Category: General

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 4, 2025 by Nicky in General / 22 Comments

It’s been a quiet week around here, though I’ve definitely been reading!

Books acquired this week

N/a! A few books I’m interested in are releasing in the coming week, though, so maybe I’ll have more to show next week.

Posts from this week

Mostly just reviews this week, so let’s do a quick roundup!

Fantasy manhwa: Solo Leveling, vol 5, by Dubu (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Fantasy: The Wonder Engine, by T. Kingfisher (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Non-fiction: Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them, by John S. Tregoning (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Non-fiction: Queer as Folklore, by Sacha Coward (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Comic: Mooncop, by Tom Gauld (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy: The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, by Caitlin Rozakis (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Romance: The Love Hypothesis, by Ali Hazelwood (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

And also the usual What Are You Reading Wednesday post.

What I’m reading

First, as always, a quick sneak peek at the books I’ve read this week that I plan to review on the blog!

I did also do a couple of rereads, like the fourth volume of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, which I don’t plan to review again, so it’s been a busy week!

I’m not sure what I’ll focus on over the weekend. I’ve dug into rereading Jordan L. Hawk’s Outfoxing the Paranormal series, so I might get up to reading the newest of the series. I’ve also started on a real chonker, The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club, which is long slow reading, and I’ll probably read a chapter or two of that.

But as ever, it’ll be whatever I feel like, in the end!

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

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted September 27, 2025 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

Happy weekend! It’s been a nice short week for me, and I’m still glad to see the weekend. Hope everyone has fun plans — even if “fun plans” means hiding away in a cosy corner with a book, of course.

Books acquired this week

I’m trying not to buy too many books, but a couple of impulse buys here and there can’t hurt when I plan to read them right away, right?

Posts from this week

Bookish comics: I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf, by Grant Snider (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Fantasy: Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Poetry: Eat the World, by Marina Diamandis (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Fantasy: Reignclowd Palace, by Philippa Rice (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Non-fiction: First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time, by Emma Chapman (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Crime: Nine Times Nine, by Anthony Boucher (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America, by Wendy A. Woloson (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

And the other posts:

What I’m reading

It’s still been a good week for reading, though a lot of these are quite short! Here’s a peek at the books I’ve finished and intend to review on the blog:

I’m planning to play a lot of Final Fantasy XIV this weekend, as I want to work on my weapon relic, so that’s going to be fun! But I do want to finish off the books I need to finish to get a blackout on Book Spin Bingo on Litsy, which means I’ll be doing plenty of reading too, as the end of the month approaches. My first focus is You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian, which I’m loving, but… I have quite a bit of reading to do!

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

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

WWW Wednesday

Posted September 24, 2025 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

A couple of manga I picked up rather at random, both by Guri Nojiro: In Love’s Key, Reprised and A Beast’s Love is Like the Moon. I liked In Love’s Key, Reprised the better of the two, though A Beast’s Love is Like the Moon has a surprising bittersweetness at the end. Both made for good light reading, even if they weren’t exceptional.

What are you currently reading?

As ever, I’ve got a few things on the go at once, though I did clear the decks a little bit with my offline weekend earlier in the month, and then my long weekend that ended yesterday. I’m most actively reading Cat Sebastian’s You Should Be So Lucky: I’m not far into it yet, but I’m very sure I’m going to love the dynamic between Mark and Eddie.

Other than that, I’m also partway through Lucy Cooke’s Bitch, which I’m finding really slow going — despite being allegedly myth-busting about female behaviour/evolution across a range of species, I’m not finding it that surprising.

I’m also reading Sydney J. Shields’ The Honey Witch, which is… so far, just “fine”. It’s not really pulling me in, and I’m not a fan of the writing style, though I can’t quite put my finger on why yet. I’m not far into it, though!

What will you be reading next?

