Category: General

Discussion: Book Covers

Posted February 3, 2026 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

After the Top Ten Tuesday prompt about interesting typography this week (check out my post if you’re curious), I saw a few people commenting that they don’t even look at book covers, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, “book covers don’t matter”, etc. And there’s a sense in which this is true — I’ve read some books with truly awful covers, really plain covers, etc. I’m not a visual person, so I don’t find covers particularly memorable, in general. I often describe them simply, just by the title and name of the author, because once a book is in my hands I don’t think an awful lot about it.

However, I think it’s a bit rash to dismiss book covers entirely! They’re serving an important purpose: they help the right people find the book, in a number of different ways, starting as simply as “by having the author’s name and title on the cover”.

(I’m going to discuss some examples below: unfortunately they’re all pretty visual, because cover design is — but I’ve made an effort to add more descriptive alt text than I usually use, since the purpose of these cover images is to illustrate a point.)

Consider the British Library Crime Classics books: they’ve got a cohesive design principle, all based on old travel posters, so you know immediately when seeing one on a shelf what it is. You’re gonna get a classic British mystery, with traditional crime/mystery elements, with a helpful introduction (usually by the series editor, Martin Edwards), which contextualises the story a bit in terms of who the author was, any other pen-names they used (particularly useful with writers like E.C.R. Lorac/Carol Carnac, Miles Burton/John Rhodes/Cecil Street, Francis Iles/Anthony Berkeley, etc), etc.

Cover of Still Waters by E.C.R. Lorac; the cover image is a painting of idyllic Lake District scenery with trees, water and high hills in the background. The effect is vintage, because it's actually a vintage travel poster. The title and author are in a square in the middle top which is a very standard layout for this series. At the bottom, it says "British Library Crime Classics" in a plain all-caps font, fairly unobtrusive. Cover of The Seat of the Scornful by John Dickson Carr; the cover image is a painting of a seaside scene, with a sandy beach, blue water, and a few boats. The title and author are in a square in the middle top which is a very standard layout for this series. At the bottom, it says "British Library Crime Classics" in a plain all-caps font, fairly unobtrusive. Cover of Someone From The Past by Margot Bennett. The image is a painting of London, showing distinctive buildings like the dome of St Paul's. The title and author are in a square in the middle top which is a very standard layout for this series. At the bottom, it says "British Library Crime Classics" in a plain all-caps font, fairly unobtrusive.

They’re so iconic that they even get copied by others in the genre. Some of those I’ve seen have just been modern pastiches of the Golden Age style, which I admittedly find a bit annoying because it’s misleading, while others are classic authors who haven’t been picked up (yet?) by the British Library Crime Classic series for one reason or another.

Cover of The Ha-ha Case by J.J. Connington; the image is a painting of a rural scene, with a vague figure amongst golden fields. The title and author are in a box at the middle top, like the British Library Crime Classics, but it's subtly off with larger text and a slightly different font. The front also includes a quote from the New York Times, which the British Library Crime Classics never do.

I enjoyed The Ha-Ha Case, as I recall, in much the same way as I enjoy most of the British Library Crime Classics: it’s a classic mystery with classic elements. It’s quite right to try to use the same signals to readers, at least in terms of picking the right audience, since J.J. Connington is a classic writer whose work would fit beautifully into the British Crime Classics series. Whether you love them for their own sake, because you’re interested in that period of the genre in general, or both (as in my case), the cover steers you pretty fairly here.

Another example where the covers are doing a lot to draw in the right readers would be danmei. Seven Seas (the publisher of a lot of translated danmei) use very similar design principles to help draw in readers, and I think I could recognise their cover designs at a hundred paces.

Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation vol 5 by MXTX; a pastel-coloured cover, featuring two men lying in an idyllic field. One, dressed in dark clothing, has his hands tied with a white ribbon, and reaches up to cup the cheek of a man dressed in white. Cover of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System vol 4 by MXTX; the cover is full of orange tones. A man dressed in green with long flowing hair embraces a man who is kneeling at his feet and hugging him around his waist, leaning his head into him. He seems to be comforting him. Cover of Mistakenly Saving the Villain vol 1 by Feng Yu Nie; a man dressed in red embraces a man dressed in white, both smeared with blood, with clouds, flowers and lightning around them, and below them two smaller figures (the same men) standing together with one gesturing to a flower.

These covers are telling you really important things about settings, the central relationships (romances between men), that the books are in a series… and they also help to enforce the really strong rules danmei often seems to have about how the characters should be imagined. You know immediately how Shen Qingqiu “should” look according to the author’s imagination. You’ll find his character design varies astonishingly little across different translations (though Binghe varies a bit more, e.g. not always having the curly hair, his outfits are consistent).

