Month: April 2023

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: April 3 – April 9

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I hope you all had a good Easter Sunday if you celebrate – and if you don’t I hope you at least got a bank holiday out of it. We’ve had a lovely long weekend so far and it’s a bank holiday here today, so who knows what I might manage to finish this week coming – after all I got another book off the long runners list this week so that’s progress. I’m also having a good go at getting through the April NetGalley releases I have – I hesitate to even write that down, but I’m trying!

Read:

Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh

The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear*

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld*

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton*

Bookman, Dead Style by Paige Shelton

The Vanderbeekers Make a Wish by Karina Yan Glaser

Started:

If Only You by Chloe Liese*

Shot Through the Hearth by Kate Carlisle

Still reading:

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin*

Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor*

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Well I went into two bookshops on our trip to London on Saturday looking for a specific book with no luck. I’ve now got it reserved at Waterstones Gower Street – but as I haven’t paid for it yet that doesn’t count right? So it’s just one preorder. Check me.

Bonus photo: Easter Sunday afternoon in the countryside with the little dog after a lovely family meal. Exactly how I like a religious holiday.

*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, streaming, tv

Not a Book: Our Flag Means Death

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It’s Sunday again and time for me to talk about something that isn’t a book again, and today it’s Our Flag Means Death – which is a comedy series about pirates very loosely based on a real life pirate.

It’s the early Eighteenth Century, and Stede Bonnet is tired of his comfortable life as a husband and father on Barbados and buys a ship and runs off to be a pirate. Except that he’s a really, really bad pirate. Like terrible. He has no aptitude for killing and his ship is outfitted for luxury rather than anything else. When we meet him at the beginning of the series, his crew are so fed up of him that they’re considering mutiny, but decide that he’ll manage to get himself killed soon enough. Except he doesn’t and soon he and his crew come across the notorious pirate Blackbeard, and they make a deal – Blackbeard will help Stede become a better pirate and Stede will teach Blackbeard how to become an aristocrat. Except it’s not as simple as that. Oh and it’s a romantic comedy.

If you’re struggling to get your head around all this, and I’ll admit I’m not doing a very good job of explaining it (luckily the first series came out in the US a year ago, so I’m hoping some of you will already have watched this and have thoughts to share), but you’ve probably spotted Taika Waititi in the trailer, and he’s also an executive producer. So the easy way to describe this is to say think of the same sort of humour as What We Do in the Shadows, but with pirates in the 1700s (and not a mockumentary). The episodes are only 25 minutes long, they’re very easy to binge and if it works for you (and it really works for me!) it will leave you with a big smile on your face.

If you’re in the UK, the first series is available on the BBC iPlayer to watch now. If you’re elsewhere in the world, you’ll need to look for it on a streaming service – probably whatever HBO Max is called in your territory. Series two has finished filming but there’s no news yet on a release date for it.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

announcement, tv

Magpie Murders redux

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It’s Easter weekend everyone and if you’re looking for something to watch – and in the UK – the Magpie Murders is being shown on TV at last. The second episode is on this evening but the whole series is on the iPlayer already. I hadn’t realised this was happening until I saw a trailer for it before Match of the Day last weekend, so apologies for the slightly late notice. I wrote about the adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s book last year when it was on BritBox – you can read that review here.

Have a great weekend everyone.

books

Series redux: Blessings

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It’s Easter this weekend so I’m taking the opportunity to remind you of Beverly Jenkins’ Blessings series which are very good small town romances with a great cast of characters and which have a strong inspirational/religious element to them. It’s nearly four years since I wrote this Series I Love post about them and I stand by it all. There is an eleventh in the series but it’s not available here in the UK, but I do have it preordered for whenever it does appear. Happy Easter everyone!

Book previews, books

Out Today: New Curtis Sittenfeld

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Honestly I think I’m allowed to squeal about this one – you all know how much I love Sittenfeld at this point. I’ve reviewed a bunch of them here, and I got excited about this arriving only a few weeks ago. I’ve got a hard copy ordered and I’ve got an advance via NetGalley – which of course I’ve started – and it’s so good I’m trying to ration myself…

Anyway as the title suggests this is a romantic comedy where a writer of a comedy show that is Definitely Not Saturday Night Live falls for one of the guest hosts. It’s only a week since I wrote about Funny You Should Ask and a few weeks since Nora Goes Off Script and I’m hoping this follows them in the famous people and normal people romance stakes, rather than another couple I’ve read hunting for the magic but which haven’t worked as well.

