What have you recently finished reading?

I haven’t finished anything in a couple of days, but the last thing I finished would’ve been J.J. Connington’s Murder in the Maze. I didn’t like it as much as the other book by him I’ve read (The Ha-Ha Case), in part because it fell back on the ol’ exotic poisons thing (curare in this case), and also I just don’t think it was well structured as a mystery.

Before that was also a classic mystery, Annie Haynes’ The Abbey Court Murder — a bit melodramatic, but satisfying enough.

What are you currently reading?

I haven’t been reading a lot in the last couple of days due to getting busy, so I’m still working on Michelle P. Brown’s Illumino, which should really admit that it wants to talk about far more than just twelve manuscripts and far more of the historical context, and the second volume of The Villain’s White Halo, which has taken a fascinating turn in a couple of respects (Duan Chongxian’s adventures, and the truth[?] of Luo Mingchuan’s whole thing).

I have also started another classic mystery, Robert van Gulik’s The Chinese Maze Murders. It’s apparently based on classic Chinese detective stories, and was originally written in English but first published in Japanese and Chinese. I’m not far into it, and I don’t know a lot about van Gulik’s background and how respectful it’s likely to be, but it’s definitely going to be an interesting product of that period of detective fiction in English from my perspective!

What will you be reading next?

No idea, honestly. I might pick out some shorter reads while I’m so busy, or continue on the classic crime binge — there are a couple more writers I noted to look into, or I could read more of the authors I’ve tried recently, since there are some more of those on Kobo Plus.

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was Sanah Ahsan’s poetry collection, I Cannot Be Good Unless You Say It, which I was not a big fan of — sadly, just not a style of poetry I gel with, I think.

Before that, I was reading Philip MacDonald’s The Rasp. I found his name on a list of Golden Age crime authors, while I was trying to find something to jog me out of a reading funk. I quite liked The Rasp, though I think his detective (Gethryn) is a bit annoying at times, with a tendency to quotation that rivals Peter Wimsey. I need to properly write up my thoughts, though; I’m a bit delayed in writing my review.

What are you currently reading?

I cleared my “on deck” considerably of late, but with the new books I got for my birthday, I do have a few going at once again. For more classic crime goodness, I’m reading Henry Wade’s The Duke of York’s Steps, which is beginning to hot up now at around 40%. Definitely a slow burner, which I don’t necessarily mind.

Other than that, I started on Michelle P. Brown’s Illumino, which is a history of Great Britain through manuscripts. It’s alright, and beautifully illustrated, though I found the first chapter a little rushed and lacking in focus.

And for something quite different, I’ve got stuck into volume two of Hao Da Yi Juan Wei Sheng Zhi’s The Villain’s White Halo, which I’m enjoying so far.

What will you be reading next?

Probably more classic crime, honestly. A lot of them are available for free on Kobo Plus, or pretty cheap, and if that’s what’s grabbing my attention at the moment, that’s what I’ll read!

That said, I have a lot of fascinating new books as well, and it’s not impossible I’ll pick up one of those, or return to something that I paused for a while. I really am trying to go by whatever’s actually caught my interest at the moment, rather than constraining myself too much.

What have you recently finished reading?

I didn’t get much reading done yesterday, but on Monday night I finally finished reading Emma Southon’s Servus, which I originally received as an ARC. It’s pretty thorough on the topic of slavery in the Roman Empire, but with Southon’s usual style, which is fairly light and flippant. I mostly enjoyed it, though of course the topic is a heavy one.

What are you currently reading?

I’ve cleared the decks a bit and now have only one book on my “currently reading” shelf… for now, at least: The Villain’s White Halo vol 1, by Hao Da Yi Juan Wei Sheng Zhi. Irritatingly, no bookshops around here seem to be stocking volumes two and three, so if I want to continue (which so far I think I will), I’ll need to order them when I get home.

So far I’m not totally in love, but I am curious where it’s going and how things work out, now that I’m a bit over halfway through volume one.

What will you be reading next?

Not a clue. I brought all my remaining 20 Books of Summer picks with me, but I think I might be about to let go of that list and just try to encourage myself to read anything, because I’m pretty fidgety and not settling to any given book, and it’s a sad waste of my deliberately chill vacation, designed with plenty of time for reading!

The amount I’m reading doesn’t look like a slump to most people, but it isn’t normal for me, and it makes me feel preeeetty restless, so I really hope I find something that grabs me.

What have you recently finished reading?