The same is true of so many genres: you don’t need to guess for long to know the genres of the covers below:

Cover of Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian; the cover is clearly on a movie/TV set, with one dark-haired man in a chair and a blond-haired man leaning over him. They look about to kiss. The font for the author's name and title is a bit comic-booky, or like the covers of pulpy fiction. Cover of Cat Dragon by Samantha Birch; an autumnal looking cover with red-leaved trees, and a house framed between them in the background. A woman with her hair in plaits wearing a traditional tall witches hat decorated with flowers confronts a cat-dragon, which looks fluffy and cat-like but with dragon wings. Cover of Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic; dozens of emoji frame an empty space the shape of a speech bubble, which contains the subtitle of the book. Cover of Platform Decay by Martha Wells; a dark cover showing a figure in some kind of body armour with a helmet on. The visor is dark and we can't see a face. They seem to be moving in zero gravity, along the suggestion of a ladder in the background.

Respectively: romance, fantasy, non-fiction, sci-fi.

When something starts melding genres, covers can be a really big part of communicating that too. Here’s a series that I really loved, which melds a classic private eye kinda story with fantasy:

Cover of Dead Harvest by Chris F. Holm; the cover looks like a classic pulpy detective story, but the image is of a man reaching into another man's chest surrounded by a burst of light, and a moon hangs in the background. Something supernatural is conveyed. Cover of The Wrong Goodbye by Chris F. Holm; another pulp detective type cover, this one featuring a group of people in a circle staring down, as if the viewer is on the floor or even in a hole in the ground. Cover of The Big Reap by Chris F. Holm; a classic pulp detective cover, but this one with the image of a creepy house and the moon, and maybe bats or birds flying across? Against these you see the silhouette of a man with weapons in his hands.

If you can, look how clever those are! Given the Raymond Chandler references, I’d bet there are covers of Raymond Chandler’s books that look just like this. But the images make it clear that there’s more going on too — I think these are such clever designs.

For another example, sometimes covers can be helpful to tell you what to expect for an author who writes several different genres. Compare these T. Kingfisher covers, some for fantasy novels, others for horror.

Cover of Swordheart by T. Kingfisher; a really bright and busy cover. A sword is the centrepiece but there are also birds and flower/leaf motifs. The effect is a bit like a kaleidoscope. Cover of Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher; there are various silhouettes of characters: a guy in armour with a sword, a wizard-like silhouette in a robe or dress, a thief hanging from one of the letters of the title. These are all standing/sitting on intricate interlocking cogs that look like clockwork. Cover of What Moves The Dead, by T. Kingfisher; a hare is the main feature, but it has fungal growths coming off it already and it looks sick/dead, or maybe like bad taxidermy Cover of Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher; the words of the title are intertwined with repellant looking flower-growths, with roots below that look almost like capillaries.

Did you have trouble telling which was which? Sure, the titles give a bit of a hint too, but sighted people are probably able to tell even before they look at the words.

Even covers with lower budgets, or which miss the mark in certain ways can give you a lot of info about what you’re getting into. I don’t love the covers below, but they still give you important info:

Cover of Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk; the cover has two men on it in old-fashioned dress, telling you the period of the story, while one of them holds a book surrounded in golden light, suggesting magic. Cover of Maelstrom by Jordan L. Hawk; the same two men as the cover of Widdershins tell us this is the book in a series, the font tells us that as well, a woman in the background gives a hint at plot... Cover of Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian; a short-haired blond female-bodied person dressed in a shirt straddles a dark-haired man with his shirt half-off. Cover of The Soldier's Scoundrel by Cat Sebastian; a possibly naked man stands behind a man whose shirt is most of the way off, their faces close. It is clearly a romantic image.

You can see the heroes of the Jordan L. Hawk series, and see that it is a series through the cohesive cover design. You can get the fantasy/horror vibes and an idea of the main pairing dynamic. From the Cat Sebastian covers, you can instantly tell it’s a romance and an idea at the pairings therein — though this is a little misleading in the case of Unmasked by the Marquess, one of the more unfortunate covers of Sebastian’s books. All the same, even with its flaws, it’s giving you important signals.

I didn’t even dig particularly deep for the examples here, or dig into the complex design principles behind many covers — this was an off-the-cuff quick post! The point is: covers are actually important, and cover artists can do an enormous amount for a book. Even on ebook stores, the cover is usually displayed, same on social sites like Goodreads and StoryGraph: unless you literally can’t see the covers (which of course is true of some!), there’s some degree of influence, even if it’s “oh, that has a self-published look” or “that’s a fantasy book”, etc — even when you may not be fully aware of it.

