Author: veritywilde

Journalist, armchair sports fan, book worm and show fiend. There's a sentence you don't hear too often.
film, not a book

Not a Book: Mary Poppins

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I mean who doesn’t watch Mary Poppins at Christmas right? Surely it’s not just me and my family? A roaring fire and a Sunday afternoon and Mary Poppins on the TV…

I mean this is an all time classic. The Banks children have scared away another nanny in their efforts to get their parents attention – their workaholic father is a banker, their mother a militant suffragette. In flies Mary Poppins, who will put the family back together through singing and dancing, chalk pavement pictures and chimney sweeps. Dick van Dyke’s cockney accent is legendary in all the wrong ways, but Julie Andrews is practically perfect in every way.

It’s well known how unhappy P L Travers was with the way Walt Disney changed her character from the original books, but for most people the movie version is all they know so it’s made that interpretation of Travers’ nanny immortal for better or worse. And for me it’s very much for better. I can sing all the songs (although many would ask me not to) and I could probably recite the script. I’ll be getting it out to watch again this Christmas. And if you want to find out more about P L Travers and the making of the film, there’s a movie version of that too – Saving Mr Banks.

If you want to watch Mary Poppins, it’s on Disney+, or it will be on TV at some point over Christmas for sure. And I’ve still got it on DVD…

Enjoy!

bookshelfies

Bookshelfie: The Chaos Shelves – part one

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Oh, ho ho Merry Christmas We’ve reached the bits of my bookshelves that I try not to pay too much attention to, because they are such a state. I keep telling myself that I’m going to sort them out, and then losing the will to live and giving up on it until I add some more bookshelves to the house! This one actually starts fairly well – you can’t see it on the photo but the back row is actually very neat and is mostly seriesand that spills over to the front where as you can see I have the Lady Sherlock and Charlotte Holmes series. Behind them are the Steph Plums and the rest of the Janet Evanovich collection and then the Christina Jones, Melissa Nathan and the bits of Susan Elizabeth Philips’ Chicago Stars series that I own in paper. The the rest of the front is odds and ends of things that don’t have a better home to go to – a Paul Charles that doesn’t match the rest of the set in format, size or design. Odds and ends in paperback and bits of series that won’t fit elsewhere. But it could be worse… and that is yet to come.

Christmas books, series

Bingeable series: Holidays with the Wongs

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Continuing my festive-y seasonally appropriate sort of theme in a way, this week’s series is the Holidays with the Wongs novella collection by Jackie Lau.

This is a four novella collection based around holidays – starting with (Canadian) Thanksgiving, then Christmas, Chinese New Year and Valentines day. The premise is a set of siblings trying to avoid the matchmaking attempts of their parents, but finding love in the process. In trope terms we have only one bed in the Christmas story, where the hero and heroine get stuck in a snow storm, fake relationship, sort-of second chance and then no strings relationship turns real. I really enjoyed these – they’re funny as well as being romances and the Wong family are a hoot across the whole series. And as an added incentive, this series of novellas has just had the film rights bought – so you never know, you might be seeing them on a movie channel near you in the next few years

If you haven’t read any Jackie Lau before, they’re a really nice place to start. Lau writes really fun Canadian-set romances. And she has several other Christmas-set novellas too if you like them as well as full length novels. I recommended Donut Fall in Love in my late holiday reading post, but there are several of her books that I’ve really enjoyed over the last couple of years.

So you can buy these individually, but they’re also available as a bundle of all of them on Kindle and Kobo which is actually the best value way of doing it.

Have a great weekend everyone!

book related, Gift suggestions

Bookish Christmas gift ideas

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It’s getting towards final posting dates now, but here are some ideas for the bookish person in your life this Christmas.

Let’s start with the obvious: a voucher to buy books. Don’t know what books I want or more likely which books from my list my mum has already bought me (hi mum!) – then get me a book token. My store of choice is Foyles – but they only do physical gift cards so if you’ve already missed the posting date you might need to go for a National Book Token or Waterstones who do physical and e-cards.

Or you could think about the books that your bookish person likes and get something related. For example my love of Terry Pratchett is well documented – and I’m not the only one in my family who loves the Discworld, so the Discworld Emporium might be your friend – I have some Assassins Guild socks (very cool) and they also do very good jigsaws. If they are a very special person in your life, then check out Paul Kidby’s website – he’s the official illustrator and I treated myself to a print of his Errol illustration earlier this year and it is beautiful.

And the same applies to a lot of other fandoms – I have a Background Slytherin print in the kitchen from Emily McGovern which I’ve had for years and really love and although she doesn’t do that print any more there are some really cool things in her shop. Then if you’re in the US, out of print are great – or at least they were last time I ordered from them, which is *gulp* four years when I was last over there but they have plenty of book-related apparel. And you can sometimes find stuff stocked over here.

And then you can always have a wander around Etsy and the craftier side of internet shopping – I’ve got a very cool quote I quote printed on a page from a French dictionary that I picked up online, and a cool book shaped USB light that I got given a few years back. All in all, plenty of options for you.

