Category: General

Stacking the Shelves

Posted July 16, 2016 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

I’m back in Belgium! And I brought a bunch of books with me.

Fiction acquired:

I’m… not sure which of these I bought and which I got as review copies, now. But yay.

Non-fiction acquired:

I love me some non-fiction.

Comics acquired:

I, uh, needed to catch up…

Finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:
–Fever, by Mary Beth Keane. An interesting historical novel taking the point of view of Typhoid Mary, and doing reasonably well at making us sympathise with her. 4/5 stars
–Talking Hands, by Margalit Fox. Fascinating discussion of both the history of sign language and the development of languages in general, with a case study of an emerging language in a Bedouin village. 4/5 stars
–Murder and Mendelssohn, by Kerry Greenwood. This last (so far?) adventure with Phryne is a lot of fun, though the main feature is really the BBC Sherlock inspired John Wilson and Rupert Sheffield, and their Phryne-facilitated romance. 4/5 stars
–Saga Volume 3, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Awesome as usual, and mostly the volume in which I really loved the Lying Cat more than ever. 5/5 stars
–Mortal Heart, by Robin LaFevers. Thanks to a certain reveal that just didn’t quite fit the way I saw the world, this wasn’t my favourite of a series I have generally really enjoyed. 3/5 stars
–A Fall of Moondust, by Arthur C. Clarke. Fans of The Martian might enjoy this classic story of rescue in space, even if the situation — tourism on the moon — seems as far away as ever. 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: Sword at Sunset, by Rosemary Sutcliff. Powerful version of the Arthurian stories, with a real and strong connection between Arthur and Bedwyr (who here basically has the role of Lancelot). I wasn’t sure at first, but for me it really, really worked. 5/5 stars

Other posts:
–Top Ten Tuesday: Facts About Me. In which I am a somewhat scatterbrained silly person with synaesthesia.

So yeah, not much reading this week because… I don’t really know why, but on Friday I got Pokemon Go and went for a three hour walk (finally hitting my Fitbit goals again!) so I blame that. Somewhat. How is everyone?

Tags: books, comics, weekly roundup

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted July 12, 2016 by Nicky in General / 13 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is all about me. Well, by that I mean, the theme is ten facts about me. As in, ten facts about the blogger writing the post.

Yes, I am this awkward in person, too.

I can read in a lot more languages than I can speak (with some help from a glossary, dictionary or simultaneous translation, in some cases). I can read modern English (obviously), French, Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and Old Icelandic. I can only really speak English, though my French is starting to become usable. (I’m also learning Welsh and Dutch, but I am very, very far from being able to read in either. Though I do know how to say “I’m reading a book” in both.)
I can taste words. I’m a lexical->gustatory synaesthete. So, in fact, is my mother. I did not know this was not a thing until I read a book which included synaesthesia as a character trait. The word “torture” tastes of dark chocolate. The Hobbit as a whole tastes like Werther’s Originals. The associations do not necessarily make sense, but sometimes they really do. (Among my favourite words to say: steps, stepped, swept, slept, crept, leapt, crypt… I don’t even know what they taste of, but I like it. When I say words in French or Dutch, they do not have a flavour. Welsh does, though. Brains are fascinating!)
I still can’t pick a career, and I’m 26. Nearly 27. I mean, at this point I have an MA in English literature… but am now partway through a BSc. I read a non-fiction book and promptly want that to be my career. Microbiology, genetics, archaeology, psychology, neurology, literary theory… Can’t I do it all?
I couldn’t read until I was seven. So please stop talking about how real bookworms teach themselves to read at two, people.
If I can’t buy you books, I don’t know what to do with you. There are some great people in my life who just don’t read, and I cannot figure it out at all. What on earth do I buy you for presents???!
As a piece of geeky silliness related to #3, I once came up with a genetic cross which shows why I’m such a bookworm. It is, of course, entirely spurious and unlikely (though of course there’s probably genetic influence in me being an introvert, the synaesthesia, etc, which all contribute to making me a reader), but I had fun. TAHDAH.
I read to my house rabbit. She likes it and has been known to bite me if I stop before she’s ready.
My imagination is completely non-visual. My memory also. I remember things in text; I can’t picture things the way other people seem to. Instead, I have word-pictures, and sometimes that means I have more of a ‘feeling’ about a character than a mental image. So Faramir in the LOTR movies is wrong not because he looks wrong but because he is not as noble and capable of resisting the Ring as the real Faramir. (Even though the reasoning for changing that for the film completely made sense.)
The only thing I recall my parents banning me from reading as a kid was The Lord of the Rings. This was purely for the reason that my mother wanted me to be old enough to properly appreciate it, not because they ever policed the content of what I read.
My biggest library fine on a single book was something like four times the actual value of the book. It would have been cheaper to just pay for a replacement. And it was on my mother’s library card. Whoops. (The book was The Positronic Man, by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and I note with distress that I cannot find my copy. Which is doubly annoying as my partner bought it for me early in our relationship, after I mentioned reading it from the library a gazillion times but never seeing another copy since then.)

