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Jed Castillo

@shelfishness

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“La tristesse durera toujours.”
— Van Gogh

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No, it's not the 31st yet. This Trick or Treat is the latest challenge from @oldskoolchallengeclub that @hook.me.a.book tagged me in.

The challenge:
Show a book that you unexpectedly loved - TREAT
Show a book that failed to meet expectations - TRICK

The TWIST is to show both the good and bad and the challenge can be STRETCHED by using the same author for both books.

🎃
This Trick or Treat could be turned into a bookish Halloween game-show.
Welcome to TRICK OR READ😀🎃📘

Our contestant is Italo Calvino.

He's brought two books.

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. A literary fiction where many stories are started and not finished, the reader is the star, and multiple genres are employed.
Could have been a struggle but I loved it. Humorous, inventive, entertaining. A five out of five. What a TREAT. Well done Calvino. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

The Castle of Crossed Destinies. Another literary puzzle. Multiple stories told with Tarot cards in a medieval setting.
What a premise. Sounds exciting.
It's not.
Not exciting at all.
Absolutely tedious.
Should have stayed as an idea and not been written.
One and half stars, and that's mainly for the illustrations.
What a TRICK.
Honestly, Calvino, what were you thinking?

🎃

That's a Trick and a Treat from Calvino.
Thanks for playing.

Join us in the next episode where we look at whether (insert author name here) has brought us a TRICK OR TREAT.

Which author are you inserting in that sentence?

🎃

#HereForTheFunNotTheNumbers
#trickortreat
#oldskoolchallengeclub
#spookyseason

I'll tag a few. No pressure to join in.

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Controversial debut novel by @breteastonellis about a jaded teenager home for a while from Uni for Christmas. On the #tbrpile for a while.
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No-one writes dialogue like Bret Easton Ellis. It’s hypnotising; kind of movie-like, and disturbing. Familiar at times, and yeah… disturbing.
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Go get it.

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How it’s going so far. Housed for now, and books waiting for a home

#catsofbookstagram

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Gilion @gilioncdimas tagged me a while ago to find and share #tenofmytbr books. She’s been highlighting her unread books alphabetically by author, and she was at P when I took this photo. Here are my ten. Sorry, Gilion, I didn’t start with A. Which one would you start with? Tagging a few of you, just in case you’re down for some fun browsing your shelves 📚

.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
#bookchallange #tbrchallange #bookstagramchallange #homelibrary

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Back to work and an end-of-first year essay for my English Lit degree (which consumed my mind, body and soul) delayed my ponderings on what will be one of my favourite reads of 2026 for sure! @patrickbaker_author is a writer that speaks my language. I read The Unremembered Places whilst visiting my brother, sister-in-law and joyous niece in Scotland, a country that always conjures up a desire to explore and partake in land/sea adventures galore. In this beautifully composed book, Baker perfectly encapsulates that sense of wonder you experience when you come across a crumbled wall that perhaps a group of children once sat on to watch the world go by or foundations of a home in which a family once looked upon as their salvation. I may be slightly odd in that respect but the reason why I love books like Baker’s is that it tunes into my own sentimentality around the past and what objects and locations meant to someone separated from us only by time. Baker’s journey to seek out forgotten parts of Scotland is the perfect balance of history and nature writing and his touching approach to recording places in which humans toiled was carried out beautifully. This is a book that taught me to art of patience, curiosity and remembering. I cannot wait to read more by Baker. ❤️

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#HereForTheFunNotTheNumbers

It's Sunday funday 😀 and time for a book challenge with the #oldskoolchallengeclub

This week I've chosen the #AnimalCrackers challenge to create a stack of books with animals in the titles.
Challenge was set by @chapter1.page1

I started in a PANIC as I couldn't see that I had any suitable books. I then realised I was looking with man-eyes 😂.
Shifting my perspective, I found this lovely lot.

How many of these have you read?

The Eyes of The DRAGON by Stephen King
Five Little PIGS by Agatha Christie
Black SWAN Green by David Mitchell
The BIRDS and other stories by Daphne du Maurier
The Thorn BIRDS by Colleen McCullough
HOGfather by Terry Pratchett
CARRION Comfort by Dan Simmons
Cloud CUCKOO Land by Anthony Doerr
The PORPOISE by Mark Haddon
One Flew Over The CUCKOO'S Nest by Ken Kelsey
BIRDsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Elegance of The HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery
Black Heart of The RAVEN by @staceydightonauthor
The HAWK and the RAVEN by Stacey Dighton
March of The LEMMINGS by Stewart Lee
Pale Face & The RAVEN by Stacey Dighton
The House of WOLF by Tony Robinson
Of MICE and Men by John Steinbeck
RABBITS by Terry Miles
SPARROW by James Haynes
Dead but Dreaming of Electric SHEEP by Paul Tremblay

📚🐺🐷🐉🐇🐁🐩🐦🐬

I'll tag a few of you. No pressure. It's all for fun.

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✨📚5 Before The End📚✨

I was tagged by @dans_bookscape (go follow him!) to show 5 books that I'd like to read before the end of the year.

A chance to rescue books from the tbr and get them on the current reads or next reads stacks.
Of course I'm currently not sticking to any of my own reading plans this year. My #26tbrin26 progress is abysmal so perhaps I should have just picked 5 from that list 🤔. But where would be the fun in that?🤣

@bookaddict451 is already tracking my 26 so don't tell them I've chosen these five 🤫. It will be our secret 😂.