So in short, I think we should celebrate cover artists and designers, don’t discount their work! Sometimes the books don’t match up to the covers, and sometimes covers do the book a disservice — this will always be true. But covers have a valuable job to do, and books can find the right people through them.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Cool Typography

Posted February 3, 2026 by Nicky in General / 50 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about interesting cover typography… which is a tricky topic for me, because I’m a very non-visual person! That said, it also sounds fun, so let’s see what I can do.

The cover of Wolf Worm, by T. Kingfisher. The title is in a large white serif font on a black background, but two flowers are poking through the letters of "wolf" and a twig in the centre of the cover has the various stages of growth and pupation of a fly dangling from it, as well as what might be a catterpillar with parasites on its back, reflecting the horror themes in the book. This twig also hangs in front of the word "worm". The plant roots that spread out below the title are red and look like veins. The cover of This Will Be Fun, by E.B. Asher. The cover has a banner going back and forth across it from top to bottom, almost like a ribbon. The title is written on the horizontal sections of the banner, split into three sections. There is also a sword diagonally across the cover, the banner weaving behind and in front of it. The curves of the banner are accented with roses, facets of gemstones, sprigs of ferns and in one spot, a tent, a castle, and a coffee mug. At the bottom of the banner, silhouettes of a man and a woman are sat in front of a large rock. The cover of A River Enchanted, by Rebecca Ross. The central feature of the cover is a river running across it. The water is varying shades of blue and the title looks like it is floating on the water, the letters not quite all on the same line and water sometimes covering parts of a letter. On the water are also yellow petals, matching the yellow of the author's name. Above and below the river, on the corners of the cover, there are purple flowers and thistle flowers on a dark background. The cover of Love, Theoretically, by Ali Hazelwood. The cover is a bright orange yellow, with bookshelves just visible. In the foreground are a man and a woman, kissing. The man is wearing a polo shirt and on his lower arm, there is a tattoo of some kind of molecular structure. The woman is in a bright pink dress and her long braid swings out behind her. The first word of the title, "love", is in a sans-serif font, but the "theoretically" is in a more graphic, handwriting-like font. The impression is of some kind of ambiguity (it's love, theoretically), or a sign off on a letter. The cover of Paris Daillencourt Is About To Crumble, by Alexis Hall. The main feature of the cover is a larger than life layer cake. Each layer is a different colour of the rainbow and each word of the title is in a different layer. The cake is finished with white frosting and on top has a purple decoration of the London skyline, clearly showing Westminster, the London Eye, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and the Gherkin. In front of cake, bracketing it on either side, are two men. The man on the left looks perhaps skeptical of the one on the left, who has his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised. All of it, cake and men, are on top of a small table that looks like it's covered in a lace doily.

The cover of Radiant Black by Higging, Costa, Chen, Lafuente, and Carey. The lower two thirds of the cover show the launch of something, or someone toward space. White clouds spread out at the bottom, the sun just peeking out from behind them. A vapour trail follows the rising black and white figure as it heads toward the black of space that is at the very top of the cover. The title itself is on two lines, aligned so that the second A in "radiant" aligns with that in "black", which is also upside down. Between the two As is a circle, halved by the blue line that runs between the two words. The cover of Tied To You, by Chelliace. The cover features two young men on a bed. One is lying back with his head on a pillow, while the other leans over him, holding his hand to kiss it. It looks like there is some size difference between them, implying perhaps a gap in their ages. The words of the title are in a curly font, and the curl on the extends out to form the crossbar on the t of "to", whereas the Y in "you" reaches up and hooks into a curl at the end of "tied". The words are literally tied together. The cover of Copper Script, by KJ Charles. Two copper coloured silhouettes stand in front of a dark blue background. One is a man in a trenchcoat, wearing a hat and a suit under his coat. The other is a man in a more working class outfit, with a cap. Around the edges of the cover is lineart and some lanterns, all in a vaguely art deco style. The blue background uses different shades to show a city skyline behind the men, and in the centre, a pen nib. The title itself is written in copperscript, with some additional decorative flourishes. The cover of An Unkindness of Magicians, by Kat Howard. This cover stands out as it is all in white. The background is flat white, with white branches reaching from the left to the right of the cover. The branches are mostly bare, but there are some leaves coming off them. These leaves and the ends of the branches weave through the also white letters of the title. The whole is very otherworldly and somewhat haunting. The cover of Planting Clues, by David J. Gibson. The cover has a green background and the left and right sides of the cover are covered in darker green etchings of different plants. There are flowers, different kinds of leaves, a few mushrooms, even some enlarged microscopic images of pollen in the lower left corner. The title has the word "planting" somewhat set into the greenery and then "clues" is made to look as if it is on a piece of crime scene tape, cut through the middle. This seems especially appropriate given the tagline "how plants solve crimes".

