Author: Nicky

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted July 27, 2024 by Nicky in General / 17 Comments

Well! I’m writing this in the evening after spending the day hanging out with a friend and absolutely raiding a bookshop. I’ve spent a little much today, but I’m happy, haha. But I’ll save that haul for the next couple weeks, since I haven’t unpacked it and added it to my StoryGraph yet.

Books acquired this week

Just one for now, since I’m not listing the ones I got today yet! I think I’d vaguely known this was coming, and then forgotten, so it was a nice surprise when Leah mentioned it in a comment and I realised it was out!

Cover of Bitter Waters by Vivian Shaw

I’m excited to read this one!

Reviews posted this week

Time for a bit of a round-up!

Other posts:

What I’m reading

I’ve been back to reading a bit more widely this week, though I haven’t finished many books yet. I’m well behind on my reading goals, but a Bookly readathon is coming, so I’m hopeful that’ll help me catch up a bit!

Here’s a glimpse at the books I’ll be reviewing sometime soon:

Cover of Dominion vol 1: The Resurrection of Jason Ash Cover of Dominion: Sandman, by Thomas Fenton et al Cover of Dominion: The Fist of God, by Thomas Fenton et al Cover of Written in Bone by Sue Black

I really liked Written in Bone, so now I’m reading All That Remains. It’s a bit more memoir-y, at least so far, and made me cry a little a couple of times (let’s say the discussion of the decline and death of someone with dementia hits a little close to home). I think from reviews it does go on to talk a bit more about the author’s work as a forensic anthropologist, though, which should be interesting.

Other than that, as I discussed in my WWW Wednesday post, I’m finally digging into KJ Charles’ The Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, which I’m loving (and still has me pretty curious, as I haven’t read much more since Wednesday — yet). I also rather randomly picked up Emily Henry’s Book Lovers, which I’m having fun with so far.

How’s everyone else doing?

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

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Review – The Subversive Stitch

Posted July 26, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Subversive Stitch

The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine

by Rozsika Parker

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 256
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Rozsika Parker's now classic re-evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between women and embroidery has brought stitchery out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts, created a major breakthrough in art history and criticism, and fostered the emergence of today's dynamic and expanding crafts movements.

The Subversive Stitch is now available again with a new Introduction that brings the book up to date with exploration of the stitched art of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, as well as the work of new young female and male embroiderers. Rozsika Parker uses household accounts, women's magazines, letters, novels and the works of art themselves to trace through history how the separation of the craft of embroidery from the fine arts came to be a major force in the marginalisation of women's work. Beautifully illustrated, her book also discusses the contradictory nature of women's experience of embroidery: how it has inculcated female subservience while providing an immensely pleasurable source of creativity, forging links between women.

Rozsika Parker’s The Subversive Stitch is a pretty academic work, illustrated with lots of plates (though these are in black and white and not really of the greatest quality, at least in the edition I have. Parker’s thesis is basically that embroidery was a huge part of how femininity was constructed, particularly in the Victorian era, and we’ve seen a lot of things both deeper in the past and now through that lens.

No doubt there’s more up to date work now, but I’m under the impression this is a bit of a classic. It can be dry, especially if you’re not interested in the subject — as I mentioned, it really is pretty academic. But there are some fascinating insights here, and also some correctives to received wisdom about what exactly the history of embroidery has been like. Solid lesson: don’t believe a Victorian source, possibly not even about Victorian norms.

Perhaps more of interest to those interested in feminist and women’s history than to those interested in embroidery per se.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Dominion vol 1: The Resurrection of Jason Ash

Posted July 25, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Dominion vol 1: The Resurrection of Jason Ash

Dominion: The Resurrection of Jason Ash

by Thomas Fenton, Jamal Igle, Steven Cummings

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 49
Series: Dominion #1
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

A gripping supernatural thriller of biblical proportions...quite literally. When detective Jason Ash arrives on the scene of a particularly strange murder in the suburbs of New Orleans, little does he know that he is about to take on the case of a lifetime. As dead people begin to come back to life, revealing that they hail from a realm where angels fight for power, it becomes clear that an epic battle between good and evil is at play, one threatening the very future of humanity.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the page numbering and so on with Thomas Fenton’s Dominion, as the versions of each volume on Amazon have only around 50 pages, though elsewhere they consistently get shown as 150 pages. The cover images match the cover images for the versions with 150 pages, so… it’s just weird.

So hopefully what I’m reading isn’t just a fragment missing the last two thirds, but I can only read what’s available, in any case. Volume one of Dominion feels fairly typical: the beginning is a little confusing, but then it switches to the point of view of a young cop, who quickly gets drawn into a conflict involving angels (and gains strange powers as a result).

That’s about as far as this first volume goes, with the conflict wrapped around the story of child kidnappings that gets the cops involved. I’m curious where it’s going, but it feels like I’ve seen this story around before… several times.

