Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted August 3, 2024 by Nicky in General / 22 Comments

Wow, it’s been a warm week! I’m not really built for warm weather… nor for cold weather… I think I’m just not really built for weather. But the sunshine has been nice on my walks, I must admit!

The latest Bookly readathon has started, so I have been doing a little more reading than I was, and I hope the week ahead will be pretty busy, reading-wise. Especially given the haul I got last weekend.

Books acquired this week

I’m going to split my haul over the next 2-3 weeks, since I got a lot of books in one go. (Next haul… probably due the week after that, since August 20th is my birthday, ahaha.) First up, a little non-fiction:

And here’s a couple of the fiction books I got as well:

It’s a rather random mix, I know, just like the full haul. I do love having such a range around to read!

Posts from this week

Here goes the usual roundup:

Fantasy: The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard (5/5 stars)
Classic crime: Tour de Force, by Christianna Brand (2/5 stars)
Horror/fantasy/romance comic: Love Everlasting vol 1, by Matt Hollingsworth, Tom King & Elsa Charretier (4/5 stars)
Non-fiction: The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, by Dan Hicks (3/5 stars)

What I’m reading

Right now I’m trying to finish up one of my new books, Standard Deviations, which is all about how data/statistics can be twisted to support totally made-up or opposite conclusions. It’s pretty well-explained, though I do have the advantage that I have (of necessity, as a science student) done two courses on stats.

It’s been a fun week, with some comics I plan to review and some manga which I won’t, alongside my chunkier non-fiction reads. Here are the books I read this week which I will post reviews of soon:

Combined with the manga I read, it was definitely a busy reading week!

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – The Brutish Museums

Posted August 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution

by Dan Hicks

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 336
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museum, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.

It’s difficult for me to evaluate Dan Hicks’ The Brutish Museums, since it’s not really my field and at times he gets quite technical and academic. It feels like the audience for this isn’t really clear: is it those who visit museums? Is it activists? It doesn’t quite feel like it’s other curators… As a result, that makes it a bit of an uneven read.

I’d been hoping for more detail about the actual Benin bronzes and how they’ve been displayed and discussed, but really this is about the wrong that’s been done — it could be about any kind of object displayed in a museum, it’s just an exemplar of a particularly egregious episode of looting, slaughter, and display of spoils.

It’s an interesting read, though it’s hard to know what to do with the information. It’s definitely a viewpoint worthy of thought, though: those who visit museums can be helping to perpetuate harm.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Dan Hicks, history, non-fiction

Review – Love Everlasting, vol 1

Posted August 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Love Everlasting

by Matt Hollingsworth, Tom King, Elsa Charretier

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Horror, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 136
Series: Love Everlasting #1
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Joan Peterson discovers that she is trapped in an endless, terrifying cycle of"romance" -- a problem to be solved, a man to marry -- and everytime she falls in love she's torn from her world and thrust into another tear-soaked tale.

I really loved the art in volume one of Tom King and Elsa Charretier’s Love Everlasting. It’s stylised and expressive, with well-differentiated characters and designs. It’s a fun race through a bunch of different styles of love story, with the main character Joan Peterson always dying just as soon as she’s declared her love for someone.

The fact that Joan — and a weird masked cowboy — are the only constants does mean that there’s not really much character-building, especially as Joan herself isn’t really exactly the same in every single scenario. The concept is the most interesting thing there, rather than the character (though Joan’s approach to her problems is, ah, entertaining).

By the end, it’s getting a touch too repetitive without any explanation, but it’s a really fun concept, and I am itching to know a bit more. I hope the second volume will explore the plot stuff from the fifth issue and deepen the story a bit.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Elsa Charretier, horror, Matt Hollingsworth, romance, SF/F, Tom King

WWW Wednesday

Posted July 31, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I did one of these, but I’m currently reading stuff I’m excited about and not just rereading (though I’m doing a lot of that too), so it seems like a good moment for an update!

So WWW Wednesday normally asks:

What have you recently finished reading?
What are you currently reading?
What are you planning on reading next?

What have you recently finished reading?

The last substantial thing I finished was Christianna Brand’s Tour de Force, of which I wasn’t a big fan — I find Brand quite cynical in her way of writing characters, and compare her unfavorably to E.C.R. Lorac, who by and large I love (even if sometimes she errs in the other direction, I’d rather that).

