Month: September 2017

literary fiction, non-fiction, Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Quick reviews

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As the deadline for Fahrenheit’s #Noirville competition draws ever closer – you’ve only got three days to go people, three days – I’ve been trying to clear the decks a bit so that I’m ready to read the entries.  So I thought I’d mention a few books this Recommendsday that I’ve read recently but haven’t chatted about.  It’s a bit eclectic, but that’s just how I roll and I know you won’t mind!

The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray

Ever wondered what Queen Victoria ate?  Annie Gray has the answers.  As well as looking at what Victoria ate across the course of her reign, it looks at how the kitchens worked, who worked there and who else they were feeding as well as the Queen.  It jumps backwards and forwards  in the timeline a little bit, but I came away feeling like I’d learned a lot about upper class dining in the nineteenth century.  ITV’s TV series Victoria is back on screen at the moment – and although the Victoria in that is very much the young queen, this would still make a nice companion read for people who want to know a bit more about the Queen’s life and her household.

Wise Children by Angela Carter

Meet Nora and Dora Chance – former musical all stars, illegitimate twin daughters of a pillar of the theatrical establishment – on their 75th birthday, which by coincidence is also their father’s 100th birthday.  Join them as Dora tells you the story of their lives before they head to the (televised) party.  This is a whirling, magical realist journey through the world of the theatre – legitimate and otherwise – full of Shakespeare references and sets of twins galore.  I found it enjoyably bonkers although it took a little while before I got my head around it all – there is a big old cast of characters here – and I’m still thinking about it a couple of weeks later.

True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling

You may remember me raving about the Little Bookshope of Lonely Hearts last year – and now it has a sequel.  The good news is that this is not the sort of sequel that breaks up the couple that you’ve invested so much in in the first book and then getting them back together.  This sees one of the other girls who works in the bookshop get her happily ever after.  I always find it slightly weird to read books where the main character has my name, but I liked Verity Love so much that I got over that quite quickly.  This Verity is an Austen mad introvert, who invents a boyfriend to keep her friends off her back and then ends up with a real life fake boyfriend.  I had a few issues with Johnny’s back story – and insufficient grovelling at the end – but was mostly swept away by this – I do love a relationship of convenience story.

Right, that’s your lot for now, but I hope there’s something in here that’s tickled your fancy and might help you fill a reading gap while I’m off reading all those Noirville entries.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, women's fiction

Book of the Week: Anna and her Daughters

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This week’s BotW is one I picked up as a Kindle Daily Deal a couple of weeks back: Anna and her Daughters by DE Stevenson.  You may remember me waxing lyrical about my love for Miss Buncle and her book back in a #Recommendsday about Comfort reads a while back and this was the first non-Buncle book I’ve read by DE Stevenson.

The cover of Anna and Her Daughters
I’m not sure about the cover on this, but hey, when the book is good it doesn’t matter!

The Plot:  Anna’s husband has died and the family’s finances are in a mess.  They’re going to have to sell the London house and move to somewhere smaller.  Anna decides that she wants to go back to the area of Scotland that she grew up in and starts making plans.  None of her three nearly grown up daughters are precisely keen on the idea, but only one, Jane, is prepared to make the best of it.  Anna and the girls move – Helen and Rosalie are practically kicking and screaming – and start their new lives.

The story is told through Jane’s eyes – she’s the plain but clever sister, who would have gone to Oxford if it hadn’t been for the money problems.  Helen is pretty, but selfish and used to getting her own way.  Rosalie isn’t as pretty as Helen, but isn’t clever like Jane either and tends to drift along in Helen’s shadow.  The combination of the three sisters makes for fascinating reading.  Anna is remarkably clear sighted about her daughters in some ways – she sees their faults in a way that many parents do not.  She tries to explain her attitude to Jane, who (justifiably) gets angry about the way that Helen treats people and the fact that she gets away with it.

As the book goes on we see the girls grow and change.  Jane discovers a gift for writing, Rosalie chooses security and Helen continues to be Helen, regardless of the consequences.  This book is very melodramatic in some ways but also feels like nothing much happens.  I loved it.  Especially when Miss Buncle gets a quick mention.

Anna and her Daughters is available in Kindle or you’ll have to go and find a secondhand paperback copy, which by the look of Amazon maybe expensive.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: September 18 – September 24

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A busy week – but lots of train journeys.  I read a book and a bit on the way to and the way back from meeting Sir Patrick Stewart (!) to make this video for work. Sorry not sorry!

