Ah! Amazing :D. I'm currently reading the Fifth Season by NK Jemesin because I've somehow never got around to it despite owning it for ages (and it's astounding).
Hi Womble. I am reading Crows and Silences, a four novella collection by the late Lucius Shepard, due out at the end of the year from Sub Press. The title comes from a line of dialogue in the first story, Kalimantan, which is the only one I've read so far.
Morning Womble. I'm currently reading The Green Man's War by Juliet E. McKenna, really enjoying returning to a character and setting I've grown attached to over the past few years.
Morning Womble! Still reading Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, but hoping to finish and start Dawnshard by tonight. Reading The Micronauts comic collection in between my marathon reading sessions to give myself little breaks! Making a promise to myself to read shorter books next year! 🙂
I'm about a quarter into The Library Of Broken Worlds and still getting to know it's intriguing post-human world.
On audio I finished Witch King by Martha Wells, which was great, and started Wind And Truth which I assume I will be listening to for the rest of my life.
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. Technically a reread as I read it a few years ago but needed to remind myself of the story before continuing with the rest of the trilogy.
Morning Womble. I hope you’ve got all your shopping done.
I started Kill For Me, Kill For You by @stevecavanagh.bsky.social last night. I got a quarter through before I had to turn in. Steve’s writing is legit brilliant. Lots of twists. I’ll read his Witness 8 next.
There's always something about reading a classic for the first time and realising why it's a classic. So recommend of the week is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy...
Yes to both these points. A great counterpoint to Bond and companion to Deighton. (Who knew exactly fuck all about the secret service but still made it believable.)
Morning Womble! Picked up Chasing The Phoenix by Michael Swanwick from the depths of my tbr. Read Dancing With Bears and a short ages ago, always enjoy Swanwick
Morning Womble, I'm still on Christmas and Other Horrors, but also The Girls by Emma Cline and just started The Thing in Christmas Town by Iseult Murphy on the side.
Good morning Womble. I'm reading "The Winter Spirits", a collection of chilly-themed ghost stories... for which I can't see an editor credited, but never mind, with names like Catriona Ward, Natasha Pulley and Andrew Michael Hurley among the contributors, you can't go far wrong.
I read that last year! And The Haunting Season the year before. I’m disappointed there isn’t another one this year , I love a spooky Christmas story
🎄👻
Good morning! Finished A curse of Chalion on yours and others recommendations. An excellent read that I would have enjoyed even more had I gotten around to it before I lost my taste for medieval fantasy.
Eyup Runny! Hope you're feeling better. Today's read is Chasm City by Alistair Reynolds. I find Reynolds a bit dry sometimes, slow and long-winded but this is really good. Three interlinked timelines around a central mystery with seriously outstanding world-building. Really enjoying it so far.
Did you not like it? Very much reminding me of Altered Carbon and Use of Weapons. Having read the other Rev Space novels, it's cool having the background filled in vis-à-vis the Melding Plague.
Three-quarters of the way through, oh dear worried some major shark jumpage is coming.
I loved this book too. Lots of fun and loads of ideas. I admit to being a Reynolds fan. This was the second book of his I read and it locked me into all his stuff.
Morning Womble hope alls well! I’m reading Robert Gerwaths’s Revolution 1918, a history of the many revolutions that happened between the end of WW1 and the early 1920s - it’s fascinating, and a touch horrifying
Rereading Aliiance Rising (Cherryh & Fancher) before diving into Alliance Unbound, for which I've been waiting a year. Early days in the history of the Alliance-Union universe. Cherryh is THE science fiction author, so far as I'm concerned.
Good morning Womble. I saved the last few chapters of John Connolly's wonderful The Land of Lost Things to enjoy with my morning coffee,I adored it just as much as my beloved Book of Lost Things. I'm still reading from The Advent of Winter daily and just started The Lotus Shoes by Jane Yang .
Hi womble. Hope you're feeling better today. Working my way through the strange The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton at the moment. It has my full attention now I've just finished a paperback. I'm enjoying it but it breaks my cozy streak!
