Author: veritywilde

Journalist, armchair sports fan, book worm and show fiend. There's a sentence you don't hear too often.
books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 29 – June 4

veritywilde

What a week. It all got a bit busy at work again but then I had a lovely weekend hanging out with friends and watching Buffy Revamped, as well as the Formula One on Sunday. In book terms, I really didn’t mean to read the new Elissa Sussman as soon as it arrived, and I was doing really well until Sunday early evening where I lost all my will power and read it from cover to cover, stopping only to eat dinner. Big whoops because it was great and now I’m going to have to wait a year at least for something else from her. This week is scheduled to be a big week in new releases that are in my personal wheelhouse – so I’m not ruling out accidentally doing the same thing again this week.

Read:

Buried for Pleasure by Edmund Crispin

The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Best Men by Sidney Karger*

A Calamity of Mannerings by Joanna Nadin*

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Lovelight Farms by B K Borison*

Once More With Feeling by Elissa Sussman

Started:

Buried in the Country by Carola Dunn

Final Acts ed. Martin Edwards

Still reading:

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin*

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Three books bought, accidentally, on a trip to Waterstones Gower Street on Tuesday evening, one ebook and the arrival of the preordered Elissa Sussman…

Bonus photo: Birmingham canal side on Saturday night. Makes a change from London.

*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, theatre

Not a Book: Buffy Revamped

veritywilde

Happy Sunday everyone. Did I spend my Saturday night laughing about Buffy? Yes I absolutely did, and now I’m going to tell you about it!

In Buffy Revamped, comedian Brendan Murphy takes you through all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 70 minutes mainly in character as Spike but he does pretty much play everyone at some point or another. But not Riley. Because there would be no point to playing Riley. He was pointless. Anyway, this is full of 90s in jokes as well as all the in jokes about the show and quotes galore. And you’ll get to do a bit of singing too.

I had an absolute ball – it’s funny and inventive and made me feel just the right amount of nostalgia. It’s fast paced and rattles through the events of the series – at the start you wonder if it’s going to get everything you want it to mention in, but some how it does. It’s not surprise to me that it is off to the Edinburgh Fringe in August because it seems like the perfect fit for it. It’s also touring all over the place before and after that – including a couple of nights in London next week. Well worth an evening if it’s coming near you.

If the apocalypse comes, beep me.

books, bookshelfies

Bookshelfie: An extra shelf

veritywilde

Remember how I said I was running out of of space? Well this is my solution. I had a metal book end that I was using on the children’s book shelf upstairs – but that’s now got to a point where it doesn’t need it, so I’ve taken the opportunity to do some reorganising and create a new shelf!

So here you are. And obviously the main issue is that it’s already full. But this does mean I have made some space on other shelves that I can now fill up. So I’ve moved the Kate Andersen Brower books so they’re together – three were in the front room and one was on the bottom shelf of this bookshelf and it’s basically a selection of hardbacks and difficultly sized books from other shelves which means that it’s created more space than you would expect. So we have some Pink Carnation hardbacks, the Richard Coles and the latest Richard Osman along with The Last Hero, a Diane Mott Henry, Hello World, a Paul Charles and my Mallory Towers omnibus from when I was at primary school. And now I have some options for reorganising. So watch this space!

books, stats

May Stats

veritywilde

Books read this month: 32*

New books: 23

Re-reads: 9 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 8

NetGalley books read: 11

Kindle Unlimited read: 1

Ebooks: 3

Audiobooks: 9

Non-fiction books: 3

Favourite book this month: Either Mrs Porter Calling or Wild Dances

Most read author: If we discount the re-listening, then it’s Josephine Tey (two books) or Michael Cragg (Reach for the Stars is 600+ pages!)

Books bought: 9 ebooks, plus 2 new ebook preorders and then 5 books and 2 arriving pre-ordered books. So quite a few…

Books read in 2023: 158

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 698

I read some really good stuff in May, but also some really less good. Still not everything is going to be for me and I did have a really excellent April so it all evens out. I’m very pleased with my progress down the to-read shelf – I was on track for a net reduction this month – until a little buying spree on the 31st. Oopsie daisy!

Bonus picture: the downstairs plant shelf enjoying the spring sunshine. I’ve added a few more to the collection this month too…

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

Book previews

Out This Week: New Elissa Sussman

veritywilde

The stats are coming, but today I’m disrupting the schedule because I wanted to mark that the new book from Elissa Sussman has just come out. I loved Funny You Should Ask when I read it back in March and immediately preordered myself a (paperback to match) copy of Once More With Feeling. This one is a former popstar who is tempted out of retirement by the former boybander who exploded her career (and his) when they had a one night thing. This is billed as second chance romance and enemies to lovers (and friends to lovers) so it’s all the things that usually tick my boxes. I can’t wait to read it!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: World War Two-set novels

veritywilde

After having such a lovely time reading Mrs Porter Calling last week, this week’s Recommendsday features some more World War Two-set books that will give you a similar feel. And I had to think long and hard about it – because so many books that sprang to mind at first were Great War books – and that’s a whole other post!

