Author: veritywilde

Journalist, armchair sports fan, book worm and show fiend. There's a sentence you don't hear too often.
fiction, Gift suggestions, non-fiction

Give Me a Book for Christmas 2016

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Yes, it’s that time of year again, where I tell you what’s been sitting in my Amazon Shopping basket for months as I try to justify buying more books in the guise of offering recommendations for people who like what I like but actually offer last minute hints to my loved ones who read the blog and anyone else who wants to buy me something.  In writing this I went back over last year’s version of this post and was cheered over how many of my 2015 wishes I’ve got and have read – and there are a couple more on my Kindle too that I bought myself!

Non Fiction

The non fiction section of this list always seems to be bigger than the fiction one – I think because non-fiction books are often more expensive or come out in hardback first so I’m less likely to buy them myself and it takes longer for them to drop down in price secondhand.

A new addition to the list is Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Mock, Hate and Fear by Sady Doyle, which Sarah MacLean recommended in her Christmas mailing list.  It’s a look at troubled women in the public eye through history – from Mary Wollstonecraft through Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse – examining what makes a “trainwreck” and why we’re so fascinated by them.  I’ve had my eye on The End of the Perfect 10 by Dvora Meyers since the Olympics in the summer, but haven’t been able to justify shelling out for it when I have so much waiting on the to-read shelf.  And then there’s Roxanne Gay’s Bad Feminist and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me which I’ve just heard so much about but haven’t got around to reading yet.

There’s a few memoirs that I’m interested on – I keep hearing good things about Tara Clancy’s The Clancy’s of Queens about her childhood growing up in different parts of New York.  Then there’s Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime about growing up in South Africa when his parents’ marriage (between a white Swiss man and a black Xhosa woman) was illegal.  Noah is almost exactly my age and it’s crazy to me that this was still happening in my lifetime, to my contemporaries.

In history terms, I’d like First Women by Kate Anderson Brower about modern First Ladies of the US,  I want to read Barbara Leaming’s Kick Kennedy because I already have Paula Byrne’s Kick waiting on the shelf and I wouldn’t mind Rosemary by Kate Larson (although I fear it may make me sad and angry) because most of my knowledge about the other Kennedys comes from Laurie Graham’s novel The Importance of Being Kennedy and Robert Dalek’s biography John F Kennedy: An Unfinished Life.

I’m not one for science books in the main – although I’d also like to read several of the Mary Roach books I recommended yesterday – but I’d really like Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are which is an exploration of female sexuality and sex, but I’m not sure there’s anyone I know well enough that I can ask them to buy it for me!  Perhaps I’ll treat myself to it in the New Year!

Fiction

The fiction section this year breaks down into authors I want to try or books I keep hearing about and series/authors I collect.  I’ll start with the former, because if you’ve been here a while the latter may seem a bit familiar to you…

Last year I was asking for the last of Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation books – this year I’m asking for her first collaboration with Beatriz Williams (who I also really like) and Karen White, The Forgotten Room, which is a timeslip novel covering three generations of a family in New York.  And incidentally I still haven’t managed to read Willig’s other novel from last year That Summer, where a woman inherits a house and discovers a painting and a mystery.

I’m always wanting non-Christmassy books to read in January – particularly because that’s when my birthday is and I’m sick of tinsel and mistletoe by New Year’s Day – which conincidentally is when Sherlock is back on TV, so Brittany Holmes A Study in Charlotte (female Holmes descendant at a US boarding school) or Sherry Thomas’s A Study in Scarlet Women (historical romance with female Sherlock) which I’ve been coveting for ages might well suit my mood early in 2017.

On the collection front, Virago reissued three more Angela Thirkells recently that I have not yet read or added to my collection (I wasn’t allowed to buy myself when Foyles were doing 20% off online, apparently 1 book as a present and 1 book for me was not an acceptable purchase ratio…) Miss Bunting, The Headmistress and Marling Hall.  There’s also a few more of Virago’s Designer Hardbacks that I’d quite like to add to the shelf – notably the two Daphne Du Maurier short story collections – Don’t Look Now and Other Stories and The Birds and Other Stories and Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on the Train.

And in more boring every day reading so to speak, I really want to read the new Aurora Teagarden Mystery by Charlaine Harris, All the Little Liars, partly because I like the series but also because the idea of an author coming back to a series after nearly 15 years fascinates me. I still don’t have the latest Julia Quinn (Because of Miss Bridgerton) or Sarah MacLean (A Scot in the Dark) so I’m falling behind in my historical romance reading as well as the rest of the backlog.

