I’ve had a busy busy week with writing an assignment — sometimes I wonder why I like studying so much, ha! I think after this degree I’m going to take a break for a couple of years… but I’ve said that before.

Anyway, time to show what I’ve been up to in the reading realm.

As usual, linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

…Nothing! I know, it’s unusual for me, but I’m really trying to behave myself and read the books I have as well as hungrily acquiring. Plus, I need to build up some buffer on my Beeminder goal so that I can get stacks and stacks of books next time I arrange a meetup with my friend from FFXIV.

(Hey Prof, are you reading this? March sometime maybe?!)

Posts from this week:

As usual, here’s a roundup of the reviews I’ve posted this week:

• Popular science: Blue, by Kai Kupferschmidt (4/5 stars)
• Fantasy novella: The Fireborne Blade, by Charlotte Bond (4/5 stars)
• Historical romance: Sailor’s Delight, by Rose Lerner (4/5 stars)
• Video game companion: Encyclopaedia Eorzea volume 3, by Square Enix (5/5 stars)
• Speculative fiction novella: The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler (4/5 stars)
• Non-fiction about food: Ice Cream: A Global History, by Laura B. Weiss (4/5 stars)
• Cosy murder mystery: Murder on Milverton Square, by G.B. Ralph (2/5 stars)

Other posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: Quick Reads
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

This week I started on a chonker from my backlog, James Suzman’s Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, which is no doubt going to take up a good amount of time this weekend. I’m also planning to just go ahead and reread The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System from the start, because there are some details I find myself irritatingly forgetting. Reading the first book or two, I didn’t know I was going to love it so much!

And here’s a sneak peek at the books I’ve finished this week that I plan to review on the blog:

And that’s it for this week! How’s everyone else doing? Reading anything good?

It’s been a long week here. Unfortunately my wife’s grandfather died last weekend (not too unexpectedly), and the funeral had to happen very quickly, so we quickly dropped everything on Monday to sort things out to get my wife there on time. We managed it, which is all that matters, but I’m a little behind on comments and visiting people back thanks to the disruption and being away from home. I’ll catch up this weekend, since I’ll be back on my main PC!

In the meantime, here’s my usual weekly roundup, and I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

Not a lot this week, but my wife caved to my pouting and got me the final volume of the Scum Villain series, which I’ve already devoured:

While the story was already over in the preceding volume, the fourth volume is full of short stories and extras that flesh out the world, the other characters, and what becomes of Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe.

Posts from this week:

I was a bit irregular about my posting schedule, but I think I did post a review every day. I have to, to even start to keep up with my reading speed — to avoid getting an even bigger backlog, I might need to post two in a day sometimes! So here’s this week’s roundup:

• Fantasy novella: In the Shadow of the Fall, by Tobi Ogundiran (3/5 stars)
• Non-fiction history: Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, by Kitty Burns Florey (3/5 stars)
• Videogame artbook: Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers: The Art of Reflection – Histories Forsaken (3/5 stars)
• Non-fiction popular science: A City on Mars, by Zach & Kelly Weinersmith (4/5 stars)
• Classic crime: Fear Stalks the Village, by Ethel Lina White (4/5 stars)
• Chinese light novel: The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System vol 2, by MXTX (4/5 stars)
• Horror graphic novel: Road of Bones, by Rich Douek et al (3/5 stars)

And other posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: New To Me Authors in 2023
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

I’ve made a little project this week of finishing books I was partway through, leading to me finally finishing We Could Be So Good (Cat Sebastian), Sailor’s Delight (Rose Lerner) and Murder on Milverton Square (G.B. Ralph). I’ve also finished reading The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, having fallen rather in love with it.

For the weekend, I’m partway through Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s Soon-ish, while also being tempted to start on Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Heather Fawcett).

Aaand a peek at the books I’ll be reviewing soon(ish):

Not bad going for a week’s reading, I think!

How’s everyone else been doing?

Back home now and back to my routines! And back to the problem of somehow making all my books fit on my bookshelves. Hmmmm.

As usual, I’ll be linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, this weekend.