I’m going to start with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series, even though I’ve already written a Series I Love post about them. They start in the 1930s, so if you just want the war period you could just start at book two – The Light Years. I mean I don’t recommend it because you won’t get the full impact of it all but you could if you want to. The Emmy Lake books are first person and just follow Emmy and these have a much wider group they follow, but in terms of the mixture of warmth and tears, they are right up there.

Next up: Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn. It has more sex than Emmy Lake, but if you want the Home Front, it has that – people trying to carry on in the most dangerous and uncertain times. It has that sense of normal rules being suspended because the world might be about to end and people doing things that they wouldn’t normally have done.

It’s set in 1946, but Jojo Moyes Ship of Brides is all about the wartime brides heading over to their unknown futures with the soldiers they have married. There are no massive surprises (or at least I don’t remember any big twists, but it’s been a decade!) but you really get to know the women on the boat and care about what happens to them.

If you want mysteries set in this period, may I please nudge you again at Maisie Dobbs. There are lots of bad series set inWW2 (no I won’t name them here) but once this series actually gets to the Second World War (at Book 13 – In This Grave Hour) it is one of the best.

It’s much older and the first section is much grimmer, but I want to give an extra mention to Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice. I’ve mentioned it before but you follow Jean from her life as an English woman living in Malaysia, through her capture by the Japanese and the death march she was put on to her post war new beginning thanks to an inheritance. I like the Alice section best because it is a strong woman paying something forward, but I know that that may be unusual. It is a little of its time, but I’ve loved it for so long I find it hard to be rational about it.

Happy Wednesday!

Book of the Week, books, LGTBQIA+, new releases, Young Adult

Book of the Week: Fake Dates and Mooncakes

veritywilde

It was a bit of a week of rhyming titles last week – one in YA and one in cozy crime, so it’s probably fitting that I chose one of them for the Book of the Week today. And in the end I’ve gone for the Young Adult romance – partly because the cozy crime isn’t out until next month and also because the cozy is the tenth in a series and I can’t break those rules two weeks in a row. But mostly because Sher Lee’s novel came out last week, it was a lot of fun and it made me really hungry!

Cover of Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee

To the plot: Dylan spends his spare time helping in his aunt’s Singaporean Chinese takeout, Theo lives in a mansion and drives a Ferrari. Their first meeting is less than optimal but when Theo turns up at the restaurant sparks fly. And soon Dylan is pretending to be Theo’s boyfriend at a family wedding. But Theo’s family is nothing like Dylan’s and neither is the life he leads. Dylan isn’t sure whether he can fit in in Theo’s wealthy, gala-attending life – or if it’s even worth trying.

This is a sweet YA romance with two heroes with completely different lives. The blurb describes it as Heartstopper meets Crazy Rich Asians and I think that’s not a bad one as far as it goes but it’s not quite as exact as that might sound. Yes Theo is Rich and Dylan is not – so that’s Crazy Rich Asians-esque, but you actually spend a lot of the time in Dylan’s world rather than Theo’s – which is not very CRA. As far as Heartsopper goes, yes it has got two young queer protagonists, but it isn’t mostly set in or around school and there’s not really any story line around coming out here the way that there is in Heartstopper. So basically, stop smashing vaguely similar books together as comparators please publishing.

We all know that I love a fake dating story – so that was great and I loved Dylan’s tight knit family too. It’s got some Insta Love going on here – and your mileage may vary with that. I’m not entirely sure that Theo ever really stands up for himself against his family properly and the solutions to the problems the duo face are a little easy in the end – but then it’s a YA and that’s how it goes. But the romance is lovely and all the food that is written about sounds delicious and it all made me hungry. It’s a really nice way to spend a few hours, and if you’re anything like me, it’ll have you off googling the various bits of the food you’ve never tried before.

My copy of Fake Dates and Mooncakes came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo, and Amazon say they have the paperback in stock too, but I’m not sure how much I believe them given my recent late arriving pre-orders. I’ll take a look for it in a big bookstore YA department next time I go into one – which may or may not be this week!

Happy Reading everyone.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 22 – May 28

veritywilde

Hello from the end of an incredibly busy week. It’s just been wild. And I’ve already written about one of the books from last week in my series post about Emmy Lake – which given that the list is a little shorter than usual this week (because of all that busy) means I’m still not a hundred percent sure what the BotW pick tomorrow is going to be. Watch this space. Anyway, we’re nearly at the end of May – which is also wild – so all the usual stuff coming up after the end of the month, probably in a slightly tweaked order, for reasons that will become apparent. Anway, have a great week everyone.