Welp, I hope that was a suitably entertaining set of facts!

Tags: about me, Top Ten Tuesday

Stacking the Shelves

Posted July 9, 2016 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

I haven’t read as much this week as I did last week, but that would be kind of difficult! What I have managed to do is catch up to all my reading goals, for which I’m very pleased with myself. Now just got to keep on top of it.

Received to review:

I think it’s been a while since I requested the Jo Clayton books, because I couldn’t remember at first why I asked for them. But Skeen’s Leap looks like fun. Also, hurrah, The Obelisk Gate! I need to read the first book still, but…

Books acquired:

I finally read The Copper Promise and liked it, so of course I had to pick up The Iron Ghost while I was here in the UK visiting my parents. I’ve been curious about The Aeronaut’s Windlass for a while, too, and though I’ve heard mixed reviews of The Grace of Kings, everything I’ve heard makes it sound intriguing.

And then of course, I also picked up a couple of TPBs. While I was here.

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:
–A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whalen Turner. I liked this a lot more on the reread, probably because I knew what to expect. Sophos is a lot less interesting to me than Gen, but the glimpse of Gen through his eyes is fascinating. 4/5 stars
–The Ancient Paths, by Graham Robb. I have to admit that actually evaluating the scholarship is beyond me, but the argument seems a bit prone to wishful thinking — “this would be convenient, so it’s true”, I guess. Still interesting. 3/5 stars
–Sick of Shadows, by M.C. Beaton. The first book was kind of fun, but the formula has worn very thin. 1/5 stars
–Saga Volume Two, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Saga continues to be awesome and funny, and still makes me laugh even when it’s gross humour I wouldn’t normally go in for. 4/5 stars
–Blood Lines, by Tanya Huff. Another fun entry in the series, though more or less as you’d expect. And there’s a mummy (the kind in bandages). 3/5 stars
–Airs Above the Ground, by Mary Stewart. Definitely not my favourite, probably because of the all-too-stereotypical relationship between the husband and wife — he beats someone up for her, he keeps secrets and that’s fine, etc, etc. 2/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: The Island of the Mighty, by Evangeline Walton. Not the best of the series by far, though it’s still an interesting and effective retelling. 3/5 stars

Other posts:
–Top Ten Tuesday: Underrated Books. The theme was books with less than 2,000 ratings; a lot of the ones I chose have very few ratings and even fewer reviews. I tried to pick a nice range of different books, with SF/F, non-fiction, poetry, detective stories…

So how’s everyone been? What’re you up to? Me, I’ve been visiting my parents this week and taking advantage of my Xbox to play all the Fable 2 and Fable 3. In fact, let me get back to that now.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted July 5, 2016 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

This week’s theme is ‘Top Ten Underrated Books’ — books with less than 2,000 ratings on Goodreads. Some of these only have a handful of ratings, though some are more popular; I tried to pick a range, because if I just picked the most underrated books it’d all be Welsh fiction, and y’all probably wouldn’t be that interested. (But if you are, go forth and read Kate Roberts, Rhys Davies, Menna Gallie, Margiad Evans…)

