Always Read

Owned?: No, library Page count: 247 My summary: Akina. A mysterious island, shrouded by storm. Windrunners can't get close. No ship has ever returned. But Navani Kholin must discover its secrets, and so she turns to Rysn. A shipowner, and companion to the larkin Chiri-Chiri, Rysn has motives of her own for finding Akina. With Windrunner Lopen by her side, Rysn is tasked with sailing into the storm and discovering what the island is holding so close to its heart. If she fails, all of Roshar might be on the line… My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

Dawnshard! My penultimate Stormlight book. I'm reading these a little out of order - this novella is set before the fourth Stormlight book, which I've already read, but I forgot that it existed until recently, so I'm playing catch-up. These novellas (this and Edgedancer, specifically_) serve to explore a few tucked-away corners of the Stormlight world, advancing plot points that can't be given this much space and detail in the main novels. Which, given that those things are thousands of pages apiece, makes sense! This particular side-story is about a voyage to a lost island by Rysn, a minor character we've encountered a few times, and Lopen, a Windrunner and Bridge Four member who regrew his arm after becoming Radiant. There are a few others, mostly minor characters from the main Stormlight stories, but Lopen and Rysn are the main ones. Ships a-sailing, legendary islands that drain Stormlight, dark omens, strange creatures…it's all here, and it's a pretty good read.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 197 My summary: It all begins when a family, looking to move into a new house, sends the floorplan to a friend. There's something strange about it, but he can't put his finger on it until he asks an architect he knows. Together, they begin to pick apart the floorplan of this strange house, and uncover the bizarre secrets of the family who lived there… My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

This is, in essence, a very simple book. It's short, only four chapters, and easily read in one sitting by most people. Would I say that, structurally or narratively, it is a good book? No. I think the story is sub-creepypasta and doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you take a step back from it. Is it, nonetheless, incredibly gripping? Yes! I think the concept of this book is really fun, and it's a good read, it's just that narratively it's kind of nonsensical when you take the whole into account. Out of curiosity, I've ordered in two other books from the same author which seem to be on the same theme, Strange Pictures and Strange Buildings. It's weird, there's so many ways in which this book didn't work, and yet I'm intrigued by it and really enjoyed it at the same time. Strange how a little bit of an unusual premise can go a long way.

(I'm also going to spoil everything under the cut, fyi.)

Owned?: No, library Page count: 335 My summary: Etheldreda is treading water. With a lavish estate to maintain and three unwed daughters (well, two daughters and one step-daughter), she needs all the help she can get to maintain appearances and try and secure matches for the girls that will lead to their stability. But when a royal invitation comes to only the step-daughter, Etheldreda must work hard to get her daughters the lives that they deserve… My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

Look. Look. You could have guessed something like this was coming. I've finally gotten my library book list down to reasonable, so I'm going to be going back to the Twisted Tales books soon - and what better to warm up for them than this, a retelling of the Cinderella story from the wicked stepmother's perspective that seems to be taking some cues from the Disney adaption? This one piqued both my interest and my scepticism. On paper, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing I would be interested in, but…how do I put this delicately? The 'feminist retellings' cottage industry often results in books that are weak on actual discussion and criticism of misogyny and heavy on weaksauce 'girl power' narratives, or narratives that claim to centre women but the men are still the only active agents in them. And therein lay the test. Does this book have something unique to say, or is it just another book that uses the trappings of feminism but does not seem to understand the actual structures of misogyny?

Owned?: No, library Page count: 391 My summary: Men at sea in the Age of Sail lived varied lives. Much of what passed into legend concerned the officers, the gentlemen who commanded ships in battle - not the majority of common sailors who lived and died on the warships. This book seeks to reconstruct that sailor's life, from the watches he took to the food he ate to the work he did; how he lived and died, as much as can be known. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

I've been looking forward to this one! Yet another research book, this one focused on the lives of common sailors during the Age of Sail. It's at least five decades after my period of interest, but that's not to say that it's not interesting! The framework given is Nelson's navy, so the period between him joining the Navy in 1771 and his death in 1805. With a bit of wiggle room, it covers the mid-late 18th century to the mid-19th. As ever, the lives of commoners aren't as heavily documented as the lives of the upper classes, though that's not to say that nothing is known of their lives. On the contrary, there's a lot that can be gleaned of the normal sailors in this time period. This book is pretty comprehensive, each chapter covering a different aspect of the sailor's life - food, work, recreation, health, discipline, et cetera. It's also well-sourced, with plenty of quotes throughout from primary sources, usually diaries or letters or memoirs.

And it's really good! This is the side of history that I absolutely adore, the history of normal people and how they lived their lives. Sailors had it pretty rough - impressment was rife during wartime, meaning that sailors and sometimes landsmen were forced into the Navy, their families and friends having no idea where they went or if they even lived. Pay was atrocious and often in arrears, and shore leave was virtually non-existent. This book gives a pretty balanced and comprehensive view on the sailor's life. Each chapter is detailed and filled with information, there's not a page wasted. It was also very readable, which is a plus for books on the more academic end of the spectrum. Even I struggle sometimes when prose is stodgy and difficult to slog through, but I breezed through this one. Overall, just a really solid book for those who want to know what this particular era of sailing was like for the common man. I cannot recommend it enough.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 416 My summary: When you think of enslavers in the Americas, who comes to mind? Doubtless, you picture a wealthy white man, the sort of landowner and property owner who can afford to enslave people on a mass scale. Very little do you think of his daughter. But women were paid 40% of the compensation money afforded to enslavers when slavery was abolished, a debt that Britain only finished paying in 2015. Women inherited property in the Caribbean too, and part of that property was the people who worked the land. Here are the stories of nine wealthy women who were Caribbean enslavers in the 18th and 19th century. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

It's something people don't think about it much. When it comes to historical bigotry, crimes, and atrocities, we tend to lay the blame at the feet of white men. Who, to be fair, are responsible for a lot of it. But the role of white women in colonial atrocities tends to be sidestepped; we have this notion that women had no agency, and so they couldn't possibly have been responsible for anything. At best, when you see a white woman in this sort of history, she tends to be an abuser on a more individual scale (abusing individual enslaved people 'owned' by her husband/father) than an enslaver in her own right. And yet, wealthy upper-class white women were just as able to enslave people on a mass scale as their male counterparts. This book, by author of Black Tudors Miranda Kaufmann, aims to set the record straight by highlighting the often complex lives of the female enslavers, usually heiresses who gained control of their fathers' properties when they died, and in different ways and to different degrees were perpetuators of slavery in the same way that their men were.

The lives of these nine women are fascinating. They come from a variety of backgrounds - one was Jewish, and faced discrimination for it, another was a mixed-race woman born to an enslaved mother whose father legitimised her and made her his heiress. But all of them, at some point in their lives, were the legal owners of actual human beings. This book is very conscientious about the lives of the enslaved people; while some of the focus is on the heiresses themselves, care has been taken to record the names of any enslaved people whose names are known, and to tell their stories where they can be known. Historical records on the individuality of enslaved people are, regrettably, often lacking, but Kaufmann has tried her best to record them where she can find them. And where individual stories aren't known, she still tells the stories of enslaved people (or, with the later heiresses, formerly enslaved people) from the islands and plantations where that heiress owned property. I was really impressed by the care taken throughout to humanise and centre Black lives and experiences, even while talking about white enslavers for the most part. She also makes a point of referencing and remembering the Indigenous people of the Caribbean, referring to them accurately as Taíno or Kalinago or whatever group she is discussing. This should be the bare minimum, but so many books fail to clear that bar! Kaufmann also takes the time in an appendix to talk about the history of the enslavers in her own family. It's a very thoughtful approach, and it's to be commended. It was a really interesting book, and I'd recommend it highly!

Owned?: No, library Page count: 349 My summary: Maps! A constant, trustworthy source of information about how the world looks…right? These are the stories of the maps that went wrong - leaving off increasingly large parts of the world, inventing mountains, providing deadly shortcuts, and overall stopping people getting from A to B. Or at least, getting there easily. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

Who doesn't like a bit of weird nonfiction? This crossed my desk at work, and it looked pretty fun. The history of weird maps, from an Ikea map that got rid of Aotearoa completely, to the map used by the Donner party which promised more than it was worth, to paper towns and other little copyright traps used on maps. Maps aren't my particular cup of tea, I'm a hopeless case when it comes to geography, but something about the book made it sound like it might be a good read. And, for the most part, I liked it! It was a comedic approach to maps and mapmaking that highlighted some particularly interesting cases. The woman who trusted her satnav so blindly she ended up in another country was bananas; I forget that, before the age of Google Maps, these things were a lot less trustworthy. Like, I was around for satnavs being a Thing (and my Dad stubbornly refusing to use one), I grew up with Mum in the passenger seat with a big paper map. It wasn't that long ago. How quickly we forget. Anyway, the information shared in this book was interesting…but.

The thing I didn't like was the book's tone. Sure, this is more in the vein of pop non-fiction, not academic - which is fine, I like some pop non-fiction from time to time when the academic stuff gets too stuffy. The problem is that I think it sacrificed some of the interesting stuff in the name of being funny, and some of the bits that it was doing just…wasn't. A chapter about Soviet censorship of maps is interrupted constantly by censor bars and text in faux-Cyrillic saying stereotypical oppressive Russian things, which just got grating after a while. The chapter on the Donner party is presented through a fictional podcast with an obnoxious presenter, but like, he was so obviously obnoxious that it got grating after a while, and I just wanted the information without all the guff. Some of the chapters were really good, the jokey jokes were kept to an appropriate level, and neither the comedy nor the information overpowered each other. It's just that a lot of the humour here felt like it was doing bits for the sake of it, rather than to help craft a more lighthearted approach to the subject matter. I still enjoyed it, but…maybe it would have been more palatable in smaller sittings.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 275 My summary: A meme is an idea that spreads. An antimeme is an idea that censors. Knowledge that cannot be known, information that you cannot retain, things that write themselves out of their mind the second they enter it. How can you fight something you cannot even perceive? Especially if it is coming straight for you… My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

Forgetting scares me.

I've got memory problems; everything before the age of about 15 is basically gone, and I struggle to come up with clear and definite memories even beside that. The idea of having seen, done, or experienced something and having absolutely no recollection of it is a great fear. And it's one that this book plays on. It's about antimemes - self-censoring information which cannot be remembered, no matter how hard you try. It's also a book that I've read before, sort of. See, this began life as a collection of SCP Foundation tales, and when I read it, the specific book was the author's self-published collection. This, however, is a more traditionally published version, and as such has been divorced from the Foundation to become its own original work. The narrative is not all that different - it's not like it was fanfiction, or something that'd need to be more heavily edited - but the Foundation has become the Organisation, SCPs are now Unknowns, that sort of thing. I was thinking of rereading this anyway, so when this copy crossed my path I thought, why not? Let's see how this story has evolved since I last interacted with it.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 172 My summary: The Taíno people were the people living in parts of the Caribbean, like Puerto Rico, when Columbus arrived. In the genocide that followed, many of their people and much of their culture was lost. Here, the author reconstructs what we know of the peopling of the Caribbean, and Taíno culture. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Yet another research book, and the last of the research books I have about the Taíno people. The main character of the novel I am working on is Taíno and Spanish - her mother was Taíno, her father was Spanish - and I've been chipping away at trying to understand both how Taíno people lived before contact with Columbus, and how much of her Taíno heritage my character would even have access to, given that she was born in 1690. The problem with it is a general lack of understanding among the books I've read that, yes, Taíno people still exist. Just because they are not 'fully' ethnically Taíno does not mean they can't meaningfully call themselves Taíno and carry on their people's language and traditions. Many writers make the assumption that Taíno people completely disappeared by the mid-1500s and that was it, that's the end of that story forever. But that's by the by. This book was cited a lot in other works about the Taíno which I have read, so for completion's sake I decided to track it down. And, I have to say, I got major deja vu from it. I cannot remember if I have read it or something like it before, but the notes I got from it - a lot during the introduction where the author talked about how Taíno people lived, then few later as he tracked the genesis of the Taíno people through the archaeological evidence - were very familiar. Hmm.

Anyway, this book was interesting. Like I just implied, I got a lot more out of the introduction, which charted Taíno culture and ways of life, than the bulk of the book, but that says more about my personal priorities in reading it than it does about the quality of the book itself. It was published in the 90s, so some of the more questionable details, like referring to groups of Native Americans as 'Indians' here and there, are at least contextualised by the book's age. It was better than some I've seen, I have to say, consistently identifying which group the Native people it was discussing belonged to where possible. I have to admit, my eyes glazed over at a lot of the pottery talk (uh, pun not intended) but, like, it was interesting. Just old in its assumptions, not helped that the author was an older man when writing it (he mentions having studied this for fifty five years) and having some cultural assumptions and baggage as a part of that. Overall, reasonably solid book.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 1372 My summary: The war rages on. Dalinar Kholin fights on the front, while Kaladin Stormblessed is forced to take a backseat due to prolonged 'battle shock'. Adolin and Shallan lead an expedition into Shadesmar to find more honourspren willing to bond with humans. And from inside Urithiru, Navani and her scholars are experimenting with new forms of Stormlight - experiments that are curtailed when an invasion comes crashing through the door. When everything breaks, will anyone be able to put the pieces back together? My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