KJ Charles’ The Duke at Hazard, certainly, and otherwise I need to get back to some of the books I have on hold, like James Alistair Henry’s Pagans. I’ve read 38 books so far in September, and yet I still have a bunch to read for my Book Spin Bingo card.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Fall TBR

Posted September 23, 2025 by Nicky in General / 36 Comments

It’s definitely beginning to feel autumnal here, with the temperatures falling and some very rainy days. I’m all for it — I love rain, especially listening to it against the windows while I’m reading, because I’m a cliché, and I’m also not super keen on very warm weather anyway (despite the problems I have with my poor circulation meaning I’m easily cold).

So it’s time too to think about my fall reading list, thanks to Top Ten Tuesday. I know there are a lot of books releasing soon that I’m interested in, so I’ve included a couple of those, but mostly I’m trying to leave those on my wishlist for Christmas, and focus on some of the neglected books of my TBR.

Mockingbird Court, by Juneau Black. I love the Shady Hollow series, and the one is due out on 7th October, so it has to earn a place on my list. It’s also set in autumn, so it’s coincidentally seasonally appropriate, too! Even though there’s murder and danger, these books are so cosy to me — I can’t wait to settle down with this one.
The Beauty’s Blade, by Feng Ren Zuo Shu. I haven’t read any baihe (f/f Chinese light novels, equivalent to the m/m danmei) yet, but I heard about this one and it sounds like a lot of fun. It’s due out in November, and I need to snag a copy right away so I can check whether my sister will be interested in it. (I mean, probably: badass ladies with swords who presumably end up kissing, it’s right up her street. But I do have to check for a happy ending.)
The Library of Ancient Wisdom, by Selena Wisnom. I’d actually sort-of started this at one point, but got busy and didn’t dig into it properly, but it looks like a fascinating history of Mesopotamia through the library of Ashurbanipal, and I enjoyed the chapter I read. It looks like a bit of a chonker, but I think it’ll be one I gladly sink into once I give it the time.
Pagans, by James Alistair Henry. I’ve technically started this as well, but it wasn’t the right moment, and now I want to get back to it. It’s a mystery set in an alternative universe where geopolitics has worked out very, very differently (e.g. no Norman invasion, Britain’s kind of a backwater, society is largely run by Anglo-Saxons with Celtcs being a heavily marginalised group, etc). Parts of it don’t seem to totally make sense, but I didn’t get that far into it, and I’m very curious how things work out, all the same.
You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian. It’s on my TBR for this month, but I haven’t got to it yet (given that I’ve been warned it deals with an amount of grief and loss, last week didn’t seem like the right time mentally). I really want to read it, though, so it’ll probably be one of the next books I pick up! I love Cat Sebastian’s romances in general, and I feel like she’s also always improving as a writer.
The Duke at Hazard, by KJ Charles. Another one that’s on my September TBR but hasn’t been read yet. This one’s definitely a priority — I don’t know why I’ve waited so long on it. I love pretty much all of KJ Charles’ work, so I expect to enjoy it.
The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club, by Christopher de Hamel. This is a bit of a random choice, but it’s been on my shelves for a while and I’d love to dig into it. I really enjoyed Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, and this one has in-page colour illustrations as well, so it should be fascinating. It’s a bit of a chonker, so I might not schedule it for the same month as the other chunky books I’m thinking about!
Folk Song in England, by Steve Roud. I like a lot of modern British folk, and the efforts of singers and groups like Jon Boden (and Spiers & Boden), Fay Hield, Eliza Carthy, Seth Lakeman and Bellowhead have given me quite the appreciation for traditional songs and their many variations. It’s another chunky book, so it’s a little intimidating, but I’m sure I can get to it!
The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, by Xue Shan Fei Hu. This sounds absolutely nuts as a concept, and I really want to dig in. I want to finish my reread of another isekai-type danmei, The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, first… but once I have, I really want to get to this one, especially as it isn’t super-long (four volumes, I think?).
Paladin’s Hope, by T. Kingfisher. I’ve been loving Kingfisher’s Saint of Steel books, and this is the next up! It looks quite a bit shorter than the last one, but hopefully it will do justice to Piper and Galen. Galen deserves some happiness now!

