Category: General

Top Ten Tuesday: Mainstream Authors

Posted November 14, 2023 by Nicky in General / 42 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is one I’m not totally sure how to answer, because I don’t really know what counts as “mainstream” for these purposes, and I have pretty eclectic taste. Let’s have a shot: the theme is “Mainstream Popular Authors that I Still Have Not Read”.

  1. George R.R. Martin. Okay, he’s a fantasy writer, but pretty much a household name by now, right? Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by him — and I definitely haven’t read the Game of Thrones series.
  2. James Patterson. I do have one of his books on my to-read list because it involves postcards (and I review books about postcards for Postcrossing’s blog), but I haven’t read any yet.
  3. Zadie Smith. I think I audited a course that had one of her books on the list, back in university, but I wasn’t actually sitting the course so I didn’t do all the reading.
  4. Elena Ferrante. I try most stuff, but her books don’t really appeal to me, so I doubt I’ll give them a shot any time soon.
  5. Hilary Mantel. I’ve got a couple of her books to read, but I’ve not touched them yet. Oops?
  6. Jonathan Franzen. Something about his work just super does not appeal.
  7. Michael Chabon. I own a couple of his books, I’ve even intended to read them very strongly at times… but I’ve never actually got round to it.
  8. Sally Rooney. I don’t actually know much about her books? They’re not squarely in my wheelhouse, or I’d know more about them from others at the very least, but it’s not like I’ve made a firm decision not to try them. Rather, what I’ve seen/heard is fairly limited, and I’ve made no decision, but nothing’s drawn me in either.
  9. Amy Tan. I have a copy of The Joy Luck Club somewhere, or I used to, but I never touched it. Oops.
  10. Steig Larsson. His books never really called to me from all I heard about them, though they were such a thing for a while that I had my eye on them.

Do I have surprising gaps here? Is there something you’re curious about whether I’ve read it or not?

Just… don’t try to argue with me whether these are mainstream or not. I just found a list or two of mainstream authors and cherry-picked from that!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Headlines

Posted November 7, 2023 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

It’s been a while since I participated in Top Ten Tuesday, but I’ve been kind of a hermit for a bit and I’d love to get back in touch with the wider blog-o-sphere, so let’s give this a go! This week’s list theme is “titles that could be headlines”. Hmmm…

Well, first up, a lot of mystery novels are perfect for this task. I’ll stick to only a few of those, and see if I can find some other neat ones as well, but to get us started…

  1. Requiem for a Mezzo, by Carola Dunn. One of the early Daisy Dalrymple novels. I could actually use the titles of this series for quite a few answers — Murder on the Flying Scotsman, Fall of a PhilandererDeath at Wentwater Court, anyone?
  2. Murder in the Dark, by Kerry Greenwood. I do love the Phryne Fisher series, but I think I’ve only ever read this one once. I should carry on with my reread of this series!
  3. Post After Post-Mortem, by E.C.R. Lorac. You can just picture a headline with that kind of snappy alliteration and mystery-causing, right? Also, this is a really good book, though personally I found it a bit harrowing due to the themes.
  4. A Very English Murder, by Verity Bright. I haven’t read this one, but I can still picture it on the front page of some newspaper or other.
  5. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. I can see a particular sort of “respectable” newspaper choosing something kind of… restrained to refer to a murder.

Cover of Requiem for a Mezzo by Carola Dunn Cover of Murder in the Dark by Kerry Greenwood Cover of Post after Post-Mortem by E.C.R. Lorac Cover of A Very English Murder by Verity Bright Cover of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers

Now let’s see if we can get a bit more adventurous and grub up some other headlines…

  1. Black Ops and Beaver Bombing, by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall. It sounds kinda weird, definitely like one of those headlines they use to pique your interest. As it happens, it’s about British wildlife. I haven’t read it, so I can’t honestly answer you about what the beaver bombing is about.
  2. Unmasked by the Marquess, by Cat Sebastian. Okay, this probably isn’t a modern headline… but nobody specified that, right? And the book is fun, too.
  3. How Long Till Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin. A pertinent question, after all.
  4. Europe at Midnight, by Dave Hutchinson. I haven’t read this one yet, but I can envision this being the big blocky headline of the Daily Mail or whatever.
  5. The Dos and Donuts of Love, by Adiba Jaigirdar. What headline can resist a pun? Cute book, too.

Cover of Black Ops & Beaver Bombing by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall Cover of Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian Cover of How Long Till Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin Cover of Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson Cover of The Dos and Donuts of Love by Abida Jaigirdar

There, whew, I did it.

