Category: General

No Book Buying Challenge: Finances

Posted February 18, 2015 by in General / 4 Comments

I promised an update on the #ShelfLove challenge today, so here it is! The discussion this month is around budgets, which means I can pretty much stick to the same format as my extra updates for last month.

  • 7/51+ already owned books read
  • Spent: £21 out of ~£30 budget (budget is 10% of my income) for January
  • Spent: £5 out of ~£25 budget for February

As for my other resolutions:

  • No books impulse-bought
  • Read every day
  • Bed before midnight… mostly
  • Up before ten every day
  • Only bought one book from a series at a time
  • Posted to the blog every day
  • Commented on at least one other blog every day
  • Tithed 10% in January, February tithe not done yet
  • Done 18 hours volunteering total
  • Reading/reviewing books from NG/etc… in progress

As for the money I save, mostly it’s going to my savings account. I am planning a slightly more complex budget so I can also save up separately for my next games console, but the main goal is just to build up my reserves a bit. It’s working well so far; I’ve shunted at least £200 into my savings so far this year, which may not be a lot for everyone but certainly is a respectable amount for me!

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 17, 2015 by in General / 12 Comments

This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is “top ten book related problems I have”. This is, ahaha, not at all difficult for me.

  1. I had to modify my ereader to fit more books on it. No really, I even made a post to show other people how.
  2. I have over 1,000 books on Mt. TBR. I don’t actually dare count. And that doesn’t really include ARCs and library books.
  3. I don’t have enough shelves. See #2.
  4. Nobody ever knows what books to buy me because I might’ve got them already. Though now I have a wishlist, so there’s no excuse.
  5. I really like lists. This can sometimes get in the way of actually reading the books on said list.
  6. There are some books I daren’t share with my partner in case she hates them. This is rare, but she doesn’t, for example, share my love for Cherie Priest’s Bloodshot and Hellbent, and it makes me pout.
  7. My books are never in the right place. I travel a lot. You know I’m gonna want to read something as soon as I leave it somewhere for a few months.
  8. Why isn’t it out in ebook? I like instant gratification, and ebooks are the easiest way. What do you mean I can’t get most of Patricia McKillip’s books on Kobo?!
  9. Why isn’t it out yet? Impatient!
  10. I preordered it, I was really excited… and a year later, I haven’t got to it yet. Um. Oops.

What’re your problems, guys?

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My Cup of Tea

Posted February 15, 2015 by in General / 23 Comments

I think this would be a nice one to go viral: a post in which we celebrate the tropes we love instead of griping about the ones we don’t (which are, no doubt, someone else’s favourites). So thanks to Kaja from Of Dragons and Hearts, here is a post about tropes which are, so to speak, my cup of tea.*

  • The loveable rogue. Locke Lamora, I am looking at you right now, but also looking further back into my reading past: Jimmy the Hand, Crowley from Good Omens, Gaiman’s Marquis de Carabas… And perhaps best of all, though not from books: Captain Malcolm Reynolds.
  • The paladin. Joscelin Verreuil. Captain America.
  • The second son. Faramir. Arutha. Verity Farseer. Josua from The Dragonbone Chair. I don’t know what it is, but I tend to prefer the younger brother.
  • Heists. You have a really clever plan, you say? Morally dubious, you say? As long as it’s fiction, I’m along for the ride.
  • Superheroes. Uh. I’m not sure this even needed to be said. But not just guys like Steve Rogers, who have been altered for it, but the people who make themselves into heroes, too, like Hawkeye.
  • Moral ambiguity. Nobody’s perfect, and while a character who is a total bastard just isn’t fun for me, it’s nice when a character isn’t a total angel.
  • Guilty conscience. Perhaps especially when it’s not really that person’s fault. Like, say Steve Rogers blames himself for Bucky’s death — it’s not really his fault, he’s in no way a bad guy, but the fact that he can believe this makes him that bit more human and believable.
  • Dragons/elves/aliens are nothing like humans. Capricious, commanding, nothing like the regal/wise/enlightened creatures we expect? Interesting!
  • Friends like brothers. “I’m with you till the end of the line.” Gaaah. Gaaaaaah. Or Marcus and Esca, Locke and Jean, Fitz and Nighteyes, Dean and Castiel…
  • Secretly in love. Shut up, I am not a ginormous softie. I’m not!

*I may be British, but I don’t actually like tea. Chamomile tea or fruit teas, maybe. Mostly not.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted February 14, 2015 by in General / 16 Comments

How’s everybody now? I really need to post an update on the #ShelfLove challenge — I’ll probably schedule that for Wednesday, since Sunday is going to be about celebrating the things I love in fiction, a la Kaja’s ‘Totally My Cup of Tea‘ post. In short: I’m still doing well. No books bought by me this week, though my Valentine’s gift from my partner was one (one!) book which I’ve been wanting for a while… Tahdah!

Cover of Owl and the Japanese Circus by Kristi Charish

I’ve also had quite a few review copies this week, which was cause for plenty of squee:

Cover of Chaos Station by Kelly Jensen and Jenn Burke Cover of The Burning Land by Victoria Strauss Cover of The Awakened City by Victoria Strauss

And if anyone is mouthing off about the lack of female superheroes, they should just take a look at my pull list — this is stuff that came out just this week.

Thor Captain Marvel Spider-woman

Which reminds me that I should post about my pull list sometime. And see if I can get hold of some more comics featuring Anya Corazon/Spider-girl. Not long till the first issue of Spider-Gwen!

Lest we forget, I’ve also been to the library. I worked out how many library books I had last week and went on the attack this week, but somehow I always seem to find another book I want.

Cover of This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart Cover of Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart Cover of Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Cover of Elric of Melnibone and Other Stories by Michael Moorcock Cover of The Galaxy Game, by Karen Lord

The Mary Stewarts and Michael Moorcock I’ve read before, but I’m trying to take in all of Elric so I’m starting from the beginning, and Mary Stewart is just comfort reading for me. The Galaxy Game I received a while ago as a review copy and didn’t get round to, so I’m making sure to show my interest now. And Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a book I’ve meant to read for a while, and even own — somewhere.

How’s everyone doing? Still sticking to your resolutions and behaving yourselves now 2015’s in its second month?

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 10, 2015 by in General / 12 Comments

This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is ‘Top Ten Things I Like/Dislike When It Comes To Romances In Books’.

Top Five I Like:

  1. Intensity. I like to see some give and take. The ability to say ‘you’re wrong’, yell at someone, and still have them respect you.
  2. Communication. Talk. To. Them. (The flipside, miscommunication, tends to really embarrass me — I’m easy to embarrass.)
  3. Forbidden love. Actually, this has to be done right, but I spent most of my academic study on Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde. Rosalind Miles’ take on both failed for me, but Steinbeck did Lancelot and Guinevere in a lovely way, and I’ve played with both stories in my own writing.
  4. “I see who you really are.” The classic is, of course, Beauty and the Beast.
  5. Equal partnership. Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle might not be the most popular couple in the Arthurian canon, but they’re my favourite by far. Challenged to tell another knight what women want most or be killed, Arthur flounders. A really ugly woman comes to court and says she will give the answer — if Sir Gawain marries her. He says yes, of course, and she gives the answer that saves Arthur’s life: “sovereignty”, the power to choose for oneself, is what women most want. So the wedding goes ahead, but on their wedding night, Ragnelle turns out to be a beautiful young maiden. She asks Gawain whether he would rather she be a beautiful woman in the daytime, when everyone can see her, or at night, when only he can. He lets her choose — which breaks the whole spell she’s under, because he has given her “sovereynté”. It’s maybe the most equal partnership in Arthurian literature, because it’s not from courtly literature where a knight is supposed to worship his lady, and yet it still gives power to the female partner, and shows him respecting her.

Top Five I Dislike: 

  1. “You are a precious little flower and I will protect you.” Enough said.
  2. Stalking = love. Just say no.
  3. Keeping secrets. I guess that’s often related to #1, but yeesh, come on, be honest. (Circumvented if this has consequences, though. Like in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.)
  4. Insta-love. Still needs saying, apparently. Which is actually where people fall down for me even if the things I mentioned above are alright!
  5. “I’m too low/high in station to marry you.” This can be played well (come on, I like Jane Eyre), but after a certain era, the class implications become too awful.

And if you’re really curious, you can read ‘The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle’ for yourselves here; someday I will both translate the original into modern English, and write my own novel based on it, if I get all my dreams.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted February 7, 2015 by in General / 37 Comments

And another week gone! This year is flying by already… which in a way is fortunate, because I was excited for the two books I picked up this week, both out on 03/02 (coincidentally, my mother’s birthday). Now it’s just A Darker Shade of Magic to go and then I’ll have the books I’m most eagerly coveting…

Bought

Cover of Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear Cover of Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman

The cover of Karen Memory is just perfect. I’m already partway through — might even have finished it by the time this goes live — and enjoying it very much. I’ve already finished Trigger Warning

Library

The Periodic Table Cover of Stonehenge by Mike Parker Pearson

Guess who’s onto the chemistry section of their Open University textbook? And Stonehenge, well, who can resist archaeology about Stonehenge?

For review

Cover of The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis Cover of The Errant Prince by Sasha L. Miller Cover of Gates of Thread and Stone

Cover of Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas Cover of Nightshade by R.J. Scudiere Cover of The Adventures of Monkey Girl and Tiger Kite by Kai Schalk

I still haven’t read a single book by Ian Tregillis. I have them. I just need to, you know, read them. Oops.

Comics

Ms Marvel Operation Sin #2

Peggyyyyy. I really need to watch Agent Carter, too. Mind you, I still really need to watch Agents of SHIELD and, uh, Norton’s Hulk (though really Mark Ruffalo is the only Bruce Banner for me, sorry).

Anyway, this was quite a big haul for me, but I’m still keeping to my resolutions! For now, at least. I do need to hurry up and get reading my review copies, though. How’s everyone else been doing? Any massive hauls?

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Tough Travels – Lairs

Posted February 5, 2015 by in General / 14 Comments

This week’s Tough Travels theme is “lairs”:

The evil lair is where a great fantasy villain will spend the plurality of his or her time.

Now of course, there are some really iconic ones — Saruman’s Isengard, Sauron’s Mordor, even Shelob’s Cirith Ungol and Smaug’s Lonely Mountain — but I’ve been racking my brains to think of something a little off the beaten path. So I remembered a quote I read somewhere quite recently, about the people who ultimately do the most evil being the people who are unshakeably sure they’re right.

Which gave me…

  • Roke, from The Earthsea Quartet and The Other Wind. It’s a stagnant world, not willing to bend with the times and let in new people (particularly, women). It’s the Establishment, really. With the best of intentions, they make a total mess of things. I think that goes for a lot of magic regulating bodies in fantasy…
  • Malthus and Aracus’ strongholds/camps/etc from Jacqueline Carey’s The Sundering. I could’ve picked Satoris for this without twisting it even slightly, since most people view him as the bad guy — essentially this world’s Sauron. And yet, his side are more accepting of grey areas and outcasts, while Malthus and Aracus’ forces are completely self-righteously convinced that they’re on the side of right. That’s more dangerous, to me.
  • Sky, in N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. There are some good people trapped in the system there, mostly kept turning by Itempas’ injustice…
  • 10 Downing Street, circa Tony Blair’s stint as prime minister. Oops. That’s not fantasy.

Looking forward to seeing what other people came up with, here; hoping it won’t make me want any new books, because I don’t have a debit card to buy them with at the moment!

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 3, 2015 by in General / 8 Comments

This week’s theme is ‘Top Ten Books I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read From X Genre’. I’m going to go for a bit of a twist and give you the top ten books my mother can’t believe I haven’t read from the classics, particularly because I’ve got English lit degrees… It’s also my mother’s birthday today! (She does read this blog, so stick your head in and say hi.)

  1. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Laurie Lee. 
  2. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad.
  3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain.
  4. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.
  5. Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy.
  6. The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde.
  7. The History of the Decline Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon.
  8. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill.
  9. Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift.
  10. Ulysses, James Joyce.

So if you’re feeling bad about not reading the classics, neither have I… (I’m also missing out on The Count of Monte Cristo and other such classics!)

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I Mustache You Some Questions

Posted February 1, 2015 by in General / 8 Comments

mustache-questions

Since Kaja from Of Dragons and Hearts tagged me!

Four names that people call me:

  1. Nikki — obviously! This is what most people call me, these days.
  2. Nicole — my family tend to still call me this. My real name!
  3. Nicci — shut up, it’s totally different somehow. But only my childhood friend is allowed to call me this.
  4. Squeak — well, actually, Dad’s stopped calling me this because I’m an adult now. But I have a very high soprano voice, and my dad has tinnitis, so, voila. It was “Croak” when I had a cold, “Squeakley” when he was being affectionate, “Princess Squeakerella” when I was being a brat…

Four jobs that I have had:

  1. Medical secretary. This mostly involved a lot of filing, some pestering people for money, and a lot of typing.
  2. Transcriptionist. People send me audio recordings of their meetings, interviews, etc, and I type out everything they say. Or sometimes most of what they say, only more grammatically. I’ve transcribed all sorts of stuff: David Cameron’s speeches, Nick Clegg’s excuses, conferences, financial results, NHS board meetings, court cases… It can be kind of interesting.
  3. Copy writer. You need someone to advertise coffee they’ve never tasted? Someone who doesn’t even like coffee? Sure! I’ll do it! And various other things, like providing content for blogs, writing web pages, etc, etc.
  4. Volunteer. Yeah, kind of cheating, but I haven’t had any other paying job. But my volunteer roles could populate this list again and then some…

Four movies that I have watched more than once: 

  1. Apollo 13. Shut up it doesn’t make me cry.
  2. Howl’s Moving Castle. <33
  3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Steve Rogers is my bb.
  4. Sherlock Holmes. With Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr.

Four books I’d recommend:

  1. The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. I don’t think this needs saying, does it?
  2. Bloodshot, by Cherie Priest. I have a craving to reread this, so here it goes in the list. I love the vampire law here, love Raylene’s OCD tendencies and how she’s kickass anyway, and the found family that grows through Bloodshot and Hellbent.
  3. The Fifth Head of Cerberus, by Gene Wolfe. Want your brain twisted round and round? Yep. Gene Wolfe.
  4. Strong Poison, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Because Lord Peter is the best detective. Shut up. Yes. The best.

Wait, there isn’t room for SeawardThe Dark is RisingAmong Others?

Four places I have lived: 

  1. Yorkshire. I grew up there.
  2. Gordon Hall, Cardiff. I was in a hall of residence in my first year of university, naturally; this was my first home away from my parents.
  3. Flat 3, Cardiff. Second year of university. There were mice. Let’s not go there.
  4. Hardy Place, Cardiff. Maybe my favourite of my homes so far, lived here with some of my university friends.

Four places I have been:

  1. Brittany, France. I’ve blanked out most of it because it was awful — it was a school trip, and my classmates wanted me to be unhappy. I was.
  2. Various parts of Belgium. My partner lives in Belgium!
  3. Rome, Italy. Went to Rome with my mother after finishing my degree. Favourite place: Pompeii. Definitely.
  4. Cornwall, UK. We went for the total solar eclipse. It turned out to be cloudy there; there was a better view back home. But Dad did teach us to swim.

Four places I’d rather be right now:

  1. Belgium. I want my bunnyyyyy.
  2. Yorkshire. I love Wales, but right now I’d rather not be here.
  3. Venice. I’ll settle for turning my PS3 on and running around Rome on Assassin’s Creed, though.
  4. Bed.

Four things I don’t eat:

  1. Spaghetti bolognese. My mother once forcefed me some because she didn’t believe I felt sick. There was projectile vomiting.
  2. Haggis. Whyyy.
  3. Turkish delight. Ughughugh.
  4. Christmas pudding. Gaaah.

Four of my favourite foods:

  1. The sausage thing with onions that my partner gets from the chip shop down the road. Oh god I could eat it right now.
  2. Cauliflower cheese. I like cheese. Nommy cheese.
  3. Crispy duck in pancakes. Mmmmm.
  4. Dad’s chilli. Or other chilli, if necessary, but Dad does it best.

Four TV shows that I’ve watched:

  1. Firefly. I’ve watched this far too many times, really. I can quote most of it. “I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you.”
  2. Pushing Daisies. I need to rewatch this! So cute.
  3. Due South. I’m not kidding you when I say Fraser was my first squish.
  4. NCIS. Okay, so I can’t watch it without crying still because I used to watch it with my grandad and I can still ‘hear’ his commentary on it. But I do love it.

Four things I’m looking forward to this year:

  1. Going to Canada!
  2. Visits to Belgium.
  3. The Wales vs England game on Friday.
  4. Visit from my ex-housemate.

Four things I’m always saying:

  1. “Daaaaaaadddyyyyyyy…” Yes, 25 and I still call him ‘Daddy’. Especially when I want something.
  2. “How much is my library fine now?” Wince.
  3. “Books books books!” The hunting cry of the wild Nikki.
  4. “I hate math…” This science course involves far too much math and not enough DNA.

Runners up: “ugh David Cameron, you [expletive]!”; “Muuuuuuuuuuuuum”; “EZIO STOP FALLING OFF BUILDINGS YOU’RE MEANT TO BE AN ASSASSIN”.

Four people I tag:

  1. You.
  2. The other you.
  3. Yes, you.
  4. My imaginary friend.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted January 31, 2015 by in General / 18 Comments

Once again, a quiet week! Which is good, since that’s what I’m aiming for. I did get two new books — rewards for finishing books two and three of my Open University course!

Bought

Cover of Dreamer's Pool by Juliet Marillier Cover of Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier

I’ve read (and reviewedPrickle Moon already; it’s lovely. And I’d been wanting Dreamer’s Pool for a while!

Library

Cover of The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart

Just one, a bit of self indulgence — I’ve read all of Mary Stewart’s romances, but this was the first one I read, and I’m looking forward to going back to it. Frothy comfort reading for the win! Though right now, I’m digging into Soulless (Gail Carriger) for that!

Oh, and the latest issue of Thor came out, too.

Comics

Thor #4

How’s everyone else doing? Broken your resolutions yet?

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