⭐ The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix was an absolute chore for me to get through. For a book with a title like this, I expected something fun, bloody, maybe a bit ridiculous, and at the very least entertaining. Instead, I spent most of the book wondering when something was actually going to happen. It’s a fairly long book, but somehow it feels even longer because so much of it just seems to drag.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I went into Fruit Fly by Josh Silver knowing very little about it, and I genuinely think that’s the best way to read this book. I’d seen it mentioned a few times, knew people were raving about it, and had a vague idea of the premise, but I wasn’t prepared for just how dark, funny, uncomfortable and completely addictive it would become.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I knew going into The Shepherd’s Crown that this one was going to be difficult. Not because I expected it to be a bad book, but because I knew what it represented. This is the final Discworld novel. The last time Terry Pratchett would take us there, and, for me, the end of a read-through that has taken me across the entire series.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ After being pretty disappointed with Snuff, I went into Raising Steam hoping it would feel like Discworld getting back to its usual self, and thankfully, it really did. This felt much more like the Pratchett I love: funny, clever, warm, slightly ridiculous, and packed with observations about people and society without ever forgetting that it’s supposed to be entertaining.

⭐⭐ I really didn’t expect to be giving a Rivers of London book two stars, but here we are. I’ve enjoyed this series for a long time, and even when some of the previous books haven’t quite hit the heights of the best entries, there’s always been enough there to keep me invested. The characters, the humour, the world, the strange mix of police procedural and magic — there’s usually something that leaves me looking forward to picking up the next one.

⭐⭐⭐ Snuff is, unfortunately, my lowest-rated Discworld book so far. Giving a Discworld novel three stars feels strangely harsh because even a weaker Terry Pratchett book still has plenty going for it. There are funny moments, some great observations, familiar characters I love spending time with, and flashes of that Pratchett brilliance that makes Discworld such a special series. But…

⭐⭐⭐ I really wanted to love Devolution. The premise is pretty much exactly the sort of thing that should work for me: an isolated community, a volcanic eruption, people cut off from the outside world, and then a group of Sasquatch deciding that the humans have wandered a little too far into their territory. It sounds like the setup for a really entertaining monster survival story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’ll admit, I wasn’t completely sold on I Shall Wear Midnight when I first started it. I went into this one expecting to enjoy it because it’s Terry Pratchett, it’s Discworld, and it’s another Tiffany Aching story, but for quite a while I found myself wondering where exactly the book was going. It felt like it took a little too long to get going, with a few false starts and different threads introduced without me being entirely convinced they were going anywhere.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Haunted Forest Tour is exactly what it promises to be. The premise is wonderfully ridiculous in the best possible way: after a portal opens up and unleashes countless monsters into a forest, the government does the only sensible thing they apparently can think of and turns it into a tourist attraction. Visitors climb aboard reinforced trams, cameras in hand, to get a close-up look at creatures that would happily tear them apart if given the chance.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I had a really good time with Whistle. Linwood Barclay has always been great at writing fast-paced thrillers that are difficult to put down, and while this one leans much more into horror than some of his previous work, it still has that same page-turning quality. I found myself saying I'd read just one more chapter several times, only to realise an hour had disappeared.

I wasn’t really sure whether to write this post. Not because there isn’t anything to say, but because when it comes to my hip, there is a lot to say. It has been such a long, frustrating, and honestly exhausting journey that trying to sum everything up in one blog post feels almost impossible. I’m not going to go back through every single thing that has happened over the years because I’ve already written plenty of posts about my hip problems, the pain, the appointments, the setbacks, and everything that has come with it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I absolutely loved this book. I went into it expecting a few funny stories about making low-budget horror films, but I ended up getting so much more than that. Bruce Campbell has such a distinctive voice that it feels less like reading an autobiography and more like sitting in a pub while he tells story after story, each one somehow crazier than the last.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I really enjoyed Artemis. It isn't quite on the same level as The Martian for me, but it's still a fun, fast-paced read that kept me turning the pages. Andy Weir has a real talent for making science feel interesting without it becoming overwhelming, and the setting of a city on the Moon is easily the strongest part of the novel.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Going into Unseen Academicals, I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. The central focus is football, and as someone who has never really been interested in the sport, I thought this might be one of the few Terry Pratchett books that wouldn't quite work for me. I couldn't have been more wrong. What impressed me most was how quickly Pratchett made me realise that this isn't really a book about football at all.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I've been slowly working my way through Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, and Making Money has easily become one of my favourites so far. What surprised me most was how Pratchett managed to make a story about banking, economics, and finance not only entertaining, but genuinely difficult to put down. The novel follows Moist von Lipwig, one of Discworld's most charming and reluctant civil servants, after the events of Going Postal.

