Category: General

WWW Wednesday

Posted September 16, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was Cho Yeeun’s Teddy Bears Never Die, which I ultimately liked quite a bit, though the genre is a bit hard to pin down — at times it just feels like a gritty thriller, and then oops! Misshapen vengeful ghosts, a possessed teddy bear, and the classic disturbed remains of a mass graveyard (where people were buried alive).

Before that it was Ianthe Jerrold’s Let Him Die; another new-to-me Golden Age author, thanks to Kobo Plus!

What are you currently reading?

I’m still working on Michelle P. Brown’s Illumino, and I still think it wants to be a more general history rather than a history of X in Y things. Which is fine, but I picked it up for the history of X in Y things, so it’s a little irritating — though at least it’s a gorgeous volume.

I’m also now reading the latest British Library Crime Classic, which is a short story collection: Eat, Drink and Be Murdered. I’m having fun with that, as usual, and I think it’s funny that so far there’s been more than one story where a knowledge of wine points to the culprit.

I also started the third and final volume of The Villain’s White Halo, which is certainly going places.

What will you be reading next?

Not a clue! I am trying to be particularly capricious and follow my whims entirely for a bit to help get over having maybe planned a bit too firmly in August, since I’ll be taking part in Haunted Shelf in October, and I do have a loose TBR for that.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I’ve Met

Posted September 15, 2026 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

This week’s prompt is about authors I’ve met, and let’s see… there’s been quite a few, since I’ve been to cons, but let’s stick to the ones that felt important at the time or have really stuck in my head!

Robin Hobb.
She did a reading in the local Waterstones when I was a teenager, and me and my mother were reading her books at the time. Of course we went, and asked questions after the reading.
Alastair Reynolds.
I got my sister back into reading by letting her try Century Rain, sitting on the floor in my room next to the shelves. She whipped right through it and has read it many a time since! So when I saw he was doing a signing in Cardiff, and my sister was around, of course I dragged her there — and though she was very shy, did manage to help her go up and talk to him.
Jo Walton.
Back in the days of Livejournal, we followed each other, and she was very kind and encouraging, and we’ve hung out on a few occasions when she was in Wales (when I still lived there) or at a convention I was attending.
Ada Palmer.
I met her through Jo Walton, and have heard her sing stuff from Sundown. Needless to say I then enthusiastically supported the Kickstarter, and it is not uncommon to hear me somehow attempting to sing both parts of “My Brother, My Enemy” while doing chores (it doesn’t work very well, but I have fun). I have also read (some of) her work, though!
Marie Brennan.
This was at a con and I haaaad to get my books signed. She had actually read my reviews, I was stunned!
Tanya Huff.
I got books signed for both me and my sister, since we both loved (different!) books of Huff’s quite a bit; my sister had been going through some stuff, and Tanya Huff wrote a very kind and encouraging note to her.
Scott Lynch.
My wife is a big fan, and we had a whoooole odyssey trying to get to his signing due to two pairs of my jeans falling apart while at the con. We ventured out, found me new jeans, and made it back in time for the signing. Whew.
Martha Wells.
I didn’t have anything to sign, and it is in the queue for the signing bewailing that fact that Lali of Portal Bookshop came to my aid! I don’t honestly remember if I even said anything coherent to Martha Wells. Worldcon is quite overwhelming, and I think I might’ve been fairly done, ahaha.
Rainbow Rowell.
I went to this signing with another blogger I’d met at Angry Robot’s “Robot for a Day” one-day working-at-a-publisher experience. I don’t think I’d read much of Rowell’s work yet, but she was kind and friendly, and made me reaaally want to read more of her work.
Sarah Pinsker.
Okay, this is actually cheating a bit because we haven’t met in-person (nor spoken for a very long time), but we used to be part of the same invite-only discussion group on Goodreads, The Alternative World. It’s unbelievable how much influence those folks had on my reading!

I’m surprised how difficult I found this to put together, but I guess it’s partly that I’m not super into readings and signings, so I go to them less than some other readers. They stand out to me most when they’re just a little bit meaningful on both sides, like Marie Brennan having known about my book reviews… even though of course it’s all in a day’s work for authors who are signing at bookshops and conventions.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Fantasy with Friends: Fantasy and Tech

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

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 technology in fantasy:

What role do you think technology should play in fantasy? Some authors try to avoid it (ex. worlds set in an imagined past before modernization or worlds where wizards simply do not use telephones or television even though they have been invented). Yet other authors try to imagine what a world with both technology and magic would look like (ex. The Legend of Korra, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series). Can magic and technology work well together? What questions does an author have to address to make it work?

