I read only four books in October and November, but in December I read a more usual nine and a half.

• The Raven Heir by Stephanie Burgis: I was delighted to discover that the main character is a shapeshifter!

Twelve year old Cordelia lives with her family in a remote castle. When nobles and soldiers arrive, demanding Cordelia’s mother hand over ( Read more... )

I only read half a dozen books during last term, but I finished The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett!

I’m so glad I tried this series again after my unsuccessful attempt to read The Game of Kings in 2015, and that I wasn’t deterred by the devastating ending to Pawn in Frankincense.

• The Ringed Castle: This takes place in the mid 1550s. After ( Read more... )

I finished listening to The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett yesterday. (I haven’t worked out all I want to say about it yet). I wanted to embark on the next book but someone else has borrowed it, so I looked to see what else the library had available.

I got through a few minutes of Veronica Roth’s Chosen Ones, before pressing “pause” and spending ( Read more... )

It’s possible I’ll read something else historical in the remaining ten days of winter. It’s also possible that wintry weather will continue into September. So not necessarily an all-exhaustive round-up.

• Fletchers End (1962) by D.E. Stevenson: The sequel is less focused and not quite as delightful as Bel Lamington, but I still liked it. It ( Read more... )

I have read four novels by D.E. Stevenson, not quite in the order in which they were written, and this was such a lovely use of my time!

• Bel Lamington (1961) (audiobook): This is about a young woman who works in London as a secretary for a shipping firm.

It’s a very gentle sort of story. Bel makes some unexpected new friends, starting with a ( Read more... )

For years now, I have relied on my library getting most of the books I “recommended” through Overdrive. I remember calculating that they hadn’t purchased about a quarter of my recommendations (and for at least some of those, the library instead bought physical copies).

But this year, they have not purchased fourteen of the fifteen ebooks I’ve ( Read more... )

Often I don’t pay a lot of attention to song lyrics. I’m content for a song’s vocals to be just another instrument, a source of melody and emotion, and for the lyrics’ meaning to occur to me slowly over time.

(Which is how I first heard The Weather Station’s “Almost Careless”, oh, years ago, 2016, and l knew key lines. Like What if we get married? ( Read more... )

I have wrestled some more thoughts into written form!

• Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin: This is yet another a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, this time about Muslims living in Canada, but it definitely -- and deftly -- justifies its existence. Once I stopped rolling my eyes at a couple of things Ayesha does as a substitute teacher1, I thought ( Read more... )

Obviously, other times I am.

I have seven other reviews I'm almost finished writing too, but I think I've spent too long at my computer lately and now I've got sore shoulder muscles and a headache.

• Frostgilded: an epilogue by Stephanie Burgis: Very short and sweet, and not really enough to stop me from feeling disappointed that Burgis isn’t ( Read more... )

I read the fourth of The Lymond Chronicles in February and have been procrastinating from reviewing it because this was a lot to process and I wanted to say more than “Well, that was devastating!”

• Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett: In the aftermath of revelations made at the end of The Disorderly Knights, Francis Crawford of Lymond embarks ( Read more... )