books

Recommendsday: South Korean books

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This month it is a year since Baek Se-hee, the author of I Want To Die but I want to eat Tteokbokki died, at the age of just 34. It spawned an outpouring of love for her and for her work and so today I have for you a few South Korean books in translation. Her writing was a memoir, and I don’t really have anything else similar to that, but I do have some fiction – and if you liked any of the Japanese books in translation I recommended a few weeks back, then there are some that have a similar feel here.

Soyangri Book Kitchen by Kim Jee Hye*

Yoojin is the proprietor of the Book Kitchen which is cafe-bookshop and a retreat. Across the course of the book we meet the people who come to visit over its first year and see how their trip changes them and their lives. It’s described as for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, but I actually think it is closer in many ways to What You Are Looking for is in the Library. It’s quite low key and definitely fairly low peril but I really like the variety of people who come through to visit and the insight into life and culture of South Korea. I read it in an evening without really moving from my reading spot.

DallerGut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee

Copy of DallerGut Dream Department Store

Penny is a new employee at a department store selling dreams. It’s her big chance and a huge opportunity for her and across the book we follow her as she learns how the job works, gets to know the other employees and the people behind the dreams that they are selling. This was everywhere about two years ago – I picked up a copy soon after it came out, started reading it and then promptly left it at a friend’s house and didn’t get it back for a year. And then when I did it went back on to the pile and I forgot about it. It had been so long since I started it that I did start again when I finally sat down to read it. This is also low peril, but has more focus on Penny and her life than it does on the dream customers and how their lives are changed (compared to the Book Kitchen I mean). It’s quirky, magical and escapist. There is a sequel now – it’s described as a duology and I can’t quite work out if I liked it enough to read it.

Baekjo laundry Has a Neat Answer to All Your Problems by Lee Jae-in*

Eunjo has been forced to move back to the coastal town she grew up in after the university she was attending was closed down before she could graduate from her fashion design course. Without a degree, there is no one who wants to hire her so when her parents decide to retire, she takes over (with no enthusiasm) their laundry shop. It’s sandwiched between a newly renovated apartment complex and one still awaiting work and he has a lot of baggage about growing up there. But she starts to notice mysterious things happening around the complex and decides to try and figure out what is happening. I think this has a great premise, but I think it’s let down by the translation. It switches from first person to third person at times for no real reason and there are jumps backwards and forwards that are never really explained, and plot developments that occur with no explanation. At first I thought it was a style thing, but as it went on and it got more confusing I put it down the translation. Which is a shame because I think it might have been trying to be a sort of low stakes mystery type of thing but just not pulling it off. Hey Ho.

That’s your lot today, please take care of yourself and if you’re struggling with your mental health, you are not alone and there are organisations who can help you.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Seventh Sinner

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Here we are with another book on the week – and it’s yet another mystery novel!

This time it’s the first book in an Elizabeth Peter series that I haven’t previously read – The Seventh Sinner is the first to feature librarian Jacqueline Kirby. Written in the 1970s, this is set in Rome and our main character is Jean, a student in the city on a fellowship and along with her friends waiting to see if their work has been enough to secure a further year’s funding. She’s been having a great time in Italy – right up until the point where she finds one of the members of her group bleeding to death in a catacomb. And then the accidents start – or is someone actually trying to kill Jean. With the help of Jacqueline, can she stay alive to finish her studies?

This is quite of its time, but it’s an atmospheric mystery in a great setting with a some of the humour that you might expect if you’ve read the Vicky Bliss which started at a similar time or her historical Amelia Peabody books. If you’ve read or are used to reading books from the seventies it’ll probably work for you. I really enjoyed it and as you know from Books Incoming I’ve got the next two to read in the series already

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 12 – October 18

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Happy Monday everyone. Back to earth with a bump and a much shorter list this week. And I’ve got a busy week coming so no guarantee that I’ll be able to do any different this week. Hey ho.