My five:
📘Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain's Ancient Places by Fiona Robertson

📘Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

📘 Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neuro Diversity by @robinince1969
Why did I not start reading this one immediately after meeting Robin this summer? Distracted by too many books 🤦🏻‍♂️

Ok, that's three non-fiction so I really need some fiction as well.

📘Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A relatively recent purchase which I was very excited about so I have to rescue it from tbr limbo immediately!

📘The Midnight Train by @mattzhaig
I loved The Midnight Library so I'm eager to get to this one.

📚
Remember, planned reads and actual reads may differ. The readers decision is final and no arguments about it will be entered into. So there 😂😂

Have you read any of these?

I'll tag a few of you to share your #5beforetheend #fivebeforetheend

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My toxic book trait is, I have a perfectly good copy of Middlemarch around here somewhere, but I bought this pretty pink one to replace it. If I’m going to read a chonky challenging classic I need to love the cover 🤷🏻‍♀️

What’s your toxic book trait?

I just want to say, there’s a lot of meta talk about bookstagram itself lately, talking about accounts, and descriptive, prescriptive, and persuasive ways to run them, and increasing follower count etc.

I might play with Canva sometimes, but I find it a pain in the ass, while I love and appreciate all the work that goes into some posts, I’m more of a “meat and potatoes” account of pictures.

I just want to show my books, look at your books, and talk about the books we read. If you agree let’s stay or become bookstagram pals 🤓

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I’m not sure what I was expecting with this one, but having had it on the shelf for a while, I thought it was time to tackle some history… albeit some kinda regrettable history.
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First-hand accounts from a group of Hibakusha (explosion affected people) on life during and following the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
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Ever wondered what it’s like when someone makes a new sun a few hundred feet above your city? This might be worth looking at. 🇯🇵

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📚 This time in previous years 📚

I was wondering what I was reading in September in the previous years and these are some books that I was reading in September 2023, 2024 and 2025

September 2023:
🍂 The heart principle - 4.5⭐️ (one of my fav romances! The third one in a series of interconnected standalone romances)
🍂 Breasts and Eggs - 4⭐️ (I felt like I read this at the perfect time. Really loved it)
🍂 The hating game - 3.5⭐️ (I still need the watch the movie, is it good??)

September 2024:
🍂 Through the woods - 3.5⭐️ (a graphic novel with some spooky short stories, very folklore. Great for this time of year)
🍂 Carnality - 4⭐️ (such a wild ride, and very addictive! But strange!)
🍂 Fangs - 3.5⭐️ (another graphic novel. This one is about vampires and I thought it was funnier than I expected)

September 2025:
🍂 Horror movie - 4⭐️ (my first Paul Tremblay and I loved this. Do not pick this up if you are looking for a fast paced slasher, because that's not what it is, but it was still really good)
🍂 The tenant of Wildfell hall - 4.5⭐️ (i fell in love with Helen, the main character, and this was so ahead of its time)
🍂 Kindred - 5⭐️ (The best book on this list and also the best book I read in 2025! This was impossible to put down, so important, so beautiful. I highly recommend)

I tagged a few people, because I love to see what you all were reading this time in previous years 🫶🏼
But if you want to do this too and I didn't tag you, please consider yourself tagged too 🫶🏼

QOTD: What were you reading in September last year?

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I was tagged by my buddy @gilioncdumas to show #tenonmytbr but I’ll just show you all the books I have with me, which comes to somewhat more than 10 (no, I didn’t count. That’s why I have too many books in my collection! 😄)

When I packed up my house and headed across the country to look for a new home, wasn’t sure how long it would take. I estimated three months of the outside, mostly because I figured it would be getting cold, and I would start to feel desperate for a warm fireplace. As it turns out, it will be a little less than that if all goes well with the home buying process.

In America that means you put an offer on a house (in this current seller’s market, that means well above what its listed for according to its estimated worth). Then if the offer is accepted, you negotiate with the sellers if an inspection turns up anything that needs to be repaired, such as plumbing, or the roof. Long story short, nothing is for certain, and it usually takes about a month.

I tend to be distracted reader, so I picked some of my thinnest books — ones that look most intriguing — and still I’ve only gotten to two of them, whilst buying more along the way. 🫣 But for all the times I took books out of a little free library and forgot to leave any, I’m leaving books along the way now, like a true book fairy. 🧚‍♂️

What are the top 10 on your #tbr ?

BTdubbs: I’m a @redvinescandy girl and I have not seen a Red Vine since I came to the East Coast. What’s up with that? Please send Red Vines!!!

#bookstagram #tbrshelf #reading

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Us guys, we’re all Bourdain fans. I don’t know what it is, but how could we not be, with his travel and food writing, and the amazing Parts Unknown TV series?
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But I, like many, had no idea he started his writing career in fiction. And this crime novel about a cook (obviously) who gets mixed up with New York mafia-types and other shady characters, was the perfect companion for a recent getaway. OK, so it wasn’t the best read of the year, but I’m sure there are more of these to get my hands on, and if I can, I will.
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Expect crude humour, descriptive cooking references, old-school rock records, drugs, characters straight of out of a mafia movie;and to read it all to yourself in his voice.
🔪

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