Category: General

WWW Wednesday

Posted May 28, 2025 by Nicky in General / 1 Comment

Yep, it’s that time again!

Cover of Advocate by Daniel M. FordWhat have you recently finished reading?

I juuust finished Daniel M. Ford’s Advocate last night. It’s the third book in a series, and there are definitely still things I’m enjoying about the series, but holy crap Aelis really doesn’t learn. You’d swear there was going to be a narrative arc of her getting less arrogant and less inclined to use other people on her climb upwards, but there’s no sign of it yet. I started to find her massively annoying, and really, if she’s supposed to be so clever then there are several twists she should’ve seen coming.

Anyway, my full review will talk about all that at length, but suffice it to say that I’m somewhat losing my patience with the series.

Cover of The Apothecary Diaries (light novel) volume 4What are you currently reading?

I have a few things on the go at once, as usual, but my main target at the moment is volume four of The Apothecary Diaries, the light novel version. I’m about a third of the way into it, and it does seem to be going by a bit quicker than the third volume did for me, but I think I might take a little break from the series after this book. I don’t own more of it yet, and I think my brain needs time to consolidate!

More slowly, I’m reading The Book Forger by Joseph Hone, which is interesting — I think I vaguely knew something about the forgeries that Hone is talking about, but nothing about the person who created them, or the people who tracked it down. It’d make good fiction!

Cover of Sorcery and Small Magics, by Maiga DoocyWhat will you be reading next?

First priority: finish Maiga Doocy’s Sorcery and Small Magics and Courtney Smyth’s The Undetectables, or possibly DNF the latter if I’m still not vibing with it. Those are the final books I need to finish my Bookspin Bingo card on Litsy, so after that I’ll probably pursue my whim a bit and do some totally undirected reading. That probably means getting back to my rereads of Vivian Shaw’s Greta Helsing books, and finishing up Roger Hutchinson’s history of the Britain through the census, The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker. But we’ll see!

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted May 24, 2025 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Happy weekend! I’ve had a slow start today due to fitting a work thing in this morning, but hopefully a weekend of video games and books awaits me. My exams are creeping closer, but I try to keep my weekends as calm as possible all the same. Nobody can be on 100% of the time!

I hope everyone else is having the kind of weekend they want, so far.

Books acquired this week

Okay, deep breath! As you may recall from last week, I’d ordered quite a few books as a treat after realising I’d waaay oversaved for my taxes. The books I got for myself were exclusively non-fiction this time, though I had a few fiction arrivals for other reasons. Let’s do the non-fiction first!

First, a selection of the V&A museum’s “Fashion in Detail” books…

Cover of Chinese Dress in Detail by Sau Fong Chan Cover of 18th Century Fashion in Detail by Susan North Cover of Underwear Fashion in Detail by Eleri Lynn

I’ve already read those and love them, I definitely intend to get more of these books from the V&A. But more about that when I post the reviews!

Next up, the somewhat more… random… non-fiction books! There is a bit of a history theme this time, no pop-science, though.

Cover of The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading, by Sam Leith Cover of The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages, by Sara J. Charles Cover of Church Going: A Stonemason's Guide to the Churches of the British Isles, by Andrew Ziminski

Cover of The Butcher, The Baker, the Candlestick Maker: The story of Britain through its census, by Roger Hutchinson Cover of Medieval Graffiti by Matthew Champion

Finally, I did also get a small poetry collection, to test out what I think of the “Poetry Prescription” collections:

Cover of Poetry Prescriptions: Words for Love, ed. Deborah Alma

I did also get a book from my wife, received my preorder of a new book by Vivian Shaw, and seem to have forgotten to mention my latest British Library Crime Classic. So here they are, too!

Cover of The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol 1 by Xue Shan Fei Hu Cover of Strange New World by Vivian Shaw Cover of Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand

So that’s a very exciting haul… and I’m likely to get some more books next weekend, as I’m meeting up with a friend specifically for the purpose of a bookshop trip. Usually I help him find more books than his budget will hold, but that doesn’t stop me stocking up too. Oh noooo… 😉

Posts from this week

As usual, a quick roundup of reviews posted this week:

I still have lots of reviews written up but unposted, but slowly we’ll catch up if I keep posting at this rate!

