Category: General

Book Blogger Hop: Rereads

Posted August 14, 2026 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

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 whether you reread:

Is there a book you keep coming back to, reading it more than once?

And ohhhh yep! There’s a lot: I semi-recently talked about some of them in short in a Top Ten Tuesday post.

I’d say each era of my life has had one book I came back to again and again, more than any others. As a kid, it was C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In my teens, it was definitely Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. My late teens/early twenties saw me rereading Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising (the whole sequence, really) over and over, and sharing it with my wife.

After that, it gets a bit blurrier, since I don’t have as much distance. I know that by the time I got married (in 2016, aged just barely still 26) it was definitely Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, and I’d say that’s still in pretty frequent rotation! But I also started reading and rereading Dorothy L. Sayers’ mysteries, and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice…

As you see, I’ve always been a big rereader, and of far more than just those books, though they’re some of the most special to me! I feel like each time I come back to a book, I read it a little differently; I’ve changed, and so it speaks to different parts of me. The best books offer more every time.

Tags: Book Blogger Hop, books, discussion

WWW Wednesday

Posted August 12, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing I actually finished was volume three of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which I loooved. The vibe reminds me of… well, for other danmei readers, if Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge got together in The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, and that made Liu Qingge warm up and show unexpected amounts of happiness (eventually). It takes Huo Wujiu time, but in this volume he’s fully in love with Jiang Suizhou, and happy just to be around him, it’s adorable. The plot has been fairly satisfying so far, too.

I really need volume four and I hate that I’m now waiting until November.

What are you currently reading?

I’m most actively working on Elinor Cleghorn’s A Woman’s Work, which is basically discussing how motherhood has been constructed and viewed over time. It makes for sometimes uncomfortable reading, since that’s not always been positive by any means, and it definitely fits thematically with her other book, Unwell Women — you can see how one led her towards writing the other.

I’m also partway through Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress, which I’m enjoying more than I expected. I was warned that the topic was really heavy and that it’d be a difficult read, but it’s surprisingly quick-moving for me, even though it is heavy.

I did also start on Becky Chambers’ As You Wake, Break the Shell, but haven’t read enough to really have an opinion yet.

What will you be reading next?

I’ll be continuing my quest to read some of my bought-in-2026 books to “make room” for birthday books (since I cap the number of books I can have bought this year and not started at 20). That means reading my two newest manga, vol 2 of My Younger Knight Takes Care of Me in Another World (which is an absolute ripoff of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, but not unfun) and vol 3 of Rinteku’s Love in the Palm of His Hand, and starting my new British Library Crime Classic, Shelley Smith’s The Party at No. 5.

Ideally I’ll start more than that, but we’ll see how it goes.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: On This Day…

Posted August 11, 2026 by Nicky in General / 29 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “Books I Was Reading On This Day Over the Last Ten Years”. I stopped using Goodreads and didn’t have a replacement for a couple of years in the middle, so this will be easier to do with the books I was reviewing on this day (or as near as possible) in previous years, so I’m going to go with that!

