Review – Winter Hours

Posted August 3, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Winter Hours

Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems and Poems

by Mary Oliver

Genres: Non-fiction, Poetry
Pages: 109
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, her most personal book yet "What good company Mary Oliver is!" the Los Angeles Times has remarked. And never more so than in this extraordinary and engaging gathering of nine essays, accompanied by a brief selection of new prose poems and poems. (One of the essays has been chosen as among the best of the year by THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1998, another by The Anchor Essay Annual.) With the grace and precision that have won her legions of admirers, Oliver talks here of turtle eggs and housebuilding, of her surprise at an unexpected whistling she hears, of the "thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else." She talks of her own poems and of some of her favorite poets: Poe, writing of "our inescapable destiny," Frost and his ability to convey at once that "everything is all right, and everything is not all right," the "unmistakably joyful" Hopkins, and Whitman, seeking through his poetry "the replication of a miracle." And Oliver offers us a glimpse as well of her "private and natural self—something that must in the future be taken into consideration by any who would claim to know me."

After reading a couple of her poetry collections, I was keen to read anything else by Mary Oliver, so I picked up Winter Hours, which is composed of essays and prose poems. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, really; things don’t entirely fit together, though the strength of her writing skill and something of her attitude to the world comes across in each.

Distractingly, though, I can’t tell whether the essay on Edgar Allan Poe is intended to be a serious piece of consideration of his life and work. It seems like it, but then she… makes up something that I’ve absolutely never heard of and can find no reference to anywhere, suggesting that the name “Egaeus” (which she spells “Agaeus”) is close to the word “aegis”, which she defines as a sick note in English schools (in the present tense). That isn’t how you spell the name and that term is not a thing: definitely not in the present, and I can find no evidence that it ever was.

It was weirdly discombobulating and left me feeling out of kilter with the whole book. So… beautifully written, but I’m not sure how seriously to take any of it, and that really changed my enjoyment of it.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Fantasy with Friends: Fantastical Sidekicks

Posted August 3, 2026 by Nicky in General / 1 Comment

Fantasy With Friends: A Disccusion Meme hosted by Pages Unbound

Start of a new week, and time for Fantasy with Friends! All the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about fantastical companions:

Who are some memorable fantastical sidekicks? Animal familiars or anything else that fits the prompt welcome!

Prompting about “animal familiars” mostly makes me think of Nighteyes in Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings books, mostly. Nighteyes is a great character, deeply loyal, sometimes quite funny, and providing a great foil to Fitz’s wavering and uncertainty. Life’s a lot more simple for Nighteyes, not because he is simple, but because he doesn’t see such a need to complicate things.

I’m also for some reason thinking of the fire demon Calcifer, in Howl’s Moving Castle: snarky, curious, not half so devilish as he’d like to make out. Admittedly some of his lines in the (very different, but still fun) Studio Ghibli adaptation are the most memorable, when Sophie bullies him into letting her cook on him: “Here’s another curse for you: may all your bacon burn!”

And of course, the best sidekick of all has to be Samwise Gamgee. No notes.

In more recent reads, though, I’m thinking of Mu Qing and Feng Xin in Heaven Official’s Blessing — they’re old friends of Xie Lian’s, or rather, his former bodyguard and his former servant, whom he considered as friends (it’s a little more complicated for them, given the status difference when they were humans and when they served as his deputies when he ascended). As themselves or in their disguised forms, they back him up and follow him around loyally, even despite the mess between them — and while a lot of people really dislike Mu Qing, I rather like the fact that he’s prickly and quick to take offence (but even quicker to give it). He’s by no means perfect, but he’s still a friend who cares deeply, and it’s clear that he takes his role as a martial god seriously and takes care of his worshippers.

And in Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, one really has to give a nod to Wen Ning. He’s faultlessly loyal to Wei Wuxian, who was kind to him and brought him back from death to be with and protect the remainder of the Wen family. He stays with Wei Wuxian through a lot of horrors, for both of them, when the whole world is against them, and stands up for Wei Wuxian and tries to act in his best interests no matter what. The way he gets angry and tells Jiang Cheng about a certain secret in order to show him how terribly he’s treated Wei Wuxian is just, aaaah!

I could keep going, but I’ll stop here, ahaha.

