The Lily Bard binge reread is over, which means I’ll presumably find something else to fixate on imminently to distract me from reading the backlog. It was ever thus. That said, it wasn’t a bad week of reading, even if there are still a few on the long running pile. This week coming is going to be a busy one though, so we’ll see how that all plans out.
Bonus picture: party time in town on Saturday with an ABBA Tribute band to mark the end of the market square redevelopment. We were on our way to the cinema, so we didn’t stay that long!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Given that I’ve already written posts about two series about home renovations and made a romance about a home renovation a book of the week, it should not be a surprise to you that I love a show about renovating houses – particularly American houses where it seems like it’s much easier to rip things up and reconfigure than it is here in the UK. And with autumn being all cosy and making me want to nest, this is the perfect time of year to be watching them!
Home Town is probably my current favourite of the HGTV series – and I’ve watched a lot, including several on my various long-haul flights over the last six months. Home Town is set in Laurel, Mississppi and features Ben and Erin Napier, a husband and wife duo (as do so many HGTV series) who restore historic homes. In the majority of episodes, Ben and Erin show their renovatees (is that a word?) a couple of housing choices, and present them with a painting of how the exterior would look after it’s been renovated and then once the hosue has been bought, they renovate it without the new purchasers seeing what is being done (or at least that’s what they say!) until the big reveal at the end,when they’re also presented with that painting from the start – now framed and with The *family name* house written underneath it. Coz every show has to have a thing right.
Ben is a carpenter and woodworker and Erin is a designer and artist. The series started in 2016 and having recently watched some of the earlier series you can see how both of them have got better at renovating things and also how prices in Laurel have gone up as more houses have been done up over the last eight seasons. I find Ben and Erin charming and I love that her decorating style isn’t black and white with shades of grey like some (Christina on the Coast I’m looking at you) but is all about colour and pattern. I also really like their commitment to improving their small town – which seems really genuine and backed up by the fact that they own and run businesses in the town. It’s all very low stakes, and low conflict and just perfect for watching while you’re doing the ironing!
Home Town is on HGTV and Discovery+ in the UK. Have a great Sunday
Last week was the biggest book release week of the year, and so I’ve been in the bookshops to check out the new arrivals. Because of course I have, what else would you have expected of me?!
Apologies for the angle – there was a table of non fiction in the way of the straight shot, but here are the foodie and celebrity books front and centre at Waterstones Gower Street. I’m not going to talk you through all of them, just the ones that are interesting to me. If you haven’t watched Stanley Tucci‘s TV programmes where he goes around Italy eating amazing food, then you’ve missed out. This is his second book off the back of the success of those series – this one is a diary of the food he ate over a year. The Nigel Slater is a similar sort of collection of food writing rather than recipes. Rebel Sounds I hadn’t seen before, and actually came out at the end of September, but it’s a look at the role music played in the twentieth century in resistance to oppression of various types. And From Here to the Great Unknown is the big celebrity autobiography/memoir of the year – it’s Lisa Marie Presley, as finished by her daughter Riley Keogh after her mother’s death. I had a read of the start of this one and it’s using different fonts for the bits written by Lisa Marie and Riley and actually I’m more interested to read it now than I was before.
More new non-fiction here, and again I’m not going to talk you through them all. But The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker is a history of the high street from Annie Gray, who wrote The Greedy Queen, which I enjoyed when I read it five or so years ago. The Scapegoat is about George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham and final favourite of James I. I’m pretty across the Tudors, and the Hanoverians, but I’m not as good with the Stuarts – particularly the early ones, so this in my area of interest, although we know how long it can take me to get around to a hardback history book… And the other in this category is Augustus the Strong, about an eighteenth century ruler of Poland and Saxony and which is described as a study in failed statecraft, as he left Poland so damaged that it disappeared as a state.
Now obviously not all these crime hardbacks are new, but there are a couple that are, and that I want to read. You know about the Richard Osman already, but I’m also interested in the Julian Clary – I read the introduction which made me laugh, and then started on the book and had to force myself to put it down before I accidentally bought it! There’s also the new Jackson Brody book – this is squarely in the “series I want to read, but haven’t got around to yet” as I’ve watched a couple of the TV adaptations and need to get the books they’re based on and read the others before I consider a hardback purchase. I’m also interested in Hells Bells, but that’s a sequel and I should probably read the previous one first. And finally there’s the new Jane Thynne down in the bottom left corner. I’ve read three of her five Clara Vine novels which are set in 1930s Berlin, but this is a standalone (or maybe the start of a new series), also in the 1930s but this time in London and Vienna.
And that’s your lot today – you’ll be surprised to hear I came away without purchasing anything, but that’s only because I was feeling so bad about the state of the pile and so many that I wanted were hardbacks…
The 35th in Agatha Raisin series came out yesterday in the UK – and the first nine are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so it seemed like a good time to write about M C Beaton’s Cotswold-based mystery series.
