Of all the 150 books that I have read in 2025, these are the ones that had covers that I liked the most. They are in no particular order and my favourite is at the bottom.
Author: Paul (Page 1 of 183)
A recap of what I set out to do last year and a summary of how badly it went…
Blogging
As I said last year, I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than just a book blogger. I have never had a huge following on social media, there are some out there who have 100K followers which is just staggering. I tend to have a niche reading interest, which may reflect my much lower following too. It has changed since I started, even what I thought were popular bloggers seems to have slipped from the limelight. Probably because everyone seems to be chasing the latest trends. I have never been that fashionable so I will keep doing what I am doing.
Still here and still blogging. I have found a better routine for note taking for review books that seems to be working well. Just need to work on the backlog. How do people out there deal with unsolicited books? Read and review or pass on if not interested?
Books
Review Books
I am forever grateful for every single review copy that I receive. I am making a concerted plan to work through all of the review books that I have been sent and much reducing the number that I request still further. That said, I would be delighted to receive some of the books that were on my anticipated list… However, it is not a deal breaker, books that I really want to read I can get from the library or buy if necessary. I am hoping to read and review at least 60 books next year from that list.
I did manage to read 32 review books over the course of 2025. This was much less than I had been aiming for mostly because of the next category.
My Own Books
I have been cataloguing the books that I have in the past few months, and have found numerous duplicates. Some I am keeping for one reason or another and I have passed on quite a lot so far. There are a few more to go, so keep an eye on my social media channels. The plan is to buy fewer books (HA!!) and I have been keeping a tally of book that came in and left the house for good. I can share those figures in my 2024 review, they are quite scary!
I did manage to read 59 of my own books that had been anguishing on shelves for far too long over the course of 2025. Plus there were four that I had borrowed (from my daughter) that I read for the bookclub!
Library Books
I have got further down on the number of library books that I have out on both cars and have just under one shelf now. There is going to be a bit of a bump as the books I have reserved a while back finally turn up but I am aiming to get it to around 30 fairly soon.
I did manage to read 55 library books over the course of 2025. This was way more that I was intending to do, and was caused by a lot of reservations that then other had reserved!
Reading Plans
I am fairly happy with the mix of books that I am reading at the moment. I feel that I got the balance right between travel writing and natural history books last year, but as these make up the bulk of my collection, then I want to read more of them. I also want to read more science fiction and fiction, because, hey, why not? I also have some other intentions detailed below, that whilst not set in stone, I would like to achieve.
This kind of worked, and kind of didn’t as the need to read some other books took over! Still the same plan for this year though
Themed Reads
This was an idea that I had a little while back, to pick a theme each month and read three or four books on that chosen subject from my gargantuan TBR. So next year I am going to do it. Here are the themes that I have picked for 2025.
Architecture
Art
Business / Economics
Environment
Food & Drink
History
Language
London
Maths
Memoir
Venice
Walking
This was based on an ide to read about a particular subject with a wider context. I did manged two books from the three that I wanted to some months and other months failed miserably! Not intending on doing it this year, but will probably do it in 2027
Female Authors
I am going to keep my target of reading women authors at 40% for 2025.
I made 36%, or 54 female authors this year. A little disappointed with this.
Ethnic Minority Authors
I had my target set to 12 last year and I am going to set the same again for 2024. Slowly more ethnic minority authors are being commissioned in the genres that I like reading, but it is sadly too few still.
I ended up reading 15 which I am really pleased about
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Aiming again to average at least one a month for this. Science fiction is good for expanding the mind and as Terry Pratchett says: Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
I ended up reading 14 Sci-Fi and fantasy over the year.
Fiction
I don’t read or buy a huge amount of fiction, but I do have a lot around that I have acquired or been sent. This year I am going to make an effort to read at least one fiction book a month. I probably won’t review them, but it depends on the book.
I ended up reading 13 fiction books over the year.
Poetry
I am aiming to read one poetry book a month this year again.
Succeeded in this intention!
Literary Awards
Last year I was a bit better at reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes (as usual). I did manage to read some from the minor prizes too, but still have a long list of books that I haven’t quite got to read yet… The same list of prizes from last year:
Wainwright
Stanford
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke
I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:
The Republic Of Consciousness Prize
Rathbones Folio Prize
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Jhalak Prize
The Portico Prize
I did read a few of the books that appeared on these prizes, but as ever, not as many as I hoped. Aiming to read the Stanford’s 2026 list this year as I actually had all the books!