I make no promises about the quality of the books, because I’ve only read four of them and only loved two. All the same, these covers jumped out at me as doing interesting things with the typography (like following the layers of the cake, the echoed upside-down A, the letters of Tied to You being tied together, the broken crime-scene tape).

For my money, the coolest is An Unkindness of Magicians, though: it’s a pretty plain font, but somehow it’s making that pale-on-pale look work, and the branches are growing into the letters… a lot of the time bright colours draw the eye, but this cover draws the eye by eschewing colour, including in the title text.

I’m very curious to see what others have unearthed, and what other people feel looks cool!

ETA: See also my post today about the importance of book covers!

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 31, 2026 by Nicky in General / 37 Comments

Here we are again, another weekend! Monday sees me back at work, but this week has still been my time off, though I haven’t spent as much time reading as I would’ve liked.

Books acquired this week

It’s been a quiet week on this front, though I did receive a finished print copy of Heather Fawcett’s Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter. I received the eARC a few weeks ago, but I’m really grateful to Hachette for sending me a physical copy too — I’d actually thought I wasn’t selected, so it was a surprise to get the shipping info a couple of days ago!

Cover of Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

I also borrowed a new book from the National Poetry Library:

Cover of Smart Devices: 52 Poems, ed. Carol Rumens

But, overall, a quiet week.

Posts from this week

As usual, let’s start with the review roundup!

And the non-review posts:

What I’m reading

I said I wasn’t reading as much as I’d hoped, but let’s take a look at the books I’ve managed to finish this week anyway!

Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter manga vol 6 Cover of The Meteorites by Helen Gordon Cover of Heaven Official's Blessing manhua vol 1 by STARember

Cover of The Grendel Affair by Lisa Shearin Cover of Guardian (light novel) vol 1 by Priest Cover of The Iron Bridge by Rebecca Hurst

So not the worst progress either!

I’m not sure what I’ll read this weekend, but right now I’m thinking of working to finish up Heather Fawcett’s Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter and T. Kingfisher’s Snake-eater, and I’m also partway through Smart Devices, the poetry collection I borrowed this week. Maybe I’ll read some manhwa too, to help catch up a bit to my reading goal before I get too far behind — but only if the whim strikes me, as always!

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 January 28, 2026 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

Cover of The Meteorites by Helen GordonWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was the first volume of the official English translation of the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua. STARember’s art is gorgeous, and it’s a really nice edition. Before that, I finished Helen Gordon’s The Meteorites, which was okay but focused more on people’s reaction to meteorites than I was entirely interested in — I’m more into the science side of things (and even then, it’s not really one of my major interests). So not entirely what I was looking for, but a fun enough read.

Cover of Guardian (light novel) vol 1 by PriestWhat are you currently reading?

I have a few books on the go, but I’ve been kinda bouncing around and not super focused. The ones I’d like to sit down and finish today are Lisa Shearin’s The Grendel Affair — the title of which is annoyingly spoilery, and really should’ve been something else to my mind — and volume one of Priest’s Guardian. I’m close to finishing both.

I don’t think I’ll read the sequel to The Grendel Affair, because it just doesn’t stand out against other urban fantasy enough for me, but I’ll continue reading Guardian unless it weirdly jumps the shark in the last 70 pages. I have some theories about what’s happening, and there’s a nice simmering sense of longing going on, so looking forward to finishing it up and getting the next volume.

Cover of Snake-Eater by T. KingfisherWhat will you be reading next?

I don’t really know, because I’ve been finding it hard to settle down to anything. I think I’ll probably focus on finishing up T. Kingfisher’s Snake-eater, which I was enjoying, and then perhaps focus on reading some of the manhwa and manhua I’ve been piling up.

Buuuut, as ever, it’ll be whatever I feel like in the moment.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Discoveries of 2025

Posted January 27, 2026 by Nicky in General / 58 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about bookish discoveries made in 2025! I don’t have any general things like bookshops or book clubs to share, so I’ll go with new-to-me authors in 2025, though it’s heavy on authors where I only know a single work/series (and sometimes they don’t have others).

