This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “book titles that describe me/my life”… and I’m not sure where to start, but it sounds like a fun one. Let’s see what I can come up with!

1. I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf, by Grant Snider.
   To be fair, I didn’t love this book and I don’t actually judge people for what they like to read… but I do like to get an idea of a person based on what they read, if anything!
2. Book Lovers, by Emily Henry.
   Not a favourite book, but it was fun… and the title is irresistible when trying to describe me. I’m a little worried about how much of my personality this list is implying revolves around books, but it’s not terribly wrong, and also it’s just easy to find titles of books about books.
3. The Constant Rabbit, by Jasper Fforde.
   Admittedly I haven’t read this one, but I couldn’t resist the title; my rabbits Eclair and Biscuit are never far away, particularly Biscuit.
4. A Palace Near the Wind, by Ai Jiang.
   One of my current reads, which I’ve been enjoying. I don’t quite live in a palace, admittedly, but I live in Yorkshire and it can be very windy here!
5. Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green.
   Tuberculosis has been a major interest of mine ever since I read Catching Breath (Kathryn Lougheed), and John Green’s book is an excellent update to that. And friends can attest that I am far too good at dragging TB into conversations somehow…
   In my defence, write a dissertation about something and you’ll never stop seeing it everywhere.
6. The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards.
   By this point, you could possibly tell that story from my own shelves, ahaha. I studied the development of crime fiction as a genre in my undergrad, and maintained an interest, collecting almost all the British Library Crime Classic reissues and various others.
7. Solo Leveling, by Chugong.
   Okay, I’ll never be even a tenth the badass that Jinwoo Sung is, but I play video games a lot, and often solo! The only multiplayer games I usually play are co-ops like Split Fiction with my wife, or of course, the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV… otherwise it’s mostly solo leveling… 😉
   Yeah, okay, I know, I’m not that funny.
8. Paladin’s Hope, by T. Kingfisher.
   Speaking of Final Fantasy XIV! My main class is Paladin, which I play in high-end content, so it can hardly be left out of an autobiography of myself in book titles. I promise I don’t go berserk like Kingfisher’s paladins, though, and I don’t have the same degree of guilt complex. I try not to make playing Final Fantasy XIV my whole personality, but I spend a lot of time with my raid group and other friends from the game, so it’s a significant part of my life, all the same.
9. The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman.
   I said I wasn’t going to keep banging on about books, but I was getting stumped, and I have so many ebooks that the physical books you can see in my house are only the tip of the iceberg.
10. To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers.
    One of the most important themes of my life has been learning, and continuing to learn… nope, more than that. My family feel it’s pretty inevitable that I will return to formal education before long; the only question is when, and what. I have two degrees in English literature, a degree in biology, and a degree in infectious diseases, so it’s probably time to break off on another tangent — maybe classical studies, with Latin? But who knows. Either way, I believe I have been very fortunate to have the opportunities to learn that I have, and hope never to take it for granted.

Oof, that took me forever to put together; I probably put waaaaay too much time into it. Very curious what other people will choose this week!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday post is about places on your bucket list, but since I don’t have a bucket list and I read books heavy on the fantasy or that skip around the world a bunch… I thought I’d go rogue. I don’t rate a lot of books five-stars (“loved it”, in the scale I use) — but the books that make the cut deserve to be talked about more, I’d say!

So let’s dig in! Some of these don’t have reviews up yet, but those that do, I’ll link my review. I’ll go backwards through time, starting with the most recent. 2026 has started out pretty well, with five out of the ninety-seven books I’ve read this year so far gaining five whole stars!

