Category: General

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2026

Posted June 30, 2026 by Nicky in General / 5 Comments

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is all about upcoming titles, and I must confess, as always I’m not very up on this, aside from the ARCs I get offered by Orbit or happen to see on Netgalley. Honestly, how do you all keep up?!

Still, I did some research and poked around, and checked my wishlist too for books I previously noted wanting, and thus found some books I’m interested in!

Cover of Mistakenly Saving the Villain vol 3 by Feng Yu Nie Cover of The Feywild Job by C.L. Polk Cover of The Imagining of Thornwood House by Jaleigh Johnson Cover of An Expert Witness by Sue Black Cover of The Wife Comes First vol 3 by Lv Ye Qian He

  1. Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 3, by Feng Yu Nie.
    This is supposed to be out today according to Seven Seas, making it technically ineligible for the list. However bookshop.org say it’s out tomorrow, so it counts. I just devoured volume two a couple weeks ago, and I’m very eager to continue the story: Yue Wuhuan is pretty unhinged, but Song Qingshi is pretty fascinated by him too, and weird and over-intense though the relationship might be, I’m very curious about how they end up and what the system intends for Song Qingshi in the wake of his choosing the wrong character to rescue. The fourth volume is also due out in the latter half of the year, hitting shelves in October.
  2. The Feywild Job, by C.L. Polk.
    Technically this seems to come out today as well, but I’m highlighting it because I thought it was next month, and no one can stop me, mwahaha. I’ve really enjoyed Polk’s books in the past, and this heist story sounds like a lot of fun. I like the cover, too!
  3. The Reimagining of Thornwood House, by Jaleigh Johnson.
    I don’t know a lot about this, but the idea of a house getting grumpy and walking off and needing to be coaxed back sounds like a lot of fun. It comes out 2nd July, so I guess I don’t have long to wait!
  4. An Expert Witness, by Sue Black.
    I only just learned about this one, but I’m excited! I’ve really enjoyed Sue Black’s previous works, because she pairs technical detail with a resolve never to lose sight of respect and humanity when handling the dead. It’s coming out on 2nd July.
  5. The Wife Comes First, vol 3, by Lv Ye Qian He.
    I haven’t read the second volume yet, so there’s just a chance there’ll be a dealbreaker there… but I flew through the first volume despite its flaws, and I imagine I’ll be keen to find out how all the court intrigue comes to a head in the third, by the time it comes out. I have volume two on my ‘on deck’ pile, after all! I love Jing Shao and his realisation that Mu Hanzhang was loyal to him to the end, and the way he’s seizing his chance to do better. This one’s coming out on 21st July.
  6. Dinosaur Sanctuary, vol 8, by Itaru Kinoshita.
    I love this manga so much, it’s just the perfect palate cleanser for anything. My reviews have been going up recently, actually, but I’ve been waiting since just before Christmas when I originally devoured the first seven volumes (I have a huge backlog of graphic novel/manga reviews that I trickle out to avoid overwhelming the blog with those). I love that it’s basically a story about a zoo, only the animals are dinosaurs. I also really enjoy the fact that it has a dinosaur consultant and adds little fact files by him. This one’s due out 28th July, and I think I’ll preorder it on Kobo!
  7. A Trade of Blood, by Robert Jackson Bennett.
    This is the third book of the Shadow of the Leviathan series which I’ve been enjoying a lot. I actually have the ARC and need to get back to it, but I have to read it on my other device because (sigh) it couldn’t be sent to Kobo because it’s a PDF. I couldn’t resist requesting it anyway, though, and I’m so glad I’ve been able to dig in. The mystery sounds intriguing, and I imagine we’ll get more details toward a clearer picture of the world/the Empire… It’s due out in August.
  8. Our Cut of Salt, by Deena Helm.
    This one is a bit out of my comfort zone, coming out from Tor Nightfire on 22nd September. It’s a horror story, with three generations of a Palestinian family linked with a home in Haifa. It might actually be one that’s more for my wife, but something about it has kinda grabbed me. Maybe the setting? Anyway, I think I’ll be giving it a try!
  9. The Scarlet Ball, by Nghi Vo. 
    I love Nghi Vo’s work, so I’m planning to read this even without knowing much about it. The set up (now I’ve actually read the blurb) sounds intriguing, too: the main character can literally take the face of a missing debutante to play her part — in exchange for what? How does that all work out? Well, unless I request the ARC I’ll have to wait until 6th October to find out.
  10. As You Wake, Break the Shell, by Becky Chambers.
    I didn’t know this was coming out but I’m definitely excited: I’ve enjoyed Chambers’ work so much in the past. I’m intrigued by the living ship/pilot link, too, as well as Chambers’ normal ability to make me care about the characters and relationships. It’s not due until 22nd October… big pout.

