Category: General

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 23, 2024 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Hurrah for the weekend!

I’m a little behind on comments/blog visits, but I’m finally starting to get back on track with my studies, so I’m calling this week a win. Looking forward to spending time today visiting other blogs, replying to comments, etc, etc.

Books acquired this week

There was no library trip this week owing to the wintery weather: first it was too cold for me to cycle without gloves, and then once the gloves arrived, sadly everything’s covered in ice. It’s supposed to warm up a bit this weekend, so we’ll see how that goes.

Nonetheless, I did get some new books! I discovered the Inklings series, from 404 Ink. They’re on a very random range of topics, in a way that delights me, so I’ve snagged quite a few — they’ll serve as quick reads to maybe start catching up with my reading goal for this year.

Cover of The End by Katie Goh Cover of Now Go by Karl Thomas Smith Cover of Blind Spot by Maud Rowell

Cover of They Came to Slay by Thom James Carter Cover of Machine Readable Me by Zara Rahman Cover of The Loki Variations by Karl Johnson

And I did also get a couple more books from my wife, namely these:

Cover of The New University by James Coe Cover of Stonehenge by Francis Pryor Cover of Breakfast Cereal by Kathryn Cornell Dolan

So as you see, it’s been a bookish week, and I’ve inhaled many of them already! (The Inklings books are quite short.)

Posts from this week

First up, the roundup of reviews posted this week:

And other posts:

What I’m reading

Well, as usual let’s start with a sneak peek at what I’ve finished reading this week…

Cover of All the Violet Tiaras, by Jean Menzies Cover of Breakfast Cereal by Kathryn Cornell Dolan Cover of Stonehenge by Francis Pryor Cover of Agatha Christie, by Lucy Worsley

Cover of The New University by James Coe Cover of The Loki Variations by Karl Johnson Cover of Now Go by Karl Thomas Smith Cover of The End by Katie Goh

As for what I’m reading over the weekend, I’m just finishing up with another of the Inklings books, Blind Spot, and then I want to finish Carolyn Wells’ Murder in the Bookshop and Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop. I also want to get back to Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots.

I need to read 80 more books by the end of the year to reach my stretch reading goal, and it’s looking very far away and unlikely… but we’ll see how it goes.

How’s everyone else doing? Reading anything good?

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 November 20, 2024 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Wednesday again! Here we go.

Cover of The Loki Variations by Karl JohnsonWhat have you recently finished reading?

The Loki Variations, by Karl Johnson, which is a bit of a discussion of the various different portrayals of the Norse god Loki in popular culture (including, but not limited to, the MCU). I quite liked it: Johnson’s enthusiasm for Loki stories and the dissection of Marvel’s influence, treating the whole subject as serious and worthy of discussion (which it is), etc.

Loki stories aren’t entirely my thing, but Johnson makes me want to seek out a couple more just for fun.

Cover of The River has Roots by Amal El-MohtarWhat are you currently reading?

Nothing very actively; I have a few books on the go, but all of them have waited at least a few days since I last interacted with them, except for my current Serial Reader choice, The Secret Adversary. It’s Christie’s first Tommy and Tuppence novel. It’s… okay? I’m really not as much of a Christie fan as some.

Other than that, I’m partway through my e-ARC of Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots, which I’m enjoying, but needed to charge my ereader to continue with. I’ve actually done that now, so I’ll get back to that soon.

Cover of The Spellshop by Sarah Beth DurstWhat will you be reading next?

I’m just starting The Spellshop, because it’s a book of the month on the Bookly Discord. For the same reason I’m about to start The Pumpkin Spice Café, about which I see fairly mixed reviews. The theme was “cosy fantasy”, and as far as I can tell The Pumpkin Spice Café is a romance (and not romantasy, either), but I enjoy romance in general so I’m giving it a shot anyway.

I’m also likely to read some more of 404 Ink’s Inklings series, which are satisfyingly random in topic. Not sure which one, though.

How about you?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Oldest Books on my TBR

Posted November 19, 2024 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

This week’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday prompts is about the oldest books on your TBR: not the ones you’ve had the longest, but the ones which were published longest ago.

