JOMP BPC June 8: Feel-good read
Pretty much anything by Sir Terry Pratchett
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@readsky
JOMP BPC June 8: Feel-good read
Pretty much anything by Sir Terry Pratchett

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I’m serious. I can’t be left alone in bookstores. #bookstagram
Solid advice, if I do say so myself….
📚 📖 📚
JOMP book photo challenge 6 October: Favourite Villain
Sophon from Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy is one of my favourites from recent memory. Originally, Sophon begins life in the trilogy as a subatomic particle responsible for spying on the Earth for the Trisolarans and hindering any technological developments humans might make. Cool so far? The Trisolarans decide that humans may be more accepting of this invasion of privacy if they turn Sophon into an anthropomorphic robot that looks like a beautiful Japanese woman who’s really into tea. Don’t piss her off though, she’s deadly with a sword!
Photographs of before and after of Scotland’s largest secondhand bookshop: Leakey’s Bookshop and Café.
Leakey’s Bookshop was established in 1979 and has been housed for the last 19 years in the old Gaelic Church (1793). It is Scotland’s largest secondhand bookshop with 100,000 selected volumes.

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JOMP book photo challenge 2 October: Currently reading
My first participation in the JOMP bpc!
Sat on a mossy (Covid neglected) bench in my work's garden. The plants are still surprisingly green for the time of year, I could almost pretend it's still summer 🌿☀️
Does anyone else love a specific chapter in a book so much, that they'll just pick it up randomly to read just that? I've read ASOIAF series twice now, but I've read The Dragontamer chapter from A Dance with Dragons more times than I can count. It's so tense and devastating.
Currently reading.
Fitting dedication for the times we are living in.
June 2020 Reads - Minireviews
5 books this month, including a BIG one. June was a bit slower; I am still not back in work and the weather was pretty terrible, so I didn’t get out much. Lockdown rules have been relaxed a bit, so we’ve had a few friends round that we haven’t seen since Feb. Was nice to just have a few drinks and play some card games (Exciting!). Now, to the mini-reviews!
The Eye of the World (Robert Jordan) I wasn’t planning on reading this, but one of my friends has been telling me to read it for years now. I’ve heard all the “it’s just LOTR fan fic/rip-off”, so I put it off since there’s always so much more original content on my reading list. Then I randomly found it in a charity shop for £2. I took it as a sign that I should read it, and I’m really glad I did! A group of young lads discover that they are being targeted by some very scary and dangerous folk, and set off on a quest with a warrior and a powerful female warrior-mage to find out why the forces of darkness are rising and why they are so interested in them. Are there a ton of LOTR parallels? Yes. Does it feel like Robert Jordan just wanted to be a modern-day Tolkien? Yup. But did I care? No. I recently started reading The Lord of the Rings (I reviewed The Fellowship of the Ring a few months ago), and god damn is that shit a slog. It took me MONTHS to read The Fellowship. I think the only way I could sum up The Fellowship is “dense, whilst simultaneously lacking in detail”. I finished TEOTW in exactly 2 weeks, and while it is dense, the story flowed well, most of the characters are interesting, there’s some badass ladies and there’s enough genuinely well-developed mystery surrounding the characters that I’m very keen to keep reading (although 14 x 800 page books is a lot of reading time to devote to one series, but we’ll see how it goes!). So, was TEOTW special or unique? Nope, but I found it an easy and entertaining read despite its size, and it was different enough from LOTR to keep me interested. Very good. 4/5
Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation (Translated by Ken Liu) I’ve already used a bit of my blog to wax lyrical about how great Ken Liu is. And I’m going to do it again! He’s great! What a guy! In this follow up to Invisible Planets, Ken has picked 16 more short sci-fi stories (and some with fantasy elements) written by some wonderful Chinese authors and again translated them for English speakers. This is just as strong a collection of stories as the ones picked for Invisible Planets and just as varied in their ideas and themes. Particular highlights include Baoshu’s What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear which is a kind of historical fiction where time for the characters progresses linearly, but major world events such as the Second World War and the Chinese Cultural Revolution are happening in reverse. This instalment also includes some more fun stories, such as Fei Dao’s The Robot Who Liked To Tell Tall Tales which is a really cute story about a King known as the biggest bullshitter in the kingdom, but doesn’t want to die with that reputation, so sends a robot out into the world with the mission to become a bigger bullshitter than the King. And finally, Ma Boyong’s The First Emperor’s Games is a short and fun read that will delight anyone with an interest in video games. I enjoyed every minute of this book and hope Ken will continue to bring Chinese sci-fi to western readers. 5/5
Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Laini Taylor) This was another charity shop find (50p!). Looked like fantasy (judging book by its cover, I know!) and then saw that Patrick Rothfuss had given it a glowing review. Turns out it was well deserved. Karou is an art student studying in Prague and seems relatively normal to her friends. However, she moonlights as an assistant to demonic beings who brought her up after she was orphaned, collecting teeth for a purpose she does not yet know. After a chance encounter with an angel, she finally finds out the truth. This is a beautifully written book. The writing is so visual, and it was extremely easy to picture the characters and their surroundings. The way the author describes Prague made me want to jump on the next plane and go. If I were any good at drawing, I would probably have had a go at creating some fan art. My only gripe would be that I’m not a fan of over-the-top, unobtainable, supernatural type romance, and the last half of this book is exactly that. However, once you start to realise what an important element this is to story, you do start to forgive it. Fast-paced and beautifully written. 4/5
The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, so this was different for me. Since I mainly read fantasy, there’s always a certain “epic-ness” to everything I read. The Book Thief is not epic, but that doesn’t detract from this beautiful story based on some of the most tragic events of the last 100 years. The story follows Liesel, a young girl who is forced to live with foster parents after her own are taken to a Nazi concentration camp during WW2 for being identified as communists. This is a story of her growing up in a poor town just outside Munich and the stories of the people she meets along the way (and her growing obsession with stealing books). But to give it a bit of quirkiness, the story is narrated by Death himself. This was probably my favourite aspect of this story, as it gave an “alternative” view of Death. Death is extremely thoughtful and talks in a manner of helping people “cross-over”. I imagine that the author didn’t have the stereotypical black cloak and scythe combo that we usually picture Death to look like. The vast array of characters makes this book an endearing one and it is one I will not soon forget. 4/5
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) I would have to put this into my most unexpected reads category. I’m finding it hard to compare to anything. Thomas Senlin is a school headmaster and all-round fuddy-duddy. He keeps to himself and never gets into any trouble. When he eventually marries Marya, a beautiful, fun, and upstanding young woman, eyebrows are raised. They decide to spend their honeymoon visiting The Tower of Babel, a marvel of modern-day engineering with unique societies on every floor. A tower so tall, no one can see the top and no one can actually confirm how high it is. Senlin has learned everything he knows about The Tower of Babel from a visitor’s guide that describes it as a utopia; the pinnacle of modern and civilised society. However, when they arrive Senlin immediately loses Marya in the dense crowds just outside the tower and he quickly learns that this place is as far from utopia as it gets. This is extremely unique science fiction with steampunk elements throughout, and follows the change in Senlin’s personality and outlook as he ascends through the tower, desperately trying to find his wife. I will admit to feeling a bit deflated about this book about halfway through. The lack of strong and/or independent female characters had me worrying and it seemed to be turning into a “save the damsel in distress story”. However, I was breathing a sigh of relief as I approached the conclusion of the book. Not every female character was a victim! Phew! Overall, a great start to this series and I’m looking forward to reading the second book. 4/5

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Reading Nevernight and started thinking:
"Wow, this is really sweary. Even the C word has been used several times."
*looks up author*
"Ah, he's Australian!"
Just realised my most hated plot device has to be "naïve, helpless woman gets herself into trouble and needs a man to come rescue her". And accompanied by other females whose only function in the story is to be a victim. Can authors stop writing this please?
Have you ever reached that point where you’re so consumed by a book that literally nothing else matters anymore and all you want to do is read and not study or do anything productive because none of it matters anymore because THIS BOOK
I have this problem with every book I read! And working from home recently has made it soooooo much worse.
New book haul! I was running low on books. Although my boyfriend doesn't agree that having 4 unread books on my shelf is "running low". Pffff.
It. Has. Not. Stopped. Raining. I just want to sit in my garden and read. Go away rain.
May 2020 Reads
Fewer reads this month, but what a month it was! Scorching temperatures here in the UK. I’m still working from home, but managed to fluke a week off during the hottest week. So I spent most of my time in my incredibly green and bushy-as-hell garden! It was nice. Mini reviews:
I was excited for The Kingdom of Copper as I really loved The City of Brass and I wasn’t disappointed. The main characters have had to go in different directions which I think was a great decision by the author. Since the first book focused solely on one place, it really helped to expand the world of the Djinn more for me. Dara finally became a little more sympathetic, Nahri is really establishing herself in Daevabad and Ali is...going through some scary shit. Oh and that cliffhanger: Top notch. Looking forward to The Empire of Gold. 4/5
Next was a cult classic that hadn’t read yet. To be honest, I liked it but I was expecting it to be better. The book is really funny and I loved all the clever jokes about what silly things demons invented, like the M25 (hideous motorway that circles London, if you’re not from the UK) and pretentious tiny meals. But it was quite slow and the ending was pretty underwhelming. And the mental gymnastics required for figuring out the baby swap scene at the beginning was just too much! Good, but could have been better. 3/5

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April 2020 Reads
Another mixed bag, but I’m 17 books into my target of 20 for this year *self-pat on the back*! The current lockdown situation is definitely starting to affect my mental health, but at least I can read more. Swings and roundabouts!
I finally finished The Farseer Trilogy after reading Assassin’s Apprentice over 10 years ago, and I’ve been getting back into graphic novels with the modern Buffy series! Now, time for some mini-reviews:
Finished the Shadow and Bone Trilogy. Definitely the worst of the three. I really haven’t enjoyed this series, but I cannot bear not finishing something once I’ve started it. I might not like it, but there’s still something deep down inside me that needs to know how it ends. And these books are incredibly easy to blast through in a few days. So why is it bad? One expects characters to grow and change over a series like this, but they just don’t. I still hate Mal. The Darkling is still boring. I read this series to prep myself for Six of Crows, and now I’m really not sure I can be bothered anymore! 2/5
Royal Assassin was AMAZING. I can’t remember why I read Assassin’s Apprentice all those years ago and chose not to continue. My only guess is I must have had a lot of school work to do at the time. Fitz really starts coming into his own here and turns from sneaky child assassin to a full blown dangerous lunatic by the end! And I love it! The relationship he develops with Molly is great as it serves to remind the reader just how young he still is; because god damn, he is dumb when it comes to the ladies! Even though you love Fitz, you still have to sympathise massively with Molly. In fact, every relationship he has with every character serves to remind the reader just what confusing, sheltered and conflicted life he has had. Chade, Burrich, Patience and Verity all care deeply for him, but feel still they need to keep him at arms-length. Because what do you do with a royal bastard? Despite being unable to ascend to the throne, to certain people he is still considered dangerous to the throne. Hobb does a wonderful job of presenting Fitz as this deeply troubled, yet sympathetic young man who doesn’t know what his place in the world should be, because no-one else knows either. So many times I wished he’d just run away with Molly. But then we wouldn’t have such a great story then would we? 5/5
Then Assassin’s Quest happened. Where did it go wrong? The story eliminated the presence of so many important characters to Fitz’s development. And...not a lot happens. For around 600 pages, Fitz is just travelling. He does stop off somewhere and has a pretty eventful time, but there were so many things to tie up and it took too long to get there. And when we did get there, it was over in a flash! New characters were introduced who appeared to serve no purpose. In short, I was disappointed. 3/5
And lastly, I read the second volume of the new Buffy graphic novel series and I’m really impressed with this modernised and alternative take on the cult show. The artwork is great, and there are some really clever storytelling techniques with the art that I just stared at for much longer than necessary! 4/5
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