Bookish Stuff

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve already bought myself another year of Fahrenheit Press books and a couple more years of Literary Review, and I have Vanity Fair as well.  I did investigate a membership of the London Library, but I don’t know anyone who would spend nearly £500 on a library membership for me – especially with the massive backlog I have at the moment (and I can get a *lot* of books for £500 – that’s probably more than I’ve spend on books for myself this year anyway!).

I do fancy a new Kindle e-reader though – my first generation Kindle Touch has given me faithful service for more than 4 years, but it’s now struggling a little bit (it keeps stalling, possibly because of the amount of stuff on it) and the paint is scratching off it.  It’d also be nice to have two so that Him Indoors could use one on the beach on holiday (he ended up using mine for a fair bit of our last one).  My pick (I think) is the Voyage – because I want the backlight but I’m also getting lazy in my old age and liked the page turning squeezing thing when I tried it at the airport.

So there you are, more books than you can shake a stick at that I want for Christmas, despite the piles I already have.  It’s like an addiction except that I learn things and it’s not illegal.

Gift suggestions, Uncategorized

Give a Book for Christmas: 2016 edition

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It’s that time of year, Christmas present shopping has hit last minute panic mode is in it’s final throes and I’d like to remind you all that books and bookish related paraphernalia make great presents and are easily available without venturing into a department store.  The fractured elbow has slowed my progress somewhat – this should have been with you a week or more ago  – sorry.  But here are some suggestions from me.

Books for Him

My other half has just devoured the new Guy Martin book Worms to Catch in about 3 days (very fast for him).  I mentioned him last year, but he keeps turning out very readable books for the petrolhead in your life.  I don’t think you can go wrong with A Kim Jong-Il Production (a BotW pick a few months back) because as far as narrative non-fiction goes it’s just so bonkers it’s hard to believe it’s true.  I keep hearing Mary Roach recommended places – and they sound like they might be perfect books for men (although I’m still hoping one might end up in my stocking) Grunt  – all about how science and war and people collide – or Stiff – about what happens to human cadavers (as long as the recipient isn’t squeamish like me) seem to be the top picks.

For Fiction, I read The Murdstone Trilogy (actually just one book) by Mal Peet earlier this year – about a writer whose sensitive YA novels about troubled teens stop selling and who ends up writing fantasy – it’s a dark and funny look at fantasy tropes with some horror thrown in too.  If he’s read Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones or the like there’s probably something here for him.For my last pick, I’m suggesting Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, another book that I haven’t read yet, but have heard great things about.   It’s set in the future where natural resources are scarce and people escape into immersive video games like OASIS.  Then one player stumbles upon the first clue to a series of Easter Eggs which could lead him to a fortune.  I have the audiobook of this waiting on my phone for just as soon as I finish The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore – which is good, but very, very gory and long – only 20 hours of that to go!

Books for Her

Lets start with the fiction.  It feels like a long time ago that I read Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible (April) but I’ve lent it on since then and had nothing but good feedback, so I’m going to recommend it again.  I can’t remember why it wasn’t BotW at the time (maybe because I was half expecting to be reviewing it for Novelicious) but it is definitely one of my favourite books of the year, and hands down my favourite Pride and Prejudice retelling.  I reviewed Lucy Dillon’s All I Ever Wanted over on Novelicious the other week, and that would also make a really good pick – it’s sort of Christmassy (it starts at Christmas) but it’s not all tinsel and mistletoe, it’s a great wintery read to give to someone who wants to spend Boxing Day (or longer) curled up on the sofa with a book in front of a roaring fire if you have one. Helen Ellis’s collection of short stories American Housewife (a previous Book of the Week) would also make a nice stocking filler if you have a woman with a dark sense of humour in your life (get a taste of what I mean here).

And now some non-fiction.  I’ve already mentioned The Best of Dear Coquette (which you should totally buy as a present for yourself at least!), but if you’re buying for someone who was a teenager in the mid 90s or later, As If! an oral history of the making of the movie Clueless might be perfect.  Clueless was one of the films that I watched on heavy rotation as a teenager (it came out just before I started secondary school so we had it on video at various slumber parties) and it still stands up today.  As If! is a fun look behind the scenes and a reminder of how different and big the film was at the time

Books for Children

For little children, I love Jon Klassen (I’ve mentioned this before) and this Christmas sees his third book about hats – We Found a Hat follows on from I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat which have been big hits among the children I buy for.

