Category: General

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 26, 2025 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

Greetings! Saturday again, huh? I’ve been trying to have a restorative week, and have been getting back to my reading somewhat — which is a relief to all, since it does wonders for my mood.

As mentioned last week, I had a bit of a spree to celebrate finishing my assignments (the last ones of this degree!) so I’m going to spotlight those now, without any further ado.

Books acquired this week

First up, there are some lovely new editions of T. Kingfisher’s Saint of Steel series. I haven’t read these, but I’ve been meaning to forever. Since they were “buy one, get one half-price” at Waterstones, and Waterstones was having a double stamps event… well. It seemed like the perfect time to splash out.

Cover of Paladin's Faith by T. Kingfisher Cover of Paladin's Hope by T. Kingfisher Cover of Paladin's Strength by T. Kingfisher Cover of Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher

But that wasn’t all, of course. I picked up a couple of fiction books too: I’d borrowed Greenteeth from the library, but had to return it, and I just loved the idea of a dragon café and thought that one sounded cute. I already owned a copy of Clockwork Boys, but I liked the new UK issue, so I grabbed that too.

Cover of The Baby Dragon Cafe by A.T. Qureshi Cover of Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill Cover of Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

Aaand finally, a few non-fiction (you knew it was coming).

Cover of The Library of Ancient Wisdom by Selena Wisnom Cover of The Magic Books by Anne Lawrence-Mathers Cover of A History of The World in 47 Borders, by Jonn Elledge

A pretty good haul, I’d say… Technically I have a review copy to share as well, but it isn’t in my hands yet (since I’m not staying at the flat while we do moving stuff), so I’ll share that next week!

Posts from this week

As usual, let’s have a quick roundup of reviews:

What I’m reading

With my assignments finally done, I’ve been finding a bit more time for reading… though partly that means I’ve got stuck into some longer/heavier reads, so I don’t have many new reviews added to the upcoming pile. But here’s what I have read!

Cover of Not To Be Taken: Puzzles in Poison by Anthony Berkeley Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter (light novel) vol 1, by Yatsuki Wakutsu Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter (light novel) vol 2, by Yatsuki Wakutsu

As for this weekend, I’ll be reading Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Price of the Perfect Playlist, and… not sure what else. We’ll see!

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

Tags: , ,

Divider

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 23, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Wednesday again! And a lovely day to talk about books (you know me; every day is a lovely day to talk about books).

Cover of Not To Be Taken: Puzzles in Poison by Anthony BerkeleyWhat have you recently finished reading?

Last night I finished up Not to be Taken, by Anthony Berkeley! It’s an interesting one, because it was intentionally written as a very fair-play mystery, because it was also a competition. The British Library Crime Classic edition includes not only the ending (which wasn’t originally published with it) but a report by Berkeley on the competition, which all made for fascinating reading. It was such a playful and innovative era for mysteries.

Cover of Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz PellyWhat are you currently reading?

I have three books that I’m currently most actively reading: Poet Mystic Widow Wife, by Hetta Howes; Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist, by Liz Pelly; and volume one of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, the original light novel by Yatsuki Wakutsu. It’s amazing to me how faithfully the manga version of the latter translates even the details of the narration. I always think I’ll get more out of the light novel version of these stories, and usually it’s only a little bit more insight. A picture’s worth a thousand words, I guess, even to someone as non-visual as me.

As for Mood Machine and Poet Mystic Widow Wife, both are quite slow going; the former is conscientious and detail-oriented in a way that makes it an excellent foil for Glenn McDonald’s You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song, which I read a couple of weeks ago. The latter is a bit less organised than I’d like, though I’m not far into it and maybe the organisation governing it will make more sense to me soon.

Cover of Necrobane by Daniel M. FordWhat will you read next?