So without further ado…

11th August 2016: Brother Jacob, by George Eliot (1/5 stars). No memory of this one, really, but I don’t think I ever did read any more George Eliot!
11th August 2017: Incognito, by David Eagleman (3/5 stars). I sort of remember the discussion of what to do about criminal behaviour, but not enough to have an opinion now
11th August 2018: Witchmark, by C.L. Polk (3/5 stars). I wasn’t an enormous fan of this at first, just kind of liked it, but IIRC I liked it more on a reread, and liked the second book!
11th August 2019: The Pandemic Century, by Mark Honigsbaum (3/5 stars). Hmm! I do actually remember this one, and that I was kind of irked that it wanted to have things both ways: you shouldn’t panic about a pandemic but you should contain it effectively. I’d have recently graduated from my BSc, so I was in a good position to critique the book (having studied infectious diseases for part of it and chosen that for my dissertation topic). I’m kinda curious if there’s been a version updated to discuss SARS-CoV-2.
10th August 2020: The Green Mill Murder, by Kerry Greenwood (4/5 stars). This was from a point where I was still writing fresh reviews for every reread of a book. It’s one that always sticks in my mind from this series, though I can never remember the way the two halves fit together. (The 11th that year was a Tuesday, so my post on that day was a Top Ten Tuesday post, Books My Bookclub Have Read!)
11th August 2021: Magic Strikes, by Ilona Andrews (4/5 stars). Another reread review! I do love the Kate Daniels series still, and this book is a fun one since it features the arena.
1st July 2022: The Grief of Stones, by Katherine Addison (4/5 stars). I don’t understand why there are no posts between this and the end of 2022; I have no memory of such a massive blog hiatus. But my next post seems to be a post at the start of 2023, where I apologise for a long absence… so I guess it must be so. Anyway, I loved The Grief of Stones, and have reread it a couple of times since. Shame I didn’t like the third book in the series much.
11th August 2023: The Bookshop and the Barbarian, by Morgan Stang (1/5 stars). I definitely remember this one! I was infuriated by it.
11th August 2024: A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, by KJ Charles (4/5 stars). I really enjoyed this one; it’s not my favourite of Charles’ work, but I had a lot of fun, as usual.
11th August 2025: Paladin’s Grace, by T. Kingfisher (4/5 stars). My goodness, this was over a year ago already? I read this one while we were in the process of moving and I was staying with my parents, and I frankly devoured it.

As a reminder, ten years is a long time! Who knows what I’d think of these books now.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Fantasy with Friends: Fantasy Plants

Posted August 10, 2026 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

Happy Monday, once more! And that means it’s time for Fantasy with Friends: all the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about fantastical plants:

What fantasy plants have stuck in your imagination? A plant with magical properties or a plant a character uses in a potion? What memorable ways does nature feature in fantasy?

My immediate answer is Caz and Meep, from Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop! I loved the idea of a sentient spider plant right from the start, and honestly for most of the story I was just wanting more of Caz, because it’s such a cool idea. I wasn’t as big a fan of The Spellshop in general as some are, but that part stuck with me!

Casting back a bit further, the other thing that weirdly popped into my head is the toffee tree in The Magician’s Nephew — the way it grew from Polly and Diggory’s remaining toffees, with magic all new in the land and so much potential that even a lamp post could grow… We don’t see the toffee plant in the books later in the chronology, and I always wondered what C.S. Lewis thought happened to it. If it were a story by Tolkien, I’d feel sure he knew (even if it never fitted into a story he actually got chance to tell), but less so with Lewis. Maybe he never thought about it again!

I’ve no real green thumb of my own, so I must admit that not a lot else sticks out in my memory! I’ll have to see what everyone else talks about to jog my memory on what I inevitably missed…

Tags: books, discussion, Fantasy with Friends, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted August 8, 2026 by Nicky in General / 23 Comments

Happy weekend! I had a bit of a bleh week, so I’m determined to fill the weekend with joy, books, and video games.

Books acquired this week

First up, and somewhat inevitably, I really, really needed book three after finishing book two, so I snagged the next volume of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine…

I’ve already plunged in, of course! I’m going to be so sad, having to wait until November for volume four… but I hear in this volume some of the slow burn pays off.

I did also borrow two poetry collections from the National Poetry Library, so here those are:

And that’s it for this week, since I’m still very much in “reading the backlog” mode to try to make space for birthday books. (Not so much physical space, there’s still plenty, but given I limit the number of books I can buy in the current year without starting them.)

Posts from this week

As ever, let’s do a bit of a roundup of my posts from the week. It’s been another busy one!

First, the book reviews:

Historical mystery: A Case of Fear and Favour, by Sally Smith (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Essays: Winter Hours, by Mary Oliver (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
Manga: Cat + Gamer, vol 2, by Wataru Nadatani (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Fantasy novella: A Palace Near the Wind, by Ai Jiang (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Fantasy romance: Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 1, by Feng Yu Nie (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Classic mystery: The Magic-Lantern Murders, by Carter Dickson (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)

As ever, three stars isn’t a bad rating, and I didn’t read these books this week. I wrote the reviews weeks/months ago when I read the books, but spread out when I post them to give a variety. If you want to check out what I’ve been reading this week, it’s the next section below!

