Month: March 2022

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Bingeable series: Sookie Stackhouse

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Happy Friday everyone. The last few Fridays we’ve been doing Series I Love, today we have a new type of post – Series to Binge. What is the distinction? Well principally it needs to be a series where you can read the books back to back without spotting the formula and getting annoyed. Now a series having a formula doesn’t make it a bad thing – and in the usual pattern of reading when you get each book as it comes out – you don’t necessarily notice it. But when you’re a reader like me who finds something you like and then rattles through as many of them as you can get your hands on as fast as possible, you do sometimes start to notice things. There are some series that I really like but that, I wouldn’t recommend you to read back to back to back – like some of the cozy crimes. Him Indoors likes to read Steph Plum when we’re on holiday – but he can only do about three before it gets a bit repetitive for him.

The Sookie Stackhouse series however, you absolutely can read one after the other. Or at least I can – I read three back to back the other week and started a fourth, put the fourth down for a few days to read other things last week, came back to it this week, finished it and went straight on to the fifth. In fact, in terms of how angry some of the fandom got with the way that it ended, it’s probably best to read them back to back (as you can now) rather than reading them as they came out – because it leaves less time to get involved in the speculation about who Sookie is going to end up with (which is why some of the fans were so disappointed). Coming back and reading them again, I’m spotting even more things that point at the way it turned out, but that’s another story.

Anyway, for those of you who haven’t come across the series before – it’s also known as the Southern Vampire Mysteries or the True Blood books – they’re about a telepathic waitress from a small town in Louisiana. A couple of years prior to the start of the books, the world’s vampire population went public and in the first book Sookie meets the new vampire that’s moved into her town and gets sucked into the problems of the local vampire population. Across the course of the series, Sookie discovers more and more about the supernatural world – and that’s what makes them so bingeable – each book adds something new or takes her somewhere different, so they don’t get samey. For example book two is in Dallas, book three is in Mississippi and introduces some extra complexity to how the vampire world is organised and how some of the other supernaturals get on with the vampires. Book four adds in more supernaturals and more complications and so on and so on. You get the idea and as you can tell you need to read them in order!

I do also need to add a proviso – these books are violent. There’s death and killing – and sexual violence too. I’ve read all the books – and I’m reading them again – but I’ve never watched the TV series because I’m fairly sure it’s going to be too violent for me. I can cope with it on the page but not on screen, much to Him Indoor’s confusion. I do normally tell you when I’m recommending something violent – and it’s sort of why I don’t say that I *love* this series – because the violence can get a bit much and I feel a bit weird about saying that I love something that has such a high body count. But then I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (for all it’s problems) so maybe I’m just being contrary. Anyway, if you need something to binge to take your mind off the outside world – and you fancy some urban fantasy then this may be your thing.

They should be fairly easy to get hold of – there are omnibus editions on kindle (as you can see from the image as well as the individual books. I have the omnibus of the first three (which I read on holiday in Greece nearly a decade ago) and then picked the rest up from various charity shops – and then got rid of them in the house move – so this time I’m borrowing the ones I don’t have from the library. All in all they should be an easy to get hold of binge.

Happy weekend everyone!

Book previews

Squee: New Linda Holmes coming!

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I honestly don’t know how I had missed that this was coming. Linda Holmes’ debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over, was one of my favourite new releases of 2019 and I’ve been really looking forward to whatever she wrote next.

Flying Solo is out in mid June and is set in the same town as Evvie Drake. According to the blurb, our heroine Laurie is returning to her hometown to handle the estate of her great aunt. While she’s back, she discovers a love letter to her unmarried aunt and gets caught up in “a righteous caper” to track down a mysterious wooden duck that goes missing from her aunt’s possessions. Doesn’t that sound excellent? I’m super excited anyway, and currently figuring out the best way of getting my hands on it!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Interesting Women

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Yes, yes, I’m a day late for International Women’s day, but for Recommendsday this week, I’ve gone for books about or by interesting women, because it seems fitting somehow. And yes, I meant to read a whole bunch of books ahead of writing this post but see all my previous notes about my inability to read stuff that’s not romance or mystery. I know. Best laid plans. But maybe I’ll have read some of them by next year!

