December 2022 – Page 2 – Verity Reads Books (lots of them)

Christmas books, new releases, Recommendsday, reviews

Recommendsday: New Christmas Books 2022

December 21, 2022December 20, 2022 veritywilde

It’s the final few days before Christmas, so here I am with a round up of some of the Christmassy romances that have come out this season.

There’s Something about Merry by Codi Hall*

This is a Christmas romance with a You’ve Got Mail-ish twist as the new foreman of a Christmas tree farm in Idaho falls for the boss’s daughter – except he doesn’t know that’s who he’s talking to. Merry’s spent the year working on herself and is ready for romance, but Clark definitely isn’t – he’s a single dad and he’s focussing on his son. The writing to each other stage of this was over faster than I expected, but the characters are nice, the setting is charming, and it’s got a very weird speciality knitted product to make you laugh. Fun.

Snowed in for Christmas by Sarah Morgan*

This is Sarah Morgan’s Christmas novel for this year – I’ve already mentioned that it’s a Kindle Deal this month, and obviously written about my love of her O’Neill brothers series. I don’t love this as much – it’s just got too many plot strands and a Very Definite Resolution for something that takes place over a couple of days, but the Snowy rural Scottish setting is delightful and I do love the way she creates her families. I could just have read a whole book each about two of the main plot strands so I wished there was more of each of them. I do think in years gone by she might have done this as a pair of novels set across the same period. But hey, the times they are a changing.

The Holiday Trap by Roan Parish*

Greta’s family don’t really understand how hard it is to be the only Lesbian in their tiny community in Maine. Truman’s had his heartbroken again and needs somewhere to escape to. A mutual friend organises a house swap between the two which sees Greta head to New Orleans, and Truman to Maine, where unexpected things happen to them both. Now, I should say that this didn’t work for me, because the characters rubbed me up the wrong way and the quirkiness levels were off the charts* BUT I know that it’s going to be someone else’s cup of tea because I’ve seen other people raving about this author. But if you want a swapping lives type romance – and some Jewish representation this Hanukkah week, you could do worse than try this.

And that’s your lot for today – but if you want some more Christmas recommendations- I have a lot of previous posts – so go check them out!

*I’ve had a lot of problems with Too Much Quirk recently. It’s getting tiring.

Christmas books, detective, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Book of the Week: The White Priory Murders

December 20, 2022December 20, 2022 veritywilde

As you may have noticed yesterday, last week was very much a week of Meg Langslow. But I did also finish a murder mystery with Christmas in the subtitle: which is a perfect timing as everyone* starts to finish work for the holidays.

A glamorous Hollywood actress is back in London. Marcia Tate has returned to try and get her revenge on the theatre community who snubbed her before she was a star of the silver screen. But when she’s found dead in a pavilion in the grounds of the author of the play she’s due to star in, a murder investigation starts and Sir Henry Merrivale is called in to investigate. This is a variation on a locked room mystery, where snow plays a key role. There is a large cast of suspects but it seems impossible for any of them – or anyone – to have committed the crime. And yet someone did.

Every year the British Library adds another few seasonal mysteries to their Christmas collection, and this is one of this year’s additions but despite the subtitle, the snow is the only really festive element – I think A Winter Mystery would probably be a better description. Carter Dickson is one of John Dickson Carr’s other pen names, and like his other books all the clues are there for you to figure it out if you know where to look – and he’ll give you the page numbers to prove it! Dickson’s writing style is not my favourite of that group of crime writers, but it’s a clever enough impossible puzzle that I didn’t mind too much.

I got my copy via Kindle Unlimited, which means you won’t be able to get it on Kobo at the moment, but you could also buy it in paperback from the British Library bookshop – it’s too late for posting before Christmas, but you could pop in to the shop if you’re in London, and I’m sure it’ll be on the Christmas mystery table in the larger bookshops.

Happy Reading!

