Books in the Wild: Brighton Waterstones

I’m sure you didn’t think that I was going to do a whole week based around the seaside without giving you a bookshop visit did you? In fact it was one of the first places that we went after we arrived – as we walked past it on our way from the railway station to the seafront and of course the early visit meant I could leave the purchases at the hotel along with my rucksack so I didn’t have to carry them all around with me!

Lets start with the fact that this is a big store, over a lot of floors and they’ve got a really large selection of new hardback fiction right as you come in the door. And as ever, I’m focussing this post on the stuff that interests me – that I read and that I’ve been looking out for and not on the whole store! Brighton has got quite a distinct identity – it was the first place to elect an MP from the Green Party back in 2010, it’s got lots of students and a large LGBTQIA community so I was interested to see their book selections.

And across those new fiction shelves, as well as recent releases I’ve read and written about, like the Curtis Sittenfeld short stories collection and The Rest of Our Lives, there’s also stuff on my pile like The Three Lives of Cate Kay and books that I’ve seen reviewed in the latest edition of Literary Review like Call Me Ishmaelle and the new Katie Kitamura.

And the table next to it has got the really new stuff – like that third Magpie Murders, which I really want to read but is Very Very Big in hardback and so I’m going to have to wait for the Kindle edition to drop to a sensible price. And there’s also the new Gregory Maguire on the far left there – Elphie – where he’s returning to the world he created in Wicked although I have to say I thought he’d covered Elphaba’s childhood in that but it’s a long, long time since I (tried to) read that.

I am of course all about the crime at the moment because romance moving towards Romantasy and contemporary romance having ever younger protagonists is not really what I want right now, so here we have some mystery books. And I was impressed/horrified at how many of this lot I’ve read already – or have on the pile. ON this side I’ve read the SJ Bennet, the Richard Osman and the Anthony Horowitz and I have the Golden Spoon and Vera Wong (as previously mentioned) on the Kindle waiting to be read. I also want to read Displeasure Island which is the sequel to Grave Expectations, but haven’t bought it yet.

And on this side my hit rate is even higher: I’ve read Knife Skills for Beginners (and its sequel, A Fatal Crossing, the Grantchester, the Andrew Cartmel (which is one of the non Vinyl Detective ones), Death and Croissants, The Marlow Murder Club, the Richard Coles and the Agatha Raisin.

Even more crime here – and my hit rate is lower, but it does include one of my purchases which was of course A Case of Mice and Murder – but also Seven Lively Suspects and another Canon Clement along with a bunch of covers that look too dark for me, although I am trying to adjust my snap judgments on that front after Ruth Galloway.

And finally, this had the new Vinyl Detective which I would have bought and read if my pre-order wasn’t already at home and the final Maisie Dobbs which is now out in paperback. I was going to do the romance section, but basically, I’d read so few of them that it felt a little bit pointless. I would say I should try and change that, but we all know how big my To-Read Pile is right now so I’m not making any promises.

Have a great Saturday everyone.