Category: General

Book Blogger Hop: Creepiest Book That Isn’t Horror

Posted October 23, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

A banner for a "Book Blogger Hop", with a photo of a bunny wearing glasses and its paws on a book

It’s Friday, so it’s time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer. I’ve made my own image from a stock photo (credit: Anna Shvets) to avoid adding images created via generative AI toCover of The Owl Service by Alan Garner my blog. Feel free to use it too if you would like!

This week’s prompt is about creepy books:

What’s the creepiest book you’ve read that isn’t officially horror, but gave you chills?

Alan Garner’s The Owl Service immediately comes to mind. It’s a children’s book (allegedly) and marketed generally as fantasy, but it’s full of real menace. It plays with the Welsh story of Blodeuwedd, with the story replaying itself with an unwilling cast, playing with tensions between English and Welsh, between classes, etc.

The cover on the edition I had (included in this post) was kinda creepy too…

I think it was actually Garner’s Elidor that really freaked me out, but I’ve never reread that one. I reread The Owl Service as an adult and… yep, still powerful and creepy. And recommended!

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WWW Wednesday

Posted October 22, 2026 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I read was, uhhh… right, Delilah S. Dawson’s Bloom: slow-burn sapphic romance turns horror. The ending is genuinely horrific; it feels like a jump-scare out of nowhere after the dreamy atmosphere of the first half, though is definitely foreshadowed in a couple ways. I need to write my review of it; I had criticisms, but overall had fun.

Cover of Startup Hell by Caitlin RozakisWhat are you currently reading?

I’m partway through Caitlin Rozakis’ Startup Hell, but not very far into it, so it’s hard to say exactly what I think so far!

I’m also reading John Wiswell’s Wearing the Lion, which I think I mentioned last week… and honestly, I’m not far into that either, and I’m still not sure I like it. Might be a case of “not for me, DNF”.

Cover of Trail of Lightning by Rebecca RoanhorseWhat will you be reading next?

No idea, honestly. Maybe a reread of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning, on something of a whim and because it meets the criteria for a reading challenge (and the sequel meets a different prompt in the same challenge). I remember liking the two books, but some of the details have faded, so it might be nice to refresh.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Things That Make Up My Perfect Day

Posted October 20, 2026 by Nicky in General / 39 Comments

Today’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl is a little less bookish than some! This time we’re talking about “Things That Make Up My Perfect Day”, which is a fun prompt.

  1. Plenty of time to read! I’m sure variations on this will be common answers among this crowd, but it’s nonetheless true for me. If I can carve out at least an hour overall for reading, that’s ideal, though I haven’t been super good at meeting that recently.
  2. New books. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but I can’t help but enjoy having a good stack of new books to acquaint myself with!
  3. Time with my rabbits. I work in the same room with them which is nice — they get to snoopervise me, I get to watch their antics. And sometimes pick them up for a cuddle.
  4. A bubble bath with a book. I couldn’t do this in the summer, the weather was just way too warm and humid, but now we’re in the thick of autumn it’s a perfect way to unwind at the end of the day. The book part is a necessity, though; I like a long soak with a book to keep my brain busy, and no distractions from social media, text messages, etc.
  5. Wearing something cute/nerdy. My mood fluctuates, and I don’t always feel like leaning into femme… but I love my dinosaur and kitty dresses from Popsy, my nerdy t-shirts like my Scum Villain “OOC! OOC! OOC!” shirt, my “cultural awareness” petri dish shirt, etc.
  6. Gaming time. Which game I might be logging into fluctuates a bit — at the moment I’ve not been spending a lot of time in FFXIV, for example, but I have been chugging along with Dressmaker and some puzzle games.
  7. Crochet time. I only recently started being able to find time for crochet again, but it’s been a fairly constant companion in the last three months, which is nice.
  8. Cheese in dinner. I mean, I don’t have to have cheese, but I do love it. Chorizo works, too.
  9. Being in Wales. This isn’t likely in the very near future, but I prefer to be home in Wales. And who knows, maybe soon, if my parents move as planned.
  10. Getting a chance to go cycling. I wouldn’t want to do this every day, because it’s time-consuming to get kitted up and go (though less if I’m just riding for fun and don’t need to take my panniers) and right now I get pretty tired. But it’s so good to be cycling again after a year of being unable to thanks to my wrist injury!

I’m sure I could think up some other factors, but these sound like a pretty good time to me!

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Fantasy with Friends: Real Things

Posted October 19, 2026 by Nicky in General / 9 Comments

Fantasy With Friends: A Disccusion Meme hosted by Pages Unbound

Monday means Fantasy with Friends time! All the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about whether fantasy is about “real things”:

Some people argue that fantasy isn’t worth reading because it’s not about real things. What is your response?