Have any of the titles piqued your interest? I’ve reviewed a bunch of these, so let me know if you’re interested in my take and I’ll grub up the links!

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…And we’re back!

Posted October 20, 2023 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Did you miss me?!

Yep, unfortunately enough this blog has been down for almost a month, due to hosting problems. Many many (many many) thanks to Adam Wolf for taking over the hosting, making everything work, and having infinite patience with the fact that I’ve never really learned to manage my WordPress installation on my own. (And many thanks to my old host, of course, for taking me on for so long!)

We should be back in business right now, but some things might not quite work perfectly (like for now I won’t get notifications for your comments in my email). I have an enormous backlog of reviews, so I’m going to start putting those up at a sensible rate of one a day, and be pretty selective about which ones I choose to share.

Hope everyone’s doing great!

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Happy New Year!

Posted January 1, 2023 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Greetings, everyone!

I know, it’s been a long time since I showed my face around here, and I’m sorry. Everything got a bit too much, reading including. But I have a bunch of resolutions for the year ahead, and one is doing better by my blog and trying to reconnect with you all.

I don’t think I’ll be posting every review I write (some of them are brief; I’ve given myself permission to do that going forward) but I hope to post a selection of reviews where I have some (hopefully interesting) thoughts to share and books I wanna big up.

Hope to hear from you all, and spend some time visiting you all too!

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Wyrd and Wonder 2022

Posted May 1, 2022 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Wyrd & Wonder
Image credit: tree wolf image by chic2view on 123RF.com

Well, here we are again!

I know I’ve been missing from the blog for a while, due to some downtime caused by my host, and burnout on my part. I’m hoping I’m back, with a backlog of reviews to post, and the Wyrd & Wonder event to join in… especially now that I have full weekends off work, and a bit more time for myself. (Same number of hours, actually, but it still feels somehow like more time to myself.)

What will I be reading? Well, I don’t know. As usual, it’ll be “as my whimsy takes me”, but I’m planning on joining in the Fionavar Tapestry reread, and I have a few fantasy books on my BookSpinBingo card for May. I think there are some unposted fantasy reviews in my backlog, so I’ll queue those up to post soon, too.

But otherwise, I’m just here to hang out, and if I read plenty along the way — well, good.

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WWW Wednesday

Posted January 20, 2022 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

And here we are again, it’s Wednesday!

Cover of The Grey King by Susan CooperWhat are you currently reading?

I’ve just finished the only non-fiction book I had on the go, so now it’s The Councillor (E.J. Beaton), my reread of The Grey King (Susan Cooper), and The Absolute Book (Elizabeth Knox). I’ve been meaning to read the latter for quite a while now. It starts off feeling like a thriller, or maybe like Labyrinth (Kate Mosse), which it namechecks… but then it takes a left turn into fairyland, which feels like a significant shift in tone. I’m not sure yet what I think.

What have you recently finished reading?

Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century (Serena Dyer), which feels quite academic — it’s talking to an audience that’s very comfortable with phrases like “while the affective resonance of the wedding doll is explicit”, which just reminds me of my English literature days and how really simple points can be obfuscated behind fancy word choices. Just… say what you mean. You mean it’s obvious that the wedding doll refers to an emotional event.

What will you be reading next?

Don’t know! Maybe I’ll take a look at what I’d have to read to get a second bingo line in the Litsy #BookSpinBingo challenge, or maybe I’ll reread Emily Tesh’s novellas, since my wife’s going to read them soon and I could use some bite-size reading.

How about you?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted January 12, 2022 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Apparently it’s Wednesday again already? Rude. But here we go!

What are you currently reading?

Non-fiction: I’m still reading Chris Gosden’s The History of Magic, which I continue to have the same caveats and concerns about as before. “Ritual purposes” are doing a lot of work with just about every kind of archaeological find.

Fiction: I’m now reading E.J. Beaton’s The Councillor, and finding it very absorbing. People mentioned it being slow, so I was prepared for that, but it doesn’t feel unduly so to me. I found some of the phrasing awkward at first, the substitutions telling us we’re in a fantasy world felt a biiit too prevalent, but I’m finding that now I’m used to it, it all works. I can just sink in for pages and pages and not notice how time is passing.