Excellent question! Well, aside from the obvious (the other volumes of the light novel I’m reading), and finishing Necrobane (Daniel M. Ford), which I’ve been neglecting… I’m not sure. I got a whole treasury of new books by spending up store credit and vouchers, so I might dig into one of those. I am supposed to be reading books I can sell/donate, to help reduce clutter while moving, though. So maybe I’ll read a book from my backlog, Wendy A. Woloson’s Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America — though I’m British, it has a certain resonance right now as I sort through my things…

What about you?

Tags: ,

Divider

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 20, 2025 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Posting much later in the day than usual because I was working on the submissions of my final(!!) assignments for this degree. Exams still to go, but my assignments are in and I am free for a while. Wooo!

So let’s quickly get to talking about books…

Acquired this week

This week was a quiet week until today, where I both got a package of new books (having spent the last of my store credit at Bookshop.org) and went to Waterstones to take advantage of their double Plus stamps offer for this weekend. I haven’t catalogued the Waterstones haul yet, so let’s just stick with my new light novels from Bookshop.org for now!

Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter (light novel) vol 1, by Yatsuki Wakutsu Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter (light novel) vol 2, by Yatsuki Wakutsu Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter (light novel) vol 3, by Yatsuki Wakutsu

I’ve been having fun with the manga (even if I have some reservations that I’ll discuss when I review them), so I’m looking forward to these!

Posts from this week

Mostly just reviews! So here’s the roundup…

What I’m reading

Sadly not a lot, this week, though I have been getting through some manga! Here’s my usual peek at the covers of books I’ve finished this week and plan to review…

Cover of Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter vol 1 Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter vol 2 Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter vol 3 Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter vol 4

Which isn’t too bad considering how busy I’ve been!

As for what I’m going to read over the weekend… now I’m free, who knows? Probably my new light novels, but I’m not ruling anything out.

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

Tags: , ,

Divider

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 16, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Wednesday again, and a little break to talk books! Whew.

Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter vol 1What have you recently finished reading?

Mostly just manga. I’m now working my way through The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter (Kazuki Irodori adapting Yatsuki Wakutsu’s light novel), and I’m enjoying it. I’m curious to read the light novels, as well, though I’m not actually sure if either manga or light novels are a finished series. Aresh’s interest in Seiichirou is cute, but I’ll get frustrated if they don’t start to communicate about that soon.

Cover of Necrobane by Daniel M. FordWhat are you currently reading?

The only thing that’s really close to an active read is Daniel M. Ford’s Necrobane, which I haven’t picked up in a few days. I’m enjoying it, but I just don’t have the attention span while I’m digging deep to get my assignments done. I am still reading something from Serial Reader, at least, which is Baroness Emma Orczy‘s Unravelled Knots at the moment. I’m not a huge fan of her “The Old Man in the Corner” mystery stories, having read a bunch of them in British Library Crime Classic collections, but I’m curious enough about them to keep reading, at least at this bitesize pace!

Cover of Poet Mystic Widow Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women by Hetta HowesWhat will you read next?

I really don’t know. Because it’s on my Litsy Book Spin Bingo card, I’m thinking about Hetta Howes’ Poet Mystic Widow Wife, and I’m also very curious about Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine as a counterpoint to the other book I read about music streaming. But I’m having a bit of trouble settling down to read because of my assignments and moving-related upheaval, so we’ll see.

What about you?

Tags: ,

Divider

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 12, 2025 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

Good evening, folks! I’m a little behind today due to shaken-up routines. Looking on the bright side, the nice thing is that currently me and my wife are preparing to move, hopefully to a bigger flat, where I am promised at least two new bookcases. Excitement!

Books acquired this week

Just one — the new British Library Crime Classic, with an author who is new to me!

Cover of Scandalize My Name by Fiona Sinclair

So I’m looking forward to giving that a shot.

Posts from this week

Let’s do a quick review roundup!

What I’m reading

Given everything going on, such as my grandmother’s funeral, it’s not too surprising that I haven’t finished a lot this week. Here are the two books I did finish and plan to review, though!

Cover of You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song by Glenn McDonald Cover of Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher

As for this weekend, I’m not quite sure. I finally started reading Necrobane by Daniel M. Ford, which I’ve been meaning to get round to a while, so I might just focus on that.

