books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 10 – August 16

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After another sweltering week, it’s meant to be getting a bit cooler. I can’t work out if this is going to help or hinder my reading – the heat has made me stay indoors more but also made it harder to concentrate. If it gets significantly cooler it will be very tempting to go out and get some fresh air. But given my recent experiences of getting out have left me a sweaty mess because of the humidity as well as the heat, may be I’ll still be sheltering in areas with air conditioning! We’re at a slightly funny point in the book release cycle – the summer books are already out, but the autumn ones haven’t quite started yet. I should be using this to catch up on things in the NetGalley backlog, but what I’m actually doing is reading books that I bought at Bristol and picking things up from the actual pile, reading 10 pages and then putting them down again. I blame the heat.

Read:

The Lion’s Tusk by Robert Jackson Bennett

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

A Labyrinth of Honeybees by Heather Fawcett

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead

Continental Christie by Agatha Christie

Helen, Television Dancer by Linda Graeme

Honey Bee Mine by Sarah T Dubb

Henrietta by Sophie Irwin*

Started:

The Truth About Love by Stephanie Laurens

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Nothing bought. A very well behaved week.

Bonus picture: a Parachutist on their way down on Sunday at the Balloon Festival. We went to take a look because a) it’s really nearby and b) it seemed slightly cooler. But in fact it was deceptive and the humidity was grim. Still at least we saw the parachutes, even if the only hot air ballons we saw were the baskets waiting to be re-gassed.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

comedy, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: How the Other Half Loves

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Another theatre trip this Sunday, and I actually saw this before I saw The Comedy About Spies, but it was an early preview and opening night was only Tuesday this week so I was a good girl and saved it.

How the Other Half Loves is a 1969 sex farce written by Alan Aykbourn, it is his ninth play (his 92nd premieres in Scarborough next month) and in fact was one of his first big successes. It follows three couples across the course of a couple of days, with two different homes existing in one set. When Fiona Foster and Bob Philips’s need to hide their affair from their spouses, they use a third couple – the Featherstones – as an alibi. William and Mary have no idea that this is going on as their lives collide with the Fosters and the Philips and much hilarity ensues.

I have seen a couple of Alan Aykbourn plays, with mixed results, but I do love a farce and this has Roger Allam (on whom more later) and so I trotted down to the Old Vic on a ticket deal. And yes it has its dated moments, but it’s really clever and there are lots of laughs. However, I watched a not insignificant portion of it through my fingers because the cringe got too much for me. As I said to Him Indoors on the way home – I think you’d like it, but I can’t put myself through that again to go with you.

It’s got a cracking cast though – led by Roger Allam, who as you can see from the video above is prepared to look ridiculous. I first saw him on stage nearly two decades ago in another farce – opposite Mark Rylance in Boeing Boeing – and obviously I adore Cabin Pressure of which he is a core component. He can do Serious (I’ve also seen him as Prospero in The Tempest) but comedy is where I have enjoyed him the most. And although every character here has their moment to shine, his Frank Foster is brilliant – he’s the department manager of the other two and has the status and pomposity to go with it but he’s also clueless and bumbling and obssessed with trivialities and under it all he’s actually maybe the kindest character of the lot. As his wife Dorothy Atkinson is channeling Margo from the Good LIfe but with more secrets but Laura Elsworthy as Mary Featherstone is doing something really interesting with the shyest mouse you ever did see who manages to do a roar by the end.

It’s is also really cleverly constructed – the in the round set up and the competing action in the two different houses, which culminates in a simulataneous dinner party as the Featherstones have dinner at the Fosters (on Thursday night) and the Philips’ (on Friday) swiveling in their seats to denote which time line they’re in at any time. And I realise that that may sound mad, but it works and it’s not even the craziest thing that Aykbourn has done in his plays – he can make The Comedy About Spies four bedroom set look simple – whether it’s this, Bedroom Farce (three bedrooms, one night and morning), The Norman Conquests (three plays each set in a different part of a house across one weekend) or House and Garden (two plays, one cast, performed simultaneously in adjoining stages). I’m not sure this is the best place to start with Aykbourn, but if you’re interested in plays with interesting concepts and can cope with Alan Partridge without dying inside then this is worth a look. It’s also the reason why I’ve had Peter Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go To My Lovely stuck in my head on and off for nearly two weeks!

