Hey all! It’s been a fairly quiet week, seeing my family, playing video games, reading… Hurrah for exactly that kind of week. And here’s Breakfast relaxing to go with it…

Received to review:

Just last week I read the first one and complained I didn’t have the sequel right away. Hurrah, now I do!

Bought: 

I probably love reading about diseases a little too much.

I also got a whole suitcase full of books from Bastian’s Book Reviews, but while they’re all awesome, I’m not adding them to my cataloguing right now.

Read this week:

   

Reviews posted this week:

–The Naming of the Shrew, by John Wright. Amusing at first, but starts to drag because it becomes too much of a list. 2/5 stars
–Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Pretty much just a taster, so it genuinely is for people who aren’t fans of astrophysics already. 3/5 stars
–The Language of Thorns, by Leigh Bardugo. Interesting invented fairytales, some of them retellings, and it doesn’t matter if you already know Bardugo’s Grisha world. 4/5 stars
–The Tiger’s Daughter, by K. Arsenault Rivera. I wanted to love this for the queerness and the elegant writing, but I was turned off by the depiction of the cultures borrowed from here. 2/5 stars
–The Gods of Olympus, by Barbara Graziosi. Not much of a surprise for me, but a good survey of the Olympian gods and what people have believed about them over the centuries. 3/5 stars
–Damn Fine Story, by Chuck Wendig. Good advice on how to tell stories, though there’s quite a lot of filler padding it out. 3/5 stars
–Under the Pendulum Sun, by Jeannette Ng. It’s hard to know what to say about this one — it’s fascinating and twisted, playing with stories about the Fae and bringing Victorian realism to it. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. What’s hot and what’s not on my reading pile.

So how is everyone? Let me know and I’ll try and swing by and comment back ASAP, though I’m quite busy today!

Good morning, folks! Here is my haul of books about diseases, for background reading for my course. I’ve already torn through four of them, actually, and it is very helpful to have this perspective.

It hasn’t been a great week in some other respects, so hey, at least I have books. And bunny pictures.

Bought:

 

 

Can you tell what I’m studying this semester? Heh.

Read this week:

   

    

Reviews posted this week:

–Jhereg, by Steven Brust. A reread to get back to the series. It remains fun, though there were no surprises (obviously), and I think some of the fun does come from working things out. 4/5 stars
–Just One Damned Thing After Another, by Jodi Taylor. I don’t know why I’m the odd one out, but to me the title summarised how this book felt. It had a natural end and then — kept going. I can’t say I loved the characters, either, or the fact that the plot was advanced by sexual assaults. 2/5 stars
–Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, by Angela Saini. Takes a look at — and skewers — supposed science about in-built differences between genders. 3/5 stars
–A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle. I didn’t get the enduring charm that’s made this a classic, I’m afraid. 2/5 stars
–First Grave on the Right, by Darynda Jones. Holy rape culture, Batman. 1/5 stars
–Taste of Marrow, by Sarah Gailey. This had less of the team feel than the previous book, and basically I’m 10,000% here for the lot of them settling down, making a found family and having capers (together) forever. 4/5 stars
–The Beautiful Ones, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I didn’t love Signal to Noise, but this worked much better for me. It’s very Heyer-esque. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday: The weekly update on my currently reading stack, and what I might read next!

How’re you all doing? I’ll always visit back if you leave a comment here, so feel free to drop in a link directly to your STS post.

Good morning, folks! I’m finally better from my cough… at least mostly, though if you look at me wrong I might go off into a little coughing fit, alas. I’ve just ordered a bunch of background reading for my course, but it hasn’t all arrived yet, so I only have a small stack of books to share this week: a couple of ARCs and a novella.

Oh, and here’s the obligatory away-from-buns bunny picture:

Received to review:

I’ve already read Close Encounters with Humankind, which is pretty fascinating; I can’t remember the summary of Valiant Dust, so that one’s going to be a surprise…

Bought:

I’ve been curious about this since N.K. Jemisin mentioned it in her column, so I picked it up with what was left of an Amazon voucher after buying stuff related to my classes.

Read this week:

    

A bit better week for reading, this week! Here’s hoping I get back into top form soon…

Reviews posted this week:

–The Hammer and the Cross, by Robert Ferguson. A little dry and very detailed; a very good read for someone who’s really interested, though. 4/5 stars
–A Very British Murder, by Lucy Worsley. A fun book covering the evolution of crime fiction in the UK, and people’s love of it. 4/5 stars
–Machiavelli: A Man Misunderstood, by Michael White. Another good biography from White. 4/5 stars
–The Man Who Fell to Earth, by Walter Tevis. I didn’t love this, but the way it ended was perfect — it made so much sense with what we see in reality. Hence, 4/5 stars
–The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden. This didn’t quite work for me, and I’m not sure why. I guess it felt rather predictable/typical in some ways. 3/5 stars
–How We Got To Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World, by Steven Johnson. Good points and a pretty entertaining read, but nothing earth-shatteringly surprising. 3/5 stars
–The Lost City of Z, by David Grann. Really, I want the book about the archaeology being done now, rather than about Victorian explorers, but it’s reasonably entertaining all the same. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday: The weekly update on what I’m reading.

How’re you doing? Comment here to let me know, and don’t forget to provide a link so I can visit you in return!

Good morning, folks! I’m not quite over the cold yet, since I have a horrible cough that won’t shift, but I’m doing better. And, I ended up with a whole stack of books from London/friends/etc. Woo!

Update on the me:

As you can see below, it still hasn’t been a good reading week. I’m just so tired. I have a few books on the go, but nothing’s sticking very well. Mostly I feel like reading non-fiction, but I’m mindful of the fact that most people are here for my fiction reviews, and don’t even read non-fiction, so I do need to keep up with the fiction content!

Although, maybe that’s the problem. I do view keeping my blog interesting as being a job, and reading ARCs as a job, sometimes. Maybe that’s taking the fun out of it a little — but on the other hand, I get fun back from running a blog people enjoy and engage with, so… Hm.

Anyway, other than that, you may have noticed that I’ve got my green lock showing my site is now secure! With the help of Lynn O’Connacht, who is very patient and hosts my blog for free, my site is now secured and fit for anything.

In other news, I’m away from the bunnies again, and you know what that means. Here is Hulk, showing everyone she’s a civilised lady and can sit at (well… under) the dinner table.

New books:

Some good non-fic picked up at the New Scientist Live event, and a bunch more fiction to keep me occupied. Hurrah!

Read this week:

  

 

Reviews posted this week:

–The Wimsey Family, by C.S. Scott-Giles & Dorothy L. Sayers. A little piece of, well, whimsy, covering the background of Lord Peter’s family in bits and bobs pieced together from letters and piffle. 4/5 stars
–Mask of Shadows, by Linsey Miller. Mostly, this felt a little bit too much like Throne of Glass and The Hunger Games, though the genderqueer protagonist was an interesting touch. 3/5 stars
–A Rare Book of Cunning Device, by Ben Aaronovitch. A fun audio-exclusive. Not essential to the broader plot of Peter Grant’s story, but a good aside and a perfect narrator. 4/5 stars
–Leonardo: The First Scientist, by Michael White. A readable and apparently well-sourced biography of a great thinker. 4/5 stars
–Drawing Breath: the Making and Unmaking of Tuberculosis, by Kathryn Lougheed. A lot of stuff I didn’t know about TB itself, and a wake-up call if you didn’t know that TB is very far from being unmade. 4/5 stars
–The Secret History of the World, by Jonathan Black. Not about what I thought it was about from other reviews, sadly. 1/5 stars
–The Carpet Makers, by Andreas Eschbach. A reread of a carefully crafted favourite. 5/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday: The weekly update on what I’ve been reading

So how’re you?

Good morning, folks. I’m currently in London, about to attend the New Scientist Live event, and completely full of cold. Wife brought it home last week, but now I’m in the thick of it too. Bleh. So anyway, I might not reply to comments/other people’s posts until tomorrow, but I promise I’ll get to them, as always!

Books received to review:

Thank you Tor and Angry Robot! Exciting stuff.

Books bought:

 

Thank you, Mum! I’ve been wanting all these for ages.

Read this week:

  

Again, not the greatest reading week. It started okay, but then I got sick…

Reviews posted this week:

–The Warrior Princess, by K.M. Ashman. Disappointing in execution, but still pretty awesome to see someone dealing with Welsh history. I learnt something! 2/5 stars
–Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. It started out entertaining, but I got tired of the brand of humour, which mostly revolves around sex and bodily functions. 2/5 stars
–Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf. About the science of how we read. I have serious questions about some of the research described. 3/5 stars
–Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee. I couldn’t wrap my head around it as science fiction, but once I treated it as fantasy and just accepted the world, I loved it. 4/5 stars
–Neanderthals Rediscovered, by Dimitra Pappagianni and Michael A. Morse. Not as in-depth as I’d hoped, but interesting stuff. 3/5 stars
–Starlings, by Jo Walton. Unsurprisingly, I loved this collection of Jo’s short work. 4/5 stars
–The Planet in a Pebble, by Jan Zalasiewicz. Not as poetic as Richard Fortey’s work, but an enjoyable survey of the rock cycle. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

–The cost of reading: Books ARE expensive. Apropos of a throwaway tweet stating that books are not expensive. (Spoiler: it depends.)