Cover of Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 8 by Itaru Kinoshita Cover of A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett Cover of Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm Cover of The Scarlet Ball by Nghi Vo Cover of As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers

Excited to see what others highlight today! My wishlist is waiting for new finds.

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Fantasy with Friends: Reading Order

Posted June 29, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Fantasy With Friends: A Disccusion Meme hosted by Pages Unbound

A new week, and a new Fantasy with Friends prompt! All the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about series reading order:

When reading a favorite fantasy series, which reading order would you recommend? For instance, when reading Narnia, do you think people should go by publication order or by chronological order? Or, if you like to recommend Tolkien, do you think readers should start with LotR or The Hobbit? Feel free to discuss any favorite fantasy series you have!

It feels like this question isn’t super relevant to my current faves, buuuut the prompt does help!

  • C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia: personally, I always go with chronological order, starting with The Magician’s Nephew and placing The Horse and His Boy immediately after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (since they overlap). I like starting at the beginning, and I feel like it gives you a solid footing for the following books. Still, there are solid reasons to go by publication order, and that’s the information you have available: if you read The Magician’s Nephew first, you’ll know more than the characters about the world of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I personally think it works both ways, and have always read it that way, but… I can see the strengths of the other way too.
  • J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: definitely read The Hobbit first. It has important setup for The Lord of the Rings, and it’s a better transition one into the other if you start with it and then let Tolkien bridge you into the higher fantasy tone of The Lord of the Rings: you can track the tone changing from the first chapter into the flight to Rivendell. The other direction would be a really weird transition, and anyway you’d have missed the introduction of the Ring and Gollum. You still have to be prepared for the fact that the audience is a little different between the two books and that the tonal shift is coming, mind you: I’m also open to the two books just being for different audiences, and only reading one or the other (though personally I love the whole).
  • Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising: I rarely ever recommend doing this, but if you’re coming to it for the first time as an adult and you don’t have much patience with children’s literature, skip Over Sea, Under Stone. At least on your first read. I do think it has a great deal of merit and adds to the lore, but The Dark is Rising introduces the stakes a lot better and is less from a child’s point of view: the protagonist of The Dark is Rising is a human child as the book starts… but as he discovers, he’s also an Old One, and that changes his perspective a lot compared to the kids in Over Sea, Under Stone, who are just human. That said, I would suggest reading Over Sea, Under Stone before Greenwitch, if you do get into The Dark is Rising, because you need to know Simon, Jane and Barney and their relationship with Merriman before you can plunge into that.

As a kid, I’d have always said chronological order for anything, but I think publication order has a lot to be said for it because that order is pretty sure to give you the information you need in the order you need it… and I think authors’ recommended reading orders can be useful here too.

Mostly, I prefer it to be unambiguous: gimme series numbering and a recommended reading order next to the title page, please!

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted June 27, 2026 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

Happy weekend! Here’s hoping the forecast spoke true and we’ll be getting some cooler weather here, because the heat is incredible. It is definitely too bloody hot (a song which is stuck in my cranium something fierce).

Books acquired this week

I wasn’t intending to get any books this week, but I definitely wasn’t going to say no when my wife had the opportunity to grab me volume two of The Wife Comes First, and I’d been looking for volume three of Guardian for a long time and panicking about the fact that almost nowhere had it…

Cover of The Wife Comes First vol 2 by Lv Ye Qian He Cover of Guardian vol 3 by Priest

I really want to get round to the next volume of The Wife Comes First sooner or later… and honestly I should start on Guardian before long, before I forget all the details of the world! The mythology is pretty complex, after all.

Posts from this week

As ever, there have been a lot of posts this week, so I’ll do a bit of a round-up. First, the reviews!

As ever, those don’t necessarily reflect this week’s reading, since I hold back reviews to try to get a diverse range over time.

Before we get into what I’ve been reading this week, here are the other posts I’ve made this week:

It’s been a lot for such a horribly hot week weather-wise! Unusually for people in the UK, my wife and I have a couple of portable A/C units, which have been lifesavers for us and the rabbits.