Read:

The Shippers by Katherine Center

Three of Hearts by Katie Cotugno

Back to You by Ann Liang

Death of an Englishman by Anna Beer

Take a Chance, Sasha Sinclair by Ashley Herring Blake

Seventh Sinner by Elizabeth Peters

Started:

Murder at the Ritz by Jim Eldridge

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

One book and one ebook

Bonus picture: I was going to post another picture of my view from the commute which is now pitch black but luckily I have something more cheerful…

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

not a book, tv

Not a Book: Rik Mayall Magnificent B’Stard

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I’m back with another documentary pick this week – apart from Quarterback at the start of September it’s been a very theatre heavy three months both on the blog and for me generally because I’ve spent a lot of time away from home, which typically means I’m spending my evenings at the theatre or reading books rather than watching something on a screen.

This is a TV documentary about the comedian Rik Mayall who was one of the pioneers of alternative comedy in the 1980s. I’m too young to remember that – but old enough to remember the repeats of various of his shows being on BBC 2 and for him to have been an anarchic presence in the general realm of showbiz. I knew the main contours of his life, but not the details – and this filled in the gaps with archive footage and talking heads interviews with all of the key players – including audio recordings of Mayall, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack aged 56 in 2014.

It’s hard at this point to understand how revolutionary or groundbreaking things that seem commonplace now are – whether it’s the Beatles in music, naturalism arriving in movie acting or alternative comedy – which was different in the UK compared to the US. So many of British comedy’s big names are people who came up through the alternative scene that it’s hard to remember that they were once outside the mainstream. Anyway, if you like comedy history, this is a good watch. If you remember anything about the era it’s even better, with some moments of real sadness – such as Mayall’s children talking about the impact of the quad bike accident on their father and Adrian Edmondson (his longtime collaborator) talking about his regret that the two of them didn’t get over the breakup of their relationship before Mayall’s sudden death.

There’s no trailer for this one, so I’ve used it as an excuse to post (possibly) my favourite scene in all of Blackadder – Mayall’s scene stealing turn as Lord Flasheart, stealing a bride away from the altar. I can (and do much to Him Indoors’ distress) recite every word of this scene. It’s just glorious. Woof!

This was on Sky Documentaries and actually quite a long time ago back in June – see my comments above about how little time I’ve spent at home that mean it’s taken me this long to watch it – but you should still be able to find it on Now.

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid-October 2026 edition

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It is a landmark month – the final Thursday Next is in my grubby little hands and here it is in the photo too. Will I start to read it straight away or will I re-read the others first (as has theoretically been my plan for a year but that i haven’t actually carried through on…) The airport purchases on the way to the holiday were Regime Change (which I read on my sunlounger) and The Cauldron (which I didn’t). See You at the Finish Line came from Saucy Books, the Edmund Crispin came from Gower Street Waterstones, and the Kimberly Akimbo playscript came from the theatre when I went back to see it again. I’d actually read that one before I even got it home, and I’ve also read The Shippers which was a pre-order as I mentioned in the Kindle Offers post.

And finally we have a late arrival – a very of it’s time cover here on this Elizabeth Peters omnibus which I picked up after the third book Die or Love (title handily hidden under the price sticker!) was mentioned on one of my favourite podcasts because it’s set at a book convention. This reminded me that there is an Elizabeth Peters mystery series that I haven’t read. This one isn’t on Kindle in the UK so it’s second hand or nothing and the omnibus of the first three was only a couple of pounds more expensive than the three book version and so here we are. I wasn’t expecting it to arrive so fast, so it gets its own solo photo because it arrived this very morning after I’d already taken the photo (and shelved) the others!

Have a great weekend!

series, Series I love

Series I Love Redux: Thursday Next

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The final Thursday Next book is finally out in the wild! It’s twenty five years since The Eyre Affair brought Thursday into the literary world – and thirteen years since she burst into my life and it’s been a long, long wait to see what the last chapter of Thursday’s story has in store – because book seven was already out by the time I started the series. I both can’t wait to read it and have a sense of trepidation about reading it in case it doesn’t live up to my hopes. I pre-ordered my copy more than a year ago – and hopefully it will have turned up by the time you read this. Anyway – if you’re still waiting for your copy do go back and read my original posts about the series.

