I was going to say it’s that time of year again where I start to panic about the missing states on my 50 states challenge, except that I actually panicked about three weeks earlier than I usually do which makes me both optimistic about my chances of not ending in a panic, but cautious because I could get complacent. Anyway, four of the seven on the finished list this week
About six – some missing states but also writing the offers post..
Bonus picture: I ransacked the tbr shelves to look for books that would tick off missing states – here they are, in a nice pile to catch my eye and remind me to read them!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
It’s Sunday again everyone and I’m back with a Netflix documentary series.
Last year we had Beckham, about David Beckham, this year we have Victoria Beckham, about his wife the artist formerly known as Posh Spice who is now a fashion designer. As it’s framing device this is focussing on the fashion business in the run up to a big show at Paris Fashion Week.
Now I’m not going to lie, this is no where near as good as the first one. We’ve covered the contours of Posh n Becks life together in the first doc and so there are times when there is not a lot of new to say. There is a lot about her fashion brand and if you were reading newspapers or online gossip pages when she started that up you will remember the suggestions that Roland Mouret was doing all the work, and she (and Roland) have Things To Say about that. And of course if you’ve been following the Family Drama, you will spot the notable absence of Brooklyn from the documentary, but it’s never discussed – and he wasn’t at Windsor Castle this week when David was knighted so it’s clearly all still going on.
If you’ve watched the first one, the second one is worth watching for contrast and completeness, but if you haven’t then watch the first one instead. No memes will be spawned by this new one…
I’ve got another northern bookshop visit today – this time I’ve been to Cockermouth and The New Bookshop, which as you may be able to tell I dropped into before Halloween! It’s actually much bigger than you think from the front, which is great and it’s got a coffee shop in there too. Because it’s so big, I’ve just picked out a couple of bits to highlight today…
As you know I’m always interested to see what new boks are being highlighted in stores, so that’s where I’m starting because there are a few here I hadn’t come across at all and a few that I hadn’t seen in the wild. On the non-fiction side, there’s Terry Deary’s Revolting about notable rebellions and uprisings but alos the new Charlie Higson book about Britain’s kings and queens that’s illustrated by Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves). They also have Julia Ioffe’s Motherland. Ioffe’s family fled the Soviet Union in 1990 and this is her look at rhe history of modern Russia through the eyes of the country’s women, and the changes in the roles of women from the Soviet era when feminism was seen as a positive and women were doctors and scientists, to today when conservative Christian values have taken over. There’s also This Way Up by the YouTubers The Map Men and Earth Shapers about geography which I think may well be in a lot of Christmas stockings (so to speak) this year.
On the fiction side I was really interested by It’s Not A Cult, which is about a band who have a cult following until they go violence after an act of violence at one of their gigs – and then suddenly they have their own cult and things start to spiral. I can’t work out if this is going to be too scary or grim for me – it’s got blurbs by Oskar Jensen who wrote Helle and Death which I liked and Natasha Pulley who I haven’t read so I’m finding it quite hard to work out where it might sit. Definitely too scary for me is Richard Armitage’s The Cut, but I can see that being in a lot of Christmas stockings too because yes it is Richard Armitage the actor who he has a lot of fans out there. This is is second book so the first clearly did well enough to get another! There’s also the fiction Terry Deary – a murder mystery and is the new Hercule Poirot continuation, as mentioned the other week.
I also love a staff recommendation section – particularly when it’s one that’s got things I haven’t spotted before on it. I’ve got a remarkably low hit rate on having read any of these – the only one I’ve read is Yellowface, but I do have The Bells of Westminster on the pile and I think mum has read Small Pleasures. We Were Girls Once looks really interesting – about three women who’s families have been friends since their grandmothers met on a bus in Lagos in the 1940s and there’s also the new reissue of Wars of the Roses (to coincide with the remake of the movie) which I was tempted by.
And finally here’s the crime section, the other place where I spend all my reading time. It’s quite hard to tell from this picture, but I thought there was a good mix of popular series and big authors and slightly lesser spotted stuff. I hadn’t seen Murder in Moonlit Square, Death on Ice, The Betrayal of Thomas True or Dead Tired before and all of them looked interesting.