⭐ There are books that overwhelm you with the sheer volume of events, where every chapter feels like it is trying to outdo the last. Mosaic by Catherine McCarthy goes in the opposite direction, and while that might sound like a relief on paper, the result is far more draining: a story in which very little of any real consequence happens, and what does rarely feels like it matters.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ There’s always something a little strange for me when I pick up a Tiffany Aching book. I never dive into them with the same immediate excitement I get from some of the other Discworld novels, and every single time it takes me a while to properly settle into the story. Wintersmith was no different. I spent the first chunk of the book feeling like I was still waiting for it to click, wondering if this would end up being one of the Tiffany books I struggle with more than enjoy.

⭐⭐⭐ I went into Camp Blaze expecting a grimy, over-the-top slasher and, to be fair, that’s exactly what it delivers. Unfortunately, it rarely feels like it wants to be anything beyond that. The entire novel leans so heavily into shock value that it starts to feel repetitive long before the ending arrives. Every brutal scene is written to top the last one, but after a while, the violence stops having any impact because there’s very little underneath it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’ve been slowly making my way back through the Discworld books, and every time I return to the City Watch novels, I remember why they’re some of my favourites. Thud! might honestly be one of the strongest of the lot. It’s funny, angry, clever, absurd, surprisingly emotional, and somehow manages to balance a murder mystery, political tension, ancient dwarf grudges, and a children’s bedtime book all at once without ever feeling bloated.

Another of this year’s re-reads for me, and revisiting Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir felt oddly well-timed considering the film adaptation has recently come out. I haven’t actually seen the movie yet, but it definitely pushed the book back to the front of my mind. Sometimes a re-read can flatten the excitement a little because you already know every twist and reveal, but honestly, this one still worked incredibly well for me the second time around.

Retro Rewind: Video Store Simulator is a management sim that was released in March 2026 for PC via Steam and allows players to manage a 1990's VHS rental store. I’m not usually the kind of person who goes anywhere near simulation games like this. Running a shop, managing stock, dealing with customers—it’s never really been my thing. But there was something about…

I mentioned on Monday that I’d been toying with the idea of putting myself out there a bit more—moving beyond just writing and actually doing something a bit more immediate. Well… I’ve gone and done it. Or at least, I’ve taken the first proper step. “Angry Sloth Gaming” is officially a thing. The name might sound a bit random if you’ve just stumbled across it, but it actually goes back quite a while for me.

I’ve been toying with the idea for a while now, and I think I’m finally at the point where I’m seriously considering starting a YouTube gaming channel. It’s one of those things that’s been sitting at the back of my mind, quietly tapping me on the shoulder every time I boot up Steam and lose a few hours to a survival game.

I feel like I’ve been talking about this hip for ages now, and in a way, I have. It’s become one of those things that just quietly (or not so quietly) sits in the background of everything I do. Some days I can almost ignore it. Other days, it’s impossible to think about anything else. Back in March, I had my appointment with the consultant, which felt like it had been a long time coming.

