Nicky
@shanaqui.bsky.social
36-year-old reader, gamer, self-employed worker, frequent student. Ace, enby, Welsh, reluctant collector of anxiety disorders. They/them.
I do work for Beeminder, Postcrossing and Taskratchet, but this is a personal account.
I do work for Beeminder, Postcrossing and Taskratchet, but this is a personal account.
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post:
The usual weekend post! Mostly a roundup, but I do have one book, my first baihe, which I'm looking forward to!
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/s...
#booksky 💙📚
The usual weekend post! Mostly a roundup, but I do have one book, my first baihe, which I'm looking forward to!
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/s...
#booksky 💙📚
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post
Wooo, weekend! This one feels much-needed. Books acquired this week Just one this week! I’ve been waiting for this book for a bit, so hurrah for its arrival: I need to read it soon because I&…
breathesbooks.com
November 22, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post:
The usual weekend post! Mostly a roundup, but I do have one book, my first baihe, which I'm looking forward to!
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/s...
#booksky 💙📚
The usual weekend post! Mostly a roundup, but I do have one book, my first baihe, which I'm looking forward to!
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/s...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - The Bookshop Below, by Georgia Summers: I wasn't always sure about the worldbuilding, but there were some fun ideas. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – The Bookshop Below
A certain amount of my reaction to Georgia Summers’ The Bookshop Below is due to really bad formatting on Kindle, which chopped off the ends of some words (I think) and made it difficult to s…
breathesbooks.com
November 22, 2025 at 1:47 AM
Review - The Bookshop Below, by Georgia Summers: I wasn't always sure about the worldbuilding, but there were some fun ideas. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/22/r...
#booksky 💙📚
So I finished Dispatch and wrote a fic, because why not.
Five Times Robert Got Kissed By The Z-Team (And One Time He Didn't, Yet), rated T
Visi/Robert, Malevola/Robert, Prism/Robert, Punch Up/Coupé/Robert, Flambae/Robert
archiveofourown.org/works/74565791
Five Times Robert Got Kissed By The Z-Team (And One Time He Didn't, Yet), rated T
Visi/Robert, Malevola/Robert, Prism/Robert, Punch Up/Coupé/Robert, Flambae/Robert
archiveofourown.org/works/74565791
Five Times Robert Got Kissed By The Z-Team (And One Time He Didn't, Yet) - edenbound - Dispatch (Video Game) [Archive of Our Own]
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
archiveofourown.org
November 22, 2025 at 1:44 AM
So I finished Dispatch and wrote a fic, because why not.
Five Times Robert Got Kissed By The Z-Team (And One Time He Didn't, Yet), rated T
Visi/Robert, Malevola/Robert, Prism/Robert, Punch Up/Coupé/Robert, Flambae/Robert
archiveofourown.org/works/74565791
Five Times Robert Got Kissed By The Z-Team (And One Time He Didn't, Yet), rated T
Visi/Robert, Malevola/Robert, Prism/Robert, Punch Up/Coupé/Robert, Flambae/Robert
archiveofourown.org/works/74565791
Oh boy, time to get out of the Steam discussions about Dispatch and not engage with anyone because wow that's a toxic mess...
November 21, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Oh boy, time to get out of the Steam discussions about Dispatch and not engage with anyone because wow that's a toxic mess...
Review - In Love's Key, Reprised, by Guri Nojiro: kinda rushed love story, but there are cute moments. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/21/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/21/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – In Love’s Key, Reprised
Guri Nojiro’s In Love’s Key, Reprised has a fairly typical Japanese m/m dynamic: one guy goes obsessively after the other, who appears to resist and be very grumpy, but finally gives in…
breathesbooks.com
November 21, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Review - In Love's Key, Reprised, by Guri Nojiro: kinda rushed love story, but there are cute moments. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/21/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/21/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Ah yes, the usual articles all over the place about how 18°C is a perfectly fine temperature for everyone and you shouldn't turn on heating until 6pm.
Even if you don't have circulatory issues like me or other reasons to need to be warm, a reminder that it is okay to be comfy.
Even if you don't have circulatory issues like me or other reasons to need to be warm, a reminder that it is okay to be comfy.
