Happy weekend! I’ve been in a reading mood for the last couple of days, so I’m very much looking forward to a lazy day.
Books acquired this week
This week’s been a busy one! My wife and I went to Manchester last weekend to go to the art gallery (to see their WORN: the life within clothes exhibition) and, let’s be real, get some books. I was hoping I’d pick some up at Queer Lit, but I confess to having found the (lack of) organisation of the shelves a bit too annoying, so I didn’t manage to get anything at an indie, despite Independent Bookshop Week.
Still, I did find myself some books, and absolutely no one is surprised by that.
So first up, the fiction! I’m also including one book I got via this week’s Top Ten Tuesday wishlist sharing, kindly sent me by Emma from Words and Peace, which made me smile.
I love both Ilona Andrews and Cat Sebastian, so I’d been looking out for those, and I’ve been meaning to try the graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea for a while, so that was a nice find too.
I also picked up a little more poetry, since I’ve enjoyed Mary Oliver’s work recently:
I’ve read both of them already — not my favourites among her collections, but there’s always something lovely about her work.
Finally, I got some non-fiction, some of which I’d been anticipating for a while:
Overall a nice little haul, and I’ve started most of them already! Impulse buys turning into impulse reads has turned out to be a very good thing for my reading mood at the moment.
Posts from this week
Right! As ever, I’ve done a fair few posts this week, so let’s do a bit of a roundup. Reviews first:
- Fantasy:Â Solo Leveling light novel vol 7, by Chugong (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
- Crime short stories: Puzzles of the Parish, ed. Martin Edwards (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
- History: Queer Georgians, by Anthony Delaney (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
- Poetry: In the Hollow of the Wave, by Nina Mingya Powles (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
- Manga: Dinosaur Sanctuary, vol 5, by Itaru Kinoshita (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
As ever, most of those aren’t very recent reads, because even with my slower reading lately, I’ve got a huge backlog of reviews written but not yet posted… I’ll talk about what I’ve been reading this week below!
And now the other posts!
- 20 Books of Summer: Getting Started
- Fantasy with Friends: Merch
- Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Wishes
- What Are You Reading Wednesday
I’m getting off to a good start with 20 Books of Summer, too, with two of my chosen books finished!
What I’m reading
I’ve been reading a lot more this week, which is a relief! I’ve been reading a few books in tandem, as usual, but very actively, so I expect I’ll finish a bunch of them this week. Thinking about it, that’s how I used to read all the time — reading a chapter of one book and then swapping to another! All this focus on finishing books, whether for ARCs or just because I feel like I “ought” to for my stats or whatever, has maybe not been serving me super well at the moment. I think the variety is helping my attention span.
Anyway, first let’s talk about the books IÂ did finish this week:
As you can see, it’s a bit more like my usual reading! I completely mainlined The Wife Comes First vol 1, and my wife is probably going to venture out and snag me volume 2 today, since it grabbed me.
The four books I’m currently rotating through most actively are Harry Tanner’s The Queer Thing about Sin, Feng Yu Nie’s Mistakenly Saving the Villain, A.J. West’s How Queer Bookshops Changed the World and Jean-Yves Mollier’s A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop, and I’m kinda hoping I’ll finish all four of those this weekend. When I finish one of the non-fiction books, I’ll probably slot Charlotte Booth’s Lost Voices of the Nile into the rotation, while I think Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Trade in Blood might be next up in fiction…
I do also want to read a couple of poetry collections so the library can have them back, so I might fit them in somewhere, too. But it’ll depend on my whim in the moment: I’ve only just got back my urge to read after a few weeks of very little reading, I’m not going to spoil it now!
I hope everyone else has a lovely/restful/enjoyable weekend planned. ♡
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.
Lovely haul! It’s great that you’re getting back to reading more. I have a copy of the Ilona Andrews book too but haven’t read it yet. Hope you enjoy these, and have a great weekend!
I’m definitely hopeful my slump is over, haha. I’ve been really looking forward to This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me… but I guess we’ll see when I actually get round to it, heh.
Two books on bookshops sound great! I hope you’re enjoying them.
Definitely! A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop is a touch dry at times, and quite focused on France (unsurprisingly given it’s in translation from French), but both are interesting.
I thought I’d read nearly all of Mary Oliver’s books but I don’t think I have found Dream Work. Maddeningly my library doesn’t have all her books so I have to make a point of checking when I go to bookstores.
My Sunday Salon: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2026/06/sunday-salon-summer-solstice.html
Anne@HeadFullofBooks recently posted…Sunday Salon — Summer Solstice
She’s not often stocked in UK libraries, which isn’t too surprising except that I’d have figured she’d be well known enough for there to be a few.