Cover of Strange Houses by Uketsu Cover of The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol 3 by Xue Shan Fei Hu Cover of The Banquet Ceases by Mary Fitt Cover of Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell Cover of A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith

  1. Uketsu. I really enjoyed both Strange Pictures and Strange Houses, especially the latter, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming Strange Buildings. They’re such weird stories, and if you want to piece together the mysteries for yourself you have to really stare at the included images. (This is perhaps why I liked Strange Houses most: I found it easier to come up with my own theories and spot what I was meant to see, so I got to participate a bit more.)
  2. Xue Shan Fei Hu. Me and my wife both got super into The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish at the same time, which was fun — reading the books at the same pace, chatting about plot developments, etc. It’s a silly story (though it does include some political intrigue) and very cute, and I’m sure I’ll reread it. I’d give other books by this author a shot too.
  3. Mary Fitt. I didn’t know anything about this queer Wales-based classic mystery writer, but in 2025 I came across The Banquet Ceases and loved it. I later read Clues to Christabel as well, which I found compelling but somewhat less enjoyable. I’m definitely eager to read more of her work, and there’s a lot of it (if not all?) on Kobo Plus, which is convenient.
  4. Sarah Caudwell. I started seeing people talk about Thus Was Adonis Murdered a lot and gave way to curiosity, ending up fully on the bandwagon despite not being sure whether the humour would suit me, or whether a crime novel based around a bunch of lawyers would be fun. I haven’t read the fourth book, which I’ve been warned isn’t as fun, but I really loved the first three. They’re witty and clever and full of character, and I’m sure I’ll reread them at some point.
  5. Sally Smith. Another legal-based mystery, in the same year?! Shockingly, yes. I was initially put off by the main character, Gabriel Ward, who seems to be kind of stuffy — but it didn’t take long before I was won over. I loved both A Case of Mice and Murder and A Case of Life and Limb (which I requested to review because I’d unexpectedly loved the first book so much), and I’m so impatient for book three.
  6. Yatsuki Wakatsu. This is the author of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, which I read in both the original light novel format and (as far as it exists) the manga adaptation. I’d definitely give more books by this author a shot; the light novels kept me chirpy and fascinated during a high-stress, high-anxiety time as my final exams approached, we were moving house, etc, etc. I’ve actually been rereading the manga due to the new volume coming out, and it confirmed to me how much fun the series is.
  7. Rinteku. I don’t know if Rinteku’s written any other manga, but I came across Love in the Palm of His Hand and really fell in love with how it tries to portray the multiple ways the deaf protagonist communicates. It was really interesting to see how Rinteku chose to represent sign language in a static medium (showing several hand positions in the same frame, for instance). It’s also a really sweet story, even if I don’t 100% love the art. I’d definitely try something else by them.
  8. Itaru Kinoshita. I absolutely fell for Dinosaur Sanctuary last year, and though I haven’t got through my backlog of written-but-not-yet-posted reviews to start posting the reviews yet, I can’t wait to share them. It’s basically “what if we found living dinosaurs, put them in zoos, and really had to take care of them?” The dinosaurs are studied, given medical care, encouraged to breed, need enrichment — and the public needs to be engaged with too. I really loved how rooted it is in what we know about dinosaurs and some interesting but plausible extrapolations. The series has a research consultant so it can be as accurate as possible! It’s wholesome and fun, and I also learned new things.
  9. Chugong. That’s the author of the original Solo Leveling light novels! I actually read the manhwa first, which I loved, but I’m knee-deep in the light novels now as well and really loving it. I find it weirdly relaxing that though the stakes are ultimately really high (the survival of all humans), the main character is so ridiculously overpowered (and so rarely at a loss) that you know somehow everything is going to be fine.
  10. singNsong. This has really been a year of me reading a lot more media from Japan, China and Korea, as you can tell from the rest of this list! So it’s only fitting to end with Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, which filtered slowly into my awareness through an online friend loving it and a few mentions in the game Tiny Bookshop, where it’s one of the books you can recommend to the bookshop patrons. I’m enjoying both the light novels and the manhwa, and can’t wait for more.

Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter (light novel) vol 2, by Yatsuki Wakutsu Cover of Love in the Palm of His Hand vol 1 by Rinteku Cover of Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 5 by Itaru Kinoshita Cover of Solo Leveling manhwa vol 8 by Dubu Cover of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint vol 1 by singNSong

I was actually surprised by the dominance of Japanese, Chinese and Korean works here, but that’s a fairly accurate picture of my reading, to be fair. There are a few runners-up whose books I enjoyed, like Molly O’Neill’s Greenteeth, Rachel Harrison’s Cackle, Julie Leong’s The Teller of Small Fortunes, Chelliace’s Tied to You… so it wasn’t easy to choose just ten to discuss. It was a good year for reading!

