Hello from London! We’ll be driving home today, but we still have the morning here and a late checkout from the hotel…
And of course — as mentioned in my post on Wednesday — I am now once more a graduate, for the fourth time! All went well, and I’m officially The Bibliophibian, BA (Hons), BSc (Hons), MA, MSc, and an alum of Cardiff University, the Open University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/University of London.
Don’t ask what’s next, because I’m still resting! The MSc was seriously hard work, along with life stuff in the last year or two. But I’m sure I’ll be back to studying sooner or later.
But you’re all here for the books…
Books acquired this week
Hold onto your hats, it’s going to be a wild ride. My wife and I saved up for months so we could go on a book spree to celebrate my graduation, and we certainly managed to do that. I’ll split the new books into at least two posts, maybe three, since it’s nicer to be able to chat about individual books rather than have an overwhelming wall of them, and I won’t be getting othernew books for a bit (except maybe some to review).
For this post at least, since it covers a couple of indie bookshops, I thought it’d be nice to group them by where I picked them up. So let’s start with the first books I got this week, from the Victoria & Albert Museum! Sadly their fashion gallery is closed, just when we’d have loved to take a look at more of these garments for real… but we did get to see some of the kimonos and other Japanese items in the Japanese gallery.
I’m not honestly sure why there was a bunch of Beatrix Potter merchandise and books, but I wasn’t complaining. I love the fact that she was actually a naturalist and a close observer of nature.
On the way back from there, I ducked into an indie bookshop while my wife was getting snacks and bubble tea: South Kensington Books. I didn’t really intend to get anything, but I found there were waaaay too many books jumping out at me to be ignored…
Once I got back to the hotel and could look them up better, I found a couple of these have few or no reviews on StoryGraph, which I actually find fairly exciting. It’s nice to get my hands on something a bit more niche thanks to the curation of indies.
Next up, we have a book from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology, which is smallish but crammed full of artifacts. It’s not very heavily curated: there are lots of display shelves and cases packed with finds, which have their labels with them but not a lot of context or sorting. Still, you can find artefacts from Amarna, which is a personal interest, and some fascinating pieces definitely jumped out at me. The display of a beaded dress, some cloth fabric remains and the display of ushabtis are a highlight, along with a pot burial that is a bit macabre.
Meanwhile, the gift shop yielded up treasure for me:
On Thursday we meant to hit quite a few indie bookshops, but the dwindling budget and my aching feet meant we stuck to Waterstones Piccadilly, Forbidden Planet Megastore, and Gay’s the Word. We trekked out to get the books from Waterstones and Forbidden Planet to the car, so I haven’t catalogued them yet… but here are the books from Gay’s the Word, the oldest queer bookshop in the UK. First, some poetry…
But don’t worry, it wasn’t all highbrow!
I had no idea volume seven of Fence was out! As for the others… well, I’m curious to know at least a little about the Heated Rivalry hype, and I’m unlikely to ever get round to watching the series (I barely watch anything unless it’s over dinner, when me and my wife watch Taskmaster or Gladiators at the moment). I’ve been wanting Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die for ages, and Straight Acting was just a random choice.
Posts from this week
I made post drafts ahead so I could keep up with posts as usual while away, so there’s plenty to round up! Reviews first:
- Romance manhwa:Â Tied to You, vol 2, by WHAT & Chelliace (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
- Fantasy: Nightshade & Oak, by Molly O’Neill (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
- Poetry: Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
- Classic crime: Sky High, by Michael Gilbert (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
- Non-fiction: Cat Tales: A History, by Jerry D. Moore (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
- Fantasy/horror graphic novel: Carmilla: The First Vampire, by Amy Chu & Soo Lee (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
- Fantasy romance: Twig’s Traveling Tomes, by Gryffin Murphy (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
- Poetry: Black Cat Bone, by John Burnside (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
As ever, don’t forget many of these reviews are from weeks ago, since I hold ’em back to try to create a diverse mix of genres in my reviews. The books I’ve been reading this week are discussed in the next section below! ↓↓↓↓↓
Other posts:
What I’m reading
It’s been a bit of a weird week for reading, given I’ve been busy with planned outings and tired from a lot of walking, but I did finish some books this week, all the same! Here’s a peek at the ones I intend to review (eventually) on the blog:
Folk Song in England is quite the chonker, but at least I got it finished before the trip! I enjoyed Mary Oliver’s poetry quite a lot, and the Fashion in Detail series from the V&A is always good, so it was a good reading week.
As for reading this weekend… well, we’re traveling home today which is quite the drive, and it’s my sister’s birthday dinner tomorrow, so we’ll see. I hope to dig into more of my new books, though; I’ve started William Tyndale and the English Language and Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries, so it’d be nice to finish those at least!
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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