Tag: Stacking the Shelves

Weekly Roundup

Posted September 14, 2019 by Nicky in General / 11 Comments

Good morning, folks! It’s been a busy week, and I’m not honestly sure where the time has gone. Ah well.

I did at least get an Amazon voucher from the bunnies this week, so I’ve indulged in some ebooks — and I got a couple of new releases, too.

Acquired:

Cover of A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker Cover of The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow Cover of Return of the Black Death by Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan Cover of Thornbound by Stephanie Burgis

Cover of The Perfect Assassin by K.A. Doore Cover of The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djeli Clark Cover of Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney

Thank you, bunnies!

Finished reading this week:

Cover of The Body in the Dumb River by George Bellairs Cover of The King in the North by Max Adams Cover of Hekla's Children by James Brogden

Reviews posted this week:

The Aztecs, by Richard F. Townsend. Actually managed to make the Aztecs boring, though I imagine it’s a good scholarly resource. 2/5 stars
The Piltdown Forgery, by J.S. Weiner. A fascinating study, though it pulls back at the last minute to avoid incriminating the obvious culprit. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. The weekly update on what’s been on my reading plate!

Out and about:

NEAT science: ‘What is a gene drive? I respond to a question about a genetic engineering technique that may help us eliminate malaria and other pests and diseases.

So that’s this week! How’s everyone else doing?

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Weekly Roundup

Posted September 7, 2019 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Well, last Saturday was problematic for my weekly roundup, because my site went down! So here’s two weeks’ worth.

Books acquired:

Cover of Making the Monster by Kathryn Harkup Cover of Chernobyl by Serhii Plokhy Cover of The Border by Diarmaid Ferriter Cover of Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race by Gavin Evans

Cover of The Body in the Dumb River by George Bellairs Cover of Murder at the Fitzwilliam by Jim Eldridge Cover of Murder in the Bookshop by Carolyn Wells

Not quite as eclectic as my usual mix, perhaps!

Books read in the last two weeks:

Cover of Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw Cover of Murder by Matchlight by E.C.R. Lorac Cover of The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon Cover of Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Cover of Any Old Diamonds by K.J. Parker Cover of The Border by Diarmaid Ferriter Cover of Heraclix and Pomp by Forrest Agguire

Reviews posted in the last two weeks:

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, by Alan Jacobs. A long essay on reading and how Jacobs thinks you ought to do it. Not as prescriptive as many, but kind of snobbish; an interesting read, but expect to argue with it. 3/5 stars
Perihelion Summer, by Greg Egan. Solidly not my thing; it’s based around an idea, rather than people, and does neither very strongly from my perspective. 2/5 stars
Late Eclipses, by Seanan McGuire. These books are always fun, but I feel like Toby was hit particularly hard with the idiot stick in this book, missing the obvious way too much3/5 stars
Within the Sanctuary of Wings, by Marie Brennan. The last of the Lady Trent books, this wraps up with some surprising and satisfying reveals… 5/5 stars
Darwin Comes to Town, by Menno Schilthuizen. Lots of examples of evolution to suit urban environments. I quibbled a bit with the organisation of the chapters, though. 3/5 stars
The Warrior Queen, by Joanna Arman. Badly edited, and mostly not about its ostensible subject. Also, prone to leaps of imagination without even the courtesy to source its wild claims. 2/5 stars
Turning Darkness into Light, by Marie Brennan. Picking up on the world of Lady Trent with her granddaughter, I found this just a delight. 5/5 stars
The Blue Salt Road, by Joanne Harris. A decent take on selkies — fairly traditional, but with a slightly re-shaped ending. 4/5 stars
To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers. Not a bad novella, but it suffered a bit from its narrative format. 3/5 stars
Strange Practice, by Vivian Shaw. A delight, as ever — this was a reread. 5/5 stars
The End of Epidemics, by Jonathan Quick. Recommendations on how to manage epidemics (and pandemics) better in future; not entirely sure it’s directed at the right audience, since much of it requires work on the part of governmens and the WHO. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. Last week’s edition…
WWW Wednesday. This week’s edition.

Out and about:

NEAT science: ‘Trilobite shakeup.‘ I wrote about a study that might disrupt our view of trilobite fossils!

Phew, that’s the lot. How’s everyone doing?