Challenges
I have concluded that challenges are great but they can distract me from reading the backlog that I have. I am going to stick to the 20 books of summer as I use that to clear a particular genre. I read fiction in 2024 and I am aiming to read science fiction for 2025.
The World From My Armchair Challenge
My ongoing challenge is to read a travel book set in or that passes through every country, sea and ocean in the world. I did slightly better at this in 2024 as I read four books for the challenge. I have twelve lined up for this and there will be an update on a blog post sometime in the first part of the year.
Had meant to read 12 but only read three! Three! There is this year…
20 Books of Summer
This is run by the blogger, Cathy of 746 books. I normally sign up to read 20 books and will do so again this summer. I did manage to read all 20 books this year too, but finished the last well into autumn!
I read about ten by end of the year. But they were big chunky sci fi books so…
Other Bookish Stuff
Cataloguing Books
I am still cataloguing books! I have completed all nine that were in the original post, and have added in two more with another about to be filled soon. I have 2610 according to my spreadsheet and 312 of those are signed. According to the list I have read 882 and not read 1727! I thought I had read more of them than that!!! The spreadsheet is set up with a shelf number so I can find books when I need them!
This is ongoing. I am not trying to find some of the books that I thought that I had, but may well have been passed on. The search continues.
Totals now stand at
Total 2475
Read 812
Unread 1662
Spreadsheets
I wrote about this back in 2023 here. I have now made further refinements and will write another post about these changes early next year. (It was going to be this year, and I have the notes to type up, but not done it yet). My main master sheet works so much better than before!
This is an ongoing irritative process and I am still tweaking them as I go along.
Bookshelves
I wrote a blog post showing all my shelves here. I have drawn up a plan for what genre of books that I want on what shelf and still have not sorted it out! There are gaps on the shelves that I need to start shuffling around based on the plan. Let me know if you want to see more of my bookshelves in a blog post.
Not really got to this as yet. If we ever move this will get sorted properly (plus I need to clear another 400 books or so…)
Planning Matrix
To try and get a grip on what books I want to read and when I have started to do things on what I call a Planning Matrix. Yes, it’s another spreadsheet and it is based on the set-up that I have developed, but uses a grid to collate what categories a particular book fits. I am finding it quite useful so far. If you want to hear more about it, let me know and I will include it in the spreadsheet post next year.
On its fourth version at the moment. I keep thinking I am going to have to change to a database at some point…
I like doing these as it gives me time to reflect on what I have and (mostly) haven’t achieved over the past twelve months. I can see what is working and what isn’t. It is often why certain things stay the same if you look back at previous years’ intentions.
I call them intentions as they are not hard and fast rules to stick by, but rather a framework of reading and enjoying it, rather than obsessively trying to reach often unachievable targets. I have reduced the number of books I read last year and will be sticking to the same target of 150. I had regularly read at least 190 a year from 2013 to 2023, and it had become a bit of a bind. Whereas reading 150 is much more manageable. And less stressful.
My rule of thumb is: Read whatever takes your interest, don’t be told what to read. If you have been recommended something and don’t like it, then stop. Make your own reading journey. Not everyone can like the same book, and as strange as it sounds, everyone reads a slightly different book!
Blogging
As I have said many times in the past, I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than strictly a book blogger. I tend to have pretty niche reading interests, which may reflect my much lower following, too. I have never been that fashionable, so I will keep doing what I am doing.
Review Books
I am forever grateful for every single review copy that I receive. I am making a concerted plan to work through all of the review books that I have been sent and much reducing the number that I request still further. That said, I would be delighted to receive some of the books that were on my anticipated list (here). However, it is not a deal breaker, books that I really want to read I can get from the library or buy if necessary. I am hoping to read and review at least 60 books next year from my spreadsheet!
My Own Books
I am still adding in detail to the catalogue of books that I own and this will carry on in the coming year. We had put our house on the market back in September with the intention of moving to a slightly smaller property, which would be more accessible for my daughter. It didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, so I will try again next year. This meant that I had to get rid of a lot of books, and this will continue as, if I am honest, it had got slightly out of hand… The intention is to get nearer to 2000 books, but we’ll see!