What are you currently reading?

Today I’m trying to finish up reading Victoria Finlay’s Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox, which is interesting but also has a feel of travel writing or memoir, neither of which are totally my thing. For each colour, Finlay’s travelled and researched by asking people in person, and set great stock by things like simply seeing the crocus fields from which saffron is made. Sometimes it feels very touristy.

I haven’t finished The Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel (KH Charles) yet, and I’d like to get back to that too.

What are you planning on reading next?

That’s a difficult one, because I have a bunch of new books begging for my attention. I’m actually quite tempted to turn to something a bit off my usual path, which is Gary Smith’s Standard Deviations. I’ve studied a bit of statistics because you have to in order to study science at all seriously, and I’ve always been rather better at statistics than I expected (I think I got good marks in my undergrad statistics course, and I definitely did in postgrad). Anyway, the point of this book is about discussing the ways statistics can be used to mislead, and I think that’s something everyone could do with being aware of — and I should be able to follow along fairly well, or so I hope!

What about you?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Gimme More Of…

Posted July 30, 2024 by Nicky in General / 11 Comments

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “Books I Wish Had More/Less [Insert Your Concept Here] In Them”. I decided to go slightly off-piste and talk about characters I want more of in given books, because there are some characters I’d love to understand more about or see the further adventures of.

Without further ado, here are my ten!

Csethiro Ceredin, from The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. She’s really cool, but we only really see her through Maia’s eyes — and early in their acquaintance, at that. I want to know about why she learned fencing, I want to know about all her other interests, and of course I want to know how she and Maia work out as a couple.
Liu Qingge, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by MXTX. He’s a fairly prominent character, given the amount of time he spends protecting Shen Qingqiu and fighting Luo Binghe, but I’d love to know about his childhood, how he and Mingyan both came to Cang Qiong Mountain, more about his past animosity toward the original Shen Qingqiu… I just like him a lot, okay!?
Ning Yingying, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by MXTX. It’s fairly obvious that her “demotion” from love interest to side character actually allows her a chance to develop and grow. I’d love to have seen more of that.
Liu Mingyan, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by MXTX. Pretty much the same story here! And why did she decide to wear a veil, and when? What will she do when she’s not Luo Binghe’s love interest, and with her brother alive?
Faramir, from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. This has been a long-term wish for me. I loved the brief glimpse we got of Faramir from a very young age, and that interest in him hasn’t abated at all. How’d he come to be the best of his family, far nobler, braver and kinder in many ways than Boromir or Denethor?
Don Abene, from Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells. And her whole group, really. How do they get on after meeting Murderbot? Does Murderbot ever join them again?
Tom Wilker, from A Natural History of Dragons (and sequels) by Marie Brennan. He’s a major character of the books, and we do get to see him succeed, but what would he write in his memoirs? What did he make of his life after he and Isabella’s great discoveries?
Cal, from Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. He’s a bit-part, really, coming or going as needed by the plot — but I wanted to know more about how he gets along in the world.
Thimble, from Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. I think this might just be because he was cute. But also we didn’t get to know a lot about his thoughts and feelings, and I’m curious.
Sun Li, from Shady Hollow (and some of the sequels) by Juneau Black. We know a bit about where he’s come from and why, but he’s developing a friendship with Vera and Lenore, and I’d actually like to see more of it — more than just them eating at his restaurant with him, for example. Do they hang out other than that? What does he do with his free time?

In the end, these are books I love just as they are… but it really wouldn’t hurt to see more of these characters.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Tour de Force

Posted July 29, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 272
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating:

Synopsis:
Inspector Cockrill’s dull vacation is jolted by a Mediterranean murder. From the moment he steps on the plane, Inspector Cockrill loathes his fellow travelers. They are typical tour group bores: the dullards of England whom he had hoped to escape by going to Italy. He gives up on the trip immediately, burying his nose in a mystery novel to ensure that no one tries to become his friend. But not long after the group makes landfall at the craggy isle of San Juan el Pirata, a murder demands his attention. The body of a woman is found laid out carefully on her bed, blood pooled around her and fingers wrapped around the dagger that took her life. The corrupt local police force, impatient to find a killer, names Cockrill chief suspect. To escape the Italian hangman, the detective must find out who would go on vacation to kill a stranger.

