Author: veritywilde

Journalist, armchair sports fan, book worm and show fiend. There's a sentence you don't hear too often.
Book of the Week, new releases, reviews, romance, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: The Rom-Commers

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It might be December, but today’s pick isn’t a Christmas book (sorry), it is a literal beach read from my holiday last week. But even if you’re not on a sun lounger right now, I think it’s still a pretty good option for a bit of escapist reading if that’s what you need.

Emma has always wanted to be a screenwriter – she’s studied for it, she’s obsessed by rom coms and she’s been writing her own for years – and she’s won contests with them. But she’s not in Hollywood hustling for gigs, she’s in Texas looking after her dad. That is until she gets a call from an old friend to offer her the chance to work with a legendary screenwriter. Charlie Yates has won all the awards you could think of but the screenplay for his new movie sucks. It’s a rom com written by a man who doesn’t believe in love – and it shows. Charlie is Emma’s writing idol so she heads off to LA for six weeks to doctor his script. Except when she gets there, he doesn’t want to work with her and he doesn’t even care about the script, it’s just a means to an end. But Emma isn’t letting her big chance go without a fight…

Now I love a Rom Com – I’ve actually been revisiting some of my old favourites recently (with somewhat mixed results, but that’s a story for another day) so as a premise this was right up my alley. And this has got all the banter and sparks flying that you could want. Emma and Charlie are a chalk and cheese duo on the surface but as you get to know them you realise how perfect they are for each other underneath. It’s got a third act twist that made me worry that I’d missed a “a novel” disclaimer on the front, but it was OK in the end. I don’t think I would have able to write about it if it had broken the rom com conventions that it was writing about – unless I was rage-writing any way.

I enjoyed Katherine Center’s previous two book Hello Stranger and The Bodyguard, but I think this is my favourite of hers yet. And I’m looking forward to seeing what we get next too.

This is out now – it’s a relatively recent release in paperback so I haven’t had a chance to check out the bookshops to see how easy it is to find in person, but I’m hoping it shouldn’t be too hard. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 25 – December 1

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A mega list this week because we’ve been on holiday. It was warm and sunny and there were plenty of comfortable places for me to read books. And there was a plane ride there and back to read on too. Generally most satisfactory. Less satisfactory is the situation with the various reading challenges, but I’m going to give them my best shot in the month that I’ve got left. I’m back at work tomorrow and I’ve got a theatre trip planned this week and it’s starting to get a bit Christmas-y so we’ll see how the list looks this time next week…

Read:

Murder at Christmas by Rupert Latimer

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

Prime Time Romance by Kate Robb*

How to Solve Murders Like a Lady by Hannah Dolby*

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

Guilt at the Garage by Simon Brett

Birding with Benefits by Sarah T Dubb

A Classic Case by Alicia Thompson

A Fatal Groove by Olivia Blacke

Flying Too High by Kerry Greenwood

Started:

Not in My Book by Katie Holt*

Still reading:

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

The Divorce Colony by April White

One ebook bought.

Bonus picture: what else but a sun lounger snap?

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

concerts, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Avenue Q

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Something a bit different this Sunday – some thoughts about a show, but not really a review because it’s a bit more than that but also there’s nothing for you to book right now.

I took this photo at the end of the Avenue Q 18th birthday concert last month. I said on my Instagram that I think it might be the best photo I’ve ever taken – the cast looking back at their younger selves at the end of the show. That it’s a good photo I know because most of the cast have used it in their Instagram posts about the show, which made my theatre nerd heart happy. That I was in the position to take such a good photo is down to being quick on the booking fingers when the tickets went on sale – and snagging us prime seats in the middle of the middle of the stalls for the matinee show.

Who is us in this context? Well it’s me and my little sister. The West End production of Avenue Q opened just as I was finishing university, and as she was doing her A Levels. I think every theatre geek has a couple of shows that are formative in their development as a theatre fan, and this was one for us. It wasn’t the one that got us into the world of theatre message boards, but it resonated with us at the points in our lives that we were at at the time. If you’ve never come across Avenue Q, it’s a comedy musical that tells the story of a new graduate, Princeton, who moves to New York to start his adult life and ends up living on Avenue Q – a sort of grown-up Sesame Street and through the show he learns life lessons from people and puppets. One of the writers went on to write Book of Mormon, and the music for Frozen (and Frozen 2). It premiered on Broadway in 2003 and it actually beat a little show you might have heard of called Wicked to the Best New Musical Tony in 2004.