What I’m reading

Let’s start with the usual sneak peek at what I’ve finished reading in the past week! I’m fully caught up on writing reviews, but as ever, it’ll be a while before most of them are posted.

Cover of Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy Cover of The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy Cover of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, trans. Simon Armitage Cover of Poetry Prescriptions: Words for Love, ed. Deborah Alma

Cover of 18th Century Fashion in Detail by Susan North Cover of Chinese Dress in Detail by Sau Fong Chan Cover of Underwear Fashion in Detail by Eleri Lynn Cover of Cold Night Lullaby by Colin MacKay

As you see I’ve been reading quite a bit of poetry — a number of these were rereads, because I was curious what I thought of them as an adult, and also whether I want to keep them, since these have all been kept at my parents’ house quite a while, since I finished my first degree. I’ll be re-reviewing these since either they were never reviewed on the blog, or they deserve the reconsideration a decade later!

As usual, I haven’t included any rereads I’m not going to review again, though there were a couple: I’ve been rereading The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System and Vivian Shaw’s Greta Helsing series.

As for this weekend, my plans involve a return to reading fiction to try to finish off my Book Spin Bingo card on Litsy — though I’m also delving into one of my new books, Medieval Graffiti, and finding that fascinating. I’ll probably do some rereading, too, and generally try to follow my whim and get refreshed for a hard work of study ahead.

Hope everyone has a great week!

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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WWW Wednesday

Posted May 21, 2025 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Cover of Chinese Dress in Detail by Sau Fong ChanWhat have you recently finished reading?

I’ve been plunging deep into some histories of clothing from the Victoria & Albert Museum. The two I’ve finished were 18-Century Fashion in Detail, by Susan North, and Chinese Dress in Detail, by Sau Fong Chan. They are beautiful and fascinating, and Chinese Dress in Detail is particularly good — though both are just high-level surveys, and constrained by what’s been preserved, what the V&A holds, etc, etc.

I definitely want to read more of this series.

Cover of Dreadful Company by Vivian ShawWhat are you currently reading?

As usual, I’ve started several hares at once. I just started on The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker (more informative subtitle “The story of Britain through its census since 1801”), by Roger Hutchinson, and I’m enjoying that quite a bit. So far it’s mostly talking about the history of the census, rather than strictly speaking what it tells us, but I’m enjoying it a lot.

I’m also reading Christianna Brand’s Cat and Mouse, which is set in Wales and evokes the place quite well (in part because it’s always raining), but so far I’m not really enjoying it. In part it’s the melodramatic tenseness, I think — just not what I enjoy at the moment when I pick up a classic mystery. Not enough distance from the awfulness.

I’m also partway through Eleri Lynn’s Underwear Fashion in Detail, also from the V&A like the books mentioned above, and a reread of Vivian Shaw’s Dreadful Company, having belatedly heard there was a new book coming out (which was duly preordered, just in time, and awaits me after I reread the others).

Cover of Advocate by Daniel M. FordWhat will you be reading next?

I don’t know, but probably Daniel M. Ford’s Advocate, T. Kingfisher’s Hemlock & Silver, and a couple of other books that are on my Bookspin Bingo card on Litsy. I started Courtney Smyth’s The Undetectables last week and didn’t vibe with it, but I’m going to give that a bit more of a shot before I decide whether to drop it or just put it back on my TBR for later.

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted May 17, 2025 by Nicky in General / 23 Comments

Good morning! Hope everyone’s doing well.

Books acquired this week

I got woken up today by the arrival of a big package of books for me, which I got myself as a reward for filing my taxes. Turns out I’ve saved up waaaay more money than I need for my taxes, so I released some from my tax budget. Most of it’s gone to the moving budget etc etc, but I gave myself enough for a treat.