Mine’s not going to be 100% reflective of the oldest books I’m likely to read, because I only put books on my TBR on StoryGraph if I own them, and I’m likely to read old books through Serial Reader/Project Gutenberg and the library, on a whim, rather than add them to my backlog. A few years ago there’d have been a lot of works from, like, the 1500s or something, but that’s not really my field now and I read all the texts I was interested in back then. Sooo given my predilection for classic mysteries, my guess is that this entire list is going to be taken up with those…

Here we go; let’s see if I’m right!

Cover of Mr Pottermack's Oversight by R. Austin Freeman Cover of The Floating Admiral by the Detection Club Cover of Death at Breakfast by John Rhode Cover of Murder in the Bookshop by Carolyn Wells

  1. Mr Pottermack’s Oversight, by R. Austin Freeman (1931). This is a classic mystery, reissued recently by the British Library Crime Classics series. I want to get around to it soon, because I rather liked Freeman’s The Eye of Osiris.
  2. The Floating Admiral, by the Detection Club (1931). Also a classic mystery, this one written collaboratively by fourteen members of the famous Detection Club, a group of classic crime writers (which still exists today). The group includes Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, so I’m definitely curious to read this one. It’s a bit gimmicky, though, so it’s not at the top of my list. I suspect it’ll be a bit of a mix in terms of quality/style.
  3. Malice Aforethought, by Francis Iles (1931). I have a couple of others books by Iles/Anthony Berkeley hanging out among the oldest on my TBR, including Before the Fact (1932) and Jumping Jenny (1933). His books are huge classics of the genre and very influential, and I’ve really enjoyed some of them. That said, Iles/Berkeley could be rather misogynistic, and I haven’t felt like risking it yet with the ones that remain. It requires a certain mood and willingness to put up with it.
  4. Death at Breakfast, by John Rhode (1935). John Rhode’s mysteries are always solid, workmanlike and enjoyable. They don’t generally have characters with huge personalities (even his series detective, Priestley, doesn’t really stand out in the way that, say, Christie’s Poirot does), and you basically know what you’re getting into, making them excellent comfort reading. I’ve been holding onto Death at Breakfast for the right moment for a while.
  5. Murder in the Bookshop, by Carolyn Wells (1936). I really should get to this one, because I do love murder mysteries set in and around bookshops, libraries, museums, etc. I know very little about it or the author, as I don’t think I’ve read any of her other works.
  6. Antidote to Venom, by Freeman Wills Crofts (1938). Crofts was really prolific, but I find his work kind of… unmemorable? And a little slow. Still, this one is in the British Library Crime Classics series, and I do want to get round to it.
  7. Rocket to the Morgue, by Anthony Boucher (1942). This stands out from the group by being an American classic, and thus out of my usual wheelhouse. I spotted it in a local indie bookshop recently, though, and was curious about the title/cover. Once I read that it was based on Boucher’s experience of being a pulp sci-fi writer, the collision of genres I love made it seem like an excellent choice!
  8. Death Knows No Calendar, by John Bude (1942). Bude is another of those classic mystery writers who will generally always write something solid and entertaining, without flair. You know what you’re getting into, and therein lies the pleasure.
  9. The Sunday Pigeon Murders, by Craig Rice (1942). About this author and book I know virtually nothing; I got it as part of an “advent calendar” of classic mysteries, and haven’t got round to it yet.
  10. Dramatic Murder, by Elizabeth Anthony (1948). This one’s a Christmas mystery, so I’m saving it for December — I actually only just got it last month, from my British Library Crime Classics subscription. As far as I know, the author is new to me, so I’m quite curious.

Cover of Antidote to Venom by Freeman Wills Crofts Cover of Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher Cover of Death in White Pakamas & Death Knows No Calendar by John Bude Cover of The Sunday Pigeon Murders by Craig Rice Cover of Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth Anthony

Aaand as predicted, it’s classic crime all the way down! I hadn’t realised I had so many hanging around unread, I’ll be honest. I tend to hoard them away from myself “for when I need them”, and then forget I have ’em stashed waiting for their moment.

Now might well be their moment, given my reading slump — where’s that copy of Death at Breakfast? When we move, I swear I’m designing the room layouts to include at least two entire floor-to-ceiling bookshelves for my classic crime collection, so I can keep them all in the same place…

Very curious to see everyone else’s lists!

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 16, 2024 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Oh boy, it’s not been a week for reading. I did carve out some catchup time for my classes, though, and I trust I’m on the way back to an even keel.