The Man Who Went into the West, Byron Rogers. A biography of R.S. Thomas, this was a lovely mix of fact and rather chatty character portrait: it makes R.S. Thomas come alive, as a man of contradictions and contrasts.
The Hidden Landscape, Richard Fortey. Or any of Fortey’s books, really; something about his style made even geology fascinating to me, and I’m not actually that interested in geology. There’s a poetry to the landscape and the long shaping of it which Fortey sees and communicates very clearly.
Cold Night Lullaby, Colin Mackay. Only read this collection of poetry if you want your heart to be ripped from your chest. It covers the poet’s experiences in Sarajevo as an aid worker, and inspired Karine Polwart’s song ‘Waterlily’. The video here includes Polwart’s introduction to Mackay’s life and work.
Dead Man’s Embers, Mari Strachan. Painful in a different way, this book follows the recovery of a man returned to his Welsh village after the Great War. There’s a touch of magic realism, but the emotional heart of the story is very real.
A Sorcerer’s Treason, Sarah Zettel. I haven’t read this in ages, and in fact need to reread it, but I remember it very fondly — and remember passing it round to various friends and relations, hence why my partner has a stack of this series tempting me to reread now…
A Taste of Blood Wine, Freda Warrington. I really didn’t expect to fall so in love with a gothic vampire romance, but it’s so unapologetic about examining the effects of the vampires and the way they choose to live on the people around them that I fell for it all the same. I think fans of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel books would probably be a good fit.
Iron and Gold, Hilda Vaughan. A classic fairytale situation, in a Welsh setting; it humanises the fairytale, making the pain of it really hit you, while also examining human relationships and how they work.
The Complete Brandstetter, Joseph Hansen. I’ve been amazed at how little I’ve ever heard about these books since my housemate wrote a dissertation on gay detectives in crime fiction. It deals with so many issues — AIDs, racial issues, homophobia, and beyond that into aging, relationships in general… and also delivers solid story after solid story.
Exiled From Camelot, Cherith Baldry. I read this for my own dissertation, which probably accounts for how fond I am of it. It’s not perfect, but the bond between Arthur and Kay is painfully real (and something often neglected in other modern fiction). It’s also an interesting mixture of materials, with stuff straight from both the Welsh sources and the much later Continental tradition.
The Fox’s Tower, and Other Tales, Yoon Ha Lee. I love microfiction, and this is one of the few collections I can think of which I would fairly whole-heartedly recommend. Yoon Ha Lee gets the art of the really short story.

I’ll be interested to see what other people have picked out this week — especially if you talk a bit about why. Link me!

Tags: Arthurian, books, poetry, SF/F, Top Ten Tuesday, Wales

Unstacking the Shelves

Posted July 2, 2016 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

This week was a good week for reading, as you can see! And for only the fifth time ever, I have no new books to showcase and can instead show off the ones I’ve finished reading. I didn’t even feature the full covers this time as I normally do for an Unstacking week cause there’s just so many! Twelve of these have been on my TBR for at least a year before I finally got round to them, so it really is good progress.

So please don’t tell me to enjoy my new books! Let me bask in being good.

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:

–Hasty Death, by M.C. Beaton. Fun enough, but it really isn’t anything special. 2/5 stars
–So You Want to Be a Wizard, by Diane Duane. I think I came to this at the wrong age — I’d probably have loved it when I was younger. 1/5 stars
–Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional, by David Waltham. Solid science and an interesting discussion of whether life is likely to be common or not in the universe, but I think we really don’t have enough data at all to actually come to a conclusion about how lucky or not we are. 3/5 stars
–Saga Volume One, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. A reread so I can get on with the series! Love it pretty much the same as before, especially the art. 4/5 stars
–Blood Trail, by Tanya Huff. Fun and brings in more supernatural creatures, etc. It’s fairly light comfort reading for me. 3/5 stars
–All For Love, by Jane Aiken Hodge. A good Heyer-esque romp, with some nice touches (the perfect switch isn’t perfect after all, etc). I enjoyed it a lot and will be reading more of Jane Aiken Hodge’s work. 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: The Song of Rhiannon, by Evangeline Walton. This book isn’t as powerful as the previous book, which is a bit of a relief after how harrowing that was. There’s a lot of good stuff here, and Manawydan remains an awesome character. 4/5 stars

Other posts:
–Top Ten Books I Was Forced to Read. It was a freebie week, so I mined for an old theme and covered books I had to read for class or research.
–ShelfLove Update. My update on the reading challenge I’m doing, which also includes my TBR for this month, as usual.

How’s everyone been? Good reading week? Anything exciting joined your piles?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

ShelfLove July Update

Posted July 1, 2016 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

ShelfLove Update!

Hello, everyone! June’s been an eventful month, with my wedding date now set (5th August) and a honeymoon booked (we didn’t choose Dublin because there’s a bookshop I want to visit there, nope)… and the UK deciding in a referendum, incomprehensibly from my point of view, to leave the European Union. Honestly, I kind of hope the last part is a bad dream.

Still, I’ve got a fair amount of reading done, woohoo!

The goals where I’m ahead are in blue; bang on are in green; behind by up to five books are in orange; anything else is in red. I now have a running total to show where I should be for the month too (e.g. by June I should’ve read 182 books overall).