This has been a long time coming. For some reason, this book's taken far longer to read than I would have expected from myself - I blame the fact that, as of writing, we've just gotten out of our annual record-breaking heatwave and my energy levels have been accordingly low. So, Stormlight Archive! I'm close to the finish line, with just the final book to go now. Not counting a novella or two that I need to get around to. (One of them's at home, I'll get to it in time.) As ever with Stormlight, I'm not going to talk about absolutely everything that happened in the book in this post, lest this post rival the book on the wordcount front. I'm just going to talk about the subplots that engaged me, or that I've got the most to say about, or similar. On the whole though, still very enjoyable, still very well-paced despite the wordcount, and I'm definitely definitely going to finish the entire series before the end of the year!

Owned?: No, library Page count: 229 My summary: It's not just men who have plundered the high seas. Women have been involved in piracy for hundreds of years, and this book is here to give them names and share their stories. From the legendary to the all-too-real, these are the stories of the female pirates who made a name for themselves on the ocean. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

Many of these books about pirate women are pretty much the same. This book's scope includes all female pirates, from all areas, time frames, and walks of life, and so what you get is an overview of each woman's life, hitting all the major beats, but not delivering a lot more than that. The usual suspects will appear - Ching Shih, Gráinne Mhaol, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, maybe Hannah Snell if we're straying away from strict piracy. Other characters do show up, but those are the mainstays. This book is archetypical in that regard, and I'm not really gonna fault it for that. Just because I've read a bit more widely doesn't mean that books for the absolute beginner shouldn't exist, after all. And this book does admirably well in giving an overview of the history of female piracy throughout the ages. While there's often scant records to go on, this book gives a decent amount of information and includes a reasonably broad number of pirates, including some you don't see all that often, such as one of my historical favourites, Sayyida al-Hurra, an intensely successful Muslim pirate of the 1500s.

One thing that this book doesn't do so well is clearly demarcate when its subjects are definitely fictional/legendary. Sure, some of these figures blur the lines there. Anne Bonny and Mary Read's life is taken from the only real source we have about their early lives, Captain Charles Johnson, and he's not trustworthy at all. Gráinne Mhaol, similarly, was a real woman whose story has faded into legend over the years, meaning that many of the anecdotes about her are likely to be fictional. And then there's the likes of Jacquotte Delaheye and Anne Dieu-le-veut, both almost definitely not real, but often reported as having lived. In all, this book's a good overview of the history of women in piracy. Just don't look to it for any in-depth details. That's not what it's for, after all.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 253 My summary: Woodes Rogers was the man who was supposed to solve the pirate problem. Sent out to Nassau to be the governor of the notorious pirate haven, Rogers already had a sailing career and a bestselling book under his belt at the time. When he arrived in the Bahamas, some of the pirates were ready and willing to accept the legitimate life - but others would be pirates to their deaths. This, then, is the story of Woodes Rogers, and what awaited him on the other side… My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

I don't like Woodes Rogers. I know, hot take, I've got beef with a man who died in the eighteenth century. But really, what I don't like isn't him, per se, it's his legacy and how he is discussed in the modern day. Woodes Rogers was meant to be the man who took down piracy, the arm of the law in the British Caribbean, the doom of pirates from the second his ship hit the shores of Nassau. The truth is…a little more pathetic than that. Rogers did bring word of the Act of Grace which pardoned pirates who had committed their crimes before a certain date, but 'King George signed a bit of paper' hardly equates to 'Rogers was a hero'. Many of the pirates just…accepted that pardon without a fight. And of those who did fight, Rogers wasn't the one who took them down; at best, he just deputised the people who did. But above all of that, what I hate about modern-day depictions of Rogers is that they tend to glamourise and lionise him for being on the side of good…despite the fact that the man was an active slave trader throughout his entire life, and gained his money by buying and selling human beings. It would be one thing if the books I read about Rogers acknowledged this. But the ones I've seen tend to just neatly brush his active role in the slave trade under the carpet, as though it isn't important or worth mentioning. For me, that's low. That's the cowardice of trying to create a 'good guys' and a 'bad guys', a hero and a villain, when the truth is that a lot of awful, immoral things were legal and widely practiced at this point in time. We shouldn't sacrifice the nuances of history when we speak about it. But we often do.