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen

Cover of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

Anne Helen Petersen deconstructs eleven women who have been deemed unruly or too much in some way. It’s such a good insight into the forces that drive perception of women – and the boundaries that are still there and the celebrities pushing against them. I read this a couple of years back – and it was a BotW at the time -and as I said thenI didn’t always like all the personalities involved here then, and I like some of them even less now, but Peterson’s arguments are really compelling and I had to examine my own thinking and challenge myself a little about my own perceptions after reading this.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shelterly

This is honestly a fabulous book shining a light on a formidable group of women who fought against a system stacked against them and played a key role in the US side of the space race. It is really, really good. I’ve read books about the Mercury 7 and the early American Astronauts but I hadn’t really got any idea of the maths and actual process behind their achievements until I read this. And I am in awe of people who can figure out not just the maths of it, but which maths is actually needed because my brain absolutely does not work like that at all. Really, really good. And then you can watch the film afterwards and see how they adapted it!

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

I can’t believe it’s nearly eight years since Maya Angelou died and I wrote about the impact her writing had on me. As I said back then this was on the extended reading list when I was studying Color Purple and Oranges are Not the Only Fruit at A Level. I can’t even begin to explain the impact it had on me (although I did try in that post). I bought the other volumes of Angelou’s autobiography and have taken them around with me from house to house ever since. The writing is amazing, her story – in this volume – is heartbreaking but she overcomes. if you haven’t already read this, you really should

First Women by Kate Anderson Brower

This group biography is six years old now, and my notes about it from when I read it (in early 2017) are that it is written from a point of view that seemed to be expecting that Hillary Clinton would win, but if you want a group biography of the First Ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama during their time in the White House and afterwards this is a good place to start. Very well researched and very interesting.

Happy Wednesday!

Book of the Week, new releases, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Get Rich or Lie Trying

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I know I said that I was mostly reading romance and mystery at the moment, but I’m veering outside that today for this week’s BotW, with a new release book that’s looking at the influencer economy and how it is changing our daily lives.

This is a sobering look at the changes that social media has brought to the world – particularly when it comes to the blurring of lines between real and fake and the Wild West of promotions, adverts and sponcon. Symeon Brown is a correspondent at Channel Four news and in his first book he examines realities of influencer culture – and what lies behind the carefully curated lives that people are presenting on social media platforms. And it turns out that what is behind the glossy facade is even murkier than you are imagining. For every success story, there are countless people handing over their own money in the hopes of being the next big thing.

Across the course of the book, Brown takes you through the full range of online smoke and mirrors – from predatory plastic surgery firms taking advantage of young women who want to look more like their filtered photos, the promises of quick riches through crypto currencies or various new types of MLMs, streamers who get paid to be racially abused, influencers who are making serious money out of activism and much, much more. But at the centre of it all there are a lot of vulnerable people desperate for a better future who are being preyed on or exploited.

I’ve recommended books about scammers or frauds here before, but they’ve usually been about single people or companies perpetuating a con – whereas this covers a huge range of ways that people are being bamboozled as part of online hustle culture. It’s well written and hard to put down – and it’s going to give you a lot to think about. Very, very sobering.

Get Rich or Lie Trying came out last week – my copy came from NetGalley – but it’s available now in hardback and on Kindle and Kobo.

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: February 28 – March 6

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As I mentioned on Saturday, this week hasn’t really been any better than last week and was certainly as busy. I’m still deep into the mystery and romance section of my tbr shelves (physical and virtual) because I can’t deal with any more uncertainty right now, but I did finish two non-fiction books last week, which were eyeopening and depressing for completely different reasons, so I’m not all happy endings and resolutions. This week coming, I’m in the office again for at least one day, so there will be some train reading, and it’s also the first week in six (!) that I don’t have a theatre trip booked. And now that I’ve worked that out and written that down, I realise how much theatre I’ve done over the last month, and am also wondering if I can squeeze a trip to something in this week too. I mean after all it really does lift my mood…

Read:

Silver Street by Ann Stafford

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer

Sex Cult Nun by Faith Jones

Cold Clay by Juneau Black*

The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers

Get Rich or Lie Trying by Symeon Brown*

Island of the Mad by Laurie R King

Who’s Calling by Helen McCloy*

Started:

Summer Nights with a Cowboy by Caitlin Crews*

Still reading:

The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky*

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Paper Lion by George Plimpton

Fire Court by Andrew Taylor*

The Start of Something by Miranda Dickinson*

Bonus photo: I could have done another photo of a theatre before a show, because I went to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks on stage on Friday night, but I thought that might be gratuitous theatre pictures, so instead I offer you my Saturday night on the sofa with a book. Because if I’m not at work or at the theatre, that’s my default spot right now!

