Weekly update #94 – a bit of general rambling

Posted on August 6, 2026 by Yrsha

It’s been a short minute since I did a weekly update. I’ve read a lot this year, I’m currently at 75 books/short stories/graphic novels and I’ve been enjoying myself. Not all have been great, some been good enough and a few gold pieces. I easily get behind on updating since I mostly write my blog posts on my phone but prefer doing them on a computer, it being easier to format how I want and everything.

Where are we at now? I’ve been meaning to do some catching up on the monthly wrap ups but it’s starting to feel a little late for some month. I’ll do them anyway since I don’t want to leave them out. I haven’t decided how to do with my mini reviews that I’m behind with. I’ve written some that are waiting, I think. Maybe I’ll just throw some of them into the monthly wrap ups where I have something to say?

I’m currently reading The Rose Code by Kate Quinn.

I’m mostly listening to it but also jump to the ebook at times when it’s more convenient to read with my eyes. I do have this book lying at mom’s waiting for me to read as a physical copy but it is very hard to put down so we’ll see how much of it is left when I borrow it.

What else is new? I did plant some plants together in a pot yesterday. Very pretty together and I’m curious to see if they in the future want to bloom at the same time or separately. This is usually not my favourite plant but they are so cute when they bloom!

I seem to be a list maker, especially when it comes to books, and when I make these lists I want to read all of it. I’ve recently made a list of all the books that I own (that I haven’t lent out to people) and I want to reread at least half of them.

I made a list of all the books Jenna has suggested for Read With Jenna and want to read all of them and make a challenge out of that. I don’t really know Jenna but there was a whole bunch of books that I hadn’t heard about before and it’s a fun thing that she recommends a book a month. I’ve read two of the 91 picked books since before, with average rating of 3 (out of 5).

I also made a list of the books Reese Witherspoon recommends to her book club. I’ve also read two out of 127, and did not finish one and have a couple more on my interest list. I’m more excited to read this bunch of books. Average rating of the two finished books are 4 stars!

Another list I made had the theme “All the books that BooksandLala have rated 4 or higher that is considered romance or fantasy with a prominent romantic subplot”. From there, I’ve read 26 out of 172 with an average rating of 3,59. I enjoy watching her videos but I didn’t think that we typically had a big overlap in the books we read so I was surprised that I had read so many!

At this point in this blog post I’m considering moving out this whole list section into it’s own blog post… Maybe if any of these reading challenges go anywhere I’ll do follow up posts?

The next list to be made was all the books we read in our old university book circle and I also added some facts about them, for example which country the author originates from and when the book was originally published. Since I cannot access the old list we made where we wrote the average rating of the books we read I tried to put something together based on peoples Goodreads to find the top (The Help by Katheryn Stockett) and bottom (Billy Summers by Stephen King) reads.

Connected to this , I also made a list of all the books that didn’t get picked for the book circle. Every time we are picking a book one person suggests three books that we then vote on. The one with the highest score gets picked and then the next time someone else suggests books. I started wondering if it was possible to see if we picked the “best” books for reading. Best in the sense that it got a high score from the people reading it. A book can be very interesting to discuss if people have different opinions and such and might be best suited for reading in that sense but I wanted to look at the numbers. Unfortunately it seems like many of the books haven’t been read of several people so we don’t really get an average. That means, that that would be a great challenge – to read books others have read in this list to get an average…

Speaking of reading what other people are reading, that is another thing I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve been wanting to pick up the books my friends on Goodreads/Pagebound are reading to see what they are reading and if would rate them simlarly. Can you guess that I have started on a list of those also?

As you can see, I just want to read everything at the moment. I want to start reading all the books and I can’t wait to start. I guess making book lists are a great way for me to really light the reading spark. It only comes with the problem that I might not really know what to pick up next of them…

What are you reading at the moment and do you happen to enjoy making lists as well?

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Böcker på resande fot

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Yrsha

Det är den tiden på året igen där vi packar ihop lite tillhörigheter, funderar riktigt noga på vilken bok vi ska plocka med oss, och reser en smula. Självfallet blir jag otroligt nyfiken på vad andra läser när jag ser att de sitter med en bok så här kommer en redogörelse från en resdag:

Bortom broarna – Kristina Ohlsson

Den första boken jag såg på tåget var Kristina Ohlssons första roman som handlar om Henrik, en bästa vän till Kristina Ohlssons deckare med secon-hand-handlare August Strindberg.

