I’m freeeeeeee! Yes, my exams are over, and the academic year too. I’ll start up again fairly soon, trying to get ahead on studying for the next year, especially since I’ll be sitting one of the hardest modules. But for now I’m taking some well-deserved time off!

Reading-wise I’m not entirely back in the swing of it yet, and I need to do some catchup with comments and saying hi to folks, but I’m back.

Books acquired this week

I haven’t got much new, but I did get this month’s British Crime Classic book from my subscription, the theme of which (academic stories) seems… a little on the nose for me right now.

I’m looking forward to digging into it, though I admit I haven’t read last week’s book yet.

Posts from this week

I didn’t do great at posting this week, missing two days, but here’s the roundup of the reviews that did go live!

• Classic short mysteries: Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards (3/5 stars)
• Fantasy romance: Den of Wolves, by Juliet Marillier (4/5 stars)
• Science history: The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record, by Jonathan Scott (4/5 stars)
• History/memoir: Hyphen, by Pardis Mahdavi (3/5 stars)

What I’m reading

I haven’t been reading a ton this week, since I’ve been busy, and at least one of the books I did read I won’t be reviewing on the blog again (since it was a reread). But here’s a glimpse at the books I’ve read that I do plan to review on the blog sometime soon:

I’m not sure what I’ll be reading this weekend, to be honest. I think I’ll probably read more of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (Sofi Thanhauser), reread Record of a Spaceborn Few (Becky Chambers), and… otherwise completely follow my whims.

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!

Yay, it’s the weekend!

Long week here: my first exam was on Monday. I started it at 10am, and didn’t finish up and submit it until 8:30pm — though that time includes breaks for stretching, food and rest, it was a lot of work. Two more to come, on Monday and Tuesday, and then I’m freeee.

So I’m still not caught up with comments on my blog, and might just need to call amnesty on the ones I’ve received so far and do better going forward.

Books acquired this week

…Zero! This isn’t really intentional — actually, I’m still meaning to pick some more of E.C.R. Lorac’s books to get on Kindle — but I keep forgetting.

Posts from this week

Despite everything, I’ve been keeping up with getting my backlog of reviews posted, so here’s a roundup:

• Non-fiction: Mushroom, by Sara Rich (2/5 stars)
• Classic mystery: Murder in the Basement, by Anthony Berkeley (4/5 stars)
• Epistolary fantasy: A Letter to the Luminous Deep, by Sylvie Cathrall (5/5 stars)
• Popular science: Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture, by Andreas Wagner (4/5 stars)
• History/science non-fiction: Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones, by Hettie Judah (4/5 stars)
• Romance manga: A Side Character’s Love Story, vol 17, by Akane Tamura (4/5 stars)

And that was it for posts this week!

What I’m reading

I started the week not reading very much, really, but in the past few days I’ve got busy finishing books from the huge stack of books I technically have part-read all at the same time, plus doing a reread of a favourite (Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet). Here’s a glimpse at the books that I finished that I’ll be reviewing on the blog in the next weeks and months…

Now I’m just trying to have a nice chill weekend reading whatever catches my fancy — right now I’m finally getting back into In Deeper Waters, by F.T. Lukens.

How’s everyone doing?

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

Last week I didn’t get round to visiting any blogs, and I’m behind on comments again. That’s because I realised my exam is on Monday, and not a week on Monday! And our shower broke, too, so I tried to clean and tidy a lot for the Royal Visit, AKA my dad coming over to see if it was some kind of simple problem he could remedy. Sooo I’ve been a little busy, and I haven’t been doing much reading (or blogging).

Still, I thought I’d check in!

Books acquired this week

That’d be a big fat zero this time! My wife’s been offering to buy me some more E.C.R. Lorac books on Kindle, since they’re cheap, but I keep forgetting to look through the Kindle store to see which ones are actually available vs which ones I have.

So, for now, nothing added to my shelves.

Posts from this week

As usual, here’s a recap of the reviews I posted this week!

• Crime/mystery: Eight Detectives, by Alex Pavesi (3/5 stars)
• Non-fiction: The Doctor Who Fooled the World, by Brian Deer (4/5 stars)
• Fantasy: The Warden, by Daniel M. Ford (4/5 stars)
• Non-fiction: A Short History of Tomb-Raiding, by Maria Golia (3/5 stars)
• Historical romance: The Ruin of a Rake, by Cat Sebastian (4/5 stars)
• Graphic novel: We Only Kill Each Other, by Stephanie Phillips et al (2/5 stars)

And that was it for the week — I haven’t had the energy (or time) for linkups, alas.

What I’m reading

This weekend I’m trying to chill and just do fun stuff, since I don’t really believe I’ll make much progress on studying in the last day or so before an exam. Better to show up well-rested and a bit more supple in the brain department. So I’ve spent my afternoon reading Murder on the Titania, by Alex Acks, and starting on Martha Wells’ System Collapse. Just for variety, I’m also planning on picking up one of E.C.R. Lorac’s mysteries: I try to save those for when I need ’em, but I think this qualifies.

As for what I’ve been reading that’s coming up for review on the blog, here we go:

Wish me luck with the exam…!

(Probably) 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 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.