This week I’m reading The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan and Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch, and what initially looked like another completely mismatched pair has turned out to have a surprisingly obvious connection: both have me thinking about the ways history accumulates beneath the present. The Silk Roads …
Cassie 
Books With Nationalities in the Title
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to …
Currently Reading: curses, crowns & catastrophic decisions
This week’s reading is another slightly ridiculous pairing on paper: Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung and The Plantagenets by Dan Jones. Surreal short fiction translated from Korean on one side; several centuries of medieval English monarchy on the other. Honestly, this is exactly the sort of reading week I enjoy. …
🦴 What Lies Beneath: Why I’m Fascinated by Burials and Bones
There’s something about bones. Maybe that sounds morbid, maybe it is morbid, but I don’t think I’m alone in the quiet fascination that settles in when a burial site is uncovered. When a skull is lifted from the soil. When archaeologists brush back the earth from a femur that last …
6 Books That Unearth the Past
There’s something irresistible about peering into the past – not just through textbook timelines, but through the soil, the bones, the stories buried with them. After finishing Ancestors by Alice Roberts, I found myself drawn to other books that don’t just tell history, but dig it up. Here are six …
Books set in the Wars of the Roses
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to …
Book Review: Ancestors by Alice Roberts
Title: Ancestors Author: Alice Roberts Dates read: 20/05/25 – 28/07/25 Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5 stars) Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Number of pages: 446 Fiction or non-fiction: non-fiction Subject or genre: history, science Book blurb: An extraordinary exploration of the ancestry of Britain through seven burial sites. By using new advances …
🐺 From Fake Fiancés to Feral Instincts: Last Week’s Reads & What’s Next
Last week didn’t go the way I planned — and honestly? That might’ve been for the best. Instead of getting lost in mythology (Mythos by Stephen Fry) and cozy magic (Mosaics & Magic by Nancy Warren) like I intended, I fell headfirst into a small-town fake engagement (The Fiancé Dilemma …
April-May Reviews Roundup
I’ve finished reading quite a lot of books lately and written the reviews for them but haven’t quite found my schedule with posting them. I’ve got reviews going back to books I finished in April that aren’t posted yet. So I figured I’d do some drive-by mini reviews just to …
Book Review: How to be a Renaissance Woman by Jill Burke
Title: How to be a Renaissance Woman Author: Jill Burke Dates read: 30/03/25 – 21/04/25 Rating 3/5 Publisher: Wellcome Collection Number of pages: 338 Fiction or non-fiction: nonfiction Subject or genre: art, feminism, history Book blurb: Plunge into the intimate history of cosmetics, and discover how, for centuries, women have …