⭐⭐⭐ I’m always up for anything involving zombies or virus outbreaks, so The Splits by M.V Clark immediately felt like something right up my street. It has that kind of premise that promises tension, collapse, and all the messy human reactions that come with it—and going in, I was expecting to really get pulled into it. To be fair, the premise is easily the strongest part.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ There’s something ridiculously satisfying about going back to a book you already know you love and finding out it still completely holds up—and that’s exactly what happened with my reread of Relic. Honestly, if anything, I think I enjoyed it more this time around. It’s easy to forget just how tightly put together this book is. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child don’t mess about—this thing moves.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I went into My Sister, the Serial Killer expecting something a bit louder, a bit more overtly shocking. The title kind of dares you to brace yourself for blood, chaos, and brutality. But what Oyinkan Braithwaite actually delivers is something far more unsettling—and, honestly, far more impressive. This isn’t a story that lingers on the act of murder itself. There’s no indulgence in gore, no drawn-out violence designed to make you flinch.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ As part of my chronological read-through of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, I’ve finally finished Going Postal, and I can honestly say it might be one of the most entertaining entries in the entire series so far. Even after reading a lot of Discworld already, this one still managed to feel fresh, inventive, and packed with Pratchett’s signature humour.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I recently went back and re-read Congo, and I’m genuinely surprised by how much I still love it. Sometimes revisiting a book you loved years ago can be a bit risky—you worry the magic might not hold up, or that nostalgia did most of the work the first time around. But in this case, the opposite happened. If anything, I appreciated it even more the second time.

Released on January 22, 2026, the Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven DLC is now available across multiple platforms, including Steam, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation. This highly anticipated expansion builds on the original game’s mix of adorable yet sinister cult management and dungeon-crawling combat, bringing players into a frozen mountain region filled with new challenges, lore, and mechanics. Whether you’re returning to tend to your followers or diving back in for the first time since the base game, Woolhaven promises to expand the world of…

⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is my second read-through of Meg by Steve Alten, the first being about ten years ago. Back then, I gave it a full five stars without hesitation. It was fast, exciting, and exactly the kind of over-the-top creature feature I loved. Coming back to it now, with a bit more reading experience under my belt, I can see the seams a lot more clearly.

If you’ve spent any time in Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault, you’ll already know that running a shop is just as important as swinging a sword. Every dungeon run ends the same way: a backpack full of strange relics, a counter waiting to be stocked, and customers ready to judge your prices with a single raised eyebrow. Set them too high and you’ll scare people off.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I’ve really been enjoying watching the Tiffany Aching books grow along with the character herself. A Hat Full of Sky feels a bit bigger and stranger than The Wee Free Men, but also more personal. It’s less about the adventure you go on and more about the kind of person you decide to be when nobody’s watching. Tiffany’s now apprenticed to Miss Level, learning what it actually means to be a witch, and I liked how grounded that all felt.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Monstrous Regiment was next up in my chronological read-through of the Discworld books, and it ended up being one of those moments where the project suddenly feels even more worthwhile. I went in expecting something solid and funny, and came out feeling like I’d just read one of Pratchett’s most pointed and emotionally grounded novels. It completely knocked me sideways.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’ll be honest: this one took me a little while to click with. Not in a bad way, exactly — more that I had to adjust my expectations. The opening didn’t immediately grab me in the way some Discworld stories do, and for a bit I felt like I was circling the edges of something rather than being fully pulled in.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I just finished There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, and I have to say, it’s exactly the kind of weird that gets me excited about fiction. From the very first entries, there’s this uncanny, almost clinical tone that makes you feel like you’re reading a classified briefing rather than a story, and I absolutely loved that. It’s clever, unnerving, and often just bizarre enough to make you stop and think about how reality itself is being twisted around the narrative.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I went into The Judge’s House expecting a quick, slightly dusty Victorian ghost story, and what I got was something far more quietly unsettling than I anticipated. It’s short, sure, but Stoker absolutely understands how to make brevity work in his favour here. There’s no wasted space, no meandering setup — just an atmosphere that tightens almost imperceptibly until you realise you’ve been holding your breath.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’ve just finished Night Watch as part of my slow, slightly obsessive chronological read through the Discworld books, and I’ve got to say: this one really stuck with me. Not in a loud, laugh-out-loud-every-page way (though there’s still plenty of Pratchett humour), but in a heavier, more reflective sense that lingered after I closed the book. By the time you reach…

