Well, after the Christmas special Books Incoming, I don’t actually have a lot to show you this time out. I’ve already read the Rivers of London graphic novel, and I’ve started Murder on the Minnesota. The Last Action Hero was bought because of how much I enjoyed Wild and Crazy Guys – and I think this is one that Him Indoors will want to read too. But that’s it. January does tend to be a quiet time for new releases, so there haven’t been any pre-orders dropping through the letter box, and because I was expecting books for Christmas I didn’t buy many in the second half of December. I also only made it into a bookshop for the first time this year this week so that limits a little! I would say Normal Service will be resumed – but remember I’m trying to reduce the size of The Pile, so maybe I should be hoping that it isn’t?! Still a third of this is already off the pile and another third will be shortly hopefully.
It’s that time of year again – where I look ahead to the books I can’t wait to read in 2024 – which also could be know as “What Verity has got on Pre-Order”. And not gonna lie, I’ve got form for some of these ending up on my end of year lists as well. I’m trying not to do too many “Latest in x series” books, because if you’re not already reading the series you shouldn’t start with them, but also I’ll probably remind you about them later too. I am going to shamelessly break that a few times in this post too. Because of course I am. OK, enough of the rules that aren’t really rules and on to the books. Today’s picture is the list as it stood in my last journal at the end of last year – hence the mini-bookcase above for the overflow from the big Beat the to Read Pile bookcase.
First up: At First Spite by Olivia Dade. It has been more than a year since Dade’s last book and this is the first in a new series. The Spite of the title is a spite house – a term I hadn’t come across before this was announced, but is apparently a very thin house built to irritate neighbours – which our heroine Athena bought as a wedding gift for her now ex-fiancé and is now going to live in herself. Only trouble is it’s next door to the aforementioned ex. This is out on February 20th and I can’t wait.
Next up is Fake Flame by Adele Buck which comes out in early April. Adele Buck was one of the authors I discovered two years ago now and this is also a first in a new series. The blurb for this is promising a fake-dating romance with a hero who knows his Jane Austen, and I am all in for that – I love Austen and fake relationships are a trope that I love.
I said I was trying to avoid series, but I can’t help myself with this – there’s a new Tales of the City novel coming out this year. I thought that Armistead Maupin was done after The Days of Anna Madrigal, but a decade on he’s back with Mona of the Manor, which is filling in a gap in the timeline – of what Mona did in England in the 1990s. It’s out on March 7th and I haven’t actually preordered it (yet) but’s because I have a ticket for and in conversation event with Maupin a few days before release, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to buy it there.
And the other sequel I want to mention is Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde which comes out on February 6th and is the long awaited sequel to Shades of Grey. I love the way Fforde’s brain works, although I’m not going to lie I was hoping that the next sequel he did would be the long-awaited eighth Thursday Next book. But I guess it’s only been twelve years and it’s been fifteen since Shades of Grey so I can’t really complain too much. The Thursday is listed for 2025, but that release date has been moving for years so I’ll believe it when I see it. In the mean time it’s just nice to have our first Fforde in four years.
I’ve just this week put my pre-order in for RuPaul’s memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, which is about growing up poor, black and broke in San Diego and then forging his identity in the Atlanta and New York drag scenes.
Also on the list of things I can’t wait to read this year is the new Emily Henry, Funny Story, which has a heroine with her dream job – but stuck in the town where her ex-fiance and his childhood best friend are starting their happily ever after. She’s sharing a house with the ex-fiance of the aforementioned childhood best friend of her ex. What could possibly go wrong?
Annabel Monaghan’s Nora Goes of Script was one of my favourite books of last year, and she also has a new one coming out in 2024 – it’s called Summer Romance and is out in June. My other favourite new-to-me author last year was Elissa Sussman and her next novel is due in September and looks like it’s called Totally and Completely Fine, which would be in keeping with her other titles!
