Tag: books

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted December 14, 2024 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

A busy week for me, on the book front! Life-wise things have been mostly calm, just work and studying and so on, as per usual.

Books acquired this week

I didn’t expect to acquire any books this week, but… that’s not how it turned out, ahaha. First up, some library holds came in…

Cover of The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke Cover of Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent

Aaand then I also got an early Christmas present from my bosses at Postcrossing, and of course it was also time for the British Library Crime Classic release, meaning I got the new one via my subscription.

Cover of Around the World in 80 Birds by Mike Unwin Cover of Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper

And then while straightening out my wishlist right before setting my wife loose on it for Christmas presents, I picked up a couple of ebooks that were going cheap aaaand I also purchased a new light novel on a whim, just to see what this series is like.

  Cover of The Honey Witch by Sydney J. Shields Cover of This Will Be Fun by E.B. Asher Cover of An Education in Malice by S.E. Gibson Cover of My Happy Marriage, by Akumi Agitomi

As you see, I’ve given myself plenty to keep me busy until Christmas (and beyond)!

Posts from this week

Time for the usual roundup! Reviews first, as ever:

And just one non-review post, my What Are You Reading Wednesday update.

What I’m reading

As ever, here’s a sneak peek at the books I read this week which I plan to review on the blog! As you can see, it’s been another busy week, helped along by novellas and manga.

Cover of The Apothecary Diaries volume 1, by Natsu Hyuuga Cover of The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar Cover of Murder at the Ashmolean by Jim Eldridge Cover of The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older Cover of A Side Character's Love Story vol 8 by Akane Tamura

Cover of A Side Character's Love Story vol 9 by Akane Tamura Cover of The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke Cover of The Big Four by Agatha Christie Cover of Immortal Red Sonja vol 1 by Dan Abnett et al Cover of The Dead of winter by Sarah Clegg

Cover of A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation vol 1 by Misaki and Momochi Cover of A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation vol 2 by Misaki and Momochi Cover of Cruel Winter With You by Ali Hazelwood

I’m going to be reading more of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation this weekend for sure, but what else…? Probably some more of A Side Character’s Love Story, and finishing up with Michael Waters’ The Other Olympians, my current serious read, which is about the fascist and specifically Nazi origins of sex testing in sport.

But, as ever, it depends on my whims in the moment.

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

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Review – The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker

Posted December 13, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker

The Bookshop, the Draper, The Candlestick: A History of the High Street

by Annie Gray

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 416
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

What makes a high street? It's certainly not just about the shopping; these thoroughfares are often the beating heart of our towns and cities and, by extension, of the people who use them. As spaces where local life and culture unfolds, our high streets can be playgrounds of personal indulgence and community spirit, or sites of contentious debate and politicking.

Historian Annie Gray takes us down the street and through the ages, from medieval marketplaces to the purpose-built concrete precincts of the twentieth century. Peeping through the windows of tailors, tearooms and grocers, we explore everything from the toyshops of yesteryear - where curiosities were sold for adults, not children - to the birth of brands we shop at today.

Vibrant and enticing, The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker is an essential reflection on how we shopped and lived in days gone by - and what the future may bring.

It’s pretty well-established by this point that I love a book that does a deep-dive on a highly specific subject, so obviously I was very tempted by Annie Gray’s The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker, a history of the high street. It starts with a chapter about shopping prior to the 1650s, and then discusses some broad eras from there, with the conceit that we’re going shopping with a certain level of means and a certain shopping list.

I wasn’t always in love with that conceit, I must admit; I wanted less about how “probably you’re quite tired by now and could do with a pick-me-up”, and more just facts. I get other people find that dry and boring, but I find the imaginative flourishes often just act like padding, and obscure the information that you’re reading for. I wonder if another format might’ve worked better, like chapters themed around types of shops (drapers, for instance) or a type of shopping (confectionary, menswear, etc) in order to really highlight how that changes over time.

Regardless, I did find this really fascinating, and it was interesting to reflect on my own experiences of high streets. Cardiff’s is definitely still alive, for instance, and apparently got the top spot in a consumer survey very recently. But where I grew up in Wakefield feels a bit more lacklustre, in part because of the semi-recent Trinity Shopping Centre built a few streets away, obviously designed to draw the life of the town there.

