Tag: books

WWW Wednesday

Posted May 21, 2025 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Cover of Chinese Dress in Detail by Sau Fong ChanWhat have you recently finished reading?

I’ve been plunging deep into some histories of clothing from the Victoria & Albert Museum. The two I’ve finished were 18-Century Fashion in Detail, by Susan North, and Chinese Dress in Detail, by Sau Fong Chan. They are beautiful and fascinating, and Chinese Dress in Detail is particularly good — though both are just high-level surveys, and constrained by what’s been preserved, what the V&A holds, etc, etc.

I definitely want to read more of this series.

Cover of Dreadful Company by Vivian ShawWhat are you currently reading?

As usual, I’ve started several hares at once. I just started on The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker (more informative subtitle “The story of Britain through its census since 1801”), by Roger Hutchinson, and I’m enjoying that quite a bit. So far it’s mostly talking about the history of the census, rather than strictly speaking what it tells us, but I’m enjoying it a lot.

I’m also reading Christianna Brand’s Cat and Mouse, which is set in Wales and evokes the place quite well (in part because it’s always raining), but so far I’m not really enjoying it. In part it’s the melodramatic tenseness, I think — just not what I enjoy at the moment when I pick up a classic mystery. Not enough distance from the awfulness.

I’m also partway through Eleri Lynn’s Underwear Fashion in Detail, also from the V&A like the books mentioned above, and a reread of Vivian Shaw’s Dreadful Company, having belatedly heard there was a new book coming out (which was duly preordered, just in time, and awaits me after I reread the others).

Cover of Advocate by Daniel M. FordWhat will you be reading next?

I don’t know, but probably Daniel M. Ford’s Advocate, T. Kingfisher’s Hemlock & Silver, and a couple of other books that are on my Bookspin Bingo card on Litsy. I started Courtney Smyth’s The Undetectables last week and didn’t vibe with it, but I’m going to give that a bit more of a shot before I decide whether to drop it or just put it back on my TBR for later.

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Review – Gitanjali

Posted May 21, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Gitanjali

Gitanjali

by Rabindranath Tagore

Genres: Poetry
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

"Gitanjali", or Song Offerings, is a collection of poems translated by the author, Rabindranath Tagore, from the original Bengali. This collection won the Nobel prize for Tagore in 1913. This volume includes the original introduction by William Butler Yeats that accompanied the 1911 English language version. "Gitanjali" is a collection of over 100 inspirational poems by India's greatest poet.

Because I read Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali (“Song Offerings”) via an app called Serial Reader, I’m not really sure if it was formatted the way it’s meant to be, and I couldn’t spot details like whether this is the translation done by the author, but all the same it was an enchanting collection of poetry that constantly had me highlighting lines here and there. It’s hard to choose any to share, especially because I don’t know if the translation is any good accuracy-wise — but definitely it’s something I’d like to return to, perhaps even have a copy of, and perhaps read more about in general (more context, maybe discussion of the translation, etc).

Bottom line is, it’s lovely: beautiful imagery, joyful, spiritual, thoughtful. There were few among the collection that I didn’t like at all, and many that spoke to me.

A very worthwhile read, all in all, and one I’m glad I stumbled upon.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Metropolitan Mysteries

Posted May 20, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Metropolitan Mysteries

Metropolitan Mysteries: A Casebook of London's Detectives

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 316
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Lord Peter Wimsey reads murder in the minutiae of a Bloomsbury kitchen. Dr. Gideon Fell unravels a locked-room mystery from a flat in Chelsea. Superintendent Aldgate cracks the case of the body atop Nelson’s Column.

The streets of London have been home to many great detectives since the days of Sherlock Holmes and Watson, with some of the best authors in the genre taking to the short story form to pit their sleuths against crimes ranging from murders on the Tube to heists from the capital’s finest jewellers.

Featuring a roster of Scotland Yard’s meticulous best, a cohort of daring doctors and a cadre of characterful private investigators, this new selection by Martin Edwards includes eighteen vintage mystery stories from a period between 1908 and 1963 to showcase the city’s most compelling classic cases.

With contributions by Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr and Dorothy L. Sayers along with rare finds by Raymond Postgate, J. Jefferson Farjeon and many more, this anthology invites you to join some of the greatest detectives ever written on their perilous trail through London’s darker underside.

Metropolitan Mysteries is another anthology edited by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics series, this time themed around London’s fictional detectives. Some of the famous ones are here, of course — Wimsey, Holmes — but some more obscure ones as well. As usual with this series’ anthologies, it’s an interesting survey of the “classic” crime fiction (though I think “classic” is a bit tired and ill-defined when it comes to this series: Golden/Silver Age would be a better descriptor, perhaps).

Also as usual with these anthologies, I think it’s greater than the sum of its parts. I’d read some of the stories before, but some of the others are of surprising interest, and altogether it’s a bit like a series of taster dishes for different authors and slightly different phases of crime fiction.

There are some stories that are better than others (I thought the Allingham one was pretty weakly related, just included just to shoehorn Campion into it, just barely), but as a whole it’s fun.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Necrobane

Posted May 19, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Necrobane

Necrobane

by Daniel M. Ford

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 366
Series: The Warden #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Aelis de Lenti, Lone Pine's newly assigned Warden, is in deep trouble. She has just opened the crypts of Mahlgren, releasing an army of the undead into the unprotected backwoods of Ystain.

To protect her village, she must unearth a source of immense Necromantic power at the heart of Mahlgren. The journey will wind through waves of undead, untamed wilderness, and curses far older than anything Aelis has ever encountered. But as strong as Aelis is, this is one quest she cannot face alone.

Along with the brilliant mercenary she's fallen for, her half-orc friend, and a dwarven merchant, Aelis must race the clock to unravel mysteries, slay dread creatures, and stop what she has set in motion before the flames of a bloody war are re-ignited.

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.

I’d meant to dig into Daniel M. Ford’s Necrobane right away after reading the first book, but somehow it didn’t happen. Fortunately, I felt like I was able to plunge back into the world really well — I don’t feel like I could explain to you the magic system of the world in any detail, even after just finishing the book, but it feels lived in. I want to be clear: it’s not a criticism! I feel kind of like the friends and acquaintances Aelis has, watching from the outside her very academic understanding of what she does. There are rules here, it’s just that I don’t know them, and that’s handled well by the story.

The story picks up more or less where we left off, with Aelis hurrying to deal with the aftermath of her actions in The Warden. We get more of Tun and Maurenia as characters, and more cool magic, and a twist that I basically saw coming (though I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to, it was so obvious that the tension was more in waiting for what would come of it, rather than whether something would come of it).

Some of the things that irritated me a bit in the first book, like Aelis’ tendency to talk to herself, were somewhat better here? Or rather, she kept doing so, but it felt less obtrusive and more natural.

I do feel a bit meh about her lack of forward planning, though; it feels like it allows for a somewhat sloppy plot (though it probably feels that way because it’s third-person limited, very tight to Aelis). It doesn’t take a super clever opponent to have her run herself into a trap, but we’re supposed to believe Dalius is very cunning, very clever, and Aelis can still run rings around him while just reacting to every situation rather than planning ahead. Even when she deliberately charges into a trap, her plan is basically “be really fast and strong”. Great. It’s entertaining reading, don’t get me wrong, but it does all feel a bit ad hoc.

In any case, the ending is rather a cliffhanger — some of Aelis’ problems are gone, but now she has a whole new one, which I definitely didn’t predict. I’m keen to pick up The Advocate soon.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 12

Posted May 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 12

A Side Character's Love Story

by Akane Tamura

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 161
Series: A Side Character's Love Story #12
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

"The long summer is finally at an end, and I've just realized that I don't have much time left as a college student."

With her job hunt concluded at last, Nobuko accepts a position in Ehime after graduation. Though she enjoys what little time remains of her college life with Hiroki and Fumi, she is constantly plagued with anxiety for the future. And as her graduation trip with Hiroki draws near, thoughts of doing "more than kissing" are on her mind, as well...

In volume 12 of A Side Character’s Love Story, Hiroki and Nobuko are thinking about “going further” than kissing. It feels surprisingly “immature” from my point of view, given how long they’ve been dating, but it’s a different culture and also, people just develop at different paces — I felt cross at myself for being kind of judgy. Hiroki is lovely about it, of course.

One thing about this volume is that we do hear a bit of detail about Shirosaki-san, which is new: she tried dating, but found that she had no real interest in kissing or going further. The way it’s described in the scene, I wonder if Shirosaki-san is meant to be asexual.

As ever, Hiroki and Nobuko are really cute, all the same.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Letter from the Lonesome Shore

Posted May 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – A Letter from the Lonesome Shore

A Letter from the Lonesome Shore

by Sylvie Cathrall

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 384
Series: The Sunken Archive #2
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

The charming conclusion to the Sunken Archive duology, a heart-warming magical academia fantasy filled with underwater cities, romance of manners and found family, perfect for fans of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

Former correspondents E. and Henerey, accustomed to loving each other from afar, did not anticipate continuing their courtship in an enigmatic underwater city. When their journey through the Structure in E.'s garden strands them in a peculiar society preoccupied with the pleasures and perils of knowledge, E. and Henerey come to accept--and, more surprisingly still, embrace--the fact that they may never return home.

A year and a half later, Sophy and Vyerin finally discover one of the elusive Entries that will help them seek their siblings. As the group's efforts bring them closer to E. and Henerey, an ancient, cosmic threat also draws near...

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.

I was a huge fan of Sylvie Cathrall’s debut, so I was very excited to read the follow-up, A Letter from the Lonesome Shore. For the majority of the book, it builds up the little mysteries more and more, and keeps up the same format of letters and documents relating to E. Cidnosin and Henery Clel (both letters between them, and letters relating to their siblings’ search for them).

For the first little bit of the book, I wasn’t quite sure. I didn’t know who the characters were and what their involvement in E. and Henery’s story was, so it seemed like the book might be taking a step back from them, which I didn’t love. But soon enough the letters between E. and Henery began, and their love winds gently through the story — along with the love their siblings have for them, and the determination of Vyerin and Sophy to find them.

I would say that the ending didn’t quite work for me just in that there were so many mysteries built up and not discussed that it broke the tension a little to have anything revealed. You know that principle where the monster in a horror movie is scariest when the director doesn’t show it directly? Like that. I did like the solution of the mysteries, and how the whole book ended: it’s entirely fitting! But the building up of the mysteries did add a lot, and it was weird once things were revealed and out in the open. It was satisfyingly weird, but not “weird beyond my wildest dreams of weird”, which is what all the obfuscation was beginning to make me feel like it ought to be.

Still, I feel like that’s rather a quibble against all else I love about this book. I adore E., I love that her (literal) OCD is presented, and not treated as a superpower nor as something that will prevent her ever achieving any of her aims, but just as a significant and disabling part of her life. Likewise Henery’s anxieties. Having at least three asexual characters with varying degrees of interest in romance is also a lovely thing.

Overall, it’s a lovely, lovely duology — I assume it’s over, given where it’s left, but who knows…

Rating: 5/5

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted May 17, 2025 by Nicky in General / 23 Comments

Good morning! Hope everyone’s doing well.

Books acquired this week

I got woken up today by the arrival of a big package of books for me, which I got myself as a reward for filing my taxes. Turns out I’ve saved up waaaay more money than I need for my taxes, so I released some from my tax budget. Most of it’s gone to the moving budget etc etc, but I gave myself enough for a treat.

Still, those books haven’t been unboxed and accessioned (so to speak) yet, so I haven’t saved and uploaded their covers yet. You’ll have to wait until next week! I’ll have a preorder and a gift arriving too, so it’ll be quite the haul: I might split it across two weeks.

Posts from this week

Here we go, the usual roundup!

I’m making sure to post a review every day, even when I have other features, to catch up a bit with the backlog. It’s good to have a backlog, and to have them all ready, but at my previous posting rate the pile of reviews would just keep building up and up!

What I’m reading

Let’s start first with the usual sneak peek at the books I’ll be reviewing… sometime, when I get through the pile (though review copies get prioritised for reviewing sooner).

Cover of A History of the World in Twelve by David Gibbins Cover of The Apothecary Diaries (light novel) volume 3 Cover of Queer City by Peter Ackroyd Cover of Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher

Cover of Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill Cover of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall Cover of The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

I did some rereading as well, so that was a pretty busy and satisfying week of reading!

I have some more rereading planned for this week, but I’ll also dig into Sorcery and Small Magics (Maiga Doocy) and Advocate (Daniel M. Ford), both of which I’ve been looking forward to for a while. All in all, I hope to spend plenty of time reading, since it’s clearly what I’m in the mood for: I managed to read five hours on one workday, this week, which… is quite the feat, compared to usual.

Hope everyone has an excellent weekend, with exactly as much reading as desired!

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 – Scandalize My Name

Posted May 16, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Scandalize My Name

Scandalize My Name

by Fiona Sinclair

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 240
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

One the eve of Elaine Southey's 21st birthday, Ivan Sweet has been found dead in his flat in the basement of the Southeys' historic north London home. A slick charmer to some of the tenants and a loathsome young scoundrel to others his death doesn't draw out many tears among the house's residents and neighbours. And yet the sordid truth starts to seep into the heart of their small community a murder is living among them, and who's to say when they might strike again? The shrewd Oxford man Superintendent Paul Grainger finds himself faced with a small circle of suspects whose connections and hidden motives heap complexity upon complexity in this tightly wrought mystery, shot through with a chilling touch of the macabre.

Fiona Sinclair’s Scandalize My Name feels very much on the cusp between “Golden Age” styles of mystery fiction and the more modern gritty crime. There’s a detailed and explicit autopsy scene, which is definitely not something I expected from something in this series, but there’s still a sense of an individual police officer going about the normal beat. Grainger’s not a world away from Lorac’s Macdonald at all, they’re very much in the same mode, even if the story has a lot more gruesome detail.

Overall, I think this one didn’t give enough clues to tie the solution of the mystery in with the rest. There was a rather sudden and very dramatic denouement which revealed the killer, but it didn’t really feel like the plot had got there yet — the denouement revealed the killer, rather than the detective.

There were some interesting character portraits, but I think it mostly felt a bit thin — maybe, as the introduction by Martin Edwards says, because there’s too many characters introduced and used as POV characters, and too much swapping around between them. That said, that doesn’t feel too unusual for a mystery story.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – A Mouthful of Dust

Posted May 15, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – A Mouthful of Dust

A Mouthful of Dust

by Nghi Vo

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 128
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle #6
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant come to the river town of Baolin chasing stories of a legendary famine. Amid tales of dishes served to royalty and desserts made of dust, they discover the secrets of what happens when hunger stalks the land and what the powerful will do to hide their crimes.

Trapped in the mansion of a sinister magistrate, Chih and Almost Brilliant must learn what happened in Baolin when the famine came to call, and they must do so quickly... because the things in the shadows are only growing hungrier.

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.

Pretty much anything by Nghi Vo is an auto-read for me, so I grabbed A Mouthful of Dust eagerly. In this one, Chih is looking for the stories of a recent famine, and plunges straight into a clearly fraught local situation. Cannibalism is more or less taken for granted in these situations, and Chih expects to find it, but people have all kinds of secrets around a famine, and the local magistrate definitely wants to hide something — and it… isn’t cannibalism?

This one’s a bit creepy, and it feels like Chih’s definitely in some danger. It feels really short, though: not incomplete, but it’s a small spare mouthful, lean with famine and shame. I’d maybe have liked one or two more stories; maybe I’d have liked a certain character to tell her story to Chih and give her own point of view…

In any case, this also reminded me that I’d really like to reread some of the earlier books in the series. Like the others, it pretty much stands alone once you have the basic concept, but it references the Empress of Salt and Fortune, and that made me remember how long it is since I read the book of that name, and that I’ve half-forgotten her story.

A lovely, lovely series of novellas, though they go some dark places. It’s an amazing concept for a series which lets Nghi Vo explore a whole range of themes and locations.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Automatic Noodle

Posted May 14, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Automatic Noodle

Automatic Noodle

by Annalee Newitz

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 160
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.

You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.

But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.

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.

Annalee Newitz’s Automatic Noodle is a cosy found-family-for-bots story set in the aftermath of California seceding from the US. That cosiness sits oddly against what inevitably reads as an allegory of racism in the anti-robot sentiment that the characters face, and against the capitalist nightmare Uber Eats etc etc.

I feel like there was a lot of stuff that was touched on, like Staybehind’s trauma, that could’ve been expanded on in a way that would’ve made it less of a feel-good cosy story, but for me would’ve made it a bit more satisfying. For me, the themes sat oddly with the wrap-up, which gives us a quick triumph against the anti-bot review-bombers and a warm snuggly feeling of community.

I couldn’t help but still be left wondering, could it really be that easy? The bots haven’t exactly escaped t the capitalist hellscape… community and good food don’t really answer the problems it raises. And it’s okay that Newitz didn’t want to write that kind of story, but I couldn’t believe in uncomplicated cosiness and a triumphant happy ending here — it was only a “happy for now”, all too clearly, and all the other stuff just hovers unaddressed.

So I think this one fizzled for me, ultimately, which is a bit of a shame as there was much to like, especially Cayenne and Hands.

Rating: 2/5

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