Books acquired this week

First off, the books I snagged at the library this week:

Cover of Starling House by Alix E. Harrow Cover of Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan Cover of Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh

I didn’t adore Alix E. Harrow’s work that I’ve read so far, but I did enjoy it well enough, so I thought I’d give Starling House a shot. I’ve been curious about Fathomfolk a while, and I had the idea at the back of my mind that I’d seen someone say good things about Where the Dead Brides Gather, so… another one to give a shot.

I did also get a new book from my wife this week, as well. There’s a couple more coming, but for now it’s just this one:

Cover of All the Violet Tiaras, by Jean Menzies

Looks like a quick read, and I’ve been curious about this series of short books for a while.

Posts from this week

As usual, here’s a roundup of what I’ve been posting this week:

Other posts:

What I’m reading

I’ve really been struggling to read this week, so I only have one book lined up ready for me to review here at some point soon:

Cover of Bitter Waters by Vivian Shaw

Not sure what exactly I’ll read this weekend, but I’ve made a start on All the Violet Tiaras, and I’m partway through Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots. So those are good guesses for where I’ll start. I’ll probably also try to get back to The Other Olympians, which is a fascinating lookback at the development of sex verification as a concept in sport (and of course all the transphobia that goes with it). I hope to find a bit more time for it this 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 November 13, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Hello again, Wednesday.

Cover of Bitter Waters by Vivian ShawWhat have you recently finished reading?​

Not much, alas. I haven’t been in the mood to read at all. The last thing I finished was Vivian Shaw’s Bitter Waters, a novella in the world of her Greta Helsing series. It feels like a bit of a coda to the trilogy, with more exploration of the vampires and their culture, background, etc. I liked it, though I don’t think it’d stand alone.

Cover of Agatha Christie, by Lucy WorsleyWhat are you currently reading?

Nominally, Lucy Worsley’s biography of Agatha Christie. It’s fascinating to get a bit more insight on the person behind the stories, and on her troubles, and the things that inspired some of her fiction.

I’ve also made a start on The Other Olympians, by Michael Waters, which digs into the early Olympic games and why sex verification became a thing. I’m not very far into it, but so far I appreciate Waters’ care to do his best in referring to people how they wanted to be referred to, even before their transitions.

Cover of The Spellshop by Sarah Beth DurstWhat will you be reading next?

I really don’t know. I’m feeling less than great still, honestly, so I might turn to something familiar and comforting — or I might start a bunch of different books and just see what sticks. I’d like to read Alexis Hall’s Mortal Follies and Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop, but I’m not sure if I want to start those now.

What are you reading?

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 9, 2024 by Nicky in General / 19 Comments

Thank goodness for the weekend, huh?

It’s been a tired and discouraged week around here, with work frustrations, interpersonal issues, and of course the result of the election in the US. (It might not be my country, but we have one single world, and it’d be good if we could all take care of it, and of each other.) Personally, I’d really like a dozen new books for comfort…

Books acquired this week

This week I didn’t buy anything new, despite the temptation, though I did have a short trip to the library.

Cover of The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel Cover of A Mudlarking Year by Lara Maiklem

I’ve already read The Secret Life of the Owl, since it was very quick!

Posts from this week

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

As a reminder, all my ratings are subjective and personal, about how much I liked the book. So me giving something one star doesn’t mean I think it’s awful, it means it wasn’t for me. Usually my reviews are the best way to dig into why I rated something the way I did!

What I’m reading

I’m having a fair amount of trouble reading at the moment, with being tired and overwhelmed, but I did carve out a little time to read a few books that I’ll be reviewing here at some point.

Cover of The Book Makers by Adam Smyth Cover of Murder at the British Museum by Jim Eldridge Cover of The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel Cover of The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie Cover of Space Rover by Stewart Lawrence Sinclair

That’s more than I thought I’d been reading, honestly!

As for this weekend, I’ve finally started on Bitter Waters, by Vivian Shaw; other than that, I’m not sure. I’ll probably focus on reading more of the biography of Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley.

Hope everyone’s doing alright.

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 November 6, 2024 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Wednesday, huh? Let’s have a spot of normality ’round here, even if my schedule’s still a mess.

Cover of The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-StempelWhat have you recently finished reading?

John Lewis-Stempel’s The Secret Life of the Owl, which is basically a miscellany with all the facts he could think of or find out about owls in the UK. It’s short, but it was nice, and I did learn a couple of things, like the fact that owls have asymmetrical ears.