Annie Gray has a surprising optimism about the future of the high street. Certainly I’ve found myself both using my local high street more, coincidentally about the time I started reading this (grabbing stuff from Boots and Superdrug rather than online, for instance, and heading to a local bike shop instead of Halfords when I needed bike accessories), and being frustrated by the shops that have closed and gone away (I’d have patronised an M&S in person if they hadn’t moved to a spot outside of town). As someone returning to cycling, the local high street (such as it is) is somehow a lot more tempting now, especially with the library now sited much closer to it.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 3

Posted December 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 3

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 158
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #3
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

It's summer, and through sheer determination, Nobuko's achieved a small miracle: she can finally have a normal conversation with her crush. She hopes things can continue on like this forever, but her junior coworker Abe-san imparts a warning about trying to "keep things the same" when it comes to love. Could this fellow side character's love story be a glimpse into Nobuko's future?

In volume three of Akane Tamura’s A Side Character’s Love Story, the slow burn continues, but both Hiroki and Nobuko are starting to admit their feelings and take a few brave steps closer together. There’s some really cute moments between them, and like in book two, we get some glimpses into what Hiroki is thinking as well. Abe and Kaneko also give them some very good advice and a little push — I love that their relationships with the people around them, like their coworkers, get as much “screen time” as their relationship with one another.

They both remain really shy, and unsure of what they’d even like to do together, but they end up going for a trip to the zoo and having a good time.

The special chapter at the end kind of spoils the flow into the next volume, but it’s also cute.

Rating: 3/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted December 11, 2024 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Happy Wednesday! Here we go again.

Cover of The Big Four by Agatha ChristieWhat have you recently finished reading?

Yesterday I finished reading The Big Four by Agatha Christie — a book of hers that she didn’t think much of, that I actually… kind of liked? I’m still not a huge Poirot fan, nor a Hastings fan, but this one was just so dramatic and over-the-top, while not actually getting too deep into the seaweed to churn out red herrings and misdirections.

It probably helps as well that it was relatively short.

Cover of The Other Olympians by Michael WatersWhat are you currently reading?

I’m most actively working on The Other Olympians, by Michael Waters; it’s slow going because it’s a period of history I’m not personally fascinated by, and I’m also not that interested in sport history in general. I’m here to understand the Nazi underpinnings of sex testing for athletes, along with anything else they gifted sport with along the way.

Cover of Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth AnthonyWhat will you be reading next?

That’s a very good question, to which I mostly don’t know the answer. I’m reading a lot of manga at the moment, and I tend to read each volume all in one go, letting my whim guide me.

That said, if I’m going to do any of my seasonal reading, I should get to that soon, so maybe Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth Anthony, this year’s Christmas-themed reprint from the British Library Crime Classics series, or Miss Beeton’s Murder Agency by Josie Lloyd, a random pick from the library.

What about you, dear reader?

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Review – The Wood at Midwinter

Posted December 10, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Wood at Midwinter

The Wood at Midwinter

by Susanna Clarke

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 64
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

‘A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They’re the same thing really.’

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

Featuring gorgeous illustrations truly worthy of the magic of this story and an afterword by Susanna Clarke explaining how she came to write it, this is a mesmerizing, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.

In the afterword to The Wood at Midwinter, Susanna Clarke mentions that she sees this as part of the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I agree that it probably would have made a fun footnote there. And as a physical volume it’s quite attractive, with a pretty cover, lovely illustrations, etc.

However, there’s basically nothing here but heavily Christian vibes and some pretty descriptions of the wood in winter. The main character, Merowdis, is a saint (because we’re told that everybody says so), and in this story she gets granted a vision of her future, which is to raise a bear-cub as her own. She’s positioned as a sort of Virgin Mary type figure, but to redeem the relationship between humans and animals, and… mostly it just comes across as very churchy, and mostly just vibes.

It’s still an attractive little volume, but I wasn’t in love with the story (inasfar as there was any). I found the afterword, in which she discusses her writing process and some of her influences, almost more interesting than the story!

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Murder in the Bookshop

Posted December 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Murder in the Bookshop

Murder in the Bookshop

by Carolyn Wells

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 256
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

A classic locked room murder mystery which will have a special resonance for lovers and collectors of Golden Age detective fiction. Includes a bonus murder story: 'The Shakespeare Title-Page Mystery'.

A successful poet and children's author, Carolyn Wells discovered mystery fiction in her forties and went on to become one of America's most popular Golden Age writers. Penning 82 detective novels between 1909 and her death in 1942, she was mourned in 1968 by the great John Dickson Carr as one of mystery fiction's 'lost ladies now well lost', and remains undeservedly neglected 50 years later. Murder in the Bookshop is a story laced with criminality, locked rooms and bookish intricacies that any bibliophile will find irresistible.

This Detective Club hardback is introduced by award-winning writer and authority on Golden Age detective fiction, Curtis Evans, and includes 'The Shakespeare Title-Page Mystery', a murderous tale of literary shenanigans that was one of the last pieces of detective fiction which Carolyn Wells ever published.

I picked up Carolyn Wells’ Murder in the Bookshop because 1) bookshop, 2) classic mystery, and 3) female author name from whom I hadn’t read anything yet. It’s American rather than British, which is part of why I hadn’t come across the author before. This volume also contained a short story, “The Shakespeare Title-Page Mystery”.

As far as the setup goes it’s fairly typical, with various hallmarks of the genre: a controlling husband, a younger wife who has developed a relationship with someone who works for her husband, the murder of said husband, a private detective, and of course, suspicion of the wife and the employee. In addition we have the stolen book, and various legit-sounding details around rare books and the rare book trade.

It falls down on inconsistency, though. One moment Fleming Stone says it’d be dangerous for the young wife and her lover to seem close, and the next (without any debate or comment) he’s talking to the police about it quite casually. “I’m not going to show this to her,” he says, only a couple of pages before he promptly does so. It just feels like a bunch of steps are being missed out — things there might be reasons for, but which you need to hear the reasons for before they make sense.

In addition, the ending is very, very rushed, and suddenly you no longer see any of the moving parts. It’s also one of those mysteries that keeps key info from the reader, which is a pet peeve for some.

It’s a shame, really, but I don’t think I’d read anything by this author again — it was too unsatisfying.

Rating: 1/5

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Review – All the Violet Tiaras

Posted December 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – All the Violet Tiaras

All The Violet Tiaras: Queering the Greek Myths

by Jean Menzies

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 88
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

For a period in time that gave us Sappho, and the love affair of Achilles and Patroclus, the Ancient Greek relationship with queer folk is a lot more complicated than at first glance. Myths were altered and adapted throughout antiquity to reflect the values and issues of the day. All the Violet Tiaras navigates queer reimaginings, explorations of gender, and more.

Jean Menzies’ All The Violet Tiaras is quite short, more a long essay than a book really, which means it doesn’t waste much time, plunging straight in to discussing the modern takes on Greek myths, and the way that queer people in particular have adopted and adapted them, seeing ourselves in them, etc.

Menzies discusses some books/stories I was aware of, and some I wasn’t, which means I now have a little wishlist of books/stories I want to look into (oh no). I think she handles well the line between what we think of as queerness now and how identities worked in Ancient Greece, without trying to project that kind of thing backwards.

It’s a minor point, but it is a bit weird to have a book that so relies on Twitter/X as being an institution that eveeeeryone uses that @usernames are included just like that (not “@username on X”, just “@username”). It feels especially weird for a book published in 2024, as X crumbles and every week there’s a new spurt of users heading off to Mastodon, Bluesky, and other alternatives. This might look very strange in a couple more years. It already feels weird to me; not having used it for two years makes me very conscious how inessential it actually is. The book could also use a solid proofread.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted December 7, 2024 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

I’m very much enjoying the advent season so far — as I’ve probably mentioned before, I usually go overboard on creating a custom advent calendar of gifts for my wife, a whole mix of things like craft kits, nerdy phone charms, books, etc. I watch out for people’s reviews of horror books all year (especially from Mogsy at The Bibliosanctum) so I can make some good choices Lisa wouldn’t otherwise hear about, since it’s really not my genre. So that’s a lot of fun, and adds a bright spot to every day.

Hope everyone’s having a good December so far, whether or not you’re celebrating any kind of holiday this month!

Books acquired this week

This week I got a couple of eagerly-awaited books to review via Netgalley: I love the Mossa and Pleiti books, and I’ve been adoring the Emily Wilde series. I also forgot to mention Neon Yang’s new book last week, so here it is!

Cover of The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older Cover of Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett Cover of Bright than Scale, Swifter than Flame by Neon Yang

I’m really excited to dig into these.

Posts from the last week

First up, the reviews!

And the only other thing I posted was my WWW Wednesday post.

What I’m reading

I have a long way to go to meet my stretch reading goal this year: as I write, I have to read 52 more books to meet my goal, and I haven’t given up yet! I’ve been reading quite a lot this week, finishing 17 things that count as books on StoryGraph (though a couple of them were very short, and there were a lot of graphic novels and manga in the mix). Here’s a sneak peek of the ones I plan to review here!

Cover of Machine Readable Me by Zara Rahman Cover of A Side Character's Love Story vol 4 by Akane Tamura Cover of A Side Character's Love Story vol 5 by Akane Tamura Cover of They Came to Slay by Thom James Carter

Cover of A Side Character's Love Story vol 6 by Akane Tamura Cover of A Side Character's Love Story vol 7 by Akane Tamura Cover of Breaks by Emma Vieceli and Malyn Ryden Cover of Snowflake Kisses by Jordan Greene & Yayira Dzamesi

Cover of Camp Spirit by Axelle Lenoir Cover of Cultish by Amanda Montell Cover of Star Collector vol 1, by Sophie Schonhammer and Anna Backhausen Cover of Star Collector vol 2, by Sophie Schonhammer and Anna Backhausen

I know, I know, it’s a lot!

Over the weekend, I plan to do a bunch more reading — for one thing, I want to dive into The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, and there’s more manga I want to read, and I’m partway through Murder at the Ashmolean and Black Ops & Beaver Bombing…

Suffice it to say, I’ll be keeping busy!

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!

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Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 2

Posted December 6, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 2

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 158
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #2
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

This side character's love story is rapidly unfolding... Emotions are running higher in volume 2, as we finally see things from the perspective of Irie-kun, who's fallen for Nobuko. Little by little they grow closer, and each gesture is leading up to something special. Everyone's cheering this couple on in the eagerly-awaited second installment!

Volume two of Akane Tamura’s A Side Character’s Love Story continues to be very cute but a slow burn, following the main character (the “side character” of the title!) as she navigates her growing feelings for a co-worker, and hesitant steps toward a relationship. Her anxieties and hesitancies about speaking up are maybe a little too real, as in the first book.

What’s nice in volume two is that we do get more of a view of what Hiroki’s thinking and feeling, where the first volume just followed Nobuko. Like her, he’s never really been interested in someone before, and he clearly overthinks things somewhat as well, but he’s a bit steadier.

There are some really sweet moments during their not-quite-date, particularly Hiroki noticing that her shoes hurt and giving her a blister plaster — he comes across as so sweet and earnest.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Wormwood Abbey

Posted December 5, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Wormwood Abbey

Wormwood Abbey

by Christina Baehr

Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Pages: 200
Series: The Secrets of Ormdale #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

As a Victorian clergyman's daughter, Edith Worms has seen everything -- until a mythical salamander tumbles out of the fireplace into her lap. When a letter arrives from estranged relatives, Edith is swept away to a crumbling gothic Abbey in the wilds of Yorkshire. Wormwood Abbey isn't just full of curious beasts and ancient family secrets: there's also a tall, dark, and entirely too handsome neighbour who is strangely reluctant for her to leave. An unexpected bond with her prickly cousin Gwendolyn gives Edith a reason to stay in this strange world -- especially when it turns out that Edith herself may have a role in guarding her family's legacy. But not all of the mysteries of Ormdale are small enough to fit in her lap...and some of them have teeth.

Christina Baehr’s Wormwood Abbey is a short historical fantasy that kicks off a series of five books (with the final book releasing in November, so it’s out now as this review goes up on my blog). It’s a pretty quick read, following Edith as she and her immediate family (her father, step-mother and half brother) arrive at the titular Wormwood Abbey to sort out the family affairs, now that all the male heirs except her father (originally disowned) are gone. There she meets her cousins Gwendolyn, Violet and Una, and… honestly doesn’t make much headway with them at first.

Oh, and there are dragons. Okay, that isn’t immediately obvious, but the cover makes it pretty clear, if you weren’t tipped off right away by names like “Wormwood” and “Ormdale”. Edith takes a while to get with the programme, even when she’s raising a baby salamander.

It’s a little slow to start, I think, but as things progress there’s a bit of adventure and tension (and some indication that there’s more to come) and perhaps a hint of romance, though Edith’s not really interested at this stage. I’m not sure how I feel about the romance yet; it feels a bit inevitable narrative-wise, but the characters don’t seem to have a lot of interest in one another.

As for Edith herself, she doesn’t quite match up to Isabella Trent (of Marie Brennan’s series), but she’s fairly practical, curious about things, and has a certain amount of courage. She’s also a writer of detective novels, which made me smile. I’m hoping her character will develop further.

Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and decided to pick up the next two books in the series to follow it at least a little further — I’m definitely curious about the revelation near the end of Edith’s abilities, and where the whole thing is going other than “the Worms family protect dragons and try to prevent them impacting on local people”. I imagine the world is going to intrude rather more, as you’d expect in that era when linkages between places became more common and travel more likely.

It is worth noting that Edith’s father is a clergyman, and there’s a good amount of discussion of Christianity. I hadn’t thought about that very much myself, given the time period it’s set in, but I noticed another review that was pretty uncomfortable about it, and it’s true that there’s a fair amount of it, along with some period-typical antisemitism as well that comes up due to Edith’s birth mother being Jewish. So that’s useful to know.

Rating: 3/5

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