I will be interested in your thoughts on The Queer Thing About Sin. My husband and I have been listening to Stephen Fry’s Greek myth books, and queer love is every bit as prevalent as straight love. In fact, I hesitate to call it queer, because then it wasn’t queer.
Olivia recently posted…Weekly Reading Update 6-20-2026
It’s an interesting one; it takes a very Christian perspective (the author was raised evangelical) and I think it does e.g. Judaism a disservice, conflating it with early Christianity and with modern Christian interpretation of what they call the Old Testament. But it does raise interesting hypotheses and suggestions.
I picked up This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me from my library this week. But my reading is off—and I’m not sure why. I picked up and set down almost everything I brought home this week. But I haven’t tried This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me yet.
Deb Nance at Readerbuzz recently posted…The Sunday Salon: 18 Years of Blogging
I was having a few weeks like that… I’ve ended up leaning into my short attention span and alternating books a lot, and that’s doing a lot for now.
I’m not familiar with Mary Oliver and went to Goodreads to check it out. Like you, and probably most of us linking up here, I can’t go browse a bookshop with out cming out with at least one book. My reading has also picked up as it gets too hot for me to be outside in summer.
Thanks for the good wisjes about doctors!
It’s definitely rare that I can resist, ahaha. I try to roll with it, there are far worse vices!
I love Mary Oliver’s poetry, definitely recommend giving her work a try if you enjoy poetry.
The two bookshop books both sound really good! And that art exhibit sounds really interesting. I will have to pop over to the website since I can’t actually pop to the exhibit itself. Lol. Darn it!
Erin @ Cracker Crumb Life recently posted…Books, Screens, and In-Betweens
I’m enjoying them! Especially How Queer Bookshops Changed the World (the other one is a bit more dry).
The exhibit was a bit smaller than we’d hoped, but definitely interesting!
Mary Oliver’s poetry is one of the first books I checked out from the library when I first became an avid reader. I loved it! Have a great week. 🙂
Meezan recently posted…Sunday Post 141
Her poetry is consistently really lovely.
Oh man…I would LOVE to go to the WORN exhibit!!!! Was it amazing?
Jinjer recently posted…Juneteenth 2026
There were some really interesting details! I think I’d have liked it to be bigger, it was quite a small exhibit, but it was definitely interesting.
Great book haul this week! So many good-looking books. I always enjoy books about bookshops. I hope you enjoy your books and have a great week!
Yvonne @ Socrates Book Reviews recently posted…The Weekend Review – June 20th-22nd
Yes, me too! something so soothing about books about bookshops. Thanks for dropping by!
so happy to put smile on your face!
Yesterday, I started reading Red Bird, by Mary Oliver
Emma @ Words And Peace recently posted…Sunday Post #161: books and Sudoku
I haven’t tried Red Bird yet!
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is on my TBR! Hope you have a good week.
Bree @ Bibliophilebree recently posted…Sunday #47
It’s one I’ve been looking forward to! Hopefully I can make time for it quickly.
I LOVED This Kingdome Will Not Kill Me and Ode to the Half-Broken so I hope you do. I have Trade of Blood to read soon.
Anne – Books of My Heart This is my Sunday Post
I’m hoping to love all of them, ahaha. Just need to make time!
I feel uncomfortable if I have more than one book going at a time. I don’t even like putting a book down overnight.
Thanks for sharing your week, happy reading.
Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out recently posted…It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #SundayPost #SundaySalon
I’m very much a many-at-a-time reader, though I do have too many at the moment and am trying to whittle it down a bit!
Looks like a great flock of books! I wonder what the graphic novel of The Wizard of Earthsea is like. I did enjoy the book when I read it.
It was a very faithful adaptation! A bit wordy, honestly, and the art is very much a matter of taste, but it was interesting.
I’ve been trying to read more poetry over the past couple of years but I haven’t tried any of Mary Oliver’s work. I should see if the local library has any.
I used to strictly read one book at a time but sometime over the past 10-15 years, I started reading at least three at a time–my daily fiction book, a nightly nonfiction, and an audiobook. That works pretty well to hold my attention without overwhelming or confusing me.
Jen at Introverted Reader recently posted…Weekly Update for June 21, 2026
Mary Oliver’s poetry is lovely, and usually very accessible! She doesn’t go in for complicated for the sake of complicated.
I usually have at least three books on the go! I think I got a bit too focused on “must finish what I start” lately, and didn’t listen to my own habits and needs about reading, trying to focus on one book at a time… going back to jumping between them has helped a lot!