Nerd Church - It's Too Hot To Do Anything

 

It’s too hot to think.

It’s too hot to do anything except stare vacantly at my laptop for a while.

But I said there’d be a Nerd Church post… so now I have to write a Nerd Church post. (Good luck, dear readers…)

Tell Me Something Tuesday: Mid-Year Check-In - What Books Have You Loved So Far In 2026?

 

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

30th June - Mid-Year Check-In: What books have you loved so far in 2026?

Tell Me Something Tuesday: Have You Ever Been Surprised By A Book That You Didn't Expect To Enjoy?

 

Warning: this post briefly refers to miscarriages and associated mental health problems

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

16th June — Have you ever been surprised by a book that you didn't expect to enjoy?

Nerd Church - Queer, 365 Days A Year

 

I’m Queer 365 days a year.

June is Pride month - the month where LGBTQ+ people celebrate and commemorate the Stonewall riots, as well as our right to exist and be the people we are.

(Here in the UK June is the month, but due to scheduling quirks, events pretty much take place all summer.)

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Are Your Favourite Beach Reads?

 

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

2nd June 2026 - What are your favourite beach reads?

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Is Your Favourite Flower?

 

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

19th May 2026 - What is your favourite flower?

I love gerberas.

I always call gerberas ‘happy flowers’ — they’re bright and beautiful and, so long as they’re not wired (bad florists *sprays with water bottle*) they freaking dance.

3 From My TBR: Books I Don't Remember Adding To My List

 

Warning: This post briefly discusses mental health issues (Bipolar disorder)

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Since my To-Be-Read (TBR) list is continually growing, from time to time I like to throw together a list focussing on some of the (often diverse) titles on there.

I may never get to all of the 1k+ books on there, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve some attention!

As this is a TBR, I haven't read any of these, so have no idea whether or not they're any good!

This time around, I thought I'd take a look at some of the books that I genuinely don't remember adding to my list...

...in my defence, it is a freaking huge list, OK? Plus I get so many different recs that it's amazing I remember why I added anything at all (lol.)

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Toppings Are On Your Ideal Pizza?

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

5th May 2026 - What toppings are on your ideal pizza?

Ermahgad I love pizza!

Pizza is my favouritest food :)

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: A Magical Solution To the Terrors of the Blank Page

 

My dearest nerdlets, there are some topics which appear in the bookish/writerly/bloggerly interwebs again and again — and one of the most common of these is writer’s block.

(Which, yes, I’ve talked about before too.)

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Is Your Favourite Sports Team?

 

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

I plan on dipping in-and-out of it if and when I feel like it - I figured it was a low-pressure way of posting a little more regularly here on Dora Reads (...and hopefully I'll be right about that!)

Nerd Church - The Neon Tragedy of Certain Dark Things (...and Romeo and Juliet)

 

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Don't deceive yourself...this is not a love story. 

- Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

He jests at scars that never felt a wound 

- Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

 

Certain Dark Things is a vampire novel.

…It’s also entirely unique.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author, describes the book as 'neon noir' - which is as good a label as any for this inventive, interesting, and compelling, mash-up of styles and genres.

3 From My TBR: Final Girls

 

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Since my To-Be-Read (TBR) list is continually growing, from time to time I like to throw together a list focussing on some of the (often diverse) titles on there.

I may never get to all of the 1k+ books on there, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve some attention!

As this is a TBR, I haven't read any of these, so have no idea whether or not they're any good!

This time, I've picked out 3 books from my TBR featuring 'final girls.'

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: On Updating Old Blogposts, and The Beauty of Blogging

Warning: Brief refs to Depression and trauma

I've been going through a lot of my old blogposts lately.

It's both an attempt to defeat the forces of entropy... 

...and to possibly get back onto Google Adsense (it's a whole thing, I talked about it a few months back, so check that post out here if you're interested.)

And... it's been interesting.

Like, genuinely interesting - way more than I thought it would be.

Basically, I was not aware of the sheer volume of stuff I have written over the course of the last 11 years - it's a lot. (Lol.)

And a lot of the things that I've written are a lot better than I remember.

(...which is probably once again proof that I'm my own worst critic 😅)

Nerd Church - The Iconic Darkness of Andrew Scott's Moriarty

 

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Warning: this post contains brief discussions of mental health issues, and brief references to murder

I can think of very few performances as utterly iconic as Andrew Scott's Jim Moriarty.

Long before he was Fleabag's Sexy Priest, Andrew Scott was BBC Sherlock's Sexy Criminal Genius. 

(Sexy being his baseline - it must be a difficult burden to bear; imagine being sexy while you pay your electric bills, or putting the bins out sexily...)

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: The Writerly Urge To Face-Plant the Laptop

 

It's not that easy, being a writer.

Sometimes, you just want to face-plant your goddamn laptop.

I've had a frustrating couple of weeks, writer-ness-wise.

• A piece of poetry I'd submitted to a magazine got rejected (again.)

• I got declined for rejoining the Google AdSense programme (again.)

• And I made only pennies on Medium (...again.)

Nerd Church - The Salt Path ...A True Story?

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Warning: this post discusses terminal illness and Ableism

I watched a normal-looking woman on The One Show sofa, sitting next to the actor Jason Isaacs, and talking about her memoir being turned into a movie (starring, oddly enough, Jason Isaacs.)

(The One Show - for those of you who aren't British - is a Big Deal™.)

Something about her - the woman, Raynor Winn - seemed... off. 

But then, I try not to judge too much based on brief interviews - I don't know these people, y'know?

Sometimes people seem off - not least when they're not TV people, and suddenly find themselves talking to the nation in the prime-time flagship slot (Lord knows, that would def. make me seem off!)

The Bookish Diversity Link List 2026

  

Your resource for all things bookish diversity is here!

Welcome to the 11th Bookish Diversity Link List, 2026 - my 10th year running the list!

OK, so the '25 list wasn't as complete as I'd like it to be.

...But lord knows, the list was made for butterfly-wings style positivity, and that's how it will continue!

(Also, it helps if people actually submit links - saves me some time!)

It takes a lot of positivity to counter negativity - and the world has plenty of negativity right now, so here I am, once again, holding up a little sign marked 'hope,' and I hope (lol) that you like it 😊

3 From My TBR: Books With House or Home in the Titles

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Since my To-Be-Read (TBR) list is continually growing, from time to time I like to throw together a list focussing on some of the (often diverse) titles on there.

I may never get to all of the 1k+ books on there, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve some attention!

As this is a TBR, I haven't read any of these, so have no idea whether or not they're any good!

This time, I've picked out 3 books from my TBR which have 'house' or 'home' in the title - check 'em out:

Nerd Church - Christmas Hurts, This Year

 

Warning: grief, death, serious illness, mental health issues, general trauma

I've always loved Christmas.

But Christmas? It hasn't treated me so well. Especially the whole lead-up-to part of Christmas.

In 2023, my father had brain surgery a few days before Christmas - that was stressful (he's OK now, mostly.)

My grandfather died not long before Christmas in 2018.

Eleven years ago, my other grandparents died at Christmas within four days of each other. We had a double funeral. 

...That still wasn't the worst Christmas of my life.

Poetry: Today Hurts

 

This poem was originally published in the The Brain Is A Noodle publication on Medium, in response to the prompt 'coping by producing' from the lovely Lucy Dan

Today Hurts

‘Now don’t drown in your tears, babe
Push your head towards the air’
— The Editors, Push Your Head Towards The Air.

Image by Lucija Rasonja from Pixabay