Read:

Anna and Her Daughters by D E Stevenson

Bones to Pick by Linda Lovely

Ax to Grind by Tonya Kappes

Accidentally on Purpose by Jill Shalvis

The Midnight Peacock by Katherine Woodfine

Thrice the Brinded Cat hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley

Black Panther 1: A Nation Beneath Our Feet by Ta-Nehisi Coates et al

BuzzBooks 2017: Romance by various authors

Started:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell

Still reading:

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

The Golden House by Salman Rushdie

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides

 

Book of the Week, fiction, literary fiction, reading challenges

Book of the Week: The Mothers

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Tricky choice for BotW this week, but I eventually plumped for Britt Bennett’s The Mothers because it was a bit out of my normal reading comfort zone, but wore it very lightly and made me think. 


In aftermath of her mother’s death and in the twilight of her time at high school, Nadia Turner gets involved with the minister’s son. Luke is a couple of years older than she is, but is still adrift after the injury that ended his football career and cost him his college scholarship. It’s nothing serious, just a bit of fun, until Nadia gets pregnant. And what comes next changes the course of both their lives and sends ripples out through their church community that will last for years to come. 

Firstly, I loved the setting of this book. Bennett really brings to life her fictional contemporary black church community in Southern California. Part of the story is told by the elder women in the church as a kind of Greek chorus. It adds an extra perspective in between flipping between the stories of those mostly closely involved. 

It’s also full of interesting characters, even if you don’t always like them that much. Luke and Nadia and her best friend Audrey make a fascinating triangle, who have different views on life and experience the fallout in different ways. 

Now, I can’t say too much more about this or I’ll give too much away, but reading through the reviews of this on goodreads, there are some very definite opinions about the author’s stance with regard to Nadia’s decision. As far as I was concerned, I thought it was handled in a very balanced, matter of fact way and in the main the fall out was portrayed as more down to the cover up and the other issues going on rather than because of the actual decision. Is that cryptic enough?!  Anyway, nearly a week later I’m still thinking about the characters, which has to be a good thing.

This is Bennett’s first novel and was nominated for a whole bunch of prizes, which really didn’t surprise me because it’s clever, well-written and very readable.  This is also a book that fills a couple of this year’s #ReadHarder categories: Debut Novel, book where all the POV characters are people of colour and for me, book set more than 5,000 miles away. 

The hardback is out now, the paperback is coming in October. When that arrives, I think you should be able to find it in most bookshops, but possibly not in the supermarket. As always, if you can’t make it to a bookshop you could order it from a Big Green Bookshop or pick it up on Kindle or Kobo. 

Happy reading. 

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: September 11 – September 17

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 I spent two days painting and a day out watching the touring cars. You can tell…

Read:

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Wise Children by Angela Carter

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Rivers of London: Detective Stories 4 by Ben Aaronovitch et al

True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling

Started:

 To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides 

Still reading:

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

The Golden House by Salman Rushdie

One ebook bought. So that’s ok. Sort of. 

Book of the Week, Children's books, detective

Book of the Week: The London Eye Mystery

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This week’s BotW is Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery, which I devoured* last week.  This has been on my radar for a while – I read A Monster Calls (Dowd’s concept but written by Patrick Ness) last year before the movie came out and thought I’d like to read more of Dowd’s work and then one of my favourite middle-grade authors Robin Stevens (you’ve all seen how much I’ve written about Wells and Wong before) was announced as writing a sequel to The London Eye Mystery.  That came out last month, so of course I needed to read the first one before reading the second one.  You know me: read series in order, glom on stuff you like, read everything authors you like have ever written.

A copy of The London Eye Mystery
I love the cover of this – and The Guggenheim Mystery has a great one too

Anyway, to the plot: Ted and his big sister Kat take their cousin Salim to the London Eye when he comes to visit them.  They watch him get into the pod and then they watch the pod go around and wait for him to get off.  But he doesn’t get off when they expect him to.  Or from the next pod.  Or the next one.  He’s vanished.  But how does someone vanish from a closed pod on a giant rotating wheel?  The police start looking, but so do Ted and Kat, and it’s not long before they’re following a trail of clues across London to try and work out what happened to Salim.

This is a clever, well-written locked room mystery: all the clues are there for the reader to be able to work out what happened to Salim, if only they can spot them.  But spotting them is not as easy as you think because Ted’s his brain works differently.  Ted says he has a “syndrome” and although it’s never said what it is, it’s clearly a disorder on the autism spectrum, possibly Asperger’s.  Ted has developed his own operating system – with tips and tricks to navigate the difficulties his syndrome causes him.  And he is very adept at dealing with the challenges of social interactions and situations.  But this does still mean that the reader isn’t always getting the whole picture.  Ted notices somethings that other people don’t – but he also doesn’t see somethings that other people would and this adds to the experience for the reader.

I pretty much figured things out at the same time as Ted did – which is great as I read a lot of mysteries and this is a middle-grade mystery and I’m definitely not a middle grader.  In fact I’m old enough to have my own middle grader and not have been a teen mum.  So depressing.  Anyway, I digress.  I loved the London Eye Mystery, will probably be lending this to my niece-in-law and will definitely be bumping the sort-of-sequel The Guggenheim Mystery to the top of my to-buy list.  Although I might wait for the paperback.

You should be able to get hold of the London Eye Mystery from all good bookshops.  My favourite is The Big Green Bookshop who will order it for you and post it out to you because they’re nice like that.  Or you could get it on Kindle or Kobo.  And I’m sure this won’t be the last time that I mention the Guggenheim Mystery here…

Happy Reading!

 

 

 

 

*I started it the week before, but only really got a good run at it at the weekend and basically read it in one big gulp.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: September 4 – September 10

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A slow start to the week, but actually in the end, I didn’t do too badly.  Still a lot of books on the ongoing pile – but I’m blaming the building work for that!

Read:

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 2 by Ryan North

This Heart of Mine by Susan Elizabeth Philips

Hortense and the Shadow by Nathalie O’Hara

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray

Blood Will Stream by Nick Bryan

Started:

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling

The Golden House by Salman Rushdie

Still reading:

Wise Children by Angela Carter

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Two ebooks bought – but that’s it.  So a bit better behaved from me!

 

Book of the Week, Series I love

Book of the Week: Rush Jobs

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This week’s Book of the Week is more of  a series recommendation.  I read two Hobson and Choi books last week practically one after the other and  I was going to save my ravings for a Recommendsday post, but I didn’t anything I liked better last week, so it seemed churlish not to pick one of them for my BotW, so I chose Rush Jobs.

The Cover of Rush Jobs
I love the tube line theme to the covers for this.

The set up: John Hobson is a private detective with a Past.  Angelina Choi is his work experience intern.  In the first book, she starts her two week placement by tweeting that they’re going to solve a high profile murder case.  #HobsonvsWolf goes viral and soon Hobson has to try to solve a case he’s not being paid for and possibly face off against a giant wolf.  In Rush Jobs, we rejoin the duo at the start of Angelina’s second and final week of her work experience. And after all the online buzz from the last case, they’re in demand.  This leads to a lot of smaller crimes to solve (or not) along with some running story lines from the first book.  I can’t really say too much more about the plot because it gives away too much* but it’s a lot of fun.

I raced through this – and then immediately bought book three.  It’s dark and seedy but very funny which takes the edge off the grim bits.  Hobson is an intriguingly flawed character – we’ve found out a few bits about what he has going on in his past and it’s not pretty.  Choi is young and idealistic and although she has reasons of her own for taking an internship at a detective agency, she’s still quite innocent and some of the goings on in Hobson’s world are a bit of a shock to her.

I’ve mentioned cozy crime adjacent novels before – and this is another of them. Theses aren’t psychological thrillers, or gore-fests, or chillers and they have some things in common with classic detective stories of the Golden Age. But if you need your detectives to always do the “right” thing, the legal thing, to have no darkness in their pasts then maybe don’t read these. But if you like stories where things can’t be tied up neatly in a bow at the end and handed over to the police to unwrap and where your detective inhabits a slightly shaky middle ground between the law and the criminals then try this series.

I picked up the first book as an actual book from The Big Green Bookshop, but have read the other two on Kindle. I have book four lined up for my train journeys home from work this week. But do start at the beginning. It’ll make more sense that way.

Happy Reading!

*NB this is why I usually talk about first books in mystery series because you have more to say without ruining running storylines for people who haven’t already read the series!

 

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: August 28 – September 3

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Well, the combination of four nights away from home for work and then a lot of work on the house means not a lot read.  As predicted really.  What wasn’t predicted was the mass of books that I’ve got on the go at once because I’m so tired and my brain’s not working properly…

Read:

Nursing a Grudge by Diana Orgain

Rush Jobs by Nick Bryan

The Case of the Poisoned Chocolates by Anthony Berkley

Miss Seeton Quilts the Village by Hamilton Crane

Trapped in the Bargain Basement by Nick Bryan

Started:

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

Still reading:

The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray

Wise Children by Angela Carter

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Two actual books bought and one ebook.  Never mind.

books, stats

August Stats

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New books read this month: 22*

Books from the to-read pile: 5

Ebooks read: 16

Books from the Library book pile: 1

Non-fiction books: 0 (but I have a couple on the go)

#ReadHarder categories completed: 1

Most read author: Susan Elizabeth Philips (4 in a massive binge)

Books read this year: 236

Books bought: 11 (8 ebooks, 4 books)

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf: 527 (I don’t have copies of all of these!)

Read Harder Bingo card for August
Only NINE squares to go. And four months to do it in…

*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics (4 this month)