It’s been a weird week. I got the rest of my assignment results (I did well on that too), but somehow I haven’t ended up doing much studying even though the exams are coming up very soon. I also got vaccinated on Thursday: it’s finally possible to buy a COVID vaccine in the UK, when you’re not eligible for the free service. I lost eligibility last year when they started excluding people with milder asthma, so I was glad to be able to get vaccinated again now. So I was a bit feverish on Friday, but of course it’s worth it.

Books acquired this week

I thought I hadn’t got anything, but turns out I’d preordered Marie Brennan’s new short story collection, and I got this month’s British Library Crime Classic, so there’s that!

Before the Fact is an interesting one, very different to most classic crime — I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Reviews posted this week

Time for a quick roundup, as usual!

• Romance manga: Don’t Call Me Dirty, by Gorou Kanbe (3/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: London Particular, by Christianna Brand (2/5 stars)
• Popular science: Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods, by Danna Staaf (4/5 stars)
• Food history: Chillies: A Global History, by Hetaher Arndt Anderson (4/5 stars)
• Fantasy: Ink, Blood, Sister, Scribe, by Emma Törzs (3/5 stars)
• Romance manga: Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, vol 3, by Shio Usui (4/5 stars)

What I’m reading

This weekend I’m hoping to finish a few of the books I’ve had on the go for a while. First on my list is The History of the World in 100 Animals, by Simon Barnes, which I’ve been tucking into today. Maybe I’ll read some more manga as well — I’ve been reading Fairy Tail as a palate cleanser from all the serious stuff, and it’s fun, but I haven’t read much of it lately even though I’m in the middle of a story arc.

As usual, here’s a sneak peek of what I’ve been reading this week and plan to review on the blog soon; not a lot, this time!

And that’s it for me! How’s everyone 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!

Oof, it’s been a busy week. The marks from my assignments have been coming in, though not for the one I care most about, d’oh. I’ve done well so far, though!

Anyway, let’s get to the books.

Books acquired this week

Despite saying I wasn’t going to acquire anything for a while after last week’s spree, this week I was a bit meh and stressed out, so my wife treated me. I love Cat Sebastian’s work, and I’d just read Daniel M. Ford’s The Warden and been rather annoyed that I didn’t have the sequel. Sooo… my wife’s the best.

And I also got a new review copy from Tor — I quite liked the first book, so I’m eager to get to this one.

But other than that, I’ve been restrained! Except, oh… a new installment of A Side Character’s Love Story popped up, and I had to have it.

I’d promise next week really will be quiet, but I had amazing results from my assignments so far, so most likely there’ll be a celebration. And celebrations ’round here almost always mean books.

Reviews posted this week

As usual, here’s the roundup of reviews posted this week:

• Popular science: The Missing Lynx: The Past and Future of Britain’s Missing Mammals, by Ross Barnett (4/5 stars)
• Graphic memoir: Everything is OK, by Debbie Tung (2/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: Murder in Vienna, by E.C.R. Lorac (4/5 stars)
• Non-fiction: The One-Cent Magenta: Inside the Quest to Own the Most Valuable Stamp in the World, by James Barron (3/5 stars)
• Fantasy novella: A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow (4/5 stars)
• Popular science: Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, by Cat Bohannon (4/5 stars)

And no other posts this week!

What I’m reading

It’s been a slightly quieter reading week, but a good one (as you can see from the sneak peek of the books I’ve finished this week and will be reviewing here soon). I particularly loved The Hands of Time and A Letter to the Luminous Deep, but really I enjoyed all of these very much.

This weekend I’ve been digging into Brian Deer’s account of the Andrew Wakefield scam, which is raising my blood pressure much as I expected it to. At the same time, though, it’s nice to see the evidence all laid out against Wakefield. (As a reminder, I think he’s next thing to a murderer; you’ll waste your breath trying to argue with me here.)

After that… maybe it’s finally time for me to tuck in and read System Collapse, the newest Murderbot book. Or maybe I should first focus on finishing Cat Sebastian’s The Ruin of a Rake.