I really enjoyed the first two books in Katherine Woodfine’s Sinclair’s Mysteries and  both The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow and The Mystery of the Jewelled Moth should be fairly easy to get hold of if you’ve got a middle-grade (upper half of primary school) reader to buy for.  Robin Stevens’ Wells and Wong books got a mention last year, but the series has grown since then and I think it’s a great choice for a girl (or boy) who has done St Clares or Mallory Towers and some Famous Five/Five Find-outers and wants more.  They do contain death though

Other Bookish Gifts

In my post about presents for me last year, I said that I wanted a Literary Review subscription – I got one (thanks Little Sis!) and have just bought myself another two years worth.  I’ve enjoyed reading it, found books I want to read that I wouldn’t otherwise and used their reviews it to weed out books I don’t want to read/can wait to turn up in the secondhand shops.

I can’t believe how much I’ve talked about Fahrenheit Press already, but I’m going to do it again now – sorry! I bought myself their subscription earlier on this year – and it’s given me a string of Books of the Week and so much good stuff.  I’ve just renewed it for another year and if you have a crime reader in your life this might be just the gift for them.  2016 has had reissues of 90s crime series, new thrillers about all sorts of things, the Danny Bird series and James Bond and Stephanie Plum’s lovechild and more. They’re so good I feel like I’ve done nothing but talk about them all year.  And that’s before I write my Books of the Year post! Details here.

I got myself a Vanity Fair subscription this year which I’m still enjoying – and magazines are a gift that keeps giving through the year – I’ve bought Good Food, Gardener’s World and others at various points. Condé Nast keep emailing me to tell me that if I buy the wrong magazine for me giftee then I can change it for free too and so that’s practically a win win!

So there you have it, some gift suggestions from me. And if you need any more ideas, all my suggestions from last year still stand – gifts for him, her and kids. Coming next: What I want for Christmas…

Book of the Week, crime, new releases, Thriller

Book of the Week: Sparkle Shot

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I feel like I’m getting repetitive here, because this BotW is another Fahrenheit Press pick.  Seriously, my Fahrenheit subscription has been one of my best book-based purchases this year.  It was a total bargain (and I got in early so it really was a bargain!) and I’ve discovered older series I was too young for (or not in the right crowd for) first time around and new authors doing interesting things and who I’m hoping I can say that I was there at the beginning for.

And Sparkle Shot falls in the latter camp.  It’s Lina Chern’s first book and it’s short but it packs a lot in.  The subtitle is “A wannabe cowboy, a handsome cop and the search for a perfect breakfast cocktail” but that doesn’t really do it justice.  It is a perfect fit for the Fahrenheit family – Mara fits in somewhere between Sam Jones from Black Rubber Dress and Eva Destruction from Barista’s Guide to Espionage, in that she’s sassy, smart and runs with an interesting crowd which sees her getting tangled up with things she’d rather not be.  In this case, her roommate, a stripper who dances under the name of Karma misses a breakfast date with her and then phones in a panic – she’s witnessed a murder and needs Mara to help stop her being the next victim.

Sparkle Shot races along at 100 miles an hour, with boys with guns, girls with guns, wannabe mafia dons, cops and peril.  It’s probably technically novella length at 95 pages, but doesn’t suffer from any of my common complaints about novellas.  There’s not a hint of underdeveloped story or things feeling too rushed.  There’s plenty of plot, there’s backstory, character development and proper tension and proper danger – not just the sort of thing that is a misunderstanding or could be fixed with a simple conversation.  It does feel like it could stand a sequel or two – hopefully longer than this because it was over too fast – but even if it’s not more from Mara and her friends, I’m still looking forward to seeing what Lina Chern writes next.

You can buy Sparkle Shot on Kindle or in paperback from Amazon, or you could treat yourself to some Bad Santa Bucks from Fahrenheit themselves and buy a few of their books – the discount gets bigger the more bucks you buy – and given that I’ve already mentioned two Fahrenheit books that have been BotWs and I’ve also recommended Death of a Nobody and Murder Quadrille (this is why I think I’m getting repetitive with my love of Fahrenheit, but honestly, so many good books) that’s five there – even if you only buy the first Sam Jones book and not the series…  And if you’re still not sure, both Sparkle Shot and Barista’s Guide to Espionage would be good books to read if you’ve read Stephanie Plum or any of the other Janet Evanovich thriller series and are looking for where to go next.  And on that encouragement to buy books I’ll go away before I buy more myself.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: December 5 – December 11

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Lots of Christmas-y reading this week – and yes, I am planning a post on it, just as soon as I get my Christmas book gift posts sorted.  Fractured elbows are a nightmare…

Read:

Sleigh Bells in the Snow by Sarah Morgan

What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin

The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh

Sparkle Shot by Lina Chern

Candlelight at Christmas by Katie Fforde

Comfort and Joy by Cathy Bramley

Not Just For Christmas by Alex Brown

Started:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Last Boat to Camden Town by Paul Charles

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

Still reading:

n/a

Four ebooks bought.  Three proper books.  And the library book bag was replenished too!