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is a perfect example of Terry Pratchett doing what he does best: taking something familiar, twisting it sideways, and using it to say something sharp, kind, and quietly profound. On the surface, it’s a playful riff on the Pied Piper story, complete with a talking cat, a gang of highly intelligent rats, and a scam that’s gone on just a bit too long.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Jingo is one of those Discworld novels that sneaks up on you. You go in expecting a fairly straightforward bit of satire — nationalism, flag-waving, the absurdity of war — and you get all that, but you also get something sharper and more uncomfortable than it first appears. On the surface, the plot is classic Pratchett chaos: a new island pops up between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch, everyone immediately decides it’s theirs, and suddenly people who’ve never met a Klatchian in their lives are very sure they’re dangerous, untrustworthy, and probably deserve whatever’s coming to them.

⭐⭐ I really wanted to like The North Woods, but by the time I finished it, I mostly felt tired and a bit let down. The biggest issue for me is the pacing. The story takes an absolute age to get going. There’s a lot of scene-setting, atmosphere-building, and slow circling around ideas, which isn’t a bad thing in theory — I enjoy a patient book when I know it’s heading somewhere.

⭐⭐⭐ When I first read The Lost World years ago, I remember absolutely tearing through it. I loved it almost as much as Jurassic Park, which is no small thing. At the time, it felt like a worthy continuation: more dinosaurs, more danger, more of that Crichton techno-thriller momentum that made his work so addictive. It was fast, exciting, and felt smart enough to justify its own existence rather than just coasting on the name.

There’s a particular kind of unease that creeps in when you realise the monster (or antagonist, the terms are often interchangeable) isn’t lying, and everyone else is. Not because the monster is gentle or fair or deserving of sympathy, but because it never pretends to be anything other than what it is. The fear doesn’t come from uncertainty, but from certainty.

Jack Mercer had been on the road since dusk, running a long-haul job that took him across a stretch of desert most truckers avoided when they could. The route wasn’t unsafe so much as unnerving. It had no towns for miles, no reliable radio signals, no lights except the ones you carried with you. Some nights the sky felt heavy with the kind of darkness that didn’t just obscure things—it swallowed them.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead quietly unsettles you rather than going for big shocks, and that’s exactly where it shines. A retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, it keeps the bones of the original story but dresses them in something far stranger, funnier, and biologically grotesque. The atmosphere is thick from the outset. The Usher house feels wrong in that slow, creeping way — not immediately terrifying, but deeply unhealthy, like a place that’s been rotting for a long time and is finally starting to show it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I finally sat down with Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney after years of loving both the 1956 and 1978 film adaptations, and I’m honestly kicking myself for not reading it sooner. I’ve watched those films so many times—each one with its own charm, its own atmosphere, its own flavour of creeping dread—but somehow I’d never made the jump back to the original novel.

Released in early access on 14 November 2025 on PC, Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault arrives as a confident, ambitious sequel that keeps the charm of the original while branching out in all the right ways. The most obvious change hits you straight away: the series has shifted from its cosy top-down pixel-art look to a more detailed 3D isometric style.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I first picked up His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet on the recommendation of one of my university lecturers. At the time, I was working on a project with some thematic overlap, and, honestly, it felt like perfect timing. I’m still working on that project now, and reading this novel has been both inspiring and a bit of a wake-up call in terms of the level of detail and narrative sophistication you can achieve.

The lighthouse didn’t have a name anymore. Whatever plaque once declared it proud and useful had rotted away decades back, leaving only its jagged silhouette jutting from the rocks like a finger pointing at something no one else could see. Locals called it the Needle because it skewered the sky; thin, stark, and unnaturally tall against the slate-grey horizon of the northern sea.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Stephen King’s Insomnia surprised me in the best way. I went in expecting a fairly straightforward horror story, but it turned into something much stranger and more ambitious. Ralph’s sleeplessness starts off feeling uncomfortably real—King captures that foggy, irritable, slightly surreal feeling of being overtired so well that I could practically feel my own eyelids twitching. As the story widens into something more cosmic, it keeps that grounded, human core, which is what makes it work.