Still, I’ll be picking up the next volume to see what the author does with the setup, so though I’m fairly lukewarm, it’s not that the story was bad.

Rating: 2/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted July 24, 2024 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I did one of these, but I’m currently reading stuff I’m excited about and not just rereading (though I’m doing a lot of that too), so it seems like a good moment for an update!

So WWW Wednesday normally asks:

  • What have you recently finished reading?
  • What are you currently reading?
  • What are you planning on reading next?

What have you recently finished reading?

I just read the Dominion comics by Thomas Fenton. I wasn’t enormously impressed, alas; the idea feels kind of overdone, and the story’s third act suddenly went nyyoooooooom!!! through to a conclusion without much stopping to explain things or explore what they meant.

Cover of A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ CharlesWhat are you currently reading?

I have finally picked up The Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, by KJ Charles, which I am (as I’d expect from a KJ Charles novel) really loving. Poor Rufus really deserves better from his family, though he really should control his temper a bit better — calling his relatives a pack of c-words is just justified, but it’s clear he’s pretty intimidating when he gets cross. Very curious what Luke’s whole deal is.

I am also currently still in the middle of my Narnia reread, partway through Victoria Finlay’s Colour, and half a dozen other books that are kind of backburnered, as is my wont.

Cover of Tour de Force by Christianna BrandWhat are you planning on reading next?

Most likely I’ll pick up Christianna Brand’s Tour de Force, which was the new British Library Crime Classic for this month. I’m actually a couple of months behind on reading them, gasp, so I should get to those soon.

But, as usual, my whim rules all, and maybe it’ll take me somewhere else.

What’s everyone else reading?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Debut Novels I Enjoyed

Posted July 23, 2024 by Nicky in General / 13 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “debut novels I enjoyed”, which I found a bit tricky as I don’t generally keep track of whether a book is an author’s debut or not. Still, let’s have a crack at it…

Cover of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin Cover of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System vol 4 by MXTX Cover of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke Cover of Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey Cover of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

  1. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin. I should reread this trilogy at some point, it’s been ages. I remember reading the first book vividly, and curling up with it to just get started, and of course ending up reading most of it.
  2. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù. Remembering that the Scum Villain webnovel was MXTX’s first, I couldn’t resist including this one! I wrote ten reasons why I loved it last week, if you’re curious.
  3. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. A chunky historical fantasy with liberal use of footnotes that not everyone enjoyed. I say this because I can hear the comments coming and I want to get out ahead of it: I know! Not everyone liked it! But I did, and have read it at least twice (and am partway through a third read).
  4. Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey. What a saga this one launched! Once again, it has its detractors (particularly for its flowery language and, of course, the masochism and sex), but I enjoyed the story and characters very much: I found the worldbuilding rich and exciting, and Joscelin is a heck of a love interest. “If I’m to be damned for what I’ve done, I’ll be damned in full and not by halves.”
  5. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. I keep wondering if this will enchant me as much if I read it again, and I think I should probably give it a shot.
  6. Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. I admit that when I first read it, I didn’t entirely get it: it’s one of those books that stayed with me, and which I had to read again to fully fall in love. Still, I was convinced by the end of the first book, and have enjoyed all Leckie’s other work since.
  7. Strange Practice, by Vivian Shaw. Not always accurate about what it’s like to be a GP in Britain in general (said Mum when I eagerly made her read the series), but enjoyable nonetheless — and some inaccuracies can be forgiven since the patients are vampires, ghouls, banshees and mummies. And the story has such a good heart.
  8. Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee. It took me a while to get into the right mindset for Ninefox Gambit when I first read it, and I have no doubt it’ll take the same again: there’s just so much going on with the worldbuilding and the politics. That said, everything you need is there in the story, if you give it the time. It’s not always easy to trust readers to do the work, and I know some people who bounced off for that reason, but I found it entirely worthwhile.
  9. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. I’m unapologetic in my love for this series, even though (like most others on this list) it has its detractors. It may be about aliens and a galaxy far, far away, but it’s also about people, the connections between people, and how small lives go on amongst much bigger events — with an unapologetic interest in those small lives.
  10. The Summer Tree, by Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s been quite a while since I read anything by Guy Gavriel Kay, and his more recent work didn’t get me so excited somehow (though I still need to give it a shot). The Summer Tree has flaws, yes — but the story of Paul, Kim, Dave, Kevin, Jennifer and Fionavar has stuck with me. Maybe I should reread it soon!

Cover of Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Cover of Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw Cover of Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee Cover of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers Cover of The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

Whew, we got there! Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s lists.

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Review – Written in Bone

Posted July 22, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Written in Bone

Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind

by Sue Black

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 360
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Our bones are the silent witnesses to the lives we lead. Our stories are marbled into their marrow.

Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it.

