Month: March 2024

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 4 – March 10

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I cannot tell you how busy last week was. But I am back in home in the UK and attempting to get my body clock back onto GMT. And not going to lie – I didn’t get much read last week – I mostly slept on the flights home rather than using it as reading time and I regret nothing to be honest! Anyway, this week should be a return to slightly more normal service. Possibly.

Read:

Buyin’ Trouble by Patti Benning

Murder in Michigan by Patti Benning

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers

The Whole Enchilada by Diane Mott Davidson

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers

The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Started:

The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R King

Still reading:

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake

The Antiques Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C L Miller*

The Last Action Heroes by Nick de Semelyen

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Three preorders arrived but I think that was about it.

Bonus photo: spotted on the baggage carousel. I would not have any faith it that all having survived a flight unscathed.

*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: The Oscars

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It’s the biggest night in the movie calendar tonight – or at least that’s what the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Science would like you to believe. I do love an awards ceremony – but I tend to record them so I can fast forward through the boring bits, even when they’re in the right time zone for me, so I won’t be staying up for all of the Oscars tonight – but it is the first year in a long time that they’ve been on free to air TV in the UK – they’re on ITV!

And, I’m not going to lie, I haven’t seen anything that’s nominated tonight – but there are still a few things I’m rooting for. Firstly I want I’m Just Ken to win the best original song prize, because I’ve really enjoyed Ryan Gosling’s face whenever it’s won all season. I would be all in on rooting for him to win best actor, except that I was an Ally and Larry fan back in the days of season four of Ally McBeal, and it turns out that I’m still not over the fact that Robert Downey Junior’s drug arrest meant he was written out at the end of the season and we never got the happy ending for them that the writers planned. And season five never recovered – because Larry was just so perfect for Ally that no one else could stand up to it. Now maybe if I could rewatch the series I would get over it, because I’m fairly sure it hasn’t aged well, but it’s not on any streaming services so I can’t watch it and find out. All I can do is watch snippets on Youtube. Like this one, the only occasion on which I will voluntarily watch Sting.

I would be rooting for Maestro – because I love Leonard Bernstein, but I’ve got so fed up of Bradley Cooper this awards season, and although I started watched Maestro I gave up after about 10 minutes (does this mean I’m lying when I say I haven’t seen any of the movies? I don’t think it counts because it’s less than 10 percent of the movie). And I know I won’t watch Killers of the Flower Moon (I’m too wimpy for every Scorsese except The Aviator, which I love) but I will be rooting for Lily Gladstone in the Best Actress category.

But beyond that, it may be that a fair amount of fast forwarding is going on – especially if the ceremony is as sad and joyless as some of the recent ones have been. But fingers crossed they get it right this year. I leave you with this video of the best costume nominees – I hope we get something as bonkers as this is:

The pile

Books Incoming: (early) Mid March edition

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As the title says, this is slightly earlier in the month than it would usually be, but as you know, I’ve been Away for work and I was planning all of this out before I went and this just seemed to make sense. Anyway, what you’re seeing here are the books in Ann Granger‘s Campbell and Carter series that I haven’t read yet, a book in the Herring series that I picked up in Foyles the other week on a whim, the new Martha Waters that I mentioned the other week and a couple that you’ve already heard about – At First Spite and one of the volumes of the Fence series. I know that I’ve got a lot of stuff arriving in March – because I’ve got pre-orders in but also because I always buy books at the airport and for the trip and I try to go to bookshops in countries that I visit and so there’s a chance there’ll be more from that. So watch this space!

books, series, Series I love, Young Adult

Series I Love: Fence

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So this week I’m adding the the graphic novel series that I’ve written about in my series posts – with Fence – a series I’ve been reading for years and hope goes on for more years to come.

Fence is the story of the members of a fencing team at the prestigious Kings Row boarding school. The main characters are Nicolas – the illegitimate son of a legendary fencer but keeping that secret, at the school on a scholarship and having had very little formal training but with bags of potential – and Seiji Katayama a hugely talented but deeply mysterious fencer whose presence at Kings Row is a bit of a surprise to the fencing world, who thought he would be at a better school. Because Kings Row is good – but it’s not championship winning good at the moment, so could this year’s team be the ones to change that? There are other members of the team and we see their stories too, but the Nick and Seiji strands are the main ones.

