Happy weekend! And whew, I need it.

Books acquired this week

I told myself I was really going to try not to get any more books before my birthday, but I’d forgotten that I’d preordered Dinosaur Sanctuary volume eight, and then one of my (brand-new) fillings broke and I had to head back to the dentist. And I really liked the first volume of this danmei…

 

Volume two of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine took a little finding (in the end I ordered it from Travelling Man, of all places, thanks to my wife spotting that they actually had it in stock) but it arrived yesterday, woooo. I might even read it this weekend!

Posts from this week

As ever lately, it’s been a busy week on the blog, so good thing I’m going to do a roundup! Here goes, starting with the reviews:

• Non-fiction: William Tyndale and the English Language, by David Crystal (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Poetry: First Rain in Paradise, by Gwyneth Lewis (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
• Manga: Our Not-So-Lonely Planet Travel Guide, vol 1, by Mone Sorai (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Fantasy: Brigands & Breadknives, by Travis Baldree (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Non-fiction: Life Changing: How Humans at Altering Life on Earth, by Helen Pilcher (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Horror: The Sea Hides Its Dead, by Megan Bontrager (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Non-fiction: A History of the World in 50 Pieces, by Tom Service (3/5 stars, “it was okay”)

As ever, most of these are not recent reads, except for The Sea Hides Its Dead, because of the way I spread out my reviews to avoid spamming everyone with sixty million manga reviews at once! I have tons of reviews pre-written and all ready to go, when the right moment comes.

Aaand of course, here are the non-review posts now:

• Fantasy with Friends: Witches in Fantasy
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books I HAD to Have…
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• Book Blogger Hop: One Single Genre

What I’m reading

First up, the little preview of books I intend to review soon, having finished them this week! I had a good weekend for reading, but tailed off once we hit the work-week — it was busy, and also the dentist stuff… Anyway, here they are!

Earlier in the week I had very specific reading plans, but I’ve decided to abandon them — they stopped sparking joy! Now my main plan is just to try to clear the deck a little bit so I have space for books for my birthday: we have a specific day planned out for me to buy plenty, so I’d better make space!

So chances are I’ll read After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine vol 2 this weekend, and dive into some of the other books that’re waiting for me, like John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints.

As ever, though, it’ll ultimately be whatever I feel like.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Happy weekend! I have big reading plans again this weekend, even though it’s just a normal weekend, because I really want to clean up my TBR a little before birthday books start rolling in.

Acquired this week

First, before I forget, library books!

The National Poetry Library had a display of Welsh poetry up top for a few weeks, and I added sooo many to my wishlist. In the aftermath of reading Afonydd, I definitely wanted to try the editors’ other bilingual book, and I figured I’d try Ness Owen’s solo collection too.

I’ve also been very lucky with book mail, with a bunch of new books to review: Hachette decided to bless me this week, and I got these three in quick succession! I also got an eARC from Little, Brown, which I’ll slip in here too…

Horror isn’t always my thing, but I’m very tempted by The Sea Hides Its Dead — and of course I’m keen on The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood, since it’s Arthurian. (For those who don’t know, I wrote my MA thesis on Sir Kay from Celtic to modern Arthurian stories. I semi-recently talked about some of my favourites!) Hopefully I’ll get to all three of these soon.

And of course, given how much I loved A Letter to the Luminous Deep and its sequel, I’m excited by Sylvie Cathrall’s new book!

Finally, a preorder came in, almost right after I finished the previous book:

Obviously I’m keen to get started on this!

Posts from this week

It’s been a busy week again around here, so here’s the round-up in case of anything you’ve missed. Reviews first:

• Non-fiction: How to Kill a Language, by Sophia Smith Galer (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Poetry: Afonydd, ed. Sian Northey & Ness Owen (5/5 stars, “loved it”)
• Manga: Cat + Gamer, vol 1, by Wataru Nadatani (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Fantasy romance: The Wife Comes First, vol 1, by Lv Ye Qian He (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Fantasy novella: Find Me Where It Ends, by Cassandra Khaw (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Children’s book: How Animals Sleep, by Jiří Dvořák (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

As ever, most of these aren’t books I finished that recently — I hold back reviews to try to give y’all a mixture to read, rather than dump reviews for all volumes of Cat + Gamer on you in the space of a week, ahaha.