Have a great Sunday

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The Spicy Librarian

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Happy Saturday, I’ve got another bookshop this week from the Bristol Odyssey and this time it’s The Spicy Librarian, a relatively new romance specialist (and bar!) in Leamington Spa. And it’s even great timing because today is Romance Bookstore Day in the US so I’m vaguely timely for once.

Firstly, I want to say that it’s big! I know their instagram says it’s Europe’s biggest independent romance bookshop, but I was not prepared. And it’s got a lovely corner plot too so hopefully everyone going past gets a good eyeful!

And let us take a moment for how pretty this is! Look at the indoor tree! And the rug! And the seats and tables for you to have a drink and a sit down with a book.

And this is the table underneath it, which I think gives a good idea of the selection – which felt very carefully curated. There’s authors here that you will see in other stores – Tessa Bailey, Lila Sage, Josie Silver – and then Kayla Olson, whose first book didn’t get a paperback release over here, the second did and now the third is getting into more stoies and then some stuff I hadn’t seen anywhere else (r at least don’t remember seeing anywhere else!) like The Singer Sisters (actually two years old), Fallen Willow and Forsaking Midnight which was a very new release at the time.

I was expecting the store to be really heavy on the romantasy and also on the self-published, but actually it’s more balanced than that. It has got a big romantasy section but as well as the usual suspects there were some lesser spotted ones – or at least lesser spotted by me, admittedly not a romantasy reader or connoisseur.

But there was also a lot of other romance as well – this is part of the contemporary romance section – with quite a lot of sports romances but I promise there were other things there too. I could easily have bought more than I did. I’ve spent a lot of time in various romance sections of bookstores and there were plenty here that I hadn’t seen before – including a bunch of US imports that aren’t in Kindle in the UK.

And finally as well as the (licenced) bar, there is merch. I’m not meant to be acquiring any more tote bags and although I did acquire tote bags over the course of the weekend, on Friday afternoon my will power was in tact. It was also about 30 degrees so I managed to resist the hoodie, but whether I’d be as strong on a chilly day in the autumn who can tell.

series

Mystery Series: Imogen Quy

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Happy Friday everyone and I’ve got a mystery series pick for you today – back in May I picked The Wyndham Case as a BotW and I enjoyed it so much that I immediately bought and binged the rest of the series and now a couple of months has elapsed and I feel it’s only fair I should tell you about the series.

Imogen Quy is the college nurse at the fictional St Agatha’s College, Cambridge. In fact she initially started training as a doctor but dropped out to move to America with her boyfriend – who was also training as a doctor and had got an opportunity over there. After he dumped her, she moved back and finished her training but this time as a nurse. Now she’s in her thirties and living in the house her parents left her in Cambridge, complete with a couple of lodgers (who change a bit from book to book) and across the four books stumbling across some mysteries.

As the college nurse, Imogen has a good reason to be called to look at a body when it’s found in college, and her role in college means that she sits outside both the students and academics of the college. She has a group of friends which includes some of her lodgers, some of the other people at the college and also a local policeman. The first mystery is connected to a historical book collection held by the college, the second is a half-written biography of a mathematician which seems to be burning through authors, the third is about the death of a prospective benefactor to the college and the final book about the mysterious death of a college scholar who fell while attempting a spot of night climbing. All of them are well constructed and pretty clever – and you can draw your own conclusions about how much I liked them based on how quickly I read them!