Award nominated, historical, literary fiction, Prize winners, reviews

Book of the Week: The Underground Railroad

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I am not a reader of Award-Winning Books.  See my posts here and here for proof of this — and I don’t think the situation has improved much in the last two years.  But some times you hear so much buzz and chatter about a book that you have to check it out.  Particularly when you luck into a copy of said book.  And Colson Whitehead’s the Underground Railroad was one of those books.  I’d heard everybody on the Bookriot podcasts that I listen to talking about how excited they were for something new from Whitehead – and then about how brilliant it was.  It kept popping up in lists of hotly anticipated books.  It was an Oprah Bookclub pick.  It was on President Obama’s summer reading list.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
I apologise for my lousy photography, but I really like the cover – with the train tracks snaking around.

The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora, a slave on a brutal cotton plantation in Georgia.  Life is more terrible than you can imagine, especially for Cora who is an outcast among her fellow Africans.  When Caesar, a recent arrival at the plantation suggests that they escape together, they take a terrifying risk to try and get to the Underground Railroad.  But it doesn’t go according to plan, and Cora’s journey is fraught with dangers as there are hunters after them, dogging their every move.  In Whitehead’s world the railroad is real – actual trains in tunnels under the southern states with a network of drivers and conductors ferrying runaways to safety.

This is such a powerful book.  It’s beautifully written, but oh so difficult to read – I’ve had to take it in bite-sized chunks so that I can digest it properly – but it’s worth it.  It makes you confront harsh and terrible truths about what people have done to each other and are capable of doing to each other.  But it’s also compelling and personal and page turning and clever.  Whatever I say here, I won’t be able to do it justice.  I still haven’t finished digesting it and I’m going to be thinking about it for some time to come.  It’s going to win all the awards – and it deserves to. It’s already won the National Book Award in the US and is Amazon.com editor’s Number 1 Book of the Year.  In years to come it’s going to be on English Literature syllabuses.  Well, well, well worth your time.

I would expect this to be somewhere prominent on a table or on a front facing shelf in bookshops.  It’s in hardback at the moment – and you can get it from Amazon (out of stock at time of writing, which says a lot), Waterstones and Foyles and on Kindle and Kobo.  It might make it into the supermarkets, but I’d be surprised.  The paperback is out in June.  I’m off to read some more of Whitehead’s work.

Happy reading.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: November 28 – December 4

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So the elbow is still giving me trouble, but I did find time to sit down and finish The Underground Railroad.  And I’ve properly started my Christmas reading kick now – with two festive short stories, finishing the Christmas Meg Langslow and starting a holiday-themed Sarah Morgan.  I foresee this situation continuing.

Read:

Duck the Halls by Donna Andrew

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch

Silent Night by Deanna Raybourn

Twelfth Night by Deanna Raybourn

The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang

Herring on the Nile by L C Tyler

The Underground Railroad by Coulson Whitehead

Started:

What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin

The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh

Sleigh Bells in the Snow by Sarah Morgan

Still reading:

n/a

One book bought – to get some free postage for a Christmas present. Progress!

new releases, reviews

Autumn Preview: Update!

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A quite while back now (September, yikes) I had a little look ahead to some of the books that I was excited about this autumn.  And now I’ve read a few of my picks, I thought it was time to give you an update in the form of a bonus post…

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple (6 October)

I was worried about hating this, but this is neither good Semple or bad Semple – it’s somewhere in between. But the good news here, is that I’ve worked out what I like about Maria Semple’s writing and what I don’t.  I don’t like being inside the head of her female leads – they’re self-centred, middle-aged quirky-to-the-point-of-irritation and they drive me crazy.  But viewed through the eyes of someone else (more normal) they can be funny and touching.  And that’s why I liked …Bernadette – because she’s not there for most of the time and it’s Bee who’s trying to work out what’s going on.   This didn’t make me tear my hair out like This One is Mine did, but it did make me vaguely annoyed.  So lesson for the future:  if Semple’s next book is written from the perspective of  a woman with children then I won’t bother reading it.