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Weekly Roundup

Posted August 24, 2019 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Good morning, folks! I’m back from Worldcon, and as ever I think I need a holiday to recover from my holiday. (Which I worked through, also as ever, though I did do reduced hours!)

I met some lovely folks, got a couple of books, and also won a proof copy of Garth Nix’s new book. Not bad! I also had my 30th birthday, and though I joked I needed 30 books (one for each year), I only got nine, so I guess nobody should be serving me in a bar… 😀

Books acquired:

Cover of Angel Mage by Garth Nix Cover of A Little Light Mischief by Cat Sebastian Cover of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall Cover of Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

Cover of A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland Cover of To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers Cover of The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite Cover of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Cover of Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee Cover of The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton Cover of Any Old Diamonds by K.J. Parker Cover of The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book by Neil Gaiman

Cover of Conan Doyle for the Defence by Margalit Fox Cover of Symphony in C by Robert Hazen

Almost all fiction, but quite a few wildly different genres there. Just another week on my TBR…

Books read this week:

Cover of The Pleasures of Reading in An Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs Cover of A History of Life in 100 Fossils

Cover of Die Laughing by Carola Dunn Cover of Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews Cover of A Little Light Mischief by Cat Sebastian

Reviews posted:

The Pandemic Century, by Mark Honigsbaum. Not revolutionary in any way, but there are definitely new titbits of information here. 3/5 stars
Dread Nation, by Justina Ireland. This wasn’t 100% for me, but it’s a fascinating setting. I had some questions about the characters — relationships don’t work like that! 3/5 stars
Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers. This had some of the emotional punch of the first and second book, but it didn’t quite add up to a satisfying story for me. It’s a fascinating exploration of a particular corner of Chambers’ world, though. 3/5 stars
In the Labyrinth of Drakes, by Marie Brennan. A lovely instalment of the series, which solves some mysteries and involves a lot of the lovely partnership between Tom and Isabella. 5/5 stars
Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells. Not quite what I hoped for, but a good conclusion for Murderbot nonetheless. Looking forward to the novel! 4/5 stars
This is How You Lose The Time War, by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar. It didn’t work for me that well, but you gotta appreciate time-travelling multiple-dimensional lesbians. 3/5 stars
Mistletoe and Murder, by Carola Dunn. Fairly standard for this series, but as always it makes a good cosy mystery. 3/5 stars
Heartstopper, volume 2, by Alice Oseman. It’s just so goddamn cute. 4/5 stars
The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black. I was told that this gets better if you hold on to the end, which shakes things up, but… I was so bored. I DNFed it. 1/5 stars
Gene Machine, by Venki Ramakrishnan. I found this disappointing in two ways. 1) The secrets of the ribosome aren’t really unlocked, only the structure. That will tell us a lot more in time, but it doesn’t yet. 2) Ramakrishnan’s obvious antipathy to one particular competitor, of whom he says hardly a kind word that isn’t loaded with begrudging “I’m saying this to be fair, but I don’t really mean it”. She’s a woman; that is now how he treats male scientists. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. The pre-Worldcon roundup…
WWW Wednesday. And this week’s roundup.

So how’s everyone doing? Reading anything good? Got your hands on an awesome book? Share! (The news, not the book. At least not till you’ve read it. I’m not a monster.)

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Weekly Roundup

Posted August 10, 2019 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Good morning, folks. It’s been a quiet week around here, given last week’s news, but we’ve been getting on with things.

Received to review:

Cover of Deeplight by Frances Hardinge

New Frances Hardinge! 😍

Bought:

Cover of Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt Cover of Unthinkable by Helen Thomson Cover of Secrets of the Human Body by Xand and Chris Van Tulleken Cover of Snowball in a Blizzard by Steven Hatch

When I’m sad, I… buy non-fiction? It kinda makes sense; it’s the most likely to really engage my brain.

Finished reading this week:

Cover of The Warrior Queen by Joanna Arman Cover of Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan

Reviews posted this week:

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. Really great and really bleak. Makes accountancy exciting. 5/5 stars
Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini. A good history of race science, a bad overview of the actual evidence. 4/5 stars
Lent, by Jo Walton. Sympathy with Savonarola? Oh yes. 4/5 stars
An Artificial Night, by Seanan McGuire. One of my favourites in the series as I’ve read so far, because of all the stuff it weaves together. 4/5 stars
The Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams. Well gah! What a way to go about things. A very good second book. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. The usual weekly update.

Out and about:

NEAT science: ‘Ice cream headache. Ever wondered what causes one of those? I’ve gotcha covered.
NEAT science: Chocolate antidepressants. There’s currently a fair bit of reporting that chocolate has been shown to help with depression. The answer is, no, it’s been shown that people who eat dark chocolate are less likely to report depressive symptoms. There may be other things going on.

And that’s it for this week! Next week I might not post, given we’ll be in Dublin at Worldcon! But reviews and such will go up as normal, and I’ll check in again soon… maybe with some new books bought in Dublin!

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Weekly Roundup

Posted August 3, 2019 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Hey guys. So bad news on the Breakfast front; he’s gone as of Friday evening, fairly unexpectedly. I’m not really wanting condolences much right now; if you want to express them, could you stick to liking this post or just commenting something nice and unrelated?

I’ll continue things much as normal around here, because that helps, but please don’t take it personally if I forget to comment back or anything.

Books read this week:

Cover of Too Like The Lightning

Reviews posted this week:

Storm of Locusts, by Rebecca Roanhorse. I still find the world refreshing, but the plotting itself feels so… predictable. 3/5 stars
Necessity, by Jo Walton. I did not expect this series to lead here, but there’s so much fascinating about it. 4/5 stars
Forces of Nature, by Brian Cox & Andrew Cohen. Not bad at explaining some things, but the physics still mostly goes beyond me! The series is probably better for that. 3/5 stars
Tower of Thorns, by Juliet Marillier. This kind of nudges in a direction I hoped the books wouldn’t go, but it’s still a fascinating story. 4/5 stars
Magic Strikes, by Ilona Andrews. Vastly entertaining, as with most of this series, and starts stepping things toward the epic overarching story… 4/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. This week’s post about my current reads.
An August TBR. Planning for what to read in August!

What’re you reading?

And also, if you’re going to Worldcon, sound off! Let me know! I’ll be there and so will my wife.

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Weekly Roundup

Posted July 20, 2019 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Good morning, folks! I’ll be honest, it’s been a heck of a week. Let’s see what I managed to get done anyway, reading-wise!

Books acquired:

 

Used to be in a book group on Goodreads with Sarah Pi, for years, so it seems about time I read her stories!

Books read this week:

Cover of Exit Strategy by Martha Wells Cover of Mistletoe and Murder by Carola Dunn

Cover of The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Reviews posted this week:

Brainstorm: Detective Stories from the World of Neurology, by Suzanne O’Sullivan. A collection of fascinating case studies; more human interest, at times, than science — but still of genuine interest. 3/5 stars
Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan. The book that really got me into this series, which made it a very nice reread as well. 4/5 stars
Rogue Protocol, by Martha Wells. Not my favourite of the series, but it still contributes to the overall arc. Maybe I should up my rating a little, actually… 3/5 stars
The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton. I’m always a little sad about the beginning and the fact that Simmea isn’t a part of the story, but it does a lot of interesting things. 3/5 stars
Of Noble Family, by Mary Robinette Kowal. A powerful and worthwhile wrap-up to the series. Not a favourite, but solid. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. The usual update!

So that’s that! How’s everyone else doing? Anything lovely on your TBR?

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Weekly Roundup

Posted July 13, 2019 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Good morning, folks! It’s Saturday again. How’s everyone doing? I’ve had a quiet week, with lots of reading, yay!

Books acquired:

And I’ve already got stuck in!

Books read this week:

Cover of The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton Cover of The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal Cover of Necessity by Jo Walton Cover of Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews

Cover of Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

Reviews posted this week:

The Just City, by Jo Walton. A thought experiment about actually enacting a thought experiment, with help from a little time travel. I do so enjoy Simmea’s narration. 4/5 stars
Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee. Lovely ending to a rather mind-bending series. I’m sure I won’t understand it all unless I reread it. 4/5 stars
Lifelode, by Jo Walton. A domestic fantasy with a curious structure/narration, and a whole lot to enjoy. Made me think mostly about what my lifelode is… 5/5 stars
Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells. Pooossibly my favourite in the series because of ART. Robots watching drama together just kinda warms the cockles of my heart. 4/5 stars
The Border Keeper, by Kerstin Hall. This one didn’t quite work for me. Some beautiful images, but it felt all disconnected and discombobulated to me! 2/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. The usual weekly update about what I’m reading, what I’ve just read, and what I might read next.

