Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 27, 2024 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

Back home now and back to my routines! And back to the problem of somehow making all my books fit on my bookshelves. Hmmmm.

As usual, I’ll be linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, this weekend.

Books acquired this week:

Getting home and back to the routine means there was some book post waiting for me. Each month I get the latest British Library Crime Classic reissue, along with a little bit of extra swag — in this case, two bookmarks and a slightly enlarged version of the book cover, which I guess could make a nice poster or something. I really appreciate that they’ve made the matching cover bookmarks a bit smaller, so they fit nicely in the book! So here’s this month’s book:

Cover of Fear Stalks The Village by Ethel Lina White

I did enjoy the other book by Ethel Lina White I’ve read so far, though it can verge a bit on the histrionic. I’m looking forward to giving this a shot, anyway.

Posts from this week:

As usual, I’ll do a little roundup of my posts this week. First up, the reviews:

And the non-review posts:

What I’m reading:

I read a lot on Sunday, and then had a slow few days as I worked my way through Roland Allen’s history of notebooks — which was fascinating, but slow. Almost right after that I started on Bettany Hughes’ The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which is also a bit slow, and will no doubt take a lot of my reading time in the coming days. Worth it, though!

Here’s a sneak peek at the books I’ve read recently which are upcoming for review:

Cover of The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler Cover of Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire Cover of Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds

Cover of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen Cover of Doctor by Andrew Bomback Cover of Pill by Robert Bennett

How about everyone else? What are you reading right now? Any great books landed on your doormat or in your shopping cart this week?

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Review – The Panic

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

Review – The Panic

The Panic

by Neil Kleid, Andrea Mutti

Genres: Graphic Novels, Science Fiction
Pages: 124
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

Ten strangers, trapped beneath the Hudson River, are forced to depend on their fellow commuters in order to survive an apocalyptic event. Those left must fight their way through more than rubble to make it to safety. But the darkness is closing in, and with it their own individual fears and paranoia. It’ll be a long road to the end of the tunnel
that is, if they don’t kill each other before they get there.

Neil Kleid’s The Panic follows ten characters who are thrown together by chance after a train crash. They’ve all been going about their normal lives, heading into New York for their own reasons, like heading to a protest. One guy’s wearing a MAGA hat, others are heading to a Black Lives Matter protest, etc. This is basically the conflict of the story: every five minutes they all stop to argue, as they are fundamentally incompatible and apparently incapable of putting that aside in a greater cause.

I found it all really difficult to follow, given the multiple interrupting speech bubbles — it felt sometimes like every page had one interruption. On the one hand, it’s a great way of representing the total Babel of people all talking at once at cross-purposes, but it hurt the story’s ability to feel coherent.

Overall, it just didn’t hang together well for me, and didn’t bring anything new to the genre of “sudden apocalyptic events throws a bunch of people together and it goes badly”.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – The History of Wales in Twelve Poems

Posted January 25, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The History of Wales in Twelve Poems

The History of Wales in Twelve Poems

by M. Wynn Thomas, Ruth JĂȘn Evans

Genres: Poetry, Non-fiction
Pages: 127
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Down the centuries, poets have provided Wales with a window onto its own distinctive world. This book gives a sense of the view seen through that special window in twelve illustrated poems, each bringing very different periods and aspects of the Welsh past into focus. Together, they give the flavour of a poetic tradition, both ancient and modern, in the Welsh language and in English, that is internationally renowned for its distinction and continuing vibrancy.

M. Wynn Thomas’ history of Wales in twelve poems taps into one of my favourite genres: giving a history of a time or place through objects or similar, using them as a window to look around at their context and what produced them, how they fit into it. It’s a pretty brief volume, presenting each poem alongside its translation (where necessary, since they’re not all in Welsh), and adding in the art of Ruth JĂȘn Evans for illustration.

The art is all black and white, with thick lines — it’s pretty striking. The choice of poems is something I’d find difficult to comment on, but Thomas’ notes on each use them exactly as I’d hope, giving something of their context and trying to unlock what they say about Wales (sometimes intentionally, sometimes as a side-effect of the poet’s main intent).

I enjoyed it, though I wouldn’t view it as a full history or as having a very strong sense of continuity from poem to poem — it’s more like twelve poems were chosen as little windows to illuminate a topic of interest, rather than them showing a consistent line of developing a theme (though they are given in chronological order).

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Queer Trade

Posted January 24, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – A Queer Trade

A Queer Trade

by KJ Charles

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 53
Series: Rag & Bone #0.5
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Apprentice magician Crispin Tredarloe returns to London to find his master dead, and his papers sold. Papers with secrets that could spell death. Crispin needs to get them back before anyone finds out what he's been doing, or what his magic can do.