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

Tags: , ,

Divider

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 9, 2025 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

It’s that time again!

Cover of Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony BoucherWhat have you recently finished reading?

Anthony Boucher’s Rocket to the Morgue, which is a fascinating meeting of two genres I love: it’s a mystery, but it’s a mystery about the classic pulp era of SF, and a lot of the characters are based on those writers: Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, etc. It feels weirdly like a book that could be written now out of nostalgia, though it was first published in 1942. I enjoyed it, and I’m curious about the other books featuring Sister Ursula.

Cover of Necrobane by Daniel M. FordWhat are you currently reading?

I started Daniel M. Ford’s Necrobane finally, yesterday — I meant to start it soon after finishing The Warden, but got distracted, as I often do. It took me a minute to pick up some of the threads again, but I’m enjoying it so far, and feel like some of the things that annoyed me have improved (Aelis doesn’t talk to herself so much).

Wish she’d talk to other people more, though… she’s keeping a secret she really ought not keep. As so often, I expect that to soon drive some drama.

I’m also reading Glenn McDonald’s You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song, which… it’s so not my area, it’s a little hard to evaluate it, to be honest. He’s very pro-streaming and pretty pro-Spotify, but at the same time, shares some of my values about listening diversely and artists getting paid.

Cover of Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz PellyWhat will you read next?

Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist should be an excellent counterpoint to You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song, so I might go with that. I’m also eyeing up some E.C.R. Lorac books which turn out to be available on Kobo Plus. In terms of the #BookSpin challenge on Litsy, I should read Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption and Hetta Howe’s Poet Mystic Widow Wife, to get my #BookSpin and work toward a bingo.

But, as ever, who knows?!

What about you?

Tags: ,

Divider

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 5, 2025 by Nicky in General / 15 Comments

Good morning folks! I’m writing this somewhat in haste as I’m also getting ready for a trip (for my grandmother’s funeral). Luckily (though sadly), there’s not a lot to say reading-wise, but let’s dig in all the same…

Books acquired this week

None! Technically I have a little allowance from my wife to get a couple of new books as a reward for hard work on my assignments, but I keep procrastinating on actually choosing any. And I didn’t have time for a library trip this week.

Posts from this week

As usual, here’s a bit of a roundup of the reviews:

* Note: the light novel is completely separate to the manga. It’s the same story/characters, but two totally different formats. Light novels are often illustrated, but are prose fiction, while manga are, well, more like comics. In the case of The Apothecary Diaries, vol 1 of the light novel covers the same events as vols 1-4 of the manga, as I understand it. I am reviewing the light novel here.

I did also post a couple of other features this week!

What I’m reading

Well, “not very much” is the summary, but let’s see — maybe I’ve read more than I thought. Here’s the sneak peek at books I’ve read this week which I plan to review on the blog (eventually):

Cover of Immortal Red Sonja vol 2 by Dan Abnett et al Cover of A Mudlarking Year by Lara Maiklem Cover of Scarhaven Keep by J.S. Fletcher

A quiet week, as I thought. Not sure what I’ll be reading this weekend, if anything, given the travel and the circumstances.

Extra feature

To leave you with a more fun note, a friend set up a list of books that “made” them, and that led me to think about my own… I ended up picking a list of 100 books which have influenced me, and live and breathe with me. A lot of them are a bit arbitrary (and I imposed some arbitrary rules, like mostly not duplicating except for four very important authors), and they’re not all books I’d recommend or endorse, but for better or worse, they tell you a lot about me.

Curious? Here’s the list — you can check off the ones you’ve read, if you like! I’d be curious if anyone can beat my mum and wife’s scores.

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

Tags: , ,

Divider

WWW Wednesday

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

Yay! Time to talk about books. Yep, it’s Wednesday.