Agatha is a middle-aged public relations agent, who at the start of the series sells her Mayfair firm so she can retire early and move to the Cotswolds. She soon finds herself caught up in a murder investigation – after she tries to ensure that she’ll win a baking competition by buying in her entry only for one of the judges to drop dead after eating it and she has to clear her name. Soon she’s stumbling over murders where ever she goes and gaining a reputation for her detective work, until in the fifteenth book she sets up her own private investigations agency.
Agatha is originally from Birmingham where her parents lived in a tower block in a slum and she has dragged herself up through her own efforts. She’s prickly, she doesn’t really understand the countryside and she hides her vulnerability under a hard shell that very few people actually see through. There is a regular cast of characters alongside her who help to smooth her path – and smooth off her edges. From the local police force there is Bill Wong, who is the first friend that she makes after moving, then there is Mrs Bloxby the vicar’s wife who helps her navigate the village, Roy Silver who used to work with Agatha in London and who pops up from time to time and then James Lacey, Agatha’s handsome next door neighbour and Sir Charles Fraith a rich but stingy friend – both of whom are love interests of sorts at various points.
Agatha is 53 in the first book in the series and has remained “in her early 50s” throughout the whole series – they’re another series that I would describe as existing in the floating “now”* where time has moved on but the characters have remained the same age. Aside from the detective agency development, Agatha’s life remains fairly similar through the series – even if some times you think things are changing!
I originally read the first dozen or so back in the early 2000s, and then after reading too many of them in a row started to get a bit fed up with the formula (see above!) – which I’ve found is very much a thing with M C Beaton books as I have the same issue with Hamish Macbeth but also her historical romances. But as long as you read them well spaced out there’re a lot of fun – as are the radio versions with Penelope Keith. The TV series – which has Ashley Jensen as Agatha – is quite a different beast to the books and I suggest if you do do both then you may be need to separate them off from each other in your head, much the way I did with the Phryne Fisher books vs the TV series.
M C Beaton – aka Marion Chesney – died in 2019, but the series has continued – with book 31 onward being credited as “with R W Green”. I need to read some of the latest ones to see if/how the series has changed at all – the most recent one I’ve read is book 28 (and I’ve read all bar about two of the series up to that point) which probably takes you up until the point where the libraries closed for Covid, because that’s how I used to read them. I would go and borrow some more – but we all know how big The Pile is at the moment. But if you haven’t read any of them, do try the early bit of the series out via Kindle Unlimited.
Happy Reading!
*See also Elizabeth Peters’s Vicky Bliss series in a way, where the first book was written in the 1970s and the last book in the mid 2008s, where the settings remain fairly close to the time that they are written in, but Vicky remains about the same age.
A step away from the Christmas themed-books today for a new historical mystery. It’s 1774 and Susan’s father is the Dean of Westminster. Life is pretty calm, until the Society of Antiquities arrives with a letter from the King demanding the opening of Edward I’s tomb. Then a ghostly figure is spotted and then a man is murdered. Susan’s father’s job is under threat so she decides to investigate. I do like a good historical mystery and this is recommended for people who like Andrew Taylor (among others) so I have high hopes!
While some series regularly do a Christmas instalment, it feels like there are a higher than usual number of them this year, so I thought I’d do a recap as they’re starting to appear on the shelves.
One of the ones already on the shelves is Jenn McKinlay’s A Merry Little Murder Plot, the fifteenth in the Library Lovers series which came out last week in hardback in the US if you can lay your hands on it, and another is the thirty sixth (!) in Donna Andrews’s Meg LangslowRockin’ Around the Chickadee which hit the shelves yesterday, again in hardback but unlike the McKinlay this does come on Kindle in the UK. There’s also number 11 in the Fixer-Upper series – The Knife Before Christmas is getting a hardback release according to Amazon, which is new thing for the Kate Carlisle series – when the previous book came out, I had that pre-ordered in the usual mass-market paperback size so I’m going to have to wait this time because a) my set won’t match and b) £23 is too rich for me when it comes to cozy crime.
There are also a couple of novellas linked to series – from Nita Prose there is The Mistletoe Mystery which came out last week and features Molly the Maid from The Maid and the Mystery Guest and from Richard Coles there is a Cannon Clement novella – Murder under the Mistletoe coming a week tomorrow on the 24th.
Moving into November there is the fourth Three Dahlias book which I have mentioned a couple of times already – A Very Lively Midwinter is out November 5 (and I have it pre-ordered) and on the same day there’s a new Albert Campion continuation from Mike Ripley – this one is called Mr Campion’s Christmas and is set in Norfolk in the early 1960s. There is also the 18th Royal Spyness novel which isn’t necessarily Christmas-set judging by the blurb but does have a festive reference in the title as it’s called We Three Queens .