As I said in my review of The Wyndham Case, I had been wanting to read the Imogen Quy series since I first read one of Jill Paton Walsh’s Wimsey continuations – in the introduction to the first one she writes about how inspired she was by Gaudy Night and so I wanted to see what she did with her own Oxbridge college mystery series. And I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t like the final book quite as much as the others, but I would happily have read more if she had written them. Paton Walsh was a prolific author and also wrote novels for younger readers and more literary fiction. She wrote the first two in the early 1990s before she worked on Thrones, Dominations and alongside other things and then are sandwiched between A Presumption of Death and the third and fourth of her Wimsey/Vane novels as the last five books she published.

I picked all of these up second hand – but they’re also available on Kindle and if I hadn’t already started buying them and wanted the set (and as matching as possible!), I might have been tempted by the Kindle editions so I could read them quicker rather than waiting for the postman.

Have a great weekend!

books

Out this Week: New Olivia Dade

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Happy Thursday – it’s new Olivia Dade week. This time it’s a second paranormal romance following on from last year’s Zom Rom Com. In World’s Okayest Oracle our heroine is Gwen, who can see the future, but only the mundane stuff for humans – not the life and death of civilisations stuff. But then brain eating zombies escape and she gets her first world-altering vision and she needs help. Hugh is the help. He’s a demon and he watched her fail her oracle test back in the day and now they have to work together. The fate of the world is at stake – but also maybe if they do save the world, might their future be together?

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: August Kindle Offers

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I always think of August as being Peak Summer, but I think that’s because the whole month was summer holidays when we were at school and that sort of thing sticks with you doesn’t it? Anyway, another bumper batch of books on offer for you this Wednesday – hide your wallets!

Lets start with this week’s BotW The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy, which I bought last weekend on the recommendation of Portugal Friend who bought it on our pre-Bristol Jolly and have obviously now devoured and recommended. Also on offer are previous books of the week: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Cathy Yardley‘s Do Me A Favor, Christina Lauren‘s The True Love Experiment, and although it’s £2.99 not 99p I’m mentioning it anyway: A Case of Life and Limb, the second Gabriel Ward mystery which I absolutely adored last year and have since listened to on audiobook as well.

In other things I’ve read recently there’s How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days (fresh from the July Quick Reviews), Alexandria Bellefleur‘s Written in the Stars, G M Malliet’s Death in Cornwall, the fourth St Just mystery and the first one after the series restarted but it should be said that all four of those new ones are in Kindle Unlimited too. Slightly longer ago (how did I read this last summer already?!) is Alex Hay‘s The Housekeepers and Julian Clary‘s A Curtain Call to Murder. Sadly I’m not seeing Clary as Herod in JCS this summer but he has got a new novel out in October, which from the description looks like it could be a sequel to this so I shan’t complain too much!

Orlando Murrin’s second Paul Delmere mystery Murder Below Deck is on offer (still no news on whether we’re getting a third in that series) as is the third Three Dahlias book Seven Lively Suspects, There’s also Marple, the Miss Marple short story collection I mentioned in my anticipated books post the other week, my mileage definitely varied but others liked it more. The same could be said for Maggie Stiefvater‘s The Listeners which I thought had great promise at the start but then tailed off.

In books I like there’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré, the final Ruth Galloway book The Last Remains – but you really should read the series in order, Josephine Tey‘s The Franchise Affair, the second Rivers of London book Moon over Soho, Emma Straub‘s Modern Lovers and Annabel Monaghan‘s Same Time Next Summer.

In things I have on the pile but haven’t read yet, there’s The Secret Lives of Murderers Wives, Kirsty Greenwood’s latest Romantic Hero, and the second in Ashley Herring Blake‘s Clover Lake series, Get Over It April Evans ahead of the release of the third book at the end of September. In things I bought while writing this post, there’s Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 and the new Rachel Lynn Solomons Extracurricular, which has teacher-student stuff going on so may or may not work for me but I liked her previous stuff enough that I’m taking the chance.

And if that’s not enough, I don’t know what would be!

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy

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Happy Tuesday everyone, this week’s choice was one of the easiest that I have recently made. I started this one on Sunday night and finished it on Tuesday and I would have finished it sooner if I hadn’t had to work. Anyway, to the book.

