Thanks to Walker Books, who sent me a review copy of Patrick Ness’s new YA book Burn via NetGalley. It is out now (yay!) so if it sounds like something you’d enjoy, order a copy from your nearest indie bookshop. Not from Amazon, please pretty please.
Author: Fran Harvey
Book review: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
Again – a NetGalley ARC review. I stumbled across Stephen Graham Jones’s short story collection After The People Lights Have Gone Off several years ago in a secondhand bookshop, and ever since then I’ve always kept half an eye out for books by him. So I jumped on the chance to review this, and will be buying a copy. Five stars, of course.*
Continue reading “Book review: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones”
Book review: Sisters by Daisy Johnson
Another book for review that I received through NetGalley – so sharing here, too. I’ll do a proper update soon. I went freelance just as the CV-19 pandemic was confirmed so… thank goodness for savings, I guess, at this stage?
This was a five-star book for me (duh). Continue reading “Book review: Sisters by Daisy Johnson”
Book review: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
I wrote this review on NetGalley (I was kindly approved to read a digital review copy by 4th Estate), and thought I’d share it here, because why not. I don’t request copies from NetGalley very often, so I try to fulfil the reviewing promise. Happily I also only tend to request books I suspect will be very good, so unsurprisingly, I gave My Dark Vanessa five stars. Continue reading “Book review: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell”
All change
Hello and happy nearly-new year!
I didn’t do any kind of round up of 2019, or musings about 2020 as December counted down. I couldn’t, at that point, write about looking forward to 2020 because just before Christmas I handed my notice in at work, and it wasn’t common knowledge until this week.
Bookishness
Oof, after the last slightly bleak Overly Honest entry, I think I owe this site some sort of more cheerful update. Relevant to that entry: I’m on antidepressants now and I’m in a far better headspace than I was. Thank you to everyone IRL who is both giving me room to get back on an even keel, but also checking up on me subtly and sweetly. I do notice and I do appreciate it. Unexpected meds side-effect: I have discovered that I’m of an age where, when I say I’m not drinking at the moment, people give my belly a knowing look and I find myself explaining that I’m not pregnant, actually, that’s just my shape. So that’s fun.
Overly honest
Like a lot of people I go through phases of wanting more privacy than my social media use affords me. I deactivate accounts and vanish for a bit and reappear and it’s usually a sign that I’m struggling with something else in life. I’m not very good at admitting to the people I know and love when that happens, let alone the world at large.
Oh monster, my monster
As I start writing this, it’s 12.15am. In about six and a half hours I will be crawling out of bed to make a Pokémon cake for my nephew’s 10th birthday, before he arrives for a day of being spoiled. (‘What flavour?’ ‘Pokémon flavour!’ Vanilla will have to do.)
Anyway, he and his mum and her boyfriend came over earlier this afternoon. He fed the dogs lettuce until they were near ready to mug him for his pasta. He became best friends with Dog 1, who pinned him down with a paw and attempted to clean his head. After that they were inseparable. Dog 2 – less boisterous, likes her space – wagged her tail from a safe distance. Continue reading “Oh monster, my monster”
It’s been a long year
Tradition, isn’t it, to write a post summing up the year? I’m getting it out of the way a few days early, because 1) I’m having a little flap about the current Work In Progress right now, and so this is a nice procrastination and 2) in a couple days I am seeing my family and will have no time for posts, only for them and actually finishing a reasonable first draft of the WIP.
OH GOD I’m in imminent danger of being a writer bore, I’m so sorry.
Here’s a quick list of good and awful things that have happened over the course of this year, as much as I can remember on a mid-holiday day when I should be doing something else.
Gods and The Wanderer
Yesterday I signed up for the Edinburgh half-marathon. I often tell people that I do well with deadlines, and I really do. I need the pressure to get me going in all areas of life, from writing to exercise to… well, spending time with people even. Otherwise I just lie around stagnant, like water in a pipe waiting for the tap to be turned on, probably growing mould and smelling a bit funny.
The pressure works really well. I get motivated and creative and I DO stuff. And then I get carried away and sometimes I accidentally put a bit too much pressure on myself and water-me sort of blurts out everywhere in panic, and lands up as a useless puddle on the sideboard, waiting to be wiped up.
Bookworms and Coffee Monsters 