Read:

Poppy Harmon and the Shooting Star by Lee Hollis*

Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee*

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers

Mrs Porter Calling by A J Pearce*

Death Knells and Wedding Bells by Eva Gates*

A Vicarage Family by Noel Streatfeild

Started:

Best Men by Sidney Karger*

Buried for Pleasure by Edmund Crispin

Still reading:

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin*

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

One book bought…

Bonus photo: It’s peony season. So I have peonies in the house now as well as in the garden. It makes me very happy.

*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: Tina Turner

veritywilde

It’s Monaco today and the Indy 500, so there is some motorsport in my plans, but I wanted to spend a bit of time today talking about Tina Turner, who died this week at the age of 83.

Obviously she was a musical legend and had a back catalogue where everyone knows at least three songs, probably half a dozen. But she was almost possibly the most famous domestic abuse survivor in the world after she spoke out about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Ike Turner when they were married. There have been movies and documentaries about what went on – I first stumbled across What’s Love Got to Do With It on late night TV when I was in secondary school – but a couple of years ago Tina herself took part in a documentary so if you’re only going to watch one thing make it that. It’s been back on Sky’s documentary channels already this week – so it should be findable in their on demand system in this country, it’s in HBO’s catalogue in the US. Here’s the trailer:

I’m going to leave you with a link to the first ever Tina Turner song that I heard, which is maybe still my favourite. I mean I love Proud Mary, but River Deep Mountain high is something else. If you’re talking about problematic men, this song has a pair of them – not only is it from the Ike and Tina era, but it’s written and produced by Phil Spector. I love the Wall of Sound sound, but it was hard to listen to for a while. But she still performed it – including at her concerts as well as when she was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the first time – she was inducted twice once for Ike and Tina and once for her solo work. And Spector died in 2021 (while still serving his sentence for murder) and Ike died in 2007 so that’s made a difference for me too.

Oh I can’t resist it. Have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance too. It has Stevie Wonder playing back up in the band. And she sounds amazing.

Thanks for all the music Ms Turner, you’ll live on through it.

books

Books in the Wild: Sainsbury’s

veritywilde

It’s been a while since I’ve done a supermarket, so I’ve had a wander to see what they have to chose from at the moment. This is my local Sainsbury’s – and I should say that I went to the local Big Tesco first, but they have done another rearrange of everything and have massively shrunk the book section down from nearly a whole aisle on both sides (including children’s books and colouring books etc) to a couple of carcasses for everything. A Paddington stare to you Tesco. Very disappointing. Anyway, this is Sainsbury’s and it’s a bit chaotic in organisational terms, but it is at least bigger and better stocked than their competition…

So the headline hardbacks on this one are the latest crop – the Queen Charlotte tie-in novel, Happy Place, the final book in the Seven Sisters series – which I did try back when the first one came out but wasn’t really my thing but I know they’ve been hugely popular – and the new Tom Hanks novel which was the preorder that arrived chez moi last week! If you look carefully you can also see the new Mhairi McFarlane in the middle of the paperbacks as well. The Maid is in there too – which seems to be having a really long tail and hanging around a while, but I did see an advert on the tube this week for a sequel so that may well explain it.

Another couple of new hardbacks at the top here – I keep seeing the Steve Jones around and obviously I’ve written about how much I enjoyed Pineapple Street and it’s suitability as a summer read. The paperback of Lessons in Chemistry is there too – which is another great summer read if you didn’t read it last year and prefer a paperback.

Having had the new Emily Henry in hardback, this one has got last year’s – Book Lovers – twice (!) as well as two of the Richard Osman series – including the latest one which is now in paperback – as well as Malibu Rising and the books from supermarket shelf regulars Jenny Colgan and Marian Keyes. You can also spot my purchase on this one – The Darkest Sin. I also keep seeing Icebreaker around and debating reading it, but I’m not sure I dare – it’s about a figure skater and an ice hockey player who team up and just the idea that a hockey player can transfer over easily makes me nervous and that’s without my recent poor track record in enjoying sports romances that turn out to be too angsty for my tastes.

And finally we have this one – with some (more) repeats from earlier as well as Daisy Jones and the new Philippa Gregory (which is a magicky one). And I guess this is the point where I muse about the balance between mysteries and thrillers and women’s fiction and how that seems to have changed over the last few years. It used to be fairly rare that I would go into a supermarket and come west without having bought a couple of women’s fiction books in whatever the current Two for… deal was and I would have had a hard time narrowing down which two that was going to be. But now there are a lot less options – and they come from a smaller group of authors. You can also see that in the colours of the covers – we’ve got a lot more of the dark covers – blues, greens, greys, blacks – of the thriller and mystery genre and fewer in the brighter hues. And some of that is also that the women’s fiction novels have gone for darker colours – and turned a bit darker. Basically what I’m saying is that it’s hard to discover new romance-focused novels at the supermarket now, and that makes me sad.

Still at least I did buy something, and if I was a casual consumer (aka not someone who reads 300 plus books a year) there are plenty of good options here for you to read – it’s just I’d like to see more variety of authors.

Happy Saturday and go and buy a book