Mostly, I think that if fantasy isn’t for you — if you can’t suspend disbelief, or you argue too much with basic premises, or can’t keep the worldbuilding straight, or whatever it is — then… don’t read it, that’s no skin off my nose!

But I do think fantasy is still about real things. It’s written by people, and inevitably it’s about people, even if those people have pointy ears or fangs or transform into werewolves or have implausible monarchies or whatever it is. I think there are probably some exceptions, because there always are, but we’re a pretty self-centred species and I think it’s often about us, really, and the themes and plotlines are generally things of interest to humans — just wrapped up in a fantasy setting.

And like I said, I can get if that’s not your jam, absolutely, but I don’t think it’s factually correct to say that “fantasy isn’t about real things”. On a superficial level, sure, it’s about potions, spells, fantastical beasts, transformations, fairies, etc, etc. But that’s just the way we dress it up; it isn’t just about that. Even the simplest fantasies aimed at kids get at real human things that kids are interested in!

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Discussion Post: Why Book Bloggers Should Avoid Substack

Posted October 18, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Spoiler: it’s the Nazis.

This has come up surprisingly often lately on several blogs I’ve been casually reading or linking up with or visiting via weekly linkups, leading to me actually deciding to add a couple of points to my commenting policy banning promotion of Nazism on my blog (including promotion of Substack). It seems that there’s still a fair few people in the world who don’t realise that Substack provides Nazis with a platform, makes money from Nazis and promotes Nazis. At least, I hope that’s what it is, and that people aren’t choosing Substack knowing that!

I’m not going to browbeat people for not knowing about Substack’s policies here; the temptation is there, but though it feels like the news has been out there a long time, whether you’ll come across it depends on the circles you run in, how proactive you are in looking up this kind of thing, and also on general life stuff. If something horrifying came up about a service I use, it’s quite possible I wouldn’t have noticed during my busy last few weeks… or even in general, given sometimes I just prefer to stick my head in the sand and read books instead.

But I do want to be clear: if you know about Substack’s Nazi problem and you keep on using Substack, and giving them your content to help legitimise their Nazi content, then other people might well wonder about what other compromises you’re willing to make. It’s one thing to know that a site has a far-right presence when promoting Nazism is at least against its Terms of Service, even if that ToS is difficult and time-consuming for the website to enforce. I’ve been part of a content moderation team, and user content is an exhausting firehose and you can never be sure something hateful hasn’t slipped the net and piled up in some corner.

But it’s quite another thing to know that the service in question proudly and deliberately hosts this content. That it has actively sent out a push notification to random users with a Nazi swastika and text inciting hatred against Jewish people (they later claimed this was a mistake, but that doesn’t fix the underlying problem that they host this content on purpose, leading to the possibility of such errors). That the service makes money off antisemitic content, and allows Nazis to earn money from posting their views on Substack. That they’re okay with hosting it on their servers and paying Nazis money for the privilege, because it brings them clicks and gets them money, even as it connects Nazis to other Nazis, gives Nazis money to fund their movements, and radicalises more people to become Nazis.

If you really think this is about Substack being all for free speech, I’ve got a bridge or two to sell you. Three, if you’re game.

And of course it’s not just Nazis: it’s other forms of bigotry as well. Of course it is: it all goes hand-in-hand. And it’s all allowed on Substack.

So, gently and with love: I believe firmly that book blogging does not belong on a platform where people will run into it side-by-side with posts calling for genocide, where that is permitted and promoted by the management. I’m aware that lots of people make different choices, and prefer to close their eyes to this truth.

But now I’ve said it, and you know; people who’ve read this post know. I’ll leave it to your imagination what I think people should do about it.

Here are some alternatives to Substack.

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 17, 2026 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

After a busy week last week with lots of library books and lots of reading, this week’s been a bit quieter.

Funny thing: I had no idea, but WordPress informs me that today is my blog’s 13th birthday!

Books acquired this week

This month’s British Library Crime Classic was their Christmas release, which is how they usually do things, and that dropped onto my doormat this week:

Cover of Call A Hearse by Jonathan Stagge

That’s it, after the recent excesses, hahaha. I haven’t been back to the library this week, since I haven’t done a lot of reading in that time.

Posts from this week

Time for the usual roundup! Reviews first, and as ever, they’re not books I read this week but reviews written sometimes quite a while ago, since I try to keep things varied and plan in advance.

And as usual, I really mean it when I say 3/5 stars means I liked a book! I know other people have other rating systems, but I stick with the old Goodreads definitions that were around over twenty years ago now.

