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 It feels as though, recently, the balance between acquiring ebooks and acquiring physical books has started to take shape in my house. I seem to acquire both, but distinctions are appearing regarding which books belong where.
I’ve actually physically run out of space for real books. I have four bookcases, two normal-size and two small-size. One of the normal size bookshelves is for books I’ve already read and intend to keep, while the other is for unread books. Both are full. One of the smaller ones is for hardcovers that I’ve read, or ones that I would like to read soon, and the other is for books I’d like to reread in the very near future, or series that I’ve liked a lot and want to see together all the time. All full. And I do keep buying books, when I get the opportunity. Having to move all of them, though, is a prospect that worries me, because it was difficult enough moving just the books I had a year and a half ago, and I know that when we do move again, which won’t be in the terribly distant future, all those books will present a problem.
This predicament has led to me buying more ebooks. If I want a book, and I’m not sure it’s a keeper, I tend to add the ebook to my wishlist, rather than the physical book. This is in part convenience, because I have made a rule for myself, which is that I do not buy physical books online, I only buy them in the store. I do buy ebooks online, obviously, as I have a Kindle, and I do buy US imports online, since I have no easy other way to get them, but I buy real, physical books in a real, physical store, because I want that store to stay there and buying cheap books from Amazon is not the way to accomplish that.
Anyway, back to my original point; in certain genres especially, I’m leaning towards ebooks quite heavily. Urban fantasy, for instance; the series take up space and my bookstore doesn’t tend to stock all of them at once. Romance, as well, because most of the ones I want are imports that aren’t on the shelves here anyway, and because I very rarely read them twice. Big books that are only available in hardcover? Ebook, to spare both my hands and unfortunately my wallet. This does lead to the interesting situation where I buy books twice, one ebook and one real book, because I like it so much I want to own it.
Leaning towards ebooks in any sense makes me feel vaguely uncomfortable, like I’m cheating on my masses of unread paper books. And reading an ebook doesn’t really confer the same satisfaction as taking a book off the shelves to read, so I actually find myself leaning towards reading physical books more often, where I can see a pile (temporarily) diminishing, even as I become more comfortable actually acquiring more ebooks. It’s a very strange situation that I can only imagine is going to evolve further.
Have you noticed a shift in your own preferences towards ebooks? Or away from them? Or do you still feel the same way you did when they first emerged onto the market? Let me know your thoughts!
Hello friends! October sped by in a flash, it seems; a week away and then a weekend away towards the end of the month means that we’re nearly halfway through November and I’m still not sure where the time went.
In October I had the privilege of going to Barcelona, Spain for work. While I did spend most of my time at the office, working and learning, there were palm trees outside to remind us that we were in fact in Spain.
We also were fortunate enough to have an evening free to explore. One of my favorite sights was the city’s second cathedral; not the famous La Sagrada Familia, still unfinished, but instead the medieval one towards the center of the city. Awash with golden light, with thirteen white geese in the cloisters to represent the saint to whom the church is dedicated, I found it to be an absolutely magical place.
Inside, I lit a candle for my younger brother, who would have been 25 last Friday and who passed away seven years ago this coming December. It just felt right.
In reading news, I finished ten books in October. I’ve discovered a trend in my reading now where I finish books in clusters on weekends and don’t really read that much in the week. Just glad I’m still in double digits!
Fiction
Non-fiction
- Imagine, Jonah Lehrer
- The Origins of Sex, Faramerz Dabhoiwala
Once again, the benefits of reading much less than I used to – I’m actually not that far behind on reviews! I still have a few from September (eek) but overall, I’m pleased.
Favorite of the Month
Easy choice this month, I loved this book to bits. If you haven’t read it yet, you should!
Trust me to find some history while everyone else is enjoying a glass of Scotch whisky! These are the oldest bottles of whisky in the collection in the Scotch Whisky Experience, Edinburgh.
I haven’t vanished – just been travelling and then ill over the past few weekends. I’ll be back next week!
Good morning Saloners! I come to you this morning a bit disappointed that I haven’t been able to join in the Read-a-thon this time around. I love sitting down with a stack of books and spending an entire day doing very little but reading them. And with my glacial reading pace at the moment, I really could have done with that boost for my totals. We have a houseguest, though, and I don’t plan to ignore her in favor of books, so no participation for me this time around.
This does mean, however, that we have an excuse to go to some of my favorite historic places since she’s never been to them. My husband has finally finished an exam he’s been studying for over the last two and a half weeks, and on weekends for about a month, so our weekends are ours again. Yesterday, we went to Fountains Abbey, which isn’t all that far away from where I live. It was a fairly chilly day, as we’re heading deeper into autumn, and so we didn’t have to contend with the crowds that my husband and I did on our last, warmer visit.
