Month: December 2022

film, not a book

Not a Book: Singin’ in the Rain

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I have series of films that I always watch at this time of year, so I thought I’d feature them here too. And as I kicked off my Christmas by watching this last weekend, we’re starting with the immortal classic: Singin’ in the Rain.

In case you’ve never watched it, it’s the story of a Hollywood leading man as the movie business transforms from silent films to talkies. Don Lockwood is an ex-Vaudeville song and dance man who got his start as a stunt man who then got paired up with a glamorous leading leafy, Lena Lamont. Lockwood and Lamont have been a marquee double act ever since. The problem is that Don can’t stand Lena – and now the bigger problem is that Lena’s voice is… not suitable for the talkies. Early in the film Don meets Cathy Seldon, a hopeful actress with a great singing voice, searching for her big break. And it all goes from there.

This has a great cast – Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor – a great story and some of the best song and dance numbers you’ll see – and not just from Gene Kelly.

And the final sequence – starting with Lena’s attempts to take over the studio (I will never tire of Jean Hagen as Lena saying “detrimental and deleterious”) all the way through to the end is just *chef kiss*. And like many of these old Hollywood movies, you can dig into the making of it and the stories behind it and it just gets more fascinating. I’m not going to say any more here though – because I know some people think that spoils the magic.

It’ll definitely be on TV at least once over the next month, but you can rent it from all the usual places too

Enjoy!

books

Books Incoming: December edition

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A smaller selection this month – and you’ve already seen two of them – Last Hero was a BotW already, and the Rainbow Rowell was a book I bought myself for Christmas! Then there’s a proof copy of Triple Cross that just appeared, my copy of Death of a Necromancer that I contributed to the Kickstarter for (and my bonus content!), the latest – and one of the last Girls Gone By Chalet School Books before my collection is complete and the new Jen DeLuca. Nice.

series

Wintry Series: Trisha Ashley’s Lancashire books

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So this is actually two separate series and one standalone. Or at least it is the way I’m counting them. But they are (in the main) really quite Christmassy and often Wintery too so they’re perfect for this time of year. And as we’re in the middle of a cold snap here at the moment, books for curling up in front of the fire with are great.

I’ve grouped them together because they are all set in little villages in Lancashire where you see some of the previous characters pop back up in later books – and two thirds of them centre around Christmas. I’ve written about Trisha Ashley before, but thear are probably my favourite of hers – as I said at the top, they’re warm hugs of books, perfect for cozy afternoons on the sofa under a blanket. They’re all romances – but the British kind, where there is a bigger plot going on that ends up in a romantic happy ending, rather than the more American one type – where any other plot is a side order to the romance. I hope that makes sense, I’ve only just come up with that sort of definition. And only now because I hate using the term Woman’s fiction so much.

Anyway, in the Sticklepond sequence is A Winters Tale is wintery but does have Christmas in it and is about Sophy, who goes back to her big historic family home for the first time after she inherits it. There’s a charming but dubious cousin and a strong and silent gardener as well as some eccentric older ladies and a possible ghost. Chocolate Wishes is not a Christmas novel, but has a chocolate maker and an ex-rock star in a second chance romance. Chocolate Shoes… is a shoe shop owner with a very annoying fiancé, who gets a mysterious next door neighbour. And the. We’re back to Christmas with a single mum with a poorly child and a handsome baker.

Then Twelve Days of Christmas and A Christmas Cracker are both set in Little Mumming – the first has a house sitter running into the home owner who is trying to avoid the village festivities, the second has a cracker factory and a woman who is trying to recover after she was framed for a crime she didn’t commit. And finally The Magic of Christmas has another cute Lancashire village with some unique festive traditions and the heroine is unexpectedly single with several men vying for her attention.

And to be honest if you can’t find something there to tempt you, I wash my hands of you. They’re all fairly easily available in ebook although as they’re fairly old now (A Winters Tale is the oldest and came out in 2008) I don’t know how easy they’ll be to find in the shops.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book previews

Out this week: Well Traveled

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Genuinely very excited for this one – the fourth in Jen DeLuca’s Renaissance Fair series, which came out on Tuesday and I’m hoping will be waiting for me at home when I get there tonight, because like a fool I preordered the paperback again, not the kindle edition (it’s the preorder price guarantee that makes the difference half the time tbh). Anyway, this features Dex, one half of Duelling Kilts who we met in the Cyrano-y plot of Well Played, and Lulu who is the cousin of Mitch – the other half of Duelling Kilts who was the hero of that last book. Dex has been a playboy-y figure whenever we’ve seen him so far and I’m looking forward to seeing how DeLuca deals with that again – having done it really successfully with Mitch in Well Matched and considering that Well Played with Dex has been the one that I liked the least so far – although I didn’t dislike if if you know what I mean!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: November Quick Reviews

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We’re into December now and I have lots more Christmassy books to tell you about, but today I’m sticking with the quick reviews – because after all, everyone needs a break from Christmas at some point in December!