Cover of Strange Beasts of China by Yan GeWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was Strange Beasts of China, by Yan Ge, which didn’t quite work for me — partly because it wasn’t what I expected, and partly because I had problems with what was explained and what wasn’t. Probably that’s partly my fault for being slow on the update, but I felt like I needed to make diagrams to understand bits of it…

I also just finished a reread of Susan Cooper’s Greenwitch, which I always like because it gives some space for Jane Drew to shine. Also the gorgeous descriptions in the chapter where Will and Merriman visit Tethys.

What will you be reading next?

I don’t really know for sure, but for #BookSpinBingo on Litsy I know I need to pick up The Absolute Book (Elizabeth Knox) and Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing (Jacob Goldstein)! So they’ll be my next fiction and non-fiction reads respectively, most likely.

What about you, dear reader?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted January 5, 2022 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I did this… but I missed it, I was just too tired out by life to pop in and say hi. So, how’s the reading going? Here’re my answers:

The Dark is Rising by Susan CooperWhat are you currently reading?

Fiction: a reread of The Dark is Rising, which just missed being perfectly seasonal, and which I’m almost done with, and Eliot Schrefer’s The Darkness Outside Us. The latter’s a little predictable, but I’m curious exactly how they’ll work it all out, and also about the romance.

Non-fiction: I’m reading Chris Gosden’s A History of Magic, but I’m constantly full of objections about the assumptions made about things we can’t possibly know. Like, people don’t need to be exploring a deep spiritual bond with animals to draw them: I do not have a deep spiritual bond with cats. I don’t even particularly like cats, I just have a particular stylised cat doodle I like to do and then label “Jorts”. And people don’t need to be trying to borrow the magic of animals to tattoo said animal onto their skin: few people are actually trying to do a magical spell when they tattoo Belle from Beauty and the Beast on their arm (though if it works to summon that library, I’ll do it). I find the descriptions of the archaeology fascinating, though.

What have you recently finished reading?

Nothing yet in 2022! But I did read quite a bit between Christmas and the New Year, including Murder After Christmas by Rupert Lattimer. It went on slightly too long and tried too hard to be quirky, but it was fun in its way.

Cover of Strange Beasts of China by Yan GeWhat will you read next?

I don’t know. Possibly Serena Dyer’s Material Lives, which is about (as per the subtitle) “Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century”, which I’m quite curious about. Also, I should read Yan Ge’s Strange Beasts of China, since it’s a book club read.

How about you?

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SciFiMonth 2021

Posted October 24, 2021 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

SciFiMonth 2021 (1-30 November): Words full of hope and threat, like the stars

ARTWORK by Liu Zishan from 123RF.com
QUOTE from Babylon’s Ashes by James S A Corey

Yep, it’s soon going to be SciFiMonth!

I’ve been doing crap at making time for reading, lately, and I don’t know if I’ll have time once November gets started — honestly, the Magic 8 ball of precedent tells me that signs point to no. But! I would like to participate a little, so here’s hoping I can maybe do some rereading of old favourites and novellas.

My main plan is to reread the Murderbot books by Martha Wells, and then read the latest, which is new to me. If I get that done, I’ll be happy.

Joining the crew?

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WWW Wednesday

Posted August 26, 2021 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Cover of Magic Bleeds by Ilona AndrewsWhat are you currently reading?

I’ve gone back to my usual habits and I’m reading a couple of books at once: Pen Vogler’s Scoff, for a start, which is slower than I’d maybe expected. It’s all about food and class in Britain, and ye gods, I’d thought my family were snobs but my eyes are getting opened. Then there’s my reread of The Fellowship of the Ring, which feels very slow right now since I only just cleared the Council of Elrond.

Finally, I’m rereading the Kate Daniels series, and I’m now embarked upon book four, Magic Bleeds. I love how Kate and Curran are total idiots and need to communicate properly, yet it doesn’t frustrate me because it doesn’t feel contrived — they’re just that stupid, and carry such a boatload of issues each, that it makes sense things won’t just work between them.

Cover of The Jasmine Throne by Tasha SuriWhat have you recently finished reading?

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri! I really need to sit down and write my review; I’m still sort of digesting it, I think. It felt so chunky and daunting, on the shelf, but it melted away when I sat down for my focused reading sessions each day. Very enjoyable, even though I tooootally called the big secret about Rao’s name.

Cover of Elatsoe by Darcie Little BadgerWhat will you be reading next?

Ooof, no idea. I recently reread The Goblin Emperor so I could start The Witness for the Dead while the details of the world were clear in my mind, so maybe that. Or Elatsoe, which is my next book club read. Or maybe one of the books I got for my birthday — The Chianti Flask looks like a good palate-cleanser in the way most of the British Library Crime Classics are.

How about you?

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