Good morning, folks! It’s been a busy week around here with assignments and such, but I managed to get very good marks in my Infectious Diseases class, so I’m super pleased.

News

You may have noticed, if you’re a follower of this blog, that I now have Amazon and Book Depository affiliate links — general ones in my sidebar, and specific ones on each book. If you’re not in the US or the UK, my affiliate links should redirect to the same book on your local site if you’re in Germany, France, Italy, Spain or Canada. At this point I’m not planning on enabling ads or anything like that, and there’ll be nothing more intrusive or obvious than the affiliate links I’ve just implemented.

I 100% understand anyone who doesn’t want to use Amazon and Amazon-owned companies to buy books, but if you do and you use my affiliate links, I get a 5% commission on whatever you order. I plan to put any money I earn back into this blog, either through buying books to review or just by using it to keep my URL and pay for WordPress plug-ins or whatever. If it doesn’t work out, well, never mind! If it does, I get a little back for the amount of time I put into this blog.

Bunnies

If you sat through that, you deserve a treat, so here’s a bunny picture even though I’m with them at the moment!

New books

Looking forward to reading more of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work! And I couldn’t resist the cover of Blood Binds the Pack, though I still need to read the first book…

Books read this week

Five stars: Castles.
Four stars: Pantomime, Abaddon’s Gate, Cleopatra’s Heir and Camelot’s Sword.
Three stars: The Viral Storm, The Essex Serpent.

Reviews posted this week:

–Bog Bodies Uncovered, by Miranda Aldhouse-Green. If you find bog bodies fascinating, this is definitely a great book for you. 4/5 stars
–Connection Error, by Annabeth Albert. A sweet romance which builds slowly and features an injured Navy SEAL and an ADHD video game developer. 4/5 stars
–The Chocolatier’s Wife, by Cindy Lynn Speer. A cosy mystery in a fantasy setting, with a bit of romance. I enjoyed it a lot. 4/5 stars
–Bring Back the King, by Helen Pilcher. If you’ve read other books on de-extinction, you might want to avoid this, but it’s a fun enough read. 3/5 stars
–Sea, Swallow Me, and Other Stories, by Craig Laurence Gidney. Powerful stories, some of which I found really disturbing. 3/5 stars
–The Five Daughters of the Moon, by Leena Likitalo. A fascinating fantasy retelling of the fall of the Romanovs, only marred by the fact that it isn’t a complete story in one volume. 4/5 stars
–Ebola, by David Quammen. Avoid it and just get the full book, Spillover. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. An update on what I’m reading.
–The Book Depository Bookmarks Disaster. So I collect Book Depository bookmarks, right? And I have bunnies, right? … A plea for help rebuilding my collection.

So how’s everyone else doing? Feel free to leave links to your weekend posts here; I always comment back as soon as I can!

I have all of one book to feature this week, and it’s not even one I bought! Yep, I passed through London and did not buy a book ‘for the road’ (for the Eurostar), and now I’m back in Belgium where the chocolate is good and the books are expensive.

Received to review: 

I quite enjoyed The Darkest Part of the Forest, as I recall, so I’m interested to follow Holly Black’s new foray into Faerie.

Read this week:

Four stars: Zika: The Emerging Epidemic.
Three stars: Goldilocks and the Water Bears, The Earth After Us, Summerlong and Futureland.

Reviews posted this week:

–The Brain, by David Eagleman. A bit basic for me, but probably great if you haven’t taken every free course on neurology you could find! 2/5 stars
–Away with the Fairies, by Kerry Greenwood. Phryne is terribly daring, there’s a blatant homage to Sayers, and everything ends well for the good guys. It’s your standard Miss Fisher mystery, and none the worse for that. 4/5 stars
–A Sting in the Tale, by David Goulson. A nice non-fic book that makes bees seem rather charming. 4/5 stars
–Close Encounters with Humankind, by Sang-Hee Lee. Some interesting topics tackling humans from the point of view of a palaeoanthropologist. 3/5 stars
–Adventures in Human Being, by Gavin Francis. A readable set of facts illustrated by anecdotes about the human body. 3/5 stars
–The Twilight Pariah, by Jeffrey Ford. Kind of fun, but not really very memorable in the end. Bit goofy at times. 2/5 stars
–I Hate Everyone But You, by Gaby Dunn and Allison Rankin. I was not a fan. 1/5 stars

Other posts: 

–WWW Wednesday: The latest from my climb of Mount TBR.

So how’s everyone doing?

Absolutely no new books this week, which means this is officially an UNstacking the Shelves week! For those who haven’t been around for that before, it’s a week where I showcase the books I’ve cleared from my shelves — I’ve just read ’em all, so please don’t tell me to enjoy them or I’ll know you haven’t read my post at all, and I’ll be sad!

First, this is my last weekend away from the bunnies for a while, so have two photos to celebrate!

