#Roll100 picks for February 2025: non-fiction, sci-fi, and a mystery!

British Sea Power (Howarth)

Horror of Glam Rock (Magrs)

Quand sort la recluse (Vargas)

I love this series! Mr Kanda agonizes over which cat tree to get Fukumaru and makes a new online friend. I always read these books with a smile and very often cry a little bit (this book is no exception).

I nearly gave up on this in the first few pages because of the wildly descriptive beginning. Then I read this was adapted from a play by Keane, so I was able to see that as the stage directions for Act 1, Scene 1. And then the action started. The love triangle was not for me, but I very much liked Aunt Anna Rose.

Was out shopping today and decided to stock up for later on in the #CosmereBuddyRead 😂
(There is no way in heck I could finish these from the library)

This week for my #FiveJoysFriday:
1. Spent most of the week working on a jigsaw puzzle: a rainbow of buildings in Copenhagen (artist: Martin Schwartz)
2. Played board games with my nephew last weekend
3. My partner and I ordered a board game table that can be converted to a dining table
4. My favourite Triscuits were on sale 😋
5. Made great progress on a work project and received encouragement on it 💪🏼

This was pretty dang cute. The KITTENS 🥺 There are only three volumes in this series (at least according to Goodreads) so I will finish it up sharpish. Thanks @JenlovesJT47 for the rec 😻

A high So-So verging on low Pick. For the most part, Leela, who narrates most of the chapters, is rendered well, but her knowledge of sailing ships is not plausible to me (those bits felt like “research“). I also found the story was told just enough out of order to be disorienting chronologically.

Dalek Empire 3.3: The Survivors was my December pick for #12BooksOf2024. It was a really good listen and has me racing through this story arc a little faster than I normally read audiobooks!

The Fearless Organization was my November pick for #12BooksOf2024. I borrowed an e-copy from the library and did a LOT of highlighting -- and then it got returned automatically when the loan was up 😂 I'll have to borrow it again to get the highlights back.

This was such a good installment of Dalek Empire! David Tennant does an excellent job as Galanar, and the dramatic cliffhangers continue to pile up. I refreshed my memory of earlier Dalek Empire arcs, and this is building on the story really well.

Overall, I'd say this was a Pick. The pace was good for a historical novel, and I enjoyed reading about the Battle of Copenhagen given that I visited the city this past summer. The only downside to this book: few female characters, and what ones exist are not well rounded. (I don't expect many given the setting, but it would be nice for the ones there ARE to be interesting.)

Hoping to be a more regular participant in #FiveJoysFriday this year! Here‘s this week‘s roundup:

1. Excited to be participating in the #CosmereBuddyRead 😊

2. Going out for dinner with friends tonight 🍽️

3. My friend knitted me a lovely pair of dark blue cabled socks 🧦

4. Saw my nephew on Tuesday! 💙

5. I have a cupboard full of snacks from Christmas, which makes my inner hobbit happy 😂

My October pick for #12BooksOf2024 is Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. A fascinating, suspenseful read. I was inspired to watch the movie as well, and that was also great.

My September pick for #12BooksOf2024 is The Fellowship of the Ring. This was a re-read inspired by meeting Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd at Comic-Con :)

My August pick for #12BooksOf2024 is Says Who?, by Anne Curzan. I liked her approach to grammar and language.

A #Roll100 wrap-up for 2024. I managed to read 15 of 36 picks, which is pretty good given that most of my reading time was monopolized by my master‘s degree. It‘s a part-time degree, so it will be taking up a fair chunk of 2025 as well, but I am looking forward to a clean slate of reading!

My July pick for #12BooksOf2024 is A Man and His Cat, Volume 11. This series is just so darn cute and warm-fuzzy-inducing 😻

I've just learned that Volume 12 is available in English and my library has it, so of course I immediately requested it 😄

My June pick for #12BooksOf2024 is Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop. I am totally here for all this cozy translated bookshop fiction, and this one in particular would go very well with a coffee.

First #Roll100 of 2025: all Doctor Who in a variety of formats 😂

1️⃣ Doctor Who: Eye of Heaven (Mortimore) (print)
2️⃣ The Diary of River Song, Series 7 (audio)
3️⃣ Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen (ebook)

For this first #BookSpinBingo of 2025, I‘m reducing the number of spaces dedicated to school texts (either book or article will count) but adding some extra freebie spaces in case some months have more school reading than others.

A cheeky Christmas present to myself so I can start the #CosmereBuddyRead in January!

My May pick for #12BooksOf2024 is A Man and His Cat, Vol. 10. This series about Mr. Kanda and his cat Fukumaru is super adorable. A lot of these books received high ratings as I zoomed through the series.

My April pick for #12BooksOf2024 is Voice Lessons, by Rob Paulsen. I read the audiobook version, read by Paulsen himself, and it was excellent. Definitely a must-listen if you enjoyed the cartoons he did voices in (I loved Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain).

My March pick for #12BooksOf2024 is Dr. Jen Gunter's latest (at December 2024). I found it extremely informative and well put together.

My February pick for #12BooksOf2024 is Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. I found this book cozy and heartwarming. It doesn't have much of a plot, but that's not what I was after when I read it. The only disappointment for me was that there's a cat on the cover but no cat in the book. That would have made it purrfect. :)

Howl's Moving Castle is my January pick for #12BooksOf2024. It's the sort of book I would probably have LOVED as a teenager; I still liked it a lot even now.

Say WHAT! That ending was a jaw-dropper. Nice work.

Just what I‘m after in a Verlaque and Bonnet mystery. The initial crime—the clearing out of a small museum over a long weekend—was an interesting change of pace.

Overall, a good collection. However, one author clearly does not knit or crochet, because at one point the story « Death in New Venice » refers to a « crochet needle » (it‘s a crochet HOOK, and it would not make a good stabbing implement). And of course this is the one thing I trip up on in a sci-fi story ?

I last read this a couple of decades ago, but it felt like a brand-new read. Kept me turning the pages quickly!

This was pretty good, leaning into Seven‘s more manipulative side and presenting some truly horrifying Cybermen. Maybe don‘t read this when eating lunch 😅

A fun way to revisit the first two seasons of Sherlock.

This is more of a will-they-get-away-with-it-dunnit than a whodunnit. I don‘t object to those, but it took forever for the murder to happen, and I found the company setting rather dull.

The story did pick up toward the end, but it took a long time to get there.

This was great. I highlighted a lot in the ebook copy but had to return it to the library, so I have to borrow it again so that I can retrieve the highlighting 😂

The PD James story (the first of the collection) was my favourite. The rest of the collection was not terribly interesting to me.

#Roll100 December 2024 picks:
1. Sherlock Holmes Essentials, Vol. 1 (Doyle)

2. Cinq semaines en ballon (Verne)

3. Doctor Who: Illegal Alien (Tucker)

My boring #BookSpinBingo list for November 2024. I just use posting the list as an excuse to play with all the backgrounds I keep downloading from PicCollage 😆

#Roll100 list for November 2024 contains all print books for once 😆
1. The Trojan Horse (Innes)

2. Mike: The Memoirs of the Hon. Lester B. Pearson (Pearson)

3. The Navigator of New York (Johnston)

Going to call it a low Pick. Still depressingly relevant even 20+ years after publication. I do remain cynical that organizations would ever fully deal with burnout in the ways presented in the case studies, but it‘s nice to imagine.

Working my way through the Reginald Hills I‘ve collected and passing them along. This installment was well structured but on the long side.

I always enjoy reading Flavia‘s voice, but I found it hard to suspend disbelief for some of the plot elements. For this reason I do not regret keeping the series a borrow rather than buy. A possibly spoilery musing is spoiler tagged in a comment.

An Archy McNally novel is always a fun time. This one is a little bit racier than other installments, on a similar level to McNally‘s Risk. But the story is good.

Loved this! Even though I knew roughly how this story ended, the journey there made for a suspenseful read. Great work by Lovell and Kluger.

I‘ve been reading a lot of articles for school this month and will probably fill up my #BookSpinBingo card the same way next month 😆

Great story! I also literally LOLd at the little intro story in the first part of the collection.

October 2024 #Roll100 picks:
1. McNally‘s Gamble, by Lawrence Sanders

2. The Tenth Doctor Vol. 6: Sins of the Father

3. We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story, by Simu Liu (audio)

My favourite of the trilogy (and I suspect many others‘ favourite as well). It has so much heart and adventure. This time round I was moved to tears by Gimli and Galadriel.

#BookSpinBingo list for September 2024 is all set. Thank goodness there‘s a comic book on the list (although have I read the comic book on this month‘s list? Absolutely not 😂)

#5JoysFriday
1️⃣ Going to see orchestra shows for The Legend of Zelda and Studio Ghibli!
2️⃣ Led a study group at work for friends interested in my master‘s program
3️⃣ My parents came to see the new house, and they loved it 🥰
4️⃣ Spent the past couple of days watching the Baldur‘s Gate 3 cast play D&D. So fun!
5️⃣ Found some nice photos to frame and hang on my walls