Christianna Brand’s Tour de Force was her final novel featuring Inspector Cockrill, and it features Cockie on an actual holiday! Naturally, it’s going to turn into a busman’s holiday, and you know that from the start: you’re just left to guess at exactly how the tensions are going to rupture and who exactly will die. It’s a fairly typical collection of characters: someone’s in love with someone’s husband, someone’s a fortune hunter, someone’s an old spinster, someone’s a detective…

I think my problem with Christianna Brand is that there’s something so deeply cynical about her writing. I always compare her with E.C.R. Lorac, where I think sometimes Lorac tends the other way too much (but that’s much more pleasant to read). It feels like everyone in Brand’s work has ulterior motives, and she doesn’t seem to have liked other women very much. Leo Rodd’s a cheat and deeply bitter due to his disability, but it’s Vanda Lane, Helen Rodd, Miss Trapp and Louvaine Barker that have their weaknesses and foibles truly exposed. Not that Brand had a great deal of sympathy for the men either, but the nature of their flaws feel different, and the spotlight less cruel.

In the end, as well, Cockrill’s simply not that great a detective here, and his blindness is just frustrating — and because of a pretty face? Meh.

I always want to like Brand’s work a lot more than I do, but here we are.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, Christianna Brand, crime, mystery

Review – The Hands of the Emperor

Posted July 28, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

The Hands of the Emperor

by Victoria Goddard

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 899
Series: Lays of the Hearth-Fire #1
Rating: five-stars

Synopsis:
An impulsive word can start a war. A timely word can stop one. A simple act of friendship can change the course of history.

Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god. He has spent more time with the Emperor of Astandalas than any other person. He has never once touched his lord. He has never called him by name. He has never initiated a conversation.

One day Cliopher invites the Sun-on-Earth home to the proverbially remote Vangavaye-ve for a holiday.

The mere invitation could have seen Cliopher executed for blasphemy. The acceptance upends the world.

Belatedly posting a book I read in 2022, and apparently never cross-posted the review of here!

I really loved The Hands of the Emperor. It’s a huge book in which not a lot actually happens, but it’s full of hope and heart, with a central relationship of love and respect that had me riveted. I was recommended it as “imagine The Goblin Emperor from Csevet’s point of view”, and that’s sort of fair — except that you have to imagine that Csevet has Maia’s drive for reform and for goodness.

Cliopher is the Last Emperor’s secretary, and has been slowly pushing a revolutionary agenda for the world now that the Fall (a magical event you mostly learn about through its personal effects on Cliopher and somewhat on the others) has changed everything. He has opinions and morals informed by his Islander background, and these influence his place at court, how people see him, and the fact that he finally decides to reach out to the Emperor as a person and offer to take him on holiday.

From that unfolds one of the book’s major themes: the Emperor Artorin’s need for freedom, his past before he became Emperor, and his growing reliance on Cliopher to change things and help him find freedom by finding his heir.

Cliopher is in some ways a bit too capable, a bit too perfect, and there are so many scenes of people getting their comeuppance because they weren’t kind to Cliopher, or didn’t understand his work and his morals, etc, etc. But it’s enjoyable every time, and it’s especially enjoyable because Artorin decides he must make other people see and respect Cliopher. The friendship between them is lovely.

It’s a long read, but one which I savoured completely. I’m looking forward to reading the other novels and novellas in this world, and my only complaint is that it stopped too soon and we didn’t get to see whether Tor retires to live with Cliopher, Conju, Rhodin, etc. There are so many scenes I loved that I couldn’t talk about them all, and several which I reread again immediately because I wanted to feel it all again right away.

I haven’t talked about a quarter of what there is to discover in this book, but that’s OK. You can go and discover it for yourself.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, Victoria Goddard

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted July 27, 2024 by Nicky in General / 17 Comments

Well! I’m writing this in the evening after spending the day hanging out with a friend and absolutely raiding a bookshop. I’ve spent a little much today, but I’m happy, haha. But I’ll save that haul for the next couple weeks, since I haven’t unpacked it and added it to my StoryGraph yet.

Books acquired this week

Just one for now, since I’m not listing the ones I got today yet! I think I’d vaguely known this was coming, and then forgotten, so it was a nice surprise when Leah mentioned it in a comment and I realised it was out!

I’m excited to read this one!

Reviews posted this week

Time for a bit of a round-up!

