Snap! Criticism time: @danhartland.bsky.social is back, this time reading Tochi Onyebuchi's HARMATTAN SEASON (@torbooks.bsky.social) with Joy Sanchez-Taylor's DISPELLING FANTASIES (@ohiostatepress.bsky.social)

Book post

Episode 6 of our close reading of Lord of the Rings! This one has a very restrained dearth of verse chat, but a return to a lot of the themes of previous sections, as we head down into the dwarf-dolven* halls of Khazad-dûm. *this is just extremely funny to me

TV Review: The Witcher Season 4 A big casting change and a return to linear storytelling redefines the tone in season 4 @annmichelleharris.bsky.social has our review at the NOAF blog: www.nerds-feather.com/2025/11/tv-r...

Ok it may be Haldir when watching the films, but I think this read through has confirmed that in the books, Glorfindel is my boi.

And we get to one of the major sections of the book as we head South and through Moria.

three days left to nominate material for the Otherwise Award! hit us with your best shot 🙏

I have among my many half-baked drafts the bones of an essay about the scourge of wiki-isation and like... extensive focus on canon etc. on fiction and god damn if I had already finished writing it, I could have been so on topic today.

Ahhh Goodreads Choice Awards season. Time to feel massively humbled about my knowledge of contemporary literature.

Extremely niche gripe - I would love it if one of the standard ancient city builder games (Rome edition) would be not a COWARD and go full polychromy. Give me garish and tasteless Rome please and thank.

Time as a Rubik’s Cube: @rachelcordasco.bsky.social reviews the third volume of Solvej Balle's ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME (tr. Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell), out soon from @ndbooks.bsky.social!

Reading the next section of LotR for our continued chats, and just really enjoying what a sassy little bitch Gandalf is.

Bookmark of When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift: complete.

The book is still not very good, and alas Stockport station is insufficiently delightful to counteract it. And won’t sell me hot beverage. Might give up and switch to Clute or cross-stitch on the train.

Now on the train home, and can conclude I had a lovely time at novacon. Good panels, a nice hotel, lovely town and excellent chats with a variety of excellent people.

Convention has been good for making progress on the bookmark.

The book is, alas, not very good, but a sofa at novacon with a glass of wine and a good dinner behind me is far from the worst place to be reading it.

Intergalactic Mixtape is live! 🥳

Stuck at Stockport station for a while so may as well entertain myself somehow. I recently had a conversation with someone (I’ve now forgotten who) who was quite anti reviewers “putting themselves into the review”. Despite forgetting the person, the opinion has stuck with me, because I v disagree.

I am starting to wonder if some sort of transport witch has put a curse on me, the amount of trains I’ve been on recently with delays, issues, rail replacement buses and nonsense.

🏊‍♀️The women who swim at Kenwood Ladies Pond have already made their decision. In 2024, almost 900 members voted to keep their trans-inclusive policy - a policy that has worked peacefully since 2019. Now, a small campaign group is seeking to overturn that democratic decision through the courts. 1/5

New column! This time on a gorgeously eclectic novella, full of the pieces of people's lives and fragments of fairytales, as well as some genuinely thoughtful and interesting themes around community.

Today’s post is not book, but board game, both things I’ve played a number of times with friends, and liked enough to want my own copies.

I somehow missed this back in September, but 👀👀👀

The worssstttttt

Trying to decide what book(s) to take away with me over the weekend and being hampered by the "can only hold one thing for review in head at once" problem, because a lot of the books I want to read imminently I strongly suspect I will want to write about too. Might have to be a non-fiction time.

Book Review: A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo A deeply unsettling addition to the series, bringing the connecting thread of food up to the forefront of the story. @chloroformtea.bsky.social has our review at the NOAF blog www.nerds-feather.com/2025/11/book...

Because we were talking about The Last Unicorn, Ed and I ended up looking at the Locus poll of best fantasy novels from 1987. I have… a number of questions for those polled.

Just finished reading the book for this month's book club and for once, I'm glad I'm moderating the meeting because I will have absolutely nothing to say about it.

After a few listens I am coming to the conclusion that I really do quite like the new Florence + the Machine album. It's not quite my normal fave type of music, but it's so atmospheric that doesn't matter.

Ahhh the monthly "what is now out in paperback???" scramble to figure out what to nominate for our book club.

Realm of the Elderlings Project: The Rain Wild Chronicles, Book 2: Dragon Haven To build a new society, you must understand what worked (and didn’t) about the old @ergative-abs.bsky.social continues the project at the NOAF blog www.nerds-feather.com/2025/11/real...

Based on the videos I’m suddenly getting on TikTok, Hallowe’en was truly the only thing holding back the onslaught of Christmas. I hate it.

I'm not going to, because that would be a silly waste of money, but I am so tempted to get an ebook of what I'm currently doing as audio, just because the cringe would be easier to handle in text. It's a generally really good book but oh my god some moments are killing me.

Apparently the thing most* likely to prod my brain into wanting to read a book is reading a bunch of mostly positive but slightly dubious reviews. Not unalloyed praise. The ones where there's a significant flaw hiding in there. WHY. *second most, after "friend I trust insistently pushes book at me"

Dredging this column up now The Last to Drown has won a British Fantasy Award. It's a wonderfully atmospheric read, prefect for this time of year, and if I or the award can't convince you maybe Roseanna can.

This would of course be solved if publishers sent me physical arcs. Pretty please? (I have received I think... two? three? physical arcs total ever and I have such a jealousy and yearning, despite what they would do to our already stretched book capacity in the flat)

This is a genuine question, not just a gripe, because I'm sure I know someone who might have the answer to it: why is it that e-arcs quite so often have quite such atrocious formatting? For context, I'm reading one now where numbers (not page numbers) and the author name appear mid-text throughout.

Someone is very much enjoying the changing of the weather and his ability to steal any blankets I might want to use.

The BFS Award for best novella went to the excellent The Last To Drown by Lorraine Wilson and you will not forget this story in a hurry www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2024/2/...

Today at the blog, Every Galaxy a Circle author @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social tells @princejvstin.com about her Six Books www.nerds-feather.com/2025/11/six-...

Managed to forget I had a data entry task that's going to take me... probably all of today to do, so I have not saved up some podcast episodes to listen to during it. I am a fool.

When I was most of the way through Hades 2, I was pretty convinced I wanted to write a review of it (I had many thoughts). And because I wanted to make sure I was accurately representing what I was talking about, I wrote a lot of it in pieces as I was playing, or at least sketched it out.

I stop paying attention to the internet for two hours and another award winner list drops? Rude.

The Award for Best Short Story goes to Loneliness Universe by Eugenia Triantafyllou, Uncanny Magazine.

We love to see it

Our latest link round-up is live! Reviews, essays, some events and CFPs from around the web for lovers of speculative fiction and criticism: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/11/01/w...

As if by magic, this review (the Swift one, aka read this everyone) is now online. locusmag.com/review/when-...

All set for a (hopefully) very pleasant three hours on the train. Also the new Florence + the Machine album is out, if I get bored of my excellent book.

Intergalactic Mixtape is live! This week, an early launch to #Novellavember with a Bonus Track from @chloroformtea.bsky.social featuring novella recs, plus lots of reviews, rec lists, and a call for your October SFF favorites!