Svindlande höjder – Emily Brontë

Den andra boken gick vi förbi när vi bytte tåg, klassikern Svindlande höjder. Det såg ut att vara en äldre engelsk upplaga, kanske en second hand-upplaga?

Anspråkstagen – David Thurfjell

Nästa bok, Anspråkstagen, verkar handla om känslan av meningslöshet och om svaret kan hittas i religionshistorien.

Baader-Meinhof – Jens Nordqvist

En medresenär till Anspråkstagen läste Baader-Meinhof, en bok om händelser i Västtyskland på 1970-talet.

Strange Glow – Timothy J. Jorgensen

Precis när vi gick av vårt andra tåg passerade vi en som läste Strange Glow, hon satt så lägligt med boken så att jag kunde se vad det var utan att anstränga mig. En bok om strålning.

Det fanns också en bok som jag aldrig lyckades identifiera. Först tänkte jag att den handlade om den amerikanska revolutionen eftersom jag såg datum kring 1775 omnämnas i texten (knepigt att läsa spegelvänt i tågfönstret) men jag är inte lika säker nu. Jag ska se om jag kan lista ut det i efterhand.

Det var kul att jag det var många böcker som lästes på tågen, jag var lite överraskad av att se så mycket facklitteratur. Det verkar som intressanta böcker, den enda jag läst själv är Svindlande höjder. Har ni läst någon av dessa böcker?

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2 x book circle books

Posted on May 21, 2026 by Yrsha

I have two book circle discussions coming up tomorrow and I thought I’d better do a small reflection on my own before I head to the discussions.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville has raised a lot of interesting discussions throughout our reading. On my own, I probably wouldn’t have finished it – not because I didn’t like it but because I found it quite boring and it was long. It did have a poetic language and I appreciated others reading quotes from it, I just didn’t pick out those by myself. It did have some highlights that I appreciated more than others but mostly I zoned out a bit while reading. We were all a bit pleasantly surprised that Herman Melville seemed to be pretty progressive in some areas, that was a fun discovery. Our prejudice on old authors was challenged to the better. It was an okay read.

The Names by Florence Knapp was a book I almost gave up on, I would have if we hadn’t moved our discussion one and a half week forward in time. This is one of those books that I have a hard time rate because I disliked reading it so much but I think it perhaps was well written and therefore deserves a higher rating. I have a hard time reading about domestic violence so I felt really bad throughout the whole book always expecting the worst to happen. It will be interesting to have our book discussion about this book to see what the others felt about this book. I perhaps felt a bit unsatisfied by the ending and am perhaps thinking that I could indeed have ended the book when I almost did? It’s an important topic and I though that perhaps the author would have a comment about it in the afterword as well.

Have you been reading anything for a book circle/book club lately? Did you enjoy the reads?

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Read your colour #2 – Slow Horses

Posted on April 20, 2026 by Yrsha

This is the first book read in the quest to see if Read your color is indeed recommending good books (to your colour).

This book was recommended as a red recommendation with the motivation: “This became an Apple TV smash hit for a reason: you’re not going to be able to put it down. Herron blends dry gallows humor with real stakes, tightening the vise one chapter at a time. High stakes, moral gray zones, and a finale that’s one of the best payoffs in modern thrillers.“.

Slow Horses – Mick Herron
Original title: Slow Horses (2010)
Series: Slough House #1
Next book in the series: Dead Lions
Read edition: Swedish audiobook Slöa Hästar
Length: 13 hours, 50 minutes

5%: based on who the recommendation is for, someone liking fast paced stories, I was a bit disappointed with the beginning of the story. I get why the author wanted to do the first part, giving the background to why the main character became a slow horse. But after that, the oh so long description of the setting was not in my wheelhouse. Can’t we just get to the story? I don’t care what colour the doors have.

8%: still not really anything happened yet, we are being presented with a bunch of characters and since I haven’t read all in a go, I’m not completely sure of who is who.

22%: we’re still being introduced to people and getting their backstory. For being a “fast paced” book it’s really moving forward slow.

Final thoughts: I found the whole book a bit boring. It was slow paced, a lot of descriptions, many characters and I was never really invested. I listened to this mostly in the car but also had the option to switch to the ebook and read it on my phone or tablet but I was never really feeling an urge to pick it up.