Still, those books haven’t been unboxed and accessioned (so to speak) yet, so I haven’t saved and uploaded their covers yet. You’ll have to wait until next week! I’ll have a preorder and a gift arriving too, so it’ll be quite the haul: I might split it across two weeks.

Posts from this week

Here we go, the usual roundup!

I’m making sure to post a review every day, even when I have other features, to catch up a bit with the backlog. It’s good to have a backlog, and to have them all ready, but at my previous posting rate the pile of reviews would just keep building up and up!

What I’m reading

Let’s start first with the usual sneak peek at the books I’ll be reviewing… sometime, when I get through the pile (though review copies get prioritised for reviewing sooner).

Cover of A History of the World in Twelve by David Gibbins Cover of The Apothecary Diaries (light novel) volume 3 Cover of Queer City by Peter Ackroyd Cover of Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher

Cover of Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill Cover of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall Cover of The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

I did some rereading as well, so that was a pretty busy and satisfying week of reading!

I have some more rereading planned for this week, but I’ll also dig into Sorcery and Small Magics (Maiga Doocy) and Advocate (Daniel M. Ford), both of which I’ve been looking forward to for a while. All in all, I hope to spend plenty of time reading, since it’s clearly what I’m in the mood for: I managed to read five hours on one workday, this week, which… is quite the feat, compared to usual.

Hope everyone has an excellent weekend, with exactly as much reading as desired!

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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WWW Wednesday

Posted May 14, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Cover of Greenteeth by Molly O'NeillWhat have you recently finished reading?

Other than my reread of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, the last thing I finished was Molly O’Neill’s Greenteeth, which I really really liked. I don’t want to say too many spoilers, but it worked in some folklore that I love, I enjoyed the narrative voice, and it was a very nice standalone read.

Before that I finished Paladin’s Grace, which I enjoyed a lot — and which has a whole world of other stories to dig my teeth into, which is also nice.

Cover of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie CathrallWhat are you currently reading?

I’ve been somewhat clearing the decks and getting books finished rather than reading a gazillion things at once, but then I keep starting a bunch at the same time. Most actively, I’m reading A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, Sylvie Cathrall’s second book and sequel to A Letter from the Luminous Deep, which I adored. It feels like I’m still finding my feet with the story this time, but I’m still enjoying it a lot.

I’m also reading The Cleopatras, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’ work that covers not just “the” Cleopatra, but the other Cleopatras of her family, starting with Cleopatra I (Cleopatra Syra). I have never read a lot about the Ptolemaic dynasty before, so this is fun.

Cover of Sorcery and Small Magics, by Maiga DoocyWhat will you read next?

I’ll switch gears and more actively read Maiga Doocy’s Sorcery and Small Magics, for a start, which I do have on the go but haven’t got very far into yet. Other than that, I want to read the fourth light novel in Natsu Hyuuga’s The Apothecary Diaries series, and maybe read some more of the manga (since apparently that helps follow some of the twistier bits of plot). I also want to read Daniel M. Ford’s Advocate, and Courtney Smyth’s The Undetectables, and generally take advantage of the fact that despite everything feeling busy, I’m very eager to read right now.

Oh, and tomorrow or at least soon I should have volume one of The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, which should be fun!

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted May 10, 2025 by Nicky in General / 11 Comments

Good morning (just!). I’ve had a bit of a long week with some illness etc etc, but oh well — onward and upward!

New books this week

And that’ll be a big ol’ zero! I do have a bunch of books that I might request on Netgalley, but I’m waiting to have cleared the decks a little more first.

Posts from this week

As usual, let’s have a bit of a roundup…

And of course I also did a What Are You Reading Wednesday post, as usual!