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

 

not a book

Not a Book: Wicked!

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This is a not a Book post because I have never managed to get to the end of Gregory Maguire’s book that Wicked is based on. And it’s not through lack of effort – I’ve tried several times, over a period of years!

Anyway, last weekend we went to see Wicked, which was my third trip to the show. I remain convinced that it’s one of the best of the family musicals for older children, and the reaction of my nieces confirmed that. While Matilda works for anyone old enough to sit through a musical, Wicked works for nines and up who have seen the Wizard of Oz, especially if they’re girls. And there’s always something special about sharing a show that means a lot to you with other people. The nerves while you’re hoping that they’ll like it. The relief when they do – and the excitement that you have someone to talk to about a thing you like – it’s like lending a book except that you get to experience it again at the same time. Bonus.

My earliest internet community was based around musicals and so back in the day I was waiting for this to arrive from the US – and went in a group to one of the previews – complete with Idina Menzell (way before everyone knew her from Frozen, I was in there ahead of the crowd). I already knew a lot of the music but I hadn’t read any spoilers and it really blew me away. I remember saying at the time that the level of spectacle was the mid 2000s equivalent of Phantom of the Opera. And 15 years on it still works on me. I always forget bits of the detail – despite the fact that the CD still lives in my car glove box*, and when I did car commuting I sang along to it all the time and I still now all the words. Him Indoors is not a musicals person generally, so it’s always a risk taking him to stuff, but even he conceeded that Wicked is clever – even if he said it didn’t need the songs!

Anyway, as I’ve said before, having to stop doing everything in the pandemic really crystalised what is important to me and what I missed (and what I didn’t ) and so now things are opened up more and the theatre companies are putting stuff on again, it’s a delight to be able to go back and do things again. In fact, this trip should actually have happened before Christmas, but was postponed because of a positive covid test in part of the family. I’m working on refilling my theatre ticket box – so undoubtedly you’ll be hearing more about my outings.

Have a good Sunday and please try not to doomscroll.

* current car glove box CDs: Rufus Wainwright Vibrate, Wicked Original Broadway Cast, Martha Wainwright’s Piaf Record, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings Give People What They Want, Caravan Palace Caravan Palace. It’s a small glovebox.

not a book, Surviving the 'Rona

Calming cooking

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It’s been ten really quite stressful days hasn’t it? I mean I’ve been working in newsrooms for more than a decade at this point and I don’t really remember anything quite like it – even 2011 which had the Arab Spring, the Fukushima nuclear disaster and Utoya didn’t feel quite like this. I’ve spoken before about the fact that over the course of the pandemic I’ve retreated into rereading old favourites and sticking mostly to romance and mystery for new books, but away from reading, the other thing that I do to calm down is cooking. I put on an audiobook or a podcast and zone out while I make something nice to eat for dinner.

The picture today is of the oven cooked paella from Roasting Tin Around the World, which is one of our regular Saturday night meals (and the leftovers are then the Monday night meal). Our pattern is to cool something fancy/complicated on Saturday and Sunday which will give leftover vets for Monday and Tuesday and then we have a bunch of recipes we rotate through on weeknights, depending on what the butcher has at the weekend, which veg the supermarket has and what is in the freezer.

The pandemic has meant that I’ve been at home to cook in the evenings an awful lot more than I used to be and that means my repertoire of recipes has increased somewhat. I keep meaning to write a post about my favourite recipe books but never really getting that far with it! That’s probably because most of my favourites come from the same author – Rukmini Iyer and her Roasting Tin series – because I like the process of chopping things up but I’m not as big a fan of having to stand over the stove the whole time and stir! I have a page in my journal each month where I keep track of what we’ve eaten in the evening – and the list is starting to get a little repetitive. So as I find it quite hard to pick recipe books without flicking through them, I think a trip to a bookstore is going to be in order soon!

If you have any recommendations for books – or even your favourite (simple) week night dinner recipes – please put them in the comments. I’m on a few cookery email lists but find them a little bit and miss so I’d you have a really good one to recommend, I’m very interested!

Stay safe everyone.

Series I love

Series I Love: Dandy Gilver

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Back with another Series I Love post because last week I read another Dandy Gilver book and realised that I haven’t written about them here for a while. I’ve already written a Recommendsday about them (but it was five years ago!) and there is a BotW from 2018, so I’ve mostly focused on a more general look at the series – which as you can see has had several different cover and title styles over the years which is deeply annoying to me in its own special way.