Crispin tracks his quarry down to waste paper dealer Ned Hall. He needs help, and Ned can’t resist Crispin’s pleading—and appealing—looks. But can the waste-man and the magician prevent a disaster and save Crispin’s skin?

A Queer Trade is a fun introduction to two characters who star in one of the few KJ Charles books I’ve yet to read, Rag & Bone. It gives a bit of context to how they met and what they’re like, which feels like a solid way to start off if you’re interested in reading Rag & Bone. It doesn’t give a lot of detail about the judiciary who operate throughout the Charm of Magpies world, so it doesn’t stand on its own very well without having read those, I’d say.

The romance is cute and hopeful, without going too far — it’s not straight to love, but straight to solid attraction, and a connection formed through weird, alarming circumstances that the two of them managed to figure out together.

It’s a quick read; I’m not in a huge hurry to read Rag & Bone, but I’m more tempted to pick it up now than I was before: I love the original trilogy in this world, but I’m not a huge fan of Jackdaw.

Rating: 3/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted January 24, 2024 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

It’s Wednesday, so time to address the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What have you recently finished reading?
  • What are you reading next?

And linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland AllenI’m deep into The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, by Roland Allen — I think I’ll finish it today. It’s proved to be exactly the kind of microhistory I enjoy, rambling through the years to look at the ways people have started to express themselves on paper, from matter-of-fact accounting to diaries like Pepys and Anne Frank’s. It’s not a quick read, but it’s an absorbing one. I loved the glimpses of Leonardo da Vinci’s methods, including the cranky complaints of modern scholars about his awful handwriting.

What have you recently finished reading?

Cover of Permafrost by Alastair ReynoldsThe last thing I finished was Alastair Reynolds’ Permafrost, a hard SF time travel novella. I’m still not quite sure if the time paradoxes all sorted themselves out — I thought that there was one obvious one that would absolutely mess with the timeline, at the end, but sometimes I think I’m just not clever enough for time travel stories. It was still a fascinating structure, anyway.

What will you read next?

Cover of Sailor's Delight by Rose LernerI should turn back to one of the books I’ve started but am currently neglecting — Sailor’s Delight by Rose Lerner, perhaps, or Cat Sebastian’s We Could Be So Good. I really liked both of them so far, my reading journey is just powered by whims, and I wasn’t quite in the mood for so much yearning/such clueless guys.

I do also want to read volume three of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, while the first two are fresh in my mind. I’m terrible sometimes about leaving a series unfinished for so long I have to start over to finish it. I did say I want to finish more book series this year!

How about you? Any reading plans? Just read something amazing?

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Review – Heartstopper Volume Five

Posted January 23, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Heartstopper Volume Five

Heartstopper vol. 5

by Alice Oseman

Genres: Graphic Novels, Romance
Pages: 336
Series: Heartstopper #5
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Nick and Charlie are in love. They’ve finally said those three little words, and Charlie has almost persuaded his mum to let him sleep over at Nick’s. He wants to take their relationship to the next level ... but can he find the confidence he needs?

And with Nick going off to uni next year, is everything about to change?

Volume 4 of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper proved a bit too heavy for me, but that’s largely not the focus of volume 5 (fortunately). Not that it was a bad story, or a topic that was handled badly, or anything like that, but it just wasn’t what I needed at the time. Volume 5 starts the healing process, and features plenty of Nick and Charlie just getting to be teenagers, and do normal teenage things — including have sex.

It also features a bit of development for Charlie’s sister, which I think is referencing Solitaire? I know nothing about that novel, so seeing how Tori gets on isn’t something I’m super invested in, but on the other hand, it’s nice sometimes to see Nick and Charlie separate, especially given the next step that’s coming for them: long distance, as Nick goes to university…

As ever the art is cute, and the relationship between Nick and Charlie is adorable.

It’s worth noting that though this installment doesn’t go heavily into Charlie’s eating disorder issues, but that hasn’t been forgotten and at times it shadows how Charlie reacts to things and how he manages.