November 21, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Ah yes, the usual articles all over the place about how 18°C is a perfectly fine temperature for everyone and you shouldn't turn on heating until 6pm.
Even if you don't have circulatory issues like me or other reasons to need to be warm, a reminder that it is okay to be comfy.
Even if you don't have circulatory issues like me or other reasons to need to be warm, a reminder that it is okay to be comfy.
Review - Vaccines: A Graphic History, by Paige V. Polinsky: this doesn't quite seem to know what audience it's aimed at/what it's trying to do. It's a very simple primer on vaccine history. Rating: 2/5 ("it was okay").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – Vaccines: A Graphic History
Paige V. Polinsky’s Vaccines: A Graphic History is a very whistle-stop tour of the history of vaccination, covering types of vaccination, how vaccination works, early vaccination, and COVID v…
breathesbooks.com
November 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Review - Vaccines: A Graphic History, by Paige V. Polinsky: this doesn't quite seem to know what audience it's aimed at/what it's trying to do. It's a very simple primer on vaccine history. Rating: 2/5 ("it was okay").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - No Ordinary Deaths, by Molly Conisbee: shortly after Grandma's death was not the right time to read this book. Interesting stuff, but assumptions about people's relationship to death got on my nerves. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – No Ordinary Deaths
Molly Conisbee’s No Ordinary Deaths is a history of mortality as experienced by (some) people in the UK, trying to focus on those we know less about — not the deaths of kings and queens…
breathesbooks.com
November 20, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Review - No Ordinary Deaths, by Molly Conisbee: shortly after Grandma's death was not the right time to read this book. Interesting stuff, but assumptions about people's relationship to death got on my nerves. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/20/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - Door into the Dark, by Seamus Heaney: not my favourite of his collections, but I do always like Heaney's poetry. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – Door into the Dark
Seamus Heaney’s Door into the Dark was only his second collection, but his style is unmistakeable. I couldn’t pick a poem from this collection I especially liked as a stand-out, but the…
breathesbooks.com
November 19, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Review - Door into the Dark, by Seamus Heaney: not my favourite of his collections, but I do always like Heaney's poetry. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/r...
#booksky 💙📚
WWW Wednesday:
The weekly "what are you reading"! This time for me with various mysteries, some danmei, a reread, some realistic historical fiction, some non-fiction... yep, it's a big mix.
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/w...
#booksky 💙📚
The weekly "what are you reading"! This time for me with various mysteries, some danmei, a reread, some realistic historical fiction, some non-fiction... yep, it's a big mix.
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/w...
#booksky 💙📚
WWW Wednesday
What have you recently finished reading? It’s actually been a few days since I finished anything, so it took me a minute to figure it out! The last thing I finished was Ursula Le Guin’s…
breathesbooks.com
November 19, 2025 at 12:11 PM
WWW Wednesday:
The weekly "what are you reading"! This time for me with various mysteries, some danmei, a reread, some realistic historical fiction, some non-fiction... yep, it's a big mix.
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/w...
#booksky 💙📚
The weekly "what are you reading"! This time for me with various mysteries, some danmei, a reread, some realistic historical fiction, some non-fiction... yep, it's a big mix.