Osric is a member of an order of assassins, Aurienne is a healer and a member of an enemy order. But Osric needs an expert healer – he’s injured and his order doesn’t let members retire. Luckily Aurienne desperately needs funding to help find a cure for a disease that’s ravaging children. And that is how the two of them find themselves flung together. As Aurienne (reluctantly) tries to heal Osric, the two of them discover that there may be some thing bigger behind the reoccurrence of the Pox. The trouble is that the longer the two of them spend in each other’s company, the harder it is to ignore the attraction between them – no matter how much they want to ignore it.

This was just a total delight. Really, it absolutely was. It’s got witty banter, two main characters who really don’t want to like each other but who really need each other and the forced proximity is truly epic. If I have a gripe with it, it’s that you don’t get all the answers in this book – but that’s also good news because it means there is a sequel, which came out in July. I wish I’d read this sooner – because the sequel was on NetGalley if only I’d known and now I’m going to have to pay money (and quite a lot of money) for it if I want to know what happens next any time soon.

I have a very mixed record on fantasy, but this is exactly the sort of end of fantasy that I like. It’s not cozy but it’s not to terribly high concept for me to deal with. Snarky banter is one of my favourite things in books and this has some of the best banter I’ve recently encountered as well as a brilliant inner monologue from the two leads to keep you going when they’re not actively fighting with each other. And the slow burn and forced proximity is excellent. it’s just so good. So, so good.

This one is super easy to get hold of – I’ve seen it in bookshops all over the place in the last year and just never got around to picking it up (more fool me) and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too. Place your bets now on how long I manage to resist the sequel!

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 3 – August 9

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Happy Monday. I would say I’m braced for another heatwave, but to be honest it feels like it has started already. It was really quite hot in London on Saturday, albeit not in the 30s, and it was so hot at home yesterday I was glad we hadn’t gone to the MotoGP at Silverstone – even though the races were exciting – because I would have been absolutely sure to get sunburn and a dehydration headache. Anyway, more excitement coming up this week with at least one more theatre trip, hopefully the air con will be working there. Anyway, on the reading front, it was a fairly ok week. I’m making fast progress down the conference purchases when I’m at home – the beauty of middle grade books is that they don’t take long to read – which is making me feel less bad about the enormous state of the pile in general.

Read:

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie

The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley

Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk by Travis Baldree

The Wednesday Witches Club by Sarah Beth Durst

Helen in Musical Comedy by Linda Graeme

Death at the Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh

The Murder on the Enriqueta by Molly Thynne

Started:

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead

Helen, Television Dancer by Linda Graeme

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

It’s offers post writing o’clock again so there were a few Kindle purchases. No actual books though

Bonus picture: The Strand and its little gaggle of theatres. I often forget that although the West End is (mostly) clustered around Shaftesbury Avenue, these three plus the Lyceum, the Duchess, the Novello, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Aldwych are all very close together too. And on Saturday night it seemed like most of them had finished their shows just in time for their patrons to be clogging the pavement as we were walking back to Euston…

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

comedy, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Comedy About Spies

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I’m back with my second Mischief show of the year. After Thespians back in May (with an almost entirely new to Mischief cast) today I’m back with a bunch of the OGs in their latest West End show, which premiered last autumn and sold so well I didn’t manage to get to see it and now is back – and this time I was quicker with the ticketbuying finger. And I’m posting this a bit later in the day than usual, partly because I only saw it yesterday and it was a late night home and I needed time to recover but also because tonight is opening night.

It’s the early 1960s and in London a rogue secret agent has stolen plans for a top secret weapon. Hot on it’s trail are agents from the CIA and the KGB all of whom converge on the same hotel to try and track it down and steal it back. However they’re not the only people at the hotel and soon unsuspecting fellow guests are drawn into their plans including an actor preparing for an audition to play James Bond and a baker trying to work up the nerve to propose to his girlfriend. And of course because this is Mischief nothing goes to plan for anyone and it soons descends into chaos and a glorious farce.

As I said at the top this is a revival after a very successful run in the West End last summer, which I suspect might have otherwise extended then if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the cast were already lined up to do Christmas Carol Goes Wrong very soon after this closed – so close in fact that there was probably only just enough time for a holiday and rehearsals to get it up and running. This has a fresh set up and cast of characters but all of the hallmarks of Mischief’s best stuff – slapstick, physical comedy and a joke rate that hardy gives you time to finish laughing at the last joke before the next one hits. I think the second half of the first act, which has a brilliantly clever set split into quarters to make four hotel rooms, colour coded, is the high point of the show but that may be because the stunts and jokes are at their height before the second half has to bring it all to some sort of conclusion. And I did worry about how they were going to end it satisfactorily, but they managed to land it just fine. I shouldn’t have doubted them.

All of the Mischief regulars are turning in great performances, but the more I see him, the more I become convinced that Dave Hearn is the strongest and most versatile actor of all of them. He originated Max in the Cornley shows – who is distracted by the audience, frequently has a complicated love life and is gets relegated to supporting roles. He’s great here as Lance, the CIA agent, turning in a really clever performance for reasons that I can’t really explain without giving huge spoilers which would be mean.

If this sounds like your sort of show, then do try and get to see it while it’s on this summer – the set is so complicated (travelators! that giant dollshouse hotel set!) that I don’t think it would be easy to tour and I think it’s one of Mischief’s best shows in age – I think we preferred it to Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, for all that I love the Cornley characters deeply.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Mr B’s Emporium

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After last weekend’s Conference book haul, this week we start on the bookshops that we visited around our weekend at conference. You’l have to wait and see what I bought from them though, so sorry about that

Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights is tucked around the corner from the Jane Austen centre near Queen Square in Central Bath. It’s been there 20 years and won a tonne of awards (including the UK’s best independent bookstore twice!) and I don’t know how I hadn’t been there before.

There were genuinely so many pictures from my visit that I could have chosen to illustrate this, but I’ve gone for this one because I think it does a good job of conveying how excellent the selection of books they have is. We were in there for ages – so often you go into a book shop and find the same books that you’ve seen everywhere else (or at least I do) but this is not that. Yes it’s got some of the “usual” stuff in there (like Meet the Newmans – now in paperback!), but it’s also got a whole load of books that I’d never come across before and suddenly wanted to read.

All the fiction is in together in alphabetical order but there are sections picking out highlights from particular genres too – this is a romance one, featuring the new Annabel Monaghan which you know I loved, the TJR I still need to read, the latest Ashley Poston and Alexandra Vasti and some other stuff I’ve seen before along with Rooting Interest which I totally hadn’t and Heart the Lover which has got a Booker Longlisting so I wouldn’t have normally thought at about.

It’s also got a beautiful children’s section, which I managed to catch looking like there’s no one in it (there was) because I do try not to put pictures of unsuspecting people’s children on the internet so you’ll have to trust me that it was busy because there’s a whole area behind that you can’t see with the picture books where the toddlers were hanging out. And it has friendly staff, in every section but particularly the children’s one, who will ask you if they can recommend you anything or find you anything or order you anything. We were in there late morning on a Monday it it was doing such a steady trade in customers that it was a delight to see.

I leave you with the Terry Pratchett hardback corner, which is basically all you would have needed to show me to demonstrate that this was a bookshop I would love. I have so much trouble resisting these beautiful hardbacks – I’m writing this looking up at my fancy bookshelf where I can see my copies of Guards! Guards, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal, Making Money and Raising Steam all of which you can also see here – still sort of regretting that I didn’t buy another one to add to them. On the wall to the side just out of shot is also a poster guide to where to start and the interconnections of the series which is a really good touch because as I have said before, you don’t need to start these at the beginning and in fact unless you’re a regular fantasy reader you probably shouldn’t.

Basically, if you’re in Bath don’t miss this one – I think between the three of us we came away with six books at least – and this the day after Book Conference at a point when we all had made resolutions not to buy too much stuff!