Hey book nerds!
I blew my budget (and then some) preordering two signed books so my haul is itty-bitty this month. My only other find was a freebie – gotta love freebies!
I was doing really well, getting ahead on some ARC’s early in the month but then reality came calling. A bunch of paperwork needed to be done and now I’ve entered a reading slump. I’m hoping to rectify that next month.
I did manage to watch the super blood moon. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to see an entire lunar eclipse before. For some reason, it’s usually cloudy where I am whenever something like this happens so I have to watch online. Not this time! I had the perfect view over the channel. It helped that I had good company, good coffee and a yummy cinnamon scroll donut to enjoy as well.
2020 gave me one really good thing: the ability to hang out (virtually, of course) with some of the animals at San Diego Zoo via their live cams. I became slightly obsessed with watching the burrowing owls raise their babies. I’ve been checking in with the adults off and on for the past couple of months but then forgot all about them. I checked again this week on a whim and there are seven eggs in the burrow!
It’s safe to say that my obsession has been rekindled and I’m checking in all the time, hoping I’ll get to see them hatch. If you want to wait with me, here’s the link.
Bookish Highlight of the Month: The Madman’s Library. As if my TBR pile wasn’t already preparing to crush me… There are so many weird and wonderful finds in this book, from teensy tiny books to those written in blood. I definitely want to reread this one.
Until next month, happy reading!
May Reads
- Me and the Robbersons (sugar high in a book)
- Threadneedle (cover of the month)
- The Stranger Times (the workplace that would suit me best)
- Remember (forgetting where you put your keys is normal!)
- Darkwood #3: Glass Coffin (I didn’t want this series to end. Trevor is my favourite spider ever!)
- Playing Beatie Bow (high school English class reread)
- The Madman’s Library (my dream coffee table book)
- Ellery Hathaway #3: All the Best Lies (Bump remains one of my favourite dogs in fiction)
- Skyborn (a prequel. I need to read The Eye of the North now)
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover – a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty – and discover how truth can survive becoming history.
Nghi Vo returns to the empire of Ahn and The Singing Hills Cycle in this mesmerizing, lush standalone follow-up to The Empress of Salt and Fortune.
Preorders
We think we understand the laws of physics. We think reality is an immutable monolith, consistent from one end of the universe to the next. We think the square/cube law has actual relevance.
We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong.
When the great incursion occurred, no one was prepared. How could they have been? Of all the things physicists had predicted, “the fabric of reality might rip open and giant monsters could come pouring through” had not made the list. But somehow, on a fine morning in May, that was precisely what happened.
For sisters Susan and Katharine Black, the day of the incursion was the day they lost everything. Their home, their parents, their sense of normalcy… and each other, because when the rift opened, Susan was on one side and Katharine was on the other, and each sister was stranded in a separate form of reality. For Susan, it was science and study and the struggle to solve the mystery of the altered physics inside the zones transformed by the incursion. For Katharine, it was monsters and mayhem and the fight to stay alive in a world unlike the world of her birth.
The world has changed. The laws of physics have changed. The girls have changed. And the one universal truth of all states of changed matter is that nothing can be completely restored to what it was originally, no matter how much you might wish it could be.
Nothing goes back.
‘It’s the first time I’ve done this. Other people have written about me – or for me – but this time it’s just my own life in my own words’
In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting life.
Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of 4, and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy’s life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds.
Billy found his escape first as an apprentice welder in the shipyards of the River Clyde. Later he became a folk musician – a ‘rambling man’ – with a genuine talent for playing the banjo. But it was his ability to spin stories, tell jokes and hold an audience in the palm of his hand that truly set him apart.
As a young comedian Billy broke all the rules. He was fearless and outspoken – willing to call out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. But his stand-up was full of warmth, humility and silliness too. His startling, hairy ‘glam-rock’ stage appearance – wearing leotards, scissor suits and banana boots – only added to his appeal.
It was an appearance on Michael Parkinson’s chat show in 1975 – and one outrageous story in particular – that catapulted Billy from cult hero to national star. TV shows, documentaries, international fame and award-winning Hollywood movies followed. Billy’s pitch-perfect stand-up comedy kept coming too – for over 50 years, in fact – until a double diagnosis of cancer and Parkinson’s Disease brought his remarkable live performances to an end. Since then he has continued making TV shows, creating extraordinary drawings… and writing.
Windswept and Interesting is Billy’s story in his own words. It is joyfully funny – stuffed full of hard-earned wisdom as well as countless digressions on fishing, farting and the joys of dancing naked. It is an unforgettable, life-affirming story of a true comedy legend.
‘I didn’t know I was Windswept and Interesting until somebody told me. It was a friend who was startlingly exotic himself. He’d just come back from Kashmir and was all billowy shirt and Indian beads. I had long hair and a beard and was swishing around in electric blue flairs.
He said: “Look at you – all windswept and interesting!”
I just said: “Exactly!”
After that, I simply had to maintain my reputation…’
Schizanthus Nerd 