Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 24, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Oof, busy week! Shoutout to all the tech and tech-adjacent folks who had long days due to the PHP2Shell and TLS certificate security issues this week (including the friend who hosts my blog, who had to spent quite some time on it — thanks, Adam). It’s been a rough week, let’s buy ourselves some new books about it! Uh, I mean… um.

Books acquired this week

Though I joked about buying myself books about it, I thought about doing so and ended up not really able to choose — and I know my reading plate is very full for the upcoming week, if I want to finish my planned TBR for October! I did pick up one book on Kobo, because it filled a reading prompt:

Fun cover, but alas, the book itself was kinda meh. Oh well!

I did also learn that Susanna Clarke has a new book… and that my library had an ebook copy. So I snagged that, obviously.

And like the previous book, I’ve already read it (it’s not long), ahaha.

Posts from this week

Though it’s been busy and eventful, I’ve started to get back into my routine, so I’ve got something more like my usual number of reviews posted! As ever, here’s the round-up:

Horror: Teddy Bears Never Die, by Cho Yeeun (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Mystery: Murder in the Maze, by J.J. Connington (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Non-fiction: Egypt’s Golden Couple, by John Darnell & Colleen Darnell (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Poetry: A Man, a Woman, & A Hippopotamus, by Selima Hill (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Manga: Cat + Gamer, vol 8, by Wataru Nadatani (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
SF mystery: The Double Dorothy, by Olivia Waite (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

As ever, these aren’t the books I’ve been reading this week (see the next section), and a 3/5 star rating does really for real mean I liked the book! It might not’ve knocked my socks off, but I had a good time.

And now for the other posts:

A pretty successful week all round, despite how busy it was!

What I’m reading

The October readathon on Litsy, Haunted Shelf, has continued to have me reading so much! So here’s a sneak peek at the books I read this week. Reminder: this isn’t a recommendation, and I don’t advise you to read them just based on this post (in fact, I had a run of bad luck with several one- or two-star reads this week). Reviews will come later!

Click the thumbnails to see the full covers:

As I mentioned above, I have a lot of reading to do if I want to complete my planned Haunted Shelf TBR. I definitely want to finish Caitlin Rozakis’ Startup Hell this weekend, and probably at least one other chunkier book left from this month’s planned TBR… maybe Sara Raasch’s The Nightmare Before Kissmas?

But, as ever, it will be down to my whim in the end; I am really not into turning reading into an obligation, so I’ll only keep to my TBR as long as it’s fun! I am also eyeing some non-TBR books like Auralee Wallace’s The Haunted Librarian and Emmeline Duncan’s Chaos at the Lazy Bones Book Shop, which seem well-suited to the season… and I’d love to read more of the manga The Summer Hikaru Died, which is surprisingly tender and sad for also being horror.

Later in the week I’ll probably be reading Cherie Priest’s The Toll, which I somehow never got to when it came out, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things, likewise. I also have Deena Helm’s Our Cut of Salt, which I’m fairly determined to get to this month.

Whatever I read, you can be sure it’ll keep me busy, ahaha.

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.