This weeks BotW is one of my purchases while I was writing the Kindle Offers post after I got the sample which didn’t get to the end of the first short story (a Poirot one) and I needed to know who did it! So here we are, an Autumn book read in Autumn – check me.
This is a collection of twelve short stories from Agatha Christie, including all of her most famous detectives among them and with a preface that is a relevant section of her autobiography complete with a poem that she wrote about her childhood. It also includes the original version of Witness for the Prosecution which was turned into a film in the 1950s starring Marlena Dietrich and has been running in a site-specific production at London’ in an actual courtroom’s County Hall for more than five years.
As is always the case with me and Christie (and in fact crime more generally), I enjoyed the ones with the regular detectives more than I enjoyed the standalone ones but they’re all pretty good and I read the whole book in less than a day, which again given that it was a work day says a lot about how much I was enjoying it!
This is on offer at the moment in Kindle, and Kobo. It also comes in a hardback edition. There are also three other short story collections – for the other seasons obviously – and Midwinter Murder is currently in Kindle Unlimited if you want some more.
I’m having one of those spells where I’m finding it hard to settle down and read some of the things on the list – but instead bingeing through something else. In this case, it’s manifesting in Patti Benning novellas and some Charlaine Harris. Who can tell the mysterious ways my mind works, I certainly can’t. Anyway, the weather has been awful, it’s proper sit inside and read weather – I feel like my feet have been on the edge of being damp for about a month now it’s been so wet. Hey ho.
Well, as usual in kindle offers week, a few ebooks bought – and I still have some samples left to read for other things so potentially more to come there. Two books in Foyles which you’ve already seen and a couple more ordered (but not yet arrived)
Bonus picture: some Art at the Outernet last week – it’s very cool but it makes my head hurt quite quickly!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Back on a streaming documentary this week, and it’s more of an interesting watch than an enjoyable one, and less of a recommendation than that word implies for reasons which I will explain if you read on…
The basics: Mr McMahon is a six part Netflix documentary about Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling promoter who ran WWE (or WWF as it was) from the early 1980s until basically the start of this year. Interviews for this documentary started before the 2022 allegations of misconduct against him emerged, and McMahon himself cancelled his final interviews for the series after this happened (as the series tells you several times). McMahon took WWE from one of a number of professional wrestling companies to the dominant force in the industry – but to say his tenure was not without controversy is to vastly understate the case.
This is the point where I say that I am not a wrestling viewer. In fact one of the things I say often when people ask me what sports I do (or don’t) watch (usually in the context of the Summer Olympics) is that I will watch pretty much anything except boxing and wrestling. During the dominant years of WWE, it very much just wasn’t on TV at a time I was watching (or channels I was watching). And lets be fair – I’m not the target market for it anyway. So I went into this not knowing a lot about wrestling other than the fact that Hulk Hogan was one of the biggest stars for a period, that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena started out in WWE and that there used to be loads of WWE toys in the Argos catalogue that I used to flick through when I was younger. Oh and that the women of WWE are called Divas, and that the winners are pre-determined.
So this was an eye-opening (and horrifying at times) watching experience for me. And of course I have no idea what has been left out, or glossed over or otherwise elided. But it does explain a lot – whether it’s how wrestling actually works, or about the wider state of the world in some ways. One thing that really, really comes through is the force of Vince McMahon’s personality. He says on camera that he doesn’t really want people to get to know him, and even in the interviews recorded after the 2022 allegations, the WWE employees are still incredibly reluctant to say anything against him – one of them describes the stuff they’ve seen so far as a hit job.
And I should say that we got to a point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the end of the documentary. The feeling started somewhere around the point where Owen Hart died (off camera but in the arena) during a Wrestlemania, and they continued the show, even with his blood on the ring, but intensified during the next episode where the Mr McMahon character and the Ruthless Aggression era just become overwhelming. But I was determined to stick it out to the end. And, oh boy. And that’s why I said at the top it’s not really a recommendation, because I came out of this pretty depressed that WWE still exists and is a thing, and that so much of it was allowed to happen at all, let alone in giant stadiums in front of baying crowds and then shown to worldwide TV audiences. But at least now I feel better informed about the world of wrestling, so I guess that’s something right?
