The Bibliollama

What are you currently reading?

Alix E. Harrow - The Ten Thousand Doors of January I'm 35% through and while I do not love it quite as much as Once and Future Witches or Starling House it's still an intriguing storyline and I am enjoying it.
Sarah J Maas - A Court of Wings and Ruin 83% through and pretty sure I'll finish it in the next couple of days. My least favourite of the series so far. I'm not enjoying the war storyline or the battle scenes and I'm struggling to tell the characters apart.
Neil MacGregor - A History of the World in 100 Objects I'm 77% through and determined to finish it this week. It's interesting enough but so dryly written that I can't read much at a time.
Anne Rice - The Vampire Lestat I've lost count of how many times I've read this book, and can quote the opening paragraph by memory. Li and I started talking about the books and so I just picked it up and started reading (I re-read Interview recently). I'm at 23% through - Lestat has just been turned and Magnus went into the fire

What did you recently finish reading?

Ronald Hutton - The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain 4/5 stars. Completely jampacked with information and utterly fascinating. I love his writing style too - he sounds the same in print as he does when lecturing or being interviewed and it's very comfortable to read.
Thomas Halliday - Otherlands 3.75/5 stars. I've been interested in pre-history and paleobiology this year, we've watched a lot of dinosaur/geology/evolution-type documentaries and this had been on my list to read for a while. Beautifully descriptive, I learned a huge amount and it didn't matter that I didn't follow every technical/scientific term, it didn't detract from the book.
Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow (Shane Schofield #3) 4.25/stars. My love for these books, let me show you it. They're just one big ridiculous OTT action sequence, and I am here for that! Although, if he could stop killing everyone that isn't Scarecrow, that would be great!
Joanne Fluke - Strawberry Shortcake Murder (Hannah Swensen #2) 4/5 stars and I am thoroughly enjoying this series, all the characters and all the recipes. I've got #3 out of the library already!

What do you think you’ll read next?

Sharon Blackie - If Women Rose Rooted
Joanne Fluke - Blueberry Muffin Murder (Hannah Swensen #3)
Ruth Goodman - How To Be A Victorian
Matthew Reilly - Hell Island (Shane Scofield #3.5)
Matthew Reilly - The Secret Runners of New York
(We covered my love for his books, yes? LOL)

June was not a great reading month, if I'm completely honest, as you can see from this graphic. I finished a whole 3 books - but I did also read the BBC Science Focus magazine, July 2023 edition but that isn't something I can log on Storygraph

Unfortunately, June continued not being a great time for my mental health - My car needed another couple of hundred pounds of work after its service, I was very stressed with work, Li's ceiling was being fixed so there was lots of moving of furniture and I ended up completely losing my daily rhythm because of it all. I fell hard into a couple of different mobile games as well.

Milly Johnson - The Teashop on the Corner
5 stars
I absolutely loved this book, which reduced me to tears on multiple occasions. The characters all had very distinct personalities and initially, as each one was introduced, I couldn't see how they would interact. The way Johnson weaved their stories in with the teashop, and how they met and friendships started blooming was fantastic

Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere
4 stars
Li's been re-reading Gaiman, and she was enthusing over Neverwhere so I picked it up as well. I read it like 10 years ago, there were bits I remembered perfectly and bits I'd completely forgotten which is always interesting how that happens. I did thoroughly enjoy the re-read (even if I started it in October and promptly forgot about it, whoops!)

Joanne Fluke - Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
4 stars
That wonderful feeling when you fall in love with the first book in the series, read it in a couple of days and discover there's over 30 more books to read! I saw the first Hallmark movie based on the series ages ago, and we know I love a good cozy mystery! I'd been wanting to read this for a couple of years so was thrilled when I spotted it on Borrowbox

Looking more at the stats side of things:
3 books, 1,21 pages – 33% <300 pages, 33% 300-499 pages, 33% 500+ pages (and I couldn't have done that if I'd tried LOL)
The main mood was mysterious
100% medium paced
100% fiction - which is very unusual or me
Genre wise romance, mystery, fantasy & contemporary
My average rating was 4.33

I do still have a lot books in progress, and they all have about the same number of pages left so July should hopefully have more books finished in it!