Good morning! Today I'm reading Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers, which I'm quite enjoying despite it taking me months to read.
Hello! I’m halfway through Tradwife by @tcparker.bsky.social and enjoying it very much. Really clever framing of the story. I’m most put out that I have a busy day ahead with no time to read until the evening
Evening Womble - a bit late to the party, but I'm currently reading Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens in Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown, and I'm about to dip into The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story by Olga Tokarczuk, which I've been looking forward to a lot.
Morning Womble! 'Tis the season, so I'm on a run of festive books at the moment. I'm currently reading Sherlock Holmes & The Christmas Demon, by James Lovegrove.
Good morning, Womble. Just finished up Navola by @paolobacigalupi.bsky.social last night, and wow, what a journey. Looking forward to the next issue. Hitting We Called Them Giants by @kierongillen.bsky.social this morning.
Just this moment finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s epic, rich and brilliant Children of Time - it utterly ensnared me. A book you want to hare through and yet never end.
Afternoon Womble, I'm absolutely knackered from doing all the things yesterday but have 4 books currently on the go. Dead Collections by Issac Fellmen is one I've had for ages but knew would be a very id-y book, The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd, Frontier by Grace Curtis and Shoestring Theory.
Happy Sunday Womble! I’m having a Sunday of Dull Chores That Must Be Done Before Christmas, and my reward is to curl up with Affinity by Sarah Waters again tonight for Victorian spiritualists with barely suppressed longings.
Having finished the book I had been savouring for years, I was after a quick palate refresher, and 1920s detective nonsense seems about perfect! Hoping this is a brisk blankets-and-coffee kinda read...
Evening Darth Tobermoriarty Womble. I just finished Nina Peanut Mega Mystery Solver by Sarah Bowie, which is a very funny graphic novel/cartoon story for readers aged 8+ that genuinely made me chuckle.
Morning, Womble! I just finished Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas (which was excellent), and I'm about to start Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T. J. Klune.
The Founders Trilogy has some of the best fantasy-sci-fi worldbuilding around, and I really liked the way the world evolved across the series but I didn't warm to the characters as much as in the Divine Cities series or The Tainted Cup.
Morning Womble!
Just finished Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan—such a beautiful read! Loved it so much that I’m gifting it to all my book-loving relatives this Christmas. Now on the hunt for my next read—any recommendations?
I ADORED that book. Foster by her is also very good. The Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan is another Christmas set book in which, at one level, not a lot happens, while a whole world is explored.
Morning Womble. Hope Sunday is treating you well. I'm currently re-reading The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers (having also been bell ringing this morning) and listening to The Emperor's Babe by Bernadine Evaristo.
Good morning! I’m currently listening to Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao, out next week. It’s great so far! Look for a release day review episode on Narrated.
Naomi Novik's short story collection Buried Deep. Ideal as I decompress from a few intensive weeks/months workwise. Highly recommended in any circumstances.
Good evening, Womble! Just finishing LeCarré's The Looking Glass War. I'm thinking about continuing the spycraft theme, but with something a bit less bleak: a reread of my childhood pile of U.N.C.L.E. novels.
Morning! Currently reading The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. It's a romp through a garishly bleak near-apocalyptic future replete with toxins, poisoned food, smog, waves of epidemics, shady corporations, and bands of revolutionaries.
Howdy Womble! I really should read some more Tasha Suri myself. May move them up my list for next year.
This week I am finishing off the last few pages of *The Green Man's War* by Juliet E McKenna, and then moving on to James Logan's *The Silverblood Promise*
Hello Womble. While baking piles of cookies to rival the height of my TBR (Ha! not even close), I'm just done with Louise Penny's All the Devils are Here, in the middle of Follett's the Evening and the Morning, and have started this morning on Alan Bradley's christmasy I'm Half-sick of Shadows. 💙📚
I'm reading Ritual od Fire by D.V. Bishop, a murder mystery set in 1500s Florence. Not sure about it yet, but I think I've unknowingly come in to it in book 3 of a series.