What I’m reading

I think last week I’d already fallen into my old habit of swapping between books after reading only a chapter or two, and rotating through that way. I’ve mostly kept that up this week, and I still think it’s working well for the way I’m feeling lately and is maybe a bit more natural to me than focusing on finishing a given book — unless the mood takes me, which it did a couple of times this week.

So without further ado, here are the books I finished reading this week:

Cover of Mistakenly Saving the Villain vol 2 by Feng Yu Nie Cover of The Queer Thing about Sin by Harry Tanner Cover of A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop by Jean-Yves Mollier Cover of The Last Escape by E.C.R. Lorac Cover of How Queer Bookshops Changed the World by A.J. West

I’m honestly impressed I finished everything, given general busyness and the heat — but my reading time was quite high this week, actually! Helped by one late night with a toothache after dental work (which fortunately settled down and was just because it was new, this time) where I couldn’t resist starting a new-to-me E.C.R. Lorac…

Anyway, this weekend I’m reading volume three of Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, have returned to Rachel Reid’s Game Changer, am knee-deep in Charlotte Booth’s Lost Voices of the Nile, and have started on Sophia Smith Galer’s How to Kill a Language. I’ll probably stick to those, though I have earmarked some library books that I really need to get round to, so it’s possible I’ll start on one of those.

Hope everyone has a good weekend — and to those in areas where it’s been really astoundingly hot, hope you’re doing alright and that the hot weather has ended or will end soon. Hang in there!

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.

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WWW Wednesday

Posted June 24, 2026 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Linking up with Taking on a World of Words again!

Cover of A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop by Jean-Yves MollierWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was Jean-Yves Mollier’s A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop, which was quite focused on the history of French bookselling — not something I really know a lot about, and though the trends are different to those in the UK that I’m (slightly) more familiar with, there was a lot of new information. A bit dry, but overall interesting!

Cover of How Queer Bookshops Changed the World by A.J. WestWhat are you currently reading?

I’m rotating through several books at once, which is working really well for me. Most prominent in my mind at the moment are A.J. West’s How Queer Bookshops Changed the World, singNsong’s Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint vol 3, and E.C.R. Lorac’s The Last Escape. I’m enjoying all three. The chapter on Gay’s the Word discussing the police raids, and the following chapter on the vital role queer bookshops played in giving people information about AIDs really choked me up.

As for Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, I’m not far into the volume, but it’s fun to remember that it’s narrated by Dokja and does give a bit more of an insight into what he’s thinking than the manhwa.

Finally, I started The Last Escape on a bit of a whim. It’s actually chronologically the last book about Inspector Macdonald, but so far it doesn’t feel like it (even if he’s planning for his retirement). It’s very much of a piece with the other books set in Lunesdale, though.

Cover of The Wife Comes First vol 2 by Lv Ye Qian HeWhat will you be reading next?

Probably The Wife Comes First vol 2, because my wife kindly grabbed that for me the very day after I finished the first volume, and I’m definitely enjoying it.

Other than that, I’m not sure: probably something from my 20 Books of Summer list, and/or a return to something I’ve had started for a while.

But, as ever… it depends on my whim.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Summer TBR

Posted June 23, 2026 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

I am late to post today because I had a dentist appointment today (big sadness, but at least I should have a clean bill of dental health again), so I’ll make this quick! I recently posted my 20 Books of Summer list, but there are some others I’d love to get to…

The first five are non-fiction, and the second lot fiction!

Cover of How To Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer Cover of Laughter in Ancient Rome by Mary Beard Cover of English Food: A People's History by Diane Purkiss Cover of A Short History of the World in 50 Lies by Natashia Tidd Cover of City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons

Cover of Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer Cover of The Wife Comes First vol 2 by Lv Ye Qian He Cover of Butter by Asako Yuzuki Cover of Sweet Poison by Mary Fitt Cover of A Death in Door County by Annalise Ryan

It’s a bit of a random selection, but there’s a bunch of library books and recent purchases here, so I really ought to make time!

 

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Fantasy with Friends: Magical Libraries

Posted June 22, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Fantasy With Friends: A Disccusion Meme hosted by Pages Unbound

Monday again! And a new Fantasy with Friends post: the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about libraries in fantasy:

Fantasy books often feature magical libraries that have anything from floating platforms to books with characters that come to life. What are a few of your favorite fantastic libraries?

I’m quite a fan of the library in Genevieve Cogman’s series that starts with the book The Invisible Library. It’s less about the magic itself being magical, though, and the sheer variety it offers: books from all kinds of worlds, both high magic and high sci-fi, including variants of the same stories unique to some of the worlds.

