Tag: books

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 11, 2025 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

Wooo, the weekend! It’s been a cold and icy week here, really treacherous (including our car dramatically almost trying to slip off the back of our carpark and down onto the house a few metres below!), but we’re doing okay. Hope everyone else is doing alright.

Books acquired this week

For a certain value of “this week”… time for the final installment of books I got for Christmas!

First up, the remains of the fiction:

Technically there’s a little more fiction to come that I haven’t shown off, since I had a couple of vouchers to spend after Christmas (and my wife got me a couple more for non-Christmas reasons), but we’ll save that for next week.

You might’ve noticed that I already featured a volume one of The Apothecary Diaries a few weeks ago — that was volume one of the manga, though, and I decided to dig into the light novel. This isn’t at all confusing! Other than that, there’s a couple of picks that were just recommended somewhere (e.g. on Shepherd), plus Thus Was Adonis Murdered, which I was suddenly seeing everywhere a month or so ago.

Next, the rest of the non-fiction!

As ever, it’s a bit of a mix.

And that’s the last of the enormous Christmas haul (part one, part two)… except for a couple of books I bought later with vouchers etc. Next week is really, really the last of it!

Posts from this week:

First up, a quick roundup of reviews…

Fantasy/teen romance graphic novel: Camp Spirit, by Axelle Lenoir (3/5 stars)
Christmas romance: Look Up, Handsome, by Jack Strange (4/5 stars)
History/folklore: Saints: A New Legendary of Heroes, Humans and Magic, by Amy Jeffs (4/5 stars)
Fantasy: A Man and his God, by Janet Morris (1/5 stars)
Non-fiction: Space Rover, by Stewart Lawrence Sinclair (4/5 stars)
Romance manga: A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 6, by Akane Tamura (4/5 stars)

And some non-review posts:

What I’m reading:

First up, a quick roundup of the books I’ve read in the last week — which has been a pretty quiet one, by my recent standards! Reviews will be showing up in due course (with one of them already posted).

This weekend I’m hoping to spend some more time reading, but we’ll see how it goes. I’d certainly like to dig back into A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, since volume 10 has just come out on Friday, and I’ve got started on the light novels for The Apothecary Diaries. Buuut we’ll see where my whim takes me: I read 66 books in December, so if my brain wants a rest, a rest it shall have.

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 – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 6

Posted January 10, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 160
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #6
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
After dreaming of it for so long, Tanaka and Irie are finally a couple. Even as she relishes her modest happiness, Tanaka can't help but worry that Irie seems to enjoy talking with other people more than he does with her. A small new adventure begins for this side character, who only wishes to grow closer to her boyfriend...

Aaaah, volume six of Akane Tamura’s A Side Character’s Love Story is so cute. In this volume, their friends urge them to actually use one another’s personal names instead of family names, and Nobuko meets Hiroki’s family.

I love how patient Hiroki is, telling Nobuko they can go at their own pace… but how she pushes through discomfort to be as brave as he is about advancing their relationship. It’s just, aaah, despite Nobuko’s anxieties and their mutual awkwardness, they are so sincere and so dedicated to their relationship.

This is #relationshipgoals right here.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Akane Tamura, book reviews, books, manga, romance

Review – Space Rover

Posted January 9, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Space Rover

by Stewart Lawrence Sinclair

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 160
Series: Object Lessons
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit many equated with the space race. The lunar roving vehicles (LRVs) would be the first and last manned rovers to date, but they provided a vision of humanity's space-faring future: astronauts roaming the moon like space cowboys.

Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the LRV's legacy would pave the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity and Perseverance, who afforded humanity an intimate portrait of our most tantalizingly (potentially) colonizable neighbor. Other rovers have made accessible the world's deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives. Still others have been utilized for search and rescue missions or in clean up operations after disasters such as Chernobyl.

For all these achievements, rovers embody not just our potential, but our limits. Examining rovers as they wander our terrestrial and celestial boundaries, we might better comprehend our place, and fate, in this universe.

The Object Lessons series hasn’t always lived up to my hopes, with books that seem more like autobiographies than examinations of a type of object. Stewart Lawrence Sinclair’s Space Rover blends the two: there are definitely highly personal chapters, talking about the people who influenced him, and surprising connections to the space program and the space rovers, but he does also discuss the process of creating the rovers, the pitfalls, and the work they’ve done.