I started in 2024, detailing the number of books that came into the house and the number that left. The intention was that the outgoing number should be higher than the incoming. Mostly this worked, and I will be continuing this habit in 2026. For 2025 the numbers were this:
Total In:
Total Out:
Library Books
I have reduced the number of library books that I have out on both cards and have got the number down to 30 now. I am intending on lowering this to around 10 per card in 2026. I am not going to stop using the library, they are essential for communities and having a space that anyone can use without having to pay any money, and by continuing to use them they stay open. Oh, and the author gets paid a little every time you borrow a book of theirs. A win-win as far as I am concerned.
Reading Plans
I am fairly happy with the mix of books that I am reading at the moment. I feel that I got the balance right between travel writing and natural history books last year, but as these make up the bulk of my collection, I want to read more of them. I also have some other intentions detailed below, that, whilst not set in stone, I would like to achieve.
Female Authors
I am going to keep my target of reading women authors at 40% for 2026.
Ethnic Minority Authors
I had my target set to 12 last year, and I am going to set the same again for 2026. Slowly more ethnic minority authors are being commissioned in the genres that I like reading, but it is sadly still too few.
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Aiming to read twelve books over the course of the year. Science fiction is good for expanding the mind and as Terry Pratchett says: Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
Fiction
I don’t read or buy a huge amount of fiction, but I do have a lot around that I have acquired or been sent. I have a pile of the Tales of The Weird Fiction to read so those will count for this.
Poetry
I am aiming to read one poetry book a month this year again.
Literary Awards
Last year I didn’t so well reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes, so would like to get back to that if I can. A reminder of some of my favourite prizes:
Stanford
Wainwright
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke
I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:
The Republic Of Consciousness Prize
Rathbones Folio Prize
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Jhalak Prize
The Portico Prize
Challenges
I have concluded that challenges are great but they can distract me from reading the backlog that I have. So I only take part is these two at the moment. One of my own and one hosted by other bloggers.
The World From My Armchair Challenge
My ongoing challenge is to read a travel book set in, or that passes through every country, sea and ocean in the world. (See post here).
I had twelve books lined up to read and read a grand total of three. Three!! I just got carried away reading other things. There will be an update on a blog post sometime in the first part of the year (promised it last year and didn’t do it – sorry). I have even worked out how to do maps in Excel to add a graphic element to this.
20 Books of Summer
This used to be run by Cathy of 746 books, but she has passed the responsibility on to Annabel at AnnaBookBel ( ) and Emma at Words and Peace. I normally sign up to read 20 books and will do so again this summer. I didn’t manage to read all the 20 books in 2025. Ho Huum. I am going to stick to the 20 Books of Summer as I use that to clear a particular genre. I read fiction in 2024 and science fiction in 2025. Haven’t thought about the plan for 2026 yet.
Other Bookish Stuff
Cataloguing Books
I am still cataloguing books and have a small number to locate that are in the odd pile that I haven’t got too. The total number of books peaked at about 2700 and am now around 2400. Still lots more to pass on or sell, and this could take some time…
Spreadsheets
I wrote about this back in 2023 here. I drafted a post and even typed it up and never published it! Partly because life got in the way a bit, but also because I had some further ideas that I wanted to develop and am still doing that little by little. My main master sheet works so much better than before!
Bookshelves
I wrote a blog post showing all my shelves here. I had intended on redoing this, then we had the idea to move, and I thought that would be a good time to redo it. Both things never happened…
Planning Matrix
This got developed a little bit further, and I have some other ideas that I want to work on to see if that will improve what I want I have in mind, but it is nudging towards a database rather than a spreadsheet. Not sure I have the time to do that at the moment though!
Literary Festivals
I am intending on going to the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival and the Shaftesbury Reading The Land festival this year. And maybe some others, as I now don’t have holiday restrictions in my current job. Maybe I’ll see you there?
What aims or intentions do you have for next year? Let me know in the comments below or post a link to your post on your blog.
December was a slower month for reading, which works as I had a lot of other things on. I ended up finishing eight books and then made a start on some chunky books to finish in January. I finished the daily read books too, I don’t mind reading these, and I am not intending to read any books like these for 2026. I have got into the habit of reading a week’s worth of entries on a Sunday, and that works fine for me.
Ended up getting a small pile of review books too ( thanks, Helen) that I will slot into the reading plan over the next couple of months. Anyway, here they all are:
Books Read
We Are All Adrift – David Banning & Iain Sharpe – 4 – Stars
The Accidental Garden: Gardens, Wilderness And The Space In Between – Richard Mabey – 4 – Stars
Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar Hardcover – Nick Garbutt – 4 – Stars
A Tree A Day – Amy-Jane Beer – 4 – Stars
An Insect a Day: Bees, Bugs, And Pollinators For Every Day Of The Year – Dominic Couzens & Gail Ashton – 4 – Stars
Poetry on the Buses – Valerie Belsey & Candy Neubert (Ed) – 3 – Stars
Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchaikovsky – 4.5 – Stars
Book(s) Of The Month
Nature Needs You: The Fight To Save Our Swifts – Hannah Bourne- Taylor – 5 – Stars
Top Genres
Travel – 19
Fiction – 13
Natural History – 13
Science Fiction – 12
Poetry – 12
Top Publishers
Faber & Faber – 7
Bloomsbury – 6
Penguin – 6
Simon & Schuster – 6
Picador – 4
Review Copies Received
Tea and Grit: A Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road – Helen Watson
Bird of Ill Omen: The Gothic Tales of Catherine Crowe – Catherine Crowe & Ruth Heholt (Ed)
Possessed: A Lost Novel of the Occult – Rosalie Synton & Edward Synton
Trees Ancient and Modern: Woodland Cultures and Conservation – Charles Watkins
The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination – Michaela Vieser And Isaac Yuen
The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages – Sara J. Charles
Readers for Life: How Reading and Listening in Childhood Shapes Us – Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhönen (Ed)
Library Books Checked Out
Three Rivers: The Extraordinary Waterways That Made Europe – Robert Winder
Make Time: How To Focus On What Matters Every Day – Jake Knapp, & John Zeratsky
The Starling: A Biography – Stephen Moss
Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History – Tharik Hussain
Books Bought (Or Sent by Friends)
As I have said elsewhere, I am trying to buy fewer books. So I will give totals of l the number of books that enter my house and those that leave permanently. These are the figures for this month:
Books in: 25 I kept these below:
Heart of the Country – James Ravilious & Robin Ravilious
False Calm – Maria Sonia Cristoff
Wild Air: In Search Of Birdsong – James Macdonald Lockhart
Where Are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay?: How Traditions From the Past Can Shape Our Future – Robert Ashton
Ley Lines of Wessex – Roger Crisp
Tea and Grit: A Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road – Helen Watson
Bird of Ill Omen: The Gothic Tales of Catherine Crowe – Catherine Crowe & Ruth Heholt (Ed)
Possessed: A Lost Novel of the Occult – Rosalie Synton & Edward Synton
Voices Of The Old Sea – Norman Lewis
Shaking Hands With Death – Terry Pratchett
Books out: 24 (The books leaving the house were sold, returned to the library or passed on to friends or charity. I am aiming for this number to be higher than the one above!!!).
So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
Was I correct in thinking that 2025 passed after about 8 months? Or is it that I am getting much older and therefore time speeds up? Answers to the usual address!
I had intended to start off with a shorter monthly TBR, but I haven’t updated my template yet (It is still on the to-do list…) so this month’s is equally long as ever. And here they all are:
Finishing off from 2025
The Cruel Stars – John Birmingham
The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History – Lea Ypi
The Owl Service – Alan Garner
A Butterfly Journey: Maria Sibylla Merian Artist and Scientist – Boris Friedewald & Stephan von Pohl (Tr)
Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain – Pen Vogler
Stanfords Shortlist
False Calm – Maria Sonia Cristoff
Review
Warrior: The Biography of a Man with No Name – Edoardo Albert with Paul Gething
The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination – Michaela Vieser And Isaac Yuen
Tea and Grit: A Bicycle Journey along the Silk Road – Helen Watson
Small Earthquakes: A Journey Through Lost British History In South America – Shafik Meghji
21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari
Your Journey Your Way: The Recovery Guide to Mental Health – Horatio Clare
Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides – Tom Chesshyre
Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird – Katy Soar (Ed)
Little Ruins – Manni Coe
Hafren: The Wisdom of the River Severn – Sarah Siân Chave
Books I’m Clearing
Russians Among Us – Gordon Corera
Philip K. Dick: In His Own Words – Philip K. Dick & Gregg Rickman
Chris Hoy: The Autobiography – Chris Hoy
On the Road Bike: The Search for a Nation’s Cycling Soul – Ned Boulting
WFMAC
The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country – Helen Russell
Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon – Richard Starks
Library Books
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future – David Wallace-Wells
Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces – Laurie Winkless
The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers – Bobby Seagull
Here Comes the Fun: A Year of Making Merry – Ben Aiken
Poetry
Meridian – Nancy Gaffield
Bookclub
The Ghosts of Merry Hall – Heather Davey
#20BooksOfSummer (Still going…)
Sunfall – Jim Al-Khalili
Revenger – Alastair Reynolds
Shadow Captain – Alastair Reynolds
So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
3 out of 5 stars
The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
At the age of ten, Mia Corvere witnesses her first execution. It is a moment that will change her life and her destiny forever. The desire to have retribution against those who slighted her family burns fiercely within her.
To do so she must embrace that fury and become a weapon without equal. She decides that she must join the Red Church of Itreya and become one of their very best assassins. However, surviving a building full of murderers is going to take some doing…
Her and her fellow acolytes’ training is intense, bloody, brutal and relentless. She makes friends with some of them, others she is ambivalent about, and there are others that will become enemies for life…
The training covers every method that they can think of for killing people, but the Red Church has another range of methods of death that their imaginations have not even considered yet.
Not every acolyte will make it to the end of the course and be in the final selection. The rate of attrition is high for failure, and they have to be aware that things that they have recently learnt will be used against them. She doesn’t know if any of her friends will be there at the end, let alone if she has enough mental strength to pass the course.
It is a fast-paced and thrilling ride. There were parts of this book that I liked, the imagination it takes to come up with this assassin’s church and the world-building I particularly liked. The plot is half decent, too. I could predict some of the outcomes, main character, first book in a series, etc, etc, but not the journey that he drapes around the characters, to the ending. There were parts I wasn’t that keen on, it is incredibly violent, so might not be for everyone. He is also keen on info dumps, and I thought that these got in the way of the plot sometimes. Most annoying were the footnotes; I’ve grown up reading Pratchett, who was a master at them, but Kristoff’s were huge and, in my opinion, mostly unnecessary. So overall, not bad, but I’ll probably not bother to read the rest in the series.
As usual, I have scoured the catalogues for all the books that pique my attention I only managed to find 15 catalogues so far, so this may be updated as I come across others. So without further ado, here are my picks from all the books being published in the first half of next year:
Aurum Press
The Tattooed Hills by Jon Woolcott
Bloomsbury
Access Adventure: The Ultimate Book of Trails and Adventures By Wheelchair And On Foot – Debbie North
Beauty Of The Beasts: Rethinking Nature’s Least Loved Animals – Jo Wimpenny
To The Limit: The Meaning Of Endurance From Mexico To The Himalayas – Michael Crawley
The Devil’s Garden: A Wicked Medley Of Flowers, Fruits and Fungi – Peter Marren
How To Fly – Simon Barnes
The Wind Beneath the Stone: My Quest to Unearth A Piece of Ireland’s Folklore – David Keohan
Sun Country: Writing My Way Home – Howard Cunnell
Canongate
Hark: How Women Listen – Alice Vincent –
The Future Is Peace – Aziz Abu Sarah & Maoz Inon
Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century – Ece Temelkuran
Homework: A Memoir – Geoff Dyer
In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment – Jo Marchant
Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange – Katie Goh
Alive: A Revolutionary Understanding of the Earth’s Intelligences – Melanie Challenger
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – Omar El Akkad
Between Two Waters: Heritage, landscape and the modern cook – Pam Brunton
Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet – Stuart Gillespie
At Sea – Y.M. Abdel-Magied
Daunt Books
Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya – Anuradha Roy
Over the Water: Essays on Islands– Various
Doubleday
Up – Lucy Rogers
The Edges of the World – Charles Foster
Duckworth
The Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs, the creation of Apple, and how one company changed the world – Michael Moritz
On Thin Ice: A Journey in Siberia, and Prison in Putin’s Russia – Charlie Walker
Bread and War: A Ukrainian Story of Food, Bravery and Hope – Felicity Spector
In Green: A Journey to the End of the Land – Louis D. Hall
Eland
News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir –Peter Fleming
Saints of Sind –Peter Mayne
Elliott & Thompson
Farewell to Russia: A Journey through the Former USSR – Joe Luc Barnes –
All the Feels: How Technology Is Changing Our Emotional Lives for the Better – Pamela Pavliscak
Full Circle: A History of Cricket – Peter Oborne & Richard Heller
The Waterlands: Follow a raindrop from source to sea – Stephen Rutt
The Apothecary by the Sea: A Year in an Orkney Garden – Victoria Bennett
Faber & Faber
Wilderlands – Eloise Kane
The Dark Frontier – Jeffrey Marlow
Tales of the Suburbs – John Grindrod
Jan Morris: A Life – Sara Wheeler
Granta
Despite It All: A Handbook For Climate Hopefuls – Fred Pearce
The Beginning Comes After The End – Rebecca Solnit
Harper Collins
Wild Peaks: A Journey on Foot Through England’s First National Park – Tom Chesshyre
Harvill Secker
Herlands: Lessons From Societies Where Women Make the Rules – Megha Mohan
Headline
Elemental – Arthur Snell
My Body is a Meadow – Bethany Handley
Power Play: Video Games, Politics and the Battle for Global Influence – George E. Osborn
A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop – Jean-Yves Mollier
Grassroots – Julia Rosen
The Writer and the Traitor: Graham Greene, Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal – Robert Verkaik
The Garden Through Time – Thomas Rutter
Jonathan Cape
Think Like a Forest: Letters to my Children from a Changing Planet – Ben Rawlence
Goyle, Chert, Mire – Jean Sprackland
Borrowed Land: A Highland Story – Kapka Kassabova
Dog Star – Michael Symmons Roberts
Little Toller
The Icknield Way – Edward Thomas
The Charm of Birds – Edward Grey
Looking for Mr Schwitters – Jennifer Potter
Oneworld
How Queer Bookshops Changed the World – A. J. West
How Not to Save the World: Activism Without Annoying Everyone Around You – Anthea Lawson
This Land Is Your Land: On A Road Trip to Make Sense of America – Beverly Gage
Transported – Elizabeth Margulis
En Route: A Journey Round France in the Company of Great Writers – Peter Fiennes
The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet – Sylvain Tesson & Frank Wynne (Tr.)
Particular Books
Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement – The Friends of Attention
The Fire in the Mountain: Sicily, Etna and Her People – Helena Attlee
Picador
Frostlines: An Epic Exploration of the Transforming Arctic – Neil Shea
Profile Books
We Know You Can Pay a Million Inside the Dark Economy of Hacking and Ransomware – Anja Shortland
Land of Hot Sauce and Gravy: Notes from a Hungry Island – Ben Benton
Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys through Ancient Literature – Emily Wilson
On the Mark: A History of Punctuation from Ancient Egypt to the Emoticon – Florence Hazrat
Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers – Hannah Lucinda Smith
Reaching for the Extreme: How the Quest for the Biggest, Fewest and Weirdest Makes Maths – Ian Stewart
Grasslands: The Intricate Life of Britain’s Hidden Habitats – John Wright
Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic – Kenneth R. Rosen
Ancient: Reviving the Woods That Made Britain – Luke Barley
“Rogues, Widows and Orphans: When Words Go Wrong and Other Bookish Misadventures” – Rebecca Lee
Reaktion Books
The Point of the Needle: Why Sewing Matters – Barbara Burman –
The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army – Jack Margolin
You Want What We’ve Got: Big Tech v. Big Journalism – Jason Whittaker
Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in Landscape and Legend – Jeremy Harte
The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living – Katherine Harvey
Way Makers: An Anthology of Women’s Writing about Walking – Kerri Andrews (Ed)
Whispers from Celtic Seas: The True Meanings of Ancient Stories from Northwest Europe – Patrick Nunn
Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland and Brittany – Paul Robichaud
September Books
The Wild Within: What Plants Taught Me about Life, Recovery and Renewal – Brigit Anna McNeill
Possessions: A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity – Davina Quinlivan
Underwing: A Story of Motherhood, Loss and Wild Intuition – Jennifer Lane
Chopsy: Resistance Tales of a Working-Class Woman – Maya Jordan
Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now – Sharon Blackie
The Bodley Head
Imitation Games: How the Gambling Industry Hijacked Sport – Darragh McGee
Tiny Gardens Everywhere: A History of Urban Resilience – Kate Brown
The Resilience Response: The New Science of Trauma and How We Heal Across Generations – Rachel Yehuda
3 out of 5 stars
The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
Who says that blokes don’t read romance? That is quite a few of you then… Romance is the genre that I deliberately avoid, or more appropriately, run screaming from the boudoir… However, this is one of the fine offerings from the British Library’s Tales of the Weird Series, and the title Doomed Romances bring a whole different connotation to the word…
The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley
This is the first Mary Shelley story that I have ever read! It is a strange tale of love and loss with whispers of folklore ad fairy tale woven in. But the strongest theme is the gothic melodrama that permeates the prose completely.
Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu
A very gothic melodrama with vampires. I felt it was very overwritten; why use one word when you could use twenty instead? There is a strong lesbian theme between the daughter and the lady who is staying as a guest in the house.
Mr. Captain and the Nymph by Wilkie Collins
Somewhere in the Pacific, a ship encounters an island. The natives that live there seem friendly and welcoming, so the sailors go ashore, and it allows them to restock supplies. Alongside the main island is another, and they are curious as to what or who is on there. The natives strongly recommend that they do not set foot on the island as it is the home of a sorcerer, and it is a taboo for anyone else but him and the nymph to be there. The captain of the ship is told about her, and when he sees her through the telescope, he becomes besotted. So much so that he is brave and foolish enough to venture onto the island…
Little Woman in Black by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Miss Sarah Pawlett was engaged to be married to Lord Bellenden. The relationship was a little unusual as she wasn’t from the aristocracy, as would be expected at the time. But this didn’t deter, Lord Bellenden.
The only problem, though, was that Sarah was head over heels in love with another actor called Ned Langley. Plus, there was a sense that she was being watched continually, and there was a small lady dressed entirely in black who sat in the same seat for every performance each night.
Who this lady was, though, would soon be revealed…
White Magic by Ella D’Arcy
I wasn’t overly enamoured with this story. It is a conversation between the narrator and their friend, but having read it twice, I wasn’t completely sure what was going on or what were the subtleties of the plot.
The Tiger Charm by Alice Perrin
This is a story set in the time of the British Raj in India. A blustering colonel sets out on a tiger hunt, dragging his wife with him. They are separated after an incident and she ends up switching to another elephant and then they are separated. When she returns, he accuses her of all sorts of transgressions that might have taken place with her new companion in his drunken rant. He still wants to shoot a tiger, though, so he sets out with her companion, with a darker motive in mind…
One Remained Behind by Marjorie Bowen
A student called Rudolph is desperate to acquire a grimoire, a book full of magic and ancient rituals and ends up arguing with an antique bookseller whose shop it is in. With a trick and some emotional blackmail, he manages to make the book his.
He wastes no time in using the book to gain fame and fortune. However, he had not ever thought through the consequences of his actions, and it all starts to unravel.
I really liked this story a lot. There is something quite satisfying about Karma…
The Lady of the House of Love by Angela Carter
I thought that this was the story that best suited the title of the book, Doomed Romances. The young lady is in a decrepit mansion with a crone as a servant. There is an innocent young soldier who stops for the night. There is a building tension as I, the reader, can second-guess his possible fate.
That said, I didn’t find it that scary. But it does have a brooding intensity that made it my top story in the collection.
The Glass Bottle Trick by Nalo Hopkinson
This is a really dark story about a man who has been widowed twice before and is now married to his third wife. They had married fairly quickly after meeting and courting, and were soon to learn that his moods were dark and his temper short.
Passing on her news was going to be a challenge that she wasn’t sure she could do…
I thought this was an incredibly intense and fast-paced story.
Could You Wear My Eyes? by Kalumu Ya Salaam
I thought that this was a well-crafted story about a man who thought that having his late wife’s eyes implanted to replace his.
What he didn’t realise was what the effect of seeing everything from her perspective would be like…
I’ll Be Your Mirror by Tracy Fahey
A story of love, anatomy and discovery by a woman who becomes obsessed by an anatomical Venus, a life-sized wax model. Very much more macabre than romantic, and has a very dark plotline.
Dancehall Devil by V. Castro
I thought that this was probably the closest story in the book to horror. A woman has just entered a club and she is approached by a man who has absolutely no idea what her has just let himself in for…
November is a short month, but I did manage to get a fair few read in the end:
Books Read
Phantoms of Kernow – Joan Passey (Ed) – 3.5 Stars
The Future Of Travel – Daniel Maurer – 4 Stars
Help!: How To Become Slightly Happier And Get A Bit More Done – Oliver Burkeman – 3 Stars
New York Vertical – Horst Hamann – 4 Stars
Green and Pleasant Land: Best-Loved Poems of the British Countryside – Ana Sampson (Ed) – 3 Stars
Jade City – Fonda Lee – 2.5 Stars
PhotoCity New York – Guillaume Gaudet & Zora O’Neill – 3 Stars
Weather – Storm Dunlop – 3 Stars
Book(s) Of The Month
Upon A White Horse: Journeys In Ancient Britain And Ireland – Peter Ross – 4.5 Stars
Lone Wolf: Walking The Faultlines Of Europe – Adam Weymouth – 5 Stars
Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts & Vanishing Trades – James Fox – 5 Stars
Top Genres
Travel – 19
Fiction – 13
Poetry – 11
Natural History – 11
Science Fiction – 10
Top Publishers
Faber & Faber – 7
Simon & Schuster – 6
Penguin – 6
Bloomsbury – 5
Picador – 4
Review Copies Received
We Are All Adrift – David Banning & Iain Sharpe
Library Books Checked Out
Help!: How To Become Slightly Happier And Get A Bit More Done – Oliver Burkeman
Fiesta: A Journey Through Festivity – Daniel Stables
Rope: How A Bundle Of Twisted Fibres Became The Backbone Of Civilisation – Tim Queeney
The Future Of Agriculture – Sarah Bearchell
Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts & Vanishing Trades – James Fox
Common People: A Folk History Of Land Rights, Enclosure And Resistance – Leah Gordon & Stephen Ellcock
Books Bought (Or Sent by Friends)
As I have said elsewhere, I am trying to buy fewer books. So I will give totals of the number of books that enter my house and those that leave permanently. These are the figures for this month:
Books in: 15 I kept these below:
High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia’s Haunted Hinterland – Tom Parfitt
Night Life: Walking Britain’s Wild Landscapes after Dark – John Lewis-Stempel
The Book of Bogs: Stories from a Yorkshire Moor and other Peatlands – Anna Chilvers & Clare Shaw
Monsterland: A Journey Around the World’s Dark Imagination – Nicholas Jubber
Books out: 17 (The books leaving the house were sold, returned to the library or passed on to friends or charity. I am aiming for this number to be higher than the one above!!!).
So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
My final TBR of 2025 was supposed to be a short one as I only have 7 books to go on the Good Reads Challenge. But I think that I am going to go over… So here is the not quite so short list for books to read this month:
Daily Reading
A Tree A Day – Amy-Jane Beer
An Insect a Day: Bees, Bugs, And Pollinators For Every Day Of The Year – Dominic Couzens & Gail Ashton
Still Reading
Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar Hardcover – Nick Garbutt
Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchaikovsky
#20BooksOfSummer (Ha!)
The Cruel Stars – John Birmingham
Sunfall – Jim Al-Khalili
Revenger – Alastair Reynolds
Shadow Captain – Alastair Reynolds
The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell
WFMAC
The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country – Helen Russell
Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon – Richard Starks
Review Books
Small Earthquakes: A Journey Through Lost British History In South America – Shafik Meghji
21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari
Your Journey Your Way: The Recovery Guide to Mental Health – Horatio Clare
Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides – Tom Chesshyre
Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird – Katy Soar (Ed)
Little Ruins – Manni Coe
We Are All Adrift – David Banning & Iain Sharpe
Books I’m Clearing
A Butterfly Journey: Maria Sibylla Merian Artist and Scientist – Boris Friedewald & Stephan von Pohl (Tr)
Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain – Pen Vogler
Russians Among Us – Gordon Corera
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History – Lea Ypi
The Owl Service – Alan Garner
Library
Nature Needs You: The Fight To Save Our Swifts – Hannah Bourne- Taylor
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future – David Wallace-Wells
Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces – Laurie Winkless
The Future Of Agriculture – Sarah Bearchell
The Accidental Garden: Gardens, Wilderness And The Space In Between – Richard Mabey
Poetry
Poetry on the Buses – Valerie Belsey & Candy Neubert (Ed)
So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
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