Mr McMahon is on Netflix, you’ll probably need to be in a pretty resilient mood to watch the final few parts, and I would say go armed with a drink, but that’s not the sort of behaviour I should be encouraging, but I needed one by the end…
So, an unusual month in a way, in that I’ve already read three of the books in this picture. So on the bright side, they’re not on the pile – they’re already off and through. On the downside, there were only two more until I went into Foyles this week and got carried away. Never mind. Four more on the pile is better than it has been. And I have all the Museum mysteries now so I can’t buy any more of those, which is something I guess. Although the Olivia Blackie is a new to me series so that could be dangerous in itself. Wish me luck…
You guys. It’s finally coming. I never thought it would. But it has a date now – an actual date, not just a year – and the date is on the publishers website as well as on Amazon. The eighth Thursday Next book is coming in 2025. And so before I start my re-read of the series ahead of the publication of Dark Reading Matter – “the eighth and last” in the series, I thought I’d remind you about them so you can join in too.
Back when I last wrote about the series, it had been eight years since book seven – it’s now been 12 and I had been thinking it might never happen – especially given that we’ve had a sequel to Shades of Grey from Fforde before we got another Thursday Next. And as ever I wonder how quick I am to spot this (see also yesterday’s post about the next H M The Queen Investigates) but I’m pretty sure this is pretty recent – Fforde’s own website isn’t updated with the release dates as I write this…
And if you want an explanation of the series, he has a good one on there which explains the fact that it’s a world where the Crimean war never ended, where time travel is possible as is entering a book and removing characters from existence. If you like books and reading, this is the sci-fi-fantasy-crime mash up for you. Also, it has this quote from Terry Pratchett.
‘Ingenious – I’ll watch Jasper Fforde nervously’
Terry Pratchett
As well as the Thursday Next novels, Fforde’s nursery crime series are set in the same universe so if you want to be a completist you can read those too. I probably will. Now the only question left is whether a) the cover of book eight will match and b) will I be able to cope with a hardback among my set of paperbacks. Who. Can. Tell.
Now while I was writing yesterday’s Kindle offers post and discovering that there’s a Her Majesty the Queen investigates book on offer this month, I also discovered that there’s a fifth in the series coming! The Queen who came in from the Cold is out in the UK in hardback first (and Kindle) on Feb 6th. The blurb says the Queen is planning her trip to Italy on the Royal Yacht Britannia when someone claims to have seen a brutal murder on the Royal Train. The Queen and her private secretary get to work – and as the title suggests there are meant to be spies and Cold War skullduggery. I can’t wait!
Oh it’s such a good month for offers. Honestly, I would say this post was expensive to write, except for the fact that everything was on offer so it was more quantity rather than cost… Anyway – to the books.
Lets start with the Halloween related special offers. Recent release Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca is 99p (which was one of my purchases!), as is Ali Hazelwood’s The Bride. There’s an Agatha Christie short short story collection called Autumn Chills as well as the Poirot mystery Hallowe’en Party and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
I re-read Nora Ephron‘s Heartburn the other week, and her memoir of sorts I Feel Bad About My Neck is on offer this month – I read it years ago and enjoyed it. Also on offer that I read years ago is Anthony Quinn’s Curtain Call – which apparently is the basis for the new Ian McKellan movie The Critic – which I would never have guessed from the trailer!
Also in adaptations but this time in things I haven’t read is Firebrand by Elizabeth Freemantle, which was previously called Queen’s Gambit and was presumably retitled because of the Chess book and movie and is actually about Catherine Parr. Also in books I haven’t read there’s The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson is also 99p – I’ve got her Love in the Time of Serial Killers on the Kindle and I really need to read that and see if I like it before I buy anything else of hers. In things I haven’t read and probably aren’t my thing, but that I know are really popular, there’s R F Kuang’s Babel for 99p, the latest Nora Roberts romantic suspense Mind Games, Alix E Harrow’s Starling House, Coleen Hoover’s Reminders of Him and Maybe Not, Sarah Adams’s The Match
There’s also a pretty good selection of translated fiction on offer this month like Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Dallergut Dream Department Store and Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, some of which I’ve read, others that I haven’t. And there’s Katherine Heiny‘s Games and Rituals on offer too and Brit Bennett‘s The Mothers, as well as Tales of the City which is the first in Armistad Maupin‘s series that I have written about more than once. The discounted Terry Pratchetts this month are Wee Free Men at 99p and Witches Abroad for £1.99 and the Georgette Heyers are Devil’s Cub, Infamous Army, Beauvallet and Pistols for Two which are all £1.99 so will probably come around cheaper at some point if you’re not in a rush. With the Heyers and the Peter Wimseys (although there aren’t any Wimseys on a good deal this month), there are more and more going out of copyright and so very cheap editions continue to pop up, but I have no idea how good a quality product they are – my history with them is that they can be not great at all.
In things I bought, there’s D is for Death by Harriet F Townson, which is the crime pen name of Harriet Evans, the Jen De Luca that I already mentioned (and started) and got samples of The Golden Spoon and a few others.
Inspector Cockerill is on holiday. He’s already regretting leaving Britain on a package tour by the time the plan lands in Italy, but by the time the tour group make it to a tiny island off the Italian coast the whole tour group is consumed with tension and rivalries. And then one of them is murdered in the hotel. Cockerill believes the killer must be one of the people who was on the beach with him and sets out to try and figure out who is responsible before the local police pick who they think is the culprit.
This is the sixth mystery featuring Inspector Cockerill and was first published in 1955. It contains some of the attitudes to foreign people that you often spot in British books of this era, but the difference between this and say, Shirley Flight – Air Hostess, is that I’m fairly sure Christianna Brand is doing that as satire – or at least for humorous reasons. The actual murder itself is a really cleverly constructed “impossible crime” and there are certainly plenty of people with motives for it. And when the solution is unravelled you see that all the clues were there and you just missed them. It’s pretty good.
This only came out in July – and it’s currently in Kindle Unlimited, which means you won’t be able to get it on Kobo at the moment. But the BLCC have published several other Christianna Brand books and some of them are not in KU at the moment so you should be able to get hold of those on Kobo if you want – and they’re petty good too. Green for Danger was a BotW as well and I’ve reviewed Suddenly at His Residence as well.
The mornings are getting darker, we’re into October and it’s the final quarter of the year. Whatever happened to 2024? Anyway, a fairly ok week in books – not quite as much finished as I wanted, but there was a lot going on in the world.
We are back at the theatre again this week because I had such a good time at Pride and Prejudice (sort of) on Friday night that I needed to write about it asap.
So, if you’re here and reading this, I’m going to assume you know the story of Pride and Prejudice. And this is a modern retelling of the story through the eyes of the servants, and with a cast of five each playing a servant and then various of the main characters, who sing carefully chosen pop songs at key moments. Here’s a trailer to give you a bit of a sense of what we’re talking about because it’s sort of hard to describe.
The London production of this won the Olivier award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play in 2022 and I can totally see why. The commentary on the events of the book is on point, the songs are witty (including Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and You’re So Vain) and the running jokes are a hoot too. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I thought my mum who was sat next to me was going to cry laughing at more than one point.
We did wonder how it might work if you *don’t* know the story of Pride and Prejudice – which as I said may not be a problem for you but maybe your normal theatre going companion isn’t an Austen fan. Well luckily I know someone who went earlier in the week to me and who isn’t familiar with the original text and she also enjoyed it – her description was “pretty good” and she liked the meta-commentary on the events and also the sweary bits, of which there are a few. So I think it’s probably a pretty safe choice for a theatre trip – if you don’t mind a bit of swearing (my mum coped) and some double entendres!
We were the second stop of a new national tour around the UK – you can find all the rest of the dates here along with info on how to book.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 