Good morning Blue Sky! Hope you’re all ok? Today I’m currently reading and highly enjoying epic fantasy in the form of A Song of Legends Lost by M H Ayinde. What are you reading at the moment?
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Just finished Killer Pictures from @maddwolfcolumbus.bsky.social which was brilliant. Now moving on to Secret Lives of the Dead from @timlebbon.bsky.social
Morning Womble! I've been in Yorkshire for a week so have been reading @nicolaz.bsky.social's amazing Menewood which meant I kept wandering around seeing the sixth century overlaid on the present.
Hiya Womble I'm reading Urban Jungle by Ben Wilson and finding it very interesting. Tempted to get a new notebook to record quotes I like and stuff I think of when reading.
Good morning Womble! I'm just finishing Elusive by Genevieve Cogman, really enjoying how she combines a fun adventure full of spectacle with serious questions about inequality & the morality of revolution.
Morning Womble! Just started The Last Freakshow by S.E. Johnson and it’s great stuff so far. Also reading some old comics from my youth for comfort, which I need a lot of these days. Have a great day!
Hi Womble! Still finishing up the Big Book of Malaysian Horror Stories in print, and in the early chapters of The House of Open Wounds by Tchaikovsky in audio.
Afternoon, Womble. It’s sunny here in Dublin. Vatican Spies is my non-fiction read this week and possibly the next. It piques my interest because of my fascination with Holy See intrigue and espionage in general.
I'm reading Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, who was big in the C19th and barely known outside academia now. Kind of a mystery. Enjoying the 1.5 page long descriptions of say, the pub, and the careful way she shows, and then tells, in case you didn't get it. But half way through!
Oh, I love that book! I read it for my English degree and fell in love with it. There are some stunning female villains and detectives in the lesser known Victorian literature
I've just started the YA novel One of us in lying by Karen M McManus. I originally picked it up in the school I work in and got sicked in so I'm reading it properly now.
Good morning Womble. I hope you're doing ok?
Over past week or so I read The Lamplighter's Bookshop by Sophie Austin; then The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal by Jodi Taylor. Now reading How to Fall by Jane Casey.
Hello Womble! I just started “The Bog Wife”. Though I may switch to “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau”at some point if I’m not in the mood for the 1st book(it seems like it could be a bit dark).
Good morning Womble. I'm reading Matt Parker's "Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension". This book on recreational maths is seriously making me dust off my maths "O" level (1979 vintage).
Hi Womble. Hope you are doing better and I am sorry for your recent challenges and loss. I just finished MONSTERS: A HUMAN HISTORY by @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
Good morning Womble, I recently finished Shards of Glass by Michelle Sagara. Which made me happy to realize I still need to catch up on her Chronicles of Elantra.
Hi Womble hope alls well! I’m playing Horus Heresy at an event in Newcastle, so also reading Dan Abnett’s End and the Death Vol. 2 - the siege of Terra coming to its preordained cataclysmic end…
Morning Womble! Since we last spoke, I have started and finished @travisbaldree.bsky.social's excellent "Legends & Lattes" and am now half way through the prequel "Bookshops & Bonedust" and I am THOROUGHLY in love with these characters & world.
Saini's The Patriarchs, which is a fascinating book about patriarchy, looking at human history and asking, why and how? I'm finding the parts about Classical Athens are seeming really reminiscent of the US, in both how they made up their constitution and their current climate.
Good morning! My book club reads are a couple of shorts from Naomi Booth's Animals At Night, and Mother Naked by Glen James Brown. It's my choice of stories for the next short story club, so I'm picking through Capote, Nabokov, Carter, Naomi Woods, Borges, Ballard and others to see what tickles me.
Morning Womble, I'm catching up on some children's books I've been sent. Finished the excellent "I am Raven" by @alastairc.com this morning and started Geraldine McCaughrea's Under a Fire-Red sky.
Good morning Womble, earlier this morning I finished The Show Woman by Emma Cowing, I'm currently reading Pale Rider by Laura Spinney and the gorgeous A Spell for Change by Nicole Jarvis
Good afternoon. I'm four-fifths of the way through Ken Follett's epic The Pillars of the Earth. He tells a good story! And having finished Swamp Thing, I've dipped back into the 60s with Essential Avengers vol. 2.
Hi Womble. I'm still on This is your brain on music by Daniel Levitin. The first 90 pages were a terrible slog through a sea of technical music lingo but it did pick up after that. Still, I want to get it done & move on to In the Heart of Hidden Things by Kit Whitfield!
Good morning, Womble. I finished up When the Moon Hits Your Eye by @scalzi.com yesterday--bonkers premise that shouldn't work but still had me laugh and even tear up (2x!) over the moon turning into cheese. Just started The Mercy of Gods by James S. A. Corey.
Happy to see you back to tempting. :) I've just finished KJ Charles's A Charm of Magpies series, now dipping in and out of Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance and CM Rosens's The Day We Ate Grandad. Also revisiting the old Point Horror 13 anthologies from the 1990s.
*every weird fiction author lunges for it simultaneously*
*Jeff Vandermeer, having already entered into symbiosis with it, explodes into a cloud of spores*
Happy Sunday Womble. I’ve walked my feet off and enjoyed every minute. Reading also excellent: The Last To Drown by Lorraine Wilson with my eyes and System Collapse by Martha Wells with my ears.
Good morning to you, Darth Tobermoriarty! I am a third of the way through Rebel Dawn by Ann Sei Lin, which is the conclusion of her fantasy trilogy for readers aged 12+ set in an Asian inspired world of paper magic. Very much enjoying it - strong world building and interesting characters.
I'm still reading the fab Edinburgh Nights series by T.L. Huchu. Listening to Paladin's Strength by T Kingfisher. And thanks to this month's supporter package from @pmpress.bsky.social, I got to enjoy Downtown Local by Aaron Cometbus - artists and others living in the cracks of NYC
Currently reading Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. I've seen it mentioned sufficiently often by historians, game designers and authors alike I figured it would be worth heading to the source.
Just finished these two.
Spies and Lies by Alex Joske took a while to get through as the case studies are so detail rich I needed to read it in instalments.
SPQR by Mary Beard was one of the most interesting, accessible and readable history books I’ve come across.
Time for some fiction now!
Greetings, Womble, good to see you! I'm just getting well into John Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye (so much fun!) and on the home stretch of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (a bit different from the show). A lovely pile awaits after these two.
Hello Womble. To begin the week I divide my time between Alan Bradley’s fun Flavia de Luce novel Speaking From Among the Bones (🇨🇦) and the so far great historical thriller L’Effet Domino by François Baranger (🇫🇷), who also writes historical Fantasy I’ll try later.
Hi Womble! I am starting When The Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy today, however, I will be doing a little bit of my own writing this afternoon all being well, I have a course that I'm well overdue completing!
“Five Ways to Forgiveness” by Le Guin. I am pretty sure I read the four stories many years ago when the book was first published under the old title (1994) but a fifth story was added and the book newly re-released. I’m enjoying it!
Morning Womble. I'm visiting my dad in the north east, so it's appropriate that I'm reading The Longest Goodbye by Mari Hannah. Three of the (several) murders happen close to where I lived when I was very young.
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Reading all the Hunger Games books in chronological order so I can see how characters like Haymitch and Effie developed
Morning Womble, hope you're in good form. I just finished TC Parker's Hummingbird and Paul Tremblay's Horror Movie. Enjoyed both! Looking at The River Has Roots for my next one.
Just finished Borne (Vandermeer) which was captivating, and failed to finish Hot Sky at Midnight (Silverberg) which was misogynistic garbage. Swings and roundabouts.
Morning Womble! Just finishing The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August, picked up because space cat, and absolutely lovely. The cat's called Pumpkin, and he's a good kitty.
I'm reading the 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, along with everyone else in the world. It zips along surprisingly well considering I have only a vague idea what's happening and who everyone is.
Morning. Still in Sinophagia ed. by @xuetingni.bsky.social varied and wonderful. After some technical issues with ebook of Future's Edge by @garethlpowell.bsky.social that are now sorted I am diving in to this long awaited read.
Good evening! I'm reading Embassytown, from a late friend's collection. Many interesting ideas, reminds me of Clarke and Chiang, am somewhat struggling to feel for the characters.
Good afternoon, Womble. I've been reading Pagans by James Alistair Henry, which is a stupendously good alt-history police procedural set in a 21st century Saxon London. It has some of the best world-building I've read, and I've spent the past week telling everyone I know to read it.
Well, you’re our favourite. Pop us an email to [email protected] and we’ll get a signed bookplate in the post to you to say thank you for spreading the word!
This sounds amazing. Hey @biggreenbooks.bsky.social , do you have this (Pagans by James Alistair Henry) on your infinite shelf of everything? I would like to purchase.
I’m getting stuck into The Sins of Steel and Shadow by @stevepannett.com
Really enjoying this unique take on vampyres and can’t wait to see where the story goes next
Currently jumping between 20,000 leagues under the sea by JV, The Lost Rainforests Of Britain by Guy Shrubsole, and Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger, because my brain won’t settle on anything. Oh! And Bog Fashion by Nicole DeRushie a kick starter that just arrived and is amazing!
Currently reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest Terrible Worlds novella Saturation Point ("Strugatsky Zone BS"), and then Daryl Gregory's When We Were Real, about a road trip to visit the glitches in the simulation we live in.
Morning Womble, I'm finishing the excellent, thought-provoking These Burning Stars and hope to start The Book of Disappearance later on. Happy reading 💜
Edenville by Sam Rebelein, about 150 pages in and not really sure I get what it’s going for tonally. It’s well-written and interesting though so I expect I will stick with it.
I tried and gave up very fast, it still surprises me to see it recommended so often but I think it's one that many people read at an impressionable age. I'm probably as annoying about the Malazan books although these days my go-to epic fantasy recs are usually Kate Elliott, Mike Brooks or RJ Barker.
I need to finish reading that series! I was really liking it but got into this exhausted state where reading other people's worlds, except things I'd read several times already, took (take) energy I still lack. It's near the top of 'things to finish when I'm more rested & have finished this book.'
Derivative were my thoughts. I fully understand why people love it, but it was after I had read most fantasy available when it was first published. Read book 1 and DNFd 2.
Morning lovely Womble, missed you last week and hope you're feeling a little better. Reading Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch to begin catching up with the books I've missed of the series. Moving on to Dead Lions by Mick Herron on Kindle. Technically still reading Iron Flame, but it isn't good.
I’m reading the Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, book 1 of her Merlin series. This was the first version of Arthurian legend that I ever read (I was 15) and I was besotted with it. So I’m a little nervous going into this reread after several decades, but so far, so good—the writing still sings to me!
Partway through an ARC of the long-awaited Faithbreaker by Hannah Kaner - I have zero idea how she's going to resolve this and who's going to survive. 🫣 Also reading An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi and nearly finished the audiobook of Titanchild by Jen Williams (again, excellent)
About half way through and thoroughly enjoying The Count of Monte Cristo. Been on my TBR list for a while (I tried to read it seventeen years ago and didn't finish it for some reason).
I was exactly the same with Lord Of The Flies, saw the film whilst in school but it took me years of the book being on my TBR before I got around to reading it
Morning, Womble :) Just finished Bone Harvest by James Brogden (solid, but I feel like the genre in general could do with stepping away from "folk horror" for a bit), and started Ned Beauman's "Venomous Lumpsucker".
Good morning, Womble! Currently well into The Last Dancer by @fatsam.bsky.social. I'm really enjoying his Continuing Time series so far, just tremendous stuff. More people need to be talking about Daniel Keys Moran.
I've been re-reading Pratchett's Small Gods. After he died, a lot of people talked about how his humour came from his anger.
I'd forgotten how much it boils to the surface in this book.
This really is Pratchett vs organised religion. And, at its best, it's one hell of a funny, unflinching fight.
IMO it's even bigger than organized religion -- "Small Gods" is such an amazing portrayal of social dynamics, how a unifying idea can grow to power and then gradually hollow itself out under the weight of institution, self-preservation, self-serving.
Good morning! Hope you’re doing better! Today I am reading the graphic novel adaptation of Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard Of Earthsea. It’s a beautiful book that is helping me see nuance I missed in an old old friend of a book.
Good to have e you back. Just started Joan Samson's The Auctioneer. 40 pages in and tension building. Also just started Elodie Harper's - House with The Golden Door. Not grabbing me as much as the first book did. I shall read on .
Morning Womble! I’m splitting my time at the moment - for the non-fiction I’m on Colourfields by Paul Kincaid, and on the fiction I’m just finishing Gautam Bhatia’s The Sentence (hopefully to start City of All Seasons by Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley later today).
In audio, I am listening to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. I have reached book three, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook. The cover art is nearly as lurid as the Discworld book!
Because I started reading the books first I decided to read them all before touching the TV series (I may not stick to this!) but even so I still see Oldman as Jackson Lamb in my head as I'm reading
Just started The Martian Contingency, the fourth and I think final part of Mary Robinette Kowal's lovely Lady Astronaut alternate history space travel series, Elma and Nathaniel setting up the first Mars habitat
Also shout out to the book I just finished, The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho, which is a lovely modern romance between Malaysians and Singaporeans living in London. Avoided a lot of clichés, had a heroine with an actual career she kept, and a gentle caring hero. High stakes backstory trauma
Hi Womble, just finished 'Shadow of the Wind'. Alas for me, I wish I could get that time back. Next onto Jacques Cazotte's 'Devil in Love' which I know I enjoy!
Morning Womble! Hope you're doing well. Currently reading a Dutch book "Het Archief" and just started in 'Proust and the Squid' about the science of the reading brain.
I am currently reading For Whom The Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn. I have no idea how people who haven't watched Jaysea's Hell's Belles videos - where this story came from - would react to it, but I already love these characters, and I am loving the book.
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Queer SF in a post #CliFi disaster setting with spiritual elements and love letters from a wife to her spouse.
🪐📚 #SF #books
https://everybookadoorway.com/shamanistic-sci-fi-the-moonday-letters-by-emmi-itaranta/
It’s a gothic ghost story, cool irreverent Bluebeard re-telling that has such a fairy-tale feel to the prose
Plus a bunch of non-fiction.
Just finished Slow Horses by Mick Herron, plus Year's Best SF 2 compilation edited by David Hartwell, from 1996.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216246919-a-palace-near-the-wind
Over past week or so I read The Lamplighter's Bookshop by Sophie Austin; then The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal by Jodi Taylor. Now reading How to Fall by Jane Casey.
Still one of my favorite books ever. Never gets old.
In the eyes: Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (.....hmmm...lol)
In the ears: The Wolves of London by Mark Morris
Having a lot of fun with it so far.
Last week I read M. R. Carey's Once-Was-Willem, which, like you, Womble, I can recommend.
Not sure what's next.
This weekend I decided to revisit PTerry's absolutely fantastic "Small Gods". Hard to go wrong with that one 🐢
*Jeff Vandermeer, having already entered into symbiosis with it, explodes into a cloud of spores*
Almost three quarters through in quick time, and it looks like I'll be straight out to buy the next book. Loving it.
I'm still reading the fab Edinburgh Nights series by T.L. Huchu. Listening to Paladin's Strength by T Kingfisher. And thanks to this month's supporter package from @pmpress.bsky.social, I got to enjoy Downtown Local by Aaron Cometbus - artists and others living in the cracks of NYC
Currently reading Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. I've seen it mentioned sufficiently often by historians, game designers and authors alike I figured it would be worth heading to the source.
Anyway, I'm reading Dark Spores, an anthology of mushroom horror from @cronegirlspress.bsky.social. It's delightfully creepy.
Spies and Lies by Alex Joske took a while to get through as the case studies are so detail rich I needed to read it in instalments.
SPQR by Mary Beard was one of the most interesting, accessible and readable history books I’ve come across.
Time for some fiction now!
Fantastic novella, by the way.
Am almost done reading My Real Children by Jo Walton. I love a parallel universe plot. Excellent read would definitely recommend.
About halfway through, like it very much, so far. A scifi murder mystery
Am at the last chapter of "The hotel" by Daisy Johnson. Beautiful writing.
Yes, it does sound amazing! It's been a huge hit with my very knowledgeable customers and I've added it onto my website.
You can buy one HERE.
https://www.biggreenbookshop.com/stuff-you-might-like-/pagans-by-james-alistair-henry/prod_1660.html
Really enjoying this unique take on vampyres and can’t wait to see where the story goes next
The Siren's Cursed Kiss by @katkinneywrites.bsky.social
Sunfall by @jimalkhalili.bsky.social with ears
The current commute read is Vandermeer's _Acceptance_ and Levi Roach's _ Empire of the Normans_ for my history fix.
Both are good.
Also rereading This is how you lose the time war - every bit as good as the first time. Such a joy to read
Which is also why the 1st part of book 2 feels like it's waiting for the plot to start.
https://indiebook.sale if you want to have a look ;)
They're like cosy crime popcorn.
I'd forgotten how much it boils to the surface in this book.
This really is Pratchett vs organised religion. And, at its best, it's one hell of a funny, unflinching fight.
Almost nobody writes social systems this well.
Great stuff so far
Just started The Martian Contingency, the fourth and I think final part of Mary Robinette Kowal's lovely Lady Astronaut alternate history space travel series, Elma and Nathaniel setting up the first Mars habitat
I’m finally reading Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook, rather than gazing upon its beauty.
I am also loving Fiona Moore’s novel, Rabbit in the Moon.
💙📚🪐
I am currently reading For Whom The Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn. I have no idea how people who haven't watched Jaysea's Hell's Belles videos - where this story came from - would react to it, but I already love these characters, and I am loving the book.