Mystery: Summers End, by Juneau Black (4/5 stars)
Science non-fiction: Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind, by Sue Black (4/5 stars)
Fantasy comic: Dominion vol 1: The Resurrection of Jason Ash, by Thomas Fenton et al (2/5 stars)
History non-fiction: The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, by Rozsika Parker (4/5 stars)

What I’m reading

I’ve been back to reading a bit more widely this week, though I haven’t finished many books yet. I’m well behind on my reading goals, but a Bookly readathon is coming, so I’m hopeful that’ll help me catch up a bit!

Here’s a glimpse at the books I’ll be reviewing sometime soon:

I really liked Written in Bone, so now I’m reading All That Remains. It’s a bit more memoir-y, at least so far, and made me cry a little a couple of times (let’s say the discussion of the decline and death of someone with dementia hits a little close to home). I think from reviews it does go on to talk a bit more about the author’s work as a forensic anthropologist, though, which should be interesting.

Other than that, as I discussed in my WWW Wednesday post, I’m finally digging into KJ Charles’ The Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, which I’m loving (and still has me pretty curious, as I haven’t read much more since Wednesday — yet). I also rather randomly picked up Emily Henry’s Book Lovers, which I’m having fun with so far.

How’s everyone else doing?

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – The Subversive Stitch

Posted July 26, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine

by Rozsika Parker

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 256
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Rozsika Parker's now classic re-evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between women and embroidery has brought stitchery out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts, created a major breakthrough in art history and criticism, and fostered the emergence of today's dynamic and expanding crafts movements.

The Subversive Stitch is now available again with a new Introduction that brings the book up to date with exploration of the stitched art of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, as well as the work of new young female and male embroiderers. Rozsika Parker uses household accounts, women's magazines, letters, novels and the works of art themselves to trace through history how the separation of the craft of embroidery from the fine arts came to be a major force in the marginalisation of women's work. Beautifully illustrated, her book also discusses the contradictory nature of women's experience of embroidery: how it has inculcated female subservience while providing an immensely pleasurable source of creativity, forging links between women.

Rozsika Parker’s The Subversive Stitch is a pretty academic work, illustrated with lots of plates (though these are in black and white and not really of the greatest quality, at least in the edition I have. Parker’s thesis is basically that embroidery was a huge part of how femininity was constructed, particularly in the Victorian era, and we’ve seen a lot of things both deeper in the past and now through that lens.

No doubt there’s more up to date work now, but I’m under the impression this is a bit of a classic. It can be dry, especially if you’re not interested in the subject — as I mentioned, it really is pretty academic. But there are some fascinating insights here, and also some correctives to received wisdom about what exactly the history of embroidery has been like. Solid lesson: don’t believe a Victorian source, possibly not even about Victorian norms.

Perhaps more of interest to those interested in feminist and women’s history than to those interested in embroidery per se.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Rozsika Parker

Review – Dominion vol 1: The Resurrection of Jason Ash

Posted July 25, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Dominion: The Resurrection of Jason Ash

by Thomas Fenton, Jamal Igle, Steven Cummings

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 49
Series: Dominion #1
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
A gripping supernatural thriller of biblical proportions...quite literally. When detective Jason Ash arrives on the scene of a particularly strange murder in the suburbs of New Orleans, little does he know that he is about to take on the case of a lifetime. As dead people begin to come back to life, revealing that they hail from a realm where angels fight for power, it becomes clear that an epic battle between good and evil is at play, one threatening the very future of humanity.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the page numbering and so on with Thomas Fenton’s Dominion, as the versions of each volume on Amazon have only around 50 pages, though elsewhere they consistently get shown as 150 pages. The cover images match the cover images for the versions with 150 pages, so… it’s just weird.

So hopefully what I’m reading isn’t just a fragment missing the last two thirds, but I can only read what’s available, in any case. Volume one of Dominion feels fairly typical: the beginning is a little confusing, but then it switches to the point of view of a young cop, who quickly gets drawn into a conflict involving angels (and gains strange powers as a result).

That’s about as far as this first volume goes, with the conflict wrapped around the story of child kidnappings that gets the cops involved. I’m curious where it’s going, but it feels like I’ve seen this story around before… several times.

Still, I’ll be picking up the next volume to see what the author does with the setup, so though I’m fairly lukewarm, it’s not that the story was bad.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Jamal Igle, SF/F, Steven Cummings, Thomas Fenton