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March Quick Reviews

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And this months quick reviews are all books that came out in the last month or so, which is a record for me I think, and conincidentally several are books that I flagged to you on release day that I’m now reporting back on, which is also a record for me. Savour it for it may never happen again!

Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K J Charles*

Well this is really good. Smugglers! Marshes! Beetles! Recovering legal clerks! A big noisy family! Awful family! Genuine peril! If you ever read The Unknown Ajax and thought “well this is good but I want more of the smuggling, less rich people problems and lots of walking on the very atmospheric marsh” then this might be the very thing – as long as you don’t want closed door of course, because maybe don’t read this on public transport. Gareth and Joss have plenty of issues to work through but they both grow and come into their own as they find a way though everything. Lovely.

No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby*

Cover of No Life for a Lady

From one extreme to the other in some ways – in the KJ Charles there is a lot of… bedroom action whereas in Hannah Dolby’s debut our heroine is delightfully clueless about sex and the like as she tries to figure out what happened to her mother who disappeared a decade earlier. This is charming as well as witty and I’m hoping that it’s going to turn out to be the first in a series. Hopefully enough people will buy it to make that happen because we have Savvy lady sleuths but not so many of the slightly bewildered by the the range of human behaviour ones and I would like more!

What Happens in the Ballroom by Sabrina Jeffries*

Like the Hellions of Halstead Hall series, this has a mix of high society and earning money. In this case the series is based on a trio of women who have started a party planning business to avoid being governesses. I’ll leave you to decide how realistic you think that is, but I’m happy to go with it, because I like my heroines independent and finding ways to have some choices and control over their lives. Anyway, this is the second book in the series and our heroine is Eliza, a military widow who is building herself a future after the death of her husband. Our hero is her husband’s best friend, who asks for her company’s help to help another young widow find a new husband. Eliza is puzzled about why Nathaniel is taking such an interest in the young woman and her child, but goes along with it. She is burned from the way her marriage unfolded (as well as her parents marriage) and he has secrets that he’s hiding. Can they find a happily ever after? Of course they can. This is a fun and easy read – I guessed a few of the secrets that were going on, but not all, and I enjoyed watching Eliza and Nat grope their way towards a happily ever after. Steamy, but in line with what you would expect from Jeffries. I think.

And that is your lot – what a great month of reading March was. Really and truly I read some really, really good new stuff as well as revisiting some favourite authors and series.

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Roughest Draft

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It may be a new month, but for the second week in a row I’m picking a contemporary romance with a then and now strand to it. Admittedly I did finish this in March, so maybe it’s not the start of a trend, but hey, it’s nice to imagine that there’s some rhyme or reason to my reading!

Katrina and Nathan used to be writing partners. But three years ago after they had finished their second book together, their partnership broke up for reasons neither has ever spoken about. Since then, they haven’t spoken and have moved on with their lives – including Nathan writing a novel on his own. But it didn’t sell as well as the books they wrote together – and now his publisher has passed on his next novel and says they want the third book on his contract with Katrina. And so the two of them end up in the same house they wrote the last book in, trying to write another best seller. But it’s hard to write a romantic novel when you hate the person you’re writing with and the two of them will have to try to work through their differences to get it done.

The book jumps backwards and forwards to show you what went wrong between Nathan and Katrina as well as them in the present day. So it’s sort of friends to enemies to lovers. The reasons for the break up are sort of what you expect they might be – or at least what I was expecting – and the pace of it all is quite slow. It’s very close focus on the two of them – but also manages not to give you much detail about either of their personalities beyond that they are writers. Emily Wibberley and Austin Sigemund-Broka are a married writing duo and have written a few YA romances – which perhaps explains some of the above. And I know that sounds like I didn’t like it, but I actually really did. I read it in less than 48 hours and bought the next book from them to see how they handle something that’s not writing about a couple writing! Given that this was their debut rom com and only came out in October, I was surprised they already have a second out but who knows the mysterious ways of publishing in the TikTok algorithm era.

If you are only going to read one of the picks from the last two weeks, I would probably go with Funny You Should Ask, but if you like YA or New Adult romances then this might be the one for you. I read this on Kindle, but it’s also on Kobo. I haven’t spotted it in a bookshop yet, but that doesn’t mean you won’t.

Happy Reading.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 27 – April 2

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Oh my goodness. I’m making progress on the long runners! Two finished and more progress on the others. I will get there. I will. Anyway we’ve reached the end of the first quarter of the year – and as you can see from the stats I’m on track with the bookshelf challenge, even if the books come from the pile in front of the shelf! And considering how busy last week was, it’s a good list really. Go me. I’ve reached the point in the Alleyn’s where I’m past my favourites and I don’t already own the audiobooks so to conserve my credits I’ve started to re listen to Peter Wimsey as well as given myself permission to skip any Alleyns that I fancy – like the weird one with the kidnapping and the smugglers. Even if it does have some Troy in it. But I make the rules so I can break them too!

Read:

The Roughest Draft by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka

Whose Body by Dorothy L Sayers

The Plantagenets by Dan Jones

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers

A Wrench in the Works by Kate Carlisle

A Very Merry Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams

Started:

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld*

Still reading:

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin*

Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor*

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton*

Two books bought – one is the new Lady Sherlock which I’ve finally been able to order in paperback and the other was another book by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka because, well that’s the way I roll isn’t it…

Bonus photo: after Tuesday night at Darren Hayes, it was Sunday afternoon at the Rugby – for England’s win over Italy in the women’s Six Nations.

*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

Not a Book: Darren Hayes

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You know how there are some songs or albums that can transport you back to a place or a time? Well Darren Hayes does that for me. I’m about to date myself a bit, but Savage Garden were the soundtrack to a lot of my teenage years. Sitting studying in my room, if I wasn’t listening to football commentaries on 5live I was probably listening to their second album, Affirmation.

One of my non-book New Year’s resolutions this year was to take the opportunity to go and do things and not say “maybe one day”. Well this ticket was already in the (virtual) ticket box at the turn of the year, but it is still a part of that. Darren Hayes last toured 13 years ago – and I thought it might never happen again. I have seen him before but was in 2006 – and a lot of things have changed since then – songs that were still new back then are now classics. Or at least I think they are. I bought the ticket months ago when they first went on sale because it’s been so long who knew when there might be another opportunity – his husband may be British but he is an Australian who has lived a lot in LA. Take your chances while you have them. The tour is called Do You Remember and is marking 25 years in music (gulp) and honestly, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

I was meant to be going with a friend, but tonsillitis meant that I ended up solo, which given how emotional the whole thing made me is probably for the best as he might have wanted to disassociate himself from the snotty mess sitting next to him. I know I’m a crier, and I get emotional when good things happen (from athletes I like winning medals, to being offered a job I want) but this was something else. The best I can describe it is imagine going to see the artist who did your favourite teenage album a couple of decades on and then instead of doing obscure cuts or remixes, they play all your favourites, no messing around with them and sound just as good as they did on the record (but live!) – well this was that for me.

My photos may be pants and part of that is because I was at the top and the back, but it’s mostly because I was enjoying the moment and watching it unfold and I didn’t want to watch it through a phone screen when it was happening in front of me. I made some videos too but they’re even worse because I wasn’t actually watching what I was filming, I was watching the stage!

I have a few more “if not now when” things planned this year and if they come anywhere close to being as good as this, it’s going to be a great year. Now excuse me, I’m off to listen to the Affirmation album again.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

books, stats

March Stats

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Books read this month: 34*

New books: 25

Re-reads: 9 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 11

NetGalley books read: 4

Kindle Unlimited read: 0

Ebooks: 9

Audiobooks: 10 – 1 new

Non-fiction books: 2

Favourite book this month: Hard to chose between Funny You Should Ask and The Cricket Term, which are very, very different books but both of which I loved.

Most read author: Diane Mott Davidson – six Goldy Schulz mysteries

Books bought: 13, including 3 preorders

Books read in 2023: 93

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 700

A really good and fun month in reading. Lots of good books, progress made on lots of fronts and a happy reader too.

Bonus picture: the tbr shelf tracker, which is actually on track! A miracle. Although to be fair some of these haven’t come from the shelf, they have come from the pile in front of the shelf, because that’s how bad the situation is right now..:

*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including 1 this month