I did also read a volume of R.S. Thomas’ poetry, and wasn’t overwhelmed. I once read and enjoyed a biography of him, Byron Rogers’ The Man Who Went into the West, and that left me feeling pretty… fond, I guess? But the poetry wasn’t for me.

Cover of Agatha Christie, by Lucy WorsleyWhat are you currently reading?

I’m not feeling very inspired by anything I have on the go right now, unfortunately. Pretty tired and meh. I’ve made no progress on The Roads to Rome by Catherine Fletcher, after finding it hard going last week. I should pick that up again soon and give it a couple more chapters to see if I want to finish it.

I’m more or less enjoying Lucy Worsley’s biography of Agatha Christie, but I don’t really seem to be in the mood to read, so I’ve tried not to force myself.

Speaking of Agatha Christie: on Serial Reader, I’m most of the way through The Secret of Chimneys. I think I see how things are going to shake out… but I’m quite prepared to be surprised, or at least wrong about some aspects. We’ll see!

Cover of The Other Olympians by Michael WatersWhat will you read next?

I’m eyeing up The Other Olympians, by Michael Waters, which I’ve had out of the library a couple weeks and not started yet.

Honestly… I’m rather hoping that writing about it will annoy any covert transphobes into going away and never reading my blog again.

How about you?

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 2, 2024 by Nicky in General / 34 Comments

Good morning folks! It’s been a busy week around here, which has meant very little time for reading — even when I was lazing around in the hotel room, since we had difficulty getting the WiFi password and finding out which of the three bins was meant for what. Lovely venue, badly executed amenities…

Anyway, the trip also means I haven’t been to the library this week, so all-in-all it’s a pretty low-key post. That said, I do have a few things to share!

Books acquired this week

Though I haven’t been to the library, I did get myself a book in order to top up an order for same-day delivery for something I needed for the trip, and I also got an e-ARC via Netgalley, so here they are!

Cover of The Virtues of Underwear by Nina Edwards Cover of The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

Two very different vibes there, I know! I’m quite curious about The Virtues of Underwear, though it was a bit of an impulse-buy… and I’ve loved Emily Tesh’s novellas, so I’m excited for this novel.

Posts from this week

I’m getting enough of a backlog of reviews that I posted some even on days I had another type of post going up, so it’s a bumper crop this week!

Other posts:

What I’m reading

First of all, let’s start with the usual: what books have I finished in the last week and plan to review here soon? Let’s see…

Cover of Saints by Amy Jeffs Cover of Rope's End, Rogue's End by E.C.R. Lorac Cover of Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings, by Natalie Lawrence

As you see, not as much reading as usual, but nonetheless, there we go! And for this weekend… I’m really not sure. I want to read some more manga, which I don’t usually review here, but I’m also knee-deep in Lucy Worsley’s biography of Agatha Christie, and The Book-Makers by Adam Smyth is due back at the library on Monday, so there’s plenty to be getting on with!

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 October 30, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Just back from a wedding, and just enough time to write a quick reading update!

Cover of Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings, by Natalie LawrenceWhat have you recently finished reading?

Over the past few days, I haven’t finished much aside from a single volume of the Fairy Tail manga, and the last thing I finished other than that was one of my weekend reads… looks like it was Enchanted Creatures, by Natalie Lawrence, which tries to dig into why humans have come up with certain kinds of stories. I really need to chew over what I thought of this and look up a couple of things that gave me pause (is a phobia of snakes really the most common human fear, for instance?). It was an alright read, but nothing too surprising, in any case.

Cover of The Roads to Rome by Catherine FletcherWhat are you currently reading?

I started on The Roads to Rome, by Catherine Fletcher. Unfortunately, my mind kept wandering and I’m not sure I’ve retained anything so far, other than the fact that there is actually a place called Narnia (Narni, now, but Narnia in Latin), which is where C.S. Lewis got the name from. I’m not sure if it’s the book or just the fact that there was a lot going on around me, so I’ll give it a bit longer now I’m home… but it might be a write-off for me.

Cover of Murder at the British Museum by Jim EldridgeWhat will you read next?

I keep throwing out ideas and then not adhering to them, so this should always be taken with a pinch of salt — but I’m fairly certain I’m going to read Jim Eldridge’s Murder at the British Museum. The first book was just okay, not wonderful, but I like the idea of mysteries set in museums enough to keep going with the next book, at least for now.