No WWW Wednesday post this week, see also: I was sick! Hopefully there’ll be more activity round here in the week to come. How’s everyone else doing?

Good morning, folks! Here’s the second part of the great Calgary book haul, featuring all the fantasy books I got! Plus some more review copies, of course.

Bought:

 

 

Quite a few from my backlog of wishlist, there! Looks like it’s gonna be fun.

Received to review:

I’ve been meaning to read Annie On My Mind forever, so yay for getting that. Well, yay to all of them (and thank you to the publishers/publicists).

Read this week:

 

It hasn’t been a reading week, really, as you can see — I’ve been focusing on replaying Final Fantasy VIII with my wife, which is a different sort of fun!

Reviews posted this week:

–Harkworth Hall, by L.S. Johnson. I have a couple of minor quibbles, but I was pretty hooked all the same. 4/5 stars
–The Deeper Genome, by John Parrington. It starts off simple, but it does start delving into stuff I wasn’t very familiar with. Definitely worth reading. 4/5 stars
–The Ghoul King, by Guy Haley. Quinn intrigues me, even though he isn’t outwardly the best person. I need moooore. 4/5 stars
–The Button Box, by Lynn Knight. A lovely survey of women’s fashion through the medium of the family button box. 4/5 stars
–Defy, by Sara B. Larson. The main character is a girl disguised as a boy. Everyone seems to know her secret, though. Meh. 2/5 stars
–The Emerald Planet, by David Beerling. I didn’t expect to love this, but I really did — it’s fascinating stuff. 5/5 stars
–Assassin’s Apprentice, by Robin Hobb. This is a reread, and I’m relieved that I still loved it. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. What I’m reading right now (or as of Wednesday, anyway).

How’s everyone?

Hey everyone! I’m back! And now I have to actually account for my hauls, erk. I’m gonna split it up into two posts, because, um, yeah. So look out next week for my fantasy haul!

Received to review:

 

Quite a bunch, right? I was really excited about most of these, and I’m so glad I got approved for them!

Crime/mystery bought

I’ve been meaning to read these for a while. I have high hopes of the Daisy Dalrymple books being my new Phryne-like fix…

Sci-fi bought

I’ve been meaning to read all three of these entirely different novels for ages, so… here goes?

Non-fiction bought

Bit of a mix, as per usual! I was glad to find something like Imagining Head-Smashed-In when I visited Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, because I would like to read more about First Nations people, and this was at least praised by modern First Nations people.

LGBT bought

I read An Unsuitable Heir while I was away, and decided I really needed to read more by K.J. Charles. Here’s hoping they all match up in quality!

Read this week:

   

 

Reviews posted this week:

–Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris. I enjoy Harris’ work for light reading, but just don’t get along with Sookie. 1/5 stars
–Outer Space, Inner Lands, by Ursula Le Guin. It’s Ursula Le Guin’s SF short fiction. ’nuff said. 5/5 stars
–Camelot’s Honour, by Sarah Zettel. A beloved reread that winds together the Arthurian story and the non-Arthurian bits of the Mabinogion. 4/5 stars
–One Renegade Cell, by Robert Weinberg. At one point, this was the state of the art in describing and understanding cancer. It’s still pretty helpful. 3/5 stars
–Magic Shifts, by Ilona Andrews. As usual, a fun entry to the series. 4/5 stars
–An Unsuitable Heir, by K.J. Charles. A lovely romance/mystery I enjoyed on a lot of levels. 4/5 stars
–Fowl Language: The Struggle is Real, by Brian Gordon. Collection of a fun comic. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday: What I’m reading at the moment!

This is the second of my scheduled way-in-advance posts, so it’s not the most up to date, but next week I’ll be back with your regularly scheduled update. I don’t have a new bunny picture to share, since the buns are off at the babysitter’s, but here’s an older one of Hulk begging to be pet, and one of Breakfast cleaning his face!

How have I deserved such cute buns?

Books bought this week:

Again, just a tiny selection from a rather larger haul. Calgary’s bookshops probably fear me, by now.

Books read this week:

 

Not much reading this week, given roadtrips and such!

Reviews posted this week:

–Acadie, by Dave Hutchinson. I was along for the ride, nodding at the fairly predictable beats — and then wham, the ending jacked it up a star. 4/5 stars
–Why Dinosaurs Matter, by Kenneth Lacovara. Nothing much new if you know your dinosaurs, but interesting all the same. 3/5 stars
–The Shadowy Horses, by Susanna Kearsley. Give me moooore of the archaeology, less of the ghost story! 3/5 stars
–Hengeworld, by Mike Pitts. Fascinating discussion of the mythic landscape of Paleolithic Britain, although I don’t always agree with Pitts’ assessments. Lots of depth on the archaeological digs and so on. 3/5 stars
–The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin. …I don’t get the fuss, sorry. 2/5 stars
–A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers. More insular and intimate than the first book, this feels less easily resolved too. I enjoyed it a lot, and it can stand alone if you’re interested. 4/5 stars
–The Making of the Fittest, by Sean B. Carroll. Basically looks at the “forensic record” of evolution encoded in DNA. Interesting enough, especially if you’re looking for examples to cite… 3/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. The update on what I’m reading and what I might read next.

I know I’ve been away, but I’ll be back soon after this goes up, so let me know how you’re all doing!

Hello from Calgary!

This post was mostly written in advance, so sorry if I don’t manage to comment back to you! Here’s the obligatory away-from-bunnies bunny pic — some cuddles with Breakfast a couple of days before we set off.

Books bought in Calgary:

This is just a taster, because jetlag has hit me hard and I can’t focus beyond the next ten minutes involving my pajamas.

Most of these I’ve had before, but review copies… I felt guilty, okay?

Books read this week:

   

I should come up with ratings for these, but honestly I’m this close to falling asleep in the middle of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

Reviews posted this week:

–Buffalo Soldier, by Maurice Broaddus. I feel like I’d have appreciated this more if I knew US history better, but it’s fascinating all the same. 3/5 stars
–A Crack in Creation, by Jennifer Doudna and Sam Sternberg. A timely exploration of the latest in gene editing — something I’d love to work on. 5/5 stars
–15 Million Degrees, by Lucie Green. Solar physics might not be quite my thing, but Green’s sense of wonder definitely came across. 3/5 stars
–Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey. I enjoyed this a lot, and had to get the next book. It has its flaws (some more female characters, please?), but in general it worked for me. 4/5 stars
–The Trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin. Understand string theory? It’s okay, Smolin points out that nobody does. This book got me as close as I’ve ever been to understanding it, though. 4/5 stars
–Starborn, by Lucy Hounsom. I found a few aspects of this problematic, and I’m not gonna read the rest of the series. 2/5 stars
–False Colours, by Georgette Heyer. It’s fun — as you’d expect from Heyer. 3/5 stars

I am back with the wife and the bunnies! And soon I’m off to Canada. I don’t know how much I’ll be around there, so there may not be a weekly roundup/STS post, but I have reviews scheduled to go up as usual.

Received to review:

Yay! I only recently read Spellslinger, so I was glad to get this now.

Birthday presents:

 

I actually got almost the full set of Peter Wimsey books in these new editions like Striding Folly, all matching, but I’m not listing them as new books because there’s so many, and because I’ve read most of them many a time!

As you see, it’s quite a mix. I picked all of them myself, so I can’t blame anyone else’s weird taste…

Books I bought:

 

I swear, there were sales.

I’d say this is my last acquisition for a while, but I specifically saved up some money for a little book spree while visiting the in-laws in Calgary…

Books read this week:

 

   

Four stars to… pretty much all of these. Three stars to Mask of Shadows, though.

Reviews posted this week:

–Life on the Edge, by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili. The idea of quantum biology scares me a little, since I’d rather keep quantum out of biology… but this book makes it seem pretty manageable. 4/5 stars
–The Vaccine Race, by Meredith Wadman. A lot of stuff I didn’t know about the development of vaccines! 4/5 stars
–Just Six Numbers, by Martin Rees. A bit out of date now, but still worth a read and pretty clear for someone not in the field. 3/5 stars
–Mapping the Interior, by Stephen Graham Jones. Creepy stuff, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, but it’s definitely effective. 3/5 stars
–Babylon, by Paul Kriwaczek. What is it about books about Mesopotamia that they fall prey to total lack of sourcing…? 1/5 stars
–The Fire’s Stone, by Tanya Huff. A reread, and it’s still fun. 4/5 stars
–A Pocketful of Crows, by Joanne Harris. Weaves together a whole bunch of interesting stories into a whole. 4/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. The usual update.
–Experiment results: My mood does correlate with how much I read! Nobody who reads my book blog is surprised, but hey, here’s the results of the little study I did on myself over on my science blog. Plus bonus maths! Now doesn’t that sound tempting?