And non-review posts:

What I’m reading

It’s been a quieter week reading-wise than I’d expected/intended, given the bleh feeling… but oh well! I was also working on ongoing reads of some slow-paced non-fiction, so it’s not as “bad” as it looks, even though three of these are very short. Here are the books I’ve finished this week:

As for this weekend, as usual I have many plans involving reading some manga, finishing volume three of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, finishing the non-fiction I’m reading, etc. Game-wise, I’m planning to finish Whisper of the House, which is a cute game combining Unpacking-style organisation and some exploration… and of course, play some Final Fantasy XIV.

But in the end, it’ll be wherever my whim takes me, of course!

Hope everyone else has had a good week.

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.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Book Blogger Hop: Writer, Reader, Editor?

Posted August 7, 2026 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

This week’s prompt is about whether you’re a writer:

Do you see yourself more as an editor, a writer, or just a reader?

Setting aside the work I do on this blog (which involves all three, heh), I’m mostly a reader, but I do write as well — even discounting my blogging and the writing I do for my various clients, and my two dissertations (I believe that’s “theses”, in US terms — they were for my MA and BSc), I write stories, usually just for myself (though I have been known to write and post fanfiction when the mood strikes). I’ve also done some science communication writing, but again, informally.

I have done some formal editing work, editing dissertations and theses for people who don’t speak English as a first language. My favourite was on Cappadocian cave churches!

But mostly, I’m “just” a reader with a blog and a backlog of books that’d make a pile so tall it probably is worthy of being called “mount TBR”.

Tags: Book Blogger Hop, books, discussion

WWW Wednesday

Posted August 5, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

Yesterday I read two poetry collections, Menna Elfyn’s Bondo and Jonathan Edwards’ My Family and Other Superheroes. The former was really good, but I was less of a fan of the latter.

Before that, the last thing I finished was volume two of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which I love a lot more than I expected. I instantly whimpered for volume three… which I have duly started.

What are you currently reading?

First and foremost, volume three of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine! I’m going to be so sad when I get to the end of this volume and have to wait until 10th November for the last one. This really worked for my mood at the moment; I’m loving the slow burn.

Other than that, I’ve also started two non-fiction books which are slower going: Emily Cockayne’s Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go and Elinor Cleghorn’s A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering. Both are alright, but not proving to be compulsive reads for me.

What will you be reading next?

Last week I ended up abandoning what I thought was a very firm reading plan, ahaha. So I’m not sure, but in theory I want to start John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints and Becky Chambers’ As You Wake, Break the Shell.

Either/both could end up being displaced by pure whim, though.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Danmei and Baihe Covers

Posted August 4, 2026 by Nicky in General / 32 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is a freebie about book covers! I decided to highlight some fun/pretty/cute danmei and baihe covers (from my collection), because I often get comments about them.

For those who don’t already know, danmei and baihe are Chinese genres which have recently-ish started being translated into English a lot. The stories focus on same-sex love, but can be all kinds of genres other than that — historical, fantastical, modern, mystery, and various mixtures of the two.

My favourite theme is honestly the covers that show the tenderness and joy the main couples share…

Buuut it’s worth highlighting some badassery as well!

I haven’t read all of these yet (the last two are still on my TBR), but I can’t wait. And I’d love to read more baihe — I’m sad I’m only featuring one! If anyone has recommendations for baihe that’s been translated and traditionally published, I’d love to hear them.

Tags: baihe, books, danmei, Top Ten Tuesday

Fantasy with Friends: Fantastical Sidekicks

Posted August 3, 2026 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Start of a new week, and time for Fantasy with Friends! All the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about fantastical companions:

Who are some memorable fantastical sidekicks? Animal familiars or anything else that fits the prompt welcome!

Prompting about “animal familiars” mostly makes me think of Nighteyes in Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings books, mostly. Nighteyes is a great character, deeply loyal, sometimes quite funny, and providing a great foil to Fitz’s wavering and uncertainty. Life’s a lot more simple for Nighteyes, not because he is simple, but because he doesn’t see such a need to complicate things.

I’m also for some reason thinking of the fire demon Calcifer, in Howl’s Moving Castle: snarky, curious, not half so devilish as he’d like to make out. Admittedly some of his lines in the (very different, but still fun) Studio Ghibli adaptation are the most memorable, when Sophie bullies him into letting her cook on him: “Here’s another curse for you: may all your bacon burn!”

And of course, the best sidekick of all has to be Samwise Gamgee. No notes.

In more recent reads, though, I’m thinking of Mu Qing and Feng Xin in Heaven Official’s Blessing — they’re old friends of Xie Lian’s, or rather, his former bodyguard and his former servant, whom he considered as friends (it’s a little more complicated for them, given the status difference when they were humans and when they served as his deputies when he ascended). As themselves or in their disguised forms, they back him up and follow him around loyally, even despite the mess between them — and while a lot of people really dislike Mu Qing, I rather like the fact that he’s prickly and quick to take offence (but even quicker to give it). He’s by no means perfect, but he’s still a friend who cares deeply, and it’s clear that he takes his role as a martial god seriously and takes care of his worshippers.

And in Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, one really has to give a nod to Wen Ning. He’s faultlessly loyal to Wei Wuxian, who was kind to him and brought him back from death to be with and protect the remainder of the Wen family. He stays with Wei Wuxian through a lot of horrors, for both of them, when the whole world is against them, and stands up for Wei Wuxian and tries to act in his best interests no matter what. The way he gets angry and tells Jiang Cheng about a certain secret in order to show him how terribly he’s treated Wei Wuxian is just, aaaah!

I could keep going, but I’ll stop here, ahaha.

Tags: books, discussion, Fantasy with Friends, SF/F

July Reading Wrap-Up

Posted August 2, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Here we are in August already! I can’t believe it’s my birthday this month: I feel like I’ve only just got used to saying it’s 2026. But yep, here it comes: on 20th August, I’ll be turning 37.

…But we’re not there yet, so let’s take a look back at July first!

July in general:

We’ve had another more heatwave in the UK since I posted last month’s pic of the bunnies in their temporary housing in an air conditioned room, and Eclair wasn’t pleased to hear that the heat was coming back…

He’s been totally fine, though! Both of them have, though they’re in full shed at the moment and everything is fluff. Thanks, bunnies, I surely needed a fur coat in this weather…

I’ve been working away at my bookcase blanket, through some goofs, fumbles, and uncertain attempts at designing things for myself. I need to sit down with a chart and work out if one thing I had in mind will actually work at all, but mostly it’s going really well! It looks more complicated than it is, and often I can just sit and chill, following the obvious pattern from the row before, rather than needing to pay tons of attention.

Luckily, all those raw ends will just need to be neatened up and trimmed, but will get enclosed inside a border — though I really should start on the tidying up work, or I’ll have to handle ~500 of them at once.

Other than that, let’s see. I’ve been gaming as always, including in FFXIV. An old friend rejoining my raid group, and we’ve really started making some progress again with the consistent group. We’re about to start working on a mechanic called “Idyllic Dream”, which is absolutely nuts and will definitely take us some time. If you’re curious, you can check out the guide we’re using. (Thanks, Hector!)

I’ve also been continuing my love of hidden object games with A Building Full of Cats and the sequel, dipping my toes into horror anomaly games with the free The Queen’s Gondola (which had one jumpscare but otherwise was more unsettling vibes — I enjoyed it, despite being a wuss), being deeply absorbed in the pretty unique puzzle game Gorogoa, and overly invested in the very silly racing sim, Wabisabi SushiDerby. It’s not all been new games, though: my wife and I have returned to a classic for more co-op fun, getting our asses served to us in Overcooked! All You Can Eat, and I replayed (and finally 100%ed) the beautiful game Pyre.

I have a bunch of new games to dig into, and several others in progress, so there’s no doubt I can keep myself busy!

Oh, and I finally got my degree certificate: now I am most definitely and officially and provably the holder of my fourth degree, an MSc in Infectious Diseases (with Merit). I haven’t yet decided on another course of study, before anyone asks…

Reading stats:

Here’s the bit you’re all really interested in, right?

Total books read: 24
Total pages read: 6,220
Rereads: 0
ARCs: 2
Series finished/up to date: 3
Books owned pre-2026: 2
Books owned from 2026: 13
Borrowed books: 9

Fiction: 11
Non-fiction: 7
Poetry: 6
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 2

Still not as much reading as I’d like, really! The numbers mean I’m slipping ever further behind my original reading goal for the year, and while I try to be flexible with goals and not care too much about hitting a certain number, it’s a bit weird for me to be reading so little, and generally suggests I’m not getting enough free time or something is otherwise going on. I’m not honestly sure, though, because it’s fairly common for me to hit a slump from March through July, and start picking up again in August.

Sooo… I guess we’ll see?

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books: 195/400 (38 books behind)
Overall pages read: 45,446/100,000 (12,910 pages behind)
Books read from backlog: 32/100 (26 books behind)
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 20/20

20 Books of Summer: 10/20 (0/5 bonus)

I’m still way, way behind on my reading goals, which is a bit of a shame. As mentioned above, it suggests I just haven’t been able to make enough time for reading… or maybe I’m still just a bit flattened by last year, which featured several big life events like moving, the final year of my MSc, and my grandmother’s death. Plus I have a new client that I’m working for, so that takes time.

I’m not going to adjust anything until after my holiday at the end of August, at least — but after that I’m definitely thinking about dropping the goal just to avoid letting it influence me into feeling ick (there’s no point in that). I think in the past I’ve always ended up exceeding my low-ish goals by a lot, often reaching my original higher goal anyway, though, so I’m a little curious what happens if I just let myself be without changing my goal, and live with being “behind”.

Blogging stats:

Views: 18.8k
Visitors: 17.8k
Likes: 412
Comments: 501
Reviews: 26
Other posts: 29

All stats were up this month! I’ve been feeling more engaged with reading and blogging, and have been prepping stuff at the weekends to free up time during the week to socialise on other blogs more, so I think it makes sense. It’s been a pretty good month, all round.

Most viewed posts:

Top Ten Tuesday: British Library Crime Classics (84 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Books that Live in my Head Rent-Free (76 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Titles with the Word “City” (42 views)
Fantasy with Friends: Brandon Sanderson (41 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Books I HAD to Have… (41 views)

My own favourite posts:

Stuff I loved from elsewhere:

From Foxes and Fairy Tales: ARC Review: Worst Man, by Louise
From Becky’s Book Blog: Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle – Book Review! by Becky
From Books, Bones & Buffy: THE INN AT THE FOOT OF MOUNT VENGEANCE by Chiara Bullen – Review, by Tammy
From The BiblioSanctum: Book Review: The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, by Mogsy
From Becky’s Book Blog: A Snake Among Swans by Hannah Kaner – ARC Review! by Becky
From The Book Haze: Book Review | The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, by Haze
From Books, Bones & Buffy: THE FAREWITCH OF FOXE HOLLER by Ellen Pauley Groff – Review, by Tammy
From Becky’s Book Blog: The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood by H.G. Parry – ARC Review! by Becky
From Keira’s Bookmark: [Review] Under the Oak Tree #1-3 by Suji Kim, by Keira
From The BiblioSanctum: Book Review: The Winter Folk by Jen Julian, by Mogsy

I really had difficulty with restraining myself from including some more links, but ten really seemed enough!

This month I did start drafting this post ahead of time, but goodness, it still seems to have taken forever. I need a better template, maybe. But at least we can say I’ve seen July out properly now.

Tags: books, monthly wrapup