Books read this week:

Four stars to: Provenance, Friday’s Child and The Gracekeepers.
Three stars to: What On Earth Evolved? … In Brief? and The Silver Wind.
Two stars to: The Other Log of Phileas Fogg and The Rabbit Back Literature Society.

Reviews posted this week:

–Caliban’s War, by James S.A. Corey. I enjoyed several of the new characters for this installment, while also getting a bit frustrated with the main character of the series and his crew. I’m still intrigued. 4/5 stars
–Snowdrift and Other Stories, by Georgette Heyer. Probably not where I’d start with Heyer, but an enjoyable set of stories with her usual comic touches. 4/5 stars
–Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli. Rovelli’s really good at getting across big ideas in simple language and a short space, though of course he doesn’t go into depth. 3/5 stars
–Kitty and the Midnight Hour, by Carrie Vaughn. There was some stuff I wanted to enjoy about this, but it was overshadowed by the character interactions. Probably a personal reaction, though. 2/5 stars
–The Bonobo and the Atheist, by Frans de Waal. Fascinating stuff about the species most closely related to humans. 4/5 stars
–A is for Arsenic, by Kathryn Harkup. Fascinating stuff about the chemistry of poisons as well as how Agatha Christie used poison in her mysteries. 4/5 stars
–The Servants, by Michael Marshall Smith. It felt like this didn’t quite know what it wanted to be. I didn’t love it and I don’t know who I’d recommend it to, even though I found it interesting enough to read all the way through. 2/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday: What’s on my currently-reading stack, and what’s coming up next.

Hey all! It’s been a fairly quiet week, seeing my family, playing video games, reading… Hurrah for exactly that kind of week. And here’s Breakfast relaxing to go with it…

Received to review:

Just last week I read the first one and complained I didn’t have the sequel right away. Hurrah, now I do!

Bought: 

I probably love reading about diseases a little too much.

I also got a whole suitcase full of books from Bastian’s Book Reviews, but while they’re all awesome, I’m not adding them to my cataloguing right now.

Read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

–The Naming of the Shrew, by John Wright. Amusing at first, but starts to drag because it becomes too much of a list. 2/5 stars
–Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Pretty much just a taster, so it genuinely is for people who aren’t fans of astrophysics already. 3/5 stars
–The Language of Thorns, by Leigh Bardugo. Interesting invented fairytales, some of them retellings, and it doesn’t matter if you already know Bardugo’s Grisha world. 4/5 stars
–The Tiger’s Daughter, by K. Arsenault Rivera. I wanted to love this for the queerness and the elegant writing, but I was turned off by the depiction of the cultures borrowed from here. 2/5 stars
–The Gods of Olympus, by Barbara Graziosi. Not much of a surprise for me, but a good survey of the Olympian gods and what people have believed about them over the centuries. 3/5 stars
–Damn Fine Story, by Chuck Wendig. Good advice on how to tell stories, though there’s quite a lot of filler padding it out. 3/5 stars
–Under the Pendulum Sun, by Jeannette Ng. It’s hard to know what to say about this one — it’s fascinating and twisted, playing with stories about the Fae and bringing Victorian realism to it. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. What’s hot and what’s not on my reading pile.

So how is everyone? Let me know and I’ll try and swing by and comment back ASAP, though I’m quite busy today!

Good morning, folks! Here is my haul of books about diseases, for background reading for my course. I’ve already torn through four of them, actually, and it is very helpful to have this perspective.

It hasn’t been a great week in some other respects, so hey, at least I have books. And bunny pictures.

Bought:

Can you tell what I’m studying this semester? Heh.

Read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

–Jhereg, by Steven Brust. A reread to get back to the series. It remains fun, though there were no surprises (obviously), and I think some of the fun does come from working things out. 4/5 stars
–Just One Damned Thing After Another, by Jodi Taylor. I don’t know why I’m the odd one out, but to me the title summarised how this book felt. It had a natural end and then — kept going. I can’t say I loved the characters, either, or the fact that the plot was advanced by sexual assaults. 2/5 stars
–Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, by Angela Saini. Takes a look at — and skewers — supposed science about in-built differences between genders. 3/5 stars
–A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle. I didn’t get the enduring charm that’s made this a classic, I’m afraid. 2/5 stars
–First Grave on the Right, by Darynda Jones. Holy rape culture, Batman. 1/5 stars
–Taste of Marrow, by Sarah Gailey. This had less of the team feel than the previous book, and basically I’m 10,000% here for the lot of them settling down, making a found family and having capers (together) forever. 4/5 stars
–The Beautiful Ones, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I didn’t love Signal to Noise, but this worked much better for me. It’s very Heyer-esque. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday: The weekly update on my currently reading stack, and what I might read next!

How’re you all doing? I’ll always visit back if you leave a comment here, so feel free to drop in a link directly to your STS post.