The Wangs vs The World by Jade Chang (3 November)

Well I liked this, but I didn’t love it.  May be I was reading it too soon after Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, or maybe the fractured elbow was impeding my sense of humour.  I think my problem is that there wasn’t a family member that I loved – and I wanted to fall in love with one (or more of them).  Each of them has a frustration (or two) about them which stopped me from embracing this as fully as some of the people I’ve heard recommending it have.  It’s a good road trip book and it was funny in places, but it wasn’t hilarious.  And I really wanted it to be.

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch (3 November)

I loved this so much. So much.  There’s magic, and the super-rich and posh school kids and all sorts of new complications.  If you like the other books in the series, I suspect you’ll like this – but the overarching story is not finished yet and there is a frustration that comes with that, along with a delight that there should/will be more from Peter and the Folly.  I read it too quickly – once I started reading it that is – and now I suspect I may have a long wait until the next installment appears.  I’ll have to console myself with the graphic novels in the interim.

I still haven’t read Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson (22 September) or How to Party with an Infant by Kuai Hart Hemmings (8 September) because I haven’t managed to get copies of them yet, but I live in hope that one or both of them may appear in my Christmas stocking…

books, stats

November Stats

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New books read this month: 28*

Books from the to-read pile: 9

Ebooks read: 18

Books from the Library book pile: 1

Non-fiction books: 1

Most read author: Courtney Milan and Deanna Raybourn (2 short stories each)

Books read this year: 328

Books bought: 12 ebooks and 4 books

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf: 484 (I don’t have copies of all of these!)

I’m not even going to talk about how many books I’ve bought this month – and I wasn’t doing great even before the elbow-fracture induced pain purchases.  Bad Verity. Still, hopefully I’ll be able to restrain myself in December with the prospect of Christmas present books on the horizon.  Oh who am I kidding.

*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics (8 this month)

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: The Best of Dear Coquette

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This may well be a slightly shorter than usual BotW post – the dodgy elbow is making typing hurt and I’m not sure I’m at my finest.  But I’m going to give it a go because this was hands down my favourite book that I finished last week and it deserves a big old mention here.


This a collection of the best bits of advice from the Dear Coquette blog which I happened upon felicitously at a time when I needed a pep talk and cheering up.  It did a marvelous job of both – and there is now a waiting list to borrow my copy.   I got told off by The Boy for reading too much of it out loud to him because “there’ll be nothing left for me to read myself”.  A few selected quotes also went down a storm on Litsy and on Twitter.

Most of the advice in here is about relationships in their various forms – the book is split into sections – on things like love, family and dating.  The Coquette is smart, witty, brutally honest and very, very frank.  It’s like the advice you wish your friends would give you, but would be too afraid to hand out yourself in return.  I don’t always agree with the Coquette’s world view, but it’s always well argued and thought provoking.

I’m not sure I’ll be lending my copy to my mum (not that she’s asked for it yet) but I can see myself giving this as a Christmas book to a few people who I think might appreciate The Coquette’s view of the world.  My copy was a proof copy (which the Coquette said she was mortified it still existed on Twitter!), but you can get a shiny proper hardback copy now – get it from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo.  The paperback is out in April.

 

 

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: November 21 – November 27

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Ok. So I went ice skating on Monday and fell over and now I have a little fracture in my elbow.  The hospital don’t like to immobilise elbows (you lose movement fast and it’s hard to get it back) so until the giant bruise appeared on Saturday I had no evidence of my injury, but I have had lots of sympathy and I’m hopped up on painkillers so it’s fairly ok.  I’ve been taking it easy (mostly on the sofa) but I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything serious – or hold heavy books.  I called time on The #MonuMeta Social Media Book this week – I’ve tried and tried and tried (I’m not sure the pain helped when I gave it another go in A&E), but I just couldn’t get into it.  It’s got great reviews on Goodreads though, so it’s clearly me that has a problem not anyone else!

Read:

The Season by Sarah MacLean

Burke’s Last Witness by C J Dunford

It Must Be Christmas by Jennifer Crusie, Donna Alward and Mandy Baxter

Twelve Days of Christmas by Debbie Macomber

A Whole Latte Murder by Caroline Fardig

The Best of Dear Coquette by The Coquette

Potent Pleasures by Eloisa James

Started:

The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang

Duck the Halls by Donna Andrew

Still reading:

The Underground Railroad by Coulson Whitehead

Perhaps unsurprisingly given my weakened state, I had a kindle spending spree from my sick bed on Tuesday and Foyles were doing 20% off for Black Friday so I bought myself a book along with the ones I was buying as presents, but apart from that I’ve been remarkably restrained.  Or at least I think that I have.