In the end, it very much depends on the world and whether things feel like they fit. There are definitely worlds where the two can sit side by side, or where magic and technology are in conflict or synergy in an interesting way — saying that makes me think of Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels books, for instance, which features the world flipping between magic and technology regularly. It can be a very fertile way to add depth to the world, introduce obstacles to the plot, and give neat ways to mix the two up together.

Sometimes the two can just co-exist because it’s a fantasy world of the author’s own creation rather than historical fantasy or something. The problem is that it can be tricky to get that to “feel right” to the reader: it’s a regular complaint in Final Fantasy XIV, to talk about a gaming example for a moment. Even though Allagan and magitek technology has always sat alongside magic in that world, sometimes the whiplash is really strong to players, even though I don’t think it’s actually badly done. The expectation that a fantasy world won’t have certain types of technology is strong, and aside from pure plausibility about how elements fit together, authors have to think about whether reader expectations will trip them up.

As with other stuff people feel strongly about like anachronisms, I’m pretty loosey-goosey myself. Put together something that feels coherent, and I’m fine with it!

Tags: discussion, Fantasy with Friends, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted September 12, 2026 by Nicky in General / 31 Comments

Happy weekend! Another busy week, but my weekend should be nice and chill.

Books acquired this week

The “this week” part is very theoretical by now, since this is the remainder of my holiday spree! Here follow the birthday presents I got myself, ahaha. For my indie bookshop buys, check out part one and part two: this one covers my finds in Waterstones in Cardiff and Bristol. I love to support indies, but Waterstones also has an important part to play, with different stores curating their stock differently, and their ability to stock such a broad range of books that indies might not be able to take on.

Also, shoutout to the kind staff member in Bristol’s location in the Galleries who spotted me near-crying at the desk and realised my phone and cards had been lost, connected it with something handed in by another customer, and unearthed them to return to me. Heart attack averted… and without further ado, here are the books I bought once I had my card again, starting with the non-fiction:

I’d known about With My Own Hand and If This Be Magic before, so I’d half-intended to snag those two: I know nothing about Marie Maitland, but her story sounds fascinating, while someone else recommended If This Be Magic. I couldn’t resist Illumino, I’m a sucker for anything about manuscripts, and Unsuitable speaks to my fascination with fashion history.

But I got some more fiction books too!

I’ve been reading the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhua a while, and this is the new volume, while Enchanting the Fae Queen is the next in a series I found a fun distraction. The Second Death of Locke comes highly recommended, too. The Library After Dark is more of a random choice, though, because the scenario sounds fun.

The birthday book haul is almost over, but I did have one last hurrah in the gift shop at the St Fagans National Museum of History, which is an open-air museum recreating buildings from Wales’ history. Many are the originals, dismantled and transferred to St Fagans for preservation and display. The first book is a biography of the man behind the original version of the museum, and the second a book about the history of the Welsh language.

Both are available on Kobo Plus, as it happens, so if you’re curious… well, that might be an option!

Finally, I spent the week looking for these, but sadly they weren’t stocked in any brick-and-mortar bookshops, so I ordered them once I got home — the remaining volumes of The Villain’s White Halo, the first volume of which I read while on holiday and really liked.

Whew! There we go — that’s the full birthday haul.

Posts from this week

Since I post quite a bit, I figure these roundups are useful even for regulars — and maybe more so for people who only pop in once a week. Let’s take a look at my posts since last week, reviews first:

Non-fiction: Welsh Food Stories, by Carwyn Graves (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Poetry: Flowers of a Moment, by Ko Un (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy manhwa: Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, vol 1, by Umi, Sleepy-C and singNsong (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy romance: The Wife Comes First, vol 2, by Lv Ye Qian He (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
SF: Ode to the Half-Broken, by Suzanne Palmer (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
History: City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish, by Peter Parsons (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Poetry: Impossible Paradise, by Chen Yuhong (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

As ever, 3/5 stars isn’t a bad rating, and these books are for the most part not very recent reads, due to my backlog of written but unposted reviews. For the books I’ve been reading this week, check out the last section of this post!

Now for the other posts!

What I’m reading

As I mentioned at the start, it’s been a kind of busy week, so I haven’t read as much as I’d have liked, and it’s mostly been classic mysteries! Which is always fun, and if it’s what’s grabbing me at the moment, I’m definitely not going to argue. So here’s a peek at the books I finished:

When it comes to weekend reading, I’m really not sure. I’m partway through Illumino, the history of Britain through illuminated manuscripts, and volume two of The Villain’s White Halo… but I might just continue to lean into the classic mysteries thing, and maybe read more by Haynes or van Gulik… or some of the others I’ve been trying recently.