Good luck!

book related, books

Recommendsday: December Kindle Offers

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So it’s the end of the year – which means it’s the run up to Christmas AND the best books of the year season, so the offers this month are a strange mix.

Lets start with the Christmas stuff. Last week’s series post was about a Sarah Morgan series – and her Christmas book for this year, Snowed in for Christmas, is 99p this month. My former Novelicious colleague Cressida McLauglin also has a Christmas book on offer – The Cornish Cream Tea Bookshop is 99p and there’s also a Jenny Colgan Christmas novel – Christmas at the Island Hotel – which is in her Mure series. One of my favourite Christmas novels from previous years is on offer too – Christina Lauren’s In a Holidaze is sort of Groundhog Day meets festive rom com and I really enjoyed it.

It’s not strictly Christmas – but it has had a festive rejacket/recover, so it makes a nice segue through to the other stuff – Rev Richard Coles’ cozy crime debut Murder Before Evensong is 99p. I included it a Recommendsday about Mysteries with Vicars back in the summer, and a second Canon Clement book is due in June (and a third also planned!).

Mrs England Cover

In the best books of the year type stuff, a bunch of the award winners or nominees from the last few years are on offer – like Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain. Stacey Halls’ Mrs England is on offer again – and the wintery Yorkshire setting would make it a great fireside read if you need one. It would be atmospheric at this time of years – but more I cannot say for fear of spoilers – but you can see a review in the July Mini Reviews. Sara Collins’ The Confessions of Frannie Langton is also 99p – which I really enjoyed back in 2019. I also wrote a whole post about Philippa Gregory’s Tudor books – and The Other Boleyn Girl is also on offer this month. And another one I’ve written a tonne about is Theranos – Bad Blood, the book by John Carreyrou that started it all is 99p this month. Read it before you watch the TV series.

This months’ Terry Pratchett is Unseen Academicals at £1.99, the Hamish MacBeth is Death of a Green-eyed Monster and the Agatha Raisin is Dishing the Dirt. The 99p Georgette Heyer is my beloved These Old Shades, but it’s sequel Devil’s Cub and my beloved Masqueraders are among the £1.99 ones at the moment. If you want some historical romance that has been written a bit more recently, The Lady Most Willing a joint novel by Bridgerton’s Julia Quinn, Eloisa James and Connie Brockaway is a bargain at the moment too. The Peter Wimsey are the very first in the series, Whose Body and The Collected Short Stories, which I think I own twice in paperback. Or at least I own some of the stories in it at least twice. Also in series, the latest Maisie Dobbs, A Sunlit Weapon is £1.49, and To Die But Once and The American Agent are £1.99 which is a good price for this series.

And as ever there are also a few things that I bought while putting this together – The Kiss Curse, the next in Erin Sterling’s series that started with The Ex Hex, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake (I think it’s on offer because the next in the series has just come out).

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Book of the Week, children's books

Book of the Week: The Chalet School Wins the Trick

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As mentioned yesterday, very much a week on my sickbed last week with a lot of rereading going on, which left an interesting array of options for today – so I’ve setttled on a sort of re-read – I’ve read the abridged version of Chalet School Wins the Trick before, but never the original version, so here we are, another week another Girls Own pick! Apologies for the slightly gloomy/shadowy picture – it’s so overcast here you would not believe

The Chalet School Wins the Trick is number 46 in the series and in many ways could be considered Peak Chalet School Tropes. But I’ll come back to that. First, lets have the plot: Just before the start of term, Miss Dene catches a group of children trying to start a campfire in the middle of the school’s best cricket pitch. She sends them along their way – but the group swear they’ll get their revenge on the school. Thus the summer term is marked by a series of pranks pulled by the quintet affecting the pupils, the staff and ex pupils.

So if you were playing Elinor Brent Dyer Bingo, this would get you a full house. We have: Joey saves the day, Mary Lou Butts in, Joan Baker being “not the right type”, sick parents/relatives at the San where the children don’t know, very weird medical treatments (a scalded arm into a vat of flour), lots of unaccompanied Child Wandering, a fete, a death of (another) parent, women’s careers being thrown over because of housework and the all time great – a massive continuity fluff within the same book. I think the only thing its missing is Joey singing someone out of an illness/coma!

As with so many reviews of Girls Own stuff that I write, this is not a book that you can easily get hold of – and nor do I recommend you to, unless you’re already interested in the oevre. It was one of the rarer books – it is from 1961, so fairly late in the series and so it had less time to be reprinted than the earlier ones. And it is full of references to escapades in previous books, which might get tiresome if you haven’t read them. If you’ve never read a Chalet School book, you should probably start with Chalet School in Exile – which is probably EBD’s best book – grappling with how to deal with a British school in Austria as the Nazis swept through Europe and what women and girls could do about it. It’s not your normal school story. Other than that, you could always start at the beginning.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: December 5 – December 11

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Well I’ve had a rotten week – I started some sort of virus (not Covid) on Monday afternoon and it just got worse and worse all week – I ended up coming home from London a day early because I couldn’t face another night not in my own bed. I’ve been feeling very sorry for myself. So say hello to comfort reading central on this week’s list – including a lot of Meg Langslow because in my weakened state I appear to have embarked on a reread…

Read:

Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood by Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova

Death Checked Out by Leah Dobrinska*

Murder with Puffins by Donna Andrews

Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos by Donna Andrews

Masters in this Hall by K J Charles

The Chalet School Wins the Trick by Elinor M Brent Dyer

Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews

Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca

We’ll Always Have Parrots by Donna Andrews

Owls Well That End Well by Donna Andrews

Started:

The Many Dates of Indigo by Amber D Samuel*

To Get to the Other Side by Kelly Ohlert*

Still reading:

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell

The Inverts by Crystal Jeans

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Only one – the K J Charles on the read list. And of course the pre-order of Well Traveled turned up too.

Bonus photo: a picture of one of the panels at the BBC 100 Women event at the Barbican on Monday before I came down with the lurgy.

*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: Singin’ in the Rain

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I have series of films that I always watch at this time of year, so I thought I’d feature them here too. And as I kicked off my Christmas by watching this last weekend, we’re starting with the immortal classic: Singin’ in the Rain.

In case you’ve never watched it, it’s the story of a Hollywood leading man as the movie business transforms from silent films to talkies. Don Lockwood is an ex-Vaudeville song and dance man who got his start as a stunt man who then got paired up with a glamorous leading leafy, Lena Lamont. Lockwood and Lamont have been a marquee double act ever since. The problem is that Don can’t stand Lena – and now the bigger problem is that Lena’s voice is… not suitable for the talkies. Early in the film Don meets Cathy Seldon, a hopeful actress with a great singing voice, searching for her big break. And it all goes from there.

This has a great cast – Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor – a great story and some of the best song and dance numbers you’ll see – and not just from Gene Kelly.

And the final sequence – starting with Lena’s attempts to take over the studio (I will never tire of Jean Hagen as Lena saying “detrimental and deleterious”) all the way through to the end is just *chef kiss*. And like many of these old Hollywood movies, you can dig into the making of it and the stories behind it and it just gets more fascinating. I’m not going to say any more here though – because I know some people think that spoils the magic.

It’ll definitely be on TV at least once over the next month, but you can rent it from all the usual places too

Enjoy!

books

Books Incoming: December edition

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A smaller selection this month – and you’ve already seen two of them – Last Hero was a BotW already, and the Rainbow Rowell was a book I bought myself for Christmas! Then there’s a proof copy of Triple Cross that just appeared, my copy of Death of a Necromancer that I contributed to the Kickstarter for (and my bonus content!), the latest – and one of the last Girls Gone By Chalet School Books before my collection is complete and the new Jen DeLuca. Nice.

series

Wintry Series: Trisha Ashley’s Lancashire books

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So this is actually two separate series and one standalone. Or at least it is the way I’m counting them. But they are (in the main) really quite Christmassy and often Wintery too so they’re perfect for this time of year. And as we’re in the middle of a cold snap here at the moment, books for curling up in front of the fire with are great.

I’ve grouped them together because they are all set in little villages in Lancashire where you see some of the previous characters pop back up in later books – and two thirds of them centre around Christmas. I’ve written about Trisha Ashley before, but thear are probably my favourite of hers – as I said at the top, they’re warm hugs of books, perfect for cozy afternoons on the sofa under a blanket. They’re all romances – but the British kind, where there is a bigger plot going on that ends up in a romantic happy ending, rather than the more American one type – where any other plot is a side order to the romance. I hope that makes sense, I’ve only just come up with that sort of definition. And only now because I hate using the term Woman’s fiction so much.

Anyway, in the Sticklepond sequence is A Winters Tale is wintery but does have Christmas in it and is about Sophy, who goes back to her big historic family home for the first time after she inherits it. There’s a charming but dubious cousin and a strong and silent gardener as well as some eccentric older ladies and a possible ghost. Chocolate Wishes is not a Christmas novel, but has a chocolate maker and an ex-rock star in a second chance romance. Chocolate Shoes… is a shoe shop owner with a very annoying fiancé, who gets a mysterious next door neighbour. And the. We’re back to Christmas with a single mum with a poorly child and a handsome baker.

Then Twelve Days of Christmas and A Christmas Cracker are both set in Little Mumming – the first has a house sitter running into the home owner who is trying to avoid the village festivities, the second has a cracker factory and a woman who is trying to recover after she was framed for a crime she didn’t commit. And finally The Magic of Christmas has another cute Lancashire village with some unique festive traditions and the heroine is unexpectedly single with several men vying for her attention.

And to be honest if you can’t find something there to tempt you, I wash my hands of you. They’re all fairly easily available in ebook although as they’re fairly old now (A Winters Tale is the oldest and came out in 2008) I don’t know how easy they’ll be to find in the shops.

Have a great weekend everyone!