Yep. Book one is City of Vengeance. While every book has a different case you probably should start with that. I discovered that series this year and binged my way through all 4 books. Can't wait for book 5.
Good evening Womble, today I finished a Bosch novel, A Darkness More Than Night, by Michael Connelly, and started a Toby Daye novel, One Salt Sea by Seanan Maguire
Evening Womble 👋 not too bad thank you and having a break from reading as looking forward to reading something new that arrives tomorrow which is Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F Hamilton
Good morning Womble. Trying to finish the last of 1969 SFF novels this week:
Jagged Orbit by John Brunner
Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick
Sweet Sweet Summer by Jane Gaskell
Masque World by Alexei Panshin
Morning Womble,
I have a few more pages of the heist will Angel stab them all in the back in Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto? Also reading Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner, I really care about these characters & need to find what happened after the battle at the end of Godkiller
Good morning Womble! I'm ok, hope you are well. I've wanted to read The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri, so I hope it's going good! Yesterday I finished up listening to Tweet Cute by Emma Lord, for now free to listen to on the podcast 'YA Heard It Here First', teen romance with grilled cheese mystery! 😂
Another podcast "Stories From Among The Stars" just started offering Kel Kade's Fate of the Fallen, a chosen one adventure but with a bit of a twist in that he's dead and the best friend is carrying on the mission ...with his head (and voice in his head, so??).
Hi Womble! Been meaning to read The Jasmine Throne for a while now. I've been on a 40K binge again, making my way through Gaunts Ghosts, but will get onto The Fall of Cadia afterwards (unless anything changes). All great fun!
Hi, Womble! Just finished the wonderfully twisty My Murder by Katie Williams, and I may need to reread its alternate perspective clone The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey.
Starting in on Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi, who is fast becoming one of my favorite escapism artists.
Good evening Womble, I'm reading Lost Things by Melissa Scott and Jo Graham. I apparently bought it 10 years ago and completely forgot I had it. Making up for lost time.
Good morning! I'm reading Super-Infinite: the Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell. I haven't enjoyed a non-fiction book this much for a very long time.
Morning!! I have that series on my TBR and I really hope to start it next year! 🤞
At the moment I am reading "Echoes of The Imperium" by N. Atwater and "The Priory of The Orange Tree" by S. Shannon!
Afternoon. After last week's blackouts, broadband disconnections, two wind-flattened sheds, the kettle dying twice and now possibly the car packing up.. I'm hiding as a gibbering wreck in a corner with Bob Shaw and the Advent of Winter anthology
Good morning! 'Tis the season, so I’m reading A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries, from the British Library Crime Classics series. I have bunches of their theme-anthologies, but for some reason the only ones I ever get around to reading are the Christmas ones!
This week, I'm starting Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles for the upcoming Season 2 of Mike's Book Report. Very excited to open up the show to more than just licensed works.
Another week in the company of Rumpole & I am still absolutely loving these stories.
The characters are delightful & believable. Mortimer's world is certainly fringed with nostalgia, but there's a depth to the dilemmas & humour which keeps you reading.
(I think I might be an Old Bailey Hack addict.)
Please excuse this naive question from a reader in mainland Europe. As a P.G. Wodehouse enthusiast who enjoys British humour, I wonder: does this book fall into the category of British humour? Also, is it filled with legalese that might be difficult for a non-native English speaker to understand?
It's similar to Wodehouse. There are plenty of recurring characters & situations which develop through the short stories.
The author explains anything law related so it won't hold up the story. He uses Rumpole, as his narrator, to serve as entertaining guide through his world so you won't get lost.
good morning! I'm reading THE STARDUST GRAIL by @yumewrites.bsky.social and it is checking all my boxes: space opera that hits the high notes, complicated cross-species friendships, colonialism, PhD student-advisor dynamics, fate of the world at stake
Evening all! Today I'm reading J C M Berne's Wistful Ascending which is a mix of space opera, superheroics, and romance. I'm not sure what else could go in here!
Good evening Womble.Fury of the gods by John and Gwynne and Stone Cold by C J Box. All good.