Whatever it is, I’m going to try to follow my whims, as usual, and not kick myself about not reading something specific or not reading enough. I’ve been doing a bit too much of that lately.

Hope everyone 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.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Book Blogger Hop: The Influence of Reviews

Posted September 11, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 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 online reviews:

How much do online reviews shape what you pick up next?

I mostly find new books in two ways: other bloggers talking about them, and random browsing in a bookshop.

When it comes to other bloggers talking about books, sometimes that’s just seeing people mention upcoming books they’re interested in, and sometimes it’s based on their reviews — a book I semi-recently picked up that I might not have if it weren’t for reviews was Jarod K. Anderson’s Strange Animals (which was reviewed by Mogsy and Tammy), for instance. If people pick out details that intrigue me, or if certain bloggers whose taste I know well are enthusiastic, that’s usually a good sign.

Sometimes when I’m trying to decide whether to get a book, I look at reviews on StoryGraph, and then I don’t just count on the reviews of people I know; I tend to seek out both very high and very low rated reviews, to get a sense of what people who feel passionately about it (one way or the other) are saying. It’s a pretty good way to quickly root out when a book is actually super racist or something, which helps.

That said, when it comes to books I find by randomly browsing in a bookshop, often I don’t look up anything at all, and just go based on the back cover and a random flip through the pages. I’ve found some real gems that way, and it’s fun sometimes to just throw aside caution and try something solely because it looked interesting and new. It’s also sometimes a terrible idea, of course, but I don’t mind taking that risk, especially since I know the fact that I do also post neutral and negative reviews sometimes helps people find books more to their taste than mine, or avoid books that they wouldn’t like either.

So the answer’s ultimately another “it depends”, I suppose!

Tags: Book Blogger Hop, books, discussion

Let’s Talk Bookish: Decluttering

Posted September 10, 2026 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

Let’s Talk Bookish is a monthly bookish discussion meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits and Dini @ Dinipandareads! It’s recently moved to this lower-frequency posting schedule which you can check out here. I’m posting a day early since I have a Book Blogger Hop post and a review for tomorrow!

September’s prompt is about decluttering ebooks and physical books:

How do you manage your digital library (Kindle, Kobo, etc.)—do you delete books you won’t read, or do you let them pile up? Do you feel less guilty about owning too many digital books versus physical ones? Which is harder to let go of: a well-loved physical book or a purchased e-book?

My physical library is reasonably well-curated. I have a backlog from years prior to 2025, but in 2025 I came up with a method that kept me reading the majority of the books I’d bought, and I’ve always got rid of books I knew I wouldn’t read again (sometimes by donating them to the local library, sometimes by donating them to charity shops, sometimes by selling them via programs like World of Books). People regularly think of me as a weird hoarder of books and it’s the silliest accusation, because boxes of books depart the household pretty much monthly. I only keep books I expect I’ll want to reread.

When it comes to my digital books, though, I do pretty much no curation at all. I just trust to the storage space on my Kobo that I have plenty, and never delete books. When ereaders had smaller amounts of memory, I had to shuffle things a lot more (though my approach tended to be “expand the memory if possible”, which used to be possible with Kobo Minis: I had a special set of tiny screwdrivers to get in, and copied the original SD card onto bigger SD cards for several of my friends, ahaha).

I know when I first had an ereader, a Sony, I organised things obsessively into folders, in part to help with browsing since it was a bit of a weird system with a lot of different buttons and no touch screen (I was an early adopter!)… but again, nope, now I just tend to use the search to pull up the book I want, or filter by “Kobo Plus” to see the books I’ve added from my Kobo Plus subscription to pick something from there. Sometimes the randomness of the sort is what sparks the urge to read a particular book, even!

I feel maybe a little guilty about books that I totally forget about in the depths of my Kobo, but I don’t feel guilty about having plenty of books at all, neither physical nor digital. It’s a joy! I’m very privileged to have such access to books and ability to keep a lot of books around me, and sometimes I’ll feel bad about not getting to a specific book I planned to read sooner or something like that, but in general, nah, no guilt or shame about books.

So yeah… in summary, I think this might be surprising to people who know how generally organised I like to be, but… I’m a gremlin when it comes to my digital library. Oops!

Tags: books, discussion, Let's Talk Bookish

WWW Wednesday

Posted September 9, 2026 by Nicky in General / 5 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?