Definitely eager to see everyone else’s picks.

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 24, 2026 by Nicky in General / 39 Comments

Okay, hold onto your hats! This one’s a big ‘un, again already — I’ve had a very bookish week!

Books acquired this week

Last weekend I had my annual vision test and OCT scan, after which I always go to the bookshop. To, you know, prove my eyes still work. Look, I swear it makes sense. So I got myself a whole bunch of books, after saying I was only going to look at the non-fiction, because there were a couple of discounts and I had collected 10+ stamps to get money off as well.

Without further ado, let’s start with the manga, manhwa and manhua I’ve got this week (that’s Japanese, Korean and Chinese comics, respectively!).

Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua vol 1 Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua vol 2 Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua vol 3 Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua vol 4

Cover of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua vol 5 Cover of Heaven Official's Blessing manhua vol 1 by STARember Cover of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint manhwa vol 8, by Umi Cover of The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter manga vol 6

I read the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation light novels recently, so it’ll be fun to explore the world more visually in the manhua. There’s a lot more in the series, so I don’t know if I’ll get the rest soon or not — I guess it depends on how much I like it as an adaptation, and maybe whether I can spend my Bookshop.org credit on it. Then there’s the first volume of the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua, which I’ve read online but wanted to own. I hope they’ll bring more of the series out soon.

Finally, the next volume of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa that I didn’t have yet, since I’ve been going through those apace lately, and the new volume of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, since volume six of the manga just released. These should keep me busy a bit! I do get a lot of manga/comics via Comics Plus/Library Pass, but they don’t seem to partner with these publishers, and anyway I’d probably want copies for my collection, so I couldn’t resist the urge to stock up.

Buuut that’s not all. I also got a few other books, a mix of fiction and non-fiction:

Cover of Monsterland by Nicholas Jubber Cover of A History of England in 25 Poems by Catherine Clarke

Cover of Katabasis by R.F. Kuang Cover of Daedalus is Dead by Seamus Sullivan

I’d been thinking about requesting Daedalus is Dead, Katabasis and Fate’s Bane as ARCs, so picking those up was an easy choice (especially with Katabasis heavily marked down!). Monsterland and A History of England in 25 Poems were more random choices, but I also love “the history of X in Y objects”-type non-fiction, so I’m very much looking forward to that one.

Since we’re on the topic of poetry, I did get a couple of books from the National Poetry Library this week, as I wrote about yesterday. They’re both debut collections, as I understand it, with one of them being native British and the other Ukrainian. I’m very curious about both, and might spend some time digging in this weekend.

Cover of The Iron Bridge by Rebecca Hurst Cover of Food for the Dead by Charlote Shevchenko-Knight

This one’s also from the library, but my local one this time. I’ve seen mixed reviews for this but wanted to give it a shot anyway because the idea amused me:

Cover of We'll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida

Finally — yes, just a little more — I got a couple more review copies as well, this time via Netgalley. I’d requested them thanks to seeing people enthuse about them in Top Ten Tuesday posts last week, and was a little surprised to actually get them!

Cover of Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe Cover of Princeweaver by Elian J Morgan

Stay for a Spell sounds like a fun cosy concept, while Princeweaver has me a little wary, since one of the blurbs says it is “a lush reimagining of the English conquest of Wales”. That could be interesting and nuanced, or it could be an absolute mess. I guess we’ll find out!

Irritatingly, I’d forgotten to check before I requested it, and it looks like Stay for a Spell is a PDF, and DRM-locked with Readium, so I can’t get it onto either of my ereaders, or even my e-ink tablet, and will have to read it on my PC. I wish publishers wouldn’t do this; I have no idea how readers are supposed to comfortably read these. Maybe on a tablet or something, I guess? But I don’t have one, so suffering it is.

Just a little note…

Related to my earlier references to my annual vision test/scan, let me just pause a moment to emphasise the importance of eye health, using UV protection, and considering getting eye tests every few years even if you haven’t needed glasses in the past. Conditions like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and glaucoma aren’t related to whether you have 20/20 vision or not, and while some of the conditions are often associated with aging, they aren’t always. Early diagnosis can really improve your outlook.

