Tag: myweekinbooks

On the blog last week

Monday – I published my review of The Mare by Angharad Hampshire, shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books Set In Snowy Places.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Saturday – I shared my review of thriller Then He Was Gone by Isabel Booth.

New on my shelves

Two historical novels from my wishlist and another book received as a prize to mark achieving Diamond level of Penguin’s Bookmarks community.

Helm by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)

Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind – a subject of folklore and wonder – who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time.

This is Helm’s life story, formed from the chronicles of those the wind enchanted: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate it, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish it, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture it – and the farmer’s daughter who fell in love. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by measuring instruments, alone in her observation hut, fears the end is nigh.

Vital and audacious, Helm is the elemental tale of a unique life force – and of a relationship: between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.

A Granite Silence by Nina Allan (riverrun)

A Granite Silence is an exploration – a journey through time to a particular house, in a particular street, Urquhart Road, Aberdeen in 1934, where eight-year-old Helen Priestly lives with her mother and father.

Among this long, grey corridor of four-storey tenements, a daunting expanse of granite, working families are squashed together like pickled herrings in their narrow flats. Here are Helen’s neighbours: the Topps, the Josses, the Mitchells, the Gordons, the Donalds, the Coulls and the Hunts.

Returning home from school for her midday meal, Helen is sent by her mother Agnes to buy a loaf from the bakery at the end of the street. Agnes never sees her daughter alive again.

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (John Murray)

PROVENCE, 1920. Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle’s artistic genius possible.

Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he’ll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe.

But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers.

Over this sweltering summer, everyone’s true colours will be revealed.

Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Odin’s Game (the final title I need to complete the What’s In A Name 2025 reading challenge), historical novel Helm on my Kindle and listening to the audiobook of Atmosphere (the final book I need to complete the When Are You Reading? 2025 Challenge).

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Look out for…

• Book Review: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
• Book Review: Ravenglass by Carolyn Kirby
• Book Review: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

On the blog last week

Monday – I shared a progress update on my Bookish Goals for 2025.

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books Featuring Characters in Holy Orders.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Friday – I shared my Top 3 November 2025 Reads.

Saturday – I took part in the #6Degrees of Separation meme forging a book chain from Seascraper by Benjamin Wood to The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. I also published my review of Small Acts of Resistance by Anita Frank.

New on my shelves

An audiobook, a book club pick and a book received as a prize to mark achieving Diamond level of Penguin’s Bookmarks community.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Penguin Audio)

In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists John Griffin and Lydia Danes; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer.

As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World by Parmy Olson (Macmillan Business)

When ChatGPT was released, the world changed overnight. Even as we all played with the new toy, a very real danger was quickly coming to that untested automations would undermine our way of life insidiously, sucking value out of our economy, replacing high-level creative jobs and enabling a new, terrifying era of disinformation.

It was never meant to be this way. The founders of the two companies behind the most advanced AIs in existence – Open AI (ChatGPT) and DeepMind (Bard) – started their journeys determined to solve humanity’s greatest problems. But they couldn’t develop their technologies without huge amounts of money – money that Microsoft and Google were more than happy to give them, in exchange for the most powerful seats at the table.

From award-winning journalist Parmy Olson, Supremacy is the astonishing, untold, behind-the-scenes story of the battle between two AI companies, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the dangerous direction that they’re now going in. Featuring a cast of larger-than-life characters, including Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel, Supremacy is a story of manipulation, exploitation, secrecy and of ruthless, relentless human progress – progress that will impact all of us for years to come.

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor (Picador)

It is 1938 and for Manod, a young woman living on a remote island off the coast of Wales, the world looks ready to end just as she is trying to imagine a future for herself.

The ominous appearance of a beached whale on the island’s shore, and rumours of submarines circling beneath the waves, have villagers steeling themselves for what’s to come. Empty houses remind them of the men taken by the Great War, and of the difficulty of building a life in the island’s harsh, salt-stung landscape.

When two anthropologists from the mainland arrive, keen to study the island’s people, Manod sees in them a rare moment of opportunity to leave the island and discover the life she has been searching for. But, as she guides them across the island’s cliffs, she becomes entangled in their relationship, and her imagined future begins to seem desperately out of reach.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Ravenglass from my TBR pile, a digital review copy of thriller Then He Was Gone and I’m listening to the audiobook of Atmosphere (set in the final time period I need for the When Are You Reading? 2025 Challenge)

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Look out for…

• Book Review: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
• Book Review: Then He Was Gone by Isabel Booth
• Book Review: Ravenglass by Carolyn Kirby