Rating: 4/5

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Top Ten Tuesday: When I Get A Round Tuit

Posted January 23, 2024 by Nicky in General / 38 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is all about the books you meant to read in 2023, and didn’t get to. There are books I’ve been neglecting much longer than that, but let’s hope I get a round tuit this year…

Cover of System Collapse by Martha Wells Cover of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohannon Cover of Cassiel's Servant by Jacqueline Carey Cover of Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs Cover of Witch King by Martha Wells

  1. System Collapse, by Martha Wells. I feel worst about the ARCs I neglect, and extra-bad about this one. I really want to read it! I love Murderbot! But here we are, and it’s well into January, and still…
  2. Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohannon. This was an ARC as well, and I bought a hardback in November, but I still haven’t so much as opened it. I’m sorry… I’m in a non-fiction mood at the moment (more than usual, I mean), so I might yet pick it up in January!
  3. Cassiel’s Servant, by Jacqueline Carey. Another ARC I neglected, in part because I meant to finish rereading Kushiel’s Avatar first, and I still haven’t managed that. I still love you, Joscelin.
  4. Ink Blood Sister Scribe, by Emma Törzs. I had this in ARC and also bought a copy (I like to do that when I’m late with reviewing an eARC), and still haven’t done more than read the first couple of pages. Rare magic books, how could I not love the idea of this one?
  5. Witch King, by Martha Wells. Look, I’m wincing as hard as you are. Yes, this was an eARC as well. And I bought a copy on release day. In my defence, it did come out during my exams! But I’m letting Martha Wells down hard, I know.
  6. Lost in the Moment and Found, by Seanan McGuire. I didn’t get to this one because I needed to catch up on the series first, and hadn’t realised I was several books behind, but I can at least report I’m nearly there! I read Where the Drowned Girls Go over the weekend.
  7. In The Lives of Puppets, by TJ Klune. Once more, I own a copy as well as having received an eARC. I really enjoyed The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door (though I’m aware of some of the criticisms of Klune’s work), and I’m looking forward to giving this a shot.
  8. Someone from the Past, by Margot Bennett. This one’s not an ARC! I had a tradition of reading the book I got from my British Library Crime Classics subscription right away, for the first part of the year… and then got a bit discombobulated when I got the Christmas anthology in October. I want to catch up and get back to it, so Someone from the Past is high on my list.
  9. Big Ben Strikes Eleven, by David Magarshack. Same here — I think this was the November book, and the Bennett was the December book? So I’d like to get round to both of them soon and get back to reading the new one as soon as it arrives.
  10. A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, by KJ Charles. I got this on the day it released, and fully intended to read it right away — KJ Charles almost never misses for me! But I wasn’t quite in the mood, and then I put it aside for a bit, and well… it’s still there now.

Cover of Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire Cover of In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune Cover of Someone From The Past by Margot Bennett Cover of Big Ben Strikes Eleven by David Magarshack Cover of A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles

Broadly speaking, I try not to be too prescriptive about what I “should” be reading, and let it be flexible depending on what I feel like. Which does land me in messes when it comes to review copies… but it’s a fairly chill way to read, most of the time! So I’m not kicking myself too hard about not reading these books yet. Their time will come.

How about you? Do you have strict to-read lists and schedules?

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Review – Till Death Do Us Part

Posted January 22, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Till Death Do Us Part

Till Death Do Us Part

by John Dickson Carr

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 245
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

"Who can I trust?"

Love-sick Dick Markham is reeling. He's set to marry Lesley Grant -- a woman whom he learns is not who she appears to be. She seems to have been associated with three poisonings, all of which were in locked rooms. Another crime has been committed and we will watch the great Dr. Fell investigate through Markham's watchful eyes.

That night the enigmatic fortune teller-and chief accuser-is found dead in an impossible locked-room setup, casting suspicion onto Grant and striking doubt into the heart of her lover. Lured by the scent of the impossible case, Dr. Gideon Fell arrives from London to examine the perplexing evidence and match wits with a meticulous killer at large.

I should preface this by saying (for anyone just tuning into my reviews now) that I really didn’t like the first couple of books by John Dickson Carr that I tried. After I read He Who Whispers, though, something clicked, and I determined to give him a little more time. Now that I’ve finished this one, I’m feeling a bit more complicated about it.

First, his female characters often leave something to be desired. There’s a certain almost femme fatale character type that he uses a few times (including here and in He Who Whispers) that I really don’t enjoy, though it can be difficult to explain exactly why not. Something about the overwrought helplessness of them, I think: the highly emotionally charged scenes where I favour a practical character who just steps up and takes control for herself. Which… not everyone or every character has to be like that, but when an author leans into the overwrought female stereotype multiple times, you really start to notice.

And of course, there’s his locked room mysteries, and his detectives. He tries so hard to come up with ingenious mysteries where you need to notice the tiniest clues and draw inferences from them if you want to treat it as a fair-play mystery — and to me, it feels sometimes like a rabbit just gets pulled out of the hat.