Out and about:

NEAT science: ‘Cancer-killing cold virus.’ By request, an explanation of how an experimental new treatment for bladder cancer might work.

So how’re you doing? Anything delicious on your reading pile? Share, share!

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Weekly Roundup

Posted July 6, 2019 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Good morning, folks! It’s been a quiet week on most fronts, but I’ve done a fair bit of reading. What’s more, I had a greedily-awaited book come in months ahead of schedule, since I just got an e-ARC ooooof…:

I am very excited!

Books read this week:

Cover of The Bitter Twins by Jen Williams Cover of Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells Cover of Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee

Cover of Forces of Nature by Brian Cox Cover of The Just City by Jo Walton Cover of Lifelode by Jo Walton

Reviews posted this week:

The Afterward, by E.K. Johnston. An enjoyably fluffy fantasy romance about what happens after an evil god fails to take over the world. 4/5 stars
A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. A beloved favourite and a timely reread. This time I couldn’t help but appreciate the science the most. 5/5 stars
Extraordinary Insects, by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson. Insects might be extraordinary, but this book wasn’t. Maybe a good introduction? 2/5 stars
The Ninth Rain, by Jen Williams. A deeply satisfying fantasy world, with some fun characters to boot. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

A July TBR. Here I go, possibly biting off more than I can chew. It’s going well so far, though.
WWW Wednesday. The usual update!

Out and about:

NEAT science: ‘NEAT RNA.‘ Yes, I found that there’s an RNA called NEAT1, and I had to write about it, because… well, what it does really is neat.

So what’s everyone else been up to? Good reading week? Anything enchanting on your pile?

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Weekly Roundup

Posted June 29, 2019 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Good morning folks! I’m super tired this week, so I’ve been kind of dragging behind a little on everything, but hey, here I am. How’s everyone been?

Read this week:

Cover of Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse Cover of An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire Cover of Lent by Jo Walton

Reviews posted this week:

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. A reread of a book I used to adore! Still has a lot going for it, not least that end leaving everything open to the imagination. That’s also a frustration with it, at the exact same time. 4/5 stars
Valour & Vanity, by Mary Robinette Kowal. Kowal takes on a heist novel! Not my favourite, but it’s fun just to sit back and watch the versatility of this series. 4/5 stars
The Dark Days Club, by Alison Goodman. Decidedly meh. It felt so juvenile. 2/5 stars
Spineless, by Juli Berwald. Enjoyable pop-science with a touch of autobiography. Well, more than just a touch. 4/5 stars

Other posts:  

WWW Wednesday. The usual update!

Out and about:

NEAT science: ‘Poor little Pluto?‘ Is Pluto a good place to look for life? Well, at least the precursors to life, yes!

And now this post is written and ready to go out in the morning, I get to go and sleep.

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Weekly Roundup

Posted June 22, 2019 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

It’s been another week! This week my sister took me out for some stress-busting book retail therapy, and it was Good. The bunnies gave me some pocket money, and I had £10 off from a full stamp card…

(I also got a stack of psychiatry textbooks from my mother, because it turns out my next degree will almost certainly be an MSc in Mental Health Science.)

Bought:

My usual rather odd mix, I think!

Read this week:

Cover of All Systems Red by Martha Wells Cover of Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Reviews posted this week:

A Talent for Murder, by Andrew Wilson. I found this rather bland, despite the copious details of Christie’s life shoehorned in. Or possibly because of the shoehorning. 2/5 stars
Sorceror to the Crown, by Zen Cho. A reread, and just as enjoyable the second time! 4/5 stars
All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. A reread, because I hadn’t got round to the last book yet, and I wanted a refresher. I do love Murderbot, social anxiety and all. 4/5 stars
Fire Logic, by Laurie J. Marks. Just didn’t work for me. Slow, and there’s something about the style… meh. 2/5 stars

Other posts: 

WWW Wednesday. The usual update!

And that’s me! I caught up last week, only to find myself with a gazillion tabs open again now. Sigh. It never ends…

How’re you doing? Good books, something you’re excited about? Weirdest book ever on the go? Let me know!

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