Why does an author write a Sherlock Holmes pastiche only to replace Watson with his own character? And why would that new character be a male doctor? It's a shame, because the initial idea, a kind of sequel to The moonstone, was a good one, only the execution was poor.

My plan is to read as many Sherlock Holmes pastiches from Kindle Unlimited as I can during my free 3 months as prime user. This one was okay, but nothing special.

Ropa is a ghostalker in Edinburgh after some kind of... Revolt? Catastrophe? There are a lot of good ideas - too many, actually, so that the library of the dead from the title is only one small part of the story. I think this is the start of a new series, but unless the sequel will be tighter, I don't think I will read it.

I thought this was only okay. Poirot is always one step behind, for a change, and I actually felt sorry for him. The anti-semitic stereotypes were jarring.

I started this after a year, because I was worried it might not be my thing. I shouldn't have worried, I couldn't put it down! The story follows a new ambassador to a big empire, where she tries to find out what happened to her predecessor. She's clearly the center of the story, in contrast to many other scifi books with multiple povs and a much wider scope (which doesn't mean that the world building is bad! I'm just a character driven reader).

I enjoyed this more than the first one, that I finished right before. Enola takes a case and deals with loneliness. I like that it's not only a big adventure for her, and I like how Sherlock and Watson are portrayed. What I didn't like, though, was the solution of how the crime was done. While it was fitting for Victorian or Gothic Literature, I had expected something else. There was an excerpt for the next book that sounded really promising.

My edition has the Netflix adaptation cover, but that's fitting because I watched the movie first. It took me a while to warm up to book!Enola, but now I like her and will start the second book next (the movie added a lot of things; there's a second one coming, by the way). It was an enjoyable read.

I'm late to the party, but now I understand the love! Somehow I had expected something different. Lucky for me, the second book is on sale as an ebook this month.

I love it. It's like this has been written just for me, Sherlock Holmes stories with a supernatural bent. Only Watson is called Doyle, and Holmes is an angel called Crow. You will get the most out of this if you have a firm grip on the canon and recognize the differences. Justice for Tonga! A Holmes version that is not a rude, sociopathic egotist is also a plus.

The newest Murderbot novella is as good as the others. Murderbot is playing detective this time. I hope the next one will be a full novel again, because novellas are too short!

I actually read this once years (decades?) ago, but I couldn't remember anything apart from lots and lots of bell ringing, so I prepared by reading the wikipedia article about change ringing (not a thing here in Germany, and the book made much more sense afterwards!). The plot starts slowly, but it has a powerful ending.

Here, have a picture of a creepy lego house and a book about a creepy house (and its inhabitants). I'm not good with creepy books, and this book skirted close to the limit of what I can stand (I have seen reviews that find it too boring - for fans of the genre probably true). I liked the author's Gods of Jade and Shadow, and I liked this one: the writing style, and the characters, especially the women.

I watched the Branagh movie last month and wanted to go to the source to see what they changed. Quite a lot, actually, but I would have been very surprised if it had turned out to be a faithful adaptation 😄 (I like the movie and the book, they are just different). The ending is quite abrupt. I would have liked another paragraph or two to gently leave the book. While it was fun to see Poirot work, I like characters that have doubts once in awhile.

Lord Peter goes undercover in an advertising firm. He can handle the work, but nearly ruins it because he has to wear his expensive shoes. Just typical 😄. Sayers worked in advertising herself, so she describes the work and people in such great detail, that it's really obvious she doesn't know as much about the topic in the subplot. Peter seems a bit callous at times, but overall, I liked it.

So this was a wild ride! I had lots of fun, but I can understand how some would only find it confusing and exhausting. Take a kind of victorian fantasy world with magic and other worlds, use a sherlockian setup with queer characters and mix in allusions to Dracula, Nosferatu, Lovecraft, Baba Yaga and fairytales and you get this. I would have liked a bit more (any?) depth to the characters, but it's just not that kind of book.

After I was disappointed in the last one, I liked this much better. I wonder if Aaronovitch will start a new plot arc, this felt like a standalone book. Only the IT company bit was too much and had me rolling my eyes at times (I'm a software developer; I don't know if that made it better or worse).

A re-read, and still I was glued to the page and couldn't wait for THAT letter. You know the one. Now I'm in the mood for the film adaptations.

I thought that the book started strong and I couldn't put it down, but then it all kind of fell apart. I also really disliked how the only female character of importance was written. Since it's the author's first book, I will give her another chance and hope for the best.

Maybe I'm too exhausted these days, but I found the focus on train timetables too tiring. There was a fun bit at the end where Peter re-enacts the crime, though.

I remember being very disappointed when I read this first years ago. Now I think it's a really good book, but a very boring romance 😄. I was reminded of Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, which I liked very much.

Probably universal opinion: Mrs Norris is horrible. Maybe controversal? I can't stand Henry Crawford.

Eh, definitely not among my favourite Wimsey novels. Bonus points for Miss Climpson, though. But I guessed the twist at the end, and I got a strong sense of 'even if this old lady might indeed have been murdered, she was terminally ill anyway, so it's not that bad a crime'. I'm sure the woman in question would beg to differ!

Book mail! I SHOULD write, 'send help I keep buying books when I have already so many unread ones', but I don't want help, I want more time to read. I tell myself there are worse vices 😄

Short story collections can be a mixed bag, and it's the same with this one. My favourites were probably the second doctor and Jamie vs. the necronomicon, and old sixie and Peri crash a wedding.

Not a good pastiche. Holmes didn't feel quite right. I'm glad I only borrowed it.

I am wavering between a pick and so-so. I found it good in parts, but Maggie could be very annoying. My hope would be that she had enough growth in this book to make the next book better, but I'm not sure I will read that. As always with post-apocalyptic fiction I wonder how society is supposed to work. Where's the gas coming from, food, clothes? To trade goods is one thing, but who is producing it? I found that more unrealistic than the gods.

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView
Thank you for the tag, @EadieB

1) No. Halloween isn't as big in Germany as in other countries, and even if someone rings they are normally too lazy to walk up all the stairs to the top floor where we live.

2) No. Halloween wasn't a thing when I was a kid, and now I can't be bothered 😂

I have no idea who has already played...
@BookNAround @Jess861 @readordierachel @claudiuo @Enchanted_Bibliophile ?

I found the first one in the Lychford series only okay, and the second one isn't a pick, either. It's interesting enough, but the special something is missing. I prefer Cornell's Shadow Police books. Still, they're short, so maybe I will give the third one another chance.

My first Schwab is a ghost story for younger readers. Cass has a ghost friend since she nearly drowned and can go behind the veil. The highlight for me was the description of Edinburgh, the city that Cass visits with her parents. I recognised the places from my visit a few years ago. It's the first part in a series, I think, and there are hints that there is still a lot to learn for Cass.

Three months and 900 pages later, I have worked my way through the beautiful annotated Sherlock Holmes edition of the 4 novels. There are lots of different illustrations and annotations. Some Sherlockian ideas are really out there, but I had the feeling that Klinger toned down the weird, compared to the Baring-Gould editions. One book down, two to go!

The book tells the stories of the forgotten soldiers of world war one, meaning the non-white men from around the world that were needed by the empires on both sides. They were badly needed, but always treated as 'lesser'. How the white governments worried they might get uppity, and how to keep them away from white women. It made my blood boil.
I found the book a bit disjointed, but that was probably due to my lack of knowledge about WWI.

This biography does a great job of explaining how as an unmarried woman Jane Austen was not important to Georgian society and had to depend on and to defer to her family. It's hard to say what she was like, because her family destroyed letters and later tried to paint a prettier picture, but I had a clearer idea after reading this.

I held back on reading this, so I would have a book that I was sure to love, and I was right. I love Murderbot, the snarkiness, the evolution, and the return of ART. Can't wait for the next one!

I finished this one today at the beach. It's a light pick for me, because it started strong but didn't have a strong ending. The description of the very real double standards for men and women in historical fiction is always so depressing.

That was more meta than expected, but that made it fun. On the whole it's a bit too long and fragmented (three coda parts!), but still a pick.

This reads like an episode of the show, and I mean that as a compliment. The librarians have to deal with Mother Goose and everybody gets their moment to shine. Lots of fun if you like the show!

One more down in my discworld reread. I may have read it only once before and couldn't remember much. I loved the parts in Ankh-Morpork and everything related to the mummies, but on the whole it's not one of the better ones.

Thank you for the tag @Erofan !
Here are my #top6reads of the year so far (Wyrd Sisters is maybe a cheat because it's a reread).

What are your top 6 @Megabooks @thegirlwiththelibrarybag @Lesanne ?

I'm slowly filling in the gaps of my Wimsey collection. This is an early one, meaning there are more annoying antics and less depth than in the later ones, but it's still enjoyable. I was surprised how often Wimsey was in peril, but then his middle name is Death!

Thank you @Lesanne for the tag

1) Do 2 books together count as a stack? Then there is one under the couch table and one next to the bed. I have one big virtual stack of ebooks.

2) Fingersmith. Not read yet.

@hes7 @HeyT @SamanthaMarie do you want to play?

#TwoForTuesday @TheSpineView

I needed a break from the book I was reading (really, I should stop trying to read non-humorous books, they are not working for me at the moment) and read this one instead and loved it. I laughed and I cried and reached the ending too soon. Maybe the writing was sometimes too on the nose to get its message across, but I don't care.

I didn't know anything about the book before going in, apart from the fact that it has strange pictures. So I was a bit baffled what direction it took. Unfortunately the protagonist is a whiny brat and, probably an unpopular opinion, the pictures take away from the story (every picture practically screams 'look what I found, now I have to make up a little story for it no matter if it fits in or not!).

1) New Zealand. I wrote in my school year book 20 years ago that I want to go there someday, but haven't managed it yet. No plans.

2) My son is back at school every second day. He's happy to see his friends, and I'm glad it's quieter in the home office.

3) @Curiouser_and_curiouser
@UwannaPublishme
@ravenlee
@BiblioLitten
@thegirlwiththelibrarybag

Thank you for the tag, @Erofan!
#ThankfulThursday @Cosmos_Moon

Spin wants to become a pilot like her father, who was branded a traitor, and fight against the aliens that attack her world. That plot has been written a thousand times before, but this book has great world building and unique details like Doomslug and M-Bot. I couldn't put it down because I needed to know why it was all happening. It's the first one in a series but thankfully it doesn't end on a cliffhanger and we get answers.

After I didn't have much luck with my last few fiction books, I very much enjoyed Chris Hadfield's account about his career as an astronaut and his time in space. He's the Canadian astronaut that sang a Bowie song in space, that's all I knew about him before 😁

Thank you @erzascarletbookgasm for the tag, but it's a really hard question! Ask me again in a few months and my answer will probably be different.

1) Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
2) Terry Pratchett: The Wee Free Men
3) Martha Wells: All Systems Red

#Favs
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

My first Virginia Woolf and, uh, probably my last. Enough said.

The first Percy Jackson book didn't grab me at the start. It got better and I found it enjoyable, but it's not a pick. I know I'm not in the target group 😁, I read it to see if it might interest my son. I think we will wait another year or two, though.

#unpopularOpinion
I didn't like it. There's no real plot, the characters are flat, the circus sounded more creepy than enchanting and I just wanted it to be over 😞

@MoonWitch94 #thoughtfulThursday

1) Tomorrow is our 10th wedding anniversary and we had tickets for the Harry Potter play this weekend. It's canceled and the new date is in November.

2) Scythe by Neal Shusterman, but I think about bailing (not the right topic for the moment).

3) After seeing it mentioned several times, I started watching Detective Anna on youtube.

Than you @wanderinglynn for the tag.
@claudiuo @Erofan do you want to play?

The novella takes place in the same universe as A dead djinn in Cairo, but with a different protagonist (although she's mentioned). Two agents investigate the, well, haunting of a tram car. I really enjoy the world building, I hope there will be another novella.