Not going to lie, there was a slightly fatal flaw in my reading plans this week – I bought two books in Foyles and started reading one of them – forgetting that I was going away at the weekend and that I was going to be too far through it for it to be worth carting it away with me for more than a week (I would have finished it before the end of the first day). And so there we are – a shorter list, with one book that was in contention for BotW unfinished, and no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow. Why am I so bad at organising my reading? Actually it’s not bad at organising. I know what I should be doing, it’s just that I am so easily tempted by shiny new books and then it derails all my plans!
Four books bought – two in Foyles and two at the weekend – and two preorders dropped onto my kindle!
Bonus picture: I do love a mews. And I was wandering near work one evening last week and took this one. I could fancy living in one of these. Sadly I do not have the requisite millions!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
A somewhat perplexing theatre trip this week. Opening Night got 1* and 4* reviews when it opened, and it seems like the audiences have paid more attention to the ones than the fours, as its closing early at the end of this coming week, instead of running though til the end of July.
This is a musical adaptation of a John Casavetes film, with music by Rufus Wainwright, starring Sheridan Smith and directed by Ivo Van Hove. Now I love to go and see a flop – I saw the X factor musical twice, and the spice girls musical to name a few – and I do actually really like Rufus Wainwright’s music, so of course I rocked up to see this before it finished to see what I thought.
And the answer, five days on, is that I still don’t know! It’s not so bad it’s funny. It’s not a misunderstood masterpiece. But it is incredibly confused, and (sadly) the music is ultimately pretty forgettable. I’m not even sure what I can say about the performances – everyone is giving it their all, but I’m still not sure what they were meant to be working towards! But I got a good discount on my seat, and I’m glad that I can say I saw it. And sometimes that’s all you’re after!
If this had been last weekend, there would only have been two books in this picture. I bought the Roman Beaird and the Rory Carroll at the airport on the way to Pisa. But then I went into Foyles on Monday night, and bought the new Alexandria Bellefleur and the Kayla Olson, and when I got home on Thursday the other two had arrived – after taking so long (in the way that second hand orders often do) that I had forgotten I had ordered them in the first place!
As I mentioned yesterday, the second in what looks to be Frances Brody’s new series is out this week, so this Friday, I want to remind you about her other series – about Kate Shackleton, daughter of a senior police officer who finds herself solving crimes and becoming a private detective in 1920s Yorkshire. The series is not the fastest to get going, but i did also read them out of order which never helps! I really like them – there have been a few set in places that I know quite well, which is always fun.
As Murder Inside made it to the Quick Reviews back in February, I though I ought to mention that the sequel comes out today in the UK. It’s called Six Motives for Murder and according to the blurb sees the women of Brackerly Open Prison catering for a wedding in the village when a murder takes place – and so of course they fall under suspicion, even though there are plenty of guests at the event who have more motive than they do. I really liked Nell as a character – and also the detail of her life as governor of the prison and the group of prisoners are also interesting. There’s loads of potential in this series -although I’m still not 100 percent sure how France Brody will keep finding scenarios for the women to be mixed up in murder – although outside work as part of their rehabilitation (which presumably the catering is) seems like a promising avenue.
When the month starts on a Wednesday it does mean the Kindle offer post comes around very quickly doesn’t it? Anyway, we did Quick Reviews last week, so it is time – and here are are this month’s offers. And it’s a real bumper month – so it’s been a lot of fun to pull it all together.
First of all, I mentionedTo Woo and to Wed when it came out back in February, I’ve got the paperback sitting on my shelf waiting for me, but the Kindle price has done a big old drop to 99p at the moment. Also 99p is Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard, which is one of the celebrity and normal person romances that seemed to be everywhere last year! Ali Hazelwood’s Love, Theoretically is also 99p this month – I’m a little bit over Giant Men and Tiny Women, but this does have a good grovel in it if you want one of those at the moment. Side note: We’re just over a month away from this year’s Ali Hazelwood contemporary romance, Not In Love, which is out in mid June. It’s only a week or two since my post about the Bright Falls series, so it’s a good time to mention that Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail is 99p at the moment. Well Matched from the Willow Creek series is also on offer
I feel like I mention Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible every time it’s on offer, but I love it so much I’m not even sorry. I read The Other Side of Mrs Wood last year – if you like novels about mediums and spiritualism in the Victorian era, this might be 99p you want to spend. Also on the historical fiction front, there is Elizabeth Macneal’s Circus of Wonders, which was a Book of the Week back in 2021. Slightly more expensive, but there are quite a few of Susan Elizabeth Philips’s Chicago Stars series on offer at £1.99 at the moment – including the newest one Simply the Best which I really enjoyed.