Here are the other posts from this week:

And that’s it for the week! I hope to get back to posting more reviews again, since work should be quieting down a bit for now (though just in time for the Christmas/New Year rush, ack).

What I’m reading

As ever, I’ll start with the books I’ve been reading in the last week! Mostly last weekend — I didn’t get as much reading time as I’d have liked during the workweek, this time round. As I mentioned last week, I want to be clear: these are just the books I’ve finished this week, and I’m not saying I recommend them at this time. You’ll have to watch out for my reviews for that! Please don’t read them because I mentioned them and then blame me when you don’t like a book that I’m planning to give one star… 😉

Cover of The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi Cover of Wicker by Ursula Wills Cover of The Disastrous Début of Agatha Tremain by Stephanie Burgis Cover of Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo Cover of The Summer Hikaru Died vol 2 by Mokumokuren

Cover of Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison Cover of The Summer Hikaru Died vol 3 by Mokumokuren Cover of Why I Adopted My Husband by Yuta Yagi Cover of The Demon Overlord's Retirement Plan by M.H. Foster

For this weekend, I’m a chunk of the way into Rachel Harrison’s Black Sheep and Francis Vivian’s Dead Opposite the Church, so those are my priority to finish. I’d like to read more of The Summer Hikaru Died as well… but otherwise, I’m not sure. I’ll probably go by whim!

Hope everyone else has a great weekend.

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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Book Blogger Hop: Bookish Escape Room

Posted October 16, 2026 by Nicky in General / 5 Comments

A banner for a "Book Blogger Hop", with a photo of a bunny wearing glasses and its paws on a book

It’s Friday, so it’s time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer. I’ve made my own image from a stock photo (credit: Anna Shvets) to avoid adding images created via generative AI to my blog. Feel free to use it too if you would like!

This week’s prompt is about designing a bookish escape room:

If you designed a book-themed escape room, what puzzles would be part of it?

I have no idea about anything specific, but I’d steer away from using details of specific books in order to appeal to a range of bookworms, using mostly general knowledge. There might be some puns on the names of authors and titles of books, for example, but they’d be guessable by people with a general knowledge of literature.

I imagine there could be something with organising books, possibly with a clue to how they should be organised (I think alphabetical by author is usually the sensible way, but I know other bookworms prefer to make rainbows, sort by book title, or sort by height)… perhaps to open a secret panel or something like that.

If I were to design something specific, it’d be an escape room based on some kind of vintage mystery, and I’d definitely put some decipherment in — if possible, based on a Playfair cypher, as a reference to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Have His Carcase. I don’t think those need to be too difficult, if you left some way to decipher the key word in the room, and I know I’ve written notes to my wife in Playfair cypher once or twice, and they did get deciphered!

I’m not really very good at coming up with stuff like this, though, so generally I’ll leave it to the enthusiasts!

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WWW Wednesday

Posted October 14, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing I finished was Yuta Yagi’s Why I Adopted My Husband, which is about the practicalities of getting around the fact that gay marriage isn’t legal in Japan. I don’t think it’s super useful for most people outside of Japan, honestly, because the issue (and solution) is pretty specific to Japan.

Still, if you’re researching and if you want to read some commentary about what it’s like to be a gay couple in Japan, this could work.

Cover of The Demon Overlord's Retirement Plan by M.H. FosterWhat are you currently reading?

I have three books on the go that I started more or less at the same time, because I was having difficulty settling down. The first was John Wiswell’s Wearing the Lion and… I don’t know. I don’t disagree with Hera that Zeus is a dipshit, but the narration is grating on me in general. It’s hard to say exactly why, because I don’t think the Greek myths have to be treated with dignity or anything. Maybe it’s just a tone I don’t get on with in general.

I’ve also started Rachel Harrison’s Black Sheep, which has been cited by several people I know lately as their favourite of her books. I’m not far enough into it to judge, really, but I was relieved to have a character with a decidedly different (less mopey) feel to Willa in Kiss Slay Replay or Annie in Cackle. Something about those two characters was a little similar, but Vesper does feel a bit different.

Aaaand I’m also digging into The Demon Overlord’s Retirement Plan, which is fun so far. I’m curious where it’ll go, because I’ve heard comparatively little about the plot.

What will you be reading next?

Uhhh, let’s focus on my current reads first, mostly! Don’t tempt me to pick up more, ahaha. But I would like to read more of The Summer Hikaru Died; I’ve read three volumes, and I definitely want to read more.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Autumnal Colours

Posted October 13, 2026 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

Just a couple of weeks ago I already did a variation on this theme, and swore I’d try to do ten more totally different ones for this week. So let’s see what I can do!