Having volunteered for the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) for some years, and having a potential genetic risk factor (a parent with early-onset macular degeneration), this one’s incredibly important to me. If you’re not getting your eye health checked, please consider it, and tack on the extra couple of quid for an OCT scan if it isn’t already standard at your optician, assuming you can afford to. And make sure to protect your eyes from UV light, even in winter, with sunglasses, hats, etc: UV light is a major contributor to several eye conditions, including common issues of aging like cataracts.

Okay, off the soapbox now, back to the books.

Posts from this week

There have been posts a-plenty this week, as I went back to working through some of the massive backlog of written reviews that are ready to post, while trying to keep some variety going. First up, the reviews:

There were other posts as well, of course, so here they are:

If you’re interested in poetry and live in the UK, I definitely recommend checking out that last post for more info about how to access the National Poetry Library’s collections! I didn’t know about them and it is a most excellent discovery.

What I’m reading

Given I’ve had the week off, you’d think I’d have managed a lot of reading, but part of the time I really wasn’t in the mood, and part of the time I spent rereading manga — namely, The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, since volume six is out and I’d forgotten where the series got up to. Still, I’ve read a few books in the last week, and here’s the usual sneak peek at the ones I finished and intend to review on the blog!

Cover of And Side by Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer Cover of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint manhwa vol 5, by Umi Cover of Longer by Michael Blumlein Cover of Solo Leveling (light novel) vol 6, by Chugong

I’m not sure what I’ll be reading this weekend and into the new week (which is also a week off for me), but it’ll probably include reading more of T. Kingfisher’s Snake-eater, which I started this week. I have a lot to do if I want to get a blackout in the BookSpinBingo challenge this month, so maybe more of those books?

But, as always… it’ll be down to my whim in the moment. Nothing’s as important as making sure I do actually enjoy what I’m reading, or at least the process. (I’ll sometimes finish books that I don’t like per se because there’s some interest in doing so, even if it’s just to write a good review to diss ’em.)

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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PSA for UK-dwellers: National Poetry Library

Posted January 23, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Did you know that there’s such thing as the National Poetry Library? And that you can sign up to borrow from their online collection if you live anywhere in the UK? I learned this yesterday on Bluesky, and I figured it was worth sharing on my blog as well because I’ve seen several people talking about wanting to read more poetry!

Sign-up is super easy: you just need to fill out the form on their sign-up page link, giving your name, email, phone number and postcode. They’ll then send you an email telling you where to send your proof of address: you can’t reply directly to that email, but just copy the email address they send there and send to that, attaching a copy of some kind of proof of address like a utility bill, bank statement, council tax bill, etc. You can black out any financial details like your account number, though they will also delete whatever you send after verifying that you really do have a UK address.

I got a reply back from them in less than 24 hours with my login details for their Overdrive collection. I can borrow up to two books at once, for up to 14 days.

I’ve been poking around the collection a bit and it looks very worth the small amount of trouble: the split by subjects isn’t very useful for this particular library, but the collections are handy, highlighting various prize winners, recent poetry collections, and other such themes, if you have no idea where to start. I’ve started by checking out two from Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize:

Cover of Food for the Dead by Charlote Shevchenko-Knight Cover of The Iron Bridge by Rebecca Hurst

There are a small number of books about poetry as well, and a small number of audiobooks. It’s not an exhaustive collection by any means, but it definitely offers a lovely way to explore some new-to-me poetry.

The library also has a physical collection, so if you live in range, you can show up with photo ID to be able to get a library card and access their physical holdings. They run poetry-related events as well! Their physical premises are wheelchair-accessible and you can check their accessibility info here. The info about their collections indicates they have braille and audio resources available for blind and partially sighted users.

All in all, worth checking out if you have a UK address and phone number at your disposal!

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WWW Wednesday

Posted January 21, 2026 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

Cover of And Side by Side They Wander by Molly TanzerWhat have you recently finished reading?

I was kinda struggling to finish anything for a bit, but last night I did finish volume five of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa! It’s juuust getting beyond the bit I read in the light novels so far, so things are heating up; I did expect this plot twist somewhat, but it’s fun to see my theories confirmed.

Before that, the last thing I finished was an ARC of Molly Tanzer’s And Side by Side They Wandered, which I found really interesting, albeit very obviously referencing the antics of the British Museum.

Cover of Snake-Eater by T. KingfisherWhat are you currently reading?

Last night I started a bunch of books at once trying to find something that fit, and I think I found some winners! I’m first going to finish up C.L. Clark’s Fate’s Bane, which is a novella; I’m curious where it’s going, and the shortish chapters are really tugging me through it. I also started T. Kingfisher’s Snake-eater, which is likely to be a quick read for me because I find most of Kingfisher’s work pretty compulsive.