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Review – A Case of Fear and Favour

Posted August 2, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – A Case of Fear and Favour

A Case of Fear and Favour

by Sally Smith

Genres: Crime, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 368
Series: The Trials of Gabriel Ward #3
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A priceless medieval book has been stolen from the Inner Temple. The librarian has been murdered at his desk. Once again, Sir Gabriel Ward KC must provide answers.

Gabriel meanwhile is preparing to represent a tiny sweetshop in Brighton brought to the brink of ruin by the postponed coronation of King Edward VII. Winning the case will save the sweetshop and change the law for ever. Yet for once he does not object to being pressed into acting as detective, because another miscarriage of justice may be on the cards.

The Temple authorities already have their prime suspects: Jitendra Shah, an Indian law student, and Lesley Roberts, the scandalously female assistant librarian, neither of whom fit the profile of a 'true' member of the Temple. Both were in the library at the time the murder must have taken place. Each claims not to have seen the other. At least one of them must be lying. But does this make them a killer?

Gabriel is convinced there is far more to this case than meets the eye. And in matters of murder, Gabriel is very seldom wrong…

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.

When I got offered an eARC of Sally Smith’s latest Gabriel Ward book, A Case of Fear and Favour, there was noooo way I wasn’t jumping on it right away. I’ve loved the previous books and their loving but sometimes critical depiction of life in the Inner Temple, the ancient rules and regulations of the lawyers there, and of course, of Gabriel Ward himself, a bit stuffy but ultimately a very good man.

Over the course of the novels, Gabriel’s found himself getting more involved in the wider world beyond the Inner Temple, and that results here in him amazing everyone and himself by taking a pro bono case. I love that we get an explanatory note afterwards discussing the real law around that case and the historical precedent, which is carefully considered!

Other than Gabriel’s pro bono case, there’s also a mystery in the library of the Inner Temple, with the death of the librarian and the disappearance of some priceless documents. It turns out to be (unsurprisingly, given it’s a novel) not unconnected with Gabriel’s case, as well, and everything proceeds veeery neatly.

I enjoyed the introduction of the characters Lesley Roberts (a proto-feminist) and Jitendra (a figure based partially on some of the experiences of Gandhi), which tugged Gabriel out into the world just a little more, and opened his eyes to more injustices he’d never considered before.

Overall, a good entry to the series, and definitely a series I recommend to mystery lovers — especially if being set in a rather odd location (the Inner Temple, a long-standing inn of court) and around the time of the delayed coronation of King Edward VII appeals!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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July Reading Wrap-Up

Posted August 2, 2026 by Nicky in General / 5 Comments

Photo of lavender in flower

Here we are in August already! I can’t believe it’s my birthday this month: I feel like I’ve only just got used to saying it’s 2026. But yep, here it comes: on 20th August, I’ll be turning 37.

…But we’re not there yet, so let’s take a look back at July first!

July in general:

We’ve had another more heatwave in the UK since I posted last month’s pic of the bunnies in their temporary housing in an air conditioned room, and Eclair wasn’t pleased to hear that the heat was coming back…

A white rabbit with brown patches around his eyes, brown ears and a brown smudge on his noise looks sternly out through a grating

He’s been totally fine, though! Both of them have, though they’re in full shed at the moment and everything is fluff. Thanks, bunnies, I surely needed a fur coat in this weather…

I’ve been working away at my bookcase blanket, through some goofs, fumbles, and uncertain attempts at designing things for myself. I need to sit down with a chart and work out if one thing I had in mind will actually work at all, but mostly it’s going really well! It looks more complicated than it is, and often I can just sit and chill, following the obvious pattern from the row before, rather than needing to pay tons of attention.

Photo of a blanket made in mosaic overlay crochet. It shows three "shelves" of a bookcase so far, mostly filled with books, with a cat sitting in the lower right on top of a book. The background colour is a deep purple-red, while the book/cat details are in cream, and the actual shelves are a tan colour. A hardback book is included for scale, about 1.5 "shelves" high.

Luckily, all those raw ends will just need to be neatened up and trimmed, but will get enclosed inside a border — though I really should start on the tidying up work, or I’ll have to handle ~500 of them at once.

Other than that, let’s see. I’ve been gaming as always, including in FFXIV. An old friend rejoining my raid group, and we’ve really started making some progress again with the consistent group. We’re about to start working on a mechanic called “Idyllic Dream”, which is absolutely nuts and will definitely take us some time. If you’re curious, you can check out the guide we’re using. (Thanks, Hector!)

I’ve also been continuing my love of hidden object games with A Building Full of Cats and the sequel, dipping my toes into horror anomaly games with the free The Queen’s Gondola (which had one jumpscare but otherwise was more unsettling vibes — I enjoyed it, despite being a wuss), being deeply absorbed in the pretty unique puzzle game Gorogoa, and overly invested in the very silly racing sim, Wabisabi SushiDerby. It’s not all been new games, though: my wife and I have returned to a classic for more co-op fun, getting our asses served to us in Overcooked! All You Can Eat, and I replayed (and finally 100%ed) the beautiful game Pyre.

I have a bunch of new games to dig into, and several others in progress, so there’s no doubt I can keep myself busy!

Oh, and I finally got my degree certificate: now I am most definitely and officially and provably the holder of my fourth degree, an MSc in Infectious Diseases (with Merit). I haven’t yet decided on another course of study, before anyone asks…

Reading stats:

Here’s the bit you’re all really interested in, right?

StoryGraph reading stats for July 2026: 24 books, 6,220 pages, average rating of 3.46. My top rated reads included Afonydd, After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 1, and The Wife Comes First vol 3. The number of pages I read per day was pretty variable, with big peaks each weekend. More reading stats for July 2026: I read 50% fiction, 50% non-fiction, and 63% of my books were under 300 pages long, with 38% between 300 and 500 pages. I read 96% in print and 4% in digital editions, and my top genres were poetry (6), fantasy (6), romance (5), LGBTQIA+ (4) and history (4).

Total books read: 24
Total pages read: 6,220
Rereads: 0
ARCs: 2
Series finished/up to date: 3
Books owned pre-2026: 2
Books owned from 2026: 13
Borrowed books: 9

Fiction: 11
Non-fiction: 7
Poetry: 6
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 2

Still not as much reading as I’d like, really! The numbers mean I’m slipping ever further behind my original reading goal for the year, and while I try to be flexible with goals and not care too much about hitting a certain number, it’s a bit weird for me to be reading so little, and generally suggests I’m not getting enough free time or something is otherwise going on. I’m not honestly sure, though, because it’s fairly common for me to hit a slump from March through July, and start picking up again in August.

Sooo… I guess we’ll see?

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books: 195/400 (38 books behind)
Overall pages read: 45,446/100,000 (12,910 pages behind)
Books read from backlog: 32/100 (26 books behind)
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 20/20

20 Books of Summer: 10/20 (0/5 bonus)

I’m still way, way behind on my reading goals, which is a bit of a shame. As mentioned above, it suggests I just haven’t been able to make enough time for reading… or maybe I’m still just a bit flattened by last year, which featured several big life events like moving, the final year of my MSc, and my grandmother’s death. Plus I have a new client that I’m working for, so that takes time.

I’m not going to adjust anything until after my holiday at the end of August, at least — but after that I’m definitely thinking about dropping the goal just to avoid letting it influence me into feeling ick (there’s no point in that). I think in the past I’ve always ended up exceeding my low-ish goals by a lot, often reaching my original higher goal anyway, though, so I’m a little curious what happens if I just let myself be without changing my goal, and live with being “behind”.

Blogging stats:

Views: 18.8k
Visitors: 17.8k
Likes: 412
Comments: 501
Reviews: 26
Other posts: 29

All stats were up this month! I’ve been feeling more engaged with reading and blogging, and have been prepping stuff at the weekends to free up time during the week to socialise on other blogs more, so I think it makes sense. It’s been a pretty good month, all round.

Most viewed posts:

My own favourite posts:

Stuff I loved from elsewhere:

I really had difficulty with restraining myself from including some more links, but ten really seemed enough!

This month I did start drafting this post ahead of time, but goodness, it still seems to have taken forever. I need a better template, maybe. But at least we can say I’ve seen July out properly now.

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted August 1, 2026 by Nicky in General / 38 Comments

Happy weekend! And whew, I need it.

Books acquired this week

I told myself I was really going to try not to get any more books before my birthday, but I’d forgotten that I’d preordered Dinosaur Sanctuary volume eight, and then one of my (brand-new) fillings broke and I had to head back to the dentist. And I really liked the first volume of this danmei…

Cover of Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 8 by Itaru Kinoshita Cover of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 2 by Liu Gou Hua

Volume two of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine took a little finding (in the end I ordered it from Travelling Man, of all places, thanks to my wife spotting that they actually had it in stock) but it arrived yesterday, woooo. I might even read it this weekend!

Posts from this week

As ever lately, it’s been a busy week on the blog, so good thing I’m going to do a roundup! Here goes, starting with the reviews:

As ever, most of these are not recent reads, except for The Sea Hides Its Dead, because of the way I spread out my reviews to avoid spamming everyone with sixty million manga reviews at once! I have tons of reviews pre-written and all ready to go, when the right moment comes.

Aaand of course, here are the non-review posts now:

What I’m reading

First up, the little preview of books I intend to review soon, having finished them this week! I had a good weekend for reading, but tailed off once we hit the work-week — it was busy, and also the dentist stuff… Anyway, here they are!

Cover of Twelve Caesars by Mary Beard Cover of The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager Cover of The Wife Comes First vol 3 by Lv Ye Qian He Cover of Zoology by Gillian Clarke

Cover of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 1 by Liu Gou Hua Cover of Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 8 by Itaru Kinoshita Cover of A Short History of the World in 50 Lies by Natashia Tidd

Earlier in the week I had very specific reading plans, but I’ve decided to abandon them — they stopped sparking joy! Now my main plan is just to try to clear the deck a little bit so I have space for books for my birthday: we have a specific day planned out for me to buy plenty, so I’d better make space!

So chances are I’ll read After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 2 this weekend, and dive into some of the other books that’re waiting for me, like John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints.

As ever, though, it’ll ultimately be whatever I feel like.

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.

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Review – A History of the World in 50 Pieces

Posted July 31, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A History of the World in 50 Pieces

A History of the World in 50 Pieces: The Classical Music That Shapes Us

by Tom Service

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 310
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Explore how music has changed our world through 50 pieces across classical, folk and world traditions with BBC presenter Tom Service, in this official Radio 3 compendium.

Music transports us and defines us. As a form of expression, it has been passed down through oral tradition, musical notation and recordings in a chain of connection that spans the globe, across the millennia. A History of the World in 50 Pieces follows that chain, collating 50 pieces of classical music that reflect our changing politics, social structures and technological development, and how composers, musicians and listeners have shaped those currents of history.

From Bach to Beethoven, Songlines to Saariaho, Hildegard of Bingen to the Happy Birthday song, Tom Service offers a fresh take on pieces that many of us think we know, and many more we might not. With each short, sharp analysis, he expands the typical canon and tests the boundaries of what we understand to be ‘classical music’ – or even music at all, such as the sounds of the earth’s rotation, and the songs of humpback whales.

Tom Service’s A History of the World in 50 Pieces is not as focused on the history part as I’d like: we do glimpse bits and pieces of history (predominantly but not always music history), but there are no references at all other than a list of sources for direct quotations, so a lot of it runs on “trust me, bro”.

There were definitely snippets of history discussed and revealed (I need to read more about Shostakovich now!) but… each section is really short, some barely four pages, so it doesn’t lend itself to much depth and detail.

What it did do was make me curious about each piece and really want to listen to them. Service’s enthusiasm for the songs is lovely, and his educated understanding of them really helps. I wish there was a playlist or something to easily listen to recommended versions, but so far I didn’t find one.

Overall, a fun read and one which gave me food for thought, but not ideal as a history per se.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Book Blogger Hop: One Single Genre

Posted July 31, 2026 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

A banner for a "Book Blogger Hop", with a photo of a bunny wearing glasses and its paws on a book

It’s Friday, so it’s time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer. I’ve made my own image from a stock photo (credit: Anna Shvets) to avoid adding images created via generative AI to my blog. Feel free to use it too if you would like!

This week’s prompt is about genre:

If you had to stick to one genre forever, which would you choose and why?

Noooo!

As anyone who hangs around my blog much knows, I don’t really stick to one genre for long, ever. I’ll hop from a mystery to a sci-fi to a non-fiction… But I’d say the majority of my reading if you look at my life as a whole has been speculative fiction, and I couldn’t give up rereading Ursula Le Guin’s work, or Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor… and speculative fiction is a pretty broad genre — you’ll note I said that rather than fantasy or sci-fi! A lot of romance and even the danmei I read could sneak under this umbrella.

I’d hate to give up my classic mysteries, non-SF romance and the wealth of non-fiction I’ve started reading in the last decade, though, so luckily this will never come to pass!

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Review – The Sea Hides Its Dead

Posted July 30, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – The Sea Hides Its Dead

The Sea Hides Its Dead

by Megan Bontrager

Genres: Horror
Pages: 351
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Trapped in an underwater cave, a group of academics must face a series of deadly, supernatural trials—each one demanding they confront their darkest sins—in this chilling aquatic cult horror debut from Megan Bontrager.

Grad student Caro has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but when an opportunity arises to act as a research assistant on an anthropological expedition for her professor and lover, Edward Beck, she doesn’t hesitate. Beck assembles a team of academics and professionals to study the ancient sea-based Cult of the Leviathan, and the expedition descends into the sea caves where the cult is said to have dwelt.

But when the cave entrance collapses, trapping them inside, the expedition finds they are not alone in the darkness. Surrounded by strange artifacts and scattered bones, an ancient trial has been set in motion. One by one, the members of the expedition will be tested and forced to atone for their greatest sin... or die.

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.

I was initially really unsure about Megan Bontrager’s The Sea Hides Its Dead, because the prose… gets in its own way, especially in the first fifty pages or so. It’s a mix of “trying too hard” and “…did you ask an LLM to help you come up with an original simile here?”, and sometimes it’s just plain overwritten. Some choice bits that I went “eh???” at include:

I bore the day like a rotten organ, one that had gotten stuck in its botched extraction.

Like… I get where this one is going for, but it doesn’t sound or feel right; “rotten organs” don’t get “stuck”, you just… well, die. And then this, after the protagonist realises that she’s forgotten that that particular day is the anniversary of her mother’s death:

It takes no bravery to make the active choice not to mourn. This, too, just happens.

But she didn’t make an active choice not to mourn. She forgot. That’s… these are not the same things. You understand that, right? Author? Right?! (Please don’t answer. This review is not for you. If you have feelings about it, feel free to go and speak to other authors, a sympathetic family member, or your therapist. This was rhetorical and not an invitation.)

I guess you can be generous there and say that the protagonist then chose not to mourn for the rest of the day after remembering, or that the very forgetting was an active choice through deliberately not trying to remember the date, but that’s all getting a bit special pleading for a sentence that doesn’t, on the face of it, make a lot of sense. It’d be easier and clearer to just write, “I’d been trying not to mark the date, to not think about it, not to set aside special time to mourn.”

And, final example, this bit:

The open, curious expression on Mallory’s face twisted, wilting in on itself like a rusted lattice.

The combo of “wilting” and “lattice” makes me think the author started off with “wilted lettuce” and then decided it wasn’t quite the right note.

Anyway! I felt like this sort of thing evened out a bit once we were into the meat of the story, which takes most of the first 100 pages. There’s an obviousness about it all, from the sordid relationship between Caroline and the professor to the drug-addicted doctor to the soldier who deserted his men. The darkness in their pasts takes obvious forms, and there’s no real ambiguity about whether Beck’s right about what the whole cave system is about. The ultimate outcome is predictable, even most of the twists.

That said, I did think the way that Caroline confronts her “sin” is pretty well done: I’m not sure she’s more likeable for the choice she makes and the way she treats it, but she definitely stands out more for it. The unashamed way she goes, “Yeah, I did that, and I’d do it again!” — yeah, pretty great. I also enjoyed her friendship with Mallory: I think we didn’t get enough build-up to that, really, but their closeness within the cave makes enough sense that it works.

Overall, it came together better than I’d feared from my sense of the writing when I started the book: maybe I got used to it, maybe it genuinely settled out and those first pages had been over-polished or something. Either way, I had a reasonable amount of fun reading it, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it, so I keep wavering on how exactly to rate it now I’m looking back at the whole. Perhaps it’s just not enough my usual genre for me to really know; I’m more of an occasional horror reader.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Life Changing

Posted July 30, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Life Changing

Life Changing: How Humans are Altering Life on Earth

by Helen Pilcher

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 384
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

For the last three billion years or so, life on Earth was shaped by natural forces. Evolution tended to happen slowly, with species crafted across millennia. Then, a few hundred thousand years ago, along came a bolshie, big-brained, bipedal primate we now call Homo sapiens, and with that, the Earth's natural history came to an abrupt end. We are now living through the post-natural phase, where humans have become the leading force shaping evolution.

This thought-provoking book considers the many ways that we've altered the DNA of living things and changed the fate of life on earth. We have carved chihuahuas from wolves and fancy chickens from jungle fowl. We've added spider genes to goats and coral genes to tropical fish. It's possible to buy genetically-modified pets, eat genetically-modified fish and watch cloned ponies thunder up and down the polo field.

Now, as our global dominance grows, our influence extends far beyond these species. As we warm our world and radically reshape the biosphere, we affect the evolution of all living things, near and far, from the emergence of novel hybrids such as the pizzly bear, to the entirely new strains of animals and plants that are evolving at breakneck speed to cope with their altered environment.

In Life Changing, Helen introduces us to these post-natural creations and talks to the scientists who create, study and tend to them. At a time when the future of so many species is uncertain, we meet some of the conservationists seeking to steer evolution onto firmer footings with novel methods like the 'spermcopter', coral IVF and plans to release wild elephants into Denmark. Helen explores the changing relationship between humans and the natural world, and reveals how, with evidence-based thinking, humans can help life change for the better.

Helen Pilcher’s Life Changing is a book about how humans have altered other life on earth, deliberately and accidentally, covering topics like the domestication of animals, cloning, genetic engineering, extinction and conservation. None of it came as a huge surprise to me, but it was written in a very readable way, and it was kinda useful to have this kind of thing gathered and grouped together (rather than read separately in books about conservation, animal domestication, etc, all separate from one another).

Throughout, Pilcher tries to keep it light, despite the sometimes-heavy topics: sometimes the humour worked for me, sometimes less so; I wouldn’t call it laugh out loud funny, but it does keep things fairly casual (and sometimes helps to make her point, e.g. when she jokingly refers to her dog as a genetically engineered creature: essentially, he is).

It’ll probably be pretty familiar if you’ve read similar books on the topic before, but it’s accessible and a reasonably easy read. There’s no numbered footnotes or even a numbered bibliography, though, for those who would prefer to be able to fact check: it’s veeeery much on the light end of popular science, in that sense.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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WWW Wednesday

Posted July 29, 2026 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

Cover of Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 8 by Itaru KinoshitaWhat have you recently finished reading?

Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 8, which has a cruel, cruel cliffhanger! I can’t believe the next volume isn’t slated to come out until March, arrghhh.

Before that, it was volume one of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which I had quite a bit of fun with. It’s a slower burn than the other danmei I’ve been reading recently, but the feelings are starting to develop and I’m very curious about where it will go exactly.

Cover of A Short History of the World in 50 Lies by Natashia TiddWhat are you currently reading?

The only book I am currently actively reading is Natasha Tidd’s A Short History of the World in 50 Lies. I’m finding it kind of suspect due to a couple of basic/silly errors, like referring to Geoffrey of Monmouth as “Monmouth”. The fact that he’s called Geoffrey of Monmouth is like literally saying “Geoffrey from Monmouth”, as opposed to “Geoffrey from Caerphilly”. In most contexts you’re not going to then refer to them as “Monmouth” and “Caerphilly”, and indeed, scholars just say “Geoffrey” after the first time they’ve specified “Geoffrey of Monmouth” (unless it’s unclear due to multiple Geoffreys, in which case they say, you guessed it, “Geoffrey of Monmouth”).

Anyway it’s something that I was taught in undergraduate English literature would be a terribly silly mistake to make, and would have my examiners carefully looking to see what else I goofed up or didn’t understand, and thus it has been with me and this book. My grasp on most of this history is thin, so I haven’t caught any other errors, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. I’m probably being a bit too generous in finishing it, but I love this non-fic format and am always so susceptible…

Cover of Servus by Emma SouthonWhat will you be reading next?

I have, for once, very firm plans! I want to finish up reading Emma Southon’s Servus and Gareth Russell’s Queen James, which are both chunky non-fiction, while also rereading Jordan L. Hawk’s Widdershins (much lighter) and getting started on Becky Chambers‘ As You Wake, Break the Shell.

On a separate note, because I’ve tweaked something, I want to warn that tomorrow I’ll probably do a test post. I’m sorry if that ends up spamming anyone’s email! Honestly most likely you won’t get an email at all, because this thing’s been broken for ages and this isn’t a very likely fix, but it’s worth trying.

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