A quick read, but meh. I liked Lady Beaconsfield and the historical note that said the author gave her more years of life to have her present at the key moment in the story (and because he liked her too).

A great Nigel Tranter book featuring the MacGregor clan. James VI and I plays a major role as well.

For me a so-so because I was so stressed out about the prophecy regarding Atalanta that I had to skip to the end to find out what happened. I loved Atalanta herself though.

June 2023 #BookSpinBingo board is all set!
#BookSpin: The Twyford Code (Hallett)
#DoubleSpin: Sword of Honour (Waugh)

Running late with my #BookSpinBingo list for June 2023! I felt a bit constrained with the owned books I had lined up, so I put a lot of them away and gave myself a few more free spaces.

May 2023 #BookSpinBingo wrap-up:
✅ BookSpin: Walk Through Fire (Ali)
📖 DoubleSpin: Pierre Berton‘s War of 1812 (Berton) (in progress)
0️⃣ bingos but came very close!

#20In4 readathon, May 2023 edition wrap-up:
Read a manga
✅ Finish a Currently Reading book (Children of the Mist, by Nigel Tranter)
✅ Start an audiobook (Missy Series 1, a Big Finish audio drama)

A very good shipwreck book (I‘ve read one or two 🤣). Neat to fit in some reading about the 1700s, which is a bit underrepresented in my reading. Also did not know Lord Byron‘s grandfather was in the navy (he was in this shipwreck).

It‘s that time again: #20In4 readathon, May 2023 edition! This time I‘d like to
Read a manga
Finish a Currently Reading book
Start an audiobook

This Samuel Johnson quote appeared in both The Wager and The Invasion of Canada: « No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. »

Less annoying than Livewire, but still not great. Also felt dated because it was published in 2011.

#VictoriaDayReadathon wrap-up:
✅ Emily Climbs (Montgomery)
✅ Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (Eagleman)

I did not start Pierre Berton‘s War of 1812 or A Fine Balance (Mistry), but I‘d had the Eagleman out from the library for a while, so it was good to finish it.

What I love in this one is how Emily‘s view of the world changes by going away to school and how her relationships with her aunts change and grow as she herself grows older. Emily is one of my favourite characters in literature and I always enjoy visiting her.

The best way to find more Canadians on Litsy? Through @melissajayne ‘s #VictoriaDayReadathon! 🇨🇦 I am looking forward to a long weekend full of reading. If I can read these 2 books, that would be great:
Emily Climbs (Montgomery)
Pierre Berton‘s War of 1812
Also could this be the weekend I finally start A Fine Balance (Mistry)?!

I wanted to like this, but it felt so similar to Legends and Lattes that I was having deja vu. I also found the romance cloying (I don‘t like mushy stuff very much). This book will surely work better for others!

Quite fun and surprisingly what helped me pull out of a small reading slump. Two sets of photos made this a good memoir! The stories were also consistent with what I‘d read in Love and Let Die, so that was good.

Quite an interesting collection of journalism. I preferred Winifred Holtby‘s over Vera Brittain‘s because Holtby‘s writing is more direct, but both women were interesting to read.

A Pick because I knew nothing about this train disaster and learned a lot!

#MagnificentMay 2023 wrap-up:

Pierre Berton‘s War of 1812
✅ Walk Through Fire
✅ Testament of a Generation
Can‘t Spell Treason Without Tea
✅ Stone Blind

Pretty good considering I spent basically all weekend playing video games instead of reading 😆

I love seeing what the dice have picked out for me each month in #Roll100. June 2023 will (hopefully) feature the following:
1. The Official Quotable Doctor Who (Scott)

2. Run Silent, Run Deep (Beach)

3. Paternoster Gang: Heritage 1 (Big Finish audio)
Have I read all of the audios the dice have picked out for me over the past 2 months? Of course not 😄

Excellent! This might be my favourite female-centred Greek retelling so far. I laughed out loud many times and was surprised and moved in other places. Highly recommended.

The introduction was good, but the first chapter went on some weird tangents and I didn‘t relish wading through a whole book‘s worth of that.

Overall a so-so. David Tennant is a good narrator and I liked the idea, but the story moved slowly enough in audio that I borrowed the ebook from the library to finish it off.

“He‘s just a bag of meat wandering round, irritating people.”
I can think of others who match this description 🤣🤣🤣

As a kid reading the Greek myths, I always related on some level to Athene, but boy do I feel especially seen in this description of Athene as having the expression “of someone lacking patience but trying to hide it” 😬😅😜 (Athene sometimes doesn‘t come off very well in these new retellings, which is a bit awkward 😂)

Athene wants a thing like all the other gods have.
“Does Aphrodite have something?”
“Aphrodite has everything she wants,” Athene snapped. “Whenever she wants it.”
Zeus nodded again. That did sound like Aphrodite.
😂😂😂

It‘s readathon time already! I haven‘t made much reading headway this week; too much going on at work. So for #MagnificentMay 2023 I think I‘ll tackle as much of the first column of my bingo card as I can:
Pierre Berton‘s War of 1812
Walk Through Fire
Testament of a Generation
Can‘t Spell Treason Without Tea

But first, Stone Blind, which is due back tomorrow 😅

May 2023 #BookSpinBingo board is all set!
#BookSpin: Walk Through Fire (Ali)
#DoubleSpin: Pierre Berton‘s War of 1812 (Berton) — this is a 2-book omnibus and I‘ve already read one half of it, so I‘ll just read the other half to consider this complete.

#BookSpinBingo April 2023 wrap-up:
✅ BookSpin: The Master Key (Togawa)
✅ DoubleSpin: The Franchise Affair (Tey)
0️⃣ bingos (but came close to 3 of them!)

April 2023 #20In4 goal achieved: finish any 2 books that I have marked as Currently Reading.
✅ The Rival Queens (Goldstone)
✅ My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece (Pilcher)
Thanks as always for hosting @Andrew65 !

Why yes I have included two books that I‘m currently reading on my May 2023 #BookSpinBingo list 👀 (Work Won‘t Love You Back and Testament of a Generation). I got bogged down a bit in April and could do with some easy wins!

This was good, although I have to keep reading more about French history—I‘m not as familiar with it as I am with English and Scottish history, so it‘s harder to keep track of all the Henris and Louis and it makes my reading slower.

A quick read as always, but I didn‘t like Nozaki-Kun‘s and others‘ attitudes toward group dates (rather sexist).

My #20In4 readathon starts now! My plan is to finish any 2 books that I have marked as Currently Reading. I‘m working on Nancy Goldstone‘s The Rival Queens now.

A sort of academic memoir in a way. Royster highlights several Black country artists and examines their influences, work, and legacy, but she also weaves in her own experiences and discusses the artists that resonate with her and how the music informs her own life.

This was really good. A nice short mystery, no words wasted.
April 2023 #BookSpin

It took me a while to pick this book up, but once I did, I got into it very quickly, probably because I knew what to expect. The yokai are very well done, several jump scares in broad daylight for me 🤣

My May 2023 #Roll100 list:
1️⃣ Pierre Berton‘s War of 1812 (Berton) (a 2-book omnibus and I‘ve read one of the books, so I‘ll just read the other one)
2️⃣ If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? (Alda)
3️⃣ Voice Lessons (Paulsen)
I have a lot of audiobooks on my main list, so I shouldn‘t be surprised that I keep rolling audios 😂

Ended up being 2 for 4 on #AwesomeApril 2023 goals:
✅ The Franchise Affair (Tey)
Un jardin au bout du monde (Roy)
The Master Key (Togawa)
✅ Code Gray (Nahvi)

Also read: Exile (Mina), Love and Let Die (Higgs), Emily of New Moon (Montgomery), and Natsume‘s Book of Friends Vol. 2 (Midorikawa)

So I was reading, just not to plan 🤣

On the difficulties of providing numbers for comparing humans‘ and dogs‘ olfactory systems: “It is easy to find estimates, and vey hard to find primary sources for them; after an hours-long search that included a university paper that sourced a factoid to a book in the For Dummies series, I fell into an existential void and questioned the very nature of knowledge.” 🤣

Not a word is wasted in this short, thought-provoking book. Well worth reading if you‘re interested in medical memoirs. Could pair nicely with Kathryn Mannix‘s Listen: Finding the Words for Tender Conversations.

I found this a quick read, and it was nice to see Blair coming into his own as an amateur sleuth. However, plenty of classism and more than a little squickiness about the plot leave me marking this a so-so.
April 2023 #DoubleSpin

This was a really interesting way to examine the impact of the Beatles and James Bond on British and global culture. Some of the connections Higgs draws feel a teeny bit tenuous, but overall I really enjoyed the book. There are spoilers for many of the Bond films, so if you‘re not a spoiler fan you may want to watch at least No Time to Die before reading this.

In all that I‘ve read about the Beatles, this is the first I‘m hearing that the Maharishi had a degree in physics!

Also, this book is making me want to rewatch Get Back.

I love the Emily books so much. I‘ve always related to her that little bit more than Anne.

This continues to be a good trilogy and I look forward to reading the third book!

Another visit to a favourite used bookstore!
📚 Flight Into Danger (Hailey)
📚 Doctor Who: Shining Darkness (Michalowski)
📚 Translations (Friel)
📚 Dancing at Lughnasa (Friel)
📚 The Back of the Turtle (King)
📚 Be My Enemy (Brookmyre)
📚 Destination Disaster (Eddy, Potter, Page)
I read Translations in 2013 but wanted to revisit it. Also glad to get The Back of the Turtle because the library was taking FOREVER.

In comparison to The Sleeping and the Dead, the other Ann Cleeves stand-alone I read, I liked Burial of Ghosts better; the first-person narration made it more vivid, and I liked that the central character was a woman. The plot may be far-fetched, but it was a far-fetched I could roll with. Found the flashbacks hard to read, so I ended up skimming them.

A soft Pick. Delicious food, and yay for the wedding! But I felt that some elements of the mystery were deduced with hidden information, so I was confused about how those conclusions were reached.