Category: book round-ups

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Father’s Day

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It’s Father’s Day today – so Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. And for those of you who don’t have your dad around any more, I hope you’re doing ok too.

I was thinking about some of my favourite dads in books for today’s post – and threw the question out to my little sister who suggested Mr Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (mainly for the comebacks not the actual parenting), Bridget’s dad from Bridget Jones’s Diary and Arthur Weasley from Harry Potter, all of which I can get on board with. I’d add Sam Vimes from Discworld to the list – in several of the Watch books he worried that he wasn’t a “good” man, in his early days he was a drunk, but he’s devoted to his son, Young Sam, and comes home every night to read Where’s My Cow to him – which when you know Vimes is quite a big turn around.

I’m also going to throw Thursday Next‘s dad into the mix – ok so he’s travelling through time hiding from the Chronoguard, but he drops in on Thursday whenever he can and tries to help and offer her advice when he can. Technically not their dad but their guardian, I’m still going to include Arthur from The House in the Cerulean Sea because he will do anything to keep his kids safe. On the same front, Mr Tom from Goodnight Mr Tom gets the nod from me too – after all he does adopt William – and by the end of the book William is calling him dad. Obviously the traditional choice in any list of great dad’s in books is Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, so you can take that one as read.

What I will say is that in writing this, I realised how many of my favourite books have dead or absent dads, which is a bit of a concern – but then the dead parent is a big thing in children’s books of a certain age – and often the drama in a historical novels is generated by the death of a father and the impact it has on the family – see Calamity of Mannerings most recently, but also a lot of the Georgette Heyer heroines and a lot of the more recent historical romance heroines too.

Which dads would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

Have a good Sunday everyone.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: May Quick reviews

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Only one new release in this month’s quick reviews after a couple of months of all new stuff. Which is interesting as I read a lot of new stuff last month, but I’ve already talked about most of the bits of it that I wanted to. Anyway, to the reviews

Summer Read by Jenn McKinlay**

Cover of Summer Reading set against a beachy background

I mentioned this on release day, and as you know I mostly read Jenn McKinlay’s cozy crimes, but the premise for this summer romance was very appealing – a return to a childhood home for the heroine who is at a bit of a crossroads in her professional life, and a newly arrived on the island hero who is searching for the keys to his family history. It’s sometimes a bit of a tough sell for a book to have a lead character who hates reading – after all we’re all readers because we’re reading it and so it can be hard to sympathise – but I think McKinlay does a good job of explaining Sam’s dyslexia and the issues that it causes for her. I’ll add that I’m not neuro-divergent – so I can’t speak to how accurate the depiction is, and obviously different people will have different experiences, but it all felt pretty plausible. I had a few minor quibbles – mostly around the fact that everything is very black and white and there’s a lot of jumping to conclusions going on at times in the romantic relationships. There’s also quite a lot of plot strands and that means even though the book is quite long, none of them really feel as completely explored as they could. But I enjoyed it and read it in two days so that says something too. I suspect it will work perfectly for people who are looking for something to read on their sun lounger – it’s a beachy summer read with a summery setting.

Proper English by KJ Charles

This is an Edwardian Murder mystery romance, set at a remote country house during a shooting party. Pat is a shooting champion, although she sometimes faces trouble from men who don’t like women being allowed to use guns. The party is at brother’s best friend’s house, where along with Jimmy’s family she meets Fenella – who deeply inconveniently is Jimmy’s new fiancée… I enjoyed it a lot and now need to read the other book that crosses over with this. I picked my paperback up in a second hand buying spree a couple of months back – a rare occasion when I’ve seen a physical copy of an early KJ Charles!