*everyone else – I’m still at work until Friday night, and it’s a really busy week.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: December 12 – December 18

December 19, 2022December 19, 2022 veritywilde

Ah. Oh dear. Well it’s not really oh dear because I have enjoyed myself. But I have been burning through the Meg Langslow reread – because I was still poorly (or at least not 100 percent) and it was so cold outside and they’re such lovely comfort reads. Of course this means I have no idea what I’m writing about tomorrow! Never mind. It’s nearly Christmas and you’re allowed a treat!

Read:

A Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh

No Nest for the Wicket by Donna Andrews

The Penguin who Knew too Much by Donna Andrews

Cockatiels at Seven by Donna Andrews

Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews

Swan for the Money by Donna Andrews

The White Priory Murders by Carter Dickson

Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews

Started:

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

Still reading:

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell

The Inverts by Crystal Jeans

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

The Many Dates of Indigo by Amber D Samuel*

To Get to the Other Side by Kelly Ohlert*

Well, I bought a stack of second hand copies in a cozy crime series and they arrived – does that count? And I bought the Patrick Radden Keefe because it was on a kindle deal.

Bonus photo: shamelessly using one of mum’s picture this week as I barely left the house – but here is the Dachshund in the snow – I treated myself to a Christmas hoodie this year that says “Dachshund through the snow” so I’m going to claim this is a festive photo too!

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

film, not a book

Not a Book: Mary Poppins

December 18, 2022December 17, 2022 veritywilde

I mean who doesn’t watch Mary Poppins at Christmas right? Surely it’s not just me and my family? A roaring fire and a Sunday afternoon and Mary Poppins on the TV…

I mean this is an all time classic. The Banks children have scared away another nanny in their efforts to get their parents attention – their workaholic father is a banker, their mother a militant suffragette. In flies Mary Poppins, who will put the family back together through singing and dancing, chalk pavement pictures and chimney sweeps. Dick van Dyke’s cockney accent is legendary in all the wrong ways, but Julie Andrews is practically perfect in every way.

It’s well known how unhappy P L Travers was with the way Walt Disney changed her character from the original books, but for most people the movie version is all they know so it’s made that interpretation of Travers’ nanny immortal for better or worse. And for me it’s very much for better. I can sing all the songs (although many would ask me not to) and I could probably recite the script. I’ll be getting it out to watch again this Christmas. And if you want to find out more about P L Travers and the making of the film, there’s a movie version of that too – Saving Mr Banks.

If you want to watch Mary Poppins, it’s on Disney+, or it will be on TV at some point over Christmas for sure. And I’ve still got it on DVD…

Enjoy!

bookshelfies

Bookshelfie: The Chaos Shelves – part one

December 17, 2022December 17, 2022 veritywilde

Oh, ho ho Merry Christmas We’ve reached the bits of my bookshelves that I try not to pay too much attention to, because they are such a state. I keep telling myself that I’m going to sort them out, and then losing the will to live and giving up on it until I add some more bookshelves to the house! This one actually starts fairly well – you can’t see it on the photo but the back row is actually very neat and is mostly seriesand that spills over to the front where as you can see I have the Lady Sherlock and Charlotte Holmes series. Behind them are the Steph Plums and the rest of the Janet Evanovich collection and then the Christina Jones, Melissa Nathan and the bits of Susan Elizabeth Philips’ Chicago Stars series that I own in paper. The the rest of the front is odds and ends of things that don’t have a better home to go to – a Paul Charles that doesn’t match the rest of the set in format, size or design. Odds and ends in paperback and bits of series that won’t fit elsewhere. But it could be worse… and that is yet to come.

Christmas books, series

Bingeable series: Holidays with the Wongs

December 16, 2022December 16, 2022 veritywilde

Continuing my festive-y seasonally appropriate sort of theme in a way, this week’s series is the Holidays with the Wongs novella collection by Jackie Lau.

This is a four novella collection based around holidays – starting with (Canadian) Thanksgiving, then Christmas, Chinese New Year and Valentines day. The premise is a set of siblings trying to avoid the matchmaking attempts of their parents, but finding love in the process. In trope terms we have only one bed in the Christmas story, where the hero and heroine get stuck in a snow storm, fake relationship, sort-of second chance and then no strings relationship turns real. I really enjoyed these – they’re funny as well as being romances and the Wong family are a hoot across the whole series. And as an added incentive, this series of novellas has just had the film rights bought – so you never know, you might be seeing them on a movie channel near you in the next few years

If you haven’t read any Jackie Lau before, they’re a really nice place to start. Lau writes really fun Canadian-set romances. And she has several other Christmas-set novellas too if you like them as well as full length novels. I recommended Donut Fall in Love in my late holiday reading post, but there are several of her books that I’ve really enjoyed over the last couple of years.

So you can buy these individually, but they’re also available as a bundle of all of them on Kindle and Kobo which is actually the best value way of doing it.

Have a great weekend everyone!

book related, Gift suggestions

Bookish Christmas gift ideas

December 15, 2022December 15, 2022 veritywilde

It’s getting towards final posting dates now, but here are some ideas for the bookish person in your life this Christmas.

Let’s start with the obvious: a voucher to buy books. Don’t know what books I want or more likely which books from my list my mum has already bought me (hi mum!) – then get me a book token. My store of choice is Foyles – but they only do physical gift cards so if you’ve already missed the posting date you might need to go for a National Book Token or Waterstones who do physical and e-cards.

Or you could think about the books that your bookish person likes and get something related. For example my love of Terry Pratchett is well documented – and I’m not the only one in my family who loves the Discworld, so the Discworld Emporium might be your friend – I have some Assassins Guild socks (very cool) and they also do very good jigsaws. If they are a very special person in your life, then check out Paul Kidby’s website – he’s the official illustrator and I treated myself to a print of his Errol illustration earlier this year and it is beautiful.

And the same applies to a lot of other fandoms – I have a Background Slytherin print in the kitchen from Emily McGovern which I’ve had for years and really love and although she doesn’t do that print any more there are some really cool things in her shop. Then if you’re in the US, out of print are great – or at least they were last time I ordered from them, which is *gulp* four years when I was last over there but they have plenty of book-related apparel. And you can sometimes find stuff stocked over here.

And then you can always have a wander around Etsy and the craftier side of internet shopping – I’ve got a very cool quote I quote printed on a page from a French dictionary that I picked up online, and a cool book shaped USB light that I got given a few years back. All in all, plenty of options for you.

Good luck!

book related, books

Recommendsday: December Kindle Offers

December 14, 2022December 3, 2022 veritywilde

So it’s the end of the year – which means it’s the run up to Christmas AND the best books of the year season, so the offers this month are a strange mix.

Lets start with the Christmas stuff. Last week’s series post was about a Sarah Morgan series – and her Christmas book for this year, Snowed in for Christmas, is 99p this month. My former Novelicious colleague Cressida McLauglin also has a Christmas book on offer – The Cornish Cream Tea Bookshop is 99p and there’s also a Jenny Colgan Christmas novel – Christmas at the Island Hotel – which is in her Mure series. One of my favourite Christmas novels from previous years is on offer too – Christina Lauren’s In a Holidaze is sort of Groundhog Day meets festive rom com and I really enjoyed it.

It’s not strictly Christmas – but it has had a festive rejacket/recover, so it makes a nice segue through to the other stuff – Rev Richard Coles’ cozy crime debut Murder Before Evensong is 99p. I included it a Recommendsday about Mysteries with Vicars back in the summer, and a second Canon Clement book is due in June (and a third also planned!).

In the best books of the year type stuff, a bunch of the award winners or nominees from the last few years are on offer – like Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain. Stacey Halls’ Mrs England is on offer again – and the wintery Yorkshire setting would make it a great fireside read if you need one. It would be atmospheric at this time of years – but more I cannot say for fear of spoilers – but you can see a review in the July Mini Reviews. Sara Collins’ The Confessions of Frannie Langton is also 99p – which I really enjoyed back in 2019. I also wrote a whole post about Philippa Gregory’s Tudor books – and The Other Boleyn Girl is also on offer this month. And another one I’ve written a tonne about is Theranos – Bad Blood, the book by John Carreyrou that started it all is 99p this month. Read it before you watch the TV series.

This months’ Terry Pratchett is Unseen Academicals at £1.99, the Hamish MacBeth is Death of a Green-eyed Monster and the Agatha Raisin is Dishing the Dirt. The 99p Georgette Heyer is my beloved These Old Shades, but it’s sequel Devil’s Cub and my beloved Masqueraders are among the £1.99 ones at the moment. If you want some historical romance that has been written a bit more recently, The Lady Most Willing a joint novel by Bridgerton’s Julia Quinn, Eloisa James and Connie Brockaway is a bargain at the moment too. The Peter Wimsey are the very first in the series, Whose Body and The Collected Short Stories, which I think I own twice in paperback. Or at least I own some of the stories in it at least twice. Also in series, the latest Maisie Dobbs, A Sunlit Weapon is £1.49, and To Die But Once and The American Agent are £1.99 which is a good price for this series.

And as ever there are also a few things that I bought while putting this together – The Kiss Curse, the next in Erin Sterling’s series that started with The Ex Hex, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake (I think it’s on offer because the next in the series has just come out).

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Book of the Week, children's books

Book of the Week: The Chalet School Wins the Trick

December 13, 2022December 13, 2022 veritywilde

As mentioned yesterday, very much a week on my sickbed last week with a lot of rereading going on, which left an interesting array of options for today – so I’ve setttled on a sort of re-read – I’ve read the abridged version of Chalet School Wins the Trick before, but never the original version, so here we are, another week another Girls Own pick! Apologies for the slightly gloomy/shadowy picture – it’s so overcast here you would not believe

The Chalet School Wins the Trick is number 46 in the series and in many ways could be considered Peak Chalet School Tropes. But I’ll come back to that. First, lets have the plot: Just before the start of term, Miss Dene catches a group of children trying to start a campfire in the middle of the school’s best cricket pitch. She sends them along their way – but the group swear they’ll get their revenge on the school. Thus the summer term is marked by a series of pranks pulled by the quintet affecting the pupils, the staff and ex pupils.

So if you were playing Elinor Brent Dyer Bingo, this would get you a full house. We have: Joey saves the day, Mary Lou Butts in, Joan Baker being “not the right type”, sick parents/relatives at the San where the children don’t know, very weird medical treatments (a scalded arm into a vat of flour), lots of unaccompanied Child Wandering, a fete, a death of (another) parent, women’s careers being thrown over because of housework and the all time great – a massive continuity fluff within the same book. I think the only thing its missing is Joey singing someone out of an illness/coma!

As with so many reviews of Girls Own stuff that I write, this is not a book that you can easily get hold of – and nor do I recommend you to, unless you’re already interested in the oevre. It was one of the rarer books – it is from 1961, so fairly late in the series and so it had less time to be reprinted than the earlier ones. And it is full of references to escapades in previous books, which might get tiresome if you haven’t read them. If you’ve never read a Chalet School book, you should probably start with Chalet School in Exile – which is probably EBD’s best book – grappling with how to deal with a British school in Austria as the Nazis swept through Europe and what women and girls could do about it. It’s not your normal school story. Other than that, you could always start at the beginning.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: December 5 – December 11

December 12, 2022December 12, 2022 veritywilde

Well I’ve had a rotten week – I started some sort of virus (not Covid) on Monday afternoon and it just got worse and worse all week – I ended up coming home from London a day early because I couldn’t face another night not in my own bed. I’ve been feeling very sorry for myself. So say hello to comfort reading central on this week’s list – including a lot of Meg Langslow because in my weakened state I appear to have embarked on a reread…

Read:

Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood by Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova

Death Checked Out by Leah Dobrinska*

Murder with Puffins by Donna Andrews

Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos by Donna Andrews

Masters in this Hall by K J Charles

The Chalet School Wins the Trick by Elinor M Brent Dyer

Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews

Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca

We’ll Always Have Parrots by Donna Andrews

Owls Well That End Well by Donna Andrews