Cover of A Mudlarking Year by Lara MaiklemWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last couple of things I’ve read were really short; the second volume of Dan Abnett’s Immortal Red Sonja, which I didn’t like, and Alix E. Harrow’s “The Knight and the Butcherbird”, which I did enjoy and is going to linger with me a bit. I’ve been needing short books a bit, since things are busy, and those both filled a hole.

Before that, I finished up reading Lara Maiklem’s A Mudlarking Year, which was very like the first book by her I read (Mudlarking). I liked it less than I liked Mudlarking, oddly enough for the same reasons as I liked that one, perhaps partly because I’d read more criticism of her possessive attitude over “her patch” and so on.

Cover of Queer City by Peter AckroydWhat are you currently reading?

I’m close to finishing up with Scarhaven Keep (J.S. Fletcher), which is a classic mystery that’s going exactly where I expected it to. There’s just one thing I’m wondering about, and I’m not sure I see where that’s going. Or rather, I hope that my vague thought is wrong, because that would be an annoying turn and I don’t think it’d make a lot of sense.

I’m also reading Peter Ackroyd’s Queer City, and I’m… not enchanted? It just feels like a series of lists, somehow: it’s a lot of information, and that without numbered references, so it’s hard to follow up even though there’s quite a lot of sources listed at the end. And it just doesn’t feel very… lively? I don’t know. Non-fiction can be very engaging, but this one’s not grabbing me.

Cover of Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony BoucherWhat will you read next?

I’m not sure, as usual. I half-started Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’ The Cleopatras, a couple of weeks ago, but barely passed the prologue. It’s on my Book Spin Bingo card for this month again, so I might dig further into that and get properly started. The Book Spin and Double Spin choices are Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption and Anthony Boucher’s Rocket to the Morgue, so those are options too.

Or something totally random. Who knows!

How about you?

Tags: ,

Divider

Top Ten Tuesday: You’d Be A Fool To Skip…

Posted April 1, 2025 by Nicky in General / 13 Comments

This week’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl is “Books You’d Be a Fool Not To Read”. My twist on this is that I’m going to talk about books I didn’t expect to love, and even some books that I didn’t love at first but came to love on rereading them. So it’s books/series/authors that I’d have been a fool not to read (and reread) — though you could take that as a recommendation on my part!

Cover of Feed by Mira Grant Cover of Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Cover of Chalice by Robin McKinley Cover of Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal Cover of A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