I also started volume one of Priest’s Guardian, though I don’t have a good sense for where that’s going yet, so I need a bit more time to get sucked in, and Nicholas Jubber’s Monsterland, which I’m probably going to read a bit at a time, since it’s non-fiction and structured in a way that lends itself to that, with separate chapters for different kinds of monsters/superstitions/etc.

I’m also slowly working my way through Helen Gordon’s The Meteorites, and would like to finish that soon, and I have a volume of the Solo Leveling novels part-read. Clearly I’ve been a bit flighty lately!

Cover of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint manhwa vol 6, by UmiWhat will you read next?

I’m not entirely sure. I’m likely to read more of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa quite soon, and I picked up the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua as well, which is high on my list. Seamus Sullivan’s Daedalus is Dead is looking tempting too, since it’s a novella and maybe suited to my current attention span.

But as ever, it’ll be wherever my whim takes me in the moment!

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Top Ten Tuesday: 2026 Goals

Posted January 20, 2026 by Nicky in General / 44 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about goals for 2026 — bookish or not. I’ll keep things mostly bookish (that’s what you’re all here for, after all, and I have so many bookish goals, always!)… so without further ado, let’s take a look.

  1. Read (or not!) according to my whim. It’s easy to get caught up in reading for a reading challenge, or because I have a review copy, or because a book’s due back at the library. And sometimes that’s fine and fun, but whenever it’s not fun, I stop. Or try to: I can’t say I’m perfect yet at this!
  2. There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure. It’s kinda sad when I see people talking about “guilty pleasures”, or deriding their reading as “trashy” (though sometimes I think people mean “trashy” in a fun, positive way, I think that’s often still caught up in popular disdain for certain genres or tropes). If it’s fun for me, then it’s worthwhile. It doesn’t need to be any deeper than that.
  3. There’s no such thing as cheating. Reading novellas, reading manga, reading children’s books, rereading a favourite, all of it is valid toward stuff like reading goals, most challenges as long as it meets any prompts, etc.
  4. I won’t do book-buying bans (or book-borrowing bans, or bans on requesting ARCs, etc). I have limits (discussed below) to help ensure that I’m not just stacking up books I don’t plan to read… but if I really want some new books, I’m not going to make that a guilty feeling. It’s a joy to support authors, to have good stuff to read, to get a nice stack of books and devour them. Provided I have the budget, I’ll make it work.
  5. I won’t buy from Amazon if at all possible. In general, but especially books: that’s what indie bookshops and Bookshop.org are for. Sometimes they don’t have something in stock, and there can be relatively few places to turn in that case, but for the majority of what I read there are plentiful options to avoid supporting Amazon.
  6. I want to have no more than 20 books at a time bought in 2026 that I haven’t started. This sometimes results in me having a few books on the go at once that I turn out not to be in the mood for, but broadly speaking it’s been really great at helping me read review books on time, start books when I feel like it instead of waiting for “the right time”, etc. I worried I would find it overly restrictive, but I did this last year and really liked the nudge to read books while they’re relevant/exciting/exactly what I’m interested in, because I just got them.
  7. I want to start all the books I bought in 2025. As mentioned above, I had the same rule last year (a limit of 20 books not started), but at Christmas the total rocketed up, ahaha. So I currently have 32 books from 2025 that I haven’t started yet. I’m hoping to get them all started (at least) by June, always provided that’s the way my whim takes me.
  8. I want to read at least 100 books from my backlog (counting 2025’s books). I did great last year at weeding out my backlog — sometimes by just recognising I didn’t want to read something after all, but also by reading 100 books that had been on my backlog since the end of 2024 or longer. I’d built up quite a backlog for a bunch of reasons, and it was great to explore my shelves more and push myself to poke around in the depths of my Kobo, get to books I meant to review when they came out, etc. I’d like to keep going!
  9. I want to read 400 books again this year… or even more? I managed to read 400 books last year and the year before, while still studying on top of full-time work. I don’t have any new course or class lined up, so maybe I have more time for reading? Maybe not, if other priorities crop up, but I still figure that 400 books is a reasonable goal to start with.
  10. Any goal can be changed if it’s doing more harm than good. I set reading goals as a way to remind myself that I want reading to be a priority, because reading makes me happy, because talking about books on my blog makes me happy, etc, but if it’s not making me happy then it needs to change. There was a point last year when I dropped my goal to 300, gradually increased it back to 350… and then I eventually ended on 400 exactly. Flexibility is important.

And that’s it! The main goal, of course, is to keep on having fun with it. If I’m not, then for me there’s no point.

How about you?

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