Strange Bedpersons by Jennifer Crusie

And finally for this month we have a Jennifer Crusie from the early 2000s. This is a fake relationship type set-up that sees Tess agree to pretend to be her ex’s fiancée for a business trip in order to help his career. In many ways this romance is quite of its time and I was never quite convinced that the hero and heroine belonged together (and even less so if it was a Democrat and Republican in our current political climate) but I do like filling in the gaps in author’s back catalogue and the snark and banter in this is great. This is a lot of fun to read if you don’t think about it too hard – and I read it in one sitting if that helps at all!

Anyway, that’s your lot, but just in case you missed them, the Books of the Week in May were Death of a Lady, To Love and Be Wise, Grave Expectations and Fake Dates and Mooncakes, and we’ve had Recommendsday posts on World War Two set novels, George III and (relatively) recent non-fiction.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: George III

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Have you been watching Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story on Netflix this week? If you have, and fancy some more reading about the period, I have the recommendsday post for you. The tie-in book for the series came out yesterday

Let’s start with the history bit – the Queen Charlotte they’re talking about is the wife of George III, aka the one who went mad, prompting the Regency, beloved of historical romance novelists for around a century now. She was born in 1744 and married George III a year after he became King. They were married for 57 years, until her death in 1818, two years before he died.

On the non-fiction front, Lucy Worsley’s Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court will give you a window into the actual life of the court at Kensington Palace in the first reigns of the first two Georges – which finishes ever so slightly before Charlotte arrived in England, but it absolutely sets the scene for what happened next and paints a vivid picture of all the rivalries that simmered under the surface – or not so under the surface. If we’re looking at wider aristocratic society at the time, it’s along time since I read it, but Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats looks at the lives of the Lennox sisters (who were descended from another one of Charles II’s illegitimate children in a nice throwback to my Coronation post the other day!) who were in and around the court during the reign of George III. Another of the big aristocratic figures of the era is Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (who in another throwback to the Coronation post was a Spencer) who was a socialite and political organiser with an unhappy marriage.

Meanwhile back to the royals themselves, George and Charlotte had 15 children, of whom thirteen survived into adulthood. Included in the children were George IV (the prince regent) and William IV, of whom there are a lot of biographies, but less has been written about the others. In Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III by Flora Fraser you can learn about the lives of the Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia and Amelia but also about their parents and life at court. If you want to go a little bit later, Fraser also wrote a very good biography of Caroline of Brunswick, wife of the Prince Regent, who had a very tumultuous life to say the least.

Moving over to fiction and Laurie Graham’s A Humble Companion ties in neatly with the Flora Fraser – as Nellie is a companion to Princess Sophia. You follow their friendship from childhood from George III’s era all the way through to the early Victorian period. And of course, as mentioned earlier, the Regency part of George III’s reign has been popular with historical romance authors since Georgette Heyer started writing about it. But Heyer actually started writing her historical romances in the earlier period and these include some of my favourites – we’re talking The Maskeraders, These Old Shades and Devil’s Cub. Aside from those, The Desperate Duchesses series is set in the Georgian period (rather than the Regency) and so is Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series, which I’ve only read a couple of but I know they have a lot of fans the romance groups that I hang out in.

And finally I’m going to issue another warning at this point – don’t go expecting Queen Charlotte to figure in the Bridgerton book series the way she does in the streaming series.

Happy Wednesday everyone.

Best of..., book round-ups, series

Series of the Year 2022

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So this is the point where I look back on the series I’ve read this year and pick out some highlights for you.

Let’s start with a new to me discovery – Her Majesty the Queen Investigates. These were fun cozy Murder mysteries with a royal twist. As I said in my series post about them, I think they work best in slightly closed settings – or at least not London – but I liked the characters and the tone a lot. It’s a shame there’s a year until the next one.

Moving on to Richard Osman. This year we got the third Thursday Murder Club book and they continue to be both clever and witty and fun but occasionally heartbreaking. This is the series that spawned the copycats that are popping up all over the place at the moment – I’m reading my way through some of them so you don’t have to!

I really enjoyed the Nanette Hayes mysteries, but I wish there were more of them. I am still looking for more 90s crime series that I missed out on (too young at the time!) and can catch up on now because they do seem to work for me – see some of the Fahrenheit series I’ve enjoyed. And I have another of the Liz Evans books waiting that I picked up from the charity book stall at the shopping centre. If you have any suggestions please do whack them in the comments please.

I’ve also carried on working my way though some of the other series I’ve been reading for years. I’m up basically up to date on the Kate Shackleton series now, as well as Dandy Gilver. It continues to be tricky to find new historical-set mystery series that I don’t wish to throw across the room, but I’m still trying. I hope Carola Dunn is having a happy retirement but I do miss her and the prospect of a new Daisy Dalrymple. But I’ve basically binged the Mary Russell series over the last two years, which has been good, but that age gap still annoys me. Royal Spyness continues and Kerry Greenwood has written a new Phryne that I’m saving for a special occasion. All hail Kerry.

Roll on 2023!

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Books of the Year: New Non-fiction

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Following on from Tuesday’s post about new release fiction, today I’m looking back at my favourite new non-fiction of the year, and this is a list that skews somewhat towards the memoir I’m afraid. But hey, there have been some really good ones this year, so sorry not sorry. Oh, and after all the success of my fiction picks matching up with the Goodreads picks, today we’re back to normal…

Stories I Might Regret Telling You by Martha Wainwright

Things I might regret telling you

This comes in the brutally honest confessional memoir category – as I said in my BotW review, possibly the most unflinching one I’ve read since Viv Albertine‘s. Martha Wainwright carries the personal revelations you’re used to in her music (Bloody Motherf*cking Asshole for example) into her look at her life so far. I saw her live in London this summer and she read a few excerpts from the book as well as singing songs from through her career and it was great. Anyway, if you haven’t listened to any of her music, but are interested in what it’s like to be an artist/creative type in a whole family of artists, this will still work for you.

A Pocketful of Happiness by Richard E Grant

A Pocketful of Happiness

This is another very raw book- Richard E Grant’s memoir about the loss of his wife and their life together. I read it on holiday and the showbizzy stories helped break up the sad bits and added up to something quite special. He’s very clearly still not over it, and maybe should have waited a little longer to write it, but his love for his wife and their wonderful marriage shines through it all. I hope writing it has helped him – and also that the reaction from readers helps too. You can see more about it in my BotW review.

Mean Baby by Selma Blair

Mean baby

Selma Blair’s memoir is another person looking back at their life fairly unflinchingly, perhaps unexpectedly if you only know about her from her movies. This is another book that featured in my Actor Memoirs post, and was nominated for Best Memoir or Autobiography in the Goodreads Choice awards – but lost out to Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died (which is also on my list). One of the fascinating things about this book is that despite some terrible behaviour at various times, Selma is clearly the sort of person that people want to be friends with because she’s managed to keep so many people in her life despite of the self destructive behaviour and alcoholism.

Get Rich or Lie Trying by Symeon Brown*

Get Rich or Lie Trying

Finally something that’s not a memoir- right! Anyway this looks at the influencer economy and social media and provided me with plenty of food for thought. It was a BotW back in March and a lot of it has stuck with me. As I said in that review, I’ve got a long standing fascination with books and podcasts about scams, and this sort of fits into that in a weird way – it’s not one big con like Bad Blood or Bad Bets but it’ll give you a sense of all the sort of scams that the internet has opened up.

And an honourable mentions should go to Harvey Fierstein’s memoir I Was Better Last Night about his amazing life in showbizness. I told you it was a memoir heavy list!

Best of..., book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Not New Books of the Year

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So yesterday we had new fiction books of the year, tomorrow I have new non-fiction for you, but today we have my favourite not new books of the year.

Ask a historian cover

Lets start with the newest – and it’s Greg Jenner’s Ask a Historian, which is out now in paperback and answers all sorts of questions that he’s been asked over his years as a public historian. He also has a new book for kids this year called You Are History, which I haven’t read yet but sounds like it’s a middle grade cross between Ask a Historian and his A Million Years in a Day. Anyway, Greg’s writing style is as much fun as he is in his podcasts, and Ask a Historian is a great book for reading in little bits when you get a chance, if you’re trying to get more reading done for example, because the question and answer format makes it easy to pick up and put down.

Moving on to some fiction, and I found it really hard to pick my favourite of the Persephone books I read as part of my gift subscription last Christmas, so I’ve ended up including a few of them here. Jocelyn Playfair’s A House in the Country was written during the war and deals with wartime life at a big country house. If you like books like The Cazalet Chronicles or Dorothy Whipple, then this maybe one for you to read. Then there’s The Young Pretenders by Henrietta Fowler about two young children who move to live with their aunt and uncle while they wait for their parents to return from India. I feel like if you’re the sort of person who liked Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes when you were younger, then this might be a book for you.

I’ve read a lot of classic crime this year – as all the British Library Crime Classics posts I’ve done demonstrate – but it’s been hard to pick favourites. So I’ve gone with a couple that were Books of the Week – Green for Danger by Christianna Brand, the creepy war time murder mystery in a hospital; Fire in the Thatch by E C R Lorac, about an arson attack; John Dickson Carr’s Til Death Do Us Part, with an impossible locked room mystery and Lois Austen-Leigh’s The Incredible Crime about a a murder and a drug gang in Cambridge.

This is already a long list, but two more before I go – for kids, Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais about three girls’ cross country cycle trip in France, and a romance: Jackie Lau’s Donut Fall In Love which features a Hollywood movie star and a baker falling in love and taking part in a baking show. Not necessarily in that order!

Happy Reading!

Best of..., book round-ups

Books of the Year: New Fiction

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We’re hurtling towards the end of the year, and so it’s time for my annual lookback at what I read this year and for me to try and pick my favourite things. Today we’re looking at the new release fiction that I’ve loved this year. And trust me when I say it’s been tough! And it doesn’t happen often, but for once some of the books that I loved have made it onto a bunch of best books of the year lists. Oh and I should add that this only looks at standalone books and not later instalments in series.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin*

Cover of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

I’ve already recommended Gabrielle Zevin’s novel to a bunch of people – and it’s been named Amazon’s Book of the Year, as well as being voted Fiction book of the year in Goodreads Choice Awards as well as Book of the Month’s favourite of the year in their vote and it’s on The Atlantic’s Most Thought-Provoking Books of the Year too. It’s a hard one to describe – even Zevins says she struggles! – although I did give it a go in my BotW review but it’s a story about friendships and opportunities missed and love all set in the world of computer games development. I think there’s something here for most people, even if they’re not expecting it. It’s being turned into a movie – so read it now and be ahead of the game!

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Cover of Lessons in Chemistry

And another of my favourites that other people are picking too is Bonnie Garmus’ novel about Elizabeth Zott. It also won a prize at the Goodreads Choice awards – this time best debut, but it’s also on the Good Housekeeping list, and she’s also Waterstones’ Author of the Year. Elizabeth is a chemist turned TV chef who uses her platform to try and improve women’s lives, all while bringing up her daughter alone. I read this the same week that I read The Unsinkable Greta James (see below) – so this ended up in Quick Reviews rather than as a BotW – but it was in my best books of the first half of the year – and I’ve kept recommending it since, but do please bear in mind the warning for sexual violence and death early in the book. This one is also getting an adaptation this time into a series – Brie Larson is starring in it and it’s going to be on Apple TV+ next year apparently.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry*

Cover of Book Lovers

I’ve actually done quite well in the Goodreads Choice awards this year – because Book Lovers won Best Romance – beating out TikTok favourite Colleen Hoover, even if you add her two nominated books together! This is big city literary agent in a small town for the summer where she discovers a professional enemy is also in residence. It’s a delight – I love enemies to lovers romances as you know and add a twist on the small town trope and it’s just a delight.

The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E Smith

Unsinkable Greta James

Now this got a whole lot less attention than the picks above, which is a shame because I adored it. I picked it as a BotW over Lessons in Chemistry partly because it was lesser known, and it really annoys me that more people haven’t heard about it. Greta is an indie popstar with a problem – she has writers block after her mother’s death and a meltdown on stage. She finds herself accompanying her father on the Alaskan Cruise that he was meant to be taking with her mum and things happen. It’s wonderful if sad at times, but the ending is perfect.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

Killers of a Certain Age

Now this was nominated for Best Crime and Thriller in the Goodreads Choice, but lost out to Nita Prose’ The Maid, which I read at the start of the year and enjoyed, but I think this is more fun. It’s about a group of women who have spent their lives working for an elite agency of assassins, but upon retiring find that they are now the targets. If you like Raybourn’s historical mystery series, you’ll like this. And if you’ve read the Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club books and are looking for something sort-of similar (The Bullet that Missed was also nominated in the same category) this might well scratch that itch.

That’s my five fiction picks. Honourable mentions should go to Carrie Soto is Back – which won the Historical fiction prize in Goodreaders choice (beating Lessons in Chemistry) – Thank You for Listening, Mad About You and Something Wilder.

book round-ups

Buy myself a Book for Christmas

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As I mentioned in last week’s Buy me a Book for Christmas post, I did a bit of purchasing while I was putting that post together, so this weekend, here’s the stuff I bought, in case you need further inspiration!

Firstly I should say that the way that I put together the Buy Me a Book post is the same every year – I go through my Amazon wishlists of Books and my Goodreads to-read shelf to look for books that I’ve added over the course of the year but haven’t bought. And then I go wandering around the various book buying websites to see how easy (or otherwise) they are going to be to get hold of. And secondly I try not to ask for books that might go on offers, be available in the supermarket 2 for however many offers and thirdly I should say that I was writing the original post in November, but it’s now December, so bear that in mind if I’m mentioning offers. Oh – and there are no graphic novels on the list because I buy those from my local comic book store and want to give them the custom.

Fiction picks

And the reason that the Buy me a book post was non-fiction heavy was partly because a lot of the fiction I was after was on some kind of offer! So I picked up the latest Emma Straub novel, This Time Tomorrow, and also the next book in Alexis Hall’s baking show series, Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble. I also preordered the next in Jen DeLuca’s Willow Creek series Well Traveled as well as the new Olivia Dade (which as you know already came out and I’ve already read), and I finally bought Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow. And because I happened to wandering around the Waterstones site, I picked up a signed copy of Rainbow Rowell’s new short story collection Scattered Showers. I did look at the British Library Crime Classics selection too – but that just added a load of books to my Kindle Unlimited list! Finally there’s Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, which was on offer in a special tie-in edition because the movie came out a couple of months back.

Non fiction picks

I’ve had my eye of Julia Boyd’s Travellers in the Third Reich for a while and this year a follow up is out. but both Travellers and A Village in the Third Reich were on offer on Kindle when I was putting the post together so rather than asking for the paperbacks, I just bought them! The new Anne De Courcy about Nancy Cunard (another in that group from the 1920s who pops up a lot) Five Love Affairs and a Friendship was on offer on Kindle at a sensible price for non-fiction, as was Mary Churchill’s War (the wartime diaries of Winston Churchill’s daughter, edited by Emma Soames) and Spying and the Crown by Richard J Aldridge and Rory Cormac. Then there is Heiresses by Laura Thompson, about heiresses from the Seventeenth Century to the present, which is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so I borrowed it. Oh What a Lovely Century would also have been on the list for this Christmas – if I hadn’t found that copy in the work charity book sale.

And I think that’s the lot. Have a great weekend everyone!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Quick Reviews

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As promised yesterday, here is this month’s batch of quick reviews – and stay til the end for the links to the other bits and bobs from this month.

The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Croft

The first of two British Library Crime Classics novels this month, this features a really intriguing series of disappearances. The Hog’s back of the title is a ridge in the North Downs near where Dr James Earl and his wife live. When the doctor disappears from his home, initially it seems like a domestic affair – with a husband giving up on an unhappy marriage, but then other people disappear mysteriously – including one of his house guests. Yesterday I mentioned that the suspense element of When Stars Collide doesn’t follow the rules of mysteries – well this not only follows the rules, at the end when Inspector French is talking you through his solution, it gives you the page numbers for the clues!

Death in the Tunnel by Miles Burton

The second BLCC is a variation on the locked room mystery – with the victim in a compartment on a moving train when he is shot. At first it seems like Sir Wilfred Saxonby has shot him self, but there’s no motive and soon inconsistencies appear and a murder investigation is underway. I had the solution- or most of the solution worked out before the end of this but it was still a good read, although if you’re only going to read one of these, maybe make it Hogs Back because that’s a totally baffling one for a long time.

The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatio Sancho by Paterson Joseph*

This was the very last book I finished in October and definitely deserves its mention here. This fits into the fictionalised real lives genre – in this case the life of a black writer and composer who lived in Regency London. As you might expect there are significant challenges facing him – and they are presented in this in the guise of a diary designed for his son to read when he is older (and it is suggested that Sancho will not be around to tell him them himself). Sancho was born on a slave ship and was given as a gift to three sisters who brought him up to be their servant before he escaped from them. I won’t say much more than that because it gives too much away – maybe I have already. The author is the actor Paterson Joseph who has spent two decades researching the life of his main character which he turned into a play before he wrote this novel.

And there’s a stack of other books I’ve written about – including older lady killers and other adventure stories, plenty of Halloween options if you still want spooky reading but also a really moving memoir and four series to get into

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: September Quick Reviews

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As previously mentioned September was a very strange month, with a somewhat truncated reading list, so I don’t have a lot to talk about this month at all. After all I skipped a whole bunch of Books of the Weeks for various reasons. And so there are only two quick reviews for you today – sorry about that.

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

When Bee gets her dream job working at NASA, her celebrations are cut short when she discovers that the co-lead on her project is Levi, her grad school arch-nemesis. When she arrives in Houston, her equipment is missing and the other staff are ignoring her, but maybe Levi might be on her side after all? I read this in The Week of Shingles and although I didn’t love it the way that I loved The Love Hypothesis, it was still exactly the book that I needed to read at the time. I’m a little fed up of Teeny Tiny heroines and Great Big Heroes – but that may be because I am 5’10” and no one is ever picking me up and carrying me around! I will never be tired of competency porn though, and Bee (and Levi) are very, very good at their jobs. I was expecting one strand of the plot to be A Bigger Thing in the resolution, but actually the whole of the end wrapped up very quickly – but it was very satisfying.

Bats in the Belfry by E C R Lorac

I’ve recommended a few E C R Lorac books now – and this is another good one. For some reason I don’t have a photo of the British Library Crime Classic edition that I read, so you’ll have to make do with this Crime Club cover that the kindle edition has. Anyway this is the story of the mysterious disappearance of Bruce Attleton. Bruce had a dazzling start to his literary career but has fizzled ever since. He’s been receiving threatening phone calls and then when he’s suddenly called away to Paris he seems to vanish completely – until his suitcase is discovered in an artists studio in Notting Hill. Inspector MacDonald is the man in charge of figuring out what has happened. It’s clever and intricate and worth sticking with – also it appears I’ve read three of these that are next to each other in the series – this comes immediately after These Names Make Clues, which comes after Post After Post Mortem.

That’s it. I said there were only two. I don’t even have a lot of links for the month either, so rather than depress myself further at how badly September went, let’s end it here.

Happy Wednesday everyone.