I haven’t finished anything in a couple of days, but the last thing I finished would’ve been J.J. Connington’s Murder in the Maze. I didn’t like it as much as the other book by him I’ve read (The Ha-Ha Case), in part because it fell back on the ol’ exotic poisons thing (curare in this case), and also I just don’t think it was well structured as a mystery.

Before that was also a classic mystery, Annie Haynes’ The Abbey Court Murder — a bit melodramatic, but satisfying enough.

What are you currently reading?

I haven’t been reading a lot in the last couple of days due to getting busy, so I’m still working on Michelle P. Brown’s Illumino, which should really admit that it wants to talk about far more than just twelve manuscripts and far more of the historical context, and the second volume of The Villain’s White Halo, which has taken a fascinating turn in a couple of respects (Duan Chongxian’s adventures, and the truth[?] of Luo Mingchuan’s whole thing).

I have also started another classic mystery, Robert van Gulik’s The Chinese Maze Murders. It’s apparently based on classic Chinese detective stories, and was originally written in English but first published in Japanese and Chinese. I’m not far into it, and I don’t know a lot about van Gulik’s background and how respectful it’s likely to be, but it’s definitely going to be an interesting product of that period of detective fiction in English from my perspective!

What will you be reading next?

No idea, honestly. I might pick out some shorter reads while I’m so busy, or continue on the classic crime binge — there are a couple more writers I noted to look into, or I could read more of the authors I’ve tried recently, since there are some more of those on Kobo Plus.

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Indie Bookshops

Posted September 8, 2026 by Nicky in General / 25 Comments

This week’s prompt from Top Ten Tuesday is an indie freebie, but I already talked about mostly indie bookshops in a recent post! So I’m going to talk about ten reasons to support indie bookshops.

Indie bookshops can be a huge part of their community.
They rarely just sell books, but often have events, provide a space for meetings, provide local advertising space, etc.
The selection isn’t mandated by corporate.
An independent bookshop can’t be told they “have to” stock gender critical nonsense or stacks upon stacks of the latest bestseller; they can exercise their own judgement.
The selection can be as weird and wonderful as the curator wants.
Not only do they not have to stock things they don’t want to, they can choose to stock only books they personally champion, lesser-known gems, etc. At the end of the day they do need to sell books… but they can afford to have some on the shelves that fit more niche interests.
It helps the fight against monopolies.
Amazon is so powerful because people feel like they can’t get what they need anywhere else. A thriving indie bookshop can be part of a local economy that says no to that.
They can specialise.
Think of some of the bookshops I mentioned like Criminally Good Books (a crime and mystery shop) and Portal Bookshop (LGBT and diverse SF/F). Waterstones is never going to set aside an entire store for a single genre, and while they can get a decent breadth of popular fiction in each genre stocked, the quality of the stock will depend on the booksellers’ knowledge. If you’ve never noticed this, try going to different Waterstones shops: they have similar selections, but not the same. There was one I went to where they clearly had a classic crime aficionado on staff, because I found some real gems. But this is the default at a specialist indie!
Indie bookshops can order rare stock.
Sometimes they have sources that a chain doesn’t or won’t use, like self-publishing platforms.
You probably don’t actually need next day delivery.
This goes to the same point as #4. We don’t actually need instant gratification when it comes to most books. Sure, sometimes you might need a textbook or reference work really quick… but most of the time it’s not necessary, and indie bookshops can often acquire stock pretty fast if you ask them to order.
Indie bookshops can stock books from other countries.
Sometimes when a book has only been released in the US, an indie can import it to the UK, and vice versa! Even if they don’t have a lot of imported books on the shelves (or you don’t know how to tell), it can be worth asking if it’s something they do.
Browsing a physical bookstore can be a lot of fun.
And enlightening! This is true of physical chains as well, of course, but see my earlier points about indie bookshop curation. Browsing a well-curated indie can bring a lot of surprises.
More bookshops and more booksellers is always a good thing.
Even if you also use chains sometimes (I do!) or rely on libraries for most of your reading (they deserve support too!), then it’s great to support the diversity of bookshops and bookselling out there.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here… but sometimes that’s fun!

I will finish by adding that since that aforementioned post recommending specific indies (only two weeks ago, and in fact on the very day I’d posted it), I learned about a new-to-me indie bookshop in Cardiff called Love Stories. You can find it in Castle Arcade, opposite Troutmark Books, the second-hand bookshop I previously recommended. Love Stories is small but has a pretty good selection, and I had a nice chat while I was there too. So consider that one recommended too!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Fantasy with Friends: Prologues

Posted September 7, 2026 by Nicky in General / 7 Comments

Aaaaand it’s Monday again with a fresh start. As ever, it’s time for a Fantasy with Friends post; all the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is on the discourse about prologues:

There has been ongoing discussion on social media about whether readers actually read or enjoy prologues. Do you think prologues add value to a story, or do you wish the story just started with chapter one? Are there good and bad ways for an author to utilize a prologue in a fantasy novel?

