Happy weekend! I’ve had a slow start today due to fitting a work thing in this morning, but hopefully a weekend of video games and books awaits me. My exams are creeping closer, but I try to keep my weekends as calm as possible all the same. Nobody can be on 100% of the time!
I hope everyone else is having the kind of weekend they want, so far.
Books acquired this week
Okay, deep breath! As you may recall from last week, I’d ordered quite a few books as a treat after realising I’d waaay oversaved for my taxes. The books I got for myself were exclusively non-fiction this time, though I had a few fiction arrivals for other reasons. Let’s do the non-fiction first!
First, a selection of the V&A museum’s “Fashion in Detail” books…
I’ve already read those and love them, I definitely intend to get more of these books from the V&A. But more about that when I post the reviews!
Next up, the somewhat more… random… non-fiction books! There is a bit of a history theme this time, no pop-science, though.
Finally, I did also get a small poetry collection, to test out what I think of the “Poetry Prescription” collections:
I did also get a book from my wife, received my preorder of a new book by Vivian Shaw, and seem to have forgotten to mention my latest British Library Crime Classic. So here they are, too!
So that’s a very exciting haul… and I’m likely to get some more books next weekend, as I’m meeting up with a friend specifically for the purpose of a bookshop trip. Usually I help him find more books than his budget will hold, but that doesn’t stop me stocking up too. Oh noooo… 😉
Posts from this week
As usual, a quick roundup of reviews posted this week:
- Fantasy: A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, by Sylvie Cathrall (5/5 stars)
- Romance manga: A Side Character’s Love Story, vol. 12, by Akane Tamura (4/5 stars)
- Fantasy: Necrobane, by Daniel M. Ford (4/5 stars)
- Classic crime short stories: Metropolitan Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards (3/5 stars)
- Poetry: Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore (4/5 stars)
- History: Fighting Fit: The Wartime Battle for Britain’s Health, by Laura Dawes (4/5 stars)
- Fantasy comic: The All-Nighter, vol 1, by Chip Zdarsky et al (3/5 stars)
I still have lots of reviews written up but unposted, but slowly we’ll catch up if I keep posting at this rate!
What I’m reading
Let’s start with the usual sneak peek at what I’ve finished reading in the past week! I’m fully caught up on writing reviews, but as ever, it’ll be a while before most of them are posted.
As you see I’ve been reading quite a bit of poetry — a number of these were rereads, because I was curious what I thought of them as an adult, and also whether I want to keep them, since these have all been kept at my parents’ house quite a while, since I finished my first degree. I’ll be re-reviewing these since either they were never reviewed on the blog, or they deserve the reconsideration a decade later!
As usual, I haven’t included any rereads I’m not going to review again, though there were a couple: I’ve been rereading The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System and Vivian Shaw’s Greta Helsing series.
As for this weekend, my plans involve a return to reading fiction to try to finish off my Book Spin Bingo card on Litsy — though I’m also delving into one of my new books, Medieval Graffiti, and finding that fascinating. I’ll probably do some rereading, too, and generally try to follow my whim and get refreshed for a hard work of study ahead.
Hope everyone has a great week!
Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!
There are some very interesting sounding books in your haul!
Have a great week!
Marg @ The Intrepid Reader recently posted…Sunday Salon: The Rachael Johns Book Club Retreat 2025
I find non-fiction quite relaxing a lot of the time, so I’m looking forward to settling in with some of them — though they can be quite chunky and that’s a bit daunting sometimes!
I hope that you manage to get lots of books and video games in this weekend!
The V and A books look good. I would like to try non fiction as I haven’t had a lot of success with it. To that end I have been approved to read Jane Austen The Biography on Netgalley so we shall see how that goes
Have a great weekend!
Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
My post:
https://budgettalesblog.wordpress.com/2025/05/24/stacking-the-shelves-106/
Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog recently posted…Stacking The Shelves
I’ve had a lot of fun so far, though today I am doing some family stuff in the evening that will mean at least a couple of hours of (gasp) not reading. Still, so far so good!
I sort of “grew into” non-fiction, by which I don’t mean that it’s a step in adulthood or something, just that as I personally changed and matured and all of that, I started reading non-fiction. It’s about a third of what I read now. I find it soothing, and also I am curious about many, many things. It’s not for everyone, though, and e.g. I mostly don’t get on with biographies, I’ve discovered.
The V&A books are nice because they’re fairly quick to read and highly illustrated; not quite coffee-table books, but there’s a lot to look at and comparatively less to read, so they went by very fast and enjoyably.
I tend to choose nonfiction over fiction often. Why? I’m curious about many things, too. I especially like what I call browsable nonfiction, nonfiction you read through, maybe not every page, maybe just the parts that interest you.
I like it that you have so many new books. Inspired, I shall stop today at a bookstore and see what I might like to bring home!
Deb Nance at Readerbuzz recently posted…The Sunday Salon: My First Butterfly
Interesting! I’m similar in that I choose non-fiction frequently (about a third of my reading is non-fic, in the last few years), but I usually lean toward choosing stuff that builds an argument or picture up by reading the whole thing.
Sounds like an excellent plan, I hope you find something good!
I love the look of your non-fiction reads – medieval graffiti and discovering what underwear our ancestors wore, or didn’t wear. Thank you for sharing and have a lovely week:).
I love my non-fiction reads, haha. I love fiction too, but sometimes non-fiction is easier to focus on.
I’m intrigued by Church Going. I remember learning about the work of stone masons for church buildings in a couple of the Edward Rutherfurd novels.
I decided I wanted to read a bit more architecture-related stuff after reading A Short History of British Architecture and realising that I really don’t know my building periods that well, hehe.
Fashion in detail books look like they’d be interesting if the photos are really good quality???
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They are! They do focus in very close on the details, though, rather than showing the full garments (in most cases — the one about Chinese dress does have small images of the whole garment as well), so sometimes it’s not easy to see quite how things go together. It’s fascinating though!
You’re smart to have some time to relax on the weekend. I like nonfiction to learn new things, but I also get ideas from fiction. I really like reading a variety of genres.
Anne – Books of My Heart This is my Sunday Post
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I’ve always found I study better if I have plenty of downtime — it’s hard to learn when stressed!
I read both fiction and non-fiction, as you can no doubt tell from my blog. I always like having a mix.
Medieval Grafitti and The Haunted Wood are calling to me! Looks like you have a lot of good books to read
Tammy @ Books, Bones & Buffy recently posted…Buffy’s Corner 5/25/25 – Looking at the Week Ahead
I read Medieval Graffiti this weekend and it’s really interesting, though annoyingly non-conclusive at the same time — we simply don’t understand some (or even a lot) of it.