We’ve got to six collected editions now – and we’ve see the guys at school, at practice, in matches and most recently at a training camp with all of their main rivals. The boarding school element is what drew me to it originally – my love of Girls Own boarding school stories is well known here, but the rivalry aspect and the art just spoke to me. And the art has been consistently really good through the whole series so far – there are various different people doing different things here and there and although the styles vary, like with Lumberjanes they’re consistent in their own way and all really nice too look at.

There’s also a couple of novels now – I’ve read the first but not the second and they get more into the other members of the team and away from Nick and Seiji and I’ve enjoyed that as well. My only gripe really is that there is so long between each book. But then that’s a fairly common gripe for me with graphic novels – but I know they take a long time to draw and that they come out in single editions first so I cope!

You should be able to get Fence from any good comic book shop – they’re on Kindle as well and the first one is at a really reasonable price – although my experience with reading graphic novels on Kindle is distinctly mixed so your mileage may vary.

Happy Weekend everyone!

Book previews

Out This Week: Mona of the Manor

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I was hoping the picture for this post would be from an Armistead Mapin in conversation event, but I missed it on Monday night because work have sent me to a different continent, although by the time you read this I should be nearly home. Anyway, this is the tenth Tales of the City novel, you know I love this series and that I’ve been looking forward to forward to filling in the gaps and finding out what Mona was uptown in England in the 1980s. Hopefully my copy will have arrived at my parents house while I’ve been away!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: February Quick Reviews

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We’re into March so here we are with another set of reviews of a couple of books that I read last month that I haven’t already talked about. And I’ve already talked about a lot of books, so points to me for finding three more to talk about!

A Murder Inside by Frances Brody

This is the first in a new series from the author of the Kate Shackleton series. This though is set in the 1960s and our lead character is the newly appointed governor of a women’s open prison which is taking over the premises of a former borstal. And of course there’s a suspicious death – and the newly arrived residents come under suspicion. I really enjoyed this – I ended up staying up way too late on a work night trying to get to the end, before I eventually gave up and I’m looking forward to a sequel, although I hope it doesn’t mean no more Kate Shackleton books.

Grumpy Fake Boyfriend by Jackie Lau

This is the first book of Lau’s pair of books about the Kwan sisters. The sister in this is Naomi who needs a fake boyfriend to take for a long weekend at a Lake House with her friends – and her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. The fake boyfriend in question is Will, a massive introvert and science fiction author who happens to be friends with Naomi’s brother. Will is only doing this because he doesn’t have many friends and doesn’t want to risk losing one of the ones he has, but despite the fact that the two of them are chalk and cheese, there’s clearly some sort of spark between them. I liked the split narrative in this one – and watching the two of them figure out how to navigate a relationship – fake or otherwise – all while under the full glare of Naomi’s friends. It’s not the longest novel but it’s great fun and it zips by. I read it in a day and went straight on to the second book!

Lady Thief of Belgravia by Alison Gray*

This features a thief and an aristocrat teaming up in 1870s London to try and steal back some important documents. And firstly, let me just say that the cover is beautiful. But beyond that this is a bit of a weird one for me because I just couldn’t figure out what it was trying to be – and that’s why my plot summary is so short! The pacing was wrong for it to be a romance, and equally the espionage plot was too thin for it to be a mystery. And because of the fact it hadn’t decided what it wanted to be, both sides fell flat for me. There’s not enough characterisation and character development in either of the leads – you don’t really ever know why Della and Cole are into each other or what they like about each other. The turning Della into a lady lessons are a nice device but she seems able to grasp a ridiculously large amount of knowledge in not a lot of time and the combination of all that just made it all just a stretch too far for me. Never mind.

And that’s your lot – the BotW were The Belting Inheritance, Knife Skills for Beginners, The Love Wager and At First Spite. And the other recommendsday posts were about mid-twentieth century careers books and xxxx.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: First Lady

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I said yesterday that whatever I chose today was going to be tricky for one reason or another, so I’ve gone for a rule breaker on the repeat front, rather than tell you (again) how much I love the Peter and Harriet books in the Wimsey series. If you want to know about that, you can go and read this post. So, instead I’m back on the Susan Elizabeth Philips train with a book from her Wynette, Texas series.