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/19/w...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - All Of Us Murderers, by KJ Charles: I found the first couple of chapters a bit rough because so many characters are so unpleasant, but once I got into it, I loved it. Rating; 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – All Of Us Murderers
It took me a bit to get into KJ Charles’ All of Us Murderers: I was pretty sure I would enjoy it, because I’ve really enjoyed almost all of her books, but the opening has almost the who…
breathesbooks.com
November 18, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Review - All Of Us Murderers, by KJ Charles: I found the first couple of chapters a bit rough because so many characters are so unpleasant, but once I got into it, I loved it. Rating; 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - The Honey Witch, by Sydney J. Shields: I was not prepared for how badly thought out this was, nor the sex scene in which a character literally dies while the other is getting her rocks off. Rating: 1/5 ("didn't like it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – The Honey Witch
I was kinda prepared for Sydney J. Shields’ The Honey Witch to be mediocre, based on a few reviews I’d read beforehand — I ended up getting it in a sale, just to give it a shot. I…
breathesbooks.com
November 18, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Review - The Honey Witch, by Sydney J. Shields: I was not prepared for how badly thought out this was, nor the sex scene in which a character literally dies while the other is getting her rocks off. Rating: 1/5 ("didn't like it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/18/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - The Deep Dark, by Lee Knox Ostertag: I always like Ostertag's art. The metaphor is a bit obvious here, which makes it a bit predictable, but I enjoyed the journey. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – The Deep Dark
I found Lee Knox Ostertag’s The Deep Dark a little predictable in a way — almost familiar, really made me wonder if I’d maybe read it before? But I don’t think so. Anyway, I…
breathesbooks.com
November 17, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Review - The Deep Dark, by Lee Knox Ostertag: I always like Ostertag's art. The metaphor is a bit obvious here, which makes it a bit predictable, but I enjoyed the journey. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - Eating to Extinction, by Dan Saladino: a bit inherently repetitive (spoiler: monoculture is bad, habitat destruction is bad, etc), but fascinating all the same. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – Eating to Extinction
Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction has a certain amount of inherent repetition: we’re losing a lot of rare and traditional foods because of monocultures, cultural homogenisation, loss …
breathesbooks.com
November 17, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Review - Eating to Extinction, by Dan Saladino: a bit inherently repetitive (spoiler: monoculture is bad, habitat destruction is bad, etc), but fascinating all the same. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/17/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Reposted by Nicky
Publishing strategy:
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything romantasy
Observe lots of people like fantasy without romance
Label everything anti-romantasy
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything anti-anti-romantasy...
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything romantasy
Observe lots of people like fantasy without romance
Label everything anti-romantasy
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything anti-anti-romantasy...
This week, I was sent a proof from one of the big publishers. In their pack, they described it as an "anti romantasy".
An anti romantasy.
I have so many thoughts about this, I honestly don't know where to begin.
An anti romantasy.
I have so many thoughts about this, I honestly don't know where to begin.
November 17, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Publishing strategy:
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything romantasy
Observe lots of people like fantasy without romance
Label everything anti-romantasy
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything anti-anti-romantasy...
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything romantasy
Observe lots of people like fantasy without romance
Label everything anti-romantasy
Observe lots of people like romance in fantasy
Label everything anti-anti-romantasy...
Thoughts on Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books: I know that it is indicated that Seivarden is male-bodied, but given that language isn't gendered like that in the Radch I find it really weird and unpleasant when readers talk about Radchaii characters like Seivarden with male pronouns... 🤔
#booksky
#booksky
November 17, 2025 at 1:05 AM
Thoughts on Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books: I know that it is indicated that Seivarden is male-bodied, but given that language isn't gendered like that in the Radch I find it really weird and unpleasant when readers talk about Radchaii characters like Seivarden with male pronouns... 🤔
#booksky
#booksky
Review - So Far So Good, by Ursula Le Guin: her final collection of poetry, and very characteristically her work. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/16/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/16/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – So Far So Good
Ursula Le Guin’s So Far So Good was her last collection of poetry, with her edits sent in just before her death. I wouldn’t say that’s particularly obvious in the poems — sh…
breathesbooks.com
November 16, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Review - So Far So Good, by Ursula Le Guin: her final collection of poetry, and very characteristically her work. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/16/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/16/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post:
The usual weekly roundup, including this month's British Library Crime Classic, a bumper crop of reviews posted, and a *slightly* quieter week for reading...
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/15/s...
#booksky 💙📚
The usual weekly roundup, including this month's British Library Crime Classic, a bumper crop of reviews posted, and a *slightly* quieter week for reading...
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/15/s...
#booksky 💙📚
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post
It’s the weekend, and I at least am very ready for it! Books acquired this week My monthly British Library Crime Classic arrived! Not one of the authors I like best, but it should be fun anyw…
breathesbooks.com
November 15, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post:
The usual weekly roundup, including this month's British Library Crime Classic, a bumper crop of reviews posted, and a *slightly* quieter week for reading...
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/15/s...
#booksky 💙📚
The usual weekly roundup, including this month's British Library Crime Classic, a bumper crop of reviews posted, and a *slightly* quieter week for reading...
breathesbooks.com/2025/11/15/s...