There were also some other posts, as ever, so here we go with those:

• Fantasy with Friends: Tropes in Children’s Fantasy
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books that Live in my Head Rent-Free
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• Book Blogger Hop: Fastest/Slowest

What I’m reading

Last weekend I took a long weekend, partly for catching up with housework and getting some specific bigger tasks done (woooo, I have a little shed for storing my bike in now!), but it also meant some really good reading time, so I started the week off very well. I slowed down toward the end of the week, but still preeeetty good.

As ever, here’s the sneak peek of what I’ve been reading and got finished this week!

My big plans for the weekend include finishing up Mary Beard’s Twelve Caesars, reading my new danmei (The Wife Comes First, vol 3) and working on some of my review books, like Megan Bontrager’s The Sea Hides Its Dead and Becky Chambers’ As You Wake, Break the Shell.

Buuut as always it’ll depend on my whim!

Hope everyone else has a great weekend, and looking forward to doing the rounds and dropping by all your blogs.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Happy weekend! And here it’s overcast (at least for now) and cooler than it’s been in days. I planned a long weekend at somewhat the last minute, to give me chance to do a few tasks around the house and build my new bike storage, so the cooler weather works out well!

Anyway, to the books…

Books acquired this week

There are actually three ARCs in the mail to me, but they haven’t arrived yet, so I can only talk about this one. I got the email offering me this ‘read now’ on Netgalley and have rarely pushed a button so hard in my life; I love this series!

I’m very much looking forward to digging into this one. I had no idea I’d become as fond of Gabriel Ward as I have; in the first book, his introduction makes him seem stuffy and pedantic… but he’s also kind, and cares about justice, and I quickly came to love the character.

Posts from this week

It’s been a busy week on the blog, especially for non-review posts, so the usual round-up sounds like an excellent plan! Reviews first, as per usual:

• Non-fiction: The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, by Marilyn Johnson (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Comic: Radiant Black, vol 1, by Kyle Higgins et al (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Non-fiction graphic novel: Love and Desire in the Promised Land: The Private Lives of Israelis and Palestinians, by Salomé Parent-Rachdi and Deloupy (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Fantasy: Strange Animals, by Jarod K. Anderson (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Historical fiction verse novel: The Home Child, by Liz Berry (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

As ever, these reviews are often for books I finished weeks or even months ago; I have all my reviews written, but hold them back to keep things a bit more varied! The books I’ve read this week will be in the section below.

Aaand the other posts:

• 20 Books of Summer: Progress Update #1
• Fantasy with Friends: Brandon Sanderson
• Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-Me Authors to Try
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• Book Blogger Hop: Do You Read Many Books At Once?

As I said, a pretty busy week, what with the 20 Books of Summer update and joining the Book Blogger Hop for the first time.

What I’m reading

I had some weird headachy/migraine stuff going on this week, so I didn’t read nearly as much as I’d have liked, but I did finish a handful of books! As usual, here’s the sneak peek of the ones I intend to review on the blog:

For this weekend, I want to start on some more of the new books purchased/received this year that are hanging around. I only let myself have 20 unstarted books bought this year at once, and the number’s been hovering at or around 20 for a while. I need some breathing room for my birthday!

That said, as I mentioned in the Book Blogger Hop post, I have a few too many books on the go at once, so I’d also like to work on those. Hopefully I can keep a balance! I suspect I’ll start A Case of Fear and Favour, and work on finishing volume two of The Wife Comes First, Carter Dickson’s The Magic-Lantern Murders, and Suzanne Palmer’s Ode to the Half-Broken. For a change of pace, I might also start Greer Stothers’ Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die…

But we’ll see. As always, it’ll be wherever my whim takes me, and that might mean somewhere else entirely. I’m reading to have fun, not to check things off a list!

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Oof, it’s way too hot here once again! And humid, at least here in my office, despite having had the portable air conditioner on dehumidifier mode for most of the last 24 hours. Still, I’m surviving and very lucky to have the air conditioner option!