Books acquired this week:

Getting home and back to the routine means there was some book post waiting for me. Each month I get the latest British Library Crime Classic reissue, along with a little bit of extra swag — in this case, two bookmarks and a slightly enlarged version of the book cover, which I guess could make a nice poster or something. I really appreciate that they’ve made the matching cover bookmarks a bit smaller, so they fit nicely in the book! So here’s this month’s book:

I did enjoy the other book by Ethel Lina White I’ve read so far, though it can verge a bit on the histrionic. I’m looking forward to giving this a shot, anyway.

Posts from this week:

As usual, I’ll do a little roundup of my posts this week. First up, the reviews:

• Non-fiction microhistory: Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close, by Hannah Carlson (3/5 stars)
• Fantasy/gothic mystery novella: The Brides of High Hill, by Nghi Vo (4/5 stars)
• Classic locked-room mystery: Till Death Do Us Part, by John Dickson Carr (3/5 stars)
• Cute school romance graphic novel: Heartstopper vol 5, by Alice Oseman (4/5 stars)
• Fantasy romance novella: A Queer Trade, by KJ Charles (3/5 stars)
• Poetry and non-fiction microhistory: The History of Wales in Twelve Poems, by M. Wynn Thomas & Ruth Jên Evans (4/5 stars)
• Apocalyptic graphic novel: The Panic, by Neil Kleid & Andrea Mutti (1/5 stars)

And the non-review posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: When I Get a Round Tuit
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

I read a lot on Sunday, and then had a slow few days as I worked my way through Roland Allen’s history of notebooks — which was fascinating, but slow. Almost right after that I started on Bettany Hughes’ The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which is also a bit slow, and will no doubt take a lot of my reading time in the coming days. Worth it, though!

Here’s a sneak peek at the books I’ve read recently which are upcoming for review:

How about everyone else? What are you reading right now? Any great books landed on your doormat or in your shopping cart this week?

After last week, this one’s been nice and quiet. I’ve had a little more time to read than usual since I’ve been out of my usual routine… though at the same time, I did have my eye injury limiting things a bit, and I promise I helped out with stuff like washing dishes and so on! So I haven’t read as much as I might’ve liked — but when do I ever get to do that?

As usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, this weekend.

Books acquired this week:

After the acquisitions of the last few weeks, this has been a quiet one. I’m sure my British Library Crime Classic subscription book of the month is waiting for me at home, but I haven’t been home to pick it up yet… so this week it’s just the most recent in Juliet E. McKenna’s Green Man series, which was on sale for 99p. I haven’t actually read any of this series yet: I really have to hop to it!

I’m pretty sure it’ll be a good time when I do get around to reading it, thanks to Imyril’s reviews. That’s why I keep picking up the ebooks when I see them on sale…

Posts from this week:

This week I’ve continued posting reviews daily, slowly trying to catch up on my backlog. So here goes the roundup!

• Fantasy romance: Blood Moon, by M.J. O’Shea (1/5 stars)
• Historical non-fiction: The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes, by Kate Strasdin (4/5 stars)
• Video game tie-in: Encyclopaedia Eorzea volume II, by Square Enix (4/5 stars)
• Fantasy horror novella: The House of Drought, by Dennis Mombauer (2/5 stars)
• Fantasy graphic novel: Cold Iron, by Andy Diggle & team (3/5 stars)
• Popular science: The Science of Sin, by Jack Lewis (2/5 stars)

As you see, I’m trying out adding an indication of genre in case it helps people decide whether they’re interested in checking something out!

And other posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals for 2024
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

As I draft this on Friday night, I’ve just finished up Cat Jarman’s The Bone Chests, so I’m not sure what I’ll focus on for the weekend. I’m feeling an itch to read more non-fiction, so I might try Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking On Paper, or possibly Bettany Hughes’ The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I want to do a bit of catching up on my reading goal as well, so I’m eyeing some novellas.

I have done some reading this week, though, so here’s a little sneak peek of reviews to come in the next weeks/months…

Hope everyone else has had a good week! Anything exciting in your reading plans for the weekend?

Greetings! It’s been a rough week for me that featured an urgent trip to the eye casualty unit. I’m recovering pretty well given the givens, and escaped with just a corneal abrasion and multiple antibiotics to apply every couple of hours, but I’m a tad limited on how long I can use screens without eye strain right now.

Biscuit Bun is really very sorry for causing all this…

As ever, linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

I may have had a book-buying spree to help make me feel better, even though it’s only just been Christmas and there’s already plenty on my TBR heap…

Bit of a mix, as usual! I’m excited about The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which Waterstones had on sale a biiit before the release date. I was lucky: I walked in just as one of the booksellers put this on the shelf.

I also received a few of books to review:

If you saw my Top Ten Tuesday post, you’ll have noticed this means I actually got several of the books I’m most looking forward to in the first half of 2024, which is really nice!

Posts from this week:

I didn’t post as many reviews this week due to it being a really bad week, but there were plenty of posts to recap, all the same!

• Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones, by Ken McNamara (2/5 stars)
• Tickets for the Ark, by Rebecca Nesbit (3/5 stars)
• Twilight Falls, by Juneau Black (4/5 stars)
• Clean Room vol 3 – Waiting for the Stars to Fall, by Gail Simone et al (3/5 stars)
• The Governess Affair, by Courtney Milan (5/5 stars)
• The Impossible Impostor, by Deanna Raybourn (2/5 stars)

And other posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: New Releases To Look Forward To
• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

It’s been mostly graphic novels so far this week, which were short and easy while I was stressed, but I did also finish (and love) A City on Mars, by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith. Over the weekend I hope to get stuck into some of my new non-fic reading, and polish off a novel or two.

Assuming my eye holds up, anyway… I’ll skip the preview of reviews to come because I’m not on my usual computer and I need to take a break from my screen now.

How’s everyone else doing? A better week than mine, I hope!

Welcome to 2024! Has it started out well for you?

As usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

New books acquired:

Last week I showed off my nerdy FFXIV books and the fiction books I got for Christmas. Now for the non-fiction!

It’s a bit of a mix of topics, as ever — just as I like it!

And in addition, I have some new books to review from authors I’ve loved in the past:

Which I’m obviously excited for! Thanks so much to Rebellion, Hodder & Stoughton and Tordotcom for these. I’ll probably dive into The Brides of High Hill first, because I really love this series and the books are quite short. I’m really trying to stay on top of Netgalley copies and read them quickly, this year…

Posts from this week:

It’s been a busy week again on the blog, so here’s a little recap of the reviews posted:

• Silent Nights, edited by Martin Edwards (3/5 stars)
• A Trace of Copper, by Anne Renwick (2/5 stars)
• Who Killed the Curate? by Joan Coggin (1/5 stars)
• A Surprise for Christmas, edited by Martin Edwards (3/5 stars)
• Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward: The Art of Ishgard – Stone and Steel (5/5 stars)
• An Unnatural Life, by Erin K. Wagner (3/5 stars)
• Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots, by Cat Sebastian (4/5 stars)

And a couple of non-review posts:

• Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Stood Out in 2023
• What Are You Reading Wednesday
• Admin update: emails not working?

As a quick update on the latter post, I’ve now removed all my posts from the schedule so they’re all being manually published, which means emails should work. If you have any idea what might be going wrong/how to fix it, my friend Adam’s got a post up on the Jetpack forum asking about it.

What I’m reading:

First off, here’s what I’ve been reading that’s coming up in reviews in the next few weeks…

 

As for the weekend, I’ve started reading Kelly and Zack Weinersmith’s A City on Mars, which pours cold water on the idea that we’re pretty much ready to have colonies on Mars (though it’s not that they want to be killjoys). I’m enjoying that so far, but I’ll probably mix in a little fiction, and maybe read something that checks off a square on my bingo card for the BookSpin challenge over on Litsy.

So that’s my updates! How’s everyone doing? Has 2024 started well for you? Read anything amazing yet?

Oof, almost time to put 2023 to bed. It was a weird transitional year for me, letting go of some stuff that had become a burden and getting out of an exploitative environment that was sucking out all of my free time and a lot of my energy. It brought me back to blogging by the end of the year, which is nice. Here’s hoping 2024 is kind to us all.

Anyway, it’s time for the post-Christmas haul, or at least the first part of it…

As before, I’ll be linking up with a few different posts: Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

I got quite a lot of books, in fact, so it’s hard to know just how to split them up into two batches. I think I’ll show off my dorky Final Fantasy books received and the various fiction books I received, this week, and then the non-fiction books I got next week, just to avoid it being too big!

So first of all, here are the additions to my Final Fantasy XIV collection:

The artbooks are gorgeous, and the encyclopaedias have a lot of fascinating information. I previously got volume I of the encyclopaedia, so it’s nice to get up to date!

As far as fiction books go, I was equally spoiled by my family, and I’m also including a book bought off my wishlist by Cheryl Malandrinos from The Book Connection, The Book of Perilous Dishes. (Thank you so much!)

I’m eager to dig into all of these, though I need to acquire Curse of the Pharaohs before I can read The Mummy Case, in order to avoid getting out of order. I think I’ll leave that a bit until my TBR pile is a little less inclined to overflow! 😀

And of course I must also include the two review copies I’ve been approved for this week:

Thanks, Tordotcom!

Posts from this week:

It’s been a quieter week for posts, since I paused for a bit while celebrating Christmas, but there are some new posts:

• The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, by P. Djèlí Clark (3/5 stars)
• The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, volume 1, by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù (3/5 stars)
• Christmas: A History, by Judith Flanders (DNF)
• Murder at Maybridge Castle, by Ada Moncrieff (3/5 stars)

Other posts:

• What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

For the weekend, I’m working on hitting my reading goal for 2023: 400 books in total! Just two more books to go, but I haven’t really decided what to read yet.

Here’s a glimpse of the books I’ve read this week which I’ll probably be reviewing on here soon:

And that’s it! Hope everyone had a good Christmas, and that we’re all looking forward to the new year. Let’s hope it’s a good one (with plenty of books).

And oof, another week gone! Christmas is creeping closer, for those of us who celebrate — I’m most looking forward to giving people all their gifts, I must admit, though I know a tidy book haul is coming my way as well thanks to my wife. I got the most perfect thing for my sister… ah, but I can’t tell you, she might read this.

It’s been another busy week, with an assignment due yesterday for one of my classes, but now that’s out of the way I’m gearing up for a quiet week or two, I think!

As before, I’ll be linking up with a few different posts: Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

I split my haul from my trip to Bath into three lots, since I was a little, ah, excessive about it. This is the final bunch, from the lovely bookshop Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. I wasn’t 100% won over by their fiction section, since books of all genres were jumbled together: even though I read very widely and some would even say randomly, I’m not always in the mood for the same thing. So I pretty much bypassed their fiction selection, sorry to say, picking up only this one which I found in their bibliotherapy room from their list of recommendations:

It’s an Arthurian retelling and prominently features Sir Kay, which means it called out my name right off the bat. I wrote my postgrad dissertation (back when I was doing English Literature) on the character of the Welsh Cei and how it echoed throughout later literature, so I’m interested to see what this one does.

What shone for me at Mr B’s was the selection of non-fiction, and the conversations I had with staff members about the books I was choosing. I’d trust their recommendations for sure. Without further ado, here’s the rest of my haul:

As you can see, I had a heck of a time!

Technically I’ve also just received my British Library Crime Classics subscription book, complete with matching bookmark (which they’ve made smaller now, yay!), free postcard and blackmail note (reproduced from this month’s story), but I’ll keep that for next week to ensure I have something to post…

Posts from this week:

I’m pretty much caught up from all the reviews I wrote while my blog was down, but I’ve kept on reading at pace in the meantime, so here’s a roundup of this week’s reviews:

• The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, by Brandon Sanderson (2/5 stars)
• Phantom Pond, by Juneau Black (3/5 stars)
• Dragon’s Blood & Willow Bark: The Mysteries of Medieval Medicine, by Toni Mount (3/5 stars)
• Peter Cabot Gets Lost, by Cat Sebastian (4/5 stars)
• Who Killed Father Christmas? And Other Seasonal Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards (3/5 stars)
• The Golden Mole And Other Vanishing Treasure, by Katherine Rundell (3/5 stars)
• Clean Room volume 1: Immaculate Conception, by Gail Simone et al (3/5 stars)

And I’ve also posted about some of my (potential) upcoming reads:

• Top Ten Tuesday: Winter TBR

What I’m reading:

I’m still trying to make myself finish The Impossible Impostor, by Deanna Raybourn. Having stalled, it’s difficult to nudge myself to get back into it. Still, other than that I’ve been reading a lot, and I have quite a few  reviews upcoming for my reads this week. As ever, here’s a sneak preview of the titles/covers:

I did read a couple of volumes of manga as well, but I’m not planning to review them here as I don’t have much to say.

And that’s it for now! How’s everyone else doing? Got any exciting books this week?