This book is another in a long line of books that conveniently ignore Rogers' part in the slave trade. I believe it's briefly mentioned, but nothing more than that. And what's left of Rogers to discuss is…well, not a lot really. The guy didn't do all that much. He found castaway Alexander Selkirk on an island - Selkirk's story is interesting. He sent people after pirates like Vane and Blackbeard - their stories are interesting. But Woodes Rogers was just sort of there the whole time, not doing much. His governance of Nassau left a lot to be desired, and wound up with him sick and in debt, falling into an early grave. This book struggles to keep its focus on Rogers because of that, straying away into other contemporary pirates and sea battles just to keep things interesting, but all that really serves to do is make Rogers look even more pathetic, because this book about him keeps refusing to be about him. And that's really all there is to say about that.

Owned?: Yes Page count: 182 My summary: Captain Frederick Hoffman was a sailor between 1793 and 1815, riding in position from a Midshipman to a Captain across several ships. This is his memoir of his time sailing, the things he saw in foreign ports, how he grew from the lowest officer rank on ship, and the unpleasant end to his career after two months as a prisoner of war in France. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

This one's a bit more tenuous in its connection to research. The thing I want to write will be set around the Golden Age of Piracy, the 1710s, and Captain Hoffman was active in the late 18th and early 19th century. Still, I want to read primary sources from the Age of Sail in general where I can find them, and there's always the odd tidbit here and there that's relevant or interesting. Captain Hoffman seems reasonably typical for his day and age - pompous, racist, and kind of a windbag. When he depicted the speech of Black people, it was always in eye dialect and stereotypical for how white people of the era perceived Black people. He also described Black people in caricaturised ways. Par for the course for a white man of the era, I suppose, though not exactly fun to read. He had some fun stories to tell though, I liked when he branched out into little pen portraits of his shipmates or more humorous anecdotes about his time at sea. Made the reasonably dry sailing narrative a little more palatable. I don't really have a lot to say about this one, it was exactly what I expected it would be; no more, no less.

Owned?: Yes Page count: 229 My summary: The story of the Caribbean pirates, in the words of the age. Here are extracts from books, newspaper articles, letters, and trial transcripts that describe some of the Caribbean's most notorious pirates, from the actual time that they were active. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Yet another piracy book, I'm afraid. The draw of this one was that it has extracts from contemporary writings about pirates - it's a collection of more primary sources, which is useful for a few reasons. One, if I want to emulate what people of the time were saying about pirates, it's useful to know what was actually being published! Two, it helps me get into the writing style of the time. But more importantly, three, it lets me know the attitudes of the time, how these people were seen and how they were being portrayed. We have characters like Elizabeth Swann from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies who are portrayed as being pirate fangirls in the era that the pirates were active, but that attitude is somewhat anachronistic - we didn't necessarily start romanticising the pirate's life until after this era of piracy was a memory, and it's important to bear that in mind if I want to strive for historical plausibility.

But anyway, this book had a lot of good information. Some of it I'd seen before, in various sources, but that's not exactly a bad thing. I really enjoyed reading what must surely be a piece of creative fiction, the supposed transcripts of conversations preacher Cotton Mather supposedly had with some convicted pirates before they were hanged, in which each of them tearfully confessed all of their sins, came to Jesus, and warned against falling down the same deplorable moral paths that they had trodden. I am sure that all of these conversations definitely happened and that Mather wasn't publishing this to fill his agenda at all. Still, it's fun to see just what was said of pirates at the time. This book isn't groundbreaking by any means, but it's useful! And that's just what I'm looking for.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 282 My summary: Ezri and their siblings don't go back home anymore. On paper, they had the perfect life. Growing up black in a gated community was never going to be easy, but at least they had their big, comfortable home, right? But a house isn't a home when it's trying to kill you, and Ezri and co got out as soon as they could. Now they're back, after their mother and father's deaths. And all kinds of truths are coming home to roost… My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

I've been on a bit of a horror kick lately, huh? Between this, Molka, Spoiled Milk, and The King in Yellow, I've been reading a variety of spooky fiction with various angles on the idea. This is definitively a haunted house story. The whole narrative centres around the house in which protagonist Ezri and their family lived when they were younger; a house that seemed to swallow up children, that killed animals, that moved the kids around in the house and hid them in hard to reach places, that made them sick, that spawned a woman with no face and with which nightmares which the siblings could not love. Part of that is due to their Mama, an overbearing woman who wants perfection from her children - understandably so, given that as the only Black family in their gated community, they feel the pressure to prove themselves to their racist neighbours. But it's still not the best kind of place to grow up in, and when the siblings return to the house as adults to find that their parents are dead, they know what to blame. This was a really interesting horror book, in the vein of what I've come to expect from Solomon, and I enjoyed it a lot! But I will be spoiling it under the cut, so be warned.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 103 My summary: A cursed play. A man set to be heir to greatness. A sculptor who has discovered a mysterious substance which turns everything to marble. A lost traveller meeting a strange woman on the moors. A yellow sign. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

A while ago, for some reason, I had Lovecraft on the mind. It's going to be my spooky season read, after all - I've had a complete collection of Lovecraft stories just sort of sitting on the shelf for a long time, and I thought I'd get around to it this October. Now, eagle eyed readers will notice that this book was not, in fact, written by HP Lovecraft. But it is something that gets retroactively tied in to the Lovecraftian mythos, and was cited by Lovecraft himself as an influence on his work. Why is any of this relevant to this book? Well, it just happened to be conspicuously sitting on a shelf around the same time that I had Lovecraft on the brain, and it's a slim enough volume that I thought it'd be some kind of appetiser, to whet my whistle for October. Besides, it's considered a classic of weird fiction in itself. Why not try it out?

Owned?: Yes Page count: 404 My summary: The Marranos were Jewish people, who when facing expulsion from Spain and Portugal under the Reconquista, decided to convert rather than flee. Some kept remnants of their Jewish faith, practicing the rituals they remembered despite not having contact with any other Jewish people. Not fully Jewish, not fully Christian, the Marranos lived in a strange no-man's-land between the two, the Other within Christian society. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

It's not really hyperbole to say that I've been looking for this book for a long time, without even knowing it. See, this is another research book for the novel I plan to write - and one of the side characters in said novel, set in the early 1700s, is a Spanish man from a Jewish family which, on the surface, converted to Catholicism during the Reconquista, but secretly considers themself Jewish and practices Judaism. The problem I faced was that I had absolutely no idea how people in that situation might act or practice their secret faith. After all, it's not like people secretly practicing an illegal religion meticulously wrote down what they believed and how they were doing it, or anything like that. Because, you know, if the Inquisition found it, that'd be as good as a confession. This book, which I found in a second-hand book shop, makes the case that the Marranos were in a sort of no-man's land - not Jewish, not Catholic, sort of both and neither at the same time. Detached from Jewish traditions which were passed down by word of mouth, but keeping apart from mainstream Catholicism despite the danger that the Inquisition posed to anyone who did so, the Marranos formed a culture of their own, Other to both Catholicism and Judaism.

It's a really interesting history, and this book makes a compelling and meticulous case, covering a lot of ground as it discusses the realities that the Marranos faced, famous Marranos both convicted of practicing Judaism and who made impacts on Catholicism, and everything in between, even going through to modern day people of Marrano descent who still practice the customs and traditions of their ancestors, even while the threat of exposure to the Inquisition is obviously no longer an issue. The historical information is very informative and well-researched. Honestly, it was the sort of information that I have been searching for this whole time, and just stumbled across in a second-hand bookshop, which is neat. Despite its dense nature, it was surprisingly readable, and I didn't really struggle with it at all, like I have with some of the longer research books I've read. So, kudos! An interesting book all round.

Owned?: No, library Page count: 336 My summary: Briarley School For Girls, 1928. A bright, popular girl falls down a stairwell and dies. Emily Locke, Violet's best friend, knows it is no accident. She just needs to prove it. One of the other girls lends her a book on spiritualism, which leads them to a strange incident. Could Violet's spirit be warning of future dangers to the girls? Who was behind her fall? And why is all the food in the pantry rotting? My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Weird horror books! I just love me a weird horror book, and I've been on a bit of a kick lately. This is a relatively new book, which sounded intriguing just on the premise. Mysterious deaths, the shadows of Empire, spiritualism, and a haunting…what's not to love here? And overall, I found it to be a pretty solid novel. There's a creepy, unsettling atmosphere throughout; both the alienness of the upper-class boarding school environment almost one hundred years ago to the modern reader, and the things that are happening in the school which are getting the girls into more and more danger. While I thought there were some aspects of this book which could have been treated a little better, I think that overall it's a spooky story with something to say about Empire, Britishness and British values, and how we treat one another. I really enjoyed it!