And that’s where I’m at with books I’m looking forward, if we’re not counting the new Lady Sherlock, Rivers of London Novella, the Vinyl Detective (back after a year off and tacking house music) and a tenth in Susan Elizabeth Philips’ Chicago Stars series. But I wasn’t going to talk about those. Whoops.
I mentioned one of Jeevani Charika’s previous books in my not new Festive reads post last month, so it seems only fair to mention that her new one is out in the UK today. If you’ve read either of her most recent books, you’ll recognise the hero here. I’m about half way through at the moment and enjoying it so far.
Hello! It’s that time of the month again, hide your wallets because I’m back with a stack of Kindle offers and if you can resist all of them you’re a better person than I am! I’m not sure this month is quite as good as last month, but there were still a few interesting things at prices to tempt.
I’ve recommended Ali Hazelwood’s adult romances a couple of times, but her YA debut is 99p this month – so if you want a story about chess rivals, then maybe Check & Mate is what you need this January. The sequel to Nita Prose’s The Maid is out in the UK in about a week now, so that probably explains why the original story about Molly the Maid is 99p at the moment.
One of the Taylor Jenkins Reid novels from before she went massive is on offer this month – I haven’t read After I Do (yet!) but it’s got a fairly good average on Goodreads for what that’s worth (and for older books it tends to be worth more than the newer ones). Another older book on offer is Amor Towles Rules of Civility, which I read back in 2016 and really, really liked it – if you’ve read his newer stuff but not this, then go and read this about a woman trying to make it in Jazz-age New York.
The discount Terry Pratchett is The Light Fantastic at £1.99. If you’re adding to your Georgette Heyer collection, it’s the Gothicky and creepy Cousin Kate at 99p this month, with Devil’s Cub and a couple of others at £1.99. As I’ve said a couple of times now, Peter Wimsey (and Heyer actually) are emerging from copyright restrictions so there are a lot of very cheap editions of some of the books available now, but I can’t vouch for the quality of them. However, The Nine Tailors is the “proper” edition of a Peter Wimsey that is 99p this January. I’m on a bit of an Agatha Christie kick at the moment as well, and there’s a similar issue with hers – I’m deeply tempted by 49p French editions of some of her Poirot novels, but slightly dubious if the translations will be ok. Anyway, in English one of her non-series books The Sittaford Mystery is 99p, as are a lot of her short stories – although I’m not sure how you work out what are in the various anthologies and what aren’t.
I bought a couple of books while writing this (what’s new!) but also added a few more to the Kindle Unlimited list. All I need to do now is finish some of the other KU books I have borrowed…
It’s the first BotW that I read in 2024 and it’s one of my Christmas gifts. And it’s non fiction, so here we are ticking off some goals for the year – more non fiction and reducing the pile!
Capote’s Women is Laurence Leamer’s look at Truman Capote and the women who he surrounded himself with – right up until the point where he published thinly disguised versions of them in his famous – or notorious – extract from his unfinished novel in Esquire magazine. This functions as a bit of a group biography – looking at each woman’s life and how it fitted in with Truman’s.
I’ve read – and written – about this little coterie before and this is a pretty good overview of the women and their involvement with Capote. I think I was expecting more about the fall out from his article – but I think I might have drawn that conclusion from the fact that the book is the basis for the next series of Feud because looking back at the blurb for this, it doesn’t really imply that. Several of the women are interesting enough that you want to read more about them – some of them I already have, others I’ll keep an eye out for. There are a couple of Swans not covered – including Ann Woodward, which is a fairly big omission, but you wouldn’t know there was any one missing if you didn’t know about the group already if that makes sense! You do sometimes lose a little track of where in time you are as it goes through the women, but I think trying to go with everything chronologically would have been even worse and very, very confusing.
Anyway, this was an interesting read that fitted right into my areas of interest that I was delighted to get for Christmas. I look forward to seeing what the TV series does with it! it’s out in hardback now but you can also get it in Kindle and Kobo – and as a bonus the price on the e-edition has come down to £4.99 (from £9.99) over the last day or two.
So I started 2024 by continuing the Drina binge and then started a new series of (short) cozy crimes with a home renovation theme. And I’ve already read one of my Christmas books, before it even made it onto the pile! I’ve started a couple of this month’s NetGalley books, but I haven’t finished any yet, so I’m basically already behind there. Hey ho I enjoyed my reading and that’s the main thing right?
Having seen two productions of Private Lives in 2023, I thought I’d start 2024’s NOt a Book selections by flagging a documentary I watched over Christmas about the play’s author, Noel Coward.
This is a ninety minute journey through Noel Coward’s life, mostly told in his own words. This is largely told in his own words – through clips from TV appearances and home movies, with extracts from his writings read by Rupert Everett and the whole thing narrated by Alan Cumming.
I’m a pretty big theatre-goer (as you probably know by now!) and so I’m fairly aware of the impact that Noel Coward had on the theatre – I’ve seen Private Lives live four times now (in three different productions), Blithe Spirit twice and Hay Fever as well. I probably should have seen more, but historically I went to musicals more than plays, and plays also used to be harder to get cheap tickets to (although that is now improving/changing). Even if you’ve never seen his work, you may have a distinct image of him in your head -smoking a cigarette and wearing a dressing gown and talking in a very clipped upper class British accent. And you’ll hear Coward referred to as “a witty raconteur” – which can often mean “humour may not translate”. But actually when I was watching this I found him genuinely funny and his life is actually fascinating – his childhood in poverty, building a theatre career, being gay in a time when it was illegal – but not exactly hiding it either, and then when his plays fell out of favour, reinventing himself on the cabaret circuit.
If you already know about Coward, I’m not sure that there’s going to be a lot here that you don’t already know, but for the rest of us – who don’t want to wade through three volumes of autobiography or try to figure out which is the right biography to go for this might do the trick – we certainly enjoyed it while we were watching it – and I spent more time paying attention to the screen than reading my book, which is not always the case!
If you’re in the UK, it’s being repeated in the early hours of the 11th, and you can watch it on iPlayer for the next 11 months.
Not going to lie, I didn’t want to do this post because, well you’ll see. But I do try to be honest here and so here is some transparency…
We enter 2024 with the to read pile bigger than ever. I’d love to say that all the books in front of the shelves are borrowed, but they’re not. I’ve just expanded beyond the shelves – which I said I wouldn’t do. It’s been a little this way all year, but has got worse in the last few months as I’ve been away from home a lot and so reading off the kindle and not physical books, and while I was trying to finish off the 50 states. So my goal for this year is to try and get back into *just* having the bookshelf of unread books and not piles nearby too. Wish me luck everyone…
So the headline here is that I did it! It came down to the last day, and to Oklahoma, but I managed to get it done. There are a few series making repeat appearances on the list, and a few authors repeating within the list but I’m sure you’ll forgive me that. Of the other stuff, I’m not going to say that I liked everything that I read, but I did like quite a lot of them – as you can see from the number that have got links through to posts featuring them. I’m still debating doing it again this year, but I think I probably will, it’s quite fun – and every year I manage to do more of them without having to think about it – this year there were only about six that I had to do panicky searching for books to fit at the last minute…
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 728
Well here we are at the end of another year and with a month that turned out to be unexpectedly productive. Who could have predicted that because it was also a really, really busy month. I’ll probably have another rejig of the format of this post for next year, I’m not quite sure how yet but I’ve got a month to think about it haven’t I! I’ve also been thinking about my reading goals and aims for the year but that’s a story for another day. I’ve already told you about my favourite books of the year – you can find those links here, here and here. Onwards we go!
Bonus picture: one last Christmasy photo from the walk to work last week in the Twixtmas.
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including this month
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 