Yes, yes, I know — a very varied bunch. Very curious to see what other people are hoping to read soon!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted September 20, 2025 by Nicky in General / 28 Comments

Welp, I’m back home! And taking a couple of days off to turn this into a long weekend and get some chill time, because oooof.

Books acquired this week

This week featured a quick library trip to grab my hold, and a few impulsive/random choices!

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers was the hold, the others were random choices. Of the poetry, I know I like some of Simon Armitage’s work, but Andrew Motion’s has previously left me cold and I don’t think I’ve read anything by Helen Tookey before, except maaaaybe in an anthology. So we’ll see how I get on with those — I’ve already made a start!

I did also snag a book from Netgalley because I felt like reading a novella, I have auto-approval, and… dinosaurs.

Posts from this week

I kept up posting, mostly, though I skipped Top Ten Tuesday this week due to a combo of circumstances and a prompt that didn’t call to me. So it’s mostly reviews:

Fantasy manga: The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter manga, vol. 3, by Kazuki Irodori (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Classic play: R.U.R., by Karel Čapek (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Non-fiction: It’s The End of the World, by Adam Roberts (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Romance: Mr Collins in Love, by Lee Welch (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Short mysteries: Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Non-fiction: Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages, by Jack Hartnell (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

And I did post a What Are You Reading Wednesday post!

What I’m reading

I’ve been reading a lot again this week, especially with being mostly offline from Saturday through to late night on Tuesday! Here’s the usual sneak peek at what I’ve finished and plan to review on the blog — it doesn’t look quite as impressive as last week, but some of the books were quite long/slow.

I’m not sure what I’ll focus on over the weekend, yet. Maybe I’ll finally start on KJ Charles’ The Duke at Hazard, and there’s a good chance I’ll start reading another British Library Crime Classics collection (probably Blood on the Tracks)… but to be honest, I haven’t settled to anything yet!

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

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

WWW Wednesday

Posted September 17, 2025 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

Yesterday I finished up Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis and KJ Charles’ Copper Script. I enjoyed both, though I had a few embarrassment-squick moments with The Love Hypothesis, and thought that Copper Script ended maybe a bit abruptly.

Still, both of them made for fun reading on a long car drive (and in the case of Copper Script, when I didn’t feel like going to bed once I arrived home, heh).

What are you currently reading?

The only thing I’m very actively reading is a library book, Boria Sax’s City of Ravens. I’m — hm. A touch sceptical about the links between the ravens of the Tower and Bran the Blessed, I must admit. But I’m early in the book, and maybe it’ll get round to discussing more links and research rather than just “Bran was associated with ravens and some people say the location his head was buried was the Tower”. I’d need to see a link between the two in order to feel that the one almost-forgotten tradition influenced the other very new one.

Other than that, I actually focused on finishing a bunch of books over the weekend! I still have a couple that’ve been backburnered for a while, which I want to go back to, e.g. my ARC of Georgia Summers’ The Bookshop Below.

What will you read next?

Excellent question, who knows? I’ll probably focus on some of the books I have already on the go, mostly, though I’ll probably also read the British Library Crime Classic collection Blood on the Tracks soon, since it’s on my bingo card and, being a short story collection, good when I need something bitesize. Some of the books I have on the go — like Lucy Cooke’s Bitch, which is non-fiction about female animals — are quite dense, so that’d break things up nicely.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted September 13, 2025 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

As a head’s up, I’m away over the weekend, down in Wales for the interment of my grandparents’ ashes, and there’s no broadband connection at the house now. I will visit back and reply to comments as usual, but maybe not until Wednesday or so (it depends how long my phone’s data lasts me, and how much time I spend online). That doesn’t mean I’m not enthusiastic to talk books and see what you’ve been reading as usual!

Books acquired this week

I wasn’t expecting to have anything, but then I finished the last volume of Solo Leveling that I owned, and remembered I had a gift voucher… and also, my British Library Crime Classic subscription book arrived. So I ended up having some nice book post after all!

