Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves created and hosted by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out Lisa’s introductory post, here.

Etiquette & Espionage
by Gail Carriger

It’s one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It’s quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners, and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine’s young ladies learn to finish … everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage – in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year’s education…

Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series is one of my favourite series which I finally finished this year, and I’ve been waiting to finish that series before I began this one set in the same universe. I believe this takes place before the events of the Parasol Protectorate books (in fact I’m very excited because I believe one of my favourite characters from that series makes an appearance) and it sounds so fun. I’m not sure when I’ll get to this because there are so many books I want to read, but I am thinking of challenging myself to read all of Carriger’s Finishing School and Custard Protocol series in 2019.

Aside from Harry Potter, what are some of your favourite books set at a school?

This week I’m joining in with Lipsy @ Lipsyy Lost & Found to talk about the books I’ve been reading recently!

Now

Sci-Fi Month seemed like the best time to dive into a book about zombies, so I’ve been reading and really enjoying Dread Nation by Justina Ireland. I love how she’s blended American history with a zombie apocalypse and the heroine, Jane, is the best. I love her.

Then

I also wanted to take part in Non Fiction November, hosted by Olive @ abookolive and Gemma @ Non Fic Books, this year, and I managed to when I read The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson. This book has been on my TBR for ages and I was saving it for November and ended up liking it an awful lot. Check out my review here!

Next

Clearly November is the month of readathons because Tome Topple, created by Sam @ Thoughts on Tomes, begins this Friday. The aim is to read long books (over 500 pages) and I’ve been meaning to read Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone all year. At just over 500 pages it qualifies for this readathon so I really want to read it at last. In fact I’m hoping to devote the rest of November to reading African and Asian-inspired fantasy with The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang and Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan.

What are you reading at the moment?