He also tries to ask — though not really at very much depth — why we create these rovers, what they do for us, and what they mean to us. I think the answers are complicated and he just touches on a few, rather than being exhaustive. In a way, he only briefly touches on how personally involved we get with the rovers, except that the book itself as a whole is a symptom of that fascination.

Personally, I think that one reason we identify so much with the rovers is that they can be our eyes and hands in a place we could not survive. It’s easy to identify with being the eye behind the camera: more than an astronaut can (having a personality, politics, opinions, needs), a rover can get out of its own way and personify all of us.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, science, Stewart Lawrence Sinclair

Review – A Man and His God

Posted January 8, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Man and His God

by Janet Morris

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 39
Rating:

Synopsis:
An immortalized cavalry commander joins forces with the high-priest of the god of war.... Where myth meets legend, two men kiss and Tempus' world changes forever. Meet and mourn the Slaughter Priest in "A Man and His God." In this canonical short novel, the Sacred Band begins when Abarsis, Slaughter Priest, brings his Sacred Band to Tempus and dies in his arms.

In this pivotal story, the Sacred Band is formed from love and death....

"Tempus put an arm under Abarsis' head and gathered him up, pulling the wounded priest across his lap. “Hush, now.”

“Soon, soon,” said the paling lips. “I did well for you. Tell me so… that you are content. O Riddler, so well do I love you, I go to my god singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him… I… fought beside you.”

“Go with more than that, Stepson,” whispered Tempus, who leaned forward and kissed him gently on the mouth; and Abarsis breathed out his soul while their lips yet touched."

This landmark short novel contains what may be the first male/male kiss in modern fantasy, and was widely reprinted, after appearing in somewhat different form in Thieves' World, in the Science Fiction Book Club, two Issac Asimov collections, and the Baen Book "Tempus" by Janet Morris.

It’s hard to know how to rate or talk about Janet E. Morris’ A Man and His God. As I understand it, it’s part of a larger world, and though it’s listed as being only 39 pages, I’d swear it was at least twice that. Maybe it was printed with the tiniest font imaginable.

Anyway, it has a semi-mythic register, and follows Tempus, a warrior who is currently on the outs with his god. It seems from the narrative that he’s cursed because he slept with his sister, and his sister is cursed because she manipulated him into it. Tempus’ feelings and intentions are often unclear, and I think that isn’t helped by the fact that this is actually cut out from a larger narrative.

The story is full of a general contempt for life and specifically for people different than oneself and for women. There is a kiss between Tempus and another man, Abarsis, as he dies, and there’s the Sacred Band who are all paired warriors, but… I can’t say that it felt particularly queer-positive in any way. There’s lots of violence, gratuitous levels of it, and torture.

Maybe it all fits together better if you read the whole original collection rather than these cut-out-and-revised fragments. That said, this part was published alone both in the past and now, so it should stand alone.

I think there’s an angle from which I can see that this is cleverly done, but the general contempt for everything that oozed off Tempus didn’t endear him to me, and it isn’t clear to me what level this is coming from: the character, the setting, the narrative, or the author. It’s not my thing either way, but one could admire it more if one was sure that the author doesn’t think they’re portraying a true hero.

Rating: 1/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Janet Morris, SF/F

WWW Wednesday

Posted January 8, 2025 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Wednesday again already! Well, at least I feel I have more to report this time…

What have you recently finished reading?

I just finished up What an Owl Knows, by Jennifer Ackerman. It’s an investigation of owls and how they do what they do, what exactly they do, and also how humans interact with and impact them. I learned some fascinating stuff, for instance that a particular species of screech owl catches blind snakes (they’re tiny) and carries them to its nest, and the snake then keeps the nest clear of e.g. maggots and so on. Baby owls that grow up with blind snakes in the nest grow 50% faster and healthier.

What are you currently reading?