#booksky 💙📚
Review - I Could Murder Her, by E.C.R. Lorac: another cast of characters who could all be murderers, and some of them you really don't want to be. I always enjoy Lorac's work. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/14/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/14/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – I Could Murder Her
I Could Murder Her features E.C.R. Lorac’s series detective, Inspector Macdonald, digging once more into a tense net of family relationships and rivalries in order to discover who murdered th…
breathesbooks.com
November 14, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Review - I Could Murder Her, by E.C.R. Lorac: another cast of characters who could all be murderers, and some of them you really don't want to be. I always enjoy Lorac's work. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/14/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/14/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Welp, I'm very open to #HiddenBooksGame hints, so far I only have 9.
Needing: the sea books on the table, the girl's hair, the white PJs(?), the blanket, the dog, the laptop, the tree with clocks, the calendar, the holiday books, the food books, the safe.
Needing: the sea books on the table, the girl's hair, the white PJs(?), the blanket, the dog, the laptop, the tree with clocks, the calendar, the holiday books, the food books, the safe.
November 14, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Welp, I'm very open to #HiddenBooksGame hints, so far I only have 9.
Needing: the sea books on the table, the girl's hair, the white PJs(?), the blanket, the dog, the laptop, the tree with clocks, the calendar, the holiday books, the food books, the safe.
Needing: the sea books on the table, the girl's hair, the white PJs(?), the blanket, the dog, the laptop, the tree with clocks, the calendar, the holiday books, the food books, the safe.
Review - The Genius Myth, by Helen Lewis: all about how the idea of "being a genius" lets people get away with being awful. Not bad, but I did find it could've been more succinct. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/13/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/13/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – The Genius Myth
The premise of Helen Lewis’ The Genius Myth is basically that when we moved from saying “this person has a genius for X” into “this person is a genius”, we created a m…
breathesbooks.com
November 13, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Review - The Genius Myth, by Helen Lewis: all about how the idea of "being a genius" lets people get away with being awful. Not bad, but I did find it could've been more succinct. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/13/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/13/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Reposted by Nicky
One of the many reasons we have to fight the rise of the far right is the risk they pose to undoing the progress we *have* made.
Lot of people are already passing this around with the usual "WHY ISN'T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING" shrieks, while ignoring the fact that the article literally says that this is a *significant* decrease from the warming that we were on track for even a few years ago.
World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds
Fossil fuel emissions have hit a record high while many nations have done too little to avert deadly global heating
www.theguardian.com
November 13, 2025 at 1:27 PM
One of the many reasons we have to fight the rise of the far right is the risk they pose to undoing the progress we *have* made.
I actually ran into people being like "but it's obvious it was song lyrics" and... the number of people who get your clever reference (to a book, song lyrics, TV show, etc) is SO much smaller than you think it is.
Don't count on everyone knowing that your violent-sounding quote is from a song.
Don't count on everyone knowing that your violent-sounding quote is from a song.
"bluesky will suspend you for anything vaguely resembling a death threat" is maybe the single most consistent moderation policy they have I don't know why anyone is surprised by this one
yes, even if it's a reference to song lyrics
yes, even if it's a reference to song lyrics
The account owner of @sarahkendzior.bsky.social was suspended for 72 hours for expressing a desire to shoot the author of an article. The post, made 11/10, stated: "I want to shoot the author of this article just to watch him die." 1/2
November 13, 2025 at 12:45 PM
I actually ran into people being like "but it's obvious it was song lyrics" and... the number of people who get your clever reference (to a book, song lyrics, TV show, etc) is SO much smaller than you think it is.
Don't count on everyone knowing that your violent-sounding quote is from a song.
Don't count on everyone knowing that your violent-sounding quote is from a song.
Review - Audition for the Fox, by Martin Cahill: a fun world wherein a young aspiring acolyte has to prove herself to a trickster god. Of course, it's a trick... but there's also work to do. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/12/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/12/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Review – Audition for the Fox
Martin Cahill’s Audition for the Fox was a pretty random find, about which I knew very little other than that it was a novella that had just released. It turned out to be set in a fantasy wor…
breathesbooks.com
November 12, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Review - Audition for the Fox, by Martin Cahill: a fun world wherein a young aspiring acolyte has to prove herself to a trickster god. Of course, it's a trick... but there's also work to do. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/12/r...
#booksky 💙📚
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/11/12/r...
#booksky 💙📚