The last book I finished was Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress, which worked a lot better for me than I’d expected. I’d been a little put off by people talking about how dark it is, and it is… and I was also worried that Terren would somehow turn out to be secretly a great person despite his actions, and the answer to that is that it’s complicated. The ending really got me; I hadn’t thought about the way it actually worked out.

Overall, ended up really enjoying it.

What are you currently reading?

I’ve made a bit of a start on The Villain’s White Halo vol 1 (Hao Da Yi Juan Wei Sheng Zhi), but I’m really still finding my feet with the worldbuilding at this moment. It feels like being confronted with The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System all over again on the amount of detail about the sects, peaks, different martial siblings, etc, but I’m really only 100 pages in and there’s plenty of time for the information to settle once my brain prioritises what I need to know. I’m curious where it’s going, but not enormously invested.

I also got back to a book I’d previously started, John and Colleen Darnell’s Egypt’s Golden Couple, but the amount of imaginative reconstruction they’re doing (at least two pages at the start of every chapter, and some chapters are only four pages long) is starting to get on my nerves. It’s not based, as far as I can tell, in actual concrete evidence — it’s based on their knowledge as Egyptologists, of course, but it’s not like “we found a specific broken cup and theorised about it”, more “we imagined an event that seems reasonable”.

Or maybe they are all based on specific objects! But it’s really not clear. It’s all very readable but… hm.

I’ve also started Greer Stothers’ Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die, but I’m not super sure if it’s going to be my thing. The jokiness seems unlikely to jive well for me. But we’ll see!

What will you be reading next?

Shake me like a Magic 8 ball for the answer, “Ask again later.”

Quite possibly more danmei, maybe Thrice Married to a Salted Fish vol 1 (Bi Ka Bi)… but really, no decision yet. It’s my birthday tomorrow and I hope to do a lot of reading since I’m off work, but definitely not constraining myself to reading anything in particular.

What have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing I actually finished was volume three of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which I loooved. The vibe reminds me of… well, for other danmei readers, if Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge got together in The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, and that made Liu Qingge warm up and show unexpected amounts of happiness (eventually). It takes Huo Wujiu time, but in this volume he’s fully in love with Jiang Suizhou, and happy just to be around him, it’s adorable. The plot has been fairly satisfying so far, too.

I really need volume four and I hate that I’m now waiting until November.

What are you currently reading?

I’m most actively working on Elinor Cleghorn’s A Woman’s Work, which is basically discussing how motherhood has been constructed and viewed over time. It makes for sometimes uncomfortable reading, since that’s not always been positive by any means, and it definitely fits thematically with her other book, Unwell Women — you can see how one led her towards writing the other.

I’m also partway through Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress, which I’m enjoying more than I expected. I was warned that the topic was really heavy and that it’d be a difficult read, but it’s surprisingly quick-moving for me, even though it is heavy.

I did also start on Becky Chambers’ As You Wake, Break the Shell, but haven’t read enough to really have an opinion yet.

What will you be reading next?

I’ll be continuing my quest to read some of my bought-in-2026 books to “make room” for birthday books (since I cap the number of books I can have bought this year and not started at 20). That means reading my two newest manga, vol 2 of My Younger Knight Takes Care of Me in Another World (which is an absolute ripoff of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, but not unfun) and vol 3 of Rinteku’s Love in the Palm of His Hand, and starting my new British Library Crime Classic, Shelley Smith’s The Party at No. 5.

Ideally I’ll start more than that, but we’ll see how it goes.

What have you recently finished reading?

Yesterday I read two poetry collections, Menna Elfyn’s Bondo and Jonathan Edwards’ My Family and Other Superheroes. The former was really good, but I was less of a fan of the latter.

Before that, the last thing I finished was volume two of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which I love a lot more than I expected. I instantly whimpered for volume three… which I have duly started.

What are you currently reading?

First and foremost, volume three of After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine! I’m going to be so sad when I get to the end of this volume and have to wait until 10th November for the last one. This really worked for my mood at the moment; I’m loving the slow burn.

Other than that, I’ve also started two non-fiction books which are slower going: Emily Cockayne’s Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go and Elinor Cleghorn’s A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering. Both are alright, but not proving to be compulsive reads for me.

What will you be reading next?

Last week I ended up abandoning what I thought was a very firm reading plan, ahaha. So I’m not sure, but in theory I want to start John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints and Becky Chambers’ As You Wake, Break the Shell.

Either/both could end up being displaced by pure whim, though.

What have you recently finished reading?

Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 8, which has a cruel, cruel cliffhanger! I can’t believe the next volume isn’t slated to come out until March, arrghhh.