I saw the original cast three, maybe four times, and then saw it on Broadway with Little Sis on our five days seven shows trip a year or two later, and again in London with Him Indoors a few years after that. One of those times I saw the original cast I took my then boyfriend, who subsequently blamed it as a factor in our break up for “giving you ideas about needing a purpose”* which was… a stretch. Anyway. Moving on. It’s a show that has a special place in my heart. And it was wonderful to go back to it and see it again, with the actors we loved that first time. Twenty years after its first production there are some things that haven’t aged that well – they did a disclaimer at the front to that end, which felt sensible – but there’s so much that’s wonderful and the nostalgia factor was great too.

And the other thing about Q is how well the original cast have gone on to do. Jon Robyns who played Princeton has just finished up a run as The Phantom in Phantom of the Opera. Simon Lipkin is about to play Fagin in Oliver! in the West End after a successful run Chichester in the summer. Giles Terera has pack of awards for his theatre work – including an Olivier for originating Aaron Burr in the West End production of Hamilton. The only original cast member who couldn’t make the reunion was Clare Foster – and that was because it was opening week for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in which she’s playing the female lead.

Sometimes its hard to tell if seeing a show that you have such fond memories of will enhance your memories or detract from them – we actually avoided seeing a revival of one of the other shows that was seminal for the two of us a summer or two ago because we were worried that it would taint our memories of it – but I’m not sure we ever really worried about this one because it was the original cast and it was billed as “in Concert” although it was more staged than that suggests. So it was great to see the band back together and be reminded how good they are and how fun the show is. And for me and Little Sis it was great timing too – this was our last theatre outing before she has a baby and so seeing a show that means so much to us but that is also about new beginnings and new possibilities was a great way to mark a bit of a moment in both of our lives.

I hope you have a show you have as happy memories of as I do Avenue Q, and that you get the chance some day to have a moment like we did at the Stephen Sondheim for this.

*Other things he blamed: “those books you read and films you watch for giving you ideas about happy endings”. I hope your eyes are rolling as hard as mine are.

books

Buy them a Book for Christmas 2024 edition

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After putting my hopes and wishes out there last Saturday, this week it’s the books that I think would make good gifts for people in my life. Although it should be noted that I actually have already bought the Christmas books for some of these people and they may or may not be books from this list, so if any of who who I buy for are reading this and are surprised because you thought you were getting something different, don’t panic!

First up, the stuff for my sister, who has been reading mommy blogs for twenty years and by extension content about Christianity in its many forms in America. First up The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon. McCammon is an NPR correspondent who grew up in an evangelical family in the Mid West and then went on to cover the Trump presidential campaign. It’s described as part memoir, part investigative journalism looking at the post-evangelical movement. In a similar/adjacent sort of area is This American Ex-Wife by Liz Lenz about the reality of marriage and divorce in America for women, written after Lenz’s own marriage broke up. Incidentally her first book, God Land about the competing forces of faith and politics after the 2016 election is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment.

I think True Story: What Reality TV says about Us by Danielle J Lindemann might be a pretty good gift for some of my friends. This is about American reality tv series, but we’re all people who have watched and dissected reality TV in its many forms over about two decades so I think an analysis of what it tells us about race, class and gender would give us plenty to talk about next time we hang out.

I know there are loads of people who love Parks and Recreation, so I think Welcome to Pawnee by Jim O’Heir aka Jerry/Garry/Larry would be a great gift. It’s a behind the scenes look at the show, with contributions from some of the other stars as well as the showrunners. And it gives me a great excuse to drop a Parks and Rec clip in this post! There’s also another book from the team behind Ghosts – this time it’s Ghosts: Brought to Life with a lot of behind the scenes details of how the show was made and stories from the show. It also means I can put this 10 Questions with Ghosts clip here and it gives me an excuse to watch it again and watch them crack each other up.

There’s a pretty good crop of big name memoirs this year – from the first part of Cher’s (tangent: the audiobook is partly read by Stephanie J Block of Kiss Me, Kate fame, who played Cher on Broadway!), to Al Pacino’s Sonny Boy, the Lisa Marie Presley which I’ve already mentioned and would quite like myself (just not as much as the books I mentioned last week!), Michael Caine’s Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over, a new volume of Michael Palin’s Diaries and Stanley Tucci’s What I Ate in One Year.

I always find fiction a bit harder for gifts, but I’ve flagged a bunch of new releases over the last few weeks that I think would make good gifts – from the new Richard Osman We Solve Murders and The Author’s Guide to Murder for mystery readers, The Bells of Westminster for the historical fiction, or the new Matt Haig or a couple of new translated fiction novels which might appeal too.