Other than that… who knows? But the biography of Agatha Christie I borrowed is my most-renewed book that’s due back at the library next, so maybe that one, just in case they still have a limit on the number of times you can renew a book.

What about you?

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Freaked Me Out

Posted October 29, 2024 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Well folks, I’m writing from a hotel room at a friend’s wedding, and I haven’t talked enough about books yet (even though it was a very nerdy wedding). So, from my hotel room to all of you, here we go: this week’s theme is a Halloween freebie, and I’m here to tell you about books that have freaked me out…

Cover of Feed by Mira Grant Cover of What Moves The Dead, by T. Kingfisher Cover of Spillover by David Quamnem Cover of Heaven Official's Blessing by MXTX Cover of Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

  1. Feed, by Mira Grant. When I first read it, it was before the point where I began to try to get curious about my fear of infectious disease, so it was a bit of an unexpected choice for me in many ways. When I initially read it, I didn’t love it — but I later read it again and again, liking it a bit more each time. I don’t think it still freaks me out in the same way, but the fear of infection which drives the story really got under my skin.
  2. What Moves The Dead, by T. Kingfisher. This was a much more recent read, of course (just last week!), and I’m a lot more comfortable taking about diseases in general now than I was back then. Still, the fear of contamination drips off this story, and it was probably only Kingfisher’s skill as a writer that kept me reading this one.
  3. Spillover, by David Quammen. I know, you probably weren’t expecting non-fiction on this list, but you might be recognising a theme about the things that scare me. I read this book when I was just beginning to see that my fears lessened if I got curious about the subject. It still freaked me out, but it also put me on the path I’m on now (final year of my MSc in Infectious Diseases!).
  4. Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. Horror isn’t the primary genre of this book, for sure, and it’s not even one that I’d necessarily mention in talking about the book. But there are some genuinely freaky, gross and gory things here, like the buried head in Banyue (I’ll avoid describing anything too graphic and leave it at that: if you know, you know). The main character, Xie Lian, suffers some really horrendous things throughout, as well, some of which is horrifying to contemplate (for example being staked into a coffin, unable to die, for a century or two).
  5. Leviathan’s Wake, by James S.A. Corey. This is more sci-fi than horror, especially the later books, but the first book in particular includes a lot of body horror.
  6. Sleeping Giants, by Sylvain Neuvel. This one isn’t horror at all, but the moment where a guy has an accident and they use the excuse to turn his knees around so he can better pilot a massive alien mech is quite shocking, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
  7. Catching Breath, by Kathryn Lougheed. Another non-fiction for you! I don’t think I was specifically interested in tuberculosis before I read this book, but ultimately I wrote my undergrad dissertation about tuberculosis, because Lougheed convinced me that we don’t pay it enough attention at all — and we should. Drug resistant tuberculosis is scarily hard to cure.
  8. Brain on Fire, by Susannah Cahalan. Cahalan experienced a bizarre illness that appeared to be a mental breakdown, and turned out to be an infection. The idea of such a misdiagnosis is terrifying, and some of her early symptoms matched with some of my genuine anxiety symptoms, which was a whole weird thing. There’s a good chance inflammation (not necessarily triggered by infection, but sometimes — and probably more than we think) is actually causing mental illness in some cases (who knows how many). The things we don’t know about our brains definitely freak me out!
  9. The End of Everything, by Katie Mack. Non-fiction about physics breaks my brain sometimes — contemplating the massive size of the universe makes me think a lot of stuff about my own significance, what I think happens when we die, etc, that is anxiety-fuelled in the worst way. Is this an obvious choice for a list of books that freaked me out? Nope, but you weren’t asking me to jumpscare you, just what jumpscared me. This was a good book in general — but a bad one for me.
  10. He Who Whispers, by John Dickson Carr. There’s a particular scene in this one where I remember thinking, “dang, that’s actually creepy.” It’s a classic mystery — but a particular character is just twisted, in a way that surprised me very much as a first-time reader!

Cover of Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel Cover of Catching Breath by Kathryn Lougheed Cover of Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan Cover of The End of Everything by Katie Mack Cover of He Who Whispers, by John Dickson Carr

It’s an idiosyncratic list, but it’s mine!

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