Either way, there’s no shortage of good books to read around here. 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!

It’s been another week already?! Last week I ended up so busy that I didn’t share my post in the linkups, or visit anyone else. It’s quietish around here in terms of visitors/comments, as a result, which is probably good while I’m all wrapped up in preparing for my exams (Parasitology, Nutrition & Infection and Bacterial Infections), but still, I kinda miss being more active.

Anyway, last week me and my wife went off to York to meet up with a friend, so we ended up in the lovely Portal Bookshop, and also paid a visit to Waterstones so I could raid their non-fiction. So I have plenty to showcase this week!

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

Books acquired this week:

As usual, since I had the opportunity, I took the time to really root around and look for new reading material. Gotta stock up, after all! First up, the fiction:

I did also get physical copies of a couple of books I had as e-ARCs (and didn’t read in time, oops):

So hopefully I’ll get round to those now!

Aaand the non-fiction which is (as ever) a heck of a mix:

I’ve already read the first three, so I guess I continue to be in a non-fiction mood! With The Doctor Who Fooled the World, I joked that I decided my blood pressure was too low and I need to raise it. It really is going to infuriate me though — Andrew Wakefield is a murderer, in my eyes.

Anyway, this was quite a spree, so for a few weeks I’m going to try and focus on more reading than acquiring, ahaha. Though I don’t do “book bans” these days; I just try to make sure I’m reading more books than I acquire, and it’ll be fine.

Posts from this week:

As usual, here’s a bit of a roundup of the reviews I’ve been posting. I’m building up a bit of a backlog again, especially of graphic novels/comics and history reviews. Anyway, here’s what was posted this week!

• Fantasy romance: Good Neighbors, by Stephanie Burgis (3/5 stars)
• Romance manga: Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, by Shio Usui (4/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: The Ha-Ha Case, by J.J. Connington (3/5 stars)
• Fantasy novella: If Found, Return to Hell, by Em X. Liu (3/5 stars)
• History: The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, by Bettany Hughes (4/5 stars)

And I did also have one non-review post:

• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

Ever since Bookly’s readathon I’ve somehow found a lot more time in my days for reading, though perhaps not as much when I was trying to read 45 hours in ten days. So this week has been pretty full. Here’s a peek at the books I’ve read which I plan to review soon!

This weekend I have a couple of books I want to finish, but I also want to start on a couple of my new books: I’d like to read A Spindle Splintered (Alix E. Harrow) and start on Hands of Time (Rebecca Struthers). We’ll see!

How’s everyone doing?

It’s the weekend again already?! Oof, how time flies. It’s been a good week for reading, and I have added two ARCs I’m excited about to my TBR.

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

Books acquired this week:

I haven’t been out buying books for the last few weeks, but I’m planning a spree tomorrow. For now, there’s just these two ARCs:

I’ve really loved a lot of Nghi Vo’s work (aside from The Chosen and the Beautiful), so I snagged this one right away. As for Haunt Sweet Home, I’m ashamed to say that I still haven’t read any of Sarah Pinkser’s work, despite the fact that we were once both part of the same small-ish Goodreads group, The Alternative World. I’ve been meaning to read her books forever, but I’m a terrible, flighty mood reader.

(I still haven’t read some of the books we had discussions about in the group, like Eifelheim…)

Posts from this week:

Time for the usual roundup! First the reviews…

• Fantasy audiobook: Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, narrated by Kristin Atherton (5/5 stars)
• Graphic novel: Oddball, by Sarah Andersen (3/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: The Religious Body, by Catherine Aird (3/5 stars)
• Popular science: Mountains of Fire: The Secret Lives of Volcanoes, by Clive Oppenheimer (3/5 stars)
• Memoir/winemaking: Wine, by Meg Bernhard (3/5 stars)

And now the other posts!

• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

By the time Bookly’s Odyssey Readathon ended, I’d read for 48 hours, which was nice and seems to have kickstarted my reading in general. Here’s a little glimpse at the books I’ve been reading which should come up for review soon on the blog:

It feels like I surely read more than that, but of course I made progress with a number of other books, including some that had been on the backburner for a while. Given I’m going out tomorrow, I’m not sure what else I’ll finish this weekend, but I’d like to finish up with A Short History of Tomb-Raiding (Maria Golia), at the very least.

And how about you, dear readers? Anything good jump into your hands off the shelves this week?

A quiet week around here, with only one new book to share (which I’ve already finished!). It’s been more of a week for reading what I’ve got, which is always nice.

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

Books acquired this week:

The other Murderbot books were free (or rather covered by one subscription or another), but I had to spend this month’s Audible credit to get Network Effect.

I’ll probably pick up System Collapse soon, but I want to read it in ebook/hard copy first; I don’t retain enough detail from audiobooks, sadly. I’m also very curious about the adapted, full-cast versions, but I don’t want to listen to them back-to-back with the unabridged versions, so I’ll hold off on that for now.

Posts from this week:

As usual, I’ve posted something every day this week. It can be hard to keep up when a blog is so active, or hard to decide what you want to focus on. So here’s a roundup! First, the reviews.

• Fantasy mystery: The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett (4/5 stars)
• YA fantasy graphic novel: Breaklands – Season One: The Chase, by Justin Jordan et al (2/5 stars)
• Memoir/history: A Bookshop of One’s Own, by Jane Cholmeley (4/5 stars)
• Popular science: Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces, by Laurie Winkless (3/5 stars)

And here are the non-review posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: The Neglected Books (AKA books I surely should’ve read by now)
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

This week I’ve been reading a lot, thanks to the Bookly app’s readathon plus my backlog of Audible titles. It’s been really nice, and once I finish this post I have plans to settle down to an uninterrupted hour with a book I’d backburnered for a while and have now got back into. My current plan is to finally finish Cat Bohannon’s Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, which is perhaps a little overly blessed with footnotes for my tastes, but fascinating.

Other than that, I’m not sure what I’ll read, but I have been digging back into Simon Barnes’ The History of the World of 100 Animals, so perhaps I’ll finish that. It’s a bit of a chonker, though!

Here are the books I’ve been reading that I plan to review on the blog. I think for the Murderbot audiobooks I might just do a general post about all of them, just focusing on my overall thoughts of Kevin R. Free’s narration…

As you see, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. It’s very satisfying!

How about you? Got anything exciting lined up?

Good afternoon, folks! I’ve been spending a good amount of today so far reading, in part thanks to listening to the audio versions of the Murderbot books. I’m not sure whether I’m going to review them — after all, I’ve reviewed the original books probably more than once, and I don’t think I have that much to say about audio. That said, I find reviews of audiobooks super helpful when I find them, so maybe it’d be good anyway? We’ll see.

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

Books acquired this week:

Two books this week! My wife buys me one book a month of my choice (which has long been our Valentine’s Day agreement: no big fuss on that day, spread out the love through the year), and picked up Ann Leckie’s short story collection for me last weekend. Plus, my British Library Crime Classic book for this month arrived.

So that’s nice! I’m already most of the way through London Particular, though I haven’t figured out whodunnit yet.

Posts from this week:

As usual, here’s a roundup!

• Romance manga: Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, vol 1, by Shio Usui (3/5 stars)
• Alt historical romance: Honey & Pepper, by A.J. Demas (4/5 stars)
• History: Ten Birds that Changed the World, by Stephen Moss (3/5 stars)
• Classic crime: The Corpse in the Waxworks, by John Dickson Carr (3/5 stars)
• Memoir: Sticker, by Henry Hoke (1/5 stars)

Other posts:

• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

As I mentioned, I’ve been tearing through the Murderbot audiobooks, but I’ve also been trying to get to grips with the tottering pile of books I have partially read. I’ve been pretty successful in the last couple of days, hurrah. So here are some of the books that I’ll probably be reviewing soon, having finished them this week!

For the rest of the weekend, it’ll be more Murderbot, finishing up London Particular, and then… who knows?

How’s everyone else doing? Anything exciting from the library this week, or landing on your ereader?