I’m pretty sure there’s a whole load of books I’ve forgotten, but if they come back to me, there’s enough time for me to write another post I’m running so early! Have a great weekend everyone.

bingeable series, cozy crime, detective, series

Bingeable Series: Museum Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with a cozy crime series that I blitzed my way through over a couple of months, and although I’m still annoyed that the final book is a different size to all the others, I enjoyed them enough that I’m trying to work past the issues it gives me for shelving them and writing about them anyway!

At the start of the series Nell Pratt is the chief fundraiser at the Society for the Preservation of Pennsylvania Antiques, when an archivist is found dead on the same day that it’s discovered that a collection of letters from George Washington is missing. Of course she starts to investigate – this is a cozy crime series after all – and thus a series of museum/antique related mysteries is underway. Like most similar series, Nell develops a group of friends and colleagues who help out with the investigation and there’s a running romantic subplot through the series too.

I bought the second in the series at Bristol this summer – and once I’d read it, I went off and started buying up the others and then read them in order. I really liked the set up of the museum and philanthropic community around Philadelphia – it felt like something a bit different after a lot of small business related cozies. I don’t know a lot about the way the museum sector works behind the scenes in the UK, let alone in the US so I have no criticisms to make on that front – I just enjoyed the mysteries and the characters and let it all unroll!

I haven’t read any other Sheila Connolly – and I was sad to see when I was digging around into her writing to find that she died in 2020. But she has other series that I will happily work my way through should the opportunity present itself.

This is another of those times where most of a cozy crime series isn’t available on Kindle – only the last one is in ebook format, and I didn’t realise when I ordered the paperback it that it was going to be a non-matching size – if I had I might have gone with the ebook.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Book previews

Out this Week: New Gail Carriger

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This is slightly early – because the official release date for this is Sunday, but depending on how you buy this, I think you might already be able to have The Dratsie Dilemma on your device. This is the latest in Gail Carriger’s San Andreas Shifter series – which features similar sort of supernatural creatures to her Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol series, but in modern day California and a very different type of world. It’s been four whole years since the third instalment so I’m really excited to see what next for the found family that we’ve got to know and love.

Christmas books, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Classic Christmas mysteries

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Anyway, some Christmas murder mysteries for you today – and did I say I was done with British Library Crime Classics for the year? Ahem. Here I am with a post that’s two thirds BLCC. And that’s if you’re being charitable. It’s probably more like three quarters. Oopsie Daisy.

Santa Klaus Murders by Mavis Doriel Hay

Starting with one I read a while ago – in fact I’ve read Mavis Doriel Hay’s other crime novels, which were among the first BLCCs I read and they are brilliant, but forgotten, Golden Age crime stories. This is no exception. A Christmas set house-party murder – with chapters written by various different character – it ticks all the boxes for what I look for in a murder mystery. It’s well worth starting your Christmas reading with this – especially as it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment.

Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth Anthony

So this is the new BLCC release for this Christmas, and features the murder (even if the courts think it’s accidental death) of the host of a Christmas show party by one of the guests. I will admit that I had the culprit worked out before the end, but as far as Christmas mysteries go, this is a pretty good one.

Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie

The Autumn equivalent of this was a BotW not that long ago, but I think this winter version is maybe slightly better – at least if you like Christie’s big name detectives. This has plenty of Poirot in it as well as some Miss Marple, Parker Pyne and Harley Quinn and the mix is pretty good. And of course the fact that it’s short stories means that you can read one, and then go do something else – ideal if you’re preparing for Christmas!

Just a couple more from the British Library to mention before I go: firstly Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon – I’m the reverse of most people in that I prefered Seven Dead to Mystery in White, but if you want a locked room Christmas mystery, then this might be it. Then of course there is Christmas Card Crime – book of the week just after Christmas 2021. Silent Nights collection – BotW back in 2015!

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday, romance

Book of the Week: Rivals

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I was trying to work out when I was finishing the Week in Books yesterday how obvious it was that what I was going to pick today. I was figuring that given that I wrote about the adaptation on Sunday and then a 700 page plus book appeared on the list and had been read in under a week the signs might have been there. But who can tell the workings of my mind? Anyway, here we are.

So (obviously) this is the book the Disney+ series is based on. And what I didn’t mention in the post on Sunday is that the eight parts of the adaptation don’t cover the whole of the book. And having been left on a cliffhanger of not knowing l of course I wanted to see how it all turned out without having to wait however many years it’s going to be for series two. If we get a series two because I’ve been burned before (see: My Lady Jane, Pushing Daisies, The New Adventures of Superman). And also I wanted to know how different the book is from the show.

And the answer to that second question is it’s pretty close. There are a few things that happen a bit differently most of which I can’t mention because of spoilers but the one I can is that Rupert being blonde in the book and dark haired in the show. And that didn’t bother me because traditionally I prefer a dark and brooding hero and I saw the adaptation first. I’m fickle me. The 80s attitudes to some things are still there in the book – but some of the best lines in the show come directly from the book dialogue.