In Wednesday’s Recommendsday, I wrote about From Russia With Love which is a spy adventure with the Cold War and Russia as a key protagonist. This week also saw the release of the latest H M The Queen Investigates novel which is also venturing into Cold War spying Territory – with a title that evokes John Le Carré. I mentioned The Queen Who Came in from the Cold back in January in my series releases post, and I think it’s the last book from that post to be released (that hasn’t been bumped back into 2025*). In this book it’s 1961 and the Royal Yacht is heading for Italy for a state visit, but on board the Queen and her private secretary are investigating a possible murder that someone thinks they saw from the Royal Train. I really like this series as you know and I’ve been looking forward to this for more than a year so I’m hoping it will live up to that. I think it’s a sensible decision to move the series back in time, but I remain sceptical about how many scenarios there actually are to keep this series going. But given that I thought similar about the Royal Spyness books and they’re still going I may be surprised! If you haven’t read any of this series, do go back and check out my series post about them – the first is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and the other three are at sensible prices on Kindle as well.
*there are two of them that have slid back into 2026 – the final Thursday Next book which should have been this month but which I sort of half expected to slide given how long we’ve been waiting already and the now final Phryne Fisher book, which presumably was slowed down by Kerry Greenwood‘s final illness.
I’ve written about G M Malliet’s Max Tudor series before, but this week she has a new book out in her St Just series. I’ve read the first three in this series, but hadn’t realised that there had been more since then and this is actually book seven. This sees a film crew visiting Cambridge and the star of the movie turning up dead. It’s been a long time since I read those first three, but I have this one from NetGalley and I would say I will report back but that’s always tricky with later books in series so I can’t promise anything, or at least not necessarily in the immediate future!
It’s the first Wednesday of the months and I have quick reviews for you – and one of them is even a new release! Two days in a row! Yes, it can happen! I’m almost proud of me. Except for the fact that the rest of the pile is massive. Moving on. To the reviews:
Taylor’s Version by Stephanie Burt*
I’m going to be honest and my most listened to album last month was the new Taylor Swift album. What can I say, I’m a millennial who likes Swedish pop, so an upbeat Max Martin-produced album is totally my jam. And so I was interested to read this book, which is a critical appreciation of Swift’s work, written by a professor who runs a course on her at Harvard. And it was interesting, but I had two key problems with it: one, I’m not a big enough Swiftie that I’m able to remember all the songs off all the albums without going back and listening to them again, and two, I’m not across (American?) music terminology and theory to be able to understand all the technicalities of the music and composition that Burt is explaining. I need someone to play it to demonstrate it to get it – like the Switched On Pop guys did with The Life of a Showgirl the other week – and to really understand the points that are being made. But I think it may well work for other people more than it did for me.
From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming
This was my purchase in the Penguin Pop-Up back in September and is only the second of the actual James Bond books that I’ve read. I’ve watched the Connery and Bond movies a lot, so it was really interesting to see what the original was and where the plot was changed to make it into a film – and there are a few changes here and they weren’t always what I expected. There’s actually not a lot of Bond here until fairly late on – it’s mostly about the Russian side of the plot, building up to the chase sequence as Bond tries to make his way back to Britain (with Tatiana in tow). As a book it is of its time, but if you’re familiar with all the issues of the movie series, you know what you’re letting yourself in for!
The Body in the Kitchen Garden by Paula Sutton*
After reading the first in the Hill House Vintage mystery series last year, I’m back to report in on the second, because I said that I would come and report back on a sequel if it came. This sees Daphne helping in the renovation of the local manor house after the return of the owner after years out of the country. But when an unidentified body is discovered in the garden, she’s drawn into another murder investigation. In the first book, I had the murderer pegged fairly early on but I thought that might be because it was a debut, but also because there was a lot of series set up going on, so the mystery couldn’t be as complex as a result. But this didn’t have all that set up to do and I had the victim’s identity and the murderer worked out as early (if not earlier). And that’s a shame because I still really like the main characters and the setting. It’s just not got enough happening or complexity for me. Hey ho.
It’s Tuesday and I’m back with this week’s Book of the Week – which is actually a book that came out last week. I’m even topical. Go me!
