We went over to Croydon to The Ludoquist games cafe yesterday to see our friends who live nearby - and played two games that were new to me.

Ark Nova:

This seems to be one of the current 'OMG - it's amazing' games around at the moment and we were very lucky to have our friend Kate to set it all up, introduce us to it and explain the rules. That ( Read more... )

I am revisiting the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal, listening to the first three books again, in anticipation of the long-awaited Martian Contingent finally arriving in March!

I'd forgotten just how bleak a lot of The Calculating Stars is - the opening especially, but also pretty much all the way through. I mean, sure - it starts ( Read more... )

I really don't know what to make of Three Daughter's of Eve by Elif Shafak.

From the blurb on the back, it seemed designed to appeal to me - split narrative about a Turkish woman coming to terms with events of her university years in Oxford...

But I really struggled with it all the way through.

I didn't much like Peri, especially in the 'present ( Read more... )

Of Blood and Bone is Book Two in the Chronicles of the One series by Nora Roberts, whose books I have been very much enjoying the last couple of years.

And this was a solid entry into the canon - though it did fall foul of some 'middle book of a trilogy' issues. It mostly follows Fallon Swift (who is The One, destined to bring balance back to the ( Read more... )

Ruin's Wake by Patrick Edwards was in a mystery book box I got as a Christmas present - and I had quite a few issues with it.

It's a sci-fi about a post-apocalyptic world that has devolved into a totalitarian dictatorship, where the world at large knows very little about pre-Ruin history and a lot of the technology of the past has been lost.

We ( Read more... )

The Cloisters by Katy Hays is basically The Secret History reskinned - and not particularly well.

It follows Ann, a small-town girl from Washington state, who starts a summer job at a small, prestigious New York museum and ends up embroiled in esoteric practices, drug-taking and murder.

I started out quite enjoying it - the setup is good and Ann ( Read more... )

Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi is a series of comics aimed at a middle grade audience, following Emily and Navin on their adventures through a portal to another world. They meet a ton of great characters (lots of awesome robots) and join forces with an vast array of really interesting people from different factions to combat an existential shadow threat ( Read more... )

I keep a wish list of books, from which I choose 12 every year and ask my parents to buy me a selection of those for my birthday and for Christmas. So, those 12 are the ones I'm most excited to read out of all the books I add to my wish list throughout the year.

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods was one of my selection in 2024 and I got it for ( Read more... )

I recently reread Project Hail Mary for both my podcast and family book club.

Podcast episodes - https://stillloveit.libsyn.com/episode-91-rrr-project-hail-mary

Transcript of podcast - https:// ( Read more... )

Yesterday, we played Gamer Over! which is a murder mystery in a box - and it was terrible! It had the usual format of each player getting an assigned character with background, various secrets, information about connection to the victim, and whether or not they were the murderer. The game was then structured around clues being given out and ( Read more... )