There are good and bad ways to do just about anything when it comes to writing a book. Good ways might include setting the scene, providing some ancient history that proves important to the story, introducing characters who become important later, etc. It can be a good way to tantalise the reader, but it can also feel like a bait-and-switch if you swap straight to other characters right after the prologue and it isn’t clear at all how things will connect (or whether they ever will).

I definitely do read prologues, because they should be there for a good reason and be part of the story. If they aren’t, that’s definitely a problem! But usually they are, and skipping them seems like shooting yourself in the foot by omitting part of the information the author intended for readers to have — I don’t really understand the decision to skip them, honestly, and I especially feel like rolling my eyes when people who skip the prologue then complain things don’t make sense.

There are definitely times when it feels like it could’ve just been a part of chapter one, or that it’s unnecessary… but that’s an individual book being not that great, not a sign that prologues in general are pointless.

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

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted September 5, 2026 by Nicky in General / 40 Comments

Happy weekend! It’s been a busy week at work, what with getting back from holiday, so the weekend is very welcome.

Books acquired this week

Alright, time for more of my birthday trip book spree! Part one is here and talks about Forbidden Planet (in Bristol) and the indie shop Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (in Bath), and the first part of this post covers the rest of the day in Bath at the delightful Topping & Company branch there. Their stores always feel magical, with wooden shelving, wooden ladders on rails around the rooms, and somehow more rooms in the spaces than you’d think could be possible.

So let’s take a look at what I picked up there!

I don’t know anything about the three non-fic choices except that they looked intriguing: I love stuff about old and weird manuscripts, and I’ve found the recent books focusing on women of ancient Rome really interesting in how they pick apart inconsistencies and give us much more complicated images of the women in question (like Emma Southon’s Agrippina). And of course, I couldn’t resist a book about the history of universities, given my… proclivities. (I finished my fourth degree last year and there is a literal betting pool about when I will next enroll.)

I did also pick up print copies of a couple of books I’d already received as eARCs:

I haven’t finished any of them yet, so I’m hoping having physical copies will help me get to them, ahaha — plus I do like to support authors by getting their books, of course.

That was it for the Monday. I was intending to drop into Waterstones in Cardiff on Tuesday while we were visiting my aunt and some of my nostagic spots from when I was a student, but I discovered that there’s a lovely new indie bookshop in Castle Arcade: Love Stories Bookshop. So of course, I had to get some books there!

I did also go to Waterstones, both in Cardiff and in Bristol… but that’s a story for next week!

Posts from this week

As ever, I’ve been posting away this week and have had plenty to say, so let’s dig into the roundup. Reviews first:

Classic crime: The Party at No. 5, by Shelley Smith (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
Graphic novel: Fence: Challengers, by C.S. Pacat et al (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Non-fiction: Lost Voices of the Nile: Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt, by Charlotte Booth (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Fantasy romance: Mistakenly Saving the Villain, vol 3, by Feng Yu Nie (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
Poetry: The Weather Wheel, by Mimi Khalvati (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Manga: Cat + Gamer, vol 5, by Wataru Nadatani (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
Fantasy: The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper, by A.J. Fitzwater (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)

As ever, these aren’t books I’ve necessarily read recently; check out the section below for what I’ve been reading this week! I have a big backlog of reviews written and ready to post, and I try to vary what I post in order to avoid spamming people with sixty danmei reviews at once.

Also, 3/5 is not a bad rating, and even 2/5 ratings mean the book had some redeeming qualities. Please do take my definitions literally; when I say 3/5 stars means I liked a book, that means I liked the book, even if you wouldn’t rate a book you liked 3/5 stars. Thanks!

Now for the other, non-review posts:

And that’s all for the wrap-up!

What I’m reading

As I mentioned, it’s been a busy week, so I haven’t been reading as much as I might’ve hoped. Still, I’ve read one of my new books and two classic crime novels, so I’m pretty happy!

For this weekend, I’m not sure what I’ll be reading — hopefully more of Teddy Bears Never Die, The Villain’s White Halo, and my classic crime binge? But we’ll see! It’s always whatever grabs my interest, after all. I’ve also started a non-fic about British medieval manuscripts, after all…

So really, it could be anything. Whatever I read, whatever you read, here’s hoping it’s a good 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.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup