The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 7-7-24

Posted on July 7, 2024July 5, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

As many Reading Reality regulars may already be aware, on Wednesday, July 3, 2024, our beloved Lucifer T. Cat left us to climb the Rainbow Bridge. My post from Wednesday, Bitter to Receive, celebrates a bit of his life with us and pours out the smallest measure of my grief – but I still feel as if I’m on the verge of tears most of the time.

The remaining members of the clowder, Hecate (now eldest as well as grumpiest), George, Luna and Tuna, all circled around and sniffed his carrier after we came home without him, but seem to be settling into their new normal. Their humans are still utterly unsettled.

I’ve been reading ahead a lot these last couple of days, as well as re-reading a whole bunch of comfort reads. It’s one of the ways that I deal with things. Galen’s been playing a good but kind of creepy game, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, and now I’m playing it too. It’s a game about dealing with ghosts, and isn’t that a bit on-target right now – at least for this household?

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Sparkle Time Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the Early Summer Giveaway Event
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Christmas in July Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the SUMMER 2024 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

Sparkle Time Giveaway Hop
B+ #BookReview: Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer
A- #BookReview: Guard the East Flank by M.L. Buchman
Bitter to Receive
#GuestPost: July 4th 2024
Christmas in July Giveaway Hop
Stacking the Shelves (608)

Coming This Week:

The Mummy of Mayfair by Jeri Westerson (#BookReview)
Penric and the Bandit by Lois McMaster Bujold (#BookReview)
This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour (#BookReview)
Daughters of Olympus by Hannah M. Lynn (#BookReview)
The Price of Redemption by Shawn Carpenter (#BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (608)

Posted on July 6, 2024July 5, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

Occasionally, Amazon’s attempts to match something-a-likes to whatever you’re searching for gets a bit, well, odd. The first entries for a search for Lightfall by Ed Crocker, I searched for “Lightfall Crocker” figuring that would be enough. The top entry for that search is a The Betty Crocker Cookbook. I get the “Crocker” part but can’t figure out where the “Lightfall” comes in.

Mr. Crocker’s not-a-cookbook aside, the prettiest covers in this week’s stack are The Bones Beneath My Skin and Remember When, and, as usual, they’re both pretty but not pretty the same at all. The books I’m most intrigued by are Earthlight and When Women Ran Fifth Avenue – of course for entirely different reasons.

Galen is particularly curious about The Elements of Marie Curie. I heard the author, Dava Sobel, speak at the ALA Conference last weekend, so I was interested, but when I told him about the book he was REALLY intrigued.

And the two books I’m most definitely looking forward to – and one of those immediately – are Penric and the Bandit and Shoestring Theory. I adore the Penric and Desdemona series, and Shoestring Theory, well, there’s a cat.

penric and the bandit by lois mcmaster bujold

earthlight by j michael straczynski audio

wooing the witch queen by stephanie burgis

before we forget kindness by toshikazu kawaguchi

For Review:
Before We Forget Kindness (Before the Coffee Gets Cold #5) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune
Earthlight by J. Michael Straczynski (audio)
The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel
Jackpot Summer by Elyssa Friedland
Lightfall (Everlands #1) by Ed Crocker
Remember When: Clarissa’s Story (Ravenswood #4) by Mary Balogh
Shoestring Theory by Mariana Costa
Trajectory by Cambria Gordon
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue by Julie Satow
Wooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy #1) by Stephanie Burgis

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Penric and the Bandit (Penric and Desdemona #13) by Lois McMaster Bujold

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-30-24

Posted on June 30, 2024June 27, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

It was a very ‘B’ week, with one notable exception. Ivy, Angelica, Bay by C.L. Polk was exceptional, as was the podcast of St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid, the short story that sets it up. Which also led to my discovery of the podcast Levar Burton Reads and now I’m totally hooked.

As you read this, I’m in San Diego for this year’s American Library Association Conference, no doubt adding to the height of my already towering TBR pile. The cats are being taken care of – but we know they still miss us based on how clingy they are when we get back. And we certainly miss them.

But none of us are missing the kitty interloper (kittyloper?) on the outside of the catio screen in this picture – and the number of screen patches has quadrupled since this was taken! Clearly this cat can see that our clowder has a good thing going and he wants to be part of it!

Stacking the Shelves (607)

Posted on June 29, 2024July 5, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

All of the books in this stack will be published in August. I’ve been saving this list for a bit, because, well, August. But I haven’t picked up much this week, so it seemed like a good time to add all of these books – and naturally their covers – to the official stacking.

The two prettiest covers in this batch – at least this time IMHO – are The Singer Sisters and Transgenesis. The books I’m most curious about are Einstein in Kafkaland, because graphic novel, and A Promised Land because the American Revolution is one of those eras that has always fascinated me.

What are your thoughts and what did you add to YOUR stack this week?

For Review:
Einstein in Kafkaland by Ken Krimstein
Eugene Nadelman by Michael Weingrad
Globetrotter by Mark Jacob and Matthew Jacob
Life After Kafka by Magdalena Platzová, translated by Alex Zucker
Once Upon Argentina by Andres Neuman
A Promised Land by Adam Jortner
Simone Weil: A Life in Letters edited by Robert Chenavier and Andre A Devaux
The Singer Sisters by Sarah Seltzer
Tablets Shattered by Joshua Leifer
Transgenesis by Ava Nathaniel Winter
Uncommon Allies by Alan M. Shore

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-23-24

Posted on June 23, 2024June 22, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

This week’s books turned out to be good to excellent! And Galen did one of his guest posts and a blog hop started this week so it was a bit of an easy week – also good!

Speaking of good, I’ve been going through this year’s Hugo nominations and picking one nominee per week that I hadn’t already read to read and review. Between Library Journal and Reading Reality it turned out that I’d read a fair number of the novels and novellas during the year, but I don’t read a lot of short fiction unless it’s in a collection – and that usually happens well after the fact. So far, the short stories and novelettes have ranged from OK to great, so I’m just making my final selections more difficult even if they will be better informed!

The above picture is a combination of “if I fits I sits” – writ rather large – and “possession is 9/10ths of the cat”. There are three cat beds on top of my dresser – as shown above. Lucifer has firm possession of the heated bed on the right as he glares at anyone who even thinks about ousting him from it. The middle cushion is only used when Lucifer doesn’t have possession of HIS bed, so he has a comfy place from which to glare at the interloper. That’s Tuna on the left, the biggest cat in the house in the smallest bed. Because he wants to be Lucifer’s buddy and Lucifer is barely tolerant of that fact. And because Tuna seems to enjoy overflowing his sleeping spots – as his other favorite bed is equally under proportioned to his generous purrson.