Targets:
- 250 or less books bought;
- 366 books read overall;
- 200 books read which I owned prior to 2016;
- no more than 10% of income on books per month.
Books bought this year so far: 101/120.
May books bought: 8/20.
May budget: £0/£30 (purchases were with vouchers).
Owned books read this month: 23/16.
Books read this month: 34/30.
Owned books read overall: 95/100 (5 books behind).
Books read overall: 175/182 (7 books behind).

The discussion question for this month’s post is:

Why do you read the books you read? Explore why you gravitate towards certain genres and/or authors. How do you pick the next book you will read?

And the answer is, mostly whim. SF/F has always been the main genre I read; probably because my mother does. And I pick the next book I’ll read by whim, or by asking everyone what I should read next and then doing something opposite, because I’m contrary. Or sometimes I’ll just pick something off a shelf and accidentally consume it.

And a to-read list for July, since I do find having the guidance useful, even if — cough — I don’t stick to it all that well. I’m carrying over the books left from last month, as they’re part of series I’d like to get finished. The others are ARCs or books from the backlist I’ve been meaning to get to.

Peter S. Beagle, Summerlong.
Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette, The Tempering of Men.
Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette, An Apprentice to Elves.
Diane Duane, The Door into Sunset.
Marie Brennan, In Ashes Lie.
Tanya Huff, Blood Pact.
Tanya Huff, Blood Debt.
Sarah Kuhn, Heroine Complex.
Laura Lam, False Hearts.
Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit.
Juliet Marillier, Tower of Thorns.
Naomi Novik, Uprooted.
V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows.
Jen Williams, The Iron Ghost.
Jen Williams, The Silver Tide.

Here’s hoping it’s a productive month for all of us.

Tags: #ShelfLove, TBR

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted June 28, 2016 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie week, so I mined the past topics for something interesting, and grabbed “Top Ten Books I Was ‘Forced’ To Read”. Which I shall interpret as meaning books read for class, rather than books people pressed upon me in a friendly manner…

The Decameron, Boccaccio. Technically I don’t think I had to read this, but doing so definitely helps to understand the context of stuff like Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. And it is, in fact, a darn good read; some of the stories get repetitive, but there’s a lot of fascinating stuff going on.
The Annotated Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien and Douglas A. Anderson. Normally I probably wouldn’t be interested in an annotated edition, but this has some really fascinating stuff.
Cwmardy, Lewis Jones. Or basically all the Welsh literature I read for class, because it was all pretty eye-opening for me.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. My love affair with this poem didn’t really begin until I read it in the original, at a painstakingly slow speed, with a really intelligent tutor at the helm.
Njal’s Saga. I just love that you can sum it up as “John Grisham for ancient Iceland”.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie. No, really! It was a class on crime fiction and it was awesome, and while Christie’s writing could get formulaic, reading this one alone was pretty awesome.
Country Dance, Margiad Evans. Or was it Turf or Stone? Either way, this deserves a special mention alongside Cwmardy because the introduction just hit me in the gut with oh, I recognise this… I forget who it was, but someone wrote about not knowing anything about Welsh literature as they grew up, and thinking there was none, and yeah, I’ve been there.
The Mabinogion. Else what kind of Welsh person would I be? But I didn’t really ‘get’ it or dig into it until I had to read it and relate it to other texts and dig into research and scholarship.
Postcolonialism Revisited, Kirsti Bohata. The birth of my understanding of Wales as a colony, and our literature as postcolonial. Not that non-Welsh classmates tended to appreciate this point of view.
Richard III, William Shakespeare. I honestly did not ‘get’ Shakespeare at first, so never bothered to read the history plays. Which turned out to be my favourites.

English Lit degree: useful for something, at least.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Stacking the Shelves

Posted June 25, 2016 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

Hey everyone! This week I have kind of had a bit of a spree, which I needed post Brexit-vote — I don’t really talk politics here much; suffice it to say my planned future with my Belgian partner is looking a wee bit more unsettled. Hurrah democracy, but boo, I wish this hadn’t come to pass!

Books acquired:

A nice haul, right? A good mix of fantasy and a couple of the romance-suspense type novels I like for comfort reading. Hopefully it won’t take me long to repair the damage to my to read pile I’ve just done…

Received to review:

I heard good things about the first two, and requested the third on a whim.

I did get some good reading done earlier in the week, but the warm weather here took it out of me later in the week. I do recommend Being Mortal; it’s a really important examination of what dying is like in the modern world. It made me cry, but it’s very worth reading.