Before that, it was volume one of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which I had quite a bit of fun with. It’s a slower burn than the other danmei I’ve been reading recently, but the feelings are starting to develop and I’m very curious about where it will go exactly.

What are you currently reading?

The only book I am currently actively reading is Natasha Tidd’s A Short History of the World in 50 Lies. I’m finding it kind of suspect due to a couple of basic/silly errors, like referring to Geoffrey of Monmouth as “Monmouth”. The fact that he’s called Geoffrey of Monmouth is like literally saying “Geoffrey from Monmouth”, as opposed to “Geoffrey from Caerphilly”. In most contexts you’re not going to then refer to them as “Monmouth” and “Caerphilly”, and indeed, scholars just say “Geoffrey” after the first time they’ve specified “Geoffrey of Monmouth” (unless it’s unclear due to multiple Geoffreys, in which case they say, you guessed it, “Geoffrey of Monmouth”).

Anyway it’s something that I was taught in undergraduate English literature would be a terribly silly mistake to make, and would have my examiners carefully looking to see what else I goofed up or didn’t understand, and thus it has been with me and this book. My grasp on most of this history is thin, so I haven’t caught any other errors, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. I’m probably being a bit too generous in finishing it, but I love this non-fic format and am always so susceptible…

What will you be reading next?

I have, for once, very firm plans! I want to finish up reading Emma Southon’s Servus and Gareth Russell’s Queen James, which are both chunky non-fiction, while also rereading Jordan L. Hawk’s Widdershins (much lighter) and getting started on Becky Chambers‘ As You Wake, Break the Shell.

On a separate note, because I’ve tweaked something, I want to warn that tomorrow I’ll probably do a test post. I’m sorry if that ends up spamming anyone’s email! Honestly most likely you won’t get an email at all, because this thing’s been broken for ages and this isn’t a very likely fix, but it’s worth trying.

What have you recently finished reading?

I got an ARC of Sally Smith’s newest Gabriel Ward novel, A Case of Fear and Favour, and fairly leapt upon it. I didn’t get to dig in much until yesterday because I was finishing other books, but then I sped through it. I do love Gabriel and his fussy ways, and his slow opening up to the world. He is so fundamentally decent, and works so hard when he has a duty, even if he’s also kind of stuffy and privileged and shut away from the world.

Before that, the last thing I finished was Suzanne Palmer’s Ode to the Half-Broken, which I also liked a lot; I thought it maybe could’ve been a liiiiittle bit tighter, because with all the chasing here and there the page count really stretched out. But I enjoyed how hopeful it was, and how the protagonist grows.

What are you currently reading?

You know the drill: a number of books all at once! Most actively, Peter Parsons’ City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish, which is about papyri found in the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchos. I wish it would focus a little more on the papyri themselves, rather than reporting information we know because of them without explaining exactly where the info came from, but it’s interesting all the same.

Other than that, I’m still working on Jon Cannon’s The Stones of Britain, and I’ve just barely started Fonda Lee’s The Last Contract of Isako.

What will you be reading next?

I just got a bunch of advance/complimentary copies from Hachette, including H.G. Parry’s The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood, which I’ve been super curious about, so chances are high I’ll dig into one of those. I did also get volume three of Lv Ye Qian He’s The Wife Comes First, which finishes the story, so I’ll probably dive straight on that tonight.

Plus… although the fourth volume of the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint novel doesn’t seem to be out in paperback in the UK, it is available on Kobo. I’m not sure if I want to snag the ebook to read it sooner, because there’s something about the physical format that I like — can’t put my finger on it, maybe it’s the font or the way things are laid out… so I guess we’ll see how impatient I get, on that front!

What have you recently finished reading?

I finished up Daryl Gregory’s The Album of Dr Moreau almost in one go, which surprised me — it’s a novella, so I figured it’d be a quick read, but I wasn’t much in the mood for reading, so I wasn’t expecting it to grab me so well. It takes the premise fairly seriously, while also being somewhat playful — inevitable when you’re writing about a boy band made up of human-animal hybrids. I enjoyed the concept, though, and the mystery! I don’t think I’ve read anything by Daryl Gregory before, and now I’m definitely curious (though if I remember rightly none of his books immediately spoke to me, maybe I’m more tempted now).

What are you currently reading?

