Unstacking the Shelves

Posted April 15, 2017 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

It’s a blue moon! Or something. Yep, I’ve had a week where I haven’t bought a single book, or received any to review. So first, have a picture of my two bunnies cuddling…

Bunnies, cuddlin'!

They’re not quite at the point where they can run around together yet, but they’re certainly getting used to each other.

And now, the weekly roundup!

Books I’ve finished reading this week:

Cover of The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay Cover of New Scientist: Where the Universe Came From Cover of The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch Cover of The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

Not the busiest reading week ever, but not bad either! And the ratings…

Five stars to… The Lions of Al-Rassan.
Four stars to… The Furthest Station.
Three stars to… Where the Universe Came From.

Reviews posted this week:

Every Heart A Doorway, by Seanan McGuire. A reread. I find this one magical and greatly enjoy the protagonist. 5/5 stars
Britain AD, by Francis Pryor. Unfortunately, Pryor’s shaky scholarship in this book made me seriously worried about his credibility in general. He’s wrong on King Arthur, and I strongly suspect he’s wrong on linguistics and genetics as well. 2/5 stars
Wicked Wonders, by Ellen Klages. An eerie and wistful and tender collection of stories I greatly enjoyed. 4/5 stars
Summer in Orcus, by T. Kingfisher. Reminds me of Valente’s Fairyland books, while still being very much its own book with some amazing and quirky characters. 4/5 stars
After Atlas, by Emma Newman. Works well as a standalone and as a companion to Planetfall, and leaves me wondering, at the end… My only quibble would be that I didn’t engage as fully with the main character as I did in Planetfall. 4/5 stars
On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. A classic and desperately important work, it might be a little slow to read but it was definitely worth it. Darwin was a great scientist, capable of generating testable hypotheses and following through, and criticising his own work. 5/5 stars
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I might not be a fan of the way the Tolkien estate puts out just about anything J.R.R. scribbled, but I did find this fascinating. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

Top Ten Breaths of Fresh Air. Books which struck me as bringing something fresh and new to my experience.
What are you reading Wednesday. The usual weekly update — which happened on Wednesday, honest, guv.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t visit you back last week, I’m afraid it’s because I had a problem with getting comment notifications. I have been baffled about how silent y’all were being! I’m on the case now and will visit back as soon as I can.

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14 responses to “Unstacking the Shelves

  1. Congrats on an Unstacking Week and for having very cute bunnies! I hate it when bloglovin starts going funny and not showing all the posts my fellow bloggers have put up…kinda throws my week into chaos when that happens so you have my sympathy! I thought computers were meant to make life easier…Have a great weekend!

        • Well, it does mention relativity on the front cover, so I can’t really claim that. But I was hoping for a bit less of a focus on it — less “we don’t know what happened because we can’t model it and make relativity and quantum physics agree, this is how we could make them agree”, more “we can only go back to [x] point, but this is what was happening then”.

  2. After Atlas is on its way to me from the library! I really enjoyed Planetfall, so I’m looking forward to it. I should pick up Summer in Orcus soon – maybe later this month after I’ve finished a few ebooks that I own – since I love Ursula Vernon.

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