It’s been a quiet week — hurrah! And I’m pretty caught up on comments and blog visits too. It’s a shame that in a few weeks things will ramp up again for my exams, but hey, at least I’m on an even keel right now.

So, as usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

Technically, there are no books acquired this week, but here’s the rest of last week’s haul! First off, the non-fiction:

I’ve started on Mountains of Fire; I’m finding it a little slower than I expected, but maybe that’s just my mood. It has a pretty cover, though; it’s actually shiny.

And here’s the rest of the fiction!

It definitely isn’t the season for Crimson Snow — I’ll probably keep that for December, but it gets me closer to completing my British Library Crime Classics collection. As for the other two, I’ve been curious about both for a while!

Posts from this week:

And here’s the usual roundup of the books I’ve been reviewing this week!

• Non-fiction graphic novel: Book Love, by Debbie Tung (3/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: A Telegram from Le Touquet, by John Bude (3/5 stars)
• Non-fiction: Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, by James Suzman (2/5 stars)
• SF novella: Navigational Entanglements, by Aliette de Bodard (4/5 stars)
• Non-fiction science history: A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth, by Samantha Weinberg (4/5 stars)

Other posts:

• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

This weekend I have all kinds of cute plans to read a lot, but goodness knows if I actually will, or whether I’ll read the things I’m intending to read. I’m content as long as I have fun. A lot of my reading this week was manga I don’t intend to review here (the Fairy Tail series by Hiro Mashima), but I did finish up two other books which I will review, or already have:

So, back to my books! Hope everyone else has had a good week, and some lovely books to read.

Hurrah, the weekend!

Last weekend I got my assignments all handed in, so the last week has been all about catching up with life stuff. Unfortunately that hasn’t yet included comments on my blog or visiting people back yet — sorry! I got stressed out and I’m digging my way out of that now, but I plan to do some commenting and visiting tomorrow.

Right, time to talk about books. As usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

As is my wont when I’ve been a bit stressed, I went totally overboard, so I’m going to split up my haul over the next couple of weeks. It’s hard to choose what to show off, so I’ll just pick a bit randomly. First off, here’s some of the non-fiction I picked up:

A bit of a mix, as ever! I wouldn’t have been that interested in The Ship Asunder, except that on a pure whim I read Seashaken Houses (a history of lighthouses in the UK) a while ago and really loved it. I wasn’t that interested in lighthouses, either, so I thought I’d give this a try.

And here’s some of the fiction I picked up:

Always love KJ Charles’ work, and I’ve heard really good things about If Found, Return To Hell. The other book is more of a whim, based on someone on Mastodon describing it as “garden fantasy”. Sounds perfect for a certain friend of mine, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Posts from this week:

Here’s the usual roundup of reviews:

• Classic mystery: The Eye of Osiris, by R. Austin Freeman (4/5 stars)
• Ecological non-fiction: Ghosts in the Hedgerow: A Hedgehog Whodunnit, by Tom Moorhouse (3/5 stars)
• Fantasy novella: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, by Seanan McGuire (3/5 stars)
• Philosophy: Spacecraft, by Tim Morton (1/5 stars)
• YA romance novella: Nick and Charlie, by Alice Oseman (2/5 stars)

I skipped Top Ten Tuesday this week, so there was just one other post:

• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

First of all, let’s start with the books I’ve already read this week.

It’s been a lovely reading week. Howl’s Moving Castle was a reread, but my first time listening to the audiobook narrated by Kristin Atherton. It was lovely; highly recommended. I also had great fun last night with Honey & Pepper, and was sad when I finished it.

As for what I’m reading this weekend, I’m not sure. I’ve started on Lapidarium, one of my new books, and also If Found, Return to Hell. But where my whims will take me, no one can tell…

How’s everyone else doing?

Well, what a busy week! I spent yesterday at a wedding, and I’ve been working hard on finally finishing my assignments as well. I’d hoped to get an extension for at least one of them, given the family stuff that’s been occurring, but my GP never replied to me… so I’ve been hard at work trying to get them all done. I think (as I write this) that I’m done: I just need to format the cover sheets. Oof!

I know I take pretty much any excuse to buy celebratory books, but last week I had a book voucher to assist me… and there are some books bought for me by my wife on the way as well. I’d say oops, but I don’t mind at all.

That said, I haven’t done a lot of reading this week. I did my best to make time for it, but I’ve been tired and not in the mood. Here’s hoping this weekend I can start to catch up!

As per usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired:

So for now I only have the books that have already arrived, not the big spree of books from my wife. It’s a bit of a mix: only one fiction book, history, and ecology (in the form of a whodunnit). I read more non-fiction when I’m stressed out, so that kind of influenced my choices this time.

Plus a few books I got in ebook format to try and tempt myself this weekend:

And yep, I know, I know! It’s another weird mix. I hope to review The One-Cent Magenta in the near-ish future, over on the Postcrossing blog. My book reviews are a steady feature over there, though I usually write a review for this blog too, slightly differently tailored.

Posts from this week:

It seems like I’ve been a bit of a misery guts in my reviews this week, but it’s happenstance that it was mostly meh reviews this week — I didn’t read these all at the same time, I’m just getting to the reviews in my posting queue now. I do try to vary what genres I post about a bit, to avoid being too samey.

• Fantasy mystery graphic novel: Brittania vol 1, by Peter Milligan et al (1/5 stars)
• Fantasy: Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, by Heather Fawcett (4/5 stars)
• SF/F comic: The October Faction, by Steve Niles & Damien Worm (2/5 stars)
• Non-fiction: Pill, by Robert Bennett (1/5 stars)

And other posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: Reading Memories
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

I actually really liked my Top Ten Tuesday post this week, I wrote quite a lot of fun stuff, but I didn’t join the linky because I didn’t think I’d be able to get round to commenting back anytime soon.

What I’m reading:

This week started off well, but then my brain exploded a bit because of stress about my assignments and I didn’t read much for a few days. I haven’t even read much this weekend, since I’ve been recovering from partying hard (attending a wedding, wearing heels, drinking two glasses of wine, and dancing for five minutes to keep the bride company, and then getting home at 10pm — such hard partying! But apparently I’m getting old and my legs hurt). But we’ll see how it goes! I did read the following books that I intend to review soon.

So really not so bad after all. So far today I’ve been listening to Howl’s Moving Castle in audiobook, and I’ve peeked into Good Neighbours by Stephanie Burgis… but we’ll see where my whims take me.

How’s everyone else doing?

Yay, weekend!

I’m still struggling to get to grips with my essays etc, but I have finished full drafts of all three. One might need a total rewrite, but two are pretty much good to go, which is a relief. I did spend a book voucher to celebrate, but the books haven’t arrived and been unboxed yet, so I’ll show those off next week.

As per usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

This week I got a gift from a friend, which I’d added to my TBR lately thanks to a really nasty review. Sometimes those do some good, ha.

And a review copy that has a pretty cover, via Tor:

I really enjoyed one of Freya Marske’s other books, though I haven’t finished reading that trilogy yet. So I’m excited for this one. Some Swordspoint vibes, unavoidably, but that’s a good thing.

Posts from this week:

As usual, here’s the roundup of what I’ve been posting! Reviews first.

• YA comic: Stone Star: In the Spotlight, by Jim Zub et al (3/5 stars)
• Fantasy novella: Lost in the Moment and Found, by Seanan McGuire (4/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: Big Ben Strikes Eleven, by David Magarshack (2/5 stars)
• Legal/true crime history: The Walnut Tree, by Kate Morgan (5/5 stars)

And the other posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: Spring TBR
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

At the moment I seem to be going ham on the weekends and then it’s a bit quieter during the week. I’m okay with that! Here are the books I finished this week which I intend to review on the blog:

Over the weekend I have a lot of lovely-sounding plans to read various books and spend hoouuuurs reading. We’ll see how that shakes out — as always, the most important thing is getting a restful, restorative weekend, and reading whatever I feel like.

How’s everyone doing?