A good week in reading. I’ve already written about two of the new books on the list, and you’ll see that Gaudy Night is making it’s 2022 appearance on the list as the Wimsey re-listen continues (again). I’ve also managed to get through most of the books that I’d started but not finished, and I have a bunch of ideas percolating for posts because of them. In a very brave move, I’ve started reading some Russian Literature. Konstantin Paustovsky’s The Story of a Life has just been published in a new translation and I got a copy via NetGalley. It is very long and very dense, so it may well scupper my goal of finishing all the January NetGalley books in January, but I’m going to keep going at it, as much as I can manage in a day before my brain gets frazzled. I’ll keep you all posted…
As you’ll have seen in the Books Incoming post, a few things got added to the pile – four of them from my trip to the works at the start of last week and another bought while I was writing Recommendsday. Then there was one e-book purchase too. So not my most restrained week!
Bonus photo: This was Tuesday morning last week in the park – which you’ll be very familiar with by now, but the frost and the sunlight was just so beautiful I couldn’t help myself.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Can confirm: a couple of things got in the way of the reading last week. Firstly, the figure skating was on – and you can’t read and pay attention to the skating – and secondly it was my birthday. On top of all the usual stuff, that means the list is shorter this week. Also Ashes of London is really long.
I may have bought myself a couple of books as birthday gifts. But I was quite restrained really.
Bonus photo: In years past, the photo would have been of a trip for my birthday, but the omicron wave means this was my second birthday in a row at home (after almost a decade of going away for it!) so here I am on the sofa with some champagne and a book. And this very laptop in the background on the other sofa because I wasn’t paying proper attention to my backgrounds. I’ll never be an influencer will I?!
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Just when I thought I was finished with the Christmas reading, I read two more Christmas books. What am I like?! Keen eyed readers will notice that I’ve already finished one of my anticipated books and have started a second. And I’ve read one and started another from that pesky NetGalley backlog. A couple of Wimsey’s are on here – as audiobooks – as I continue to relisten to them all as I putter around the place. I’m making good progress on Vanderbilt – which is a hardback so not quite as portable as some of the other options, otherwise I think it would be finished already! The end of year/start of year posting frenzy is coming to an end I think, but I do have some ideas for posts coming up to try and keep a bit of the momentum going, even if it’s not quite as much as it has been for the last three-ish weeks!
Bonus photo: This week, as the only place I’ve been that isn’t my house is the park, the corner shop and Aldi, I thought I’d give you a change. Here’s an attempt to be creative – with some flower arranging…
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Well I do hope you have been enjoying the positive orgy of posts over the last two weeks – and we’re not done yet! Obviously there’s a book of the week post tomorrow, but there’s also the Mini-reviews on Wednesday as usual too. But on top of that I’ve been thinking about my Kindle Unlimited reading in 2021 and my anticipated books of 2022. As for this post, because I finished the 50 States challenge just before Christmas, my goal for the week between Christmas and New Year was to try and finish off all the books that have been hanging around on the Still Reading list for weeks. And as I managed that, I threw in a last a last bit of Christmas Reading as well. I’ve also made a start on a couple of my Christmas Books, as well as what seems like my annual attempt to improve my life in some way with some self help/productivity type books. I didn’t manage finish everything I started though, so the Still Reading list may be empty for one week only! And as we were not really going out because we were close contacts of a Covid case, there was plenty of time for reading so this week’s list is a long one – and as we’re in a new calendar year, the re-read count is reset, hence the appearance of Death in a White Tie again – which was my audiobook for most of the week.
I bought myself the Hayley Mills, and laid in the next Mary Russell after the one I started this week, but that was it I think. I’m kinda pleased with me!
Bonus photo: Some gorgeous colours at sunset (well nearly sunset) on Sunday after my very wet and cold trot around the park.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Amid the flurry of end of year posts, here is something completely different and that has been months in the making. It’s taken me a while to get this down in writing in a way that I’m anywhere near happy with and I’m still not sure I’m quite there. So why am I finally posting it now? Well, I was writing my end of 2021 post and it was starting to touch on some similar ground, so I thought I ought to get this out there first.
One of my very earliest posts on this site was about my love of Peter Wimsey. And over the years since then I have reread and relistened to the series over and over. But until the summer it had been years since I had Gaudy Night – in full at least and not as a radio play. But then I treated myself to the audiobook in August and listened to it. And I was enjoying it so much that I got the book off the shelf too. And then I realised that I was behind on my podcasts because I wanted to carry on listening to Gaudy Night rather than listening to them. And when I got to the end, I started all over again. And now I have a lot to say about it and Spoilers ahoy, not just for Gaudy Night but for most of the rest of the Wimsey books. Be warned.
A reminder, if you need it, that Gaudy Night is the third of four books featuring Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey. It is the book where Harriet’s relationship with Peter moves towards a resolution. The final book of the quartet sees the pair get married and Gaudy Night is the bridge that explains how they got from the tetchiness of the murder at Wilvercombe (which was already a step on from her mistrust and confusion in Strong Poison) to a point where Harriet has realised that she is in love with him and that taking a chance on another relationship might be the right thing to do.
She fell a victim to an inferiority complex, and tripped over her partner’s feet. ‘Sorry,’ said Wimsey, accepting responsibility like a gentleman. ‘It’s my fault,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m a rotten dancer. Don’t bother about me. Let’s stop. You haven’t got to be polite to me, you know.’
Worse and worse. She was being peevish and egotistical. Wimsey glanced down at her in surprise and then suddenly smiled.
‘Darling, if you danced like an elderly elephant with arthritis, I would dance the sun and moon into the sea with you. I have waited a thousand years to see you dance in that frock.’
‘Idiot’ said Harriet.
Have His Carcase
I have had the audiobooks of a lot of the other books in the series for years. In fact Busman’s Honeymoon was one of my earliest picks on Audible and I soon picked up as many of the others as I could that were read by Ian Carmichael. But he didn’t read all of them, so I filled in the gaps using radio adaptations of the series – again starring Ian Carmichael as Peter. I had Murder Must Advertise read by someone else, and Five Red Herrings read by Patrick Malahide (in a delightful crossover with my love of the Inspector Alleyn TV adaptations) but until thus summer I didn’t have either Have His Carcase or Gaudy Night in full on audio. But as I was working through audiobooks at some pace, I decided to take a chance on the Have His Carcase that Audible were offering. Now I have reread Have His Carcase a few times – because I think it’s a particularly well worked mystery – but I’d stuck to the radio play version because of my attachment to Ian Carmichael narrating. But actually after a little bit I got used to Jane McDowell, and although the code breaking section makes no sense to me as audio (it’s hard enough on paper), because it was told from more Harriet’s side than Peter’s the female narrator grew on me. So I bought Gaudy Night.
The thing it is easy to forget reading now is that Sayers spaced out the Peter and Harriet with other novels with just Peter and the poor readers at the time had no idea what was going to happen – if anything – between them. So when you realise Strong Poison (1930) was followed by Five Red Herrings (1931), it adds the context that perhaps the reason Peter has gone off to Scotland is perhaps to clear his head after Harriet’s trial. Have His Carcase is next (1932), when Harriet finds a body on the beach and Peter comes down to solve the crime (as she thinks) but also as the reader knows, try and make her situation better. Then it’s Murder Must Advertise, which focuses on Peter in his advertising alter ego but with a blink and you’ll miss it nod to what is going on with Harriet.
Wimsey put down the receiver. ‘I hope,’ he thought, ‘she isn’t going to make an awkwardness. You cannot trust these young women. No fixity of purpose. Except, of course, when you particularly want them to be yielding.’
He grinned with a wry mouth, and went out to keep his date with the one young woman who showed no signs of yielding to him, and what he said or did on that occasion is in no way related to this story.
Murder Must Advertise
Then the following year was the Nine Tailors before (at last) Gaudy Night in 1935. And early in Chapter 4 of Gaudy Night, Sayers sets out for you what has been going on in the background all along. I’m struggling to think of another series with a moment quite like it – where an author says “by the way, while these mysteries were going on, there was also something I didn’t tell you about”.
Was it too late to achieve wholly the clear eye and the untroubled mind? And what, in that case, was she to do with one powerful fetter which still tied her ineluctably to the bitter past? What about Peter Wimsey?
Gaudy Night
And then across the course of 500 pages, Harriet tries to solve a poison pen mystery at her old college, but decide exactly what about Peter Wimsey. She works her way through her hang ups after her disastrous relationship with Philip Boyes and starts to come to a better understanding of who she is and what it is about her that has caused Wimsey to propose to her once a quarter for years on end. And the reader understands him better for it too.
I have listened to the radio play version of Gaudy Night more times than I care to count, because even though Ian Carmichael is really quite old by that point, he doesn’t sound it and it is such a clever mystery as well has having a great setting in Oxford. But as I listened to it unabridged, I realised both how cleverly that radio adaptation had been done and how much had been taken out from the original novel. Reggie Pomfret’s whole plot strand is neatly snipped out and part of the evolution of Harriet’s feelings goes with it. And because it is a radio play you also lose the internal side of Harriet’s world and of course the glorious set up explaining what had been going on in the background with Harriet and Peter was missing too – because how on earth do you jump through a time line like that in a radio play?
After I finished Gaudy Night, I bought the Jane McDowell Busman’s Honeymoon and listened to that as well for the contrast with the Carmichael that I have listened to so many times. And it was interesting, but then I went back to Gaudy Night again. And again.
And so here we are, several months on. And I’ve probably listened to it in full half a dozen times. And my edited highlights half a dozen more: that chapter four description of the three years between Wilvercombe and Harriet’s return to her old college for the Gaudy. Her first encounter with St George and her subsequent discoveries about Peter’s relationships with his family – and then Peter’s reaction to that. His arrival in Oxford and their afternoon on the river. The chess set. The resolution of the mystery. The resolution. What it is about Gaudy Night that means it is what my brain needs at the moment I don’t know. But it is.
I’ve written bits and bobs here about the pandemic, but it’s been a rotten nearly two years for everyone. And it turns out that my brain had decided that the best way to get away from what’s happening in the real world and to help it relax, is to listen to the same audiobooks over and over again. Gaudy Night. Busman’s Honeymoon. Sylvester. These Old Shades. Artists in Crime. Death in a White Tie. And that’s ok by me, even if it does mean I’m months behind on podcasts I previously listened to religiously. But hey. These aren’t normal times. As is evidenced by the fact that I’ve just written the longest thing I’ve ever put on this blog to dissect my obsession with Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. Now if you’ll excuse me, Harriet is trying to write a letter to Peter about St George…
Hands up anyone else whose Christmas didn’t quite work out as planned? Yes, quite a lot of us really isn’t there. Still in our case it could have been worse – there was only one positive test, and the rest of the family are still clear. For now. Anyway, it came at the end of a very, very busy week and consequently this week’s list is mostly the tail end of the 50 states challenge (I finished!) and then Christmas (or at least festive) themed novellas. But that was what I fancied reading, so it’s allowed! Onwards to the last few days of the year. Coming up this week we have the end of year extravaganzas – as long as I manage to write them all…
Six more states ticked off! I’m so nearly there now that it’s tempting to add more targets for the end of the year, but I shall valiantly resist the urge. It was a busy week last week and this one is going to be another one as I try to get everything done before the big day on Saturday. Wish me luck!
Is this week’s list entirely dominated by books for the Read across the USA challenge? Yes. Was there some fun stuff there? Absolutely. Am I on track to finish it before the end of the year? I think so. As you were.
A bumper week of posts last week – somescheduled, one not. As I suspected last week, I’ve been mostly focussing my reading efforts on finishing my Read Across the USA challenge for the year – with four more states ticked off. I’m starting to get vaguely optimistic that I might complete it, but it’s early in December yet and who knows what I might get distracted by…
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne*
Theroux The Keyhole by Louis Theroux
Blood at the Bookies by Simon Brett
Bonus photo: I didn’t actually take a lot of pictures last week, but getting a neat square out of my lasagne on Sunday night may be the high point. What does that say about me?! At any rate, it made me happy in the it’s the small things way!
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
So I can confirm, that this was the week where I realised that I have just over a month until the end of the year and a lot of states to still tick off from my Read the USA challenge this year. Thus, a bunch of books got abandoned midway through while I started a scramble to try and get some more states ticked off. And I actually did ok – with three more off the list and some stuff ordered for some of the other missing states so things are feeling a bit more possible again. But I can feel a theme for the next few weeks reading coming along…
As I’ve already mentioned it at the top, I can’t lie – there have been a few books bought this week because of the aforementioned reading challenge and the fact that the tbr bookshelf isn’t going to help me with some of my missing states! I did pick up books for a few of them via Kindle Unlimited though, so that’s something right?!
Bonus photo: some comfort cooking for the picture this week, because there’s nothing like coming home from a sunny holiday into top temperatures of 4 degrees to make you want to eat something that will stick to you ribs…
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 