Verity Reads Books (lots of them)
In which our heroine attempts to tame the to-read pile
Happy Friday everyone, it occurred to me that I haven’t done a round up of all the various series posts I’ve done for a while. But there’s so many of them now that I’ve actually just done the romance ones for you today because it’s February and it’s Valentine’s Day the other week. And I’ve tried to categorise them a little bit for you.
Small Town romance
Showbiz/showbiz adjacent
Sports romance
Paranormal
Historical romance
Novella series
After picking a Kate Shackleton yesterday which was particularly evocative of Yorkshire I thought I’d mention a few more books set around the county
Let’s start with one of my very favourite Georgette Heyer’s – Venetia. Most of this is set in and around Venetia and Damerel’s houses in rural Yorkshire. Venetia is feisty and independent- but Jasper is one of Heyer’s best hero’s and among the most well fleshed out. Another Yorkshire set historical romance – but with a very different vibe – is Sarah MacLean’s Ten Ways to be Adored while Landing a Lord. Our heroine is running the family estate with very little money, and the hero is escaping from fashionable society to the country. This is the second in the Love by Numbers series.
When other people were reading Rivals, I was reading Barbara Taylor Bradford. And A Woman of Substance is set in Leeds and the surrounding countryside. I think this was the first book with sex scenes I ever read but it’s mostly a big old saga as Emma Harte raises herself up from housemaid to department store tycoon. I did read the rest of the trilogy and some of her others, but I think this – which was her big breakthrough was the best.
I mentioned it in the summer when I went to see the stage adaptation at the Open Air Theatre, but a reminder that Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is set in Yorkshire. I’m going to admit that I haven’t reread this since I was a child, so I can’t swear to how the original is aging… and of course there’s also James Heriot and his adventures in veterinary medicine.
Another book I read recently is Sovereign, the third in the Shardlake series, which sees Matthew following in the train of Henry VIII as he makes his progress to York. As well as a good murder plot it’s also really good at creating sixteenth century York – and given how much of old York still exists you can really conjure up the settings in your head. It was particularly good for me because my history supervisor at university was based in Kings Manor, which is one of the principal locations.
And finally several of the series I really like have installments in yorkshire – including Lady Julia Grey and Royal Spyness, but you really need to ahve read the others to get the most out of them.
Happy Humpday everyone!
Yeah, so the reading list is being held up by the audiobooks and I’m not really sure why, because it felt like an ok week in reading. The Kings Loot is nearly finished though, and I’m not making bad progress on the Holly Stars. But that still reading list is looking a little long, so I need to do a bit of work on that front this week, or at least try to.
Read:
Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh
Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer by Lee Hollis
Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh
Metropolitan Murders edited by Martin Edwards
Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh
Murder in the Afternoon by Frances Brody
Started:
The Kings Loot by Richard Wallace
Still reading:
Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars*
The Favourites by Layne Fargo*
A Traveller in Time by Alison Utley
Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher
No books bought, which is probably a good thing really things considered.
Bonus picture: Filming in Fitzroy Square on Friday
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Happy Sunday everyone and hilariously this post was mostly written before I realised that in order to compare something to Jonathan Creek, I probably needed to explain what Jonathan Creek was and why I love it because it is somewhat vintage these days and I am old. So now I’ve done that, my review of Ludwig will make more sense…
Ludwig is a six-part detective drama-comedy series starring David Mitchell as John, an anti-social puzzle designer and Anna Maxwell Martin as his sister-in-law Lucy. In the first episode Lucy sends for John to help as her husband, his identical twin brother James has gone missing. James is a police detective and has left her a letter of resignation as well as some instructions. Lucy says that James has changed over recent months and rather than submit his resignation or report him missing she wants John to pretend to be James and infiltrate the police. Thus starts the running plot of the series alongside a murder of the week each episode.
I described this series to one of my work colleagues as Jonathan Creek but with puzzles instead of magic and a running plot beyond Creek’s will they or won’t they in the Maddie years. I struggled whether to call it a drama or a dramedy or a drama comedy in the description at the top because there is humour but it’s not laugh-track sitcom funny (or at least what sitcoms are aiming for) and if the comedy to drama scale has Brooklyn 99 at the comedy end and something really bleak at the other, this one falls somewhere closer to the halfway point than to the Brooklyn 99 end. It’s got less jokes than Deadloch but it’s also nowhere near as bleak as the final episode of that gets (which was nearly too far for me).
I really enjoyed the murder of the week element, but I did worry how they were going to resolve the fact that John was pretending to be a police officer – and what might happen to those cases that he had solved. But actually it sorted that pretty neatly in the end. And it’s got a lot of familiar faces to me in the various murder cases – mostly people who I’ve seen in the theatre more than on TV – like Hammed Animashaun who was one of the scene stealing thugs in the Kiss Me, Kate I loved so much last summer.
