Category: Authors I love

Authors I love, Book of the Week, fiction

Book of the Week: The Celebrants

veritywilde

A diversion away from mystery and romance into “proper” fiction today. And this has been on my shelf since the paperback came out in February last year, but given that I had a Very Bad Year last year when it comes to people dying it has taken a while for me to be in the right place to read it, much as I love Stephen Rowley.

The Celebrants follows a group of friends, who made a pact in college to throw each other “living funerals”, after one of their group dies. Nearly 30 years later, the five of them are still in touch, but rather than the funerals making them think of all the reasons life is worth living, all they seem to do is make them remember what could have been. But one of the group has just had a diagnosis that there’s no coming back for, and the whole group will need to face their past head on.

As I said, I had a bad year last year on the losing people front, and wasn’t really in a place to want to be reading about impending death in a friendship group, given that I was living through precisely that. But I’m in a better place at the moment (or at least a more resilient one!) and so I went in. And it’s really good – it will remind you about the friends you’ve made over the years, how the friendships you made with people you met when you were young can sometimes survive all the changes that come with the years and still understand you better than almost anyone else and also that you never do really feel any older than you were just after you graduated college.

This was a lovely read – and although it made me tear up at the end, it was worth it (if that makes sense). I really like Rowley’s writing style and his characters are always so real – no one is perfect, they’re all three dimensional, flawed people. The narrative moves around through the years between their various funerals as different things happen in their lives and that really worked for me too and broke up the potential sadness nicely.

Annoyingly, this one isn’t available on Kindle (and nor is the Guncle sequel which is a right pain) so you’re going to have to get this in a physical edition. I’ve seen the Guncle in the Big Foyles, but not this one, so it may also be a special order. But it is worth it.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, Book previews, Series I love

Out Today: New Rivers of London

veritywilde

Happy New Rivers of London Week! Book 10 in Ben Aaronovitch’s series, Stone and Sky, is out today and I am very, very excited! It’s three years since we last had a full length novel in the series – since Amongst Our Weapons in 2022 we’ve had two novellas, both set in the US but one in the present day with Agent Reynolds, and one in the past with Nightingale in Jazz Age New York. Now they were both great, but I am so excited to see what’s happening to Peter. We’ve had a few hints in the graphic novels because the last three have been beyond the end of Amongst Our Gifts, but it’s not the same as a proper novel. My copy has already arrived – early in fact, except I was staying in London (and it was hot hot hot) and so the only problem is I’m off on a trip for work tomorrow and I don’t dare start it because I’m not sure I’ll get it finished before I have to leave and I don’t want to trek it away with me part finished and when I know I’ll buy books at the airport…

Authors I love, Book of the Week, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Show Don’t Tell

veritywilde

Happy Tuesday everyone and today I’m back with a new release (it’s under two weeks since it came out, that totally counts as new still) collection of short stories from one of my favourite authors.

This is a new collection of short stories from Curtis Sittenfeld, mostly looking at various aspects what it is like to be a women, usually a woman in her forties, in the Mid-West of America. It’s her first full collection of short stories since 2018’s You Think It, I’ll Say It which was also a Book of the Week when I read it in 2019 (and which is probably the only book of hers I don’t own. I should fix that). Since then she’s written Rodham, her alternative history of Hillary Clinton, and Romantic Comedy which was one of my very favourite books of 2024 and which I now want to go back and read again. It should also be noted that there is a bit of overlap here with some short stories having appeared elsewhere individually or in a mini collection. But given that I didn’t write about any of those at the time I’m feeling ok about recommending this – just if you are a fan (like me) you’ll have read some before and you may want to calibrate your expectations of new stuff accordingly.

Anyway there are not enough stories about normal women, with normal lives doing things and this is full of them. As with that last collection there is just enough action to keep things moving but not so much that you don’t get to know the character. And once again Sittenfeld has picked out a few things that are happening in the world and done interesting and often witty takes on them. It’s just lovely. Really really nice. I rationed myself to make it last longer. It’s that sort of book – and you can do that with short stories if you just let yourself read one in a sitting.

As you could see from my photos at the weekend, this is getting shelf space on display in the bookshops, but it’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, Series I love

Belated Happy Birthday Soulless!

veritywilde

One of the things that happened last month that I missed was the fifteenth birthday of Gail Carriger’s first book, Soulless. I wasn’t quite in on this from the start – I started reading her about five years in, but I have consistently revisited Soulless since – and read all of the connected books at least once. I own many of them in more than one format – Soulless I have in paperback, ebook and audiobook (which I’m actually listening to at the moment) because that is the sort of person I am. Anyway, the point of this is to point you back at my series post for the Parasolverse, although I’ve also got review posts for a bunch of the later books which I read after I started this blog. So if you fancy some vampires, werewolves and more in Steampunk Victorian London this week, these could be just the thing for you!

Authors I love, books, Series I love

Forty Years of Discworld

veritywilde

It’s forty years today (24th November) since the very first Discworld book, The Colour of Magic was picked so for today’s Friday series post returning to one of my absolute all time favourites.

So I will admit that the early books of the series aren’t my favourites . Yes, I’ve reread them all, but I haven’t gone back to the first few any where near as many times as I have say, Going Postal or Guards, Guards. And if you’ve never read them, I do of course have a post for that – go and read my Where to Start with Discworld post. But that first book does introduce Rincewind, the incompetent “wizzard”, and the most famous trunk in literature, the Luggage. And although the social satire develops over the series, it’s here in embryonic form, as Twoflower introduces in-sewer-ants to Ankh Morpork, shortly followed by the first case of insurance fraud!

Book Four, Mort, is where I think it all kicks into gear as death and his white horse ride into the picture and in book six it’s the arrival of the witches and Granny Weatherwax. I’ve said before that the city-based and later books are my favourites, but really I find it hard to chose because they’re all old friends.

Back in the day, my sister and I used to fight to be the one who bought dad the new Discworld book for his Christmas book, and then we’d often read if before he did once it was unwrapped. And although it’s eight years since Sir Terry died, we have some new Discworld content this Christmas, because his daughter Rhianna and Gabrielle Kent have written Tiffany Aching’s Guide to being a Witch, which I haven’t seen yet but which I will probably buy at some point soon because I know what I’m like! Tiffany and the Wee Free Men were one of the brilliant final gifts Athert end of the series, and I’m interested to see what Rhianna has done with it all.

But basically the message of this is go read some Discworld, please and thank you!

Have a great weekend.

Authors I love, bingeable series, Book of the Week, detective, mystery

Book of the Week: Murder and Mendelssohn

veritywilde

So a slightly cheaty pick this week, as it’s not a book I haven’t read before, but as I finished the Phryne reread last week, I’m going to let myself break the rules!

Murder and Mendelssohn is the twentieth book in Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series and has a lot of the key threads in the series running through it. Inspector Jack Robinson asks Phryne for help investigating the murder of an unpopular conductor. Jack thinks the killer may come from among the choir he has been rehearsing so Phryne decides to infiltrate the choir and find out. But at the same time, one of her old friends from World War One is in town and needs her help keeping a mathematical genius alive.

My favourite Phrynes are the ones with a large cast of suspects, a love interest and a historical connection – and this has all of that. The full Fisher menage is here – with the exception of Lin Chung, and it has has Greenwood’s take on Sherlock Holmes in Rupert Sheffield, former codebreaker and current irritant to all around him except John Wilson.

I wouldn’t suggest you start the series here, because you’ll miss all the fun of getting to this point, but if you do make this your first taste of Miss Fisher, then it will give you a pretty good flavour of what everything is all about. One last thing – a warning: if you’ve watched the TV show, don’t expect this to be the same. I’ve enjoyed the series, but it’s a teatime drama and they have adapted the series to fit that – which means they’ve done a few things to Phryne’s love life, added some running plot strands that don’t exist in the book and reduced the size of the Fisher household somewhat. So treat them as separate entities if you can.

You can get Murder and Mendelssohn in all the usual ebook formats – Kindle, Kobo and the rest – and that’s probably the easiest way to get hold of them.

Happy reading!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: April 4 – April 10

veritywilde

A weird old week. Not even sure what was going on with me to be honest, except being really busy and doing a lot of house cleaning as everything was a state after all the covid. Onwards and upwards etc.

Read:

Enter a Murderer by Ngaio Marsh

The Cheltenham Square Murder by John Bude

Altogether Dead by Charlaine Harris

A Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch 

Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh

A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair

Started:

Agatha Christie’s Poirot by Mark Aldridge 

Stories I Might Regret Telling You by Martha Wainwright 

Still reading:

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Paper Lion by George Plimpton

Fire Court by Andrew Taylor*

The Start of Something by Miranda Dickinson*

Plan for the Worst by Jodi Taylor

The Fake Up by Justin Myers*

I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein

Ummmmm. Preorders arrived, another preorder added to the list and a couple of ebooks. Move along, nothing to see here.

Bonus photo: the street used as Sherlock’s house in the BBC series, as seen on my walk to the station last week.

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

 

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 28 – April 3

veritywilde

Did I have a week with a massive binge of Jodi Taylor and an inability to settle down to read anything else? Yes I absolutely did. Did I also go away at the weekend? Absolutely. Am I already behind on my plans for April? Totally. Hey ho. Happy Monday everyone!

Read:

A Thorn in the Saddle by Rebekah Weatherspoon

The Steam Pump Jump by Jodi Taylor

And Now for Something Completely Different by Jodi Taylor

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Christmas Past by Jodi Taylor

Hope for the Best by Jodi Taylor

When Did You Last See Your Father by Jodi Taylor

Why is Nothing Ever Simple by Jodi Taylor

Started:

A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair

Plan for the Worst by Jodi Taylor

The Fake Up by Justin Myers*

I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein

The Cheltenham Square Murder by John Bude

Still reading:

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Paper Lion by George Plimpton

Fire Court by Andrew Taylor*

The Start of Something by Miranda Dickinson*

A couple of books bought because Little Sis (who has a kindle on my account) was off on holiday and needed some fresh reading material! Or at least that’s my excuse.

Bonus photo: There is no photographic evidence of my weekend away, and very little of the rest of my week because it was a fairly standard mostly working at home, day in the office in London sort of week. So instead here are my happy face paper clips, which I was using to try and persuade my sister to make a stationery order this week…

Multi coloured paper clips with smiley faces

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

 

Authors I love

Squee: New Steven Rowley coming

veritywilde

Ok it’s not coming till 2023, and all I know about is the title – The Celebrants – but I’m super excited about this. I loved The Guncle last year and The Editor the other week, so something new from Steven Rowley is very exciting to me. To be honest I’m not even sure it’s real, because Goodreads seems to be the only place it exists right now. But hey, I can hope/a girl can dream!

In the meantime, the paperback edition of The Guncle is out in the USA on the 5th and in the UK on the 12th. And you should definitely read that. And then try to resist the urge to buy a kaftan!

Happy weekend everyone!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 21 – March 27

veritywilde

Another Covid-y week although I have now tested negative a couple of times. The early part of the week was spent sleeping on the sofa while the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice played in the background, the later part catching up on all the stuff I’d missed. All without leaving the house! I’ve shifted the Paustovsky off the reading list for a while – reading about beautiful cities in Ukraine is not something my brain can cope with at the moment. But I will come back to it at some point.

Read:

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood

And The Rest Is History by Jodi Taylor

Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh

The Lake District Murder by John Bude

An Argumentation of Historians by Jodi Taylor

With Love from Rose Bend by Naima Simone*

Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q Subtano

Started:

Hope for the Best by Jodi Taylor

A Thorn in the Saddle by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Still reading:

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Paper Lion by George Plimpton

Fire Court by Andrew Taylor*

The Start of Something by Miranda Dickinson*

No books bought. Clearly Covid is affecting my ability to buy books., i’m sure the to-read shelf is thanking me?!

Bonus photo: honestly I really struggled for a photo for today, because i haven’t been anywhere and no one needs to see my covid tests again. Anyway, here’s Mr Darcy and mr Bingley as seen from my sofa.

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