I never actually managed to finish it (got distracted, even though I was enjoying it, so it ended up back on my TBR), but I’m also a fan of the idea of The Library of the Unwritten, where books unfinished by their authors end up in a library after their death.

I don’t remember a lot about the library in Garth Nix’s Lirael, but it was one of the reasons I really enjoyed the start of that book, as Lirael learned to take care of the library!

More generally, I think my favourite magical libraries are not so much full of magical conveniences, but crammed full of books on all kinds of topics, with fascinating and mysterious titles. A big space to explore, full of books of all kinds, some of which may be magical, but mostly just numerous. Several times in my life I’ve picked a local library clean of the books that interest me, so huge libraries that seem practically unlimited call to me.

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted June 20, 2026 by Nicky in General / 32 Comments

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.

Cover of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews Cover of Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian Cover of A Wizard of Earthsea graphic novel adaptation by Fred Fordham Cover of Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer

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:

Cover of A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver Cover of Dream Work by Mary Oliver

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:

Cover of A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop by Jean-Yves Mollier Cover of How Queer Bookshops Changed the World by A.J. West Cover of The Queer Thing about Sin by Harry Tanner Cover of How To Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer

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:

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!

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 I did finish this week:

Cover of Puzzles of the Parish ed. Martin Edwards Cover of The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean Cover of Dream Work by Mary Oliver

Cover of A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver Cover of A Wizard of Earthsea graphic novel adaptation by Fred Fordham Cover of The Wife Comes First vol 1 by Lv Ye Qian He

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.

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WWW Wednesday

Posted June 17, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

Cover of The Book Eaters by Sunyi DeanWhat have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing I finished was Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters, which was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I found the world-building a bit goofy: these people literally eat books, like… chew and swallow them. And that transmits the information into their brains somehow? But someone within the story refuses to call that magic, and other stuff frames it as biological? Yeah… no. That’s not how any of that works. If it’d just called it magic, I’d have got along with it a lot better — but then other stuff wouldn’t have worked so well.

On the other hand, the discussion of monstrousness and motherly love and family, all of that was pretty powerful and well done.

Cover of How Queer Bookshops Changed the World by A.J. WestWhat are you currently reading?

I’ve started even more books at once, because it sparked joy in the moment, so I’ll mostly highlight those! I started two queer books and one about booksellers, and the three of them are additive in interesting ways: A.K. West’s How Queer Bookshops Changed the World, Jean-Yves Mollier’s A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop, and Harry Tanner’s The Queer Thing About Sin. The latter has a premise I’m very curious about, that acceptance of queer relationships is stronger when there’s higher levels of economic and political equality; I hope Tanner carries it through the book and reflects on it more, because I’d like to see more evidence than just ancient Greek city-states.

I also started on volume one of Lv Ye Qian He’s The Wife Comes First, which is leaning into court intrigue type stuff that I’m very curious about. Jing Shao definitely didn’t deserve Mu Hanzhang’s loyalty in his past life, and I’m wondering whether it’ll ever show us why Mu Hanzhang was so loyal. Either way, I’m enjoying Jing Shao’s eagerness to please Mu Hanzhang now that he understands how amazing he is.

Cover of Butter by Asako YuzukiWhat will you read next?

I got a couple of poetry collections by Mary Oliver at the weekend, and Fred Fordham’s graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea, so those are high on my list! I also need to get round to some of my library books, like Asako Yuzuki’s Butter, because the library wants them back.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Wishes

Posted June 16, 2026 by Nicky in General / 22 Comments

Every so often, the Top Ten Tuesday theme is all about the books you’re hankering for right now, and sharing your wishlist so that people can get them for you if they feel so moved! So let’s see.

Cover of Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works, by Helen Pearson Cover of If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, by Daniel Hahn Cover of A Widow's Charm by Caitlyn Paxson Cover of Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo Cover of Charlotte Brontë's Life through Clothes by Eleanor Houghton

