Category: General

Stacking the Shelves

Posted February 20, 2016 by Nicky in General / 33 Comments

It’s been a busy week, both for books bought and books read! What’s everyone else been getting their hands on or reading this week?

Books bought

Truthwitch arrived in Illumicrate’s second box, and I’m excited to read it — especially with Robin Hobb’s endorsement on the cover. Courage is the Price is written by a friend of mine, and now it has a print edition, so of course I had to get it. Aaaand Waterstones had a copy of A Gathering of Shadows already, so I grabbed it and cancelled my preorder. But, to make up for that (since apparently sales like that don’t count for first week sales), here is a preorder giveaway!

Plus, uh, a batch of comics. Which I justify by pointing out they are female superheroes, and as such need supporting.

I mean, until Jessica Drew, Carol Danvers and Hope Van Dyne join the Avengers in the MCU, I won’t believe that Marvel have finally got the message we want them.

Library books

I already own The Girl in the Road and The Speed of Dark… somewhere. This should be impetus to read them. In theory.

Books to review

Thanks, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury and Saga Press! Because I am dreadfully behind, False Hearts will actually be my first book by Laura Lam, and I’ve only just got The Winner’s Curse… good thing I felt like reading it, haha.

Read this week:

Yes, I did read all of those. Yes, I do eat and sleep, we just don’t quite understand how I fit it in.

Reviews this week:
–Soundless, by Richelle Mead. Not a favourite of mine, unfortunately, especially because it features the magical healing of a deaf character. 2/5 stars
–The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, by Catherynne M. Valente. Now this I loved, quite predictably, since I’ve enjoyed the whole series. It’s a Changeling-child of a book within the series, but I didn’t resent it for that. 4/5 stars
–Lois Lane: Fallout, by Gwenda Bond. I love superhero novels, and I love the increasing role of women in comics and comic-related media. So, yep, I loved this, too. 4/5 stars
–Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, by Jennifer Kloester. It has a lot of detail, and does its best to shine a light on a woman who was very private when alive. 4/5 stars
–Colour Me Calm: Mandalas, by Elizabeth James. One quibble: it had at least one design that has been published before. It could be innocent, but it bothered me a bit. 3/5 stars
–Death by Water, by Kerry Greenwood. I enjoyed this one a lot, since it allows Phryne to leave behind the comforts of home and her familiar cast, and go a bit further afield. 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: Camelot’s Blood, by Sarah Zettel. The last of the quartet, this romance does interesting things with the Arthurian setting. 4/5 stars

Other posts:
–Appreciating comics. A piece on how exactly I came to love comics — and appreciate them as an art form.
–Top Ten Tuesday: Songs I Wish Were Books. Heavy on the modern folk music.
–Review of Illumicrate’s Box #2. What it says on the tin!

And seriously, if you like V.E. Schwab’s work and haven’t got a preorder of A Gathering of Shadows, welp, I got you covered.

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 16, 2016 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

This week’s theme is all about music — and one of the suggestions is “10 songs I wish were books”. Well, let’s see…