What I’m reading

I’m not actually sure how much I’ve read this week, so let’s find out. Here’s the usual sneak peek at the books I’ll be reviewing on the blog… sometime soon (bearing in mind my massive backlog):

Cover of Castle of the Winds by Christina Baehr Cover of A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard, by Simon Jenkins Cover of Scandalize My Name by Fiona Sinclair Cover of Metropolitan Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards

Cover of The Magic Books by Anne Lawrence-Mathers Cover of The Banquet Ceases by Mary Fitt Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter manga vol 5 Cover of Unravelled Knots by Baroness Orczy

So quite a good week for reading! I’m hoping to fit in plenty more reading over the weekend: currently I’m deeply ensconced in A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks (David Gibbins), but I also want to read more of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore (Sylvie Cathrall), The Apothecary Diaries (Natsu Hyuuga) and… probably a bunch of others too.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, with exactly as much reading as they’d like!

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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WWW Wednesday

Posted May 7, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Wednesday again! This week is a bit busier, but I’m trying to keep plenty of time for reading…

Cover of Metropolitan Mysteries, ed. Martin EdwardsWhat have you recently finished reading?

I finished up reading Metropolitan Mysteries yesterday, another anthology of more-or-less classic crime stories in the British Library Crime Classics series, and edited as usual by Martin Edwards. I’ve said quite a few times before that I find these collections to be more than the sum of their parts, really: each story in and of itself might be entertaining, but it’s in being collected together as a survey of a subject that makes them most interesting to me (as someone who studied the development of crime fiction as a genre, albeit only as an undergrad).

Cover of The Apothecary Diaries (light novel) volume 3What are you currently reading?

Quite a few things at once, no surprises there. I just read a chapter of The Magic Books (Anne Lawrence-Mathers), which is only mildly interesting to me in that “magic” mostly meant semi-religious astrology — so a lot of the discussion around these manuscripts is about acceptability to the church, which gets a bit repetitive. It’s hard to say what else I hoped for, because it certainly focuses on the contents of the manuscripts too, but I think the answer is just that sadly I don’t find these particular manuscripts that interesting.

I’m also reading volume three of The Apothecary Diaries, the light novel version. I’m noticing a lot of confusion about the difference between manga and light novels on my blog, so to be clear, they’re not the same thing. Light novels are prose, though usually with a few illustrations (though my ebook copy of My Happy Marriage didn’t have any), as opposed to manga/manhua/manhwa which are essentially comics. Sometimes a light novel gets adapted into a manga; The Apothecary Diaries has been adapted twice, in fact, and there’s a further spin-off manga as well. The volume numbers don’t match up: the story from the first volume of the light novel is covered in volumes 1-4 of the manga, if I understand correctly.

Anyway, I haven’t read much of the manga, but I’m enjoying the light novels! Maomao is a lot of fun as a character.

Other than that, I’ve just started on The Banquet Ceases, by Mary Fitt, a queer mystery writer based in Wales who as far as I know the British Library Crime Classics series hasn’t seen fit (ha) or haven’t been permitted to republish, but luckily, Moonstone Press have. I’m not very far into it yet, but it seems very “classic” in setup (though that word is getting a bit tired/ill-defined around mystery/crime).

And! I’m also reading Paladin’s Grace, by T. Kingfisher. It slipped onto the backburner a bit, but I’m enjoying it.

Cover of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie CathrallWhat will you be reading next?

I really need to get round to starting A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, by Sylvie Cathrall. I begged for a review copy, so I’d really best get round to it! I’m excited for it, though I sort of feel tempted to reread the first book… but really, I didn’t read it that long ago, I should be able to pick up the threads. We’ll see, I might reread it anyway, just for fun.

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted May 3, 2025 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

Yay, weekend! My week hasn’t been that busy, but it’s been a lot of time spent not reading, when I’m decidedly in the mood to read.

Hope everyone else has had a good week!

Books acquired this week

This week it’s “just” ARCs — two eARCs, and one book that arrived in the mail a little unexpectedly. Thank you Tor and Hachette.

Cover of Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz Cover of A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo Cover of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall

I was especially excited to see the new Nghi Vo (thank goodness for my autoapproval!), but the highlight was A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, which I hadn’t been expecting though I had tentatively reached out asking for it.