Some of this information is easily understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. But by carefully piecing together the evidence, the facts of a life can be rebuilt. Limb by limb, case by case – some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre – Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the hidden stories in what we leave behind.

Sue Black’s Written in Bone is, unsurprisingly, all about bones — the things bones can tell us, even when we lack any other evidence of someone’s life. It covers the effects of injuries, congenital differences, causes of death, post-mortem traumas, and the way someone has lived their life, illustrated with examples of cases Black has dealt with.

It’s worth realising going in that some of those are pretty harrowing: there are clinical but nonetheless thorough descriptions of horrific violence and the damage it can cause, reconstructing the series of attacks during a deadly assault. Black also worked on identifying paedophiles from their characteristics in images and film (though the acts in these films and images are mercifully not described). She also describes her own rape, when she was young. She has a distance from it, at least in the telling, but overall if this is something you’d find very difficult, I’d recommend not reading this (or skipping that chapter).

It’s a fascinating way to think about the body, to imagine what things might be written into my bones. At times it’s discomforting, because the violence described is very vivid, literally blow-by-blow of whole assaults and murders. But Sue Black writes with compassion for victims and a careful clinical distance, so I found it relatively easy to just focus on the mechanics of the thing and not on the horror, and understand Black’s points.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Summers End

Posted July 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Summers End

Summers End

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 265
Series: Shady Hollow #5
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A unique take on dark academia, featuring everyone’s favorite vulpine sleuth, Vera Vixen.

It’s late August in Shady Hollow, and the heat has intrepid reporter Vera Vixen eager to get away. She agrees to chaperone the annual field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture, along with her good friend Lenore Lee to come with her.

But when the two enter the tomb, they find bones that are distinctly more…modern. Digging a little deeper, Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in a recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues. Now the fox and raven have to delve into the dark world of academia and archaeology to determine which creature thought they were clever enough to get away with the perfect murder.

Summers End is the latest in Juneau Black’s Shady Hollow series, and it takes the story out of the immediate environs of Shady Hollow, to a nearby archaeological site which has obvious analogues with sites like Stonehenge and Newgrange: it’s both a tomb and a calendar, surrounded by ritual and stories. Vera and Lenore are there to chaperone some kids to see the site and learn about it, and have a little bit of a holiday.

And of course there’s a murder, and of course Vera Vixen has to be in on it — not least because, predictably, someone important to her is involved (if only by proxy). We learn a little more about Lenore, and about her sister, who ends up accused of the murder. It’s a neat way of taking us out of Shady Hollow and ensuring that it doesn’t feel too much like the supposedly friendly little town is rife with crime (same with the previous book, which turned out to be a very different sort of crime).

I enjoyed the setting, though the dramatic denouement started pushing into being a little too much. I was surprised that we didn’t see more of Orville, but on reflection it’s actually quite nice to still see Vera operating separately — she’s an independent fox, and while she enjoys partnering up with Orville (inasfar as that’s appropriate given she’s a reporter, not part of the police), it’s nice to see her going solo. Or, as in this case, with her own sidekick.

If the other books in the series leave you cold, I doubt this’ll change things, but I found it a fun installment.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted July 20, 2024 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

Happy weekend! There’s still not a lot going on for me reading-wise, but it always goes in phases for me, and I’m not sweating it. Reading’s not my job, it’s meant to be for fun, after all.

Plus, the fact that I’m not acquiring more books is not so bad: I have a bookshop trip with a friend coming up next week (most likely), and my birthday coming up in August (definitely), so… quiet weeks are good, if only because I’m running out of space.

Books acquired this week

N/a! I did look at requesting some on Netgalley, but I didn’t feel the excitement, so I decided to give it a miss (for now at least).

I should’ve pre-ordered KJ Charles’ new book, but I forgot. Hoping to pick that up next week!

Posts from this week

Here’s the usual roundup of what I’ve been posting!

Other posts:

What I’m reading

I’ve still been mostly re-reading the Narnia books, which I’m not going to review here again, but I did this week finish one new book I’ll review soon:

Cover of Summer's End by Juneau Black

It’s a fun addition to the Shady Hollow series; I enjoyed it a lot.

I did start picking up some other new-to-me books this week as well, though I haven’t finished them yet, including Sue Black’s Written In Bone, which is fascinating (if sometimes gruesome) and Victoria Finlay’s Colour, which is pretty fascinating. Perhaps I’ll finish them in the week ahead!

Hope everyone’s having a good one!

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

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Review – Hands of Time

Posted July 19, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Hands of Time

Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History

by Rebecca Struthers

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 288
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Hands of Time is a journey through watchmaking history, from the earliest attempts at time-keeping, to the breakthrough in engineering that gave us the first watch, to today - where the timepieces hold cultural and historical significance beyond what its first creators could have imagined. Acclaimed watchmaker Rebecca Struthers uses the most important watches throughout history to explore their attendant paradigm shifts in how we think about time, indeed how we think about our own humanity. From an up-close look at the birth of the fakes and forgeries industry which marked the watch as a valuable commodity, to the watches that helped us navigate trade expeditions, she reveals how these instruments have shaped how we build and then consequently make our way through the world.