Suzanne Vega’s ‘Gypsy’. Please do not ever look for me, but with me you will stay / and you will hear yourself in song blowing by one day.
Dar Williams’ ‘The Ocean’. I didn’t go back today, I wanted to show you / that I was more land than water / I went to pick flowers, I brought them to you / Look at me, look at them, with their salt up the stem.
Danny Schmidt’s ‘Firestorm’. I used to flap my tongue like fists of flint against the granite fools / Until sparks blazed in my eyes, it’s true / But now I’m done with that, I haven’t / Torched the woods to kill one rabbit / Not for years, not until they came and fucked with you.
Show of Hands’ ‘Haunt You’. I’ll haunt you / Sleep in fear / Whisper curses in your ear / I’ll course right through your heart of steel.
Jon Boden’s ‘Beat the Bounds’. Sat behind the broken wheel / soft-top gone, nothing left to steal / broken shades upon her eyes / oblivious to cloudy skies.
Fairport Convention’s ‘Matty Groves’. “A grave, a grave,” Lord Donald cried / “To put these lovers in / But bury my lady at the top / For she was of noble kin.”
Heather Dale’s ‘Lady of the Lake’. And their touch was like a lover’s / Clear and sweet, drenching and unfolding / With no need for air or sunlight in the deep / And in the passions that they bared / In pledges won and secrets shared / They’d stand together in what destiny would bring / And crown a king.
Heather Dale’s ‘Confession’. She’s given up the veil, the vows she’d sworn / Abandoned every effort to conform / Without a word to anyone she’s gone her way alone / A dove escaping back into the storm.
Dar Williams’ ‘This Was Pompeii’. I am thinking about a teacup / Suspended and half-served / and all the scholars know is that it’s perfectly preserved.
Thea Gilmore & Joan Baez’s ‘The Lower Road’. From the fruit on a poplar tree / To the bruise round a band of gold / From the blood in a far country / To the war of just growing old / We travel a lower road / And it’s lonely and it is cold.

I listen to folk music a lot, so there’s a whole wealth of songs which tell stories. And sometimes I’d like a glimpse deeper…

Tags: Top Ten Tuesday

Appreciating comics

Posted February 15, 2016 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

A lot of readers don’t like comics, or just can’t get into them, or can’t see what extra dimension comics add that works for other people. And I get it; there was a point where I didn’t really read comics, and in fact looked down on them as little more than picture books with extra dialogue (because teenagers can be snobs like that, and because I had some cognitive dissonance which allowed me to claim manga was something else entirely). But someone comments on one of my reviews today and asked what I like about comics in general, and I found myself wanting to explore it at some length.

I started reading comics really because of the MCU. I wanted more of Steve Rogers (“I don’t want to kill anyone, I just don’t like bullies, wherever they’re from”) — much as I loved him on the screen, that was only a handful of hours of time with him, and a lot of that taken up with explosions and supervillainy. I don’t think I particularly started with Cap comics, but I did mostly start with Marvel, where the character colours a lot of the narratives because he’s such an integral Marvel character — an instigator of Civil War, a moral compass, the leader of the Avengers. A mentor to the Young Avengers; a friend to so many others.

And then I found that in comics there was a whole lot more diversity, too. Female superheroes like Captain Marvel, whose translation to the screen we’re still awaiting. Gay superheroes like Teddy Altman and Billy Kaplan. Disabled characters like Vengeance Moth and Oracle.

I think that’s when I got hooked. For the characters. But also because comics could tell me more about those characters, and give my very non-visual brain more to work with: the way they stand, the way they move, the way they react. The bonds between characters which would be overstated if you took a paragraph to describe them, but which are explained so simply in a single panel of a comic.

It’s also worth noting that there are tons of really worthwhile comics which are not about superheroes, which is something people forget, because the words comics and superheroes have become so strongly linked. But there’s awesome stuff out there — The Wicked + The Divine, Bitch Planet, Saga, Rat Queens — which explores other kinds of worlds, and works like Maus and Persepolis which use the form to explore very serious, autobiographical subjects.

What really taught me to appreciate comics was Prof. William Kuskin’s MOOC, Comic Books and Graphic Novels. It’s a very rewarding course if you’re willing to engage with it, teaching you to dissect a page of a comic in just the same way you might a famous poem — understanding the conventions of the form like panels and gutters in the same way as you can learn to spot rhythms and couplets. It’s one thing to unconsciously be affected by these things, I find, and another to take a moment to realise how the page ratchets up the tension, how a particular artist has broken a convention or bent a rule to let the action explode out of the page.

Comics aren’t just novels with pictures — which is why I find the term graphic novel a bit disingenuous. It’s a whole different form, combining words and art, and I think it’s best appreciated that way. Reading it just for the words or the images and not for the way they combine to tell the story is definitely not the best way to experience them.

(And if it remains not your thing, that’s fine, just like it’s fine not to like poetry.)