Posts from this week

As usual, here’s a roundup of reviews to start with…

And a couple of non-review posts this week:

What I’m reading

Let’s close as usual with what I’ve recently finished and what I’m planning to read this weekend. First a sneak peek at books I intend to review soon that I finished this week:

Cover of Necrobane by Daniel M. Ford Cover of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett Cover of The Baby Dragon Cafe by A.T. Qureshi Cover of A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo Cover of Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

I’ve been deep in some chonky books like The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts (Anne Lawrence-Mathers) and A Short History of British Architecture (Simon Jenkins), so I’ll read a bit more of those this weekend, but I’m also planning to delve into more classic mystery with Fiona Sinclair’s Scandalize My Name and a short story collection edited by Martin Edwards, Metropolitan Mysteries. Other than that, I’ve also started on T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace… so I have plenty to keep me busy.

Hope everyone’s having a good weekend!

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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Wyrd and Wonder 2025: Setting Sail

Posted May 2, 2025 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Wyrd and Wonder 2025 banner: Celebrate the Fantastic 1-31 May, with a mermaid tail appearing

It’s May, and that means it’s time for Wyrd and Wonder, the month-long celebration of the fantasy genre.

It’s been a while since I had time to adventure in May — and truth be told, with my exams coming, I don’t know how active I’ll be. But sometimes it’s fun to depart from the rules and declare oneself a pirate of sorts, and I’ll be trying to fit in plenty of reading to keep myself sane anyway.

As usual, I’ve set up a bingo card for this month for the #BookSpinBingo challenge on Litsy, so my primary objective is to read those books. I’ve thrown a few fantasy books into the options:

  • Castle of the Winds (Christina Baehr)
  • A Letter from the Lonesome Shore (Sylvie Cathrall)
  • Spirits Abroad (Zen Cho)
  • Sorcery & Small Magics (Maiga Doocy)
  • Advocate (Daniel M. Ford)
  • The Apothecary Diaries light novels (Natsu Hyuuga)
  • Hemlock & Silver (T. Kingfisher)
  • Paladin’s Grace (T. Kingfisher)
  • Greenteeth (Molly O’Neill)
  • The Baby Dragon Cafe (A.T. Qureshi)
  • The Undetectables (Courtney Smyth)

If I’m charting my course for a blackout on my bingo card this month, I’ll have to read all of those and more — so wish me luck!

A square graphic showing a "bingo" square of book covers with five free spaces, and highlighting two covers as the "Book Spin" and "Double Spin". The book spin is The Apothecary Diaries vol 4, the double spin is Sorcery and Small Magics.

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WWW Wednesday

Posted April 30, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Yay, time to talk about books! As if I ever stop, ahaha.

Cover of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson BennettWhat have you recently finished reading?

Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption, which I adored. I originally had an ARC, but then life happened (my wife broke an ankle and my grandmother died), so I didn’t get round to it until I bought the finished copy last week — but believe me, I was eager for it, because I really liked the first book. It’s such a rich and inventive world, and does much more than “Sherlock Holmes in a fantasy setting” might make you think.

Cover of The Magic Books by Anne Lawrence-MathersWhat are you currently reading?

I’ve actually been finishing books quite quickly, so there’s nothing lingering around that hasn’t been lingering around for a while already. This morning I started on Anne Lawrence-Mathers’ The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts, which I expect will take a while (the Bookly app says four more hours, which is a lot for me). So far it’s mostly about works relating to astrology, which isn’t quite what I think of when I think of magic/enchantment, but I’m curious to read more anyway.

Cover of Paladin's Grace by T. KingfisherWhat will you read next?

I just got an ARC of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, by Sylvie Cathrall. I adored the first book and could barely put it down, so this is high on my list. I’m also very tempted by T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace, though, and The Baby Dragon Café (A.T. Qureshi). I feel like I could do with something lighter before I plunge into A Letter from the Lonesome Shore — I have quite the “book hangover” from A Drop of Corruption. Daniel M. Ford’s Advocate is another ARC I’m late to read, and I just finished the previous book Necrobane, so that’s somewhere on my “next up” list too.

In sum… who knows? I’ll read something, that’s for sure: I’m very much in a reading mood!

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