This one does get explained well, but there was a while where it was just too frustrating for words (I made a lot of cranky noises at it; my wife was definitely laughing at me). I don’t know quite what I’d want to make it hang together better for me: maybe just a bit more sense of the detective (and those around him) as humans. I’m not sure what drives Gideon Fell, beyond the love of a puzzle, yet on several occasions he shows a very human and humane side. I think a little more of that would do wonders for me.

Anyway, my newfound faith in John Dickson Carr isn’t quite shaken, but I hope the next book of his that I read takes a slightly different tack.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Brides of High Hill

Posted January 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Brides of High Hill

The Brides of High Hill

by Nghi Vo

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 128
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle #5
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Nghi Vo's Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle returns with a standalone gothic mystery that unfolds in the empire of Ahn.

The Cleric Chih accompanies a beautiful young bride to her wedding to the aging ruler of a crumbling estate situated at the crossroads of dead empires. The bride's party is welcomed with elaborate courtesies and extravagant banquets, but between the frightened servants and the cryptic warnings of the lord's mad son, they quickly realize that something is haunting the shadowed halls.

As Chih and the bride-to-be explore empty rooms and desolate courtyards, they are drawn into the mystery of what became of Lord Guo's previous wives and the dark history of Do Cao itself. But as the wedding night draws to its close, Chih will learn at their peril that not all monsters are to be found in the shadows; some monsters hide in plain sight.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Nghi Vo’s latest Singing Hills novella starts off by setting you up with some expectations, right from the blurb, and skillfully leans on that to guide you through the novella to the crisis point. It feels darker to me than the previous novellas in this series, with a real sense of unease throughout — not that the others have no sense of looming consequences, but I was more frightened for Cleric Chih than I usually would be. Chih has been drawn into something they may not be able to get out of, where they’re not so much an observer anymore, or just interested in how things turn out, but a part of the tale and critically affected by whatever will happen. Which is not the first time, I suppose, but this just felt more immediate.

I think Vo does an amazing job at teasing things out, with some little hints along the way to help you catch on so that once it all becomes clear, it’s really clear. It’s difficult to say much about this story without spoiling that journey, so I won’t say any more on that.

I did find that once certain things started happening, it all unravelled really quickly and I almost stumbled. I guess that’d be my only critique, but the story caught me when I stumbled and rearranged the world so everything made sense, so maybe that moment is really just part of the experience.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close

Posted January 20, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close

Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close

by Hannah Carlson

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 320
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Who gets pockets, and why?

It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? And why are the pockets on women’s clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets.

Throughout the medieval era in Europe, the purse was an almost universal dress feature. But when tailors stitched the first pockets into men’s trousers five hundred years ago, it ignited controversy and introduced a range of social issues that we continue to wrestle with today, from concealed pistols to gender inequality. See: #GiveMePocketsOrGiveMeDeath.

Filled with incredible images, this microhistory of the humble pocket uncovers what pockets tell us about ourselves: How is it that putting your hands in your pockets can be seen as a sign of laziness, arrogance, confidence, or perversion? Walt Whitman’s author photograph, hand in pocket, for Leaves of Grass seemed like an affront to middle-class respectability. When W.E.B. Du Bois posed for a portrait, his pocketed hands signaled defiant coolness.

And what else might be hiding in the history of our pockets? (There’s a reason that the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets are the most popular exhibit at the Library of Congress.)

Thinking about the future, Carlson asks whether we will still want pockets when our clothes contain “smart” textiles that incorporate our IDs and credit cards.

Pockets is for the legions of people obsessed with pockets and their absence, and for anyone interested in how our clothes influence the way we navigate the world.

Hannah Carlson’s Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close begins with the oldest types of pockets we know about, for both sexes, and quickly moves on through the years, discussing the evolution of pockets, the politics of pockets, and ultimately the fashion world’s take on pockets. It’s really not just about pockets: it’s also about women’s lives and how pockets have figured into those (they’ve been more significant than you might think), about how men’s fashions have changed and what those fashions have meant (hands in pockets used to be considered super rude), etc.

As a way of examining a swathe of history and society, it works pretty well, and it’s aided in its pace and interest by the addition of lots of colour images. I did briefly wonder whether it had forgotten all about tie-on pockets or decided to treat them as bags, but it got there after dealing with men’s pockets, in the end.

It made an interesting supplement to Barbara Burman and Ariane Fennetaux The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660-1900, since it fills in some of the men’s side of things, and doesn’t confine itself within that period. Slightly less academic than that book, too, I’d say.

Rating: 3/5

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