As a recommendation to a red reader, I didn’t think it was a good fit. I was never sitting on the edge of my seat needing to know what happened. If I weren’t set on finishing it for the sake of this post (and to give the tv series a try), I would probably have slowly abandoned it. I’m however a bit inclined to try the TV series to see if I like the story better that way.

I gave the book 2 stars – it was OK.

Current tally of read books:

ColourRead booksAverage rating
Red12
Blue13
Yellow44*
Orange0–
Green0–
Purple0–

Red got both a read count and an average rating after this book.

*Only two of the yellow books are rated, I need to remind myself of what I thought of the other two.

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A reading update

Posted on April 16, 2026 by Yrsha

I haven’t been reading or updating much lately but I’ve finished a couple of books. Here’s four fairly recent finishes.

I read Red Rising (Red Rising Saga #1) by Pierce Brown together with one of my book circles. I was planning on reading it as an ebook in Swedish but my audiobook service had unfortunately removed that one. I had started that one over a year ago and thought this was a good opportunity to reread the beginning and continue. I ended up listening to it. I did like the book but I think I would have appreciated it more reading it with my eyes. Let’s see if I’ll do a reread with a library copy at some point before moving forward in the series.

Trick of the Night by Eric Ugland is a good addition to The Bad Guys, this was number 8 in the series. There always side quests so you are making very small progress to the main story but I think that’s easily how it gets while playing a game like this. I really like this narrator to this series.

I’ve seen someone read Saga by Briak K. and Vaughan on Instagram and thought I would give it a try as they had it in the library. Fun with a sci-fi graphic novel! There was more nudity than I expected from a story like this, wasn’t prepared for that. Overall I liked the story and am pleased that I have a couple more volumes at home.

Selected (Moonclaw #1) by M. L. Francis showed up as a suggestion in my audiobook service, I hadn’t heard of it before. I realised afterwards that it’s a Dutch paranormal romance. Fun to read something that isn’t English or Swedish in origin. I thought this book was okay but the mystery “behind” felt a little out of place and almost added afterward? I didn’t like the male character and their dominance fights, it felt unnecessary. The human-were relationship (for example having humans as servants and at the same time having the ball for the sake of humans) felt a bit weird and I guess will be explored more in coming books. I’ll probably not continue with the series.

What have you been reading recently?

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March 2026

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Yrsha

I think we can say that I failed in my read-instead-of-scrolling goal this month too. But I haven’t really been in the mood to read. I did read a couple of things and the reading feeling is back in April! Let’s take a look.

I read 4 books; 3 novels, 1 graphic novel. All of these were new to me books.

English: 4
Swedish: 0

Audiobook service: 2
Library: 2
Owned: 0

Physical: 2
Audio: 2
Ebook: 0
Audio + Ebook: 0

Mostly novels this month, I tested out a new graphic novel series that I enjoyed; Saga.

Top rated book this month (rated 3,75):
* Mate – Ali Hazelwood

Have you read anything good lately?

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Read your colour #1

Posted on April 13, 2026 by Yrsha

I recently watched a video by bookswithlala where she reads according to her book colour. She linked the test where you figure out which type of reader you are and I did it a couple of times interpreting the questions a little different.

Every time, except one, I got red reader and the first look was good, the description felt like a match. I also got quite high on orange and yellow (and was picked a yellow reader one of the times I did the test). The results I got usually looked something like this:

After going through and logging all the free recommendations for the different reader types, I can show the result of the already read books:
Red: 0
Blue: 1
Yellow: 4
Orange: 0
Green: 0
Purple: 0

Books already on my radar were a couple in yellow and orange. But mostly, the listed books were those I had never heard about before and I think that is on purpose from the creator. He wants to broaden your mind and make you interested in looking outside your normal reading bubble, or get you to start reading as a first.

The recommendations for red seems to be mostly thrillers and that is something I seldom pick up. For the yellow books, many seem to be sad books, also not a book type I tend to pick up.

I decided that I would try this colour thing out. Maybe these recommendations are great and maybe I should be reading more thrillers? I don’t think I will be reading the saddest yellow books though, I don’t like being sad.

Let’s read a couple of recommendations, maybe from different colours and see how it goes!

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February 2026

Posted on March 13, 2026 by Yrsha

I failed in my read-instead-of-scrolling goal this month. I don’t really have a good reason for not putting in the work more than I zoned in more on other interests and scrolled a bit on social media for these. I think we got quite a lot read anyway, but I could have put some more effort in. I guess we can’t be successful every month!