This plot is quite a lot, so hold on and bear with me. Our heroine is Cornelia Litchfield Case, widow of the President of the United States and also daughter of a former vice president. She’s found herself being pushed back into the role of First Lady and it’s killing her from the inside. So she gives her secret service minders the slip and escapes DC for a cross country road trip. Our hero is Mat Jorik, a disillusioned journalist whose ex wife has just died and is now taking charge of her children – but only to deliver them to their grandmother on the other side of the country. Nealy and Mat’s paths cross at a service station, and soon they’re on a cross country road trip together -in an RV with a surly teenage girl and a baby. The sparks fly between them – and this is the first time ever Nealy has had the chance to get to know a man who doesn’t know all about her baggage and her background, and who has no expectations of her. What could possibly go wrong?

So this is a road trip romance with a side of found family. I loved Mat from the start – he’s an absolute softie with a heart of gold that he hides behind a bit gruff exterior. And Nealy is one of the more interesting heroines you’ll encounter – her backstory is wild. I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work itself out at the end, but it did and it was really quite neatly done – although it did all happen quite quickly, which is always annoying. But basically this is a fun read with a bit of an unusual set up and is all the better for it. I have the next two books in the series lined up (because they were on offer, although this was not) so I look forward to reading more of the series – and maybe seeing a bit more of the Wynette of the name!

I have no idea if it’s possible to get this in paperback for a reasonable price – but it’s available on Kindle and Kobo. And yes, I did break my usual pricing rules while buying it, but I’m blaming the jet lag!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: February 26 – March 3

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Hello from a mystery location, where it is 30+ degrees and very humid and where I can’t get my head around the massive time difference to home and my brain is a little frazzled. I’m on a work trip, so it’s been super busy – and that’s why the list is a little shorter. I have no clue what I’m going to write about tomorrow, because you’ve heard about all of these authors pretty recently but I’m sure I’ll think of something, or break the rules as usual!

Read:

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers

Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh

Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers

First Lady by Susan Elizabeth Philips

Mr Hot Shot CEO by Jackie Lau

Angel Catbird Vol 3 by Margaret Atwood et al

Sellin’ Out by Patti Benning

Started:

n/a

Still reading:

The Whole Enchilada by Diane Mott Davidson

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake

The Antiques Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C L Miller*

The Last Action Heroes by Nick de Semelyen

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Ummm. Well, two books bought at the airport, two more bought in a bookshop here and a couple of ebooks too. I blame the jetlag!

Bonus photo: clouds appearing on the plane camera just as I approached flying over home!

*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

Not a Book: Bitconned

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Happy Sunday everyone, I hope you’re all having a good weekend. This weekend is the latest instalment in my occasional series of stuff about scams. I’ve already talked about documentaries about MLMs, about hydrogen trucks, and the next thing I’m expecting a wave of podcasts and documentaries about is crypto. I’ve already listened to a bunch of podcasts about Sam Bankman Fried and the fall of FTX, but that hasn’t really made it to screen yet, but what has is Bitconned, which tells the story of Centra Tech, a crypto startup who created their own currency but also said they were creating a debit card that you could use to spend your crypto in the real world. Except that it’s all a scam.

And what this documentary had is interviews with the people behind the scam. Yes, as in the actual people who carried out the con did interviews for this doc. It’s absolutely wild. And yes, they’re as obnoxious as they seem in the trailer. Maybe more so, but don’t let that stop you from watching it because it’s a truly bonkers scheme they tried to pull – and demonstrates what experts mean when they say that crypto was a Wild West!

Have a great Sunday!

books, stats

February Stats

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Books read this month: 34*

New books: 22

Re-reads: 12 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 9

NetGalley books read: 2

Kindle Unlimited read: 7

Ebooks: 4

Audiobooks: 12

Non-fiction books: 0

Favourite book this month: Simply the Best by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Most read author: Ngaio Marsh because of the relisten

Books bought: ummm… I think it’s about 20 and a preorder.

Books read in 2024: 72

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 730

A pretty good month all in all, although I didn’t do very well on the NetGalley front. Must try harder in March!

Bonus picture: wisteria season not yet underway!

*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including 7 this month