No books bought this week. Very pleased with myself. TBR is stable
Good morning Womble
Just finishing up audiobook of Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson which includes 3 good ghost stories. Good narration too. On BorrowBox.
Last hundred pages of South!
I will never moan about being cold, tired, hungry, wet, thirsty or lost ever again.
Good morning, Womble!! I’m reading The Shabti by Megaera C Lorenz. Set in 1934 it’s about a former medium debunking fake spiritualists till he meets a uni professor who’s convinced he’s being haunted. It’s creepy & perfect.
Happy Sunday, Womble! We’ve finished our podcast reading for the year, so I’ve started Echoes of the Imperium by Nicholas and Olivia Atwater. Looking forward to a few weeks of mood reading!
Hello Womble! I have at last pulled Daughter of the Empire by Fesit & Wurts off the TBR after mumblety years; I hope for a better experience with it this time round. On digital I've read 24% of Northern Wrath by Thide Kold Holdt. It's fine, but not capturing me, and I'm not sure why.
Good morning Womble!
I finished the audiobook of Treason’s Harbour yesterday and I am taking a break from Patrick O’Brian because my pre-order of Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky is here!
Morning Womble! Hope you're well. Tomorrow I'll start rereading The Evenings by Gerard Reve (because that is the number one book that I always read before Christmas :)) Currently in between books and casually reading in the annotated Wind in the Willows.
Comments
On audio I finished Witch King by Martha Wells, which was great, and started Wind And Truth which I assume I will be listening to for the rest of my life.
I started Kill For Me, Kill For You by @stevecavanagh.bsky.social last night. I got a quarter through before I had to turn in. Steve’s writing is legit brilliant. Lots of twists. I’ll read his Witness 8 next.
Yesterday I finished reading The Return of the King. I made it all the way through Lord of the Rings! 🥳
I also started Shattered Spirits: The Fall of Ishcairn by Cal Black
🎄👻
Three-quarters of the way through, oh dear worried some major shark jumpage is coming.
In the eyes: The Big Chill by Doug Johnstone
In the ears: Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Just finished Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan—such a beautiful read! Loved it so much that I’m gifting it to all my book-loving relatives this Christmas. Now on the hunt for my next read—any recommendations?
That ones on my TBR!
I'm currently reading Heavenly Tyrant as the bookshop got it in early 😄
Technically a reread, but it was so long ago it’s like reading a new book.
This week I am finishing off the last few pages of *The Green Man's War* by Juliet E McKenna, and then moving on to James Logan's *The Silverblood Promise*
Jagged Orbit by John Brunner
Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick
Sweet Sweet Summer by Jane Gaskell
Masque World by Alexei Panshin
See how I actually do!
I have a few more pages of the heist will Angel stab them all in the back in Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto? Also reading Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner, I really care about these characters & need to find what happened after the battle at the end of Godkiller
Starting in on Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi, who is fast becoming one of my favorite escapism artists.
At the moment I am reading "Echoes of The Imperium" by N. Atwater and "The Priory of The Orange Tree" by S. Shannon!
Wake me up in 2026
How are you liking The Lotus Empire?
I'm currently enjoying Twisted Expectations by Brent Harris.
The characters are delightful & believable. Mortimer's world is certainly fringed with nostalgia, but there's a depth to the dilemmas & humour which keeps you reading.
(I think I might be an Old Bailey Hack addict.)
The author explains anything law related so it won't hold up the story. He uses Rumpole, as his narrator, to serve as entertaining guide through his world so you won't get lost.
Such vivid imagery.
No books bought this week. Very pleased with myself. TBR is stable
Just finishing up audiobook of Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson which includes 3 good ghost stories. Good narration too. On BorrowBox.
Last hundred pages of South!
I will never moan about being cold, tired, hungry, wet, thirsty or lost ever again.
I finished the audiobook of Treason’s Harbour yesterday and I am taking a break from Patrick O’Brian because my pre-order of Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky is here!
Currently reading AG Slatter's The Briar Book of the Dead, which I was struggling with in the beginning, but I'm getting into it now.