Books acquired this week

Last week I forgot to feature a library book, so sneaking that into this week’s post: Murder at the Black Cat Cafe is one I’ve been meaning to try for a while, though I thiiiink I have read a different mystery by the same author and didn’t love it? That said, I wasn’t reading a lot of mysteries in translation at that time, and I think I have my eye in a bit better now, so I’m hoping I’ll enjoy it more. Reading in translation can sometimes be easier like that, when you have a degree of context.

Meanwhile, over at the National Poetry Library they set up a collection of Welsh collections; you can only take out two at a time, and I still had one other collection I haven’t got round to, but I’m looking forward to more of those. For now, I’ve just grabbed Sian Northey and Ness Owen’s Afonydd anthology, which is bilingual and sounds like a fascinating project.

I also got exciting new books to review:

A new Becky Chambers book is always something I eagerly anticipate, so looking forward to digging into this one, and I’ve been meaning since forever to pick up the books by the M.A. Carrick duo, since one of them is Marie Brennan!

Finally, this month’s British Library Crime Classic dropped onto my doormat yesterday:

I’ve grown to appreciate John Dickson Carr’s books quite a bit, though I didn’t love the previous book that’s linked to this one (The Unicorn Murders), so I’m curious what I’ll think of this one.

Posts from this week

Let’s get things rounded up, reviews first, as usual:

• Poetry: Night Sky with Exit Wounds, by Ocean Vuong (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Romance manga: Welcome Back, Aureole, by Takatsu (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Sci-fi manga: Dinosaur Sanctuary, vol 7, by Itaru Kinoshita (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Sci-fi novella: We Burned So Bright, by TJ Klune (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Romance: Game Changer, by Rachel Reid (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Classic mystery: Sweet Poison, by Mary Fitt (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

And the other posts:

• Fantasy with Friends: Magic Systems
• Top Ten Tuesday: Titles with the Word ‘City’
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• Let’s Talk Bookish: Discussion Posts

What I’m reading

After a pretty frenzied weekend of reading the week before last, I’ve been positively sedate this week. It’s partly because I’ve been reading a longer book (Jon Cannon’s The Stones of Britain) which just isn’t something you can sit and chug down in one go, and partly because I’ve had other things on my mind.

That said, I did finish a few books, some of which had been lingering on my ‘currently reading’ pile for ages!

My weekend plans involve some crochet, a fair amount of gaming, including trying to get to grips with the puzzle game Gorogoa… and also cogitating on the ‘couch to 5k for reading’ idea that Naomi Alderman posted on Substack (not linking it; please don’t use Substack) and how I’d adapt it to become a bit less, well, elitist-sounding. Buuut I expect to post a 20 Books of Summer update tomorrow, and spend some time reading more of The Stones of Britain, finishing up Helen Pilcher’s pop-science book Life Changing, and probably reading The Magic-Lantern Murders.

I might also start on rereading Jordan L. Hawk’s Widdershins books (so I can finally get back to the new-to-me books and finish the series) or volume two of The Wife Comes First, just to make sure I read and thoroughly enjoy books that… certain commentators… undoubtedly think are, what was her word? “Pap”. (Yeah, you can tell this one’s annoying me. There’s probably a whole blog post on this brewing, if not my very own ‘couch to 5k for reading’ plan.)

Either way, there’s a high likelihood I’ll start something new, because even with so many books already in my on-deck pile, I like to slip in something fresh here and there. We’ll see, though!

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Happy weekend! And I’m glad to see it, especially since it’s going to be a pretty busy week ahead. Gotta soak up some relaxation now!

Books acquired this week

A couple of books I was excited about came out this week, but so far I’ve stuck to one — and everyone who knows me is very thankful I managed to get a copy, because when Bookshop.org didn’t have it on the release date and Waterstones turned out to not even be listing it as a book that exists, I was very pouty. Buuut Bookshop.org had copies a day after release, so, whew.

I dived in already… and accidentally flicked ahead and saw a new and confusing character name?! So I’m not sure where this is going, and I might regret not waiting for the last book in October.

I did also get an ARC and a library book, which I allllmost forgot about because I’ve already finished both of them!

And that’s everything… for now.

Posts from this week

Let’s do a bit of a recap: reviews first, as usual!

• SF manga: Dinosaur Sanctuary, vol 6, by Itaru Kinoshita (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Graphic novel: Navigating with You, by Jeremy Whitley, Cassio Ribeiro & Nikki Foxrobot (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Myth retelling: Daedalus is Dead, by Seamus Sullivan (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Fantasy romance (danmei): Guardian, vol 2, by Priest (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Non-fiction: Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries, by Stephanie Boonstra & Campbell Price (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

As ever, most of these are books I read a while ago, since I hold reviews back to make sure I get a good mix of genres, rather than flooding everyone with 250 manga reviews at once. (Not quite literally, but the backlog of graphic novel and manga/manhwa/manhua reviews is longer than any other genre.)

As for the other posts from this week:

• Fantasy with Friends: Reading Order
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2026
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• June Reading Wrap-Up

And if it tempts you, the June wrap-up has a photo of my bunnies and of my crochet project progress!

What I’m reading

I read a whole bunch of books last weekend, and then slowed down a bit during the week, but it’s definitely been a good week for reading. I got a blackout on the BookSpinBingo challenge from Litsy for the first time in a while, and generally felt really happy and energised about reading, hurrah!

So, a quick peek at the covers of the books I finished and intend to review on the blog…

Considering I haven’t finished a book since Tuesday, that’s quite the collection of titles — I hadn’t quite realised how much I was reading. Here’s hoping this weekend is good for reading too: I know I’m going to read more of Mistakenly Saving the Villain vol 3, and I’d like to finish Charlotte Booth’s Lost Voices of the Nile. Other than that, I’ve got back to Stephanie Burgis’ Wooing the Witch Queen, and have a couple of other non-fiction books on the go that I’ll probably dip in and out of.

I also want to find plenty of time for crochet and gaming, of course, so we’ll see exactly where my whims take me this week! Maybe it’ll be somewhere completely different to what I expect right now, and that’d be fine.

Hope everyone’s had a good week!

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Happy weekend! Here’s hoping the forecast spoke true and we’ll be getting some cooler weather here, because the heat is incredible. It is definitely too bloody hot (a song which is stuck in my cranium something fierce).

Books acquired this week

I wasn’t intending to get any books this week, but I definitely wasn’t going to say no when my wife had the opportunity to grab me volume two of The Wife Comes First, and I’d been looking for volume three of Guardian for a long time and panicking about the fact that almost nowhere had it…

I really want to get round to the next volume of The Wife Comes First sooner or later… and honestly I should start on Guardian before long, before I forget all the details of the world! The mythology is pretty complex, after all.

Posts from this week

As ever, there have been a lot of posts this week, so I’ll do a bit of a round-up. First, the reviews!

• Graphic novel: Lady-Bird, by Fabrice Sapolsky and Dawn J. Starr (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
• Fantasy: Solo Leveling (light novel), vol 8, by Chugong (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Sci-fi/fantasy/romance: Clean Sweep, by Ilona Andrews (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Non-fiction: 20th Century Fashion in Detail, by Claire Wilcox and Valerie D. Mendes (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Poetry: Parallax, by Sinéad Morrissey (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Crime: The Last Escape, by E.C.R. Lorac (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

As ever, those don’t necessarily reflect this week’s reading, since I hold back reviews to try to get a diverse range over time.

Before we get into what I’ve been reading this week, here are the other posts I’ve made this week:

• Fantasy with Friends: Magical Libraries
• Top Ten Tuesday: Summer TBR
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

It’s been a lot for such a horribly hot week weather-wise! Unusually for people in the UK, my wife and I have a couple of portable A/C units, which have been lifesavers for us and the rabbits.

What I’m reading

I think last week I’d already fallen into my old habit of swapping between books after reading only a chapter or two, and rotating through that way. I’ve mostly kept that up this week, and I still think it’s working well for the way I’m feeling lately and is maybe a bit more natural to me than focusing on finishing a given book — unless the mood takes me, which it did a couple of times this week.

So without further ado, here are the books I finished reading this week:

I’m honestly impressed I finished everything, given general busyness and the heat — but my reading time was quite high this week, actually! Helped by one late night with a toothache after dental work (which fortunately settled down and was just because it was new, this time) where I couldn’t resist starting a new-to-me E.C.R. Lorac…

Anyway, this weekend I’m reading volume three of Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, have returned to Rachel Reid’s Game Changer, am knee-deep in Charlotte Booth’s Lost Voices of the Nile, and have started on Sophia Smith Galer’s How to Kill a Language. I’ll probably stick to those, though I have earmarked some library books that I really need to get round to, so it’s possible I’ll start on one of those.

Hope everyone has a good weekend — and to those in areas where it’s been really astoundingly hot, hope you’re doing alright and that the hot weather has ended or will end soon. Hang in there!

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Happy weekend! I’ve been in a reading mood for the last couple of days, so I’m very much looking forward to a lazy day.

Books acquired this week

This week’s been a busy one! My wife and I went to Manchester last weekend to go to the art gallery (to see their WORN: the life within clothes exhibition) and, let’s be real, get some books. I was hoping I’d pick some up at Queer Lit, but I confess to having found the (lack of) organisation of the shelves a bit too annoying, so I didn’t manage to get anything at an indie, despite Independent Bookshop Week.

Still, I did find myself some books, and absolutely no one is surprised by that.

So first up, the fiction! I’m also including one book I got via this week’s Top Ten Tuesday wishlist sharing, kindly sent me by Emma from Words and Peace, which made me smile.

I love both Ilona Andrews and Cat Sebastian, so I’d been looking out for those, and I’ve been meaning to try the graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea for a while, so that was a nice find too.

I also picked up a little more poetry, since I’ve enjoyed Mary Oliver’s work recently:

I’ve read both of them already — not my favourites among her collections, but there’s always something lovely about her work.

Finally, I got some non-fiction, some of which I’d been anticipating for a while:

Overall a nice little haul, and I’ve started most of them already! Impulse buys turning into impulse reads has turned out to be a very good thing for my reading mood at the moment.

Posts from this week

Right! As ever, I’ve done a fair few posts this week, so let’s do a bit of a roundup. Reviews first:

• Fantasy: Solo Leveling light novel vol 7, by Chugong (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Crime short stories: Puzzles of the Parish, ed. Martin Edwards (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• History: Queer Georgians, by Anthony Delaney (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Poetry: In the Hollow of the Wave, by Nina Mingya Powles (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Manga: Dinosaur Sanctuary, vol 5, by Itaru Kinoshita (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

As ever, most of those aren’t very recent reads, because even with my slower reading lately, I’ve got a huge backlog of reviews written but not yet posted… I’ll talk about what I’ve been reading this week below!

And now the other posts!

• 20 Books of Summer: Getting Started
• Fantasy with Friends: Merch
• Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Wishes
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

I’m getting off to a good start with 20 Books of Summer, too, with two of my chosen books finished!

What I’m reading

I’ve been reading a lot more this week, which is a relief! I’ve been reading a few books in tandem, as usual, but very actively, so I expect I’ll finish a bunch of them this week. Thinking about it, that’s how I used to read all the time — reading a chapter of one book and then swapping to another! All this focus on finishing books, whether for ARCs or just because I feel like I “ought” to for my stats or whatever, has maybe not been serving me super well at the moment. I think the variety is helping my attention span.

Anyway, first let’s talk about the books I did finish this week:

As you can see, it’s a bit more like my usual reading! I completely mainlined The Wife Comes First vol 1, and my wife is probably going to venture out and snag me volume 2 today, since it grabbed me.

The four books I’m currently rotating through most actively are Harry Tanner’s The Queer Thing about Sin, Feng Yu Nie’s Mistakenly Saving the Villain, A.J. West’s How Queer Bookshops Changed the World and Jean-Yves Mollier’s A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop, and I’m kinda hoping I’ll finish all four of those this weekend. When I finish one of the non-fiction books, I’ll probably slot Charlotte Booth’s Lost Voices of the Nile into the rotation, while I think Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Trade in Blood might be next up in fiction…

I do also want to read a couple of poetry collections so the library can have them back, so I might fit them in somewhere, too. But it’ll depend on my whim in the moment: I’ve only just got back my urge to read after a few weeks of very little reading, I’m not going to spoil it now!

I hope everyone else has a lovely/restful/enjoyable weekend planned. ♡

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Happy weekend, folks! I have plans for the day, so I’m looking forward to that… but I’m hoping for a quiet Sunday to go with it. For now, let’s look at my week in books, though it’s been a pretty quiet one.

Books acquired this week

I thought I hadn’t got anything, but actually I was wrong! I got offered the first one to review, and I’ve been curious about this author for a while and enjoying other pre-release reviews. Plus, my British Library Crime Classic for this month arrived!

I’ve already tucked into Puzzles of the Parish, since short stories sounded exactly my speed this week. What a contrast in those covers, ahaha.

Posts from this week

First up as always, the reviews:

• Fashion history: Japanese Dress in Detail, by Josephine Rout (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Poetry: A Dress of Locusts, by Safa Khatib (1/5 stars, “didn’t like it”)
• Romance manga: The Stranger in the Hoarding House, by Joe Aruku (2/5 stars, “it was okay”)
• Manga: Dinosaur Sanctuary, vol 4, by Itaru Kinoshita (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Fantasy short stories: Seasons of Glass & Iron, by Amal El-Mohtar (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)

None of these were read this week, since I have a long backlog of reviews ready to post and try to mix it up and keep a range ready to post!

Other posts:

• Fantasy with Friends: Series or Standalones
• Top Ten Tuesday: Handwriting on Covers
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• Let’s Talk Bookish: Pride Month Reading

What I’m reading

This week, the line-up of books I’ve finished is very small, because I’ve been busy with a new work thing and also just letting my brain rest and do whatever in my downtime. I did finish one book, though — a random pick from Kobo Plus!

I’m not sure how much reading I’ll get done today, since I’ll be out for most of it, but I hope to finish Puzzles of the Parish. Other than that, I’d like to finish up volume two of Mistakenly Saving the Villain, but we’ll see! I’m still trying to let myself settle down and just read whatever’s fun to me in the moment.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

Happy weekend! I’ve had a fairly quiet week without feeling in the mood for much, but I got out of the house yesterday for a little adventure (viewing the UK AIDs Memorial Quilt, which is on display this weekend not too far away) and feel a bit perkier today, so let’s hope for some good weekend reading.

Books acquired this week

Nothing new in the mail for me, but I did pick up some library books! These were more or less random choices just based on whatever I spotted in a very quick trawl through while waiting…

 

And a hold came in from the National Poetry Library:

It’s possible I put it on hold just for the hippos on the cover!

Posts from this week

Starting with the reviews:

• Mystery comic: The Great British Bump-Off, by John Allison et al (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Manga: Dinosaur Sanctuary, vol 3, by Itaru Kinoshita (3/5 stars, “liked it”)
• Fantasy mystery: The Killing of a Chestnut Tree, by Oliver K. Langmead (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Fantasy: Solo Leveling, vol 6, by Chugong (4/5 stars, “really liked it”)
• Classic mystery: The Unicorn Murders, by Carter Dickson (3/5 stars, “liked it”)

As usual, most of them aren’t books I’ve finished super recently, since I hold back reviews to keep a mix of genres going. The books I’ve read this week are in the next section though!

Other posts:

• Fantasy with Friends: Fantasy Tropes
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Can’t Believe I’ve Never Read
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• May Reading Wrap-Up

What I’m reading

It was a bit of a slow week as far as reading goes, though I did some organising of my currently-reading pile and got realistic, so the terrifying stack is a bit better managed now, and I kinda hope that will perk me up. I did finish a few books, and they weren’t short ones either, so it wasn’t a bad week, all the same!

This weekend I’m hoping to return to Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters, which I’ve been neglecting, and maybe start on volume two of Feng Yu Nie’s Mistakenly Saving the Villain… but I’m not super set on anything, and mostly planning to follow my whim. Not doing that is what gets me feeling overwhelmed and unhappy with my reading, after all.

I haven’t made much progress on my crochet since last week, but I’m hoping to get some work in on that, too.

Happy reading, folks!

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.