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, books, new releases

Book of the Week: Welcome to Glorious Tuga

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For the second week in a row, I’m writing about a book that I finished on Monday. But it was one of two books I finished on Monday, so that gives a bit of a sense of how close to the end I was, and how hopping around my reading was last week. It’s also out this very day in the US (it came out here last month) so it’s also relatively well timed. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Tuga is a remote island in the South Atlantic, only accessible by boat at certain times of year. On the last boat in this season are Charlotte Walker, on her way to study the island’s tortoises, and Dan Zekri, on his was home to take over from his uncle as the island’s chief medical officer. What follows is a year in the life of the key characters on the island – full of ups and downs and a huge learning experience for Charlotte.

I really enjoyed this – it’s gentler than I expected but also all the characters felt very well rounded and fully formed, not just Charlotte and Dan. And this is also the first in a trilogy, which I only realised after I finished it and is good news because I wanted more! I’m trying to think of comparison books – but struggling a lot. It may yet come to me, but everything I’ve thought of so far had a lot of “it’s like one thing that this book does, but not like any of the rest of it” so I don’t think they work! And it’s so new that the Good Reads suggestions are still other new releases which doesn’t help either!

I mentioned Welcome to Glorious Tuga in my Summer of Not Sequels post and as I predicted in that I have already seen it about a lot this summer – at the airports and in the bookshops. My copy came from NetGalley, but you can buy it now in all the usual formats like Kindle and Kobo as well.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: June 24 – June 30

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Not the longest list this week – but some of the stuff I didn’t finish is quite long. Also the Euros are on and there was Formula One and MotoGP at the weekend. And the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders documentary on Netflix… and that’s all before you get to the wonderful weather!

Read:

A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K J Charles

A Murder at the Movies by Ellie Alexander

Spicy Lasagne Murder by Patti Benning

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Garden Vegetable Murder by Patti Benning

Career Novels for Girls by Kay Clifford

Started:

Jackie by Dawn Tripp*

Still reading:

Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal*

The Unforgettable Loretta, Darling by Katherine Blake*

No books bought!

Bonus picture: London in the sunshine.

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

children's books, theatre

Not a Book: The Secret Garden

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This is a fresh version of the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic children’s story that is on at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park for the start of the summer. The core story – about newly orphaned Mary Lennox being sent to live at Misselthwaite Manor after the deaths of her parents and uncovering the many secrets that the house is hiding remains the same – but there has been some sensitive updating done which makes it work a bit better for today’s audiences as well as providing a beautiful inspiration for the stage design and music concepts.

I really, really enjoyed myself watching this – with the trees all around you and birds flying overhead as the sun went down, the setting is absolutely perfect for a play about the healing power and magic of nature. I saw the fourth preview – so there were still a few technical gremlins to sort out (mostly mic cues) but the show itself and the performances were wonderful. In fact my only real grip was that my feet got cold, but that was my own fault for wearing canvas shoes with no socks!

This would make a great show for the kids this summer – but sadly it’s only on until July 20th, which is just as the schools are breaking up in most places, then Fiddler on the Roof takes over in the theatre for the rest of the summer. You can find more details here.

Have a great Sunday

book related

Books in the Wild: Foreign translations

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Mixing it up a little bit this weekend, but as well as looking at the book selections at the airport and the English language offers in any bookshops I encounter I also take a look at the books I can spot in translation – and the different covers they get… or otherwise. So here are a few that I’ve spotted on the last few trips.

Lets start with some Italian Julia Quinn! These are non-Bridgertons including some of my favourites – like What Happens in London and The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. I’m always interested to see historical romance covers because they are so wildly different between the UK and the US even before you get to translated versions. In the UK these originally had line-drawn almost cartoon-y covers and now have been repackaged with headless torso photographs of men and or women to match the reissued Bridgerton books which are now getting the couples from the show on the cover as their series happens.

I thought this was really interesting – as well as the artwork on Husband Material, Love, Theoretically and the Ana Huangs, they’ve also kept the English titles. Now with Husband Material I can sort of understand that, because it’s so built in, but the others you could have changed it surely? All of these have the same cover design in the US and the UK so I’m wondering if this is a TikTok influenced thing: Have they kept the titles that people might have seen on English language BookTok? I don’t know, but I find it very, very interesting.

From Italy to Spain now, and next up is a previous Book of the Week – Jenny Jackson’s Pineapple Street, which has got the US cover, which I just think is too lairy compared to the UK one. I like the idea of the formal and fancy room, because it is a rich people problems book, I just think this is an ugly set of colours!

And finally here we have Spanish Sally Rooneys, which have got the English language cover concepts, but the titles translated and a few tweaks. Some of these have the same editions in the UK and the US and some don’t – I’m not sure which came first or whether it’s changed as she’s grown in popularity, but I do really love the covers her books get – they’re so distinctive and eye-catching.

Here endeth this Saturday’s trip through cover design, I hope you’ve enjoyed it – it may make a reappearance at some point in the future you never know…

Book previews, series

New Lady Sherlock

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I was thinking when I was writing this that it doesn’t seem like that long since I last read a Lady Sherlock book, so I had a little look back – and I realised that although I wrote my original Series I Love post for Lady Sherlock as the last one came out in early 2023, I actually didn’t read it until the autumn – which probably explains why my brain was confused.

Anyway the eighth book in the series is out this week, and A Ruse of Shadows seems to be once again building on the events of some of the previous books in the series, so I’m going to say again, that this is a series that repays reading in order. In the previous book, A Tempest at Sea, Charlotte was on board ship trying to keep a low profile, in this new instalment we have someone that Charlotte’s investigations have put in prison asking for her help, so I’m intrigued to see how that works out and how it fits into the various running plot strands that we already have going on.

I’m also intrigued to see if my pre-ordered copy turns up and when – because the last few times it… has been erratic, so we’ll see what happens there! If you want to read the Lady Sherlock series, I do advise you to start with A Study in Scarlet Women, which is available in Kindle in the UK – which for some reason the latest one isn’t (yet). You can find a link to the whole series on Amazon here.

Book previews

Out this Week: New Ashley Poston

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The rush of summer releases continues and this week it’s Ashley Poston’s new book A Novel Love Story. The blurb tells me that our heroine is Eileen, a romance novel lover who breaks down on her way to her annual book club retreat and finds herself in Eloraton – a small town which seems too good to be true, which may be because it’s also the setting of her favourite book series. Eileen is sure that she’s been sent to give the town a story book ending – except that there’s one character who doesn’t want her to finish the story – the grumpy bookshop owner who she just can’t place…

She’s done ghosts, last year it was time travel, and it looks like she’s doing magic – well sort of anyway. I would say I’m sceptical about it, but I was sceptical about the last two and I liked them both, so I’m actually optimistic this is going to be right up my street when I get my hands on it.

LGTBQIA+, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Non-fiction for Pride Month

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It’s the final Wednesday in June, so for the last Recommendsday of the month I’m following on from last weeks’ fiction picks for Pride Month, with some non-fiction option.

Young Bloomsbury by Nino Strachey

Let’s start with something that I finished last week.This is a group biography of the second generation of the Bloomsbury Group, who joined in with the first wave in the 1920s when people like Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey were at the height of their powers and influence. There are a lot of people in this – many of them named Strachey – so it can some times get a little confusing, but it’s a very readable look at some of the lesser-spotted Bloomsburies and what they got up to. Very much an overview, and so I’m now off to see what there is on some of the more interesting figures in this that I didn’t already know about!

Wild Dances by William Lee Adams

This is a slightly strange one to write about – because William is actually a work colleague! As well as working with me, William is a massively popular Eurovision expert who runs a YouTube channel and blog. How did he get from small town Georgia (the US state, not the country) to here? His memoir will tell you and it’s quite the journey. Reading this was the first time I read a memoir written by someone who I know in real life, so that was slightly disconcerting experience. But the book is really powerful and worth reading even if you don’t like Eurovision.

I’ve already recommended a load of really good non-fiction that fits into their category too – like The Art of Drag – which you can see in the photo behind William’s book; Legendary Children – about RuPaul’s Drag Race’s first decade; Fabulosa – about the secret gay language Polari; and Harvey Fierstein’s memoir I Was Better Last Night. And currently on the pile waiting to be read, I have Queer City – about the history of gay London, The Crichel Boys – about a literary salon adjacent to the Bloomsbury group; and RuPaul’s memoir The House of Hidden Meanings. I’m also looking out for Bad Gays – looking at overlooked gay figures in history, and Hi Honey, I’m Homo – about queer comedy and the American sitcom.

Happy Wednesday!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scandal

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Yes, yes, I finished this on Monday, but I finished it on the train to work, before 8am and Goodreads still thinks that’s Sunday so it’s all fine right? Not cheating at all.

Anyway, Major Rufus D’Aunstey is the new Earl of Oxney and owner of a remote and ancient Manor House in the vicinity of Romney Marsh. He’s already been through a months long battle in the court with his uncle about his inheritance, and now Luke Doomsday, the son of a local smuggling clan has turned up with another claim against the title. But Luke is also a secretary, and Rufus needs a secretary to help him untangle the mess that his predecessor left behind him. Soon the two of them are allies, except Luke has a reason he wanted to come to the manor and it wasn’t to do with being a secretary and it’s all about to get a bit complicated.

This is the second in K J Charles’s Doomsday books set in the same area and with the same smuggling family on the one side, but some years later and a different family on the other side. You don’t need to have read the first one, although it may enhance the experience, this is standalone. This has got smugglers and terrible relatives and a happy ending after a certain amount of adventure. I also really like the setting – The Unknown Ajax is one of my favourite Georgette Heyers and this has a lot of the smuggling themes from that plus the tension between a military hero and the people who have turned to smuggling to get by but dialled up to 11 and with more normal people. All in all it’s a really satisfying read.

As you can see, I have a physical copy and I’ve spotted it in a number of the larger bookshops, so you should be able to get hold if it if you want a paperback, or of course you can get it on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: June 17 – June 23

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It seems like we might have brought some summery weather home with us from Gran Canaria! And considering I was back at work from Tuesday, I’m actually pretty pleased with this list of reading last week. All I need to do now is get the hammock set up in the back garden ready for some quality reading time in the sunny weather.

Read:

Lumberjanes Vol 19 by Shannon Watters et al

The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

Hearty Homestyle Murder by Patti Benning

Young Bloomsbury by Nino Strachey

Lumberjanes Vol 20 by Shannon Watters et al

Honey BBQ Murder by Patti Benning

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Beef Brisket Murder by Patti Benning

Started:

A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K J Charles

A Murder at the Movies by Ellie Alexander

Still reading:

Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal*

The Unforgettable Loretta, Darling by Katherine Blake*

One ebook bought

Bonus picture: Saturday afternoon in the countryside. There is a boules tournament going on just out of shot, which is less quintessentially British, but this view just made me thing of Constable paintings for some reason.

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

streaming

Not a Book: 99

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As if there wasn’t already enough sport on TV at the moment, what with the Euros reaching the start of the last round of group games tonight, the grass court tennis season being well underway and the build up to the Olympics, I’ve got a football documentary for you today.

99 is Amazon Prime’s documentary about the 10 days that saw Manchester United win the treble in the summer of 1999, which I refuse to believe can be 25 years ago, because I remember it, and how did I get this old?! Anyway this takes you through the process that got them to that remarkable treble as well as those key days, with interviews with all the key figures involved as well as loads of archive from the time.

Looking back at this distance, it’s clear that no matter whether you support Man U or not (and I’m definitely in the not camp) this was a remarkable achievement – and they did it with a large number of players that had come through the club’s academy set-up. Clubs have done the same thing since – but they’ve done it after large injections of money from various sources and without the home-grown talent.

If you’ve seen the Beckham documentary series, this (unsurprisingly) has a lot of the same talking heads (and some of the same producers too) but obviously the focus is very different. But if you enjoy one, you’ll probably enjoy the other, from sporting point of view anyway.

Have a great Sunday!