Last week was the biggest book release week of the year, and so I’ve been in the bookshops to check out the new arrivals. Because of course I have, what else would you have expected of me?!
Apologies for the angle – there was a table of non fiction in the way of the straight shot, but here are the foodie and celebrity books front and centre at Waterstones Gower Street. I’m not going to talk you through all of them, just the ones that are interesting to me. If you haven’t watched Stanley Tucci‘s TV programmes where he goes around Italy eating amazing food, then you’ve missed out. This is his second book off the back of the success of those series – this one is a diary of the food he ate over a year. The Nigel Slater is a similar sort of collection of food writing rather than recipes. Rebel Sounds I hadn’t seen before, and actually came out at the end of September, but it’s a look at the role music played in the twentieth century in resistance to oppression of various types. And From Here to the Great Unknown is the big celebrity autobiography/memoir of the year – it’s Lisa Marie Presley, as finished by her daughter Riley Keogh after her mother’s death. I had a read of the start of this one and it’s using different fonts for the bits written by Lisa Marie and Riley and actually I’m more interested to read it now than I was before.
More new non-fiction here, and again I’m not going to talk you through them all. But The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker is a history of the high street from Annie Gray, who wrote The Greedy Queen, which I enjoyed when I read it five or so years ago. The Scapegoat is about George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham and final favourite of James I. I’m pretty across the Tudors, and the Hanoverians, but I’m not as good with the Stuarts – particularly the early ones, so this in my area of interest, although we know how long it can take me to get around to a hardback history book… And the other in this category is Augustus the Strong, about an eighteenth century ruler of Poland and Saxony and which is described as a study in failed statecraft, as he left Poland so damaged that it disappeared as a state.
Now obviously not all these crime hardbacks are new, but there are a couple that are, and that I want to read. You know about the Richard Osman already, but I’m also interested in the Julian Clary – I read the introduction which made me laugh, and then started on the book and had to force myself to put it down before I accidentally bought it! There’s also the new Jackson Brody book – this is squarely in the “series I want to read, but haven’t got around to yet” as I’ve watched a couple of the TV adaptations and need to get the books they’re based on and read the others before I consider a hardback purchase. I’m also interested in Hells Bells, but that’s a sequel and I should probably read the previous one first. And finally there’s the new Jane Thynne down in the bottom left corner. I’ve read three of her five Clara Vine novels which are set in 1930s Berlin, but this is a standalone (or maybe the start of a new series), also in the 1930s but this time in London and Vienna.
And that’s your lot today – you’ll be surprised to hear I came away without purchasing anything, but that’s only because I was feeling so bad about the state of the pile and so many that I wanted were hardbacks…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 