I read 10 books; 4 novels, 5 graphic novels and 1 middle-grade. One of these was a re-read.

English: 8
Swedish: 2

Audiobook service: 4
Library: 0
Owned: 6

Physical: 6
Audio: 2
Ebook: 1
Audio + Ebook: 1

It seems like there was a majority of graphic novels this month. I finished A Business Proposal and am currently thinking about what graphic novel to pick up next, they were quite cozy and relaxing to read. Not a lot of high rated reads but I enjoyed most of my reading.

Top rated books this month in reading order (rated 4 or higher):
* A Business Proposal, volume 8 – Haehwa, Narak
* Fire Touched – Patricia Briggs (re-read)

Have you read anything good lately?

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Down the TBR-hole #22

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Yrsha

It is time for another round of Down the TBR-hole, where I go through the books in my To Be Read shelf on Goodreads and try to decide if I still want to read them (should they stay) or not (should they go?).

The Downstairs Girl – Stacey Lee
I think this sounds like an interesting read (and am giving me some tv series Bridgerton vibes?) and was excited to see it available at my audiobook service. It was unfortunately in Polish so I won’t understand it… I’ll keep it anyway.
Verdict: Stays

Rules of Engagement – J.T. Geissinger
Also a story that sounds for me, but not something I have available to borrow.
Verdict: Stays

Lakeshire Park – Megan Walker
This is added this to my audiobook service already so I’ll give it a go.
Verdict: Stays

Duke and Duplicity – Emma V. Leech
Could be fun. Not available somewhere unless I buy it. Do I feel like it’s worth a buy? Probably not. The author has other books on my audiobook service so I might give them a try to see if it’s worth a revisit on this one.
Verdict: Goes

Vald av vargar – Frida Hallberg
Another Swedish fantasy author that I want to give a try.
Verdict: Stays

Letting Go of the Words – Janice G. Redish
I think I saw this book recommended on a list for designing stuff for the web. The reviews are a bit mixed, some saying that it’s now a bit outdated. I find the subject interesting but I don’t think I want to buy it.
Verdict: Goes

Universal Principles of Design – William Lidwell, Kristina Holden, Jill Buttler
This one is actually available at my audiobook service as an ebook! Saving it in my shelf.
Verdict: Stays

Forms That Work – Caroline Jarrett, Gerry Gaffney
Sounds interesting!
Verdict: Stays

Fritt fall – Anneli Olsson
I own this one and did start it at some point. I think I need to re-start it now. Have every intention of reading it though.
Verdict: Stays

A Whisper in the Dark – Jessi Elliot, K. J. Sutton
I’m a little intrigued but it doesn’t feel like a book I would prioritize, and I have to buy it to be able to read it.
Verdict: Goes

Seafire – Natalie C. Parker
This one is available at the library so I’m adding it to the to-borrow-shelf and will give it a try.
Verdict: Stays

The Boyfriend Project – Farrah Rochon
I think part of the reason why I added this was because the main character seems to be an app developer. It’s a keeper.
Verdict: Stays

How did it go this time?
Books in the TBR shelf at start: 240
Number of staying books: 9
Number of leaving books: 3
Total amount of leaving books: 63
Number of reserved books at the library: 0
Number of books put in to-borrow-shelf: 1
Number of books added to audiobook-account: 1
Current amount of books in my TBR shelf: 256

A bit of a mix this time. We have removed a totalt of 63 books now, and the current amount is shrinking again. The books we looked at now were added in late 2020 so we are starting to get into present time.

Did you find anything here you would like to read?

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Four recent reads

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Yrsha

The Duke’s Wicked Wife by Elizabeth Bright was a fun read but I don’t think I can say that it was very memorable, I think it will be one of those books I look back at later this year and not remembering so much about. This book is a part of a series, each with different main characters, and I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to check out the others.

Norrskenet is a children’s book about arctic foxes. If I understand it correctly, the two authors are a father and his little boy. The illustrations are beautiful in this one, only that makes it worth reading. It was a quick read and I would like to know how the story continues.

In anticipation for the latest Mercy Thompson book, I decided to do some re-reading. I have just finished Fire Touched and am ready to move on to the next book. Always a delight to read this series! Love it!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mate! It was very easy to just keep reading and I wanted more, I like Ali Hazelwood’s writing. The plot was kind of thin, though. If there are more books published in this world, I’d be happy to read it.

What have you been reading recently?

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