Some of the people are worse in the TV show than the book, others the reverse. There are a few characters in the show who are more fleshed out on screen than they were in the book. I was wondering how they could do a whole other season out of what was left of the book but there’s so much plot still to cover I’m pretty sure they can – especially if they want to bring a few of the things that are different back around to the book. Plus the ending of the book is all very fast. So there’s a bit of scope there.

All in all it’s deeply readable and although it satisfied my craving for resolution it probably made me even more desperate for series two sooner rather than later. Hey ho. At least I can reread/rewatch if I want to.

You should be able to get a copy of this absolutely everywhere given the adaption and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too. Plus there’s a new reading of the audiobook performed by Georgia Tennant aka David’s wife if you want a bit of a crossover effect and nearly twenty five hours of audio to listen to!

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 18 – November 24

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A pretty good week in reading, partly because I was commuting back and forth and not staying in lining, partly because the weather was awful so going out seemed very unappealing. I’ve started on the Christmas-themed reading now too, so there’ll be some more on that front coming too. And as you can see, I have now read the actual book of Rivals…

Read:

Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin

Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth Anthony

What Bloody Man is That by Simon Brett

Rivers of London: Stray Cat Blues by Ben Aaronovitch et al

Soulless by Gail Carriger

Rivals by Jilly Cooper

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie

One Lucky Subscriber by Kellye Garrett

Started:

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Murder at Christmas by Rupert Latimer

Guilt at the Garage by Simon Brett

Still reading:

The Divorce Colony by April White

Two books, no ebooks.

Bonus picture: Snow at the station on Tuesday morning on the way to work. I think the season really has changed now…

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

book adjacent, streaming

Book Adjacent: Rivals

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Back with a book adjacent streaming pick this week, because why not. And this has had so much advertising that you all can’t have missed it and as I’ve watched it I thought I should report back.

This is the pretty starry eight part adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s legendary 80s bonkbuster novel, Rivals. Set in the Cotswolds, it’s 1986 and retired Olympic showjumper and now MP Rupert Campbell Black and his rival Tony Baddingham are jockeying for power. How are they doing that? Well it’s through the medium of regional commercial TV franchises. I know. That sounds bonkers, but it works. And yes – those franchises really were a thing. And there are a lot of storylines going on here from the huge ensemble cast. At the start of the series we see Tony returning to Britain from a trip to New York where he’s recruited a hotshot producer for his company Corinium and then poaching Irish journalist and interviewer Declan O’Hara away from the BBC. And it’s the arrival of the O’Haras that sets up a lot of the events of the series.

I’m going to fess up now that I hadn’t read the book when I watched this, but maybe that’s for the best, given that you often have a picture in your head of what everyone should look like and the show often doesn’t match up. So I went into this with no preconceptions or loyalties and I enjoyed the hell out of it. This is a over the top melodrama where basically every character is doing bad things to a greater or lesser extent. In fact, the only really “good” character in all of this is the eldest O’Hara daughter Taggie. Taggie is 20, and it’s her… complex relationship with Rupert that is at the heart of this and keeps it from vereing over into awful people doing awful things. And I thought long and hard about how to describe what’s going on between Rupert and Taggie, but it basically boils down to the fact that I know that the age gap is too big, and I know that Rupert is probably morally bankrupt, but by the final episode I really didn’t care!

This has also got a lot in it about the British class system – everyone in it is rich, but they’re not all posh. And the way you can tell is through a myriad of tiny and bigger things – from Valerie’s double glazing and uncertainty about whether she should be saying dessert or pudding, to Tony’s insecurity about his grammar school education compared to Rupert’s at Harrow and much, much more. It’s so clever. Oh, and there is so much sex. From opening on a couple joining the mile high club in Concord’s toilet to fourways and pretty much everything inbetween. Excess is the word of the day – and there’s a lot of 80s excess in here. Your mileage may vary on that – and also on the sexual politics. I could have done without Rupert’s behaviour towards Taggie at the dinner party and I could definitely have done the full visuals on the nasty rape in episode six, but for the most part I just tried to see it as a product of a different time that the show runners haven’t tried to modernise too much because if you did that you would lose a lot of the rest of what makes it so much fun.

I watched the first four episodes in Essex the other week, and I then watched them again with Him Indoors so that I could watch the rest of the episodes with him and I could happily watch the whole thing again – maybe now with the benefit of fast forwarding the bits I didn’t love. And can we have series two stat please – there is so much left unfinished they can’t just keep us hanging surely…