This has already been commissioned for a second series, which is good news for a number of reasons. If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s on the iPlayer now in the UK, but I’m not sure what the international streaming situation is – BritBox US’s website doesn’t work properly for me because I’m in the UK and I can’t face setting up a VPN just to find that out!
Have a great Sunday everyone!
Well it all went a bit downhill this week after Ballet Shoes – work was insanely busy and I had a cold. And I didn’t even stay up for the start of the Super Bowl – which tells you something about how tired and grotty I was feeling! Fingers crossed for a better week this week…
Read:
A Victim at Valentines by Ellie Alexander*
A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh
Indignant in Indiana by Patti Benning
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson
Charred to Handle by Patti Benning
Death Upon a Star by Amy Patricia Meade*
Started:
Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars*
Metropolitan Murders edited by Martin Edwards
Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer by Lee Hollis
Still reading:
The Favourites by Layne Fargo*
A Traveller in Time by Alison Utley
Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher
One book bought. That’s it. Restrained.
Bonus picture: the National Theatre and South Bank complex looking over towards St Paul’s after Ballet Shoes
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
It’s still early in the year, so the book release calendar is still getting itself sorted for new stuff, but I’ve been wandering the bookshops of central London to take a look at what is about at the moment so that I could report back!
I’m starting with a set of books from Foyles where we have a few that are almost certainly too much for me on one front or another! I read Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires a few years back and it was a great idea but the horror was too much for me. I have learned from that – this one is about a home for unmarried mothers in Florida in the 1970s and is clearly Not For Verity, even if I know it will be for others. I still have Alex Hay’s The House Keepers on my Kindle TBR so I’m not allowed to buy anything else from him before I’ve read that. And the same applies to the Tom Hindle. And the rest all look to be down the end of the thriller spectrum that is too scary for me!
There’s a few duplicates here in Waterstones Piccadilly, but there’s also a few that I’ve read too – the Richard Osman, Robert Thorogood and Richard Coles. I read the previous book in this Faith Martin series and I have the Leonora Nattrass waiting to be read too. And there are some lovely covers – The House With Nine Locks is beautiful and Ink Ribbon Red and White City are striking too – even if the actual books probably aren’t my thing.
For some reason, I like the crime and mystery covers that are about at the moment more than the women’s fiction/romantic fiction ones. So much at the moment seems so similar. And I know that’s always been the way with cover trends – see all the cartoon covers in the early 00s, and then the headless ladies of historical romance – but at the moment it’s like there’s four styles only that they’re choosing from. And maybe that’s why I’m buying more mystery in shops than anything else right now?
Have a great weekend everyone!
Another busy but solid week in the end. Slightly more novellas than usual, but a few things crossed my path and it was a bit of a difficult week so they suited what my brain could cope with. Hopefully this week will be better.
Read:
The Bookstore Sister by Alice Hoffman
The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman
Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh
Murder as Fine Art by Carol Carnac
Vexed in Vermont by Patti Benning
Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh
Oddities in Ohio by Patti Benning
The Fan Who Knew Too Much by Nev Fountain
Tune in Tomorrow by Melanie Benjamin
Started:
A Victim at Valentines by Ellie Alexander*
Still reading:
Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson
The Favourites by Layne Fargo*
A Traveller in Time by Alison Utley
Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher
One book, one pre-order. Restrained.
Bonus picture: another jigsaw finished. The Discworld Emporium ones are really tricky. Lots of similar colours in different areas.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Books read this month: 31 *
New books: 19
Re-reads: 12 (all audiobooks)
Books from the to-read pile: 5
NetGalley books read: 2
Kindle Unlimited read: 8
Ebooks: 4
Audiobooks: 12
Non-fiction books: 1
Favourite Book: Paradise Problem (although the final part of the Fangirl Manga was also really good)
Most read author: excluding the Ngaio Marsh and Kerry Greenwood audiobooks, Diane Mott Davidson and Vicki Delany with two each.
Books bought: Five books and three ebooks
Books read in 2025: 31
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 760
A very busy month in real life, and a set of stats held up by the fact that it’s the start of the new year and audiobook relistens count to the total again. Relatively restrained on the purchasing front – mostly helped by the fact that a lot of what I wanted to read was in Kindle Unlimited.
Bonus picture: my favourite sign from my visit to Bookends at the start of the month
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including this month!
I mentioned a few small town series in my post on Wednesday, but I’m taking the opportunity this Friday to remind you about the Fool’s Gold series. There are twenty full length novels in Susan Mallery’s series set in a small town in California as well as twenty five novellas of various lengths. The novels come in groups – friendship groups, or siblings, or business partners – where they all getting paired off one book after another. Overall the series covers about six years in the life of the town. They’re very easy to read – and even easier to read one after another. As I said in my original post there is a slightly higher pregnancy ratio plot than I would usually go for, but they’re so relaxing I let them off. If you don’t want to start at the beginning, I suggest you start with the group of retired sportspeople that start at book 14.
Have a great weekend everyone!
A fairly solid week – it may be the end of January but I’m still reading a bit of Christmas stuff here and there, which