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted:
–Blood Price, by Tanya Huff. Fun urban fantasy with some unique features (like a protagonist with retinitis pigmentosa). Not Huff’s all time best or something, but a lot of fun. 3/5 stars
–Darwin’s Ghosts, by Rebecca Stott. We can be prone to thinking Darwin’s idea was totally original, but as he acknowledged himself, there were antecedents. This book discusses some of them — while acknowledging that Darwin’s theory is what finally made sense of all the data. 3/5 stars
–Midnight Never Come, by Marie Brennan. I didn’t love this as much as the Isabella Trent books, but that’d be a pretty high bar anyway. Midnight Never Come has a lot of interesting set-up, though one of the characters felt a little disconnected from the action. 4/5 stars
–King of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner. This book views Gen from the eyes of someone naive to his intelligence, and that makes it a lot of fun. Even though we made the same mistake when reading The Thief… 5/5 stars
–Unnatural Habits, by Kerry Greenwood. Lots of social commentary and a look at the deeper parts of Phryne’s personality, combined with a rather bitterly funny subplot. 4/5 stars
–Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury. Lots of beautiful prose and not so much substance, for me. Probably deservedly a classic though. 2/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: The Children of Llyr, by Evangeline Walton. More than the first book, this is where I really fell in love with Walton’s evocation of the Welsh mythology. Beautiful and harrowing. 5/5 stars

Other posts:
–Top Ten Books from 2016 So Far. I didn’t really struggle with this, which surprised me! Looks like I’m pretty caught up.

How’s everyone been doing?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted June 21, 2016 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

This week’s theme is “Top Ten 2016 Releases So Far”. And I’m not sure I’ve read ten yet… But let’s have a shot.

This Savage Song, by Victoria Schwab. I had this as an ARC and it’s finally out; it’s awesome, and possibly my favourite of her books so far.
The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North. Fascinating core idea and well-executed. I think I like it more than Touch or The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, and I did like those too.
The Raven and the Reindeer, by T. Kingfisher. Fun lesbian retelling of ‘The Snow Queen’. No, I’m not kidding.
In the Labyrinth of Drakes, by Marie Brennan. Enormously satisfying for fans of the series, and it keeps on bringing the awesome.
Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire. For a novella, this was very satisfying, and it’s definitely encouraged me to get on and read more of McGuire’s work.
The Winner’s Kiss, by Marie Rutkoski. Picked right back up again after I disliked some things about the second book, and gave us an excellent end.
The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All The Way Home, by Catherynne M. Valente. A lovely end to the series, and avoided the trope I was really scared of.
City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Give me mooooooore…
Kingfisher, by Patricia A. McKillip. I suspect I’ll appreciate this more if I ever come back and reread it. It has her usual magic all the same.
The Girl From Everywhere, by Heidi Heilig. Fascinating setting (Hawaii, 1884) and some awesome characters. By which I mostly mean Kash.

Well, that was surprisingly easy! I guess I’m keeping up better than I thought.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Stacking the Shelves

Posted June 18, 2016 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

Hey everyone! It’s been a busy week, but finally my wedding plans are looking more sorted and both me and my partner are done with assignments and such (for now). Now I can read more, right? Right?!

Books received to review:

I wasn’t 100% sold on Signal to Noise, but I’m interested in this one all the same.

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:
–The Book of Phoenix, by Nnedi Okorafor. Maybe the strongest of Okorafor’s books I’ve read so far, at least for me. It’s crammed full of stuff and I didn’t feel like it really used it all, but it was a good narrative of how we make myth. 3/5 stars
–The Raven and the Reindeer, by T. Kingfisher. A sweet version of The Snow Queen, with a twist. Gerta still rescues Kay, but along the way she meets her real love… 4/5 stars
–Spider-Woman: New Duds, by Dennis Hopeless and Javier Rodriguez. A fun redesign for Jessica Drew, and an interesting story… unfortunately cut off by Secret Wars. 3/5 stars
–The Other Wind, by Ursula Le Guin. The ending this series deserved, beautifully dealing with some of the issues that might have been nagging at the observant. 4/5 stars
–Snobbery With Violence, by M.C. Beaton. Relatively silly and light, with a by-the-numbers mystery, but it entertained me. 3/5 stars
–Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand. Has a real sense of the uncanny and an interesting structure (which some people might find annoying, but which I enjoyed). Never pushes into horror for me, but stays solidly unsettlingly. There’s one bone-chilling moment, though… 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: Prince of Annwn, by Evangeline Walton. Skillful retelling of the First Branch of the Mabinogion. Expands and humanises, but deals very well with the original material and keeps everything in line with it. 3/5 stars

Other posts:
–Top Ten Most Anticipated Releases for the Second Half of the Year. What it says on the tin. Gimme!

How’s everyone been?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup