This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is beach reads, and I… don’t really have specific books I’d read at the beach. So instead I’m going to tell you what I’d take with me to go on a beach holiday right now, if I was going to do such a thing — and you’ll have to just enjoy the weird choices!

(Technically it’s Wednesday here now, but I haven’t gone to bed yet, so nyah. It’s Tuesday.)

1. The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I should’ve started reading this earlier in July, because it’s a book club choice for a danmei book club Discord. Also, I’ve really enjoyed MXTX’s other series, and I’m very curious about this one, especially since people rave about it a lot.
2. The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker, by Roger Hutchinson. This is about the census in Britain, both the story of how the census came to be and how it’s been managed, and also the story of what it says about Britain. I’m partway through it, so if I was heading off on a beach holiday, I’d definitely take it with me. Also, it’s fascinating!
3. Dreadful Company, by Vivian Shaw. I’ve been rereading this series before reading the latest book, and I’ve let myself get distracted from the second book for far too long. So this one would have to slip into my bag. It’s a fun story, set mostly in Paris, and is pretty breezy, too — definitely a good companion for a lazy afternoon.
4. The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, by Caitlin Rozakis. This one sounds fun and pretty light, so I think it’d be ideally suited to a nice holiday spent lying around somewhere warm and comfy. (For me that needn’t be a beach: curled up on my new recliner works!)
5. The Judas Window, by John Dickson Carr. This is the most recent British Library Crime Classic reissue, and I’m eager to get to it. I’ve had mixed results with reading John Dickson Carr’s work at times, so I’m kind of curious where I’ll fall with this one.
6. Paladin’s Strength, by T. Kingfisher. Having just read Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine, I’m eager to get back to this series as well. It’s a liiiittle bit chunky-looking on the shelf, so maybe a holiday would be an ideal prompt to get stuck in.
7. Between Two Rivers, by Moudy Al-Rashid. This is a history of ancient Mesopotamia that I’ve been meaning to read for a while, and I’m choosing it for no other reason than that the cover keeps catching my eye.
8. The Love Hypothesis, by Ali Hazelwood. I’ve been meaning to read more of Hazelwood’s romances; maybe this is the moment? Might be a good quick read while I’m so busy with moving stuff…
9. Idylls of the Queen, by Phyllis Ann Karr. This would be a reread. I mentioned this in a recent Top Ten Tuesday post about books I want to reread, and this seems like a good moment! I just saw my copy in the great unboxing of books; surely I’ll find it soon as I properly sort through and alphabetise?
10. Elusive, by Genevieve Cogman. I might have to reread the first book first, but I remember tearing through it — if the second book is the same, that could be a very fun holiday read!

I know, I know, as ever it’s a bit of a weird mix. I can think of others, like the next volume of the Solo Leveling manhua… but it’s time for me to think about sleep, so let’s stop there…

This week the Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “books that take place in/set in X”… and I’m not feeling very original, so I’m just going to talk about ten books that take place in fantasy worlds that have a deep place in my heart. I’m going to try to pick secondary world fantasies, rather than books set in slightly alternate versions of our own reality… but we’ll see.

I’m also going to try to set this up by going through my more recent reads and reviews, instead of reaching automatically for the same books I always pick. Let’s go have a look!

1. A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation (manga), by Misaki, Momochi et al. This is kind of “isekai”, in that a character from one world ends up in another world. But the fun thing is that neither are our world, pretty clearly; we don’t hear a lot about Lizel’s home world, but it obviously isn’t our modern world, at the very least — and he has magic, as does his king, so it looks like a transfer from one fantasy world to another. There are hints that it could also be time travel/alternate dimensions… but either way, it’s all fantasy, all the way down. The setup of adventurers, magic and dungeons immediately places it as something rather like a Final Fantasy game, which tickled me as well — but mostly, really, I love this series because Lizel wanders around having fun and enjoying the concept of being in a new world. Also he makes very good friends in Gil and Eleven.
2. Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher. I just finished reading this on Sunday, and I had an absolute blast with it. It’s the same world as some of Kingfisher’s other books, including Paladin’s Grace, which I read recently. In some ways it’s quite a generic fantasy world quest sort of story, but Kingfisher’s style and dialogue make it lively. It’s like she’s playing with fantasy tropes with warmth and affection, not cynicism, even when she’s presenting us with a fairly typical paladin character who is trying to be oh so noble, and then has the narrative give him a thwack upside the head for being a bit of an idiot at times.
3. The Warden, by Daniel M. Ford (+ sequels). Brilliant young necromancer and mage gets assigned to a post she considers beneath her, is snooty and dismissive of the villagers, and slowly begins to settle into that village and care about the people… but at the same time, boy, Aelis reaaaally wishes she could get back to the city. (Which she does, for a while, in Advocate.) There are things that irritate me about Aelis (she wings it far too much, relies on her wealth far too much, and asks way too much of other people) but I find the magic really fun, and as Aelis’ adventures bring her to explore more of the world that shaped her and her problems, I’m really intrigued by it.
4. A Letter to the Luminous Deep, by Sylvie Cathrall (+ sequel). I loved this series so much, with Henery and E. slowly getting to know each other through letters and shyly forming a bond, despite their anxieties and (in E.’s case) outright OCD. It’s a frankly bizarre world in some ways, and it isn’t always clear about how it got that way (though at the end of the duology there are some explanations). There’s so much wonder about the sea and the mysteries within it, and I tore through both books trying to absorb and understand their mysteries.
5. The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett (+ sequel). I’ve enjoyed the fantasy worlds in several of Robert Jackson Bennett’s books, but this is the most recent I read. It’s a Sherlock Holmes homage in a fantasy world that roots the detective and the mysteries deeply into that fantasy. The mystery element isn’t always as clever as it wants to be, but the world is fascinating: the leviathans, the whole empire, the ways people have been deliberately and unintentionally altered by contact with technology derived from leviathans… I wonder where the overarching story is going, and it’s fascinating to explore the world along the way.
6. The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. I would include the spin-off series as well, except that I found the handling of a particular relationship in the final one (so far?) bizarre. Maybe I’ll enjoy it more on a revisit when it doesn’t feel like a betrayal, but in the meantime I’ll use The Goblin Emperor as my exemplar for this fantasy world. Addison does a lot of worldbuilding, especially around language, but also technology, magic, culture and religion. There’s a lot going on, and so much that’s hinted at but not explored in the plot — at least, not yet.
7. The City in Glass, by Nghi Vo. This book felt like an absolute fever dream. It’s really tightly focused on a single city and the actions of an angel and a demon (not quite our religious versions of angels/demons) as they fight and thwart each other and try to guide the city. It’s really hard to describe, but it’s beautifully written, and the descriptions of the city and of Vitrine are vivid and strange.
8. The Teller of Small Fortunes, by Julie Leong. This is cosy-ish fantasy, in that there are some big stakes in the background, but mostly our characters want to stay out of the way of it all, travel together, create their little found family, and solve their fairly ordinary (for a fantasy world) problems. I found Tao’s magic (and how she chooses to use it) fascinating, and really enjoyed the journey — though compared to some of the fully realised fantasy worlds I’ve mentioned here like in The Tainted Cup and The Goblin Emperor, the world-building is a bit thinner.
9. Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I debated whether this should be in the list, particularly as I think there are meant to be correspondences between places like Xianle and Yong’an in the story with actual locations in China, while Hua Cheng’s aesthetic and background is considered a nod to Miao/Hmong origins… but I couldn’t resist including it anyway, as it also isn’t supposed to be historical China. It’s more historical China inspired, along with Chinese traditions, etc. It’s such an epic, spanning 800 years of suffering and longing, and there’s always the sense that all kinds of magic could (and will) happen. From Ghost City to the domain of Black Water Sinks Ships to Mount Tonglu and the Kiln, there’s a lot of history and magic to discover as you read. (Also, a beautiful love story.)
10. The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard. There are so many ways this is wish-fulfillment, as Cliopher is hyper-capable, and hyper-able to push through world-changing reforms that make everyone’s lives better with no downside, and it’s full of the virtues of more communal ways of living and being, and different ways of thinking. Nonetheless, the differences between this and most Western Europe-inspired fantasy are a lot of fun, and sometimes wish fulfillment and people using power in wholesome ways is just fun to read. Plus, I adored the friendship between the Emperor and Cliopher.

That was pretty fun, especially the restriction to proper secondary world fantasy instead of fantasy set in our world… I’m looking forward to seeing other people’s lists!

This week’s theme from Top Ten Tuesday is “Books with honorifics in the title”, which I’m really not sure I can actually get a total of ten for. I guess this might be pretty dependent on genre! Anyway, let’s see how I do…

1. The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes, by Kate Strasdin. A non-fiction which discusses a Victorian woman’s “dress diary”, containing snippets of cloth from her clothes (and sometimes clothes worn by her friends and family). I found it a really fascinating delve into fabric and social history.
2. The Doctor who Fooled the World, by Brian Deer. I know, this sits kind of oddly with other books from the list, but it’s a really good takedown of the lies spread by Andrew Wakefield, and highly recommended if you’re on the fence about whether his allegations about the MMR vaccine (or vaccination in general) actually hold any truth. I consider Andrew Wakefield a mass murderer, to be clear, a man so blinded in his own search for fame and profit that he endangered the whole world — but I don’t blame people who were led astray by a man who used his position as a scientist to inspire false confidence. I feel so sorry for people who believed in what he had to offer.
3. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This is a book I’ve reread a couple of times, despite being huge. I know that not everyone enjoys it, and I honestly wouldn’t even have predicted that I would, but there’s such dense world-building and some really fun ideas about magic.
4. The Magpie Lord, by KJ Charles. I’ve read this a number of times, and it remains fun. Lord Lucien Crane isn’t entirely a good person, but he seeks his own kind of justice and fairness, and I love the way that he and Stephen Day are drawn together.
5. Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo. I really loved this slightly fantastical, dark Hollywood. It was completely enchanting. I actually might give it another read at some point.
6. The Mysterious Mr. Badman, by W.F. Harvey. I’ve more or less forgotten the plot of this one, I must admit, but I gave it 4/5 stars at the time! It’s a classic mystery, and a fairly conventional one, according to my review, which explains the rating. I really love classic mysteries, but not so much because they’re innovative or unusual — usually, more because they’re not. They’re very comforting in their predictability.
7. Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight, by R. Austin Freeman. This is also a pretty classic mystery, but an unusual one in that it shows us the commission of the crime to begin with, and then the efforts at covering it up. It’s quite slow-paced, and I did find that it dragged a bit, but I ultimately gave it four stars for making me care about the criminal. It’s very carefully written, and I did enjoy it.
8. Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates, by Kerry Greenwood. Also known as Cocaine Blues, this is the first book of the Phryne Fisher series, and it’s so much fun. For some reason, I didn’t love it when I first tried it, but when I gave it another go, Phryne won my heart. A reread is tempting…
9. Miss Jacobson’s Journey, by Carola Dunn. I read this series out of sequence, but had a lot of fun going backwards to read this one: Miriam is a great romance protagonist, and I did get fond of her two potential suitors as well — perhaps somewhat helped by the fact that I already knew one of them from the second book. I’m getting tempted to reread the whole trilogy!
10. The Duke Heist, by Erica Ridley. Putting this book here has reminded me there’s a couple of books in this series I haven’t read yet! They’re somewhere in my boxes of books in the storage unit, but perhaps once I dig them out, it’ll be time to pick them up. I’ve found all the books in the series so far really fun, and The Duke Heist is no exception. Lawrence takes a while to sort out his behaviour totally, but the way he interacts and becomes playful with Chloe is adorable.

Look at that, I made it! Maybe a couple of these are kinda cheating, but we’re gonna call it good anyway.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “books I’d like to reread”, and rereading is a topic I’m always interested in, so it seems like a good place to jump back in after a while of not taking part!

1. The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher. I don’t remember this very well, except that I enjoyed it, and I always love Kingfisher’s takes on fairytale retellings. I’m very curious how it compares to my experience of Hemlock & Silver, one of her most recent — that one is so inventive, even though it’s spun out of the story of Snow White.
2. The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie. I liked this more than most people I knew back when it came out, and I’m wondering how it’d sit now; it’s the only novel by Leckie that I haven’t read multiple times. I keep thinking about it, so maybe when I unpack my books post-move it’s time to dig in.
3. A Coalition of Lions, by Elizabeth E. Wein. I recently finally managed to get round to my reread of The Winter Prince, and started on this one, but then stuff happened and it went on a backburner. I remember devouring the series, though, so I am curious to get back to it.
4. An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. I’ve been working my way around to a reread of this — the first book by Charles I ever read — for ages, but somehow I’ve never got round to it. It’s actually third in a trilogy, and I’ll probably read them in order this time (though if I recall correctly, it didn’t matter a lot). It was one of the books I read first when starting to get into romance, after requesting the ARC on a bit of a whim, and I’d enjoy a revisit.
5. The Steerswoman, by Rosemary Kirstein. I have read this first book of the series twice, paused to read something else, got distracted, and never got onto the remaining existing books. I know the series isn’t finished (at least, I seem to remember that), but I still want to explore more of it. And, uh, remember the details from the first book, because it’s been a while.
6. Among Others, by Jo Walton. This was so much The Book of my early twenties that I’m not sure if it’s quite safe to go back to it. It might be weird if it doesn’t resonate as much anymore! Or I might end up remembering why a whole bunch of books got onto my TBR (it’s very much a book about someone who reads), and that might be dangerous for my productivity. But who needs productivity?
7. The Winter King, by Bernard Cornwell. I loved this so much as a teenager, and read it several times, but it’s been a long time — I’m not sure if I even reread it when I was studying Arthuriana, because it didn’t really fit in with any of the things I was looking at. I can’t remember if Kay/Cei is even a character at all, for example (I wrote my dissertation on Cei and what the portrayal of him was doing in Arthurian texts of different periods).
8. Idylls of the Queen, by Phyllis Ann Karr. I did read this for my dissertation — in fact, it was one of my key texts (along with Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot) for the modern chapter. I don’t remember a huge amount about it now, but I’m certain I want to reread it. In fact… I wonder if I have the ebook? Hmmm. Otherwise, it’s in one of those boxes somewhere…
9. Sailing to Sarantium, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Ominously, the second book was missing when we packed up my books for the move, so I might have to repurchase it — and maybe it might be time to get some matching editions, if they’re actually in print? I scrambled together my collection of GGK’s work on a very tight student budget when I fell in love with The Summer Tree, and none of them match, and some of them are kinda gross-looking. Anyway, I remember being spellbound by this duology, so I’m eager to reread (though fair play, I’m pretty sure my wife didn’t finish it and my mum didn’t like it the way I did, so I don’t know if it’ll hit the same now).
10. Magician, by Raymond E. Feist. I don’t know if this can possibly stand up to the warm memories I have of it, but I do at least want to reread the initial three books, Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon. I loved those books so much, I really did. I don’t think I actually thought much of Feist’s other books in the same world, and certainly never read and reread them in the same way, but those first three… yeah.

There we go, got that back down to ten after briefly going overboard! I’m a great lover of rereading, sometimes just for the comfort of a familiar book, sometimes because you never know what you’ll discover when looking at something with fresh eyes.

NB: I’m not necessarily recommending these — I remember them all fondly, and remember them as being (at least mostly) very good, but who knows what’s happened since I last stepped into these particular pages? The Suck Fairy might have been by.

This week’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl is “Books You’d Be a Fool Not To Read”. My twist on this is that I’m going to talk about books I didn’t expect to love, and even some books that I didn’t love at first but came to love on rereading them. So it’s books/series/authors that I’d have been a fool not to read (and reread) — though you could take that as a recommendation on my part!

1. Feed, by Mira Grant. I think back when I first read this, half the problem was that I was in a very anxious period in my life. I’m not sure if I was on anxiety medication yet; possibly not, or possibly not the more effective medication I later tried. Anyway, Feed scared the crap out of me by hitting me right where my fears were. I still have anxiety, and health-related anxiety at that, but I’ve come a long way by being curious about it and looking my fears right in the face — and I’m really fascinated by Feed now, too.
2. Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. It’s not that I hated this when I first read it, as far as I can remember. But I didn’t quite “get” it either. It was a book everyone had been talking about, and it didn’t seem like my thing. I don’t know quite when that changed, but I think it was while reading the later books — and now when I reread this first one, I love it too.
3. Chalice, by Robin McKinley. The first time I read it, I felt like everything wrapped up too quickly and left me with so many questions. The protagonist spends the whole book not sure what she’s doing, and making it up as she goes along; understanding the boundaries of her abilities by finding them. Reading the book again (and again and again), though, the itch of curiosity is more about figuring more out myself and enjoying the questions.
4. Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal. As with most of the books on this list, it’s not that I hated the book on first read, but it wasn’t an obvious hit either. I think I gave it two stars. It was before I got into romance novels in general, and I really wasn’t an Austen fan. I just didn’t really… get the appeal, and I don’t think I wanted to get the appeal. It stuck in my head, though, and I later read Glamour in Glass and… loved it. At that point I revisited and found that I liked it, actually.
5. A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. I know! If you’ve been around here long, you know I loved that book. But I didn’t love it the first time — I think I did give it three stars, “liked it”, but I definitely wasn’t all-in, ride-or-die. I can’t say quite why it didn’t work for me at the time — maybe just mood? But I read Tropic of Serpents, adored it, and reconsidered.
6. The Gabriel Hounds, by Mary Stewart. To be accurate, my change of heart on this was more of a general re-evaluation of Mary Stewart’s work and why I was reading it, what I was interested in, etc. I read The Gabriel Hounds without knowing much about Stewart’s work (and quite possibly after having already disliked her Arthurian retellings), and I don’t think I really let myself get into it. I really should revisit again, because aspects of it have reaaaally stuck with me — though Madam, Will You Talk? remains my favourite.
7. The Talisman Ring, by Georgette Heyer. I can’t remember if this was my first Heyer novel, but I think so (except for maybe her mysteries). It’s a heck of a romp, and it immediately sold me on Heyer’s work.
8. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This one is an absolute brick of a novel, and I remember vividly acquiring it second-hand during my first degree, and tucking myself away in the library to read great big chunks of it between lectures. I actually read it really fast, after entering into the process somewhat dubiously. There are things about it that I hadn’t expected to like — the footnotes, the faux-Regency style, etc — and I’m pretty sure a couple of people I knew had hated it. And yet!
9. An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. I hadn’t read much romance at this point, and I’m not entirely sure why I requested it on Netgalley — but given how much I love Charles’ work now, I’m very glad I did. I read it for the first time during a visit to my parents-in-law in Canada, so I also have a vivid memory of keeping a careful straight face while reading the sex scenes in the living room, ahaha.
10. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers. I think (and time proved) that this was not the best starting point for me with Peter Wimsey. He’s not very emotionally present in the story (at least until the end), so if you’ve read a few classic mysteries, you can come into it a bit jaded and not ready to see the detective as a full-blown character. Clouds of Witness or, later, Strong Poison are probably better for that — though really, I think what does it is the cumulative exposure to Lord Peter across the books. I think they’ve all got better (for me) over time as I’ve learned to see where something is Peter being Peter, rather than a generic detective. The audiobook adaptations with Ian Carmichael also add a lot, as well as both adaptations to TV series (older ones with Ian Carmichael, some slightly more recent ones with Edward Petherbridge).

And that’s it! Ten books I wasn’t sure whether I’d like, or which I liked more on reading again. Take these as recommendations if you wish!

It’s been a while since I did Top Ten Tuesday — mostly I haven’t had the brain capacity to think about it, with a lot going on (as discussed elsewhere). But this week’s topic is all about the TBR, and that I can still manage!

So here’s a few thoughts at what I might maybe read in the next few months, or so I hope!

1. Strange Pictures, by Uketsu. This is a mystery novel I came across somewhat recently, and I’m intrigued by the idea (which centres around some strange drawings that provide clues to a horrible mystery). My wife got me an e-copy this weekend, so I’m keen to dig in soon!
2. The Apothecary Diaries (light novels), by Natsu Hyuuga. I have volumes three and four ready to read, and I’m keen to dig in, after volume two got into the mystery of Maomao’s parents. I love Maomao.
3. The Apothecary Diaries (manga), by Nekokurage. Maybe this seems like cheating, but I’ve found it fascinating lately to read the manga/manhua/manhwa adaptations of light novels quite close to when I read the light novels themselves. Often the adaptations are very close, but it does provide a bit of perspective. I’m quite far behind on the manga compared to the light novels, so I’m not sure if I can keep up, but we’ll see!
4. A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett. I hope to get round to this one fairly imminently, since I have an ARC, but we’ll see…
5. Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green. I’m likely to dig into this as soon as I get my copy, which is allegedly on the way. I love learning about and talking about tuberculosis, and it sounds like it’s got under Green’s skin too (hopefully not literally). And I’d like to have a new pop-sci book to throw at everyone, since Catching Breath (Kathryn Lougheed) is now pretty old.
6. The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I think I may have put this on my list at the start of the year, but then it took until mid-February to actually resolve an issue where my copies hadn’t arrived, and I didn’t want to start on it until I had them all. Maybe soon now!
7. Breath of the Dragon, by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee. I’m very curious about this one, love the cover, and recently grabbed it on a bookshop trip. So it’s high on my list.
8. Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher. I love Kingfisher’s work, and I have an ARC of this. I requested it more or less automatically, let’s be honest. Eager to dig in!
9. Necrobane, by Daniel M. Ford. I actually have an ARC of the third book, Advocate, but I need to read the second book first. Hopefully I’ll get around to that soon.
10. Poetic, Mystic, Widow, Wife, by Hetta Howe. This list wouldn’t be complete without a touch more non-fiction, so here we are — a history I’ve been curious about for a while, and one of the books I got for Christmas.

Eager to see what other people have on their lists…

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is about our bookish goals for 2025, which is always an interesting one to ponder. I fall in and out of love with having strict goals like a target number of books to hit: I feel like it’s an important motivator for me to keep making time for reading, but at the same time it risks making reading be about numbers instead of enjoyment. So my goals always try to balance that out… So, without further ado, let’s jump into the goals!

1. Read 400 books this year. This is the same target I managed to hit in 2023 and 2024, so it feels doable now. “400 books” includes novellas, comics, manga, individually published short stories like Kindle Shorts, audiobooks, potentially even radioplays. It’s a deliberately broad selection. If I hit my goal by reading every volume of Fairy Tail, starting again from the beginning, that’s absolutely fine if that’s what I feel like reading.
2. Roll with it. If it hits September and I haven’t been able to read anything like enough, I am absolutely going to drop my goal to whatever seems reasonable. I can be stubborn about this; I “had” to read 66 books in December in order to meet my goal for 2024. But the whole time I was trying to listen to myself and check how much I still wanted to do it, how much I actually felt like reading. There’s no use in a goal that makes you feel miserable, unless your aim is misery.
3. Read 90,000 pages this year. That means the average page count of the books I read should be 225 pages. I’ve avoided setting it too high, so that it leaves plenty of room for manga that clock in at 160 pages, or graphic novels at 100 pages, or whatever it might be — while encouraging me to also read some of my longer books as well to balance the scales.
4. Ensure at least a quarter of my reading is books from my backlog. I’m not sure yet how realistic this is. So far, 84% of my reads (11/13) have been from my backlog, but that’ll probably change later in the year once I’ve received more review copies, been to bookshops, etc. I actually thought about saying half my reading should be from the backlog, and I might still bump this goal up, but I thought I’d start out by seeing how it goes. I think a quarter should be fine, even a half, but I’m a mood reader, so I try not to paint myself into a corner.
5. Read according to my whim, no matter what. Lists are so tempting. I love lists. But as I just mentioned, I’m a mood reader. There’s no way I can stick to a plan to read a specific list of books, or anything of the kind.
6. Read for an hour a day, on average. It doesn’t always happen; I tend to read for a bit under an hour a day during the work week, and then binge on the weekends, at least while I’m still studying. But it’s a good marker and driver of mental health for me: I read more when I feel alright, and I feel better when I read. So I try to keep an eye on this, and ensure I make the time.
7. Try to finish (or DNF) the books I start within a reasonable length of time. I have some books “on hold” that I’ve been partway through for ages, and I’ve been trying to rid myself of that habit. I don’t want to be super restrictive and say “only one book at a time”, because that’s not at all how I read and it isn’t fun. But I would like to keep it to a reasonable number, and have them all be books I’m actively reading, rather than having a handful of books that have been paused for weeks or months.
8. Stay curious. I want to try new things, and things I wouldn’t necessarily automatically pick up. Manga with silly titles (The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, I’m eyeing you), non-fiction books about topics I don’t normally read about (though given the range I read, surely few things are unexpected anymore), enormous doorstoppers that will take forever that have been intimidating me (At the Feet of the Sun? I loved the first book, but I’ve been holding off on this one!), and so on and so forth.
9. Read first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I want to stop grabbing my phone first, and reading is an excellent way to start the day slowly, gently, and without immediately turning on the firehose of social media, email, and work. It’s also a good off-ramp for the day, which specifically requires time away from screens, helping to resist the temptation to stay glued to them unil the last minute.
10. Graduate from my MSc. Not a reading goal, you say? No, but if I can just finish this degree, I’ll have more free time again, and you know I’ll be using that for reading. I’m gunning for a distinction, though it feels increasingly difficult to reach; at this point, really I’ll be proud just to finish, because it’s been a rough five years. I’m experienced with studying (this is my fourth degree), and thrive on it to some extent, but the time limit has been a difficult ask alongside full-time work and miscellaneous life events. Technically, I won’t graduate this year (the ceremonies will be in February 2026 — yes, two ceremonies: one from University of London, one from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) but I want to be eligible to graduate at the next ceremony. Once that’s done, I’ll be free to spend more time reading, visiting people’s blogs, etc, etc. I look forward to it very much.

And that’s my plans for the year! We’ll see how they go: what I said in #2 applies to all of these, I want to roll with the punches and adjust my goals as-needed!

Today’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl‘s Top Ten Tuesday is “most anticipated books releasing in the first half of 2025”, so let’s take a look…

1. Murder as a Fine Art, by Carol Carnac (January). Technically this isn’t new, but where would I get my hands on it other than through the British Library Crime Classics reprint? Carol Carnac is slightly better known as E.C.R. Lorac, but sadly less known than she ought to be in all her guises. Her mysteries are some of my favourites, and I’m eager to read this one.
2. A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol. 10, by Misaki, Momochi, Sando and Lamp Magonote (January). I haven’t quite read all the existing books yet, but I’m eager to keep following Lizel’s adventures, watching him charm everyone he meets, scheme like the best of ’em, and read the entire contents of a bookshop even faster than I would.
3. But Not Too Bold, by Hache Pueyo (February). I’ve read this as an eARC already (review here), but I’m looking forward to seeing what others think. It’s a little bit gothic, a bit creepy, and yet it’s a romance too…
4. The Ten Teacups, by Carter Dickson (February). Another one from the British Library Crime Classics collection. I’ve not always loved the work of Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr, but I gained a bit more of an appreciation for it in the last year, and I’m curious about this one. There’s still the chance I’ll dislike it, but equally a chance it’ll be a five-star read for me.
5. Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett (February). I love this series, and I’m really happy to have received an eARC for this one as well. The formatting unfortunately leaves something to be desired (it’s an epub clearly generated straight from a PDF without cleanup), so I might hang on for the published version, alas. But I’m super excited to return to Emily’s world.
6. The Tomb of Dragons, by Katherine Addison (March). I urgently need to get to my eARC of this, because I don’t want to wait for the release in March! And here’s firmly hoping that someone finally gives Thara Celehar a hug. (I can dream.)
7. Murder by Memory, by Olivia Waite (March). A fun SF mystery, which I’ve already read (review here). I know a couple of people who are going to love it, and I’m going to very much enjoy their enjoyment.
8. Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green (March). The number of people who immediately notified this was going to be a thing when the news of it broke was… gratifying, honestly. Y’all know me! Yes, it’s high on my list, and I’m very hopeful for a new book on tuberculosis that will (I hope) make the seriousness of the situation clear to laypeople. Given my current degree and my undergrad dissertation, it probably won’t teach me anything new per se, but I’m always interested in how different people frame the problems — and you never know what someone fresh to the topic may notice or pick out as important. Either way, I expect to have Opinions.
9. A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett (April). I really liked The Tainted Cup, so I’m keen for the follow-up. I love genre mashes like fantasy and mystery, so this is catnip to me.
10. The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, by Malka Older (June). Again, I had an eARC copy of this and enjoyed it (review forthcoming) — it might not be my favourite of the Mossa and Pleiti books in some ways, but it was still a fun time, and I’m looking forward to having more people to talk about it with.

And there we go! I’m sure there’s a lot missing, and I’m looking forward to browsing other people’s lists and learning just how much I missed out…

It’s been a minute since I participated in Top Ten Tuesday, because that exhausted student life has caught up with me (apparently that happens even during your fourth degree), but I couldn’t resist this topic, particularly on this very apt date!

Yep, it’s the best of 2024, according to me. Let’s go!

1. Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù. This was an inevitable choice. I started reading The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System in 2023, so of the two MXTX novels I’ve read so far, this was the more obvious pick for “best of 2024” (even though I finished Scum Villain in 2024, and it is very fun). It’s an epic love story, but the plot around the love story is pretty astounding too, with Xie Lian’s principles being tested again and again and again. No matter what, though, he has Hua Cheng at his side — and Feng Xin and Mu Qing too, bickering all the way. I love so many of the characters, love the world, and love Xie Lian’s journey to prove that you don’t have to save yourself at the cost of others.
2. A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, by Misaki, Momochi and Sando. I’d love to read the light novel, but for now what we have in translation is the manga — and I fell in love with it all in a heap this December. There are nine volumes out, with the tenth dropping in late January. It’s a fairly low-stakes story: Lizel gets transported to another world, where he proceeds to very competently secure himself an adventurer to show him the ropes and a coterie of fans to make life smooth for him. He’s clearly not as sweet (or at least, not as simply sweet) as people think, but Gil sees through him. It’s not a romance, explicitly, but the bonds he forms with Gil, Eleven, Ray, Judge and Studd (and his existing bond with his king) are pretty heavily coded as romances and crushes. I adore Lizel and his excitement about bookshops, and particularly his “friendship”(?) with Gil. I have a few critiques (female characters where?) but I’ve had so much fun with this series.
3. A Letter to the Luminous Deep, by Sylvie Cathrall. This is a debut that absolutely stole my heart. It’s a bittersweet story, since we see E. and Henery falling in love through their letters when they’ve already been lost, and their siblings working through what happened with grief and love. All the same, I love how the mysteries unfold and intertwine, I love the personalities revealed through their letters, and the world we’re presented with. It’s the first of a series and I absolutely can’t wait. It’s haunted me: when I was partway through it, I kept picking it up to read just a little more, and getting lost for a hundred pages at a time; since then, thoughts of how it’s all going to work out have kept coming back to me.
4. The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, by Roland Allen. This was one of my earliest reads of the year, and I loved it. It’s a ramble through the history of humans using notebooks to think, from simple jottings of numbers to bullet journals, ICU diaries, morning pages, and more. I’ve been a journaller most of my life (though not always on paper), and loved the rambling trip through the history of it. Learning about ICU diaries made me cry, and I gave morning pages a shot because of it. (It’d have gone better if I had more time — maybe when I’m no longer a student?) Definitely a recommended non-fiction.
5. Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett. It has a bit of a flavour of the Isabella Trent books (by Marie Brennan), which attracted me. It’s by no means a copy, but I could imagine Emily and Isabella getting along beautifully, and they share the same kind of “deranged practicality” that’s Isabella’s hallmark. I love Emily’s serious study of faeries of all types, her knowledge and competence, contrasting with her relative inability with people. (Lovers of Isabella: Emily is even worse at handling stuff like local politics, and doesn’t generally get that kind of thing to come right by her own meddling efforts either.) I found both books of the series so far a lot of pure fun, and not too heavy on the romance as to eclipse Emily’s serious academic endeavours.
6. The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler. In a way this is three books in one, and I preferred one of the three (and didn’t think that the other two stories wove in as well as they ought to have done). But I was so fascinated by the thread I did love that that didn’t matter. I really, really loved this one, and read it in just a few sittings, always reading just a liiiiittle bit more, just a few more pages won’t hurt, etc, etc. I think it has some weak points, but it presents such a compelling thought experiment that that kind of didn’t matter. I don’t know how well I’m selling this, but it had me mesmerised.
7. Moneta: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins, by Gareth Harney. This is the kind of history I’ve found myself really liking, where history is teased out of a physical artefact or collection of a similar type of physical artefact. In this case, coins. Harney writes really compellingly, fascinated about his own subject, which is always the most fun kind of non-fiction to read. I usually find it easier to set non-fiction aside for a bit even when I find it really interesting, but I was constantly picking Moneta up to read just a bit more.
8. Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History, by Rebecca Struthers. On a similar vein, this tells us the history of watches, and a little bit about the history of the wider world through discussing watches and the changes in timepieces. It’s another one that I found hard to put down, finding myself as absorbed in the detail as Struthers describes being in the watches she mends. It lent me a bit more appreciation for the pocket watch of my grandfather’s that I’ll be inheriting once it’s been fixed.
9. Honey and Pepper, by A.J. Demas. This is a romance set in an alternate Greece, and I ended up really loving the characters. I had some quibbles about the portrayal of slavery (it’s obviously negative, but some of the characters are neck-deep in slaves when they suddenly decide to free them and support them — which doesn’t and shouldn’t erase a lifetime of keeping humans as slaves), but it does try to be nuanced and handle the fact that one of the main characters has complicated feelings about it all.
10. What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher. Horror isn’t entirely my thing, but this novella managed to tiptoe juuust around the edges of things that trigger my anxiety too much, giving a sense of unease that worked well. It’s a retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, but it’s far more than that too, introducing the character of Alex Easton and an element of Ruritanian romance in kan’s origins and cultural baggage. There’s a bunch of fun characters, and Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher always writes very engagingly. I liked the sequel too, but What Moves The Dead felt creepier and managed that unease better.

That was a mix of my four and five star reads (I’m stingy, there weren’t many of the latter), and it was very difficult to narrow down what should be included here. Honorable mentions go to The Warden, Out of the Drowning Deep, Rose/House, Written in Bone and The Eye of Osiris.