Better than Fiction by Alexa Martin

As previously mentioned, Alexa Martin wrote some of my favourite American Football romances, and this is her second standalone rom-com. Drew has inherited her beloved Grandmother’s book store in Colorado, and feels way over her head as a self-proclaimed non-reader. Jasper is an author who comes to the store to do a reading and event and who decides to try and change her mind about books in return for her help with his settings for his new novel. I’m not usually a fan of people tryng to turn others into readers – or telling them that they just haven’t found the right things to read yet, but this actually manages to make it work. Drew and Jasper are engaging characters and the gang of old ladies are a delight. Plus Martin makes hiking in Colorado sound so beautiful that even I started thinking that it might be fun – and I *hate* hiking

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra*

Cover of Mercury Pictures Presents

This tells the story of Maria Lagana, an Italian in Los Angeles in the 1940s. I really like stories about the movie industry, and stuff set in World War Two and this is both of those – split between Mussolini’s Italy and California, it looks at the immigrant experience in America in war time and the risks that people will take to survive and the sacrifices people will make for the people they love. If you’ve read non-fiction (or fiction) about the studio system or the Hollywood blacklist, this might well be of interest to you.

Chester House Wins Through by Irene Smith

And finally another from my Book Con haul and this makes it onto this list as it’s a massive curio really – a book about a girls school where there is rivalry between the day girls and the boarders. That’s not unusual in itself – but here, the day girls have their own house and are deeply unpopular with the rest of the school for not pulling their weight and for behaving badly in town. It’s also from the late 1960s so it has a side order of society changing and girls wanting to go out and do things in the evenings and not be so protected. So far, so interesting, except there’s a lot of talking about doing things, and not a lot of actual doing on the page. The day girls do turn it around, but it has to be said that there’s not a lot of likeable characters here. One for the Girls Own collectors really.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Book of the Week, crime, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Green for Danger

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Another week, another British Library Crime Classic pick – and I would apologise except that this is really really good and a new to me author so I’m not really sorry.

Green for Danger is set in World War Two, at a military hospital in Kent. At the start of the novel, a postman delivers seven acceptance letters to people who want to work at the hospital. A year later, he returns to the hospital as a patient, and dies on the operating table during what should have been a routine operation. At first it is thought to be an accident, but Inspector Cockrill is sent to double check. When he is stranded at the hospital during an air raid, events start to unfold that prove that Joseph Higgins’ death was no accident.

This is a really clever and atmospheric novel – enough to make you afraid of ever having an operation again, for all that it’s set in the middle of World War Two and technology has obviously changed and moved on since then. I didn’t guess who did it – but I probably could have done if I had tried hard enough because the clues were there if you thought about it hard enough. As I said at the top, this is the first Christianna Brand novel that I’ve read – having spotted this on the BLCC table at Waterstones in Piccadilly a couple of months ago and waited to see if it would rotate into Kindle Unlimited – which it has. And if they are all as good as this, I’ve got a treat coming, even if this is her most famous mystery. And I chose my words wisely there – because she’s also the creator of Nurse Matilda – which was adapted for screen by Emma Thompson and turned into Namny McPhee, which is one of my favourite kids films of the last twenty years. And not just because it has Colin Firth in it!

Anyway, the paperback of Green for Danger is fairly easily found: in the British Library shop, and I’ve seen it in several more bookshops since that first time in Piccadilly. And as I said it’s in KU at the moment, which means it’s off Kobo for a while, but should be back there at some point.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 28 – December 4

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A good week of reading in the end in terms of the mix of genres, even if I didn’t finish any more of the long runners. I’m still working on it though. We’re into December now though – so we have the quick reviews this week after last week’s stats but there is more Christmas stuff coming up and you’ve already had buy me a book and the stuff I bought myself.

Read:

Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

Murder Mystery Book Club by Danielle Collins

Mystery in the Channel by Freeman Willis Crofts

James Bond: My long and eventful search for his father by Len Deighton

This Telling by Cheryl Strayed

Luck of the Draw by Kate Claybourn

A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear

Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews

Started:

Death Checked Out by Leah Dobrinska*

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

Bonus photo: the South Bank arts complex on Tuesday night as I walked across the river

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

theatre

Not a Book: Best of Enemies

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Getting this in quickly before the barrage of Christmas posts as I went to see this the other week when it was in late preview stages and it’s now open and has been reviewed.

Best of Enemies is a new play by James Graham about the televised debates between Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jnr at the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968. The two men represented the new left and the new right respectively and hated what each other stood for. In real life, they remained enemies for the rest of their lives – with lawsuits and counter suits – extending even beyond Buckley’s death when Vidal was still happy to insult him. The play uses transcripts of the dialogue from the TV debate for those sections and imagines what was going on behind the scenes.

In the play Buckley is David Harewood and Vidal is Zachary Quinto. Casting a black actor as the white Buckley does highlight the times when Buckley is talking about race – but that’s not the main focus of the clashes between the men shown in the play. Quinto is excellent as Vidal – arch and snarky and supremely confident in his own abilities and beliefs. The staging – as you can see from the photo has TV like windows – that can show you the control room behind or be used as TV screens to project the actors during the debates, or the sections of rival newscasters talking you through the events of the day.

The play is making the argument that the debates are the start of the commentator-led, TV politics that has turned into the polarisation you see on social media – and while that may sound like a bit of a reach, the debate sections of the play feel very timely – almost spookily so at times. I thought it was really, really good – and if you’re in London before the 18th of February and fancy a show, this would be a good pick.

book round-ups

Buy myself a Book for Christmas

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As I mentioned in last week’s Buy me a Book for Christmas post, I did a bit of purchasing while I was putting that post together, so this weekend, here’s the stuff I bought, in case you need further inspiration!

Firstly I should say that the way that I put together the Buy Me a Book post is the same every year – I go through my Amazon wishlists of Books and my Goodreads to-read shelf to look for books that I’ve added over the course of the year but haven’t bought. And then I go wandering around the various book buying websites to see how easy (or otherwise) they are going to be to get hold of. And secondly I try not to ask for books that might go on offers, be available in the supermarket 2 for however many offers and thirdly I should say that I was writing the original post in November, but it’s now December, so bear that in mind if I’m mentioning offers. Oh – and there are no graphic novels on the list because I buy those from my local comic book store and want to give them the custom.

Fiction picks

And the reason that the Buy me a book post was non-fiction heavy was partly because a lot of the fiction I was after was on some kind of offer! So I picked up the latest Emma Straub novel, This Time Tomorrow, and also the next book in Alexis Hall’s baking show series, Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble. I also preordered the next in Jen DeLuca’s Willow Creek series Well Traveled as well as the new Olivia Dade (which as you know already came out and I’ve already read), and I finally bought Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow. And because I happened to wandering around the Waterstones site, I picked up a signed copy of Rainbow Rowell’s new short story collection Scattered Showers. I did look at the British Library Crime Classics selection too – but that just added a load of books to my Kindle Unlimited list! Finally there’s Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, which was on offer in a special tie-in edition because the movie came out a couple of months back.

Non fiction picks

I’ve had my eye of Julia Boyd’s Travellers in the Third Reich for a while and this year a follow up is out. but both Travellers and A Village in the Third Reich were on offer on Kindle when I was putting the post together so rather than asking for the paperbacks, I just bought them! The new Anne De Courcy about Nancy Cunard (another in that group from the 1920s who pops up a lot) Five Love Affairs and a Friendship was on offer on Kindle at a sensible price for non-fiction, as was Mary Churchill’s War (the wartime diaries of Winston Churchill’s daughter, edited by Emma Soames) and Spying and the Crown by Richard J Aldridge and Rory Cormac. Then there is Heiresses by Laura Thompson, about heiresses from the Seventeenth Century to the present, which is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so I borrowed it. Oh What a Lovely Century would also have been on the list for this Christmas – if I hadn’t found that copy in the work charity book sale.

And I think that’s the lot. Have a great weekend everyone!

series

Wintry series: O’Neil Brothers

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We’re moving towards Christmas and so I thought I would start a seasonal series strand to help with your festive reading needs! And I’m starting with an old favourite author – Sarah Morgan and her O’Neil Brothers series, which is are nearly a decade old now – which is frankly quite scary.

And I’m going to say at the outset, that only two of the three books in this series are set at Christmas – but that’s two thirds so it still counts. This series is set in the Snow Crystal ski resort in Vermont. Our three heros are the O’Neil brothers – whose family run the resort. In the first book in the series. Sleigh Bells in the Snow, Kayla would rather ignore Christmas than celebrate, but she heads to Snow Crystal to try and win the marketing business of the resort’s owner Jackson. Suddenly Last Summer is about Elise, a chef in the town and the runway brother Sean, who is a surgeon who had a one night stand a few years back and are busy ignoring it. And the third book in the series is Maybe this Christmas where ex-ski racer and single dad Tyler ends up with his friend Breanna (who is secretly in love with him) staying in his chalet because the resort is overbooked. So that’s a career girl finding love while turning aroudn the fortunes of a ski resort, a second chance romance and a single dad romance. If you don’t want to read the whoel series – and why wouldn’t you because you’ll then get to see the previous couples pop back up again – you can pick your trope and start there!

Sarah Morgan has a long list of Christmas books now, so it took a bit of thinking to pick one to feature here – but I went for the O’Neil brothers, because the snowy setting makes it feel extra Christmassy. But if you want more Sarah Morgan Christmas, there is a Christmas book in her Puffin Island and From Manhattan with Love series as well as various standalone novels.

You should be able to get hold of these fairly easily in ebook, but I don’t know how likely you are to find paperbacks nearly decade on. But to get yo sgtarted here is the Kindle link to Sleighbells in the snow and a Kobo link to the “box set” of all three.

Happy Friday everyone!