  1. Feed, by Mira Grant. I think back when I first read this, half the problem was that I was in a very anxious period in my life. I’m not sure if I was on anxiety medication yet; possibly not, or possibly not the more effective medication I later tried. Anyway, Feed scared the crap out of me by hitting me right where my fears were. I still have anxiety, and health-related anxiety at that, but I’ve come a long way by being curious about it and looking my fears right in the face — and I’m really fascinated by Feed now, too.
  2. Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. It’s not that I hated this when I first read it, as far as I can remember. But I didn’t quite “get” it either. It was a book everyone had been talking about, and it didn’t seem like my thing. I don’t know quite when that changed, but I think it was while reading the later books — and now when I reread this first one, I love it too.
  3. Chalice, by Robin McKinley. The first time I read it, I felt like everything wrapped up too quickly and left me with so many questions. The protagonist spends the whole book not sure what she’s doing, and making it up as she goes along; understanding the boundaries of her abilities by finding them. Reading the book again (and again and again), though, the itch of curiosity is more about figuring more out myself and enjoying the questions.
  4. Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal. As with most of the books on this list, it’s not that I hated the book on first read, but it wasn’t an obvious hit either. I think I gave it two stars. It was before I got into romance novels in general, and I really wasn’t an Austen fan. I just didn’t really… get the appeal, and I don’t think I wanted to get the appeal. It stuck in my head, though, and I later read Glamour in Glass and… loved it. At that point I revisited and found that I liked it, actually.
  5. A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. I know! If you’ve been around here long, you know I loved that book. But I didn’t love it the first time — I think I did give it three stars, “liked it”, but I definitely wasn’t all-in, ride-or-die. I can’t say quite why it didn’t work for me at the time — maybe just mood? But I read Tropic of Serpents, adored it, and reconsidered.
  6. The Gabriel Hounds, by Mary Stewart. To be accurate, my change of heart on this was more of a general re-evaluation of Mary Stewart’s work and why I was reading it, what I was interested in, etc. I read The Gabriel Hounds without knowing much about Stewart’s work (and quite possibly after having already disliked her Arthurian retellings), and I don’t think I really let myself get into it. I really should revisit again, because aspects of it have reaaaally stuck with me — though Madam, Will You Talk? remains my favourite.
  7. The Talisman Ring, by Georgette Heyer. I can’t remember if this was my first Heyer novel, but I think so (except for maybe her mysteries). It’s a heck of a romp, and it immediately sold me on Heyer’s work.
  8. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This one is an absolute brick of a novel, and I remember vividly acquiring it second-hand during my first degree, and tucking myself away in the library to read great big chunks of it between lectures. I actually read it really fast, after entering into the process somewhat dubiously. There are things about it that I hadn’t expected to like — the footnotes, the faux-Regency style, etc — and I’m pretty sure a couple of people I knew had hated it. And yet!
  9. An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. I hadn’t read much romance at this point, and I’m not entirely sure why I requested it on Netgalley — but given how much I love Charles’ work now, I’m very glad I did. I read it for the first time during a visit to my parents-in-law in Canada, so I also have a vivid memory of keeping a careful straight face while reading the sex scenes in the living room, ahaha.
  10. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers. I think (and time proved) that this was not the best starting point for me with Peter Wimsey. He’s not very emotionally present in the story (at least until the end), so if you’ve read a few classic mysteries, you can come into it a bit jaded and not ready to see the detective as a full-blown character. Clouds of Witness or, later, Strong Poison are probably better for that — though really, I think what does it is the cumulative exposure to Lord Peter across the books. I think they’ve all got better (for me) over time as I’ve learned to see where something is Peter being Peter, rather than a generic detective. The audiobook adaptations with Ian Carmichael also add a lot, as well as both adaptations to TV series (older ones with Ian Carmichael, some slightly more recent ones with Edward Petherbridge).

Cover of The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart Cover of The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer Cover of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke Cover of An Unsuitable Heir by K.J. Charles Cover of Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers

And that’s it! Ten books I wasn’t sure whether I’d like, or which I liked more on reading again. Take these as recommendations if you wish!

Tags: ,

Divider

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted March 29, 2025 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Greetings! It’s been a quiet-ish week for me in most respects, though the new raid tier has been released in FFXIV, and the Savage version releases on Tuesday, so getting ready for that is keeping me busy.

But we’re here to talk about books, so let’s get to that.

Books acquired this week

I didn’t get chance to go to the library this week, and though I technically have some money to buy a couple of books, I haven’t 100% decided which to get, so this week there’s just one book, the latest British Library Crime Classic via my subscription. It’s a bit late this month because of printing issues, and it doesn’t seem to have a matching bookmark, which makes me very sad.

Cover of Not To Be Taken: Puzzles in Poison by Anthony Berkeley

I have mixed feelings; I like reading the novels from this series as an academic interest, but sometimes misogyny etc bleed through, and that’s the case with several of Anthony Berkeley’s books, if not all. Still, I’ll give it a shot.

Posts from this week

Time for a roundup!

What I’m reading

I’ve fit in quite a bit of reading considering how much I’ve been playing FFXIV, so let’s start with the usual peek at the books I’ve finished this week which I plan to review on the blog:

Cover of Fence vol 4 by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad Cover of Fence vol 5 by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad Cover of Fence vol 6 by C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad Cover of Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

Cover of Jane Austen in 41 Objects by Kathryn Sutherland Cover of Solo Levelling (manhwa) vol 1, by Chugong, Debu Cover of Strange Pictures by Uketsu Cover of A Breviary of Fire by Marie Brennan

Not sure what’s next, actually, but I’ll be following my whim as always.

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

Tags: , ,

Divider