Book previews

Out this week: New Bonnie Garmus

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Bonnie Garmus’s debut Lessons in Chemistry was one of my favourite books of 2022 and so it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that her second book Peck & Peck which came out on Tuesday is the book that I want to mention this week. Per the Blurb: It’s 1982 and Batter Grey has just finished college and he’s working in the Gap because having an ear for poetry hasn’t got him a proper job like his friends have. But then he scores a job at a prestigious poetry journal, only to discover that it is way more dysfunctional than he could have imagined. I am very much looking forward to reading this one – and I’m expecting it’s going to be absolutely everywhere given the success of Lessons in Chemistry.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Kindle offers

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It’s the second Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means: my monthly encouragement to spend money on cheap Kindle books. And just before I start, a mini rant that Amazon seem to be majing it harder and harder to find which books are on a (really good) offer by constantly only offering me about twenty recommendations per category in books that it thinks I will like – rather than the old school long lists of best sellers per genre. I hate everything about this.

Cover of A Deadly Episode

Lets start with the mystery books and there are two Anthony Horowitz on offer at 99p this month – the latest Hawthorne and Horowitz A Deadly Episode and The Magpie Murders – I assume because the adaptation of the third book in that series is currently on the TV. The Killing Time, the second in Elly Griffiths latest series is also 99p as is the Rivers of London novella Winter’s Gifts, the second in Simon Brett’s latest series Major Bricket and the Body in the Belfry, and Graham Norton’s debut Holding which I think counts as a mystery and was turned into a really good TV version.

Moving on and Katherine Centre’s The Shippers is 99p which is almost annoying because I’ve been waiting for an offer since it came out on Kindle but they clearly waited until the paperback came out – which was the backup that I had pre-ordered (and which arrived last week), the new Maria Semple Go Gentle, Travis Baldree‘s Legends and Lattes is 99p, as is Libby Page‘s The Lifeline, and if you’re in a Halloween-y mood, then Olivia Dade’s latest book World’s Okayest Oracle (reluctantly) Seeks Demon is 99p. In historical fiction there’s Leonora Nattress’s The Bells of Westminster, the second Shardlake mystery Dark Fire and Tom Hindle‘s A Fatal Crossing. I’ve been on a run of translated fiction recently, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that former BotW What You Are Looking for is in the Library is 99p as is the third Before the Coffee Gets Cold book, Before Your Memory Fades.

In the nonfiction lists there’s former BotW Hello World from current Celebrity Traitors start Hannah Fry and Trevor Noah‘s Born a Crime. Among the stuff that I haven’t read but which looks good or has been recommended there is An African History of Africa by Zainab Badawi, Satnam Sangera’s Empireworld, which is the sequel to the award-winning Empireland, Otto English’s Notorious (which I have on the pile from a previous holiday airport purchase), Anthony Beevor’s The Second World War, Tracy Borman’s The Private Lives of the Tudors, Alice Roberts’s Crypt and Lucy Worsley‘s Queen Victoria. I bought Victor Sebestyen’s Weimar Germany to add to the heap of books about 20th Century Germany I have waiting for me to read, as well as Peter Cozzen’s Deadwood and Adrian Tinniswood’s The Power and the Glory.

The Terry Pratchett is Thud! which is the seventh in the Watch series; the John Le Carré is The Honourable Schoolboy which is the sixth Smiley book and also the second in the Karla trilogy (the first being Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and the Georgette Heyer is An Infamous Army which is the fourth (and my least favourite) in the Alistair-Audley books which are the only time(s) that she revisits any of her characters in her historical fiction. If you’ve never read any of Nancy Mitford’s novels, the Penguin Complete Novels is 99p and would be worth it just for The Pursuit of Love or Love in a Cold Climate let alone those two plus six more. I’ve been doing some more Mitford-related reading recently, so watch out for a follow up to my Recommendsday on them in the near future*. Also in if you haven’t read is Jeannette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit which I read as an A Level set text along with The Color Purple. The 1300 lines of Wordsworth’s Prelue was worth suffering through to get those two novels…

In books that I keep seeing advertised to me, there is The Road to Tender Hearts which has The Wedding People and The Correspondent as comps, which are both waiting on my to-read pile, so I probably should read one (or both) of them before I pull the trigger on that one! I did however buy Jeeves Again, which is a collection of Twelve new stories in the world of PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster by people like Jasper Fforde and John Finnemore which I must some how have missed when it came out last year.

And if that’s not enough for oyu, I don’t know what would be! Happy Humpday and best of luck to your wallet!

*by which I mean hopefully before the end of the year!

Book of the Week, Book previews, historical, mystery, new releases, previews

Book of the Week: The Shadows of Kensington Gore

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This is a slight cheat again this week but for a different reason than the last two weeks have been. I did read this last week – but it’s not out until next Thursday so that’s where the rule breaking occurs. But as I always say, I make the rules so I’m allowed to do what I want about them in the end. It was my favourite thing I read last week though so it totally deserves this spot.

I really enjoyed The Murder at Worlds End and so I was looking forward to this follow up – and I was not disappointed. Stephen and Miss Decima are now in London, installed in a mansion block near the Royal Albert Hall. Miss Decima is and running a detective agency from it. But all the cases she is getting are household pilfering and she’s is getting bored. Stephen is finding is feet in a new neighbourhood and is growing frustrated that he’s not as involved in the detecting as he was hoping – and that he’s running the whole household on his own and having books thrown at him when he’s not doing things as quickly as Decima wants him to. But all this changes when they go to a Suffragette meeting ahead of the Coronation and Stephen is first on the scene of a murder. This also means he’s the police’s prime suspect – and so he and Miss Decima are back on the case again.

The atmosphere of pre-Coronation London is great – and so is the portrayal of the various factions within the movement for women’s suffrage. Too often this can get flattened to just the suffragettes, but this has got the peaceful and the militant factions in the thick of it – as well as all the various movements trying to prevent women from getting the vote. It’s also got the working class – or more accurate the servants class view, all of which makes for an intriguing mystery to solve. It’s also funny – Stephen’s antics as he tries to find his place in the neighbourhood are great, as is Decima and her various foibles. The body count is fairly high – but it manages to balance the light and the shade really well. Miss Decima hasn’t changed her character since the first book and so she’s as cantankerous and difficult as ever – and the book is trying hard not to soften her into fluffy old lady, which must be a temptation given the rest of the genre.

I raced through this and I really hope that there is a third book coming because this showed that there is plenty of material for mining in London for these two.

My copy came from NetGalley and as I said it’s out on the 22nd so you can pre-order it now if you’re desperate to read it after this rave review. Here are the Kindle and Kobo links. It’a a hardback release but should be fairly easy to find in the stores when it does come out – Waterstones have a signed version for preorder which is usually a good sign for availability and I’ve seen Murder at Worlds End all over the place since it came out last year. There’s an audiobook too – which looks like it might be dual narration between Joe Jameson and Juliet Stevenson which would be fun.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 5 – October 11

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So here’s the thing… I’ve been on holiday. And I was on holiday this time last week is true. So today’s list is huge. In fact the holiday list in general is massive and I’m pretty pleased with myself because my goal was to read some non fiction (done) and to try and make progress on the NetGalley list (done). And I know what I’m picking for tomorrow too, so I will break the streak of writing about books I finished on Monday! This week I’m back down to earth with a bump so we’ll see what happens to the list now, but I think we already know it’s going to be *much* shorter.

Read:

Julia at the Drive-In by Rainbow Rowell

The Final Problem by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Murder at Canterbury Cathedral by Jim Eldridge

Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

Winter Breakage by David Levithan

The Price of Admission by Dustin Thao

The Spy and the Snake by M J Rowbotham*

Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L Sayers

The Shadows of Kensington Gore by Ross Montgomery*

Death in the Dressing Room by Simon Brett

The Bloodshed in the Bookshop by Simon Brett

Miss Hortense and the Last Rites by Mel Pennant*

Pride, Prejudice and Peril by Jessica Bull*

Started:

Take a Chance, Sasha Sinclair by Ashley Herring Blake

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Eight ebooks bought (offers post writing does tend to do that to me), one pre-order put in and another pre-order turned up. I’m expecting another pre-order this week so we already know there’ll be at least one book on next week’s list.

Bonus picture: a picture from (nearly) the top of Teide, the third highest volcano in the world. There was sand from the Sahara in the air so we couldn’t see as far as you usually can, but we still got all the effects of being 3,500m above sea level…

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