  1. Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works, by Helen Pearson.
    This was reviewed recently in New Scientist, and it sounds like an intriguing look at how evidence-based science works!
  2. If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, by Daniel Hahn.
    I saw someone mention this (I think Keira?) and it sounds fascinating. Translation is such a knotty problem, and Shakespeare is extra difficult because there’s a double-barrier of time as well as language.
  3. A Widow’s Charm, by Caitlyn Paxson.
    I’ve seen some good reviews of this, and it sounds like fun!
  4. Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, by Seishi Yokomizo.
    It’s always interesting to broaden my experience of crime/mystery stories and read in translation, so I’m curious about this one.
  5. Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes, by Eleanor Houghton.
    Clothes tell us so much about the period they came from, the person who wore them, and the kind of life they lived. I’m very curious.
  6. All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now, by Ruby Tandoh.
    I’ve been curious about this one for a while, as food history is another thing that I enjoy dipping into.
  7. The English House: A History in Eight Buildings, by Dan Cruickshank.
    I’m a sucker for histories that are a history of X in Y things… and while I’m not super into architecture, it’s still a field where buildings of the past tell us an awful lot, and I’m capable of being interested!
  8. The Apothecary’s Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How it Became a Commodity, by Karen Bloom Gevirtz.
    I haven’t heard much about this, but the topic is fascinating!
  9. Ode to the Half-Broken, by Suzanne Palmer.
    This doesn’t seem to be out yet in the UK, but Amazon has it, and I’ve been reading some very positive reviews! It sounds right up my street.
  10. The Nightmare before Kissmas, by Sara Raasch.
    I’m not sure that Raasch’s books are 100% my thing, but I’m happy to try outside my comfort zone, especially since I’ve been seeing glowing reviews from people I trust! So I’d like to give this one a shot — though I’d have been interested in The Entanglement of Rival Wizards instead if it’d been out in paperback in the UK, so I wouldn’t mind an ebook copy of that if it fell into my ereader, ahaha.

Cover of All-Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now by Ruby Tandoh Cover of The English House: A History in Eight Buildings by Dan Cruickshank Cover of The Apothecary's Wife by Karen Bloom Gevirtz Cover of Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer Cover of The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch

My Amazon wishlist is here, and I’m also game for ebook copies if you’d rather buy a book voucher for me to get an ebook with, in which case I suggest a National Book Token or Kobo voucher, since I prefer not to use Kindle anymore. My email address is bibliophibianbreathesbooks [at] gmail [dot] com.

(Buying me Kindle books and sending them to that email address does work as well, since I do have a Boox ereader and can still access the Kindle app, it’s just not my preference. Kobo deserves more love!)

Excited to peek at other people’s lists and spread a bit of bookish love today!

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Fantasy with Friends: Merch

Posted June 15, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Fantasy With Friends: A Disccusion Meme hosted by Pages Unbound

Another new week, and thus a new Fantasy with Friends post: the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about the merch you’d like to see:

If you could design merch based on any fantasy books, what items would you want?

I don’t buy a lot of merch because I don’t have a lot of room for it — or rather, there’s room, but I tend to find it feels cluttery and I don’t know of many items that have uses that I’d want to be fantasy-themed. Except the biggie: bookmarks. I collect free bookmarks, of all stripes: my favourites are ones that advertise bookshops, especially indies, but I have a soft spot for ones that display books I’ve actually read, too. I got into the habit because of the free bookmarks the Book Depository used to do, and now… well, I have far more than I can use, even though I tend to use multiple bookmarks at a time (marking out stuff like where the chapter ends or other convenient stopping-points).

And even though I have more than I can sensibly use, I’d still love more. I’d love some danmei-themed ones: I think I have a couple based on Heaven Official’s Blessing, if I remember rightly, but I’d love them for other danmei as well, because the illustrations are often gorgeous. These covers in particular, for example:

Cover of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System vol 4 by MXTX Cover of The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol 2 by Xue Shan Fei Hu Cover of Heaven Official's Blessing vol 6 by MXTX Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation vol 5 by MXTX

But really I could go for bookmarks of anything I’ve read, even if the cover isn’t particularly pretty! There was a fun set somewhere with stats from a book/series, maybe Game of Thrones? With like a body count and other stats like number of battles… that kind of thing could be neat.

Some stuff like that is out there, but it’d be kinda nice if every book came with it — my British Library Crime Classics books do, for instance, due to my subscription!

Other than that, I do enjoy bookish t-shirts: I have some for Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s books, like a t-shirt with “OOC OOC OOC” on it (from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System) and one with cute bunnies representing Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian (from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation). I’m always game for that kind of thing. Maaaaybe a tote bag here or there? And I’ve had a few necklaces with pendants that looked like specific books, or earrings like that. I have some Hua Cheng-inspired earrings, too; I don’t wear earrings a lot, but I do like to be able to be nerdy when I do.

Anyway… “mostly bookmarks” is probably a fairly boring choice, but it’s honest, haha.

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