The year is 1910 and Haley’s Comet is passing over the earth. On a tidal island of Cornwall, a Viscount is preparing for the apocalypse. But when the staff of Tithe Hall unseal their rooms the next morning, Lord Conrad Stockingham Welt is dead in his office and a murder investigation gets underway. Straight into the police’s crosshairs is Stephen Pike, who arrived at the house fresh from Borstal the day before the murder. But Stephen knows he didn’t do it – he was looking after the elderly aunt of the victim Miss Decima Stockingham, who is foul mouthed, but very, very smart. Soon the two of them are trying to work out who did commit the murder as the policeman in charge of the case makes wild claims to try and pin it onto one of the servants.
This has got such a great premise – I love a cantankerous older woman heroine and the pairing of Miss Decima and Stephen is really entertaining and makes a great use of the above stairs-below stairs nature of the plot. And it’s really quite humorous at times too. I will admit I had the solution worked out well before they did though – but forgive them because there is world building and setting up going on here for a sequel and I am very much here for that when it happens.
My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo as well as in hardback. I’ll be watching out for it in the shops.
It’s definitely heading into winter now. The mornings might be a bit lighter but it’s only temporary and the weather is colder and wetter. And so I’m deep into mystery books because it feels like they suit the season. Last week was fairly calm (especially compared to the week before) and I’m hoping for similar this week. I’ve actually made a proper plan of what I want to read this month, so we will see if I manage to stick to that in any way!
Well. A couple of impulse purchases because the Helen Ellis was on offer as were some Georgette Heyer detective books, although I only bought one of them. I did manage to resist the Foyles double stamps though, but only because I own most of the paperbacks I might have bought already and I had that preordering spree on Waterstones just a few weeks ago!
Bonus picture: autumnal colours in Bloomsbury.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Angela Lansbury would have been 100 last month, so today I’m talking about one of my favourite childhood movies – Bedknobs and Broomsticks – which had magic and witches and is thus perfect for a post-Halloween autumn afternoon.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is loosely based on two books by Mary Norton, who also wrote the Borrowers books. In this Disney version it’s 1940 and three orphans, Charles, Carrie and Paul, are evacuated to the village of Pepperinge Eye on the Dorset coast where they are billeted with the very reluctant Eglantine Price. They try to run away to London but change their mind when they discover Miss Price is a witch. When they try to blackmail her about this, she turns Paul into a rabbit and says that she’s learning magic to try and help fight the Nazis. When her correspondence course writes to say it’s closing down, they head to London on a flying bed to track down her teacher to try and get the final spell on the course. But it turns out the teacher is Emelius Brown, who is a street magician who has no idea his spell work when it’s Miss Price using them. And that’s only got you to the halfway point. The second half has a trip to a magical island and a Nazi invasion to thwart.
As well as Angela Lansbury as Miss Price, it has David Tomlinson (aka Mr Banks in Mary Poppins) as Emelius Brown, Reginald Owen (Admiral Boom from Poppins) and for Brits of a certain age Bruce Forsyth as a spiv. Like Mary Poppins it has a mix of live action and animation sequences and music by the Sherman Brothers. As is often the case the song that got the Oscar nomination (The Age of Not Believing) is not my favourite in the but Beautiful Briny, Substitutiary Locomotion, The Old Home Guard and the Portobello Road songs are singalong bangers.
Like so many Disney films, it was adapted into a musical a few years back and I saw it on tour in Northampton. That was ok rather than brilliant, it was great to hear the songs from the movie but I didn’t love the new additions and I can see why it never went into the West End. My sister and I recorded this off the TV (one Christmas I think) and watched it in rotation with about four other videos on Saturday nights while we were eating dinner in front of the TV (our weekend treat). Even now if I happened across it on TV on a weekend afternoon I’m pretty sure I would stop and watch it to the end.
Favourite book: Probably What You Are Looking For is in the Library
Books bought: lets skip over this…
Most read author: Jill Churchill – two more Jane Jeffreys books
Books read in 2025: 314
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 802
So after the progress of September on the NetGalley and pile front, October wasn’t quite as strong. The bright side is that the six NetGalley books I did read include all of the October releases, so for once I’m keeping pace with that, but the list is being somewhat propped up by novella and Kindle Unlimited. A lot of them were me trying new mystery series – and not always to great success. But if you don’t try them you don’t know, and I guess at least I’m getting the value out of my KU subscription!
Bonus picture: After the clock change, I’ve got sunrise on the train again – as opposed to dark until London – for a week or two. And this week the colours were amazing, although the frost in the fields is a sign of the weather to come…
*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – 9 this month!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 