Cover of Startup Hell by Caitlin Rozakis Cover of The Double Dorothy by Olivia Waite Cover of Golden Terrace vol 1 by Cang Wu Bin Bai Cover of City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons Cover of The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black

Cover of Ramesses the Great by Toby Wilkinson Cover of Butter by Asako Yuzuki Cover of Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe Cover of I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf, by Grant Snider

Plenty of reds, yellow and oranges there! I think I win (at my self-imposed game, haha).

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted October 10, 2026 by Nicky in General / 36 Comments

Hurrah, it’s the weekend again! And I have no plans (that’s a good thing).

Books acquired this week

I finally finally ended up going out for a ride on my bike this week, which means I made it to the library for the first time in a while! So here’s what I picked up on that adventure.

Cover of X Marks the Spot: The Story of Archaeology in Eight Extraordinary Discoveries by Michael Scott Cover of The Pen: A Human History by Simon Garfield Cover of The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann

Cover of The Remedies by Katharine Towers Cover of The Art of Falling by Kim Moore Cover of The Blind Road-Maker by Ian Duhig

I picked up The Beheading Game because someone tantalised me by saying they felt there are links to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in it, so I’m curious about that, despite it not being totally my thing… and I picked up a bunch of poetry collections almost at random because they were on a display, I didn’t know any of the poets, and I do like to explore poetry lately.

I did also get a book in the mail for review from Orbit/Hachette, too!

Cover of As We Fall Through Time by Claire North

I actually got another one as well, but I’ve put it aside until I can get the first book in the series, as I hadn’t realised it was a sequel when I requested it (the email was not super clear, or I was daft, I don’t know which).

And finally, my rabbits (helped by my wife, of course, who definitely wasn’t the actual source) bought me two books on Kobo, and I accumulated enough Kobo Super Points to get myself a third:

Cover of A Scholar's Guide to Demonology & Other Dark Arts by Genevieve Cogman Cover of The Demon Overlord's Retirement Plan by M.H. Foster Cover of The Haunted Librarian by Auralee Wallace

So that’s quite a lot of new books on my plate this week. Oh nooo, etc.

Posts from this week

As ever, let’s do a bit of a roundup. Since it’s a busy time, I haven’t managed to post a review every day — the review posts are all ready to go, since I write reviews as soon as I finish a book generally, but I kept forgetting to come back and send a review post out as well on days I had other features. Still, there’s been a post every day, so there’s plenty to catch up with!

First up, the reviews:

As ever, please do take my rating definitions literally! If it says I liked it, I liked it, even if you don’t use 3/5 stars that way. And these aren’t books I’ve read this week — those are discussed in the next section below!

Here are the non-review posts:

What I’m reading

As a quick note, it’s come up a few times that people assume me posting books I intend to review here constitutes a recommendation, so just to clarify: nope! I didn’t enjoy all of the books below, and at least one was a one-star read. I review everything I read, regardless of whether I liked it. If you see me post a book in the ‘What I’m reading’ section then try it yourself and don’t like it, that is not my problem. Even if the book is racist/misogynist/transphobic/etc, I don’t put a warning/disclaimer on this bit because I’m purely showing people what I’ve been reading; you’ll have to wait for my review (or ask me!) if you’re really keen to know my actual thoughts. Yelling at me about it or calling me out on your blog isn’t going to help anything!

Anyway! It’s been a good week for reading, thanks mostly to the month-long readathon I’ve been taking part in on Litsy! It’s been encouraging me to read some novellas and shorter books, and honestly that’s been nice, since sometimes it means taking a chance on something new to me. Here’s a sneak peek at the books I’ll be posting reviews for sometime in the foreseeable future…

Cover of Heaven Official's Blessing manhua vol 2 by STARember Cover of Bad Dolls by Rachel Harrison Cover of A Marriage of Undead Inconvenience by Stephanie Burgis Cover of Hyacinth by Elle Porter

Cover of The Library after Dark by Ande Pliego Cover of A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence by Stephanie Burgis Cover of A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck Cover of Dirt-Stained Hands, Thorn-Pierced Skin by Tabitha O'Connell

Cover of This Vampire Won't Give Up! vol 1 by Madoka Kitaji Cover of More to Love by Georgina Kiersten Cover of The Summer Hikaru Died vol 1 by Mo

As for this weekend’s reading, I want to focus on finishing Rachel Harrison’s Kiss Slay Replay and dig deeper into my actual October TBR, but I’m also planning to read some poetry and manga for palate-cleansing purposes (inasfar as trying different horror manga is very palate-cleansing, I suppose), and more of The Summer Hikaru Died because it’s really good so far.

In the end, as ever, it’ll be whatever my whim drives me to, though!

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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