Weekend! Whew. It’s been a rough week, and I’m glad to see my weekend and my reading time.

Books acquired this week

I didn’t really expect/intend to get books this week, but it kinda happened anyway. I’d almost forgotten my hold on Murder at Gulls Nest, a book I saw a bunch of other bloggers post about; my wife picked it up for me once I got the notification it was ready! And I got a couple of new options out from the National Poetry Library, too:

I also got approved for another ARC on Netgalley, oops! So there’s this to look forward to as well:

Posts from this week

As ever, I’ve posted a whole bunch of reviews, so let’s start off with the roundup of those:

• Romance manga: Star and Hedgehog, by Nayuta Nago (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• SF mystery: The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Non-fiction: Church Going: A Stonemason’s Guide to the Churches of the British Isles, by Andrew Ziminski (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Poetry: Afterwardness, by Mimi Khalvati (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Graphic novel: Bipolar Bear and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Health Insurance: A Fable for Grown-Ups, by Kathleen Founds (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Fantasy graphic novel: Quince, by Sebastian Kadlecik, Kit Steinkellner and Emma Steinkellner (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Fantasy romance (danmei): Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (light novel), vol 5, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

As ever, it’s actually been a while since I read most of these, since I try to hold reviews back and provide some variety (rather than review 40 graphic novels in a row, which I could do with my backlog of reviews!).

I have done some other posts this week, so here they are:

• Fantasy with Friends: Tolkien (discussing the portrayal of good and evil in LotR)
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books for Armchair Travellers
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading

Work’s been a little, uh, intense this week, so I didn’t get a lot of time for myself — and when I did, I found it hard to get into the mood for reading, alas. Still, I did do some reading in the last week, and as ever, here’s a sneak peek of the ones that I will review on the blog… eventually:

As for this weekend, once I’ve managed to unwind a bit, I hope to spend more time with Julie Leong’s The Keeper of Magic Things, and continue reading the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua. I settled in a bit with Amy Coombe’s Stay for a Spell, so maybe I’ll read more of that too.

It’d be lovely to get a lot of reading done, but I’m conscious of being a bit frazzled, so we’ll see!

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.