A fusion of art and science, history and social commentary, this fascinating work, told in Struthers's lively voice and illustrated with custom line drawings by her husband and fellow watchmaker Craig, is filled with her personal observations as an expert watchmaker--one of the few remaining at work in the world today. Horology is a vast subject--the "study of time." This compelling history offers a fresh take, exploring not only these watches within their time, but the role they played in human development and the impact they had on the people who treasured them.

Timepieces have long accompanied us on our travels, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, the ice of the arctic to the sands of the deserts, outer space to the surface of the moon. The watch has sculpted the social and economic development of modern society; it is an object that, when disassembled, can give us new insights both into the motivations of inventors and craftsmen of the past, and, into the lives of the people who treasured them.

An award-winning watchmaker--one of the few practicing the art in the world today--chronicles the invention of time through the centuries-long story of one of mankind's most profound technological achievements: the watch.

Rebecca Struthers is a watchmaker in the traditional mould, and The Hands of Time is a history of time (or at least, timekeeping) from that point of view. It’s not just about watches, but also about the things that shaped our need to keep time, and the times when watches have been showpieces, groundbreaking inventions, solutions to problems, etc.

It’s the kind of book I really love, focusing in on one object (a watch) to tell us about wider society, using the theme to discuss people and events of the past. I don’t know anything about watchmaking, I’m not personally very interested in it, and I don’t wear a watch — but I found Struthers’ reflections on watches and watchmaking fascinating nonetheless.

There was something focused and meditative about it, like spending all day carefully adding details to a very small model: I know real watchmaking is much more painstaking, but one can recognise the feeling, at least. It was very satisfying, even though I’m sure I’ve retained nothing about the actual process of building a watch.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Nefertiti’s Face

Posted July 18, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Nefertiti’s Face

Nefertiti's Face: The Creation of an Icon

by Joyce Tyldesley

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 240
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Little is known about Nefertiti, the Egyptian queen whose name means "a beautiful woman has come." She was the wife of Akhenaten, the pharaoh who ushered in the dramatic Amarna Age, and she bore him at least six children. She played a prominent role in political and religious affairs, but after Akhenaten's death she apparently vanished and was soon forgotten.

Yet Nefertiti remains one of the most famous and enigmatic women who ever lived. Her instantly recognizable face adorns a variety of modern artifacts, from expensive jewelry to cheap postcards, t-shirts, and bags, all over the world. She has appeared on page, stage, screen, and opera. In Britain, one woman has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on plastic surgery in hope of resembling the long-dead royal. This enduring obsession is the result of just one object: the lovely and mysterious Nefertiti bust, created by the sculptor Thutmose and housed in Berlin's Neues Museum since before World War II.

In Nefertiti's Face, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley tells the story of the bust, from its origins in a busy workshop of the late Bronze Age to its rediscovery and controversial removal to Europe in 1912 and its present status as one of the world's most treasured artifacts. This wide-ranging history takes us from the temples and tombs of ancient Egypt to wartime Berlin and engages the latest in Pharaonic scholarship. Tyldesley sheds light on both Nefertiti's life and her improbable afterlife, in which she became famous simply for being famous.

Joyce Tyldesley’s Nefertiti’s Face tackles not (as I think some other readers have hoped) who Nefertiti was, where she came from, what she might have been like, and how she died — though some of that is discussed as well — but the specifics of the famous limestone and gypsum plaster bust of her, currently on display in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. It accepts the attribution to the artisan Thutmose (or at least to his workshop in Amarna), and has a guess at aspects of the life of Thutmose and his workmen as well as at the purpose and meaning of the bust.

That does of course involve some contextualisation for people who might be coming to this fresh, so it includes a chapter about Akhenaten and the establishment of Amarna. Tyldesley rather squashes the hope that Nefertiti was equal to Akhenaten in some way, pointing out her position in the art is usually subordinate to his, and her exceptional actions like smiting enemies are always in the context of his absence — disappointing, but a good analysis.

Obviously there’s always the conjectures about where her tomb might lay (or have lain), and about who might’ve been related to whom and how among the Amarna family.

There is also inevitably discussion about repatriation, which Tyldesley seems somewhat against (claiming that the exhibition of the bust in Berlin benefits Cairo by encouraging people in their love of Egyptian archaeology, and thus boosting tourism). Ho-hum.

Overall, I found this one enjoyable, though obviously aimed at a popular audience. It does have footnotes and a fairly detailed bibliography; always a good sign.

Rating: 4/5

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