 Might be where the monks stored their food but it’s certainly beautiful now.  The abbey itself  Down the aisle of the church. Fountains Abbey is secluded in a valley and, after the Dissolution of Monasteries by everyone’s favorite Henry VIII, became part of an aristocratic estate which is now all owned by the National Trust. As a result, it still feels calm and peaceful, with a river trickling nearby and impressive later water gardens just past the abbey. Lovely spot on a sunny day, even a chilly one like yesterday.
In reading news, I only managed to finish one book this week, Fate’s Edge by Ilona Andrews. I have made a significant dent in Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow by Juliet Grey though, and you should expect a review of both this week.
Have a great week, everyone, and I hope you’re all reading wonderful books and enjoying the change in seasons!
It’s been all over the news in the last few weeks in the UK – archaeologists digging in Leicester may well have found Richard III. Even if it wasn’t across the internet, it’s now been covered by the magazines I read.
When a group of archaeologists from the University of Leicester began digging in a car park in a search for the Franciscan Priory where Richard was supposedly buried, I admit I was sceptical. Archaeology is fantastic and reveals tons of information that informs our understanding of the past, but searching for one person whose burial site has long been lost? I thought they were foolish to publicize the fact that they were actively looking for the king who has been the source of so much speculation because it was so unlikely that they’d find him. Yet here we are, with the archaeologists having found a skeleton that has clear evidence of unhealed battle wounds and one shoulder higher than the other, buried in the highest status position in the church and with evidence of a hurried burial without a coffin. With the dig covered in at least two of the bigger magazines this month, it’s a subject that has attracted a huge amount of attention:
I’m fascinated by this in a sort of morbid way. Like probably most others who study history, I like to visit the mortal remains of the people that I find most interesting. Plenty of them have been lost, and Richard III has always been one of those figures. Finding his bones, if the DNA analysis proves that they are his, changes a few things about history the way we’ve understood it. We may now discover if his shoulder was actually higher on one side and how the end of the battle went, but we’re still not going to know whether or not he killed the famed princes in the tower. Yet this particular king has caught public attention for hundreds of years, both as a popular villain and as a king that some feel deserves a break. He has a society devoted to him and many many works of history and fiction attempting to do one of the two.
I waver between these two attitudes. Understanding the context around the history makes the question even harder to answer, although I tend to lean towards the fact that they were murdered under his watch these days. Will that stop me from visiting his grave, if this is him and when they finally decide where he will lie (in York, as he possibly wished, or in Leicester, where he was found) after all these years? No, I don’t think so. If anything, it’s incredibly interesting to me to watch this unfold, as it will inevitably become part of Richard III’s history, more than five hundred years after his death, even if it isn’t him. It is a tiny part that I actually get to live through, and these reminders that history happens all around us, all the time, are always welcome.
Have you heard about this potential discovery? What are your thoughts?
This past week, we had a flood here in York. One of the most popular pictures going around on Facebook was Clifford’s Tower, our last particularly visible remnant of York’s two castles, surrounded with water. Here’s one of them, which was shared by English Heritage earlier this week:
 photo from English Heritage York floods frequently as a result of being in a valley and situated in between two rivers, the Fosse and the Ouse. In short, the reason for the town’s location and, in the past, prosperity, results in the flood which threaten it. usually it’s the Ouse that floods. Usually the floods don’t get far enough to do much other than overflow the river’s banks and get in the racecourse and the gardens, but this one was worse than usual. We were fortunately unaffected, although some drains overflowed just two streets away from ours and did get into people’s houses and a local pub’s cellar, but it served as a stark reminder that we’re never too far from Mother Nature’s wrath, even in a country which doesn’t suffer from the natural phenomenons that plague so many others. The flood is now receding, and I’m hoping the recovery for the people and livelihoods harmed by it is smooth and quick.
In reading news, I’ve spent most of the week buried in Blackout by Mira Grant. It’s been strange to read this straight after reading Ashes of Honor, which is written by the same author under her real name. The books have very different feels to them, except for a few things, one of which is the way both main characters absolutely crave a particular caffeinated drink. For one, it’s coffee, for the other, it’s Coke – and I don’t really remember reading too many main characters with such obvious addictions. Definitely curious, but both are fantastic books and well worth your time.
I’m now about halfway through Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor and hoping to finish today to round off this month’s reading. Can’t believe, as usual, that tomorrow is October, and we are well and truly into fall, but at least this season is perfect for curling up under a blanket with a great book.
How was your week? Anything exciting coming up for you in October?
Good morning everyone. I’m devoting this morning to catching up – on blogging, on fellow blog posts, on commenting. This past week was BBAW and it seemed like such a fantastic week. I only had a chance to post once, but I did have an opportunity to look around your blogs and leave comments on some posts, which I don’t do nearly often enough. I loved reading in particular about books that everyone loved, and the BBAW interview swap, both of which I missed. And, of course, thank you to everyone for your support on my own post. I am so grateful to have you all still interested and reading on a regular basis.
This week has been fairly busy for me, with only two evenings free and one of those spent gaming, the other spent cleaning (exciting, I know). We’ve not ventured anywhere particularly exciting this weekend, either, as my husband has an exam coming up and has been more diligent about studying. It’s also looking very rainy today, so less than ideal for a walk outdoors. I’d hoped for one last weekend spent camping, but I don’t think it’s going to happen this year.
Fortunately, what I do have to look forward to is a trip to Edinburgh in November for the first time; we’re going for a long weekend away and going to see our very first Final Fantasy concert. I’m also going to Barcelona for a week for work in October and hoping to actually see the city at some point, so the rest of the year isn’t all going to be stuck at home. And when my own city is full of beautiful history, I can’t complain all that much.
 York Minster On the reading front, I progressed incredibly slowly through 1356 by Bernard Cornwell this week, which was not the book’s fault; I’ve finished and I’m still pondering what to read next. I have Fledgling by Octavia Butler coming for the upcoming A Diverse Universe blog tour and I’m going to be reading Blackout by Mira Grant very soon as well. Speaking of Mira Grant / Seanan McGuire, I have Friday off work and I’m actually hoping to have an October Daye read-a-thon so I can get to Ashes of Honor, but I can’t decide if I’m patient enough yet to read five books before I get to the latest one. Lots of fantasy and science fiction, just the way I like it these days.
Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead – let me know what you’re looking forward to!
Seems like summer – at least as the UK experiences it – has finally arrived in the beginning of September! We’ve spent the last two weekends exploring the area around a town in the North York Moors called Goathland.
This is a fantastic little town for walking with plenty to see – it has a waterfall called Mallyan Spout:
Lots of lovely paths across the moor, which is just coming out of the deep purple heather season:
And a Roman / no one actually knows but it’s certainly old road:
It also has its fair share of sheep, pubs, and other walkers, but I didn’t take any pictures of those. Next time! Hoping the weather holds until next weekend at least so we can continue to enjoy the countryside – it’s rained so much this summer that this is our first real chance.
I did fit in some reading yesterday, finished Small Favour by Jim Butcher and The Hidden Goddess by M.K. Hobson. I’ve now moved on to 1356 by Bernard Cornwell, which is going to be released later this month and so far promises to be just as good as his previous books. I’ll be reviewing that in a couple of weeks’ time.
This week, I’m anticipating BBAW and hoping to participate in a few of the post topics. I’ve always enjoyed this week, and I’m definitely looking forward to catching up and finding some new bloggers to follow.
Have a great week everyone!
It has started feeling decidedly like autumn in the UK already, which has depressed me to a ridiculous degree; I truly feel as though we haven’t had summer this year. The temperature has stayed very low and the rain we’ve had (the most since 1912) has certainly made it gloomy. I seem to require a higher temperature to be comfortably warm than most Brits, probably because my American skin is used to hot summer weather, so even when my husband and friends noted that it was a bit warmer, I just never really got there. Summers aren’t always like this here, fortunately, so I’m already hoping for next year.
The colder weather does seem to have inspired me to read more books, though. I’m still reading at a slower pace than I have in the past, but I was delighted to finish 12 books this month (although I am including a novella in that figure). Of the ones that I intend to review, I’ve actually done a fair job, too, with 3 more reviews coming next week. I’m attributing the reviews to last week’s bank holiday, but clearly a single three-day weekend gives me enough time to get back into the swing of reviewing. Yay!
Here’s what I read:
- The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin
- The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, Sinclair McKay
- The Midwife of Venice, Roberta Rich
- The Last Caesar, Henry Venmore-Roland
- White Night, Jim Butcher
- Secret Desires of a Gentleman, Laura Lee Guhrke
- Tides of War, Stella Tillyard
- Gunmetal Magic, Ilona Andrews
- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
- Map of a Nation, Rachel Hewitt
- Winter’s Passage, Julie Kagawa
- The Dirty Streets of Heaven, Tad Williams
Favourite of the Month
 
Totally different books, both awesome in their own completely different ways. I already reviewed Harold Fry. Gunmetal Magic is going to be reviewed this week. Nothing like a new Ilona Andrews book to make my reading world brighter.
What’s coming in September
This should give you a good idea of what I’ll be reading this September:
This is my immediate TBR pile, which alternates between review books (that’s a review book up top) and my own books that I’d like to read next. Blackout is definitely getting read this month; I’ll probably start this week, in fact. I’m also planning to read 1356 by Bernard Cornwell, and will be featuring an excerpt from the book ahead of its pub date in the UK this month. I’m excited; I really enjoy all of Cornwell’s books, and I don’t think this is going to be an exception.
Finally, I’m also participating in Aarti’s A More Diverse Universe blog tour, which involves lots of bloggers reading speculative fiction books by authors of color. This is a fantastic project; I was so dismayed to discover that there are so few speculative fiction books actually written by authors of color in comparison to how many there are and that I’ve personally read. I need to make more of an effort.
As for what else I have planned this month – I’ve just ordered some books to start refreshing my Russian. Working amongst so many people who speak multiple languages has made me both jealous and irritated that I never kept up the one language I did study intensively (for six and a half years). I do also hope to go to Russia in the next couple of years, so it’s a good time to start trying to refresh my memory and get back into it.
What does September have in store for you?
I discovered a link today via Lady Business of this fall’s most exciting science fiction and fantasy releases which reminded me just how many books I have to look forward to this fall and early winter in two of my favorite genres. We’re really spoiled for choice this year and there are a number of books I just cannot wait to read.
I’m going to start by telling you about the books from authors I already love, which I will definitely purchase; I do intend to try some new ones, but here are my guaranteed reads this fall:
 Ashes of Honor, by Seanan McGuire – this one isn’t actually at the link above, although I’ve seen it on others; it’s the sixth October Daye book. Seanan McGuire has become one of my favorite authors for this series and others. I wrote at length on how much I simply adore this series for being epic, heart-breaking, and amazing, and I can’t believe the next book is actually out a week from Tuesday, although Amazon is predicting I will have to wait a little bit longer. I preordered it in April as soon as they released the cover and have been stamping my feet in impatience ever since.
The only question now is whether I should attempt a re-read of the entire series before this one arrives. If I do decide to, it will be next weekend, and I’m sure you will hear about it. I’d never recommend you start with this one, but if you’re craving urban fantasy, Rosemary and Rue is calling your name.
 Next up, The Dirty Streets of Heaven, by Tad Williams. An epic fantasy author goes urban fantasy and, by all accounts already, does a fantastic job of it. I actually already have this book for review (thank you, Amazon Vine) because I have read and really enjoyed some of that epic fantasy in the past. As far as I recall, it didn’t really break the stereotype of farmboy saves the world, but when an author does stereotypes well, you’re reminded why they exist in the first place. That’s exactly what Tad Williams did there, and is another reason I’m excited to read this book. It’s in my “immediate TBR” pile, so you’ll be hearing about it from me very soon. I haven’t even read the summary, so I have no idea who Bobby Dollar is, but that’s okay; I’m ready for Williams to introduce me to this new world his way.
 Dark Currents by Jacqueline Carey, another new urban fantasy, is a completely obvious must-read for me. I adored her original Kushiel trilogy when I first got into epic fantasy, and I’ve not quite found another match for something that so very brilliantly evoked a new world and mythology, while creating absolutely fantastic characters, a perfectly epic saga, and an incredible love story. Even Carey’s own later novels haven’t quite matched it, but I simply love the way she writes and haven’t failed to like a single one of her books. I may have fallen behind with her epic fantasy (although I still own it all) and haven’t read Saints Astray yet, but that hasn’t stopped me craving this book too (also despite the cover, which I do not like).
This is another book I know virtually nothing about as it stands, but as I’ve mentioned, I like new releases that way.
 Finally, for the purposes of this list, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold is one book I will definitely be reading. I fell in love with the Vorkosigan saga recently and have been recommending it up and down to anyone I know who actually reads books, so resisting this book is an impossible feat. I’ve actually still not read Cryoburn because it’s the last and it hasn’t had the world’s greatest reviews, but having this book on the horizon makes me very excited.
I’ll still say, even if you think you don’t like science fiction, give Young Miles a try. You might be surprised.
This is only a short list, but my craving for urban fantasy here is really obvious. I’m glad the public craving for it seems to match my own, mainly because I generally find these books to be satisfying in so many different ways, and they’re much faster reading than epics. I still love epics, but I no longer have the time to sink into a huge series. I love all of the different worlds; though they’re usually based in cities in our world, the differences between them and the varying levels of darkness are fantastic. I love the fact that they can feel epic in a shorter space of time, that the main characters are often women who can kick butt and have feelings at the same time, and that they create long-lasting relationships between characters that really matter.
What new releases are you looking forward to this fall? Is there anything on the list above that’s new to me I simply must try?
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