Tag: books

3/5 Star Review – Strange Houses

This book by Uketsu was a YouTube sensation a few years ago, and a friend suggested I read it, so I did. The translation to English makes it a bit awkward. It was not my favourite genre, but it was interesting to see where it went. I think I was expecting it to be a more interesting story, but I found it pretty tame, with a lot of build up for nothing. The telling of the story was the most interesting part, and then once you knew the details the story lost interest (at least for me). I probably will not read any more of the series though I do really want to read their other book, Strange Pictures.

3/5 stars

4.5/5 Stars – The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

I finally finished book 6 (audio book) of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series – first, it was VERY LONG. Such a good listen though, probably one of my favourites so far. The adventurers are on a new floor, which of course means new mechanics. This floor involves cards almost like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon, and they’re used in combat.

There wasn’t enough Princess Donut in this book, and I wasn’t especially engaged in the card fight mechanic for the floor. Carl goes through some brutal memories and scenes involving his step brother and Dad. The AI is messed up. Mordecai was OK. The nun was creepy.

This book was completely off the wall in a way that I’ve come to expect from Matt Dinniman, except I have NO IDEA how he does it. The entire book is filled with action, horror, humor, and drama. The more you listen to it, the more everything that seems over the top and ‘too much’ clicks exactly into place, and you’re just left standing there thinking “woah, holy shit.” and the amazing (to me) part of it is – IT MAKES SENSE. Matt Dinniman has created an incredibly over the top messed up world that logically makes sense in my brain when he describes it, despite the fact that it is completely made up bonkers nonsense.

This book held more emotional scenes than the previous ones (IMO), and I was there for it. I can’t wait to start the 7th book.

4.5/5 stars

4/5 Stars – Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

This book was recommended to me by all sorts of friends, and I started seeing it pop up on my feed here and there – so when Kobo offered it on sale, of course I had to grab it. This was the very first book I bought for my Kobo Clara, and it was a lovely read. Things started out a bit slow, but as I progressed through the book and learned more about the two characters, I got deeply involved in the story. My only reason for giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because I didn’t really enjoy how this book ended, it felt a bit rushed compared to the overall feel of the rest of the book.

The more I read, the more I started liking Wendell Bambleby (Emily’s colleague / rival) and the less I liked Emily! She started getting on my nerves. I did love how well we came to know the main character, the book came complete with footnotes and it was pretty unique. I saw some reviews mention the ‘dryness’ of the book, but honestly I think it suits the academic feeling of things, and I found the deeper stories to be just perfect. Overall, a lovely cozy read, and I’m sure I’ll be picking up the others before too long.

4/5 stars

June 2025 Wrap Up

After a very slow May, I’m glad that June showed a lot more promise, with four books completed, and four others on the go. I did have to pause ‘No Country for Old Men’ as I was just not in the right frame of mind to continue with that one. It is VERY dark. I’m undecided if I’ll continue to read it in the future or if I’ll just mark it as DNF and clear it from my TBR pile, we’ll see. Some fantastic reads this month, and some not-so-great, but at least I finished them. I did also have ‘The Dose Effect’ as my BBBC read, and I am pretty sure that one is going to be added to the DNF pile because I am simply not interested. I mentioned last month that I need to look for another book club, that still rings true.

Happy reading!

5/5 Stars – Clockwork Boys

This is Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher. Wow. I’m so glad I read the Paladin series first, even though it’s out of publishing order as far as these books go. I loved this book so much but I think it also helped that I already knew the history involved. Kingfisher is brilliant, her characters came to life (as always), and I can’t say enough good things about this read. It was an absolute joy in every aspect.

There’s a ton of ‘unique’ aspects of this book that make it so much more than your basic fantasy read. The carnivorous tattoos, the ex-demonhunter paladin, a smart ass assassin. I’m very excited to read the next book because of course it ended on a massive cliffhanger.

5/5 stars

3/5 Stars – The Christmas Tree Farm

The Christmas Tree Farm, by Laurie Gilmore. I needed something easy on the brain, and this was available at the library so I picked it up. It is your typical hallmark-esc romance, except r-rated with some sex thrown in. I could not take this book seriously. The part where he found her vibrator in the couch was just hilarious to the point of being unbelievable (in specific, their discussion around it, not the actual act, that part I could see happening). Not a literary masterpiece, but it was what I was looking for. Just a nice simple read.

3/5 stars

May 2025 Wrap Up

I did NOT get a lot of reading done this month. The Butcher’s Masquerade was almost completed as I went into the month, and then I had a really difficult time finding a book that would stick. I ended up starting Foxglove King but I had to put it on hold as it was all a bit ‘too much’ for me at the time. I’m sure I will pick that one up again at a later date. The book is a physical one I own on my shelf, so at least I can easily come back to it.

The BBBC read was another huge disappointment. I’m thinking of joining another book club where I might find books that actually resonate with me, the net is just too wide on this one and they promote a lot of books from Amazon which I’d like to avoid since swapping over to my Kobo. Onyx Storm has also yet to reel me in, for some reason I’m just not that interested in the story this time around. It’s probably also because I’m reading the physical book and my hands have a hard time holding it. Weird thing to mention, I know, but it is what it is.

At least some reading was had. Maybe June will be a better month, we’ll just have to see.

February Reading Wrap Up

It’s that time of the month where I go over how I did in my reading stats! That’s right, a new feature because I’ve never actually done a reading wrap-up before. Why not start now?!

The graphics are from TheStoryGraph which is my book tracking site of choice these days. If you’re into statistics, this is where you want to be. They even include a calendar of all your reading updates. Looking at February, I see it was another big month for books and I really hope that carries over into March, but if it doesn’t that’s alright too. I read a total of 7 books (29% of those were audio books, the rest were physical & ebooks) and my average rating was 3.57 – I only had one 5 star read, and that was ‘What I ate in One Year’ by Stanley Tucci.

I’ve decided moving forward I’d like to devote an entire spread to any 5 star books I read, mostly because I don’t often have a lot of 5 star reads, and I think it would be a neat little bit of creativity I could toss into my reading journal. I’m not 100% pleased with how the journal went this year, but I am determined to keep with it (as best I can) and then next year I can implement changes like moving to a square journal and organizing some things better. Right now the journal is a lot of statistics, and while I do love stats, I’d like a little more creativity to flow.

In January I read 6 books (I may actually backdate a post to represent this) which I also thought was a lot for me, but hey maybe this is the year for massive reading (so I can protect my mental health with all of the crazy that is going on in the world these days). I certainly have no complaints – and I really hope that March involves just as many (if not more) amazing reads.

Still Here – Still Reading

Despite the fact that I rarely ever make it to actually posting on this damn book blog of mine – I have been reading this year. A LOT in fact. I’ve even been keeping up with my reading journal for once (gasp). Which is what the picture above is from. It’s two spreads that I’ve included, one that shows new releases for 2025 that I’m looking forward to, and the other spread (well, now it’s outdated, but I’ll get to that in a moment) talks about all of the books that I’ve purchased.

BookOutlet.ca also just happened to have a $7.99 sale and it coincided with the removal of taxes (temporarily) on some items. Some items being books. So I purchased 7 brand new books for $50 total, including free shipping. I was incredibly happy when they showed up. Which books? I’ll have to talk about that in a future post.

In the meantime, enjoy the pictures of my reading journal spreads.