I dived on Solo Leveling right away, while waiting for everyone to be ready for the drive down to Wales. The story comes to a climax, and I was sooo eager to see what happens, and the books were the perfect length to finish up before we left… though I admit I hadn’t expected to have time to finish both of them.

I also grabbed a book from the library to read on the drive, since I’ve been curious about it a while:

I’ve read this already as well!

Posts from this week

A quick roundup of the reviews posted this week:

Non-fiction: 100 Dresses, by The Costume Institute (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Graphic novel: Fence: Rivals, by C.S. Pacat & Johanna the Mad (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy: Into the Riverlands, by Nghi Vo (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy romance: Gwen & Art Are Not In Love, by Lex Croucher (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Non-fiction: Rebel Bodies: A Guide to the Gender Health Gap Revolution, by Sarah Graham (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Non-fiction: The Postal Paths, by Alan Cleaver (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

What I’m reading

I’ve been reading a lot this week, so hold onto your hats — here’s the preview of the books I finished which I plan to review on the blog!

Over the weekend, it’s likely that I’ll read quite a lot because of the lack of broadband. I actually set up a mini-bingo card to keep me occupied, so I guess my next read (and very appropriate too) will be focusing on finishing Tir: The Story of the Welsh Landscape. After that, probably The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry… but we’ll see! As ever, I’ll follow my whims.

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

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

WWW Wednesday

Posted September 10, 2025 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was John S. Tregoning’s Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them. I didn’t really enjoy it; part of it is the fact that since I bought it, I’ve studied immunology (as part of my MSc), so the first part of the book was boring, leaving plenty of time for me to get annoyed by Tregoning’s sense of humour. The tone really, really grated; Tregoning thinks he’s hilarious, and it’s just cringe.

It might be better for a layperson, though of course, the humour wouldn’t improve.

What are you currently reading?

As ever, a few books at once, some of which I’m giving more attention than others. I’m most into Nine Times Nine by Anthony Boucher, at the moment, in the sense that I’m hoping to finish that today. The timing for reading it is maybe a bit stupid, because I read Boucher’s Rocket to the Morgue as we drove down to attend my grandmother’s funeral, and I’ve (totally without planning it) ended up reading this as I’m about to head to Wales again for the interment of my grandparents’ ashes. I can’t imagine I’m going to ever feel like reading Boucher’s work again at this rate, because there’s something about his style in this book that takes me very vividly back to reading Rocket to the Morgue. Oops.

That said, not a huge loss; I find it pleasant enough, but not something I’m wildly excited about.

I’m also reading Queer as Folklore, by Sacha Coward, which I’m finding interesting enough so far. Also The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry (David Musgrove & Michael John Lewis), which I’m enjoying, and Reignclowd Palace (Philippa Rice), which I need to give some more attention.

What will you be reading next?

I don’t know. I’d like to say I’ll read KJ Charles’ The Duke at Hazard, because a) I can’t believe I haven’t read it yet, and b) it’s the very centre of this month’s Litsy bingo card, but I don’t know. I’ve been weirdly resistant to starting it, even though I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy it. I might just start something I have few expectations of, like Sidney J. Shields’ The Honey Witch — or focus on the other books I’m technically currently reading that have slipped onto the back-burner.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Villains

Posted September 9, 2025 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “villains”, which I’m finding pretty tricky to fulfil… but let’s see what I can do!