These are historical mystery – usually murder mystery – stories set in Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s. At the start of the series, Dandy is a fairly well to do married lady with too much time on her hands, with two sons at boarding school and a disinterested husband. Her detective career starts with a jewel theft that turns into a murder that she wants to solve to clear the name of the dead women’s fiancé – Alec. Alec becomes her side kick and the two of them start a discreet private investigations business, which her husband wouldn’t put up with if it wasn’t for the fact that it brings in useful money and running a Scottish estate is getting harder to do on the money has.

There are fifteen books in the series and I have read all bar one. and I think I should mention more that these are not cosy historicals in the way that say the Daisy Dalrymple series tended to be. They’re not country house type stories and the solutions to these are often darker and creepier. In my opinion the series had a few teething issues on books 3 and 4, but then the really get going again, and are quite inventive at the situations they put Dandy into – dance halls, schools, fishing villages and more.

Unusually for me, I don’t think you necessarily need to start this series at the beginning – they’ve evolved a fair bit and there’s not a running plot that’s going to get spoilt if you read out of order like if for example you go for Daisy Dalrymple or Royal Spyness out of sequence – or in fact any cozy with a running romantic subplot, except perhaps Steph Plum which has a love triangle which I don’t see how it can *ever* resolve (or even evolve). My recommendation is to start with either Dandy Dalrymple and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom or Dandy Dalrymple and a Most Misleading Habit and see how they take you and go from there.

Have a great weekend!

books, stats

February Stats

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Books read this month: 29*

New books: 18

Re-reads: 11 (8 audiobooks, 3 books)

Books from the to-read pile: 8

NetGalley books read: 4

Kindle Unlimited read: 2

Ebooks: 6

Library books: 1 (all ebooks)

Audiobooks: 8

Non-fiction books: 1

Favourite book this month: Playing for Love or Well Matched

Most read author: Charlaine Harris – 3 Sookie Stackhouse novels and the short story collection

Books bought: 13 including pre-orders

Books read in 2022: 62

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 632

A fairly steady month, dominated again by re-reads I think.

Bonus picture: Map update!

*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels (2 this month)

book round-ups

Recommendsday: February Quick Reviews

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This was quite a hard post to write this week because February is a short month, I have already written about so many books and have also done so many rereads. What a problem to have. Anyway, here are a couple of quick reviews to end the February content!

Well Matched by Jen De Luca

This is the third in book in Jen DeLuca’s series about the people who work at a Renaissance fair in Maryland – and yes I know this is the second time this month I’ve mentioned this series. This time our heroine is April – the single mom elder sister of Emily from Well Met and Mitch, the hot guy in the kilt who teaches high school gym during the months of the year when he’s not working the Ren Faire. This is a fake relationship and older woman and younger man romance but also deals with April trying to figure out what she wants her life to look like having spent years focusing on the idea that as soon as her daughter goes to college she’s moving away from their small town. It’s a delight and it was a lot of fun watching the two of them – even if I did sometimes wonder why April was being so stupid!

Death by Intermission by Alexis Morgan

So one of the things that happens when I try to do the fifty states challenge is that I try a lot of different cozy crime series that are available on Kindle Unlimited as they’re set all over the place. Anyway the next two both fall under that. Death by Intermission is the fourth book in the series – and is the first one from the series that I’ve read – as it is the one that was in KU. Anyway our heroine is Abby and our corpse is a local insurance agent who is found dead in his deckchair as Abby is helping tidy up after an open air cinema screening. Her mum’s beau is one of the suspects so of course Abby starts investigating. This is an idea is good, execution is a bit patchy, mostly when it comes to the relationship between Abby and her mum which is very angry and shouty and escalates fast. But the solution to the murder was neat and I liked Abby’s boyfriend Tripp, although there were a few too many ex-special forces soldiers around for my general liking.

Prologue to Murder by Lauren Elliott

Another cozy crime, another good idea with less good execution. Addie runs a bookstore in a seaside town in New England where the locals are bizarrely and incredibly rudely hostile. When the local librarian is found dead, Addie investigates to try and clear her name because the local newspaper gossip column keeps hinting that she is responsible. This is the second in the series and I felt like I’d really missed out because I hadn’t read the first to understand why the whole town hates Addie so much. It’s a little bit high school mean girls and not enough cozy mystery of that makes sense. Which is a shame, because the eight book in the series comes out in April so I could have had a good binge!

Anyway this three is your lot for this month – stats coming up tomorrow and a Series I Love post on Friday.

Happy hump day!