Tags: comics, discussion

Stacking the Shelves

Posted February 13, 2016 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

Happy Saturday, everyone! I do look forward to my Saturday posts and going round the regular blogs and some new ones, saying hi, so don’t be shy to leave a comment here — I’ll always reply and comment back on one of your blog posts too. It’s been a quiet week, really: reading-wise, anyway. I did have a friend visiting from the US, so Monday and Tuesday were spent pretending to be a tour guide.

Received to review:

I still need to read Garden Spells, so hopefully First Frost will be an impetus to read both! I’m quite hopeful given a couple of friends’ enthusiasm for them. I got Lois Lane Fallout via maximumpop, who have an astounding amount of good book giveaways.

Bought:

Well, City of Blades actually came via my friend from the US, so it would match my copy of City of Stairs, and The Buried Book and Lone Survivors were gifts from another friend. All of these come from my wishlist, so I’m looking forward to getting stuck in. Especially The Wicked + The Divine!

Library:

I am feeling like a Heyer binge, so I am pleased to note my local library has a bunch in stock at the moment. I need to finish reading Mary Stewart’s Arthurian books, for sure, and I’m a completist, so I had to pick up the Age of Ultron Prelude. Demon Road is Cait @ Paper Fury’s fault.

Read this week:

Reviews this week:
–Rose Cottage, by Mary Stewart. A quiet romance I reread for the familiarity/comfort factor. 3/5 stars
–The Collectors, by Philip Pullman, read by Bill Nighy. Atmospheric and creepy, and the narrator really worked. 4/5 stars
–Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey. My first encounter with Lackey’s Valdemar, surprising as that may be considering how long I’ve loved this genre. I quite enjoyed it, but the writing can be weak. 3/5 stars
–The Midnight Queen, by Sylvia Izzo Hunter. A little bit of Sorcerer to the Crown, a little bit of Jonathan Strange & Norrell, and a lot of sweet romance. 4/5 stars
–Song for the Basilisk, by Patricia McKillip. Lovely, though not the most accessible of McKillip’s books. 4/5 stars
–Avengers: Age of Ultron Prelude, by Joe Bennett and Will Pilgrim. Unfortunately, rather a waste of time unless you seriously need an update. 2/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: Camelot’s Sword, by Sarah Zettel. Third in the series, and seeing these posts go up is making me really want to reread them… oops? 4/5 stars

Other posts:
–Blog accessibility. A really important post for me, suggesting quick tips to make your blog easy for readers with visual issues to read.
–Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Romances I’ve Loved. Some fairly predictable ones here…

What’s everyone else been up to? Any book sprees, or have you been more restrained than me?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 9, 2016 by Nicky in General / 15 Comments

This week’s theme is a Valentine’s Day related freebie, so I’m going to put together a list of fictional romances I have loved! And probably no one will be surprised by my choices.

Gawain and Dame Ragnell. Sarah Zettel’s Camelot’s Shadow is the only contemporary book I can think of that uses these two in the way I’d like. I love that, in the original(? oldest extant might be a better word) medieval version, it’s all about equality. Gawain gives Ragnell a choice about her own life, her own body. How can that not appeal?
Roux and Vianne, from Joanne Harris’ Chocolat. I used to think of this book as a guilty pleasure, but having given that whole concept up, I have to cop to this one (and why not?). The undemanding connection between these two really works for me — and reminds me of a favourite song, Suzanne Vega’s ‘Gypsy’.
Joscelin and Phèdre, from Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart. I want a Joscelin of my own! Okay, they take some time getting there, but they come to an understanding and they are devoted to each other.
Pilar and Loup, from Jacqueline Carey’s Santa Olivia. They’re just… adorable. Puppy love and all.
Anluan and Catrin, from Juliet Marillier’s Heart’s Blood. A lovely Beauty and the Beast retelling, and I really believed in the way these two damaged people came together.
Marco and Celia, from Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. This book is just… gorgeous. I need to reread it.
Lord Peter and Harriet, from Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison. Well, the whole series, of course. The patience he has with her, and the way they finally, finally get together… “If I should once give way to Peter, I should go up like straw.”
Kate and Curran, from Ilona Andrews’ Magic Bites. Again, the whole series. They’re just… such good banter and also passion and irritation and… yep.
Phryne and Lin Chung, from Kerry Greenwood’s Away With the Fairies. I might wish for Phryne to flirt with someone else again, but I do enjoy the bond between these two.
Simon and Baz, from Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On. Okay, I haven’t even read it yet, but I’ve peeked, and eeeeh.