On the mystery front, the second in Richard Coles’ Canon Clement series, A Death in the Parish is 99p, presumably because we’re less than a month out from the release of book three now. If you’re a Kindle Unlimited member, The Ashes of London and The Fire Court, the first two books in Andrew Taylor’s Marwood and Lovett series is in KU at the moment – I reviewed Ashes a year or two back.
On the non fiction front, The Radium Girls is 99p – it’s hard to read because of what happened to the women but it is a really interesting and readable book about a forgotten bit of history. Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie biography was in the Quick reviews last week and while that’s not on offer at the moment, a couple of her other books are 99p: Queen Victoria which I’ve mentioned before and A Very British Murder, which I haven’t read but I did watch the TV series that goes with it back when it came out. The Missing Cryptoqueen is 99p at the moment – I haven’t read the book but I’ve listened to the podcast series so if it’s anywhere near as good as that it’ll be a great read.
I wonder how many of you predicted that this would be today’s choice when you saw the list yesterday? Yes, it is breaking a rule because it’s the tenth in a series, but I think you absolutely can read this one standalone, although obviously you’ll get more out of it if you’ve read the others.
It’s the 1990s and we’re in the English countryside. Yes, this is filling in a gap in the series and we’re finally going to find out what Mona got up to in Britain after she inherited a stately home from her husband. Of course it’s all a little more complicated than that, but that’s the bare bones of how she ended up running a hotel – of sorts – in order to keep the bills paid and avoid having to sell up. At the start of the novel, while Mona and her adopted son are looking forward to a visit from the San Francisco contingent, they welcome a couple from the US and it all gets a little complicated and they have to sort it all out before Michael arrives.
Not going to lie, reading this was a treat that I had been saving myself and I just couldn’t wait any longer. I love this world and I love Maupin’s writing, and it was lovely to go back in time and get some more of them in their younger glory. And there are some nice nods in this to earlier books – and some bits of 90s culture that Maupin would have had to disguise or fictionalise at the time (if he’d known about them) but can now just put in there. This isn’t as interwoven with the events of the time as the original few books were – but that’s only to be expected when they’re no longer being written contemporaneously with the events themselves. If you like the series, I don’t think this will disappoint. If you’ve never read them before then it’s not a bad place to jump in – but you could always just start at the beginning and slot this in in its chronological spot in the series.
You should be able to get this in any good bookshop – I think they’ve even put the paperbacks out in new editions to match this one, which is nice but also annoying because now my set matches even less. I’ll cope though I’m sure! And of course it’s on kindle and kobo too
Did I go on a bit of a binge of Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony/Su Lin series, why yes. Should I have been reading other things? Probably. Am I sorry? Not at all. And it was a pretty busy week too. And it’s only getting busier over the next few weeks too, so we’ll see how that goes.
Seven books bought – mostly because of writing the offers post – and one preorder arrived.
Bonus picture: Sunday gardening. This bag doesn’t look that big on the photo, but it’s actually huge, and yet despite that the garden doesn’t look that much better. Never mind.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Most read author: Probably Agatha Christie – with four audiobooks
Books bought: six ebooks, a couple of book-books and a pre-order arrived
Books read in 2024: 139
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 740
A pretty good month – a lovely holiday, some good books and not too much actually added to the pile. So for me a big win!
Bonus picture: Another picture from the holiday – this time from a pier looking back at the Apuan Alps that we had just driven through to get to Massa.
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including this month!
Of course I went wandering in the bookshops while we were in Italy. Why wouldn’t it. And here is the first part of the results of my market research. This is one is in Pistoia and is part of a chain. I went into a couple of them and they were all in charming buildings. Now whether that’s because they like that aesthetic or because Tuscany is full of amazing buildings, I don’t know. Anyway, I appreciated the pretty locations.
Can I start with how much I love the fact that romance is called pink literature? Crime is called yellow literature so it just made me smile. And this bookshop had loads of them – in Italian and English.
There are also plenty of examples of English covers being used in translated editions in the romance and in the woman’s fiction sections – Lucy Score, Colleen Hoover, Taylor Jenkins Reid and more.
I’m not quite sure why the translated Mia Sosa is in the English language section, but there were plenty of options for the English-reader abroad – with a strong long in Italian-set books – Elena Ferrante, Hotel Portofino, Murder Under a Tuscan Sky, Italian-set romance novels, non fiction books about Italy.
And finally is it even a bookshop these days without a TikTok/BookTok mention somewhere! Of course it’s not…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 