Shen Qingqiu, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu). Well, okay, the original Shen Qingqiu is not that inventive as a villain… and to say we’re talking about Shen Yuan mostly removes his claim to be on this list. But I thought I’d be funny and give a nod to him for anyone else who knows the fandom. The real villain is Shen Yuan’s internalised homophobia and general obliviousness to Luo Binghe’s feelings, though, am I right?
White No-Face (Bai Wuxiang), from Heaven Official’s Blessing (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu). This guy is a genuine villain. No spoilers for his true identity, but he torments Xie Lian and orchestrates his fall from grace, and makes it so that he can’t die no matter what happens to him. Xie Lian suffers immensely just from that, but White No-Face also gets into his head and warps his reality, trying to damage his essential goodness. He’s a hell of a villain, even without getting into the spoilery stuff.
Anaander Mianaai, from Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie). Anaander is a really fascinating villain, divided against herself due to her many bodies, and somehow managing to hold it all in balance and keep secrets against herself. She’d be run of the mill as a mere tyrant, but her war against herself makes her fascinating.
Melisande Shahrizai de la Courcel, from Kushiel’s Dart (Jacqueline Carey). Melisande is a complicated figure, with her own motivations that from her point of view are perfectly reasonable. She’s a villain because we care about the characters she moves against, and she’s amoral on her way to her planned victory… but if she’d succeeded in her aims, history might’ve cast her as a hero.
Roland, from the Kate Daniels series (Ilona Andrews). This one’s a long story, much of it spoilery for anyone who hasn’t read the whole series. There’s never any doubt, though: Roland will crush anything that doesn’t go the way he plans.
Kossil, from The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula Le Guin). The Nameless Ones are formless, dark and terrifying, but they’re like forces of nature. Kossil is self-serving, cruel, and motivated by worldly power. Her evil is so mundane compared to the dark weight of the Nameless Ones, which… actually makes her more awful.
Governer David Tate, from Feed (Mira Grant). A right-wing conspiracy taking advantage of a zombie plague is all too realistic, so I couldn’t pass this one up. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course (further awfulness follows in the later books). But no spoilers…
The Company, from The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells). It looms large over Murderbot’s existence, so much so that Murderbot won’t even say the name of the Company and edits it out of everything it says and remembers. Capitalism’s everything in the Corporation Rim, and arguably the whole system is the villain here, but the Company is certainly a potent avatar of it.
Lancelot, from The Winter King (Bernard Cornwell). It’s rare for Lancelot to be cast as a villain — and admittedly he’s a very petty one — but this one’s memorable because it’s a very unusual choice to portray Lancelot as a small and cowardly run-of-the-mill villain, rather than some kind of tortured hero.
Regal Farseer, from Assassin’s Apprentice (Robin Hobb). Regal’s pretty much never likeable on the page, and his arc is pretty obvious from the outset, so in a way he’s a very obvious and unsubtle villain, and not exactly a favourite of mine. Still, he’s certainly memorable.

It took me a while, but I did it! I’m very curious what villains other people will name, though I spotted a lot of people going off-piste this week, so far…

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted September 6, 2025 by Nicky in General / 27 Comments

Woo, Saturday!

The upcoming week is going to be a bit weird for various reasons (with the interment of my grandparents’ ashes coming up next week, travel, etc), but I have lots of reading plans to keep me cheerful and occupied.

Books acquired this week

This week, I haven’t bought or been given anything new, but I did drop by the library, so I do have some interesting finds! First up, fiction/graphic novels:

And then a bunch of non-fiction! Something of an unusual mix, as ever — and that’s the way I like it.

Posts from this week

It was a quieter week on the blog this week, but let’s do a quick roundup of the reviews:

SF mystery: The Last Murder at the End of the World, by Stuart Turton (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Fantasy light novel: The Apothecary Diaries, vol 4, by Natsu Hyuuga (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
History: The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective, by Sara Lodge (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy manhwa: Solo Leveling, vol 4, by Dubu (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy romance: Sorcery & Small Magics, by Maiga Doocy (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
History: The Paper Chase: The Printer, The Spymaster & The Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers, by Joseph Hone (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

The only other post was my chatter for What Are You Reading Wednesday!

What I’m reading

I feel like I’ve done quite a lot of reading this week, but I haven’t yet counted it up, so let’s see. As usual, here’s the sneak peek of the books I’ve finished off this week (excluding any I don’t intend to review on the blog)…

So… yep, quite a lot of reading! This weekend I’m probably looking to dig into Uketsu’s Strange Houses, since it’s probably due back at the library. I’ll probably also read one of the library books from a couple of weeks ago, Nineteenth-Century Fashion in Detail. Other than that… who knows!

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

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup