Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Summer TBR

Posted June 16, 2020 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Greetings folks! I’m all caught up with my backlog of comments and so on and excited to get back to visiting more blogs. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is books on your summer TBR… and while I’m really bad at picking out what I’m actually going to read, I love lists and planning what I’m going to read so I can ignore it, so… here goes! Links go to the GR page so you can read the summaries.

Brit(ish), by Afua Hirsch. I’ve been wanting to read more books focused on the experience of being a person of colour in Britain; so much of the discussion on racism focuses on the situation in the US, and my feeling is that while there are commonalities, there are bound to be differences as well. I’d like to get a better feel for that (though Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book was a good starting point).
Daisy Jones & the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I loved The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo — or at least, I tore right through it, even if I had some more ambiguous feelings at the end. I have actually started Daisy Jones, but it hasn’t really hooked me yet.
Pet, by Akwaeke Emezi. I’m super curious about this one, based on the blurb, so I picked it up recently. It’s a relatively short read, too, which is quite attractive for my easily distracted brain right now. There’s just so much that sounds awesome, though reviews from people I know have been a bit mixed. Still, a world where badness has been defeated… I’m really fascinated to see how the book deals with that.
Queen of Coin and Whispers, by Helen Corcoran. This has been on my TBR for a while and my preorder finaaaally made it. I’m willing to bet it’s something my sister would love, too, but I get it first. Mwahaha, etc.
Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston. It sounds like so much fun and so cute. And like a world I want to be in right now, to be honest, where the biggest problem in US politics is apparently that the female President’s son falls in love with a fictional British prince.
The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again, by Richard Horton. On the other hand, obviously this is super-topical right now, but I think it’s going to be a really interesting take on it. Current affairs + public health, it’s right down my alley.
This Is Kind of An Epic Love Story, by Kacen Callender. This is something I picked up recently as well, and it sounds really cute. Also, romance with a hard of hearing character? Awesome!
Catherine House, by Elisabeth Thomas. This sounds creepy-weird! It was actually a rec in a Twitter thread and I kind of just went for it, so it’ll be interesting to see what I make of it.
Boyfriend Material, by Alexis Hall. I have an ARC, and I really need to dig into it. It sounds so fun — fake dating is a great trope to play with. I’ve been eager for this since I first heard about it.
Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders, by Aliette de Bodard. I really need to reread the first two books of the Dominion of the Fallen so I can read the third, but this stands alone and should be a lot of fun. I loved Asmodeus and Thuan, even is Asmodeus is… well, he’s Asmodeus; you’ll know what I mean if you’ve read The House of Binding Thorns. I have an ARC, and it’s probably close to the top of my TBR right now.

So that’s one version of what I might be reading this summer. How about you?

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Weekly Roundup

Posted June 14, 2020 by Nicky in General / 7 Comments

Hey folks! Regulars around here might have noticed a small change over the last few days: I’ve changed the spelling of my name from “Nikki” to “Nicky”. WordPress won’t allow me to change it for my past comments, so you’ll still see it around in some places. “Nikki” just wasn’t quite me anymore. It’d be great if everyone can try to use the new spelling, but I know it’s not always easy to remember, so I won’t yell at you if you forget!

Also, I’m really sorry, but I’m still behind on comments. I’m still going to post my link to this week’s linkups and keep right on top of replying to comments here, while going back through my backlog to reply and visit folks in return. Thanks for understanding! Weird times we live in, huh?

Aaand yep, my site had some downtime again today. Not sure what happened there, so fingers crossed it’s over.

All that said, here’s some books I got this week!

Linking up with The Sunday Post @ The Caffeinated Reviewer and Stacking the Shelves @ Reading Reality & Tynga’s Reviews.

Books acquired:

Few more than I should have been buying, hahaha. Partly that’s due to gifts and preorders, though! As usual, it’s a biiiit of a mixture.

Books read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

–The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, by Zen Cho. A Wuxia story that just didn’t quite work for me… partly because, though the idea appeals, I don’t actually know that much about the genre. It’s hard to appreciate the cleverness and context that way! 3/5 stars
–Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken, by The Secret Barrister. Rather enlightening (and also frightening) look at how Britain’s legal system is completely fucked up and failing. 4/5 stars
–The Science of Monsters, by Matt Kaplan. Ugh, this was promising but… the author continually pushed his ideas too far and made them ridiculous. 2/5 stars

Review – The Science of Monsters

Posted June 13, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Science of Monsters, Matt Kaplan

Part of the entertainment factor of this book is the fact that it takes its theories too far. After explaining Chimaera legends as the result of animals wandering into a tar pit and becoming fossilised in a weird tangle, the author goes on:

And Chimera was hardly alone. If a horse went down to a tar pit for a bit of water, got stuck, died, and was subsequently fed upon by a vulture that also got stuck in the tar, that would provide an explanation for the legendary Pegasus. Some art even shows Chimera battling with Pegasus. Was this linked to a find of fossils that people could barely make sense of?

He then goes on to use tar pits to explain sphinxes and Scylla: “Indeed, if there is a monster that stands as evidence that the ancients were looking at fossils of multiple animal skeletons jumbled together, it is Scylla.”

He does nobly admit right after that that “this requires tar pits, and Greece (and the rest of Europe) doesn’t have any”! Yes, that would be a bit of a problem for this theory, but it’s okay — he then posits trade routes as bringing the stories to Greece…

The problem with this book is that there is a lot of truth in it: it discusses gigantism in humans as arising due to tumours in the pituitary gland and suggests that could be the source of some monstrous legends; it points to fossils and tar pits as origins of various monstrous legends and ideas; it points out that giant predators were around in the past. However, it leans on these ifs and maybes — and on a good deal of special pleading — and takes it way too far. Maybe we imagined Cerberus because a giant slavering dog with three heads just seemed scary, you know? No need for three wolves to be swept off to sea together and fossilised as a jumble of bones with three heads.

In the end, I got tired of the exercise for my rolling eyes and put this down, relieved that I never paid for it and instead borrowed it. Whew. If you’re interested in some of the potential scientific seeds of monster stories, there are definitely nuggets of truth here. I learnt that the pituitary tumour thing actually ran in families due to a genetic disposition, producing families of giants! I learnt about some monsters I didn’t know that well! But… I have serious questions about the author’s seriousness here: his Chimera and Pegasus idea really begs for us to ask whether he thinks the fights between King Kong fighting Godzilla were inspired by film-makers finding an enormous ape fighting an enormous reptile in a tar pit? Or does he recognise that while the monstrous can (probably always does) grow from seeds of reality, probably a lot of ancient story-tellers were just thinking up ways to scare the shit out of each other, create amazing spectacles for artwork, or just tell a good story.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, science

Ereader Review: Onyx Boox Poke2

Posted June 13, 2020 by Nicky in General / 36 Comments

The Onyx Boox Poke2

When it comes to ereaders, everybody knows about the Kindles and Kobos — there’s brand-name recognition there, even if you’ve never owned them. But they’re not the only ereaders out there, and I’ve been thinking for a while about getting hold of an ereader that’s a bit less tied to a specific ebook store. I haven’t loved the user interface on the most recent Kobos, and Kindle’s software has all the same flaws I found annoying when I owned a Kindle Keyboard.

I knew about the Onyx Boox ereaders, but I’d never even handled one, and there was no way to get to play with one in advance, so I was hesitant. The Poke2 is one of their newer models, and it didn’t really take me long to take the plunge when I read up on the specs. The selling point for me is that the Poke2 is built on Android, meaning that it can download any app on the Google Play Store: Amazon and Kobo, of course, but also various apps tied to libraries like Libby and BorrowBox, or subscription services like Scribd.

There are other neat features, like the screen light: you can adjust both the strength and the temperature of the light, to create a comfortable reading experience and to cut down on blue light. It’s one of the lightest and smallest readers out there, touted as the closest thing to the Kobo Mini that I adored (and would still use, had it only a built-in light). It’s also supposed to be better for PDFs than Kobo or Kindle. It can handle pretty much all the popular file types.

So, how was my experience?

Well, it wasn’t a joy to order it: they had very few units available due to delays in manufacturing during the pandemic, and then there were delays in dispatching and of course also delays with Fedex (although this is not their fault at all, and not really the fault of Fedex either; it’s just the way things are). Once it arrived, though… it’s a joy. I have both a Kindle Paperwhite and a Kobo Aura 2, which are pretty comparable with each other in terms of weight, shape and feel. I took some comparison pics with the Kindle:

Kindle Paperwhite on the left, compared with an Onyx Boox Poke2 on the left. Screen up. — Kindle Paperwhite on the left, Onyx Boox Poke2 on the right.

I have to say that I’m a convert: the Poke2 feels slimmer and sharper, and the Kindle isn’t curved enough that it makes it significantly nicer to hold. From using it, I do have a slight problem that how I hold the Poke2 tends to cause me to very lightly touch the screen, because that margin really isn’t very wide. The more I read and get used to holding it, the less it happens.

I also got a free cover with the Poke2, and it’s pretty nice: it looks like fabric, but it’s waterproof and easy to clean. It’s super lightweight, and basically my only issue is that it’s fixed onto the ereader with sticky pads. I’ve never loved sticking my ereaders into covers, even if it does keep them very light. That said, I’ve found this cover the least obtrusive of any I’ve had, it has the sleep/wake function, it folds back on itself easily without creating an ugly crease, and it was free.

In terms of the software, it takes some setting up. It doesn’t come registered for Google Play immediately, and I couldn’t find out how to until I turned on the browser by chance. They do have instructions, once you do that, but it doesn’t necessarily leap to mind as the first thing to try! I also would not recommend the built-in reader: I find the sidebar annoying, and though there’s a large choice of fonts (and it’s easy to download and install more), I couldn’t get them as small as I wanted.

Once I did get myself set up, I was all good though. I ended up paying for Calibre Companion for easy sorting of my side-loaded books, and that has been worth the price already — I don’t have to connect my ereader via USB, just set up the link over wireless. You can actually drop books to it via wifi anyway, without Calibre Companion, but I already used Calibre and having that as the interface helps keep things organised.

I also have Libby and Borrowbox installed for library books, and I’ve rarely made so much use of the library; it’s just as easy as downloading them to my phone (which I always found to be too full of distractions for good reading time, though great while on the go). With the Kindle and Kobo apps as well, I can access both my collections. When I want to read the side-loaded books, so far I’ve been using Moon+ Reader, but anything where you can disable animations, set a plain white background and use black text will work just fine.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for something that just works out of the box, you’re still looking at a Kindle, Kobo or another of the established players. The Onyx Boox Poke2 is much more what you make of it, and you can customise a lot of things. That means setting it up can be a bit of a learning curve, but once you’ve got the Play Store authorised, you’re home free if you’re used to using Android. It runs on Android 9, so it’ll be around for a while, and it adds a lot of convenience to accessing a diverse ebook collection. I love the feel and weight of it, and for me the customizability is a plus.

Custom screensavers on the Poke2

Tags: ereaders, non-book review

Review – Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken

Posted June 10, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken, The Secret Barrister

The Secret Barrister writes under this pseudonym in order to speak frankly — and in this book they let loose on the state of the legal system in Britain. The poor management of CPS, the decimation of legal aid, the Innocence Tax, and all the ways that the government (not just the Tories, but perhaps mostly) have messed up our adversarial system, prioritising statistics over justice… while arguably failing to properly prosecute many cases as paperwork slips and overworked CPS employees fail to come up with the goods.

The title might trick you into thinking that this is going to be juicy gossip about defending the indefensible and prosecuting the most egregious crimes, but instead the Secret Barrister has several bees in his bonnet (or wig, as the case may be) and they really let it rip. I barely understood our legal system before, and now I know two things: 1) I’m writing to the chocolate teapot I have to call my MP, for all the good he does (Dan Jarvis, I’m looking at you and your constant banging on about veterans like they’re the only constituents that matter; are you planning on replying to any of my letters anytime soon?) and 2) staying the hell away from the courts.

I don’t know how my sister can want to be a lawyer, ye gods. I mean, obviously it’s not all criminal law, but… yipes.

And yes, there are one or two awful stories of justice gone awry, if that’s what you’re interested in. But instead, I recommend it as a way to get a handle on what our legal system really does, how it ought to work, and a little about what the government could be doing about it. It isn’t always an easy read, but the Secret Barrister writes clearly; law isn’t always something you can feel passionate about, but I am fully convinced of the Secret Barrister’s dedication to their work… and their desire to improve our system.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

WWW Wednesday

Posted June 10, 2020 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

It’s that time again! Check out Taking On A World Of Words to chat with everyone else who has posted what they’re reading right now!

What are you currently reading?

Fiction: currently still in the middle of The Priory of the Orange Tree, at the five-pages-a-day pace. I’m not sure if everyone else is still doing it, actually; I should drop a message in our group thread! It’s a very slow pace for me, but it’s something that’s doable even when my brain is rubbish, so actually it’s really nice.

I think it’s the only thing I currently have actively on the go, fiction-wise, though as usual there are a lot of books lying around at some stage of progress.

Non-fiction: I’m reading Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist. It’s been on my radar for a while, and then my library actually bought it (probably because of everything that’s going on at the moment). I think a lot of people think it’s a handbook, a list of steps about how you, the reader, should become an antiracist; my impression was that it’s more of a memoir about how Kendi became and experiences being an antiracist, and why he feels it’s important, and so far that’s being borne out.

What have you recently finished reading?

Fiction: I just read Burning Roses, by S.L. Huang. I didn’t know the Hou Yi legends before (or rather, I think I’ve read about the story somewhere, but it’s not part of my cultural consciousness), but I thought it was neat how the novella weaves that story in with Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, and even Beauty and the Beast. They’re all stories at different registers, for me, and yet Huang makes it work.

It’s also delightfully queer.

Non-fiction: I read the Secret Barrister’s Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken at a gallop because someone else had a hold on it, and finished that this weekend. Meep, I do not ever want to end up in the British court system for any reason. Yeeesh.

What will you be reading next?

Good question! My library have just bought Empire of Light by Alex Harrow at my request, so that’s definitely high on the list; I’ve just got Pet by Akwaeke Emezi, so I want to read that soon. As always, what I’ll actually read is anyone’s guess — I also just got a review copy of Boyfriend Material, by Alexis Hall, and goodness only knows what non-fiction I’ll pick up next.

What are you currently reading?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Books from the Backlog

Posted June 9, 2020 by Nicky in General / 11 Comments

This week’s theme is “books you added to your TBR and forgot why”. I’m not quite sure how to answer that, because the reason I added books to my TBR is always that they were interesting. Often someone or other has recommended them, but equally often it’s just that I stumbled across them somewhere. The precise reason is lost in time for almost everything on my TBR.

But I think a look at some books that have been on my backlog and almost been forgotten there might be instructive!

Retribution Falls, by Chris Wooding. This was bought for me in a LibraryThing Secret Santa! I think that must’ve been in about 2012? It’s a good pick for me and people have compared it to Firefly and it just… hasn’t made it up the pile yet. I’m a mood reader! This… will be a theme.
Daughter of the Forest, by Juliet Marillier. Oh gosh, this has been on my list for even longer. I didn’t entirely get along with it when I first tried it, and stalled out somewhere in the middle; I decided to try again, sometime after I read and loved Heart’s Blood. I still intend to!
Memory and Dream, by Charles de Lint. A friend of mine loves Charles de Lint’s work; I’ve only read a couple, and I remember coming across this one in a charity shop and deciding, hey, why not? It’s something I kept in the big clear-out, but I think it might be from 2011 — one of the oldest books on my TBR, in other words.
Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith. This is a classic, and I know I should’ve read it already. Mea culpa?
Republic of Thieves, by Scott Lynch. I inhaled the first two books, and then this one just… didn’t come out, for ages. Once it finally did, I was sort of reluctant to read it and then have to wait again. It really does have to happen someday soon, before my wife and mother both explode.
The Girl with All the Gifts, by M.R. Carey. I’ve had this since it first came out in paperback, I think. It’s not quite my thing, which is part of why it’s lingered — but I do enjoy the right kind of zombie novel, as Mira Grant’s Feed demonstrates, so it’s sort of waiting for the right mood.
The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin. I am a big fan of N.K. Jemisin, and when I got this on the release day way back when, I started reading it, read 200 pages in one go, and then… somehow never touched it again. I remember that some life thing threw me off, but I don’t remember what.
The Iron Ghost, by Jen Williams. I really liked The Copper Promise, but by the time I picked up The Iron Ghost, I didn’t remember it well enough. I love supporting ongoing series, but it does drive me nuts that if I read a series as it comes out, I’m at risk of forgetting what was in the first book before the next comes out. I’ve always been a big reader, so this didn’t always bother me… but with so many books and so many series to love, it’s a bit overwhelming.
City of Miracles, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Yep, that’s another case of the above! I loved City of Stairs and enjoyed City of Blades. I really have to get to this soon.
Two Serpents Rise, by Max Gladstone. This is sooort of the same deal, but also because I wasn’t totally sure I “got” Three Parts Dead, and meant to reread that first. And then… time passed, and moodreading is a thing, and here I am ‘fessing up, years later.

So what about you guys? Do you actually forget why you’ve added books to your TBR? Or are you more like me and it’s just a fierce fight for any particular book to get to the top?

Just FYI, I’ve been struggling a bit with mental health and tiredness, and it might be a couple of days before I can visit back if you comment… but I always do my best and totally commit to doing so this time (even if I call amnesty on past weeks).

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water

Posted June 9, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho

Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 23rd June 2020

I love the idea of Wuxia, but I’ve actually encountered very little of it, and I think that puts me at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to evaluating how successful this is, and knowing how to enjoy it. And it’s marketed as being about a “found family” — well, that should be totally up my street!

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get along with it as well as I’d hoped, and the “found family” feels fairly thin. The characterisation of anyone apart from the main characters is fairly light, and I didn’t really feel I got a handle on who anyone was as a person and what they held dear, apart from those main two (and even then, sometimes I struggled). It feels like it’s going to be an adventure story, but in the end it’s more personal — only I didn’t feel like I came along for the journey.

This sounds more critical than I want to be; I enjoyed reading it, and appreciated Tet Sang a lot. I don’t know how to stack up my experience here against other Wuxia books, and I think that’s part of the problem.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Weekly Roundup

Posted June 7, 2020 by Nicky in General / 7 Comments

Hey folks! I don’t know if anyone noticed my site going down for a day, but that was a whole mess. It’s been a fairly quiet week here: not much reading, at least, though there’s been plenty of other stuff to do. I have spent around three hours today reading, which is nice!

Linking up with The Sunday Post @ The Caffeinated Reviewer and Stacking the Shelves @ Reading Reality & Tynga’s Reviews.

Received to review:

Purchased:

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:

–How to Invent Everything, by Ryan North. Fun gimmick, didn’t always work for me as a reading experience. Think I might know a bit too much to get the best out of it. 3/5 stars
–The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I tore through this… and also thought it could have been a more profound story with less about Evelyn’s love affair, and more about one of her relationships with one of her husbands. 3/5 stars
–Language Myths, ed. Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill. Fairly slight but a decent primer. 3/5 stars

Review – Language Myths

Posted June 7, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Language Myths, ed. Laurie Bauer, Peter Trudgill

Language Myths is a short and sweet collection of essays from various linguists, ruminating on various language myths from the incredibly specific (“Maori is an inferior language because you cannot use it to discuss astrophysics”) to the words on everyone’s lips (“kids are ruining the English language with their sloppy usage”). Most of it will be unsurprising to anyone with a spec of linguistic knowledge, and the level of interest and depth varies depending on the linguist writing the given essay and how good they are at putting their point across.

I don’t agree with some other reviewers that all the myths are strawmen, because I’ve heard exactly these arguments coming from people who hate language change, think that young people are undermining the pure clarity of the English language as it was spoken When I Was A Lad, etc, etc. Some of the myths feel a little more awkward, though, and I suspect that it because it is the particular linguist’s bugbear, and they just really wanted to write about that specific thing.

It’s not mindblowing, and the quality varies a little, but it’s still a decent primer on some of the things that linguists have to say about common perceptions of how language works.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Nicky @ The Bibliophibian

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Summer TBR

Weekly Roundup

Books acquired:

Books read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

Other posts:

Review – The Science of Monsters

The Science of Monsters, Matt Kaplan

Rating: 2/5

Ereader Review: Onyx Boox Poke2

The Onyx Boox Poke2

Review – Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken

Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken, The Secret Barrister

Rating: 4/5

WWW Wednesday

What are you currently reading?

What have you recently finished reading?

What will you be reading next?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books from the Backlog

Review – The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho

Rating: 3/5

Weekly Roundup

Received to review:

Purchased:

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:

Other posts:

Review – Language Myths

Language Myths, ed. Laurie Bauer, Peter Trudgill

Rating: 3/5

Books acquired:

Books read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

Other posts:

The Science of Monsters, Matt Kaplan

Rating: 2/5

The Onyx Boox Poke2

Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken, The Secret Barrister

Rating: 4/5

What are you currently reading?

What have you recently finished reading?

What will you be reading next?​

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho

Rating: 3/5

Received to review:

Purchased:

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:

Other posts:

Language Myths, ed. Laurie Bauer, Peter Trudgill

Rating: 3/5

What will you be reading next?