I’ve plunged into Tea on Sunday, by Lettice Cooper, which I think was December’s book from my British Library Crime Classics subscription (which sends me the most recently published book in the series each month). It’s not actually that old, from the ’70s, but as the introduction says, it has a very classic feel all the same. I’m enjoying it well enough so far; it’s the slow and methodical type, and I feel like the first 100 pages have been mostly giving us character portraits of the suspects. Which is not a complaint!

Via Serial Reader, I’m now finally reading Anna K. Green’s The Leavenworth Case; it’s such a classic that I’ve meant to read it for a long time. I’m not very far into it yet, though.

What will you be reading next?

I’m not sure, to be honest. I’ve been a bit slow and uninspired with my reading, so I want to make sure it’s something that grabs my attention. Perhaps I’ll return to The Spellshop — I only stalled out on that because I switched to some more seasonal reading, and I do want to finish it.

What about you?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Review – Saints

Posted January 7, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Saints: A New Legendary of Heroes, Humans and Magic

by Amy Jeffs

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 448
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
In Saints, Amy Jeffs retells legends born of the medieval cult of saints. She draws on 'official' lives, vernacular romances, artworks and obscene poetry, all spanning from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. The legends' heroes originate from as far east as Turkey and North Africa and as far west as Britain and Ireland. Saints includes such enduring super saints as Brigid, George, Patrick and Michael, as well as some whose legends are less well known (Scoithín, Euphrosyne and Ia) or else couched in prejudice (William of Norwich).

Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims. She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.

The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December.

Saints' legends suffused medieval European culture. Their heroes' suffering and wonder-working shaped landscapes, rituals and folk beliefs. Their tales spoke of men raised by wolves, women communing with flocks of birds and severed heads calling from between bristling paws.

Amy Jeffs’ Saints is intended to bring some of the excitement and attention we have for retellings of folklore to hagiographies (stories telling the lives of saints). She’s chosen a small sampling of all the possible stories and retold them, following each with some commentary on its context, meaning, etc. Most of them were unfamiliar to me (I’ve only studied a few Vitae, those which mention King Arthur), so the commentary was much-needed.

Jeffs’ style in retelling the stories is rather personal, informal, sympathetic; she gets into the heads of the characters and has us inhabit them for a few moments, which I rather liked, though it’s not usually how saints’ stories get told. That’s because she really is recounting them as folklore, as stories, rather than with belief — which, for some readers, might not be acceptable, I’m sure.

I would personally have liked a bit more of the commentary, since I have a reasonable feel for what hagiographies are like, but I enjoyed it. The paper cut illustrations add something as well, I think, though I’m not the most visual person.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Amy Jeffs, book reviews, books, history, non-fiction

Top Ten Tuesday: Upcoming Books of 2025

Posted January 7, 2025 by Nicky in General / 24 Comments

Today’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl‘s Top Ten Tuesday is “most anticipated books releasing in the first half of 2025”, so let’s take a look…

Murder as a Fine Art, by Carol Carnac (January). Technically this isn’t new, but where would I get my hands on it other than through the British Library Crime Classics reprint? Carol Carnac is slightly better known as E.C.R. Lorac, but sadly less known than she ought to be in all her guises. Her mysteries are some of my favourites, and I’m eager to read this one.
A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol. 10, by Misaki, Momochi, Sando and Lamp Magonote (January). I haven’t quite read all the existing books yet, but I’m eager to keep following Lizel’s adventures, watching him charm everyone he meets, scheme like the best of ’em, and read the entire contents of a bookshop even faster than I would.
But Not Too Bold, by Hache Pueyo (February). I’ve read this as an eARC already (review here), but I’m looking forward to seeing what others think. It’s a little bit gothic, a bit creepy, and yet it’s a romance too…
The Ten Teacups, by Carter Dickson (February). Another one from the British Library Crime Classics collection. I’ve not always loved the work of Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr, but I gained a bit more of an appreciation for it in the last year, and I’m curious about this one. There’s still the chance I’ll dislike it, but equally a chance it’ll be a five-star read for me.
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett (February). I love this series, and I’m really happy to have received an eARC for this one as well. The formatting unfortunately leaves something to be desired (it’s an epub clearly generated straight from a PDF without cleanup), so I might hang on for the published version, alas. But I’m super excited to return to Emily’s world.
The Tomb of Dragons, by Katherine Addison (March). I urgently need to get to my eARC of this, because I don’t want to wait for the release in March! And here’s firmly hoping that someone finally gives Thara Celehar a hug. (I can dream.)
Murder by Memory, by Olivia Waite (March). A fun SF mystery, which I’ve already read (review here). I know a couple of people who are going to love it, and I’m going to very much enjoy their enjoyment.
Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green (March). The number of people who immediately notified this was going to be a thing when the news of it broke was… gratifying, honestly. Y’all know me! Yes, it’s high on my list, and I’m very hopeful for a new book on tuberculosis that will (I hope) make the seriousness of the situation clear to laypeople. Given my current degree and my undergrad dissertation, it probably won’t teach me anything new per se, but I’m always interested in how different people frame the problems — and you never know what someone fresh to the topic may notice or pick out as important. Either way, I expect to have Opinions.
A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett (April). I really liked The Tainted Cup, so I’m keen for the follow-up. I love genre mashes like fantasy and mystery, so this is catnip to me.
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, by Malka Older (June). Again, I had an eARC copy of this and enjoyed it (review forthcoming) — it might not be my favourite of the Mossa and Pleiti books in some ways, but it was still a fun time, and I’m looking forward to having more people to talk about it with.

And there we go! I’m sure there’s a lot missing, and I’m looking forward to browsing other people’s lists and learning just how much I missed out…

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Look Up, Handsome

Posted January 6, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Look Up, Handsome

by Jack Strange

Genres: Romance
Pages: 361
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Quinn wants to save his bookshop, the last thing he needs is to fall in love…

Hay-on-Wye’s only queer bookshop is always a hive of activity. So when it’s threatened with closure, its owner Quinn Oxford is determined to do whatever it takes to save his beloved shop.

That is until romantic novelist Noah Sage arrives in town. Gorgeous, brooding and clearly unhappy to be there, Noah is the distraction Quinn doesn’t need. Noah has a history with Hay and it’s one he’d rather not face. But when the snow leaves him stranded, he’s left with no choice.

Hay is a small town, meaning Quinn can’t help but bump into Noah wherever he goes. And as the two grow closer together, is it possible that Noah’s feelings towards Hay will thaw? Can Quinn have a real-life romance and save his beloved bookshop? Or will he need a Christmas miracle…

Jack Strange’s Look Up, Handsome is a cute Christmas romance set in Hay-on-Wye, based around the fact that one of the romantic leads (Quinn) owns Hay’s only queer bookshop… which is under threat of eviction, without much chance of being able to set up anew. The other romantic lead is Noah, a romance writer who grew up in Hay, came back for a book-signing at a festival, and got stuck due to snow.

The two predictably flirt and seem close to forming a relationship, in and around efforts from Quinn and his friend Ivy to save the shop, but then it becomes clear that Noah actually has a partner already, which obviously complicates things greatly. (There’s no actual cheating by the letter of the law, so to speak, but it comes very close and the intent is there: if Quinn hadn’t put the brakes on, I don’t think Noah as written would’ve done so. So bear that in mind.)

There’s also a bunch of other relationships in the book which help make it feel alive: Quinn’s friendship with Ivy; Ivy’s fling with another character; Quinn’s relationship with his mother, step-father and sort-of cousin; Quinn’s work for Noah’s mother (an Oscar-winning actress hit by scandal), when he becomes her ghostwriter; Quinn’s vague knowledge of his assistant in the shop, Daniel Craig (who ends up in a relationship with a guy called James Bond)… and there’s Hay itself, written with love and an eye to Welshness (there are some Mari Lwyds!) that was appreciated by this reader. I didn’t actually love Hay an enormous amount myself on a brief visit, but this book made me want to go back and give it another shot — maybe in less miserable weather.

I think there could’ve been a bit more attention to the villain of the piece, though; he comes across as very one-dimensional, and it makes him feel like a pantomime villain. I think it’s realistic that he doesn’t come round and change his mind, to be clear, but it felt weird that he had no redeeming qualities in the present. There are some faint hints of supportiveness in the past, but… I think it would’ve felt more rounded if he’d been a little pained by what he’s doing, rather than being a clean-cut out-and-out villain.

Overall, it’s basically one of those small-town romances where everyone comes together, there’s a clear bad guy, and yes, there’s a happy-ever-after in the end. It felt more well-rounded and more grounded in a real location than I expected, though, and ultimately I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s probably somewhere between three stars and four, but I’m rounding up because I enjoyed the Welshness and the fact that it’s centered around a queer bookshop. Shout out to places like Portal Bookshop (York) and The Bookish Type (Leeds) for being great places for queer people to get books and community.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Jack Strange, romance

Review – Camp Spirit

Posted January 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Camp Spirit

by Axelle Lenoir

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Romance
Pages: 208
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Summer camp is supposed to be about finding nirvana in a rock garden... But Elodie prefers Nirvana and Soundgarden. Can she confront rambunctious kids, confusing feelings, and supernatural horrors all at once?

Summer 1994: with just two months left before college, Elodie is forced by her mother to take a job as a camp counselor. She doesn't know the first thing about nature, or sports, of kids for that matter, and isn't especially interested in learning... but now she's responsible for a foul-mouthed horde of red-headed girls who just might win her over, whether she likes it or not. Just as Elodie starts getting used to her new environment, though -- and close to one of the other counselors -- a dark mystery lurking around the camp begins to haunt her dreams.

Axelle Lenoir’s Camp Spirit felt a bit like there were two halves, not equally split, that it kept jumping between: a summer love story between two camp counselors, Elodie and Catherine… and a spooky/supernatural story that involved the camp leader, and only later connected at all with what was going on with Elodie and Catherine.

The romance is cute enough, but it feels like it might actually have been stronger if it’d stuck to the summer of self-discovery between Elodie and Catherine or the supernatural plot. As it was, the supernatural plot felt side-lined compared to the teenage woes of those two.

It is, of course, also a very teenage book, given that a large part of what’s going on involves Elodie and Catherine developing feelings for each other.

I quite liked the art, and overall, I did have fun reading it, but it felt strangely slow — especially the first half or so.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: Axelle Lenoir, book reviews, books, graphic novels, queer fiction, romance, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted January 4, 2025 by Nicky in General / 21 Comments

Happy new year! Yep, time for the first STS/Sunday Post of 2025. It’s been a busy week for me and 2025 has so far been tired and meh, on balance. I don’t believe that that has to set the tone for the whole year, luckily!

A bright spot (as ever) is books, so let’s get to talking about those…

Books acquired this week

Time for the second installment of my Christmas haul (the first part being last week’s post here)! Here’s a selection of the non-fiction…

As ever, a weird mix, as ever! I’m trying to decide where to start, since I’m a bit spoiled for choice…

And the fiction selection:

I really liked the sound of all these — I’m hoping I’ll be in the mood to continue Rebecca Thorne’s series soon, since I know the third book is out relatively soon (and the fourth in August, I think?). But as ever, I’m going to let my whim guide me!

Posts from this week

As ever, let’s have a bit of a recap. I’ve stepped up my posting schedule a bit due to a backlog of reviews (though mostly for graphic novels and manga!), so there was plenty going on!

Christmas romance comic: Snowflake Kisses, by Jordan Greene & Yayira Dzamesi (3/5 stars)
Classic mystery: Dramatic Murder, by Elizabeth Anthony (4/5 stars)
Archaeology: Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King, by Mike Pitts (3/5 stars)
Romance manga: A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 5, by Akane Tamura (4/5 stars)
Science/history: Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter, by Matthew Shindell (5/5 stars)
Horror novella: Crypt of the Moon Spider, by Nathan Ballingrud (2/5 stars)
Historical mystery: Murder at the Ashmolean, by Jim Eldridge (2/5 stars)

And there were a couple of other posts!

What I’m reading

As ever, time for a sneak peek at the books I’ve finished recently which will be coming up for review… eventually (I mentioned that backlog, right?!).

For this weekend, I want to really settle into my 2025 reading! Only one of the books just above was read in 2025; I’m a bit bogged down in my second read, Jonathan Silvertown’s Selfish Genes to Social Beings. I’m hoping to finish that and read a couple of volumes of A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, at the least!

But we’ll see how it goes… How’s everyone’s 2025 so far?

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