And finally, it’s not really a series, but every Christmas the British Library Crime Classics series comes up with a new festive-themed book – this year it’s Dramatic Murder which came out last week and is by an author I hadn’t heard of – Elizabeth Anthony. The blurb says it was first published in 1948 and has been forgotten for 75 years so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be the only one in that situation. It’s set at a Christmas party on a private island off the coast of Scotland where the host is found electrocuted and I think it sounds really promising. That’s your lot:
This weeks BotW is one of my purchases while I was writing the Kindle Offers post after I got the sample which didn’t get to the end of the first short story (a Poirot one) and I needed to know who did it! So here we are, an Autumn book read in Autumn – check me.
This is a collection of twelve short stories from Agatha Christie, including all of her most famous detectives among them and with a preface that is a relevant section of her autobiography complete with a poem that she wrote about her childhood. It also includes the original version of Witness for the Prosecution which was turned into a film in the 1950s starring Marlena Dietrich and has been running in a site-specific production at London’ in an actual courtroom’s County Hall for more than five years.
As is always the case with me and Christie (and in fact crime more generally), I enjoyed the ones with the regular detectives more than I enjoyed the standalone ones but they’re all pretty good and I read the whole book in less than a day, which again given that it was a work day says a lot about how much I was enjoying it!
This is on offer at the moment in Kindle, and Kobo. It also comes in a hardback edition. There are also three other short story collections – for the other seasons obviously – and Midwinter Murder is currently in Kindle Unlimited if you want some more.
I’m having one of those spells where I’m finding it hard to settle down and read some of the things on the list – but instead bingeing through something else. In this case, it’s manifesting in Patti Benning novellas and some Charlaine Harris. Who can tell the mysterious ways my mind works, I certainly can’t. Anyway, the weather has been awful, it’s proper sit inside and read weather – I feel like my feet have been on the edge of being damp for about a month now it’s been so wet. Hey ho.
Well, as usual in kindle offers week, a few ebooks bought – and I still have some samples left to read for other things so potentially more to come there. Two books in Foyles which you’ve already seen and a couple more ordered (but not yet arrived)
Bonus picture: some Art at the Outernet last week – it’s very cool but it makes my head hurt quite quickly!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Back on a streaming documentary this week, and it’s more of an interesting watch than an enjoyable one, and less of a recommendation than that word implies for reasons which I will explain if you read on…
The basics: Mr McMahon is a six part Netflix documentary about Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling promoter who ran WWE (or WWF as it was) from the early 1980s until basically the start of this year. Interviews for this documentary started before the 2022 allegations of misconduct against him emerged, and McMahon himself cancelled his final interviews for the series after this happened (as the series tells you several times). McMahon took WWE from one of a number of professional wrestling companies to the dominant force in the industry – but to say his tenure was not without controversy is to vastly understate the case.
This is the point where I say that I am not a wrestling viewer. In fact one of the things I say often when people ask me what sports I do (or don’t) watch (usually in the context of the Summer Olympics) is that I will watch pretty much anything except boxing and wrestling. During the dominant years of WWE, it very much just wasn’t on TV at a time I was watching (or channels I was watching). And lets be fair – I’m not the target market for it anyway. So I went into this not knowing a lot about wrestling other than the fact that Hulk Hogan was one of the biggest stars for a period, that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena started out in WWE and that there used to be loads of WWE toys in the Argos catalogue that I used to flick through when I was younger. Oh and that the women of WWE are called Divas, and that the winners are pre-determined.
So this was an eye-opening (and horrifying at times) watching experience for me. And of course I have no idea what has been left out, or glossed over or otherwise elided. But it does explain a lot – whether it’s how wrestling actually works, or about the wider state of the world in some ways. One thing that really, really comes through is the force of Vince McMahon’s personality. He says on camera that he doesn’t really want people to get to know him, and even in the interviews recorded after the 2022 allegations, the WWE employees are still incredibly reluctant to say anything against him – one of them describes the stuff they’ve seen so far as a hit job.
And I should say that we got to a point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the end of the documentary. The feeling started somewhere around the point where Owen Hart died (off camera but in the arena) during a Wrestlemania, and they continued the show, even with his blood on the ring, but intensified during the next episode where the Mr McMahon character and the Ruthless Aggression era just become overwhelming. But I was determined to stick it out to the end. And, oh boy. And that’s why I said at the top it’s not really a recommendation, because I came out of this pretty depressed that WWE still exists and is a thing, and that so much of it was allowed to happen at all, let alone in giant stadiums in front of baying crowds and then shown to worldwide TV audiences. But at least now I feel better informed about the world of wrestling, so I guess that’s something right?
Mr McMahon is on Netflix, you’ll probably need to be in a pretty resilient mood to watch the final few parts, and I would say go armed with a drink, but that’s not the sort of behaviour I should be encouraging, but I needed one by the end…
So, an unusual month in a way, in that I’ve already read three of the books in this picture. So on the bright side, they’re not on the pile – they’re already off and through. On the downside, there were only two more until I went into Foyles this week and got carried away. Never mind. Four more on the pile is better than it has been. And I have all the Museum mysteries now so I can’t buy any more of those, which is something I guess. Although the Olivia Blackie is a new to me series so that could be dangerous in itself. Wish me luck…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 