Let’s stick to the ones I have in my ‘active’ pile, though I have a lot of other books in various states of suspended animation. In no particular order, we have Suzanne Palmer’s Ode to the Half Broken, which I am enjoying quite a lot. Inevitably there’s something a bit reminiscent of Murderbot at first in a first-person narrative about a synthetic intelligence (albeit completely non-human) navigating the world, and you can imagine Murderbot being similarly cranky about losing a leg… but it’s definitely its own thing, too, and I am really enjoying this one. It’s one of the few books lately that I feel the itch to pick up, rather than nudging myself to pick it up: I enjoy books I read in the latter way, but it’s fun and special when it’s the former.

Next, I started on Carter Dickson’s The Magic-Lantern Murders; some of John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson’s work is decidedly not for me, and this is verging into that category. I feel like ‘Yakety Sax’ ought to be the soundtrack, is the problem: coincidences and near-slapstick scenes of chaos just… don’t work for me.

There’s also Jon Cannon’s The Stones of Britain, which I am enjoying inasfar as Cannon is having a ball thinking about geology and how that has shaped human settlements. It is not my interest, but he’s fascinated, and so it’s enjoyable.

Finally, volume two of Lv Ye Qian He’s The Wife Comes First, which I’m enjoying so far — albeit that Jing Shao really does deserve to sleep on the couch sometimes, and Mu Hanzhang shouldn’t let him get away with trying to be a big cute puppy of a man to get out of it. (Though it’s very cute.)

What will you be reading next?

I’m not sure what long-form stuff I’ll read next, but I’m definitely planning to read Sian Northey and Ness Owen’s bilingual poetry anthology Afonydd, not least because I’ve spent several days talking to StoryGraph’s support team to try to convince them to understand that searching the word “afonydd” should pull up a book called Afonydd, not 25 other items which contain only 3-4 of those characters in different orders, such as Rick Remender’s Deadly Class Volume 11: A Fond Farewell Part One or Deanne Dietz’s Hearts Held By Barbed Wire, which matches the search because it is #1 in her “Afton Adders” series.

(If you were wondering, they said thanks for the feedback and told me to add Welsh — a language I don’t speak, because English imperialism — to my profile in order to find the book. That doesn’t work, not least because the edition is listed as being in English, but also because, as stated, I don’t speak Welsh.)

I’m also interested because it’s bilingual: poems written in Welsh have been provided with an English translation, and those written in English with a Welsh translation. It seems like a lovely project, and I feel compelled to note that the book seems to be available on Kobo Plus, and you can find it on StoryGraph if you add Sian Northey’s name to your search. Wouldn’t it be lovely if more people a) read such a lovely and thoughtful project, and b) rated/reviewed it on StoryGraph to maybe convince them to care about their broken search?

What have you recently finished reading?

I’ve finally been getting through some books that’d been sort of paused for a while, so I finished up Charlotte Booth’s Lost Voices of the Nile and Stephanie Burgis’ Wooing the Witch Queen at last. That’s… a pretty weird mix, I’ll admit; Lost Voices of the Nile is a bit dry, but really interesting (to me, anyway; I never grew out of the obligatory childhood Egypt phase). Wooing the Witch Queen was pretty fun, too: I was pretty worried about the identity reveal part and whether it’d be a totally stupid third act breakup, but honestly, that wasn’t bad.

I also finished volume three of Mistakenly Saving the Villain, and I really wish it was October already so I could have the next/last book. It is unclear to me how everything’s going to work out, but wow. Things sure are messed up!

What are you currently reading?

I’m focusing on three books at the moment: one is Jon Cannon’s The Stones of Britain, which is soothing because I have no actual interest in geology or psychogeography, but Cannon is fascinated by stones and place and how the combination of the two have worked out, and someone else’s enthusiasm is (usually) very enjoyable to me.

I’ve also got back to Helen Pilcher’s Life Changing: How Humans are Altering Life on Earth, almost none of which is coming as a surprise to me (nor would’ve when it was new), but is sort of soothing because of it.

And finally, I’ve got back to Carwyn Graves’ Welsh Food Stories, which is interesting enough so far; the importance of bread and cheese didn’t come as a surprise, but the chapter on cockles and other seafood was more unfamiliar.

What will you be reading next?

I’m not sure, but I’d like to add some fiction into the rotation with the other three. There are a few books I have already started that I could pick up, so I might just randomly reactivate one of those and see how I get along. Since I have 32 books marked as “paused” on StoryGraph… it’d probably be sensible.

That said, I do also have some ARCs I should get to or should’ve got to already, so maaaybe one of those — Fonda Lee’s The Last Contract of Isako, maybe, or John Wiswell’s The Dragon Has Some Complaints.