1. Ramesses the Great, by Toby Wilkinson. (Finished 30th March 2026.)
   I tore through this one! It helps that Ramesses is a very compelling figure, but Wilkinson presents his evidence well and without speculating too much on stuff we can’t really know for sure about Ramesses II’s inner thoughts, he gives us a good idea of the man all the same. Not always likeable, inasfar as we can make that judgement from this distance of time and from a different culture, but certainly fascinating.
2. Blue Horses and Felicity, by Mary Oliver. (Finished 26th March 2026.)
   It’s cheating a little to bundle these together, but I did read them at the same time! These two poetry collections are both lovely: I find Oliver’s poetry really accessible to read, without being too simplistic.
3. The Library of Ancient Wisdom, by Selena Wisnom. (Finished 28th February 2026.)
   I liked this one a lot: I’ve read a couple of other books on ancient Mesopotamia, but don’t feel like I have the same grasp of it as I do ancient Egypt. This gave me some of that, through focus on the library of Ashurbanipal. It’s necessarily limited and doesn’t really touch on the lives of common people, but it was still pretty interesting.
4. A History of England in 25 Poems, by Catherine Clarke. (Finished 9th February 2026.)
   I thought this one was great: the choice of poems sometimes surprised me, but was always illuminating, and Clarke has a pretty good grasp of the problems between England and the other countries it shares an island with. There were things I’d have liked to see more of, but I was still really happy with this one.
5. Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail — The Art of Succession -Relics of Heritage-. (Finished 25th December 2025.)
   I suppose I could skip this one as it sort of feels like it doesn’t count as a book read, but on the other hand I find the game’s artbooks really interesting, because they give you a glimpse at the original designs of familiar bosses, characters and in-world assets. It might be a quick read (since it’s almost all images), but a picture’s worth a thousand words and all that.
6. Strangers and Intimates, by Tiffany Jenkins. (Finished 13th November 2025.)
   This one actually stuck with me less than I’d expected given the high rating, but it did raise interesting questions for me about why the value people place on privacy changes, and the differences between generations. There were some fascinating reflections on the scandal with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and how that has changed politics.
7. You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian. (Finished 28th September 2025.)
   This is a lovely romance, with some grumpy/sunshine dynamics, but it’s more than just a list of tropes. There’s a lot of healing from grief, and a lot of hope (even in times that weren’t so great for queer people). Also, there’s a dog!
8. Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, by Nghi Vo. (Finished 2nd and 5th June 2025.)
   These were rereads, so perhaps it’s no surprise that they got such a high rating! They’re the first two books in the Singing Hills series, at least in publication order — I do think they’re also a good place to start in getting to learn about where Chih is from and what they do, and they have my favourite formats for the series too, being focused mostly on stories told to Chih. Some of the later books are more about Chih themself, which is also fun, but I like these best.
9. Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher. (Finished 25th May 2025.)
   2025 and 2026 have been the years of T. Kingfisher for me, it seems. This one just grabbed me at the right time, I think, and I thought the ideas and the way of retelling the Snow White and Rose Red story were just so fun. Also the mirror monsters were a work of horrible genius.
10. Cold Night Lullaby, by Colin Mackay. (Finished 22nd May 2025.)
    This was another reread. I’m not sure I ever expected to reread this one, because Mackay went through horrors and he certainly paints them vividly in his poetry, but… something made me feel like it was the right time to read it. It’s a poetic working-through of the things he witnessed in Bosnia when he went there as an aid worker — including the mutilation and murder of the woman he loved.

Sorry for going off-piste, but I look forward to seeing everyone else’s TTT posts this week! Maybe you’ll inspire me to create a bucket list.

Today’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday iiiis “buzzwords or phrases that would make you read (or avoid) a book”. I immediately thought about tropes, especially since a lot of people seem to use trope style stuff for marketing, soooooo… let’s hit TV tropes and look for my catnip.

I’ve done that partly by looking at novels I already love, lest I end up with more on my TBR.

1. Intimate Hair Brushing. Just… just hear me out here. I am a complete sucker for non-sexual intimacy in general, and I think it’s often underused but a great way of showing genuine closeness between two characters. This one shows up in The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, in one of the extras: post-canon, Shen Qingqiu is trying to soothe Luo Binghe when he thinks he’s angry and upset, and one of the things he does (after cuddling to sleep) is brush his hair. It’s actually a version of Luo Binghe from another world, who actually starts considering trying to get Shen Qingqiu to come away with him afterwards… but the point is that it’s a sign of how intimate Shen Qingqiu has become with his former disciple, and a solid sign of the change from the master/disciple relationship into something romantic. It also shows up in Heaven Official’s Blessing, though it’s also a way there for Xie Lian to check whether Hua Cheng is a ghost/his power level as a ghost (as low-level ghosts can’t form details like hair and fingerprints).
2. Red String of Fate. This refers to the idea of people who are fated to be bound together, visualised as a red string. Mostly I love this when it’s played with a bit: fate in and of itself isn’t that interesting, but avoiding fate or forging your own fate… yep, catnip. In Heaven Official’s Blessing, there’s is an actual magic string that Hua Cheng gives to Xie Lian so they won’t be separated — and it works as a symbol of their bond, because Hua Cheng has repeatedly chosen to bind his fate to that of Xie Lian. It’s also played with in Tied to You: Jigeon is in love with Wooseo even before it’s revealed they’re joined together by what’s basically a red string of fate, but there’s no guarantee they’ll end up together, because bonds can be broken. Jigeon acts deeply manipulatively to try to ensure he gets Wooseo in the end… but ultimately he has to reveal what he’s been doing to Wooseo and be accepted by him in spite of it, or their bond will never be complete.
3. What You Are In the Dark. I found this on the page about Gawain, and yeees. The moments where a character will not be witnessed by anyone else, no one will ever know, and they will choose good over what’s convenient. Think Frodo refusing to kill Gollum, for example.
4. Addictive Magic. Or really many kinds of magic system that make magic complicated and have a cost; I ran across this one on the page for The Lord of the Rings, but I’m sure I’ve run into it elsewhere too!
5. Genre Savvy. I love a bit of meta, where a character seems to be aware of the genre they’re in… or misread the genre. We’re back on Scum Villain here, where Shen Qingqiu thinks he’s still in a harem novel, but Luo Binghe has fallen in love with him, changing the genre. It’s also played straight in a lot of ways, because Luo Binghe is “The Protagonist” and has plot armour that protects him from stuff going wrong, because he has to be supreme within his own story. Shen Qingqiu even uses that to get out of trouble, knowing that the story won’t allow any harm to come to Luo Binghe, and banking on it to save them both at one point by persuading someone to attack Luo Binghe (they get knocked out by a random falling beam!).
6. Rivalry as Courtship. The very first example of this I can think of in my life was Anne and Gilbert in Anne of Green Gables (and the later books, which develop it a lot more). All those charged feelings make things more explosive and give a real sense of chemistry. That said, I usually dislike it when it’s more enemies than rivals, if there are atrocities involved or something like that — it’s weird when people try to sweep that under the rug. In that case you also need a hefty dollop of atonement in order to get the whole thing to work.
7. Aw Look! They Really Do Love Each Other! This one came up on The Goblin Emperor’s page, and yeeees. The example given is when Maia’s guard Beshelar, who has been quite aloof and disapproving, gets angry on his behalf when he learns that Setheris abused him. I love that moment, because it shows how much he really cares!
8. Badass Bureaucrat. The example given is Cliopher Mdang in The Hands of the Emperor, and yes, absolutely! Also Csevet in The Goblin Emperor, in slightly different ways.
9. Family of Choice. Also known as the found family trope, or at least, I think these are pretty much the same. For people to choose each other… yep! Thank you, that’s lovely, let’s have some more! Think of the crew of Wayfarer in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, for instance.
10. Hidden Badass. They don’t look like a badass, they don’t seem like they can kick your ass, but oh boy howdy you’d better not cross them. Happens quite a lot in danmei, since characters don’t need to be physically ripped to be extremely strong.

This has taken me long enough, so I’m gonna hit post with just these — even though there are probably plenty of other tropes contending for my top ten!

It feels like five minutes ago that we were posting our winter reading lists, but today’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is a spring reading list! As ever, I don’t really theme my reading lists, so this just ends up being what’s top-of-mind for me. At the moment, that means finishing the books that I bought last year and haven’t started yet, so let’s pick out some of those.

1. Strange New World, by Vivian Shaw. 
   I’ve been meaning to read this for ages, and even reread the previous three books to prepare for it, but I still haven’t picked it up. Surely, surely, now will be the time.
2. The Wolf and His King, by Finn Longman.
   This is a retelling of ‘Bisclaveret’, which I studied in my first undergrad degree, and I am very excited to read it. I got it for Christmas and it just hasn’t made the way to the top yet, but surely now!
3. Wearing the Lion, by John Wiswell.
   I’ve been very curious to try Wiswell’s books, and though I’ve heard slightly mixed things about this one, it does sound potentially right up my alley.
4. Brigands & Breadknives, by Travis Baldree.
   I loved Legends & Lattes, and though I wasn’t as big a fan of the prequel, I’m still looking forward to giving this a shot.
5. Cat Dragon, by Samantha Birch.
   Got to admit, I know very little about this book other than the fact that there are cat dragons, and I am all over this concept.
6. Welsh Food Stories, by Carwyn Graves.
   I enjoyed Graves’ previous book, Tir; I don’t think he and I entirely see eye to eye on what makes ‘Welshness’, but he still has interesting things to say, and I’m interested to learn more about Welsh food culture beyond cawl, Welsh cakes, bara brith and rarebit.
7. Thrice Married to a Salted Fish, vol 1, by Bi Ka Bi.
   It sounds like a fun story, and the other volumes should be set to come out this year, so I’d like to dive in soon!
8. Mistakenly Saving the Villain, by Feng Yu Nie.
   Ditto! I’ve seen some comparisons to Heaven Official’s Blessing, which intrigues me since I love that book.
9. Shield of Sparrows, by Devney Perry.
   I admit to being slightly intimidated by how much of a chonker this one is… but I’ve heard some really good things, so I’d like to give it a shot soon.
10. The Isle in the Silver Sea, by Tasha Suri.
    This one comes highly hyped up, so I have very high expectations. I’ve enjoyed Suri’s work in the past… but again, it’s a bit of a chonker, so I’m a little shy of it, ahaha.

You might notice that there are actually some repeats from my winter TBR. I must admit, I only read four books from the list: The Palace of Illusions, Spinosaur Tales, Solo Leveling (light novel vol 1) and Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (light novel vol 1). Oops! Maybe I’ll do better with the spring list… though to be fair, I still don’t even own a copy of The Wife Comes First.

What are you excited about this spring?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is green covers, in honour of St Patrick’s Day. One day people will care half as much about St David’s Day and do something for that, right?

…Right?

Anyway, here are some green covers I dredged up! Since covers are the main thing here, I’m presenting them without too much comment and not as cropped thumbnails, but I tried to pick books I genuinely enjoyed or am looking forward to, of course.

Quite the mix, as ever for me! A few mysteries (Clues to Christabel, Serpents in Eden, A Case of Life and Limb), some fantasy (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, The Big Reap, Paladin’s Strength), some romance (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Mr Collins in Love, Paladin’s Strength), and some non-fiction… the only one I haven’t read yet is Welsh Food Stories, which I really need to get to.

And yeah, okay, maybe I was working in St David’s Day a bit, with Vanished Wales, Welsh Food Stories and Clues to Christabel (Mary Fitt lived and worked in Wales). It’s the right time of year for it, like, with the daffodils out and St David’s Day only just gone.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is books with ordinal numbers in the title, which took me some doing! But I got there in the end, by spelunking through past books read.

1. The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff.
   This was the first to jump to mind, as it’s a book I’ve loved for a long time. Sutcliff was great at writing historical fiction that was perfect for kids without being patronising and without skimping on detail. The germ of the story for this one is a Roman eagle that was found during an archaeological dig, along with the alleged disappearance of the Ninth Legion (though the status of the Hispana and how it ended are questioned more now, if I understand correctly). Despite that, it’s not meant as a history lesson, and I love Marcus, Esca and Cub, and the story of the Ninth Legion that Sutcliff imagined.
2. The Fourth Island, by Sarah Tolmie.
   Turns out I never posted my review of this book here, so I’ve added that to my list! I’ve loved several of Tolmie’s novellas, and remember enjoying this a lot — though it’s not a story that comes to many conclusions, but rather one that leaves you with all kinds of questions and things to ponder. As I recall, it’s beautifully written, too!
3. The Ninth Rain, by Jen Williams.
   This one’s stuck in my head for ages! I’ve been contemplating a reread of this as well, because this trilogy just felt so chewy. I don’t know if that makes sense to say, but there was a lot of worldbuilding, a lot of stuff going on, and I got really attached to some of the characters.
4. The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher.
   And another one I’d really like to reread! It’s been quite a long time, but I remember finding this a really fun retelling, and there’s a hedgehog! I definitely remember the hedgehog.
5. The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin.
   I imagine this one is on a lot of fantasy and SF lovers’ lists, because there’s so much going on in this one. It’s hard not to spoiler, honestly, because so much of it should probably just be experienced without knowing, leaving you picking up the pieces… I need to finish the trilogy someday.
6. The First Ghosts, by Irving Finkel.
   This was a complete impulse read back when I picked it up, and I found it really fascinating. Finkel discusses the ancient sources that tell us what people in ancient Sumeria, Babylon and Assyria believed about ghosts, and digs into what he thinks that means. I felt somewhat differently about that part (which dinged the rating a touch), but I still found it really interesting.
7. The First Fossil Hunters, by Adrienne Mayor.
   I really enjoyed this one: Mayor digs into what the ancient Greeks and Romans thought about fossils, because obviously they did see fossils in the world and wonder about them and have stories about them. I think at times it goes beyond the evidence a bit, but it’s still really interesting.
8. The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert. 
   The sixth extinction is, of course, the one that’s happening now, with massive losses in biodiversity in pretty much every biome. Kolbert’s book is partly a discussion of that, and partly a celebration of biodiversity in hopes that people can be convinced to protect it. Definitely a worthy read.
9. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, by Camilla Townsend.
   This book attempts to look past the Spanish sources that are frequently used to understand the Aztec world, looking for sources written by indigenous people wherever possible and trying to dispell certain myths (like the idea that Moctezuma believed Hernán Cortés was a god). And it finally taught me to pronounce certain Nahautl words, as well; the pronunciation guides were really good.
10. Third Time Lucky, by Tanya Huff.
    Confession: I don’t really remember this collection, but I thought highly of it at the time, and Huff is a fun writer in general. So I’d probably stand by past-me’s recommendation!

See? I did it in the end!

Very curious to see others’ choices, and whether everyone struggled as much as I did!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is a genre freebie, so I decided to go with a genre I enjoy a lot: microhistory! I’m technically going to use the term somewhat broadly, but the idea is to take a tiny slice of history and zoom in, using analysis of that small aspect to understand bigger themes and trends.

So here we go! Let’s see what I can pull off my shelves.

1. A History of England in 25 Poems, by Catherine Clarke.
   I read this last month, so my review isn’t up yet, but I think it was my first 5-star read of the year. It does a really good job of staying aware of England’s colonial history (including toward Scotland, Wales and Ireland) and picking poems that aren’t the obvious poems everyone would always pick. I highly recommend it: poetry can tell us a lot about history, because it’s written by the people who lived it.
2. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, by Emma Southon.
   This is a book I read quite a while ago, but I think of it very fondly. It digs into Roman society through the lens of what might count as murder — and what was just considered justified. I loved it.
3. The Notebook: A History of Thinking On Paper, by Roland Allen.
   I really loved the way this book rambled around the history of how people use notebooks, from ledgers to ICU diaries. The idea that something that we might take for granted as much as the idea of keeping a notebook has a whole history behind it is very fun to me.
4. The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry, by David Musgrove and Michael Lewis.
   Of course, it isn’t really just the history of the object itself, but the events it depicts, and how the events have been understood in the years since, in part because of the tapestry. I really loved this one, because it makes clear that we aren’t always certain about what happened and why.
5. The British Museum, by James Hamilton.
   The British Museum didn’t just spring into being, it’s a whole institution with a history of its own. I will caveat that this book isn’t a critique of the British Museum; it’s in awe and support of the endeavour, and barely discusses the issues with the British Museum’s practices of cultural theft. But it’s still fascinating to learn about how the building came to be what it is today.
6. Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A Global History, by Judith Levin.
   I’m letting this book stand in for the whole Edible Series, because I could’ve picked out a whole bunch of those. Food tells us a lot about history: how food traditions travel, whether they’re adopted, imposed or absorbed and changed, tells us a lot about contact between different cultures. (So yes, this particular book discusses “coca-colonisation”.) Sometimes with books in this series, I hadn’t really thought about the history and relevance of that particular food at all, so it’s always nice to dig in.
7. Chinese Dress in Detail, by Sau Fong Chan.
   This book isn’t exhaustive, because it’s based on the holdings of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which inherently biases collection of European items. Still, I found it a fascinating introduction, and the author makes sure to be clear that “Chinese” is a bit of an umbrella term, also discussing Uyghur clothing history as well. Like food traditions, fashion reflects the periods it comes from, with influence from other countries as well as industrialisation and the changing needs of the population. The other “Fashion in Detail” books from the V&A are similarly fascinating.
8. The Button Box, by Lynn Knight.
   This was one of the first books I read in this sort of genre: Knight focuses on the buttons she finds in a box of old buttons that has been used and added to by the women of her family, and thus tracks the history of not just fashion, but women’s place in society, technological advances, etc. I reread it semi-recently and didn’t love it as much as I had before, but I still remember it fondly.
9. Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, by Paul Koudounaris.
   Prior to reading this, I knew little to nothing about the catacomb saints. It’s not a tradition that particularly speaks to me, but I was fascinated to learn how the practice of venerating and decorating the bones of (supposed) saints reflected people’s faith. The photography for this volume is absolutely stunning, too. Macabre, but riveting.
10. The Sarpedon Krater: The Life and Afterlife of a Greek Vase, by Nigel Spivey.
    If anything on this list is microhistory, this book’s the one. From a single vase, the scope expands to Renaissance art and modern museum collections (and looting). I didn’t know much about this specific vase before I read it, and I’m not really one for art history so I couldn’t evaluate if it was really as influential as the author says… but I loved the process of learning more about it, and the potential influence it’s had all this time.

I ended up with a “shortlist” of at least ten more books, but let’s stop there, before I get too obsessive about pruning the list. Hopefully it’s a nice spread of options for the way histories of objects or types of objects, or seemingly more transient things like fashion and food, can tell us all kinds of things about history!

I don’t actually save quotations from books very often, so for this we’re reaching for some snippets I remember (or at least half remember, enough to look them up) to see what’s made an impression on me… let’s see what I can rustle up. Some of these I’ve surely posted before (and am posting again because they remain as vital to me as ever), but some are definitely newer.

1. From John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis, because TB remains a terrible and destructive disease that we must all take responsibility for:  
   We cannot address TB only with vaccines and medications. We cannot address it only with comprehensive STP programs. We must also address the root cause of tuberculosis, which is injustice. In a world where everyone can eat, and access healthcare, and be treated humanely, tuberculosis has no chance. Ultimately, we are the cause.
   We must also be the cure.
2. From Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, because Maia’s efforts to be better than what was done to him (without it being easy) make him a wonderful character:
   “In our inmost and secret heart, which you ask us to bare to you, we wish to banish them as we were banished, to a cold and lonely house, in the charge of a man who hated us. And we wish them trapped there as we were trapped.”
   “You consider that unjust, Serenity?”
   “We consider it cruel,” Maia said. “And we do not think that cruelty is ever just.”
3. From Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Heaven Official’s Blessing, because Xie Lian’s strong determination to save whoever he can is something I aspire to:
   “If a day isn’t enough, let it take a month. If a month won’t do, then two months, three months! If I can’t save ten thousand, then I’ll save a thousand. If I can’t save a thousand, then I’ll save a hundred, or ten, or even just one!”
4. From Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Heaven Official’s Blessing, because it struck a chord for me in emphasising choice:
   “I might not be able to decide whether the road is easy or not, but whether I walk it is entirely up to me.”
5. From Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, because this scene is actually really important, and we really do have to know when to say sorry:
   Wei Wuxian strode over with his hands clasped behind his back. “Young man, sometimes in life, there are a few sappy things one must say.”
   “What?” Jin Ling asked.
   “‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’,” Wei Wuxian replied.
   Jin Ling clicked his tongue. “Well, I refuse. What’re you gonna do about it?”
   “There’ll come a day when you’ll say them through tears,” Wei Wuxian said.
   Jin Ling scoffed, and Wei Wuxian suddenly said it himself.
   “I’m sorry.”
6. From Susan Cooper’s Silver on the Tree, because it’s easy to wait for someone else to save us:
   “For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy the world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvelous joy.
   And the world will still be imperfect, because men are imperfect. Good men will still be killed by bad, or sometimes by other good men, and there will still be pain and disease and famine, anger and hate. But if you work and care and are watchful, as we have tried to be for you, then in the long run the worse will never, ever, triumph over the better.”
7. From Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, because this is the turning-point of the story, and in a way taught me to be less anxious by facing my fears:
   “You must hunt the hunter.”
8. From Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, because it’s true but hard to learn:
   “Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.”
9. From Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, so that not all of these are serious (and because this, too, is true!):
   “Books are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ’em, then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.”
10. From Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, because it’s a good one to end on, and a line I will never forget:
    Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

With apologies to those who could’ve predicted the inclusion of those quotes from Cooper, Le Guin, Addison, Smith and Sayers…

This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is books for armchair travellers, and my take on that is probably idiosyncratic… but here we go.

1. Monsterland: A Journey Around the World’s Dark Imagination, by Nicholas Jubber. I actually just finished reading this last night, so it jumped to mind. Each chapter starts with a short retelling of a monster story, and then Jubber explores various landscapes that have housed the monsters, participating in local festivities, peeping at the dark places in our imagination. Sometimes it feels a liiiittle bit… white tourist gawking at the locals, but it’s still interesting. This is probably the book on my list that best fits the theme, and I didn’t personally love it, but I can see why other people would.
2. The Gabriel Hounds, by Mary Stewart. I would’ve picked my favourite Stewart, Madam, Will You Talk? — and it’s definitely hard to choose with Stewart’s work, because she’s great at evoking a sense of place — but I think the landscape and setting of The Gabriel Hounds stuck with me most of all, perhaps because it was one of the first of her books I read. The heat, the dusty roads, the dilapidated rooms of the palace of Dar Ibrahim, it all feels very real.
3. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Partly prompted by yesterday’s discussion post, of course, but I think I might’ve come up with this one anyway! It’s such a journey, with terrible and wonderful sights. You can even undertake it yourself by doing a Walk to Mordor challenge, if you get tired of the armchair.
4. The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman. The whole series, really — want to travel through various fictional worlds, on quests for rare and unique books? An alternate fae-touched Venice, in book two? Irene travels through various different worlds, and I for one loved traveling with her.
5. Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Fancy some trekking around Scotland? It’s possible, or at least was, to retrace some of the journeys taken by the characters in this classic mystery, and follow the story through the landscape. I can’t imagine the train times are the same anymore, but still…
6. A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, by Misaki, Momochi & Sando. This manga series features a man from a fantasy world ending up somehow transported to another, different fantasy world — and deciding to make the most of it and have a bit of a holiday. Admittedly the main attraction of the story is his relationship with the friends he makes there, but we also get to see a bit of the world, learn a bit about magic, and see some cool monsters.
7. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. Space travel more your thing? This first book of the series hops around a bit, visiting a few different planets, though the setting is generally a bit more restricted in later books.
8. The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff. How about a trip to the past? A bit of Roman Britain, a trek through Scotland of the same period, and you can practically feel the chilly mist in places.
9. Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need Them, by Dan Saladino. I’m not actually a foodie myself, but I’m interested in food science and food history, so this was a much-enjoyed read of 2025. By necessity, the story of rare foods and local delicacies at risk of disappearing takes the author’s narrative all over the world.
10. A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. The whole series is a trek around a slightly-askew version of our world, with many locations and customs clearly based on/inspired by real-world locations, but also with scope for Brennan to imagine alternate histories, alternate mythologies, and, you know, the inclusion of dragons. The first book barely dips a toe in, but the whole series features perilous voyages, desert survival, tropical jungles, dangerous mountains, etc, etc. (And I will say that the author, if not always the narrator, stays aware of the issues of white people “exploring” and “discovering”.)

I’m not sure how other people are interpreting the theme, but I think maybe I cheated a little bit by offering travel to the past and to fictional planets… but hey, that’s where I like to “travel” in my books, so there!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday post is a Valentine’s themed freebie, so let’s talk about the books I’ve dragged my wife (Lisa) into reading alongside me!

This is not going to be by any means an exhaustive list, because books are one of my love languages, and sharing excitement about books has been a thing we’ve done for over 20 years now — since I was 15. Nor is it a true chart of our relationship through books, because I wouldn’t recommend some of the books we’ve bonded over through the years (like the Rurouni Kenshin manga, the author of which is a paedophile). It’s just ten of the (many) possible books I could choose!

1. The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper.
   The whole sequence, really, and especially The Grey King. The older BBC radioplay version of it (not the recent one) was pretty formative for me, and when I managed to rediscover MP3s of it online in my teens, I ended up rereading the original book, loving it completely, and demanding just about everyone read it too. My now-wife complied, of course, and many’s the conversation we had about the series, imagining what the ending might mean for the characters (does Bran ever remember who he really is?), etc.
2. Harpy’s Flight, by Megan Lindholm.
   We read quite a few of Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm’s books ultimately, but I particularly remember packing up the Ki and Vandien quartet to send it to my now-wife (then living in Belgium) when I was around sixteen. Those book parcels were really important in forming our friendship and early relationship, and in providing something fun to look forward to, to talk about, etc. I remember the start of Harpy’s Flight super vividly, as well. I might reread these books sometime soon!
3. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin.
   And ultimately many of Le Guin’s other books… but it will have started with Earthsea (as it did for me when I was a young teen). Given how much I love Le Guin’s work, and how much this particular one came to mean to me personally (I regularly use Ged’s ultimate decision to turn and face the Shadow as a way to vividly demonstrate my own experience of dealing with anxiety), it’s a good thing we’ve shared this in common for a long time.
4. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin.
   I actually vividly recall sulkily climbing into bed to read this when I had a headache and Lisa wasn’t available online to chat to. I’m pretty sure it also went into one of the boxes of books I sent over to Belgium — the end result of all this was that when we finally moved in together, we had duplicate copies of quite a lot of books. We loved the whole trilogy, and have kept up with Jemisin’s work ever since (actually, Lisa’s probably ahead of me by quite some way).
5. Feed, by Mira Grant.
   This is, on its face, so much more Lisa’s kind of thing than mine that it seems kinda weird that I was the first to read it, but I’m the one who’s more plugged in to discovering books in general, so it isn’t that surprising, and it does plug in to a lot of things that it turns out I find fascinating. (Namely, global pandemics.) We both loved this whole series, and Lisa went on to read more of Grant’s books (and her work as Seanan McGuire). More of it than I have, at this stage!
6. Magic Bites, by Ilona Andrews.
   This was a series we read together more recently. Or rather, I started it, read a few books, went back and started over after accidentally taking a long break, and Lisa got interested enough to ask me for the first book… and swiftly overtook me. Ever since then, when we read the same series, if I’m ahead then Lisa will tell me “choo choo” every so often to indicate that they are steaming ahead and definitely due to overtake me.
7. Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee. This one was a fairly recent one as well, because I remember talking it over, reacting to it, theorising about it, and generally waving our hands around like lunatics about it while walking around a local park. We both keep meaning to reread it, possibly at the same time, because it blew our minds and we’d love to read it again with that insight rereading can give.
8. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu.
   When I first read the first volume of this series, I was sat in a hotel room in Bath making confused, amused, concerned and bemused noises at the plot. It was my first danmei, and my first cultivation novel, and in many ways it’s not the greatest place to start because it’s actually an affectionate critique of cultivation novels. Nonetheless, I liked it enough to get the next book, read the whole series, and emoted wildly at Lisa about it while staying with my parents (while they were visiting family in Belgium). I can’t remember if I’d persuaded them to read it by the time they got back, or whether I had to keep begging them with my newfound obsession in mind (I was even watching the donghua!) — but we got there in the end. We’ve read several danmei series together now, but I think we’ll always remember this first one with great fondness!
9. Paladin’s Grace, by T. Kingfisher.
   This isn’t the first Kingfisher book my wife read, actually, but it stands out because we started reading this series in parallel-ish while I was once again staying with my parents, this time while we were in the process of moving in 2025. We’d be meeting up after work or on weekends (as well as constantly chatting online — you mustn’t imagine we’re ever out of communication with each other for long; after 20 years of being together, I think we might stop functioning if we were) and talking about whatever I was reading, and this series was one of them. Clockwork Boys, too.
10. Solo Leveling, by Chugong.
    I’ll end this list with the most recent thing we share! I read the manhwa series last year, and only turned to the light novels when I was sure it was going to be my thing and I’d already finished the manhwa. My burbling about it eventually got Lisa curious, they watched the animation, and now they’re reading the series, just starting as I’m on book eight. Occasionally we’ll both stop to emote about Jinho being precious, and similar such reactions.

There are many honourable mentions that I didn’t have space for in the top ten — like Jo Walton’s Among Others, which felt in my early 20s like a portrait of me in some ways, and My Real Children, which Lisa has always loved especially — but I trust this has painted a picture of a joyously bookish relationship over the years!

I’ll leave you with this little tradition of ours to be jealous over: our Valentine’s agreement, renewed each year, is that Lisa will buy me one book of my choice each month, whenever my whim strikes. The reciprocal agreement (no complaints about daytime naps) hasn’t been activated in a long time, and probably needs to be replaced with the ability to send me to get fancy coffee twice a month or something like that — but aren’t I lucky?!