And of course, every Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart and Susanna Kearsley romance feels perfect as I read it — they just don’t tend to stick in my head separately the way these do.

Tags: books, romance, Top Ten Tuesday

Blog accessibility

Posted February 8, 2016 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

It’s time to have a quick chat about something: blog accessibility. It’s particularly important to me because my mother has macular degeneration and I’ve been a volunteer for two charities which advocate for people who have sight-related disabilities, and because I know I have at least one regular reading my blog who uses a screenreader. It’s something you might not be very conscious of — especially if, as I found was pretty common, you assume that people with sight issues don’t (can’t) read.

Well, the technology for disabled people to keep on reading is definitely out there — magnifiers, audiobooks, ereaders, even plain ol’ being read to. And likewise, there’s plenty of assistive technology available for participation online, from screenreaders to browser extensions. I’m willing to bet there are some bloggers who use these technologies, maybe without talking about it, and probably there are people who are frustrated about participating because of issues, like pages with teeny tiny fonts, grey on white text, twiddly fonts, no alt text, etc, etc.

So! What can we do to fix this? It’s a lot of information to take in, but there is a website specifically teaching web accessibility, if you want to go the whole hog: the Web Accessibility Initiative. There’s also an accessibility evaluation tool called WAVE, which might help. And there’s a checklist I run through in my head (which I spent entirely too much time making into an acronym):

ACCESS

Alt(ernative) text. If you include an image, describe that image in the alt text. All you need is to add alt=”Description” to the HTML. Then screenreaders will read out the description instead of skipping the image entirely.
Contrast and colour. Have you got grey text on a black or white background? If so, there’s a good chance some people can’t read it at all, and others will get headaches trying! Black against white (and white against black) are a good contrast, obviously, and I can’t imagine anyone wants to go with black on neon yellow, which is supposed to be very readable. But try and think about contrast when designing your blog.
Ease. Is it easy to find things on your site, or do people have to trawl through miles of menus to find something?
Size. This is somewhat adjustable by the end-user, but if you have BIG TEXT for reviews and tiny text for comments, people will need to zoom in and out depending on which part of the page they’re on. Keeping things more or less the same size should help, and you can check this easily yourself by zooming in and out in your browser.
Style. If you’re using a font with serifs (little extra strokes on the letters), this can be difficult for people with dyslexia and visual issues. There’s a good page here about font choices and how to present text on your webpage.

I am sure there’s a ton of stuff which that leaves out, but it’s a good jumping off point, I think, along with using evaluation tools. The benefit of all this is that your site will look good to all your visitors, if you plan for them in the first place, and more people can participate in our community and share their views and experiences. Can’t see a downside to (book) blog accessibility!

As for my own blog accessibility, I have already worked on it somewhat (with my mother’s feedback and web evaluation tools), and I’m always open to making more modifications, too. My skills with css and coding and so on are non-existent, so I might be limited in exactly what I can do. Still, that’s what the internet/my techy partner is for, and I will do my best to accommodate any disability needs!

Tags: accessibility, discussion

Stacking the Shelves

Posted February 6, 2016 by Nicky in General / 23 Comments

This is definitely not an unstacking week! I bought five books this week, and received one to review as well. And I didn’t get much reading done at all… oops!

Received to review:

I’m quite excited about this one! I love McKillip’s work.

Bought:

I’ve heard mixed things about Defy and Soundless, but I was curious anyway and had leftover euros to spend. So hurrah! And hey, I went three months without buying books…

Read this week:

Reviews this week:

–Kingfisher, Patricia McKillip. Her first novel in a long time, everyone’s very excited about this. And I think she delivers. 4/5 stars
–Queen of the Flowers, Kerry Greenwood. Fun and more personal/involving than the last couple of books. 4/5 stars
–Time’s Anvil: England, Archaeology and the Imagination, Richard Morris. A bit prone to rambling and tangents, but interesting. 3/5 stars
–Dreamsnake, Vonda N. McIntyre. A reread for me. Worth the second visit, though there’s a lot of things I’d still like to know! 4/5 stars
–Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Interesting ideas — magic in pop music and vinyl! 3/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: Camelot’s Honour, Sarah Zettel. Maybe the most influenced by Welsh mythology of the whole series, this is a comfort read for me. 4/5 stars

February TBR

Posted February 3, 2016 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

I don’t know why anyone believes the TBR stacks I make, since I so often randomly deviate and wander off. Nonetheless, I’m behind on my reading goal already and need, to catch up, to read 37 books in February. Eek. So here’s a somewhat random selection, for inspiration if I’m wondering what to read…

Already reading:

The Tiger and the Wolf, Adrian Tchiakovsky. Also a review copy and due out in a few days, so yeah, hurry up, self.
Song for the Basilisk, Patricia McKillip. I’m quite a way through this, so it should be easy to finish!
Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, Jennifer Kloester. Partway through this, and I believe the library wants it back. So hurry up, self!
Shiver, Maggie Stiefvater. This is a really fast read for me and I’m not sure why I haven’t finished it already. Got distracted, I guess…
The Genome, Sergei Lukyanenko. I was pretty captivated by this a few weeks ago, so hopefully I can get back into it and eat it up.
Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey. Though the library hasn’t called to ask when the hell I’m going to return this, they’d have a perfect right…

ARCs/new releases:

Dreams of Distant Shores, Patricia McKillip. Even my review isn’t due until May 10th, but shush. I want to get to this one.
Different Class, Joanne Harris. Got this for review, and I typically eat up Harris’ prose, so…
City of Blades, Robert Jackson Bennett. I have to read this, omg.
Lois Lane: Fallout, Gwenda Bond. Slightly demanding email saying my deadline is 15th February for a book I won, but okay.
Rebel of the Sands, Alwyn Hamilton. Found in a Belgian bookshop in advance of the release date, so it’s fate, right?

Argh, read some books you already own:

Saints Astray, Jacqueline Carey. Should be a fast read, judging from how fast my sister tore through it, and it’s why I reread Santa Olivia…
Library of Souls, Ransom Riggs. Finishes up the trilogy!
Death by Water, Kerry Greenwood. It’s inevitable I’m going to read at least one Phryne book, let’s be honest.
The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, Catherynne M. Valente. I’ve been craving this for a while, it’s about time.
Dreamer’s Pool, Juliet Marillier. Before the people waiting for me to read it eat me or something.
The Wrath & the Dawn, Renee Ahdieh. People have ARCs of the next book. Clearly it is time to get off my butt.
Carry On, Rainbow Rowell. I need to stop just admiring the cover and peeking at the end.
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers. I am so sold on this book, you don’t need to say a word more. I’m convinced I’ll like it.
Companion to Wolves, Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear. I love both authors (or at least, Monette’s work as Katherine Addison). It’s time!
Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo. Everybody seems to love this even more than the Grisha books. So okay, it’s time!

Obviously, I’m hoping to read a lot more than this. But if I manage to read this bunch, I’ll be happy!

Tags: books, TBR

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 2, 2016 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

This week’s theme from The Broke and Bookish is about past and future settings, so I decided to pick out ten historical/alternate history settings which I’ve loved. I’m pretty eclectic and a good story can get me interested in just about any period, so this might be a rather mixed list…

Farthing, Jo Walton. This alternate history is set post-WWII, and asks, what if we compromised with Nazi Germany? What happens then? What societal creep, what slow insidious curtailing of freedom? It’s a heartbreaking trilogy, full of characters to love and hate, and I think Jo does a great job evoking that version of Britain.
The Phryne Fisher books by Kerry Greenwood. I never thought of Australia as a setting I’d like to read about, but I am greatly enjoying this whole series, and the era. I have ghostwritten a book with a flapper heroine, so that might help with my fascination with Phryne and her Melbourne.
Arthurian Britain, in all kinds of books. Or post-Arthurian, in the case of The Buried Giant. It’s quite a wide field, really; some people have a Romanised Arthur, some a very Saxon Arthur. There’s some great stuff which contextualises Arthur in various historical periods — Bernard Cornwell being a good example of an anti-Saxon, post-Roman Arthur.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke. The way the magic is integrated into the early nineteenth century and its history works perfectly for me. It’s a long book, but so rich in detail and care that I don’t mind a second of it.
Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan. That whole series, really — and some other books featuring the exploits of women in that sort of period, like Mary Robinette Kowal’s Regency fantasies. Finding a bigger place for women in history? A+++.
The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff. Whatever inaccuracies there might be in Sutcliff’s work, it feels right. I’ve always loved her Roman/post-Roman Britain books, and pretty much everything she writes has a fantastic sense of time and place. The Eagle of the Ninth I’ve always loved especially, because it takes a historical mystery and examines it, tries to explain it through fiction.
The Bearkeeper’s Daughter, Gillian Bradshaw. Along with Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sailing to Sarantium and the sequel, this book opened my eyes to the possibility of historical fiction set in Constantinople. This wasn’t a period of history I knew well or thought much about, but now I’d happily pick up more books set there.
Dissolution, C.J. Sansom. And other medieval/renaissance detective stories, like the Cadfael books, too. But this one felt especially rooted in the time period, shaped by the politics and issues of the time.
Outlaw, Angus Donald. Okay, that book itself wasn’t one of my favourites, but that whole period dealing with Robin Hood? Like the Arthurian stories, I love it when writers choose to make Robin Hood feel as real as possible.
Greek/Roman settings. That encompasses Rosemary Sutcliff’s work in some ways, and Jo Walton’s Thessaly books too. It’s just a great period of time with all kinds of things going on, where you can introduce mythic elements or figures that have become legendary now, at the same time as peopling the streets of Rome or Pompeii with ancient people.

So yeah, quite a mixed bag. Looking forward to seeing what other people have this week!

Tags: books, Gillian Bradshaw, Jo Walton, Rosemary Sutcliff, Top Ten Tuesday

ShelfLove February Update

Posted February 1, 2016 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

ShelfLove Update!

It’s February already?! Who let that happen? Okay, first up, the theme for this month is about fictional boyfriends/girlfriends/best friends. I think anyone who knows me well, or even knows this blog quite well, knows that my immediate choice for a friend would be Mori, from Jo Walton’s Among Others. Okay, I’m rather older than her, but she’s mature for her age and we have experiences in common (like being Welsh in a posh English school and, you know, books). I feel like we could quite happily co-exist, elbow to elbow, each reading a book and demanding nothing of the other — and yet also talk endlessly about books when we feel like it. Or philosophy, or the strangeness of people, or fairies, or whatever else came to mind.

Books bought this year so far: 0.
January budget: £0 spent of £30.
Owned books read: 13/200.
Books read overall: 23/365.

A good start, I think! It’s actually been three months since I bought myself any books, though as this goes live I am probably in a bookshop, spending the last of my euros in a guilt-free, non-budgeted spree. (Basically, all my euros are from the January budget, and were originally for food, laundry, whatever came up while visiting my partner. I’m going back to Britain on Saturday, so my remaining euros are now game to use for anything. Of course, the rule of only buying books I really want is still in place, and any euros left over will be saved for my next visit. I won’t buy books just for the sake of buying books!)

Reading-wise, I need to read on average 16 owned books a month to hit that 200 book target, and an average of a book a day to hit my overall target. So clearly, I need to cancel work and read more, right? And, ahem, spend less time playing Assassin’s Creed Unity…

Tags: #ShelfLove, books