman who seems pretty secure in herself and confident, despite having chosen the things that Hinako thinks will have her rejected by people. She and her sister have an enjoyable relationship too: it’s not just about Sato and Hinako, but also about the people around them.

Vibes-wise, this feels like an f/f version of A Side Character’s Love Story, in many ways — which is a series that I adore. I was keen to pick up a bit more of this at least and see where it goes; that said, having done so, I should point out that the lesbians are both explicitly asexual, and there’s a certain amount of horror and self-loathing along the way. It’s fairly light as things go, but it’s worth knowing, and though it is ace rep, there’s of course always the problem that sometimes that’s just to render it more acceptable socially (or because of censorship).

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, manga, queer fiction, romance

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 13, 2024 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

It’s been a quiet week — hurrah! And I’m pretty caught up on comments and blog visits too. It’s a shame that in a few weeks things will ramp up again for my exams, but hey, at least I’m on an even keel right now.

So, as usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

Technically, there are no books acquired this week, but here’s the rest of last week’s haul! First off, the non-fiction:

I’ve started on Mountains of Fire; I’m finding it a little slower than I expected, but maybe that’s just my mood. It has a pretty cover, though; it’s actually shiny.

And here’s the rest of the fiction!

It definitely isn’t the season for Crimson Snow — I’ll probably keep that for December, but it gets me closer to completing my British Library Crime Classics collection. As for the other two, I’ve been curious about both for a while!

Posts from this week:

And here’s the usual roundup of the books I’ve been reviewing this week!

Non-fiction graphic novel: Book Love, by Debbie Tung (3/5 stars)
Classic mystery: A Telegram from Le Touquet, by John Bude (3/5 stars)
Non-fiction: Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, by James Suzman (2/5 stars)
SF novella: Navigational Entanglements, by Aliette de Bodard (4/5 stars)
Non-fiction science history: A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth, by Samantha Weinberg (4/5 stars)

What I’m reading:

This weekend I have all kinds of cute plans to read a lot, but goodness knows if I actually will, or whether I’ll read the things I’m intending to read. I’m content as long as I have fun. A lot of my reading this week was manga I don’t intend to review here (the Fairy Tail series by Hiro Mashima), but I did finish up two other books which I will review, or already have:

So, back to my books! Hope everyone else has had a good week, and some lovely books to read.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – A Fish Caught in Time

Posted April 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth

by Samantha Weinberg

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 256
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
A gripping story of obsession, adventure and the search for our oldest surviving ancestor - 400 million years old - a four-limbed dinofish

In 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a young South African museum curator, caught sight of a specimen among a fisherman's trawl that she knew was special. With limb-like protuberances culminating in fins the strange fish was unlike anything she had ever seen. The museum board members dismissed it as a common lungfish, but when Marjorie eventually contacted Professor JLB Smith, he immediately identified her fish as a coelacanth - a species known to have lived 400 million years ago, and believed by many scientists to be the evolutionary missing link - the first creature to crawl out of the sea. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer had thus made the century's greatest zoological discovery. But Smith needed a live or frozen specimen to verify the discovery, so began his search for another coelacanth, to which he devoted his life.

I didn’t really expect to be hooked when I picked up Samantha Weinberg’s A Fish Caught in Time. Fish aren’t a huge interest of mine, even coelacanths, and in many ways the book is quite biographical in detail, discussing the life of J.L.B. Smith and Margaret Smith in quite a bit of detail, along with some of the other personalities who searched for live coelacanths.

Nonetheless, I found it surprisingly riveting! And that’s always fun, when a book turns out to surprise you. And there are details about coelacanths too, and the controversies surrounding them (are they a missing link between the water and the land, for example? and do they bear live young, or not?), which the biographical details help to highlight and contextualise.

It also helps to make the political implications of coelacanths and their territories very clear; I hadn’t particularly thought about who might consider themselves to own coelacanths, and yet it’s very clear that various countries and localities and political bodies have tried.

If you’re looking for something that’s more of a deep dive into coelacanth biology and ecology, this wouldn’t be it — but it’s an interesting history of the moment the first recently-dead coelacanth was found, and what it meant, and what it led to.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Samanatha Weinberg, science

Review – Navigational Entanglements

Posted April 11, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Navigational Entanglements

by Aliette de Bodard

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 176
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Using the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ vitality, Navigators guide space ships safely across the Hollows: a realm of unreality populated by unfathomable, dangerous creatures called Tanglers. In return for their service, the navigator clans get wealth and power—but they get the blame, too. So when a Tangler escapes the Hollows and goes missing, the empire calls on the jockeying clans to take responsibility and deal with the problem.

Việt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is rather unfortunate because, as a junior apprentice in the Rooster clan, when her elders send her on a joint-clan mission to locate the first escaped Tangler in living memory, she can’t exactly say no.

Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan usually likes people. It says so on her resume: “information gathering”—right after “poisoning” and “stabbing.” So she’s pretty sure she’s got the measure of this group: they’re the screw-ups, the spares; there isn’t a single sharp tool in this shed.

But when their imperial envoy is found dead by clan poison, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together—fast—before they end up cooling their heels in a jail cell while the invisible Tangler wreaks havoc on a civilian city and the reputation of all four clans.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Aliette de Bodard’s Navigational Entanglements has quite a bit going on for a novella, with a bunch of worldbuilding around the navigators, their clans, the Empire, the politics between them, and the dangers of creatures that lurk out there in space. Việt Nhi, a junior, is sent with a couple of others (none of whom get along very well) to find and kill a tangler, a strange creature whose touch can kill humans. Predictably, things don’t go to plan.

Việt Nhi likes secrets and she likes rules. She likes to understand what’s at the root of things, because that’s easier to understand than the shifting rules of conversation and interaction with peers. She’s quickly drawn to one of her companions, Hạc Cúc, because even though she’s dangerous and relationships don’t usually seem to go well anyway, Hạc Cúc seems to understand a bit of what makes her tick, and want to work with it. Meanwhile, Hạc Cúc is struggling with her own feelings of inadequacy, her worry that she isn’t half as kind or capable as her mentor, her expectation that she’ll hurt those around her.

It makes for a pretty sweet romance, as each goes out on a limb for the other, and the bond that forms between them is also part of what makes the story come together. Their relationships with the other characters are less central, but also part of what makes it all tick — I got pretty caught up in whether they’d all come through for each other (and it didn’t feel like a foregone conclusion).

It works well at novella length, providing a story that’s both a glimpse of a larger world and complete in itself as far as Việt Nhi, Hạc Cúc and their motley band go. There are surely other adventures ahead of them, and there’d be room for a sequel — but it’s also complete in itself.

I did have to chew on this a bit to decide how much I liked it, because it wasn’t something I instantly connected with, but I enjoyed it the more for thinking over it.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Aliette de Bodard, book reviews, books, SF/F

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 10, 2024 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

It’s WWW Wednesday time! That’s:

What have you recently finished reading?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?

What have you recently finished reading?

I’ve mostly been reading Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail, a manga series which is a bit male-gazey and focused on fighting, but has been fun enough and low-stakes enough to keep my interest when I’m feeling a bit meh and having trouble getting into the swing of things again.

Before that, it was A.J. Demas’ Honey & Pepper, which is a standalone romance set in an alternate Ancient Greece. I loved the way the relationship between them develops and how thoughtful Nikias (one of the two main characters) is about his own kneejerk reactions.

What are you currently reading?

Like I mentioned, I’ve been a bit fidgety, but last night I did pick up A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth last night, which is by Samantha Weinberg. It’s not just about coelacanths: there’s a good amount of info about the guy who described the first recently-dead specimen found, J.L.B. Smith. I’m not always a fan of more biographical stuff, especially when I’m more interested in popular science, but there’s a good amount of context for the importance of coelacanths and what they can tell us. I’ve found it surprisingly absorbing.

I’m also partway through The Ha-ha Case, by J.J. Connington, which is a pretty classic mystery, nothing special.

What will you read next?

Possibly I’ll get back to one of the books I have on the go — for example Clive Oppenheimer’s Mountains of Fire. On the other hand, I’m really trying not to nail myself to anything, and just read whatever strikes my fancy in the moment. So we’ll see!

What about you? Reading anything good?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Review – Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Posted April 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

by James Suzman

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 464
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
Work defines who we are. It determines our status, and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hard-wired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like?

To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, he shows that while we have evolved to find joy meaning and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now. He demonstrates how our contemporary culture of work has its roots in the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago. Our sense of what it is to be human was transformed by the transition from foraging to food production, and, later, our migration to cities. Since then, our relationships with one another and with our environments, and even our sense of the passage of time, have not been the same.

Arguing that we are in the midst of a similarly transformative point in history, Suzman shows how automation might revolutionize our relationship with work and in doing so usher in a more sustainable and equitable future for our world and ourselves.

James Suzman’s Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time didn’t really go where I expected. It takes a very long view of work and starts before humans even evolved, down at the level of cells doing “work” and life acting ultimately to increase entropy (even as it appears to create order). He spends a long time discussing the early evolution of humans and human society, discussing hunter-gatherer societies (extrapolating back from currently existing ones to make guesses about earlier ones, which is always dangerous though probably justifiable).

When he eventually got round to farming societies, half the book was already gone, and he dashed madly onward to do industrial societies at a gallop. I felt like half of this book wasn’t on topic, and some of his promises weren’t kept in terms of what he was going to discuss. Either a lot of the first part needed to be cut, to keep things at a relatively surface-level throughout… or he needed to go just as in-depth on the second half.

There were some interesting titbits here, including contradictions to received wisdom about sexual selection that’s intriguing and which I want to look into further, but it just doesn’t come together well.

Also, the editing was very shaky in some places. Typos galore! Ouch.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, James Suzman, non-fiction, science

Review – A Telegram from Le Touquet

Posted April 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Telegram from Le Touquet

by John Bude

Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
With some trepidation Nigel Derry approaches the country house of his enigmatic and unpredictable aunt Gwenny for an Easter holiday visit. After a tense few days in which her guests’ interactions range from awkward dinners to a knife fight, a disgruntled aunt Gwenny departs for Europe. Receiving a telegram from Le Touquet inviting him to join Gwenny in the south of France, Nigel finds himself on a vacation cut short by murder as a cold shadow of suspicion eclipses the sunny beauty of the Côte d’Azur.

Enter Inspector Blampignon of the Sûreté Nationale, whose problems abound as the case suggests that the crime may have occurred hundreds of miles away from where the victim was discovered. Undeterred, the formidable French detective embarks on a thrilling race to discover the truth in this rare and spirited mystery novel, first published in 1956.

A Telegram from Le Touquet is pretty much what one expects of John Bude: a mostly competent mystery without flair, with a few thumbnail sketches of characters but not great psychological depth. It starts with a section from the point of view of someone who eventually becomes a suspect, Nigel, allowing Bude to set the scene for Gwenny and her web of jealousies and secrets. After that, we turn to the mystery proper, with the scene set with a few unpleasant people and a few nondescript generic character types.

Certain aspects of it I had worked out pretty quickly, but the pieces didn’t all fit together right away, which kept me occupied for a while, but mostly I didn’t get super interested in the cast and who might be the killer, and I kind of suspected the alibi thing pretty early on. Inspector Meredith makes a tiny cameo, but it’s mostly Blampignon (who also appeared in Death on the Riviera). Meh either way, really.

This all sounds like damning with very faint praise, but it was reasonably well paced, it sowed clues and didn’t spend too much time belaboring them, and sometimes in the very predictableness of mysteries of this era there’s a sort of comfort.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Bude, mystery

Review – Book Love

Posted April 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Book Love

by Debbie Tung

Genres: Graphic Novels, Non-fiction
Pages: 136
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Bookworms rejoice! These charming comics capture exactly what it feels like to be head-over-heels for hardcovers. And paperbacks! And ebooks!And bookstores! And libraries!

Book Love is a gift book of comics tailor-made for tea-sipping, spine-sniffing, book-hoarding bibliophiles. Debbie Tung's comics are humorous and instantly recognizable--making readers laugh while precisely conveying the thoughts and habits of book nerds. Book Love is the ideal gift to let a book lover know they're understood and appreciated.

Debbie Tung’s Book Love is an easy enough read which blithely presents a certain picture of what it is to love books. There are definitely pages I relate to — like the one where she’s in the middle of one book, can’t wait to start a new one, and just lets herself read the introduction… which leads to reading the whole thing.

On the other hand, I feel like she leans into a particular sort of loving books where it’s as much an aesthetic as anything, to the point of being an affectation, and one that I think has become ever more popular because of phenomena like “bookstagram”, where half the time people want books to take pictures of them (hence, probably, the page where she insists on returning a movie edition of the book, and hence definitely the page about checking out book-related social media to “inspire” you to read more).

I’m not immune from the aesthetics of books, to be clear. A flat or a house isn’t a home to me until I’ve brought my books in, and I continue to love reading dead-tree books even as I adore my sleek and comfortable ereader. I love getting new books, and I love the smell of books. But I don’t get so precious about it: I’m fine with lending books or giving books away, with reading the movie tie-in edition, with being less conscious all the time of being a person who reads, and my ereader is a constant companion even though it doesn’t look as bookish.

Sure, I knew going in that this one would be all about books, but it’s suspiciously full of bookshops, coffee shops and fairylights too, and that grates a bit.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Debbie Tung, graphic novels

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 6, 2024 by Nicky in General / 19 Comments

Hurrah, the weekend!

Last weekend I got my assignments all handed in, so the last week has been all about catching up with life stuff. Unfortunately that hasn’t yet included comments on my blog or visiting people back yet — sorry! I got stressed out and I’m digging my way out of that now, but I plan to do some commenting and visiting tomorrow.

Right, time to talk about books. As usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

As is my wont when I’ve been a bit stressed, I went totally overboard, so I’m going to split up my haul over the next couple of weeks. It’s hard to choose what to show off, so I’ll just pick a bit randomly. First off, here’s some of the non-fiction I picked up:

A bit of a mix, as ever! I wouldn’t have been that interested in The Ship Asunder, except that on a pure whim I read Seashaken Houses (a history of lighthouses in the UK) a while ago and really loved it. I wasn’t that interested in lighthouses, either, so I thought I’d give this a try.

And here’s some of the fiction I picked up:

Always love KJ Charles’ work, and I’ve heard really good things about If Found, Return To Hell. The other book is more of a whim, based on someone on Mastodon describing it as “garden fantasy”. Sounds perfect for a certain friend of mine, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Posts from this week:

Here’s the usual roundup of reviews:

Classic mystery: The Eye of Osiris, by R. Austin Freeman (4/5 stars)
Ecological non-fiction: Ghosts in the Hedgerow: A Hedgehog Whodunnit, by Tom Moorhouse (3/5 stars)
Fantasy novella: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, by Seanan McGuire (3/5 stars)
Philosophy: Spacecraft, by Tim Morton (1/5 stars)
YA romance novella: Nick and Charlie, by Alice Oseman (2/5 stars)

I skipped Top Ten Tuesday this week, so there was just one other post:

What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

First of all, let’s start with the books I’ve already read this week.

It’s been a lovely reading week. Howl’s Moving Castle was a reread, but my first time listening to the audiobook narrated by Kristin Atherton. It was lovely; highly recommended. I also had great fun last night with Honey & Pepper, and was sad when I finished it.

As for what I’m reading this weekend, I’m not sure. I’ve started on Lapidarium, one of my new books, and also If Found, Return to Hell. But where my whims will take me, no one can tell…

How’s everyone else doing?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – Nick and Charlie

Posted April 5, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Nick and Charlie

by Alice Oseman

Genres: Romance
Pages: 176
Series: Heartstopper
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
"CHARLIE: “I have been going out with Nick Nelson for two years. He likes rugby, Formula 1, dogs, the Marvel universe, the sound felt-tips make on paper, rain and drawing on shoes. He also likes me.”

NICK: “Things me and Charlie Spring do together include: Watch films. Sit in the same room on different laptops. Text each other from different rooms. Make out. Make food. Make drinks. Get drunk. Talk. Argue. Laugh. Maybe we're kind of boring. But that’s fine with us.”

Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie are the perfect couple – that they’re inseparable. But now Nick is leaving for university, and Charlie will be left behind at Sixth Form. Everyone’s asking if they’re staying together, which is a stupid question – they’re ‘Nick and Charlie’, for God’s sake!

But as the time to say goodbye gets inevitably closer, both Nick and Charlie question whether their love is strong enough to survive being apart. Or are they delaying the inevitable? Because everyone knows that first loves rarely last forever…"

I wish I’d really loved this novella, Nick and Charlie, set in Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper universe and following the period just at the end of year 13 and the beginning of university for Nick. We’ve seen the foreshadowing of this in volume five of Heartstopper proper, so it felt a bit superfluous (though of course this was actually written first, I’m just speaking of the reader’s experience here) — and unfortunately switching to this format rather than the graphic novel makes it feel… well, a bit too YA for me.

I don’t know why it’s okay in the graphic novel and less so here: perhaps because we have more direct access to Nick and Charlie’s thoughts, and probably also because the conflict feels compleeeetely manufactured. It grows out of Charlie’s insecurities in a totally normal sort of way, sure, but his drunk outburst and their refusal to then communicate properly with one another doesn’t match up with the way they normally interact.

Pile on top of that the stupid coincidence of Nick’s phone supposedly being unable to receive picture messages due to being dropped even though everything else works okay (??? not the way it works), and it just feels like needless drama, manufactured so there’s even a story at all.

I really hope the final volume of Heartstopper is better than this. Charlie and Nick do need to reckon with their relationship, and what it means to be the unit that is Nick-and-Charlie… but this novella doesn’t work for me beyond some of the cute moments between them.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: Alice Oseman, book reviews, books, romance