This week last year the Sunday Post contained three items in addition to the usual scheduling stuff. A picture of Luna, a reminder that Banned Books Week started that day, and an announcement about that year's Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer. Clearly, it's that time again, all the way around, because today's Sunday Post features; 1) a picture of Luna, 2)a reminder that Banned Books Week starts today, and 3) an announcement that sign-ups are open for THIS year's 14th Annual Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon, hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer…

I've started saving all the creepy covers for Halloween. It's amazing how pretty the whole stack is once the really scary stuff gets removed. (OTOH this year's Halloween Edition of Stacking the Shelves may be a literal nightmare!) The prettiest cover - or at least the most beautiful in the artistic sense - has to be Edmonia. She was a sculptor, so it seems entirely fitting that the cover of even her fictional story would be beautiful. And it is. Although The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2026…

This week's schedule may go the same way as last week's schedule. It kind of already has, as one book I thought I'd be reviewing this week isn't going to be published until this time NEXT month. This week ended in a "bail and flail" where nothing was working, which is why I turned to the trusty duo of Barker & Llewelyn to get me out of the slump. Which certainly worked, BUT put me one book closer to the end of the series - at least until next year. I'm going to have to find another comfort read series to fill that gap.

This stack has some pretty. In fact, it has some of pretty much everything. Spooky season is just around the corner, holiday books are coming in, and this week's stack has a special book just to make it a bit, well, special. The pretty covers, IMNSHO, are The Chinese Lady, The Court of Venus, The Three Graces of Pearl Street and When Mikan Road Was Ours. As usual, they are not all pretty the same, but pretty nevertheless. The spooky season covers look like Dreamland, Mazywood…

This week's schedule is feeling just a bit tentative - and a bit more like last week's than I intended it to be. C'est la reading vie. But seriously, last week was going fine until I got a migraine, and had to pull a previously finished review out of my emergency cache because my head just wouldn't let me write. It happens. And not that I wasn't planning to post Morfran in a couple of weeks. I just prefer my plans to stay planned. This week's schedule is feeling tentative because I'm waiting for the posting info for the…

There are several really pretty covers in this stack. Which makes for a VERY pleasant change! Particularly as they are not all pretty the same. I'm looking at The Bookbinder & the Thief, The Flower Court, The Memory of Borrowed Books, No Good Deed and Throne of Frost and Flame and they are all beautiful in their own ways. A Complement of Scoundrels isn't precisely pretty, but it has a kind of orderly complication combined with meticulous drawing that I also like a lot. The one I picked up just for the title is…

Today's cat picture is one of those "die from the cute" pics. George and Tuna are clearly communing in the upstairs hallway. How that works, I don't know, because Tuna is not exactly the brightest cat in the world - and he looks particularly discombobulated in this pic - while George doesn't always have possession of his share of the orange cats of the world's single brain cell. They're still buds, and its still adorable. I think this one was taken the night before we left on our trip, meaning that the suitcases were out and packed and every single cat in the house was unhappy about it.

This stack has a couple of VERY pretty covers in The Creek, the Crone, and the Crow and Meet Me in the Garden. Fossil Feud has a cute cover, a cute title, and my reading group is having a blast with it so it's rising fast up my virtually towering TBR pile. I'm also hearing good things about The Hocus Pocus Handbook, so that's going to get reviewed as soon as I can find a slot for it. But OMG the year is winding down fast. It's still summer-y here, but the temps are dropping into that delightful zone from the mid-70s to the low-80s and it's lovely to be outside.

This Sunday Post features an extra special visiting cat. Say "hello" to Spike! Spike is visiting here today because a couple of weeks ago we visited him and his human in Anchorage. Spike is very clearly Luna and Tuna's brother from another mother, and we're his extra people because we're part of his herd. Literally. Whenever one of us went ANYWHERE in the house he stood around waiting until he could herd us back into a single location so he could watch over us. He was, as you can see, VERY determined about it!

There are some fascinating covers in this week's stack. Not so much pretty, but a lot of pretty interesting! Back for Blood somehow manages to be both a bit pretty and a bit pretty creepy in this cover. It looks pretty at first, then you get a good look at the images and it flips to pretty creepy. Odette Rising looks like the closest cover to really pretty. But I really love the style of The Dungeon Book - and probably the book as well, as that's the one I'm most curious about.

Luna looks like she's just woken up from a nap in this picture. Alternatively, she's hiding from the "Monster Vacuum" in my lap and she's not pleased that I disturbed her. Or it's merely that "the princess of quite a lot" just doesn't want to be disturbed by anyone or anything - especially not the owner of the lap she's currently possessing. Speaking of disturbances and disruptions, tomorrow is the final day of August. Summer - as a period of time rather than a meteorological season - is coming to an end.

There's some of everything in this stack. Some pretty, some cute, some creepy, some curiosity, some anticipation, etc., etc., etc. In the pretty and pretty cute categories, there's The Bookshop Book, The Fall Fix Up, Fallen for France, and Rainy Day Bookshop. For creepy there's The Burn Line, Intercepts, and She's a Doll. Certainty looks ominous but not creepy the way that The Burn Line does. It's also the title I'm most curious about. The Bone Door manages to be both creepy and cute!

This week's readings were not just generally good, but two of them absolutely blew me away. I was NOT surprised by how much I enjoyed The Tailor. I was expecting it because the series has just been so damn good. But I've been fortunate that the whole series was released here really close together so I didn't have to wait between books. Now that we've caught up with the series over here, it's going to be a LONG wait until book 9 comes out next summer. A Thousand Painted Hours is another book that I expected to be good.

There are a couple of actually pretty covers in this stack. I'm looking at Children of the Wild, Dead New World, and A Fellowship of Academics & Arts and those all hit my "pretty" button in their own pretty different ways. In contrast, there's only one creepy cover, and that's Tillinghast. I can't make the body parts in that cover make sense, and I'm probably better off if I don't! The book I'm really curious about is The First Ladies' Guide to Murder. It wouldn't work NOW, of course.

This Sunday there's nothing missing in the post, and I won't have to play a fill-in-the-blanks game when I wake up. After all, the whole point of Sundays it to not need to rush around to get ready first thing in the morning. Or at least it is at Chez Reading Reality! It also marks the end of a truly excellent reading week. A Trade of Blood, The Silver Hand and Preaching to the Choir were all absolutely terrific, but not terrific in the same way. And that's just a part of what made all of them such great reads!

There's not a lot of outright pretty in this stack, but there's certainly a lot of pretty darn cute! Fishbone Cinderella sweeps back and forth over the border between merely cute and downright pretty, while the cutest of the cute, IMHO are A Game of Cat and Killer, Meet Cute Magic, Mr. Mendlebee's Pandimensional Literary Repository (and Yarn) and The Reimagining of Thornwood House. Fishbone Cinderella is one of the books I'm most curious about - because I'm really curious about how that title works itself out. Speaking of titles, …

It feels like this week's Sunday Post is about half TBD. It's not actually half, it's just weirding me out a bit.  I generally write these posts a day or two before, and that's usually fine. But the Summer Giveaway Event hasn't ended quite yet, I don't have the images for the Fall Giveaway Event yet either, and things feel a bit incomplete. Howsomever, we also have company over and I need to post SOMETHING. So here we are. (I'll edit this later on Sunday to add the missing pieces.)

YAY! There are only two really creepy covers in this stack, Preaching to the Choir and Stay Buried. I finished Preaching to the Choir yesterday, and the story is even creepier than the cover. But it's fascinating AND fantastic, as you'll see in the review this coming week. As We Fall Through Time and  Life Out of Order both having interesting covers with VERY similar themes. Which fits, as the books look rather similar as well. But I think I'm going to have to finally read The Time Traveler's Wife…

It's the second of August. It feels like we're still in the midst of summer. And yet, The Summer Giveaway Event ends this coming Saturday, which just seems weird. Summer's not OVER, but we're already making way for FALL! OTOH, school starts this week around here, and that's weird as well. Today's cat picture is of Tuna looking over George's shoulder. The boys are buds, they hang out together a lot. Which really means that George goes off by himself and Tuna hunts him down because Tuna really, really needs someone to cuddle with.

There's a lot of creep in this stack. So much so that it's a pity I couldn't save it for Halloween. I mean seriously, the 'pretty creepy' way outnumbers the 'pretty' by a considerable margin. Even the rather pretty cover for The Moonlight Runner has a touch of the gothic about it. There's The Glowing Hours, Hex House, A Spell for Drowning, This House Will Feed, To Kill a Queen, Witch of the Shadow Wood,  and Women of a Promiscuous Nature (love the title, tho').

I very nearly left one of the entries for this coming week as "TBD". Not that I don't have PLENTY of books to choose from, but they weren't  hitting the right note. At least not until I remembered that the Amazon Original Stories Magic & Mystery collection will be released on Tuesday. And I KNOW I'm going to dive right in. This should be GRAND - and I can't wait to find out. At least I'm admitting things up front this week. Last week I sorta/kinda knew that I'd be switching…

This is a stack with some of absolutely everything. I mean it. EVERYTHING! First, even though it's only July, there are TWO holiday books in this stack, Eight Ways to Say I Love You and Mingle All the Way. Somewhere, someone should be receiving a ten-yard penalty for rushing the whole, entire season! The pretty book, and there is one this time around, is The Jeweled Book. Even the title is pretty! The cutest book is, OF COURSE, A Fellowship of Curses & Cats, with an honorable mention for…

Today's cat picture is a photo of "peace in our time". At least in Hecate's time. She STILL wants to be an only child. It's never happened and it's not going to, either. But she lives in hope - and grumpiness. This picture was a surprise. Both of the girls haunt Galen's office, but not usually at the same time and especially not in this close  proximity - although Galen often serves as the "Berlin Wall" between their two opposing forces. On this particular afternoon, they either both needed their "security human" too much to quibble about the other's presence, or were both just too much in need of a nap to care.

The "natural" covers turned out to be the pretty ones in this stack. By that I mean The Library of Flowers, The Slantwise Histories, and Strangebrew Apothecary. They all feature something from the natural world, either flowers or birds, and are just composed in an appealing way. (At least to me.) Although Family Drama gets points for looking like something Norman Rockwell would have done. Just Friends and Only Friends are both pretty cute and get extra credit for having a little theme of their own going.