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?

Yay, it was my birthday! I mean, um, hi! Look, I have books!

Books acquired:

All from my wife. 💙 I am a spoilt creature.

Read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

• Black Water Sister, by Zen Cho (4/5 stars)
• The Port of London Murders, by Josephine Bell (3/5 stars)
• Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky (3/5 stars)
• ARC review: Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (4/5 stars)
• ARC review: The Necessity of Stars, by E. Catherine Tobler (4/5 stars)
• The Paradise War, by Stephen Lawhead (4/5 stars)
• The Invention of Murder, by Judith Flanders (4/5 stars)

So how’s everyone doing? Any good books come your way lately?

Greetings, folks, from the end of a busy week! I can’t promise I’ll be under less stress going forward, but my work life will be a little simpler, which is something! How’re you all doing?

Books acquired:

Early birthday presents from Portal Bookshop! 💙 I have actually read Witchmark before and liked but didn’t love it, but something’s been itching at me lately and I’d like to try it again — and read the rest of the series. So this was lovely.

Books read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

• Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2/5 stars)
• Index, a History of the, by Dennis Duncan (4/5 stars)
• What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah (3/5 stars)
• Magic Strikes, by Ilona Andrews (4/5 stars)
• The Cheltenham Square Murder, by John Bude (3/5 stars)
• Calamity in Kent, by John Rowland (3/5 stars)
• Sea People, by Christina Thompson (3/5 stars)

Giveaways:

• Worldwide Book Giveaway: I’ll be choosing one random person who replies to this tweet to receive one book of their choice. I’ll do the draw on the 21st.
• UK Book Giveaway: I’m choosing three random people who respond to this tweet to receive a book of their choice via Portal Bookshop. Plus, some other folks are signing up to buy a random person a book, so I think so far there are five chances to win. Also drawn on the 21st!
• Buy Someone A Book: If you’re interested in joining in with buying a book for a random Twitter user, you can sign up to join in by replying to this tweet. When the time comes, I’ll pick a random winner for you, and get you two connected so you can sort out the purchase. I’ll let you know who you’re buying for on the 21st, with the help of my trusty RNG.

And that’s everything!

So, any good books joined your TBR this week? Thrown any books against the wall in anger? How’s reading going in general?

Welp, busy week here. I keep hoping that “next week” will be less bumpy, but it never seems to be true. Ah well!

Received to review:

I had this on my wishlist, and then spotted that I was auto-approved by the publisher on Netgalley, so… here we go!

Books read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

• Somebody’s at the Door, by Raymond Postgate (3/5 stars)
• Snowball in a Blizzard, by Steven Hatch (4/5 stars)
• A Fatal Waltz, by Tasha Alexander (3/5 stars)
• Seashaken Houses, by Tom Nancollas (4/5 stars)
• The Library of the Dead, by T.L. Huchu (3/5 stars)
• Elephants on Acid, by Alex Boese (2/5 stars)
• Ouch! The New Science of Pain, by Linda Rodrigues McRobbie & Margee Kerr (4/5 stars)

Aaaand that’s all for this week! How’s everyone doing?

Gooood evening! I had a busy day of, um, questing on FFXIV… so I’m only just setting up this post now. Not that I have much to report! No new books, and only a couple of books read.

Books read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

• Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao (4/5 stars)
• Walls: A History of Civilization, by David Frye (3/5 stars)
• A Poisoned Season, by Tasha Alexander (4/5 stars)
• The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine, by Thomas Morris (2/5 stars)
• Necropolis, by Jordan L. Hawk (4/5 stars)
• Comfort Me With Apples, by Catherynne M. Valente (3/5 stars)
• The Fabric of Civilization, by Virginia Postrel (4/5 stars)

Aaand that’s it for me, for this week. How’s everyone doing?

Good evening, folks! How’s everyone been? It’s been too warm here, but it’s fortunately a lot cooler today. Not much reading this week, alas… too cranky from the heat.

Received to review:

Read this week:

Reviews posted this week:

• Pandora’s Jar, by Natalie Haynes (5/5 stars)
• Phoenix Extravagant, by Yoon Ha Lee (3/5 stars)
• Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England, by Michael Livingston (5/5 stars)
• The Gentle Art of Fortune-Hunting, by K.J. Charles (4/5 stars)
• Two-Way Murder, by E.C.R. Lorac (4/5 stars)
• Magic Burns, by Ilona Andrews (4/5 stars)
• The Wychford Poisoning Case, by Anthony Berkeley (1/5 stars)

Aaand that’s it from me. Any good books for you this week?