It’s not quite an Unstacking the Shelves week, but I haven’t bought anything, so here’s a quick peek at what I’ve finished!

  

Not as good a reading week as last week, but still, progress!

My haul this week is all via Netgalley. I’m so excited to have got Kingfisher, and I’m looking forward to trying Adrian Tchiakovsky’s work. I need to read City of Stairs pronto so I can get to City of Blades…

I’m especially glad about Kingfisher, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get it — they normally only grant ARCs to people with over 1,000 followers, and the Bibliophibian lost around 400 in moving from WordPress hosting to self-hosting. So hurrah! Hurrah!

And what else has been going on? Well, here’s the weekly roundup:

Reviews this week:

–The Dark Arts of Blood, by Freda Warrington. Deliciously self-indulgent. I remain so glad I picked the first book up on a whim. 4/5 stars
–Siege and Storm, by Leigh Bardugo. Not as compelling as the first book, but I did enjoy it. 4/5 stars
–Before They Are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie. I knew I’d enjoy this, as it was a reread, and it definitely stood up to it. 4/5 stars
–Genes, People and Languages, by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza. Interesting, but lacked focus. 3/5 stars
–Death Before Wicket, by Kerry Greenwood. Probably my least favourite of the series so far, alas. Maybe I just hold Phryne to really high standards. 2/5 stars
–Beauty, by Sarah Pinborough. Slightly darker again than the other two books, this wraps up the trilogy… and leaves a lot of things open. 3/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: Young Avengers: Sidekicks, by Allan Heinburg and Jim Cheung. A favourite series of mine, this was the first Young Avengers comic I read! 5/5 stars

Other posts:

–January TBR. Check out what I’m planning to read this month!
–On Deadlines, GRRM and Consequences. The POV of a freelance ghostwriter on the issue of Martin’s announcement that The Winds of Winter will be late.
–Top Ten Tuesday: Resolutions. Check out my bookish resolutions for the year.
–Bout of Books Progress. Follow along and see how I’ve been doing.

How’s everyone else been? Any awesome discussion posts you want to share? Any exciting ARCs hit your doormat?

I may be slow to reply today, as I’m getting on the train at ridiculous o’ clock to head to Belgium for a month with my partner. So yay for that, and feel free to mob my inbox while I’m out…

For the first time in a long time — or possibly the whole time I’ve been doing the Stacking the Shelves meme via Tynga’s Reviews — I don’t have any new books from any source to share this week! It helps that the library is closed and I have a firm resolution to stick to a budget (see my Shelf Love participation post). Technically, my book ban from December is over, but I do want to try and be mindful of buying books this year.

So to celebrate, I have a new feature for this blog. Sort of. I remember someone else once posting “Unstacking the Shelves” posts, while they were trying to catch up with their backlog, and I’m going to shamelessly steal their idea. Whenever I have no books to report buying, I get to do an Unstacking the Shelves post, showing what I’ve read in the last week!

Which is, this week, the following six books:

 

My favourite read this week was probably The Masked City, which I enjoyed more than I expected to based on my rating of the first book — I’m beginning to think I was overly cranky with that one! It was interesting to read Kowal and Mosse’s short stories, too; they’re very different collections. Lagoon, I’m still processing… So far, I still need to write reviews for the last four.

At the same time, I thought I might start highlighting my other posts this week for people who only come by on a Saturday via the link-up. That way, people just dropping by can get a better idea of my blog — and maybe some people will want to stick around!

Reviews this week:
–Greenwitch, by Susan Cooper. This was my reread for the TDIR Readathon; it’s a very familiar book for me, so it was like visiting with old friends. I did have some new thoughts about Jane Drew this time, though. 5/5 stars
–Charm, by Sarah Pinborough. Second in the series, this retells the story of Cinderella… with extra sex and links to all kinds of other fairytales. 3/5 stars
–Word Puppets, by Mary Robinette Kowal. Received to review via Netgalley, this introduced me to Kowal’s non-Regency work. There are some forgettable stories, but for the most part it’s a strong collection. 4/5 stars
–The Masked City, by Genevieve Cogman. So much fun! Magic and books and dragons and Fae… And did I mention that the main character is an operative for an organisation called the Library, and there’s an awesome magic system using the power of words? Sign me up! 4/5 stars
–The Cutting Room, ed. Ellen Datlow. Unfortunately not really my thing, though there are some very memorable stories in the collection. Probably a case of ‘it’s not you’… 2/5 stars
–The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie. This was another reread, albeit one I wasn’t as familiar with as Greenwitch. I enjoyed it a lot; memory, if anything, had downgraded this from the rating it deserved. 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: The House at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman. This feature reposts old reviews I wrote before I had this blog. Neil Gaiman’s work is solidly entertaining, but I thought maybe I was exactly the wrong age to appreciate this one. 3/5 stars

Other posts:
–Bout of Books Participation Post. For once, I’m on time to join in the Bout of Books readathon!
–Top Ten Tuesday: Repeat Gifts. This week I went off-script and picked a theme of my own, talking about the books that I’m always giving to new people.
–ShelfLove Participation Post. This challenge worked really well for me last year, and here’s my (rather ambitious) plan for 2016!

I’ve also just added a bunch of social media options to the blog, so you can now follow me on Google+ or Facebook. I have a Twitter as well, but it has more of a personal focus. Me being me, though, a personal focus still means a lot of book chatter.

Oh well, we’ll see! How’s everyone doing? Hope you’ve started 2016 as you mean to go on, with laughter and light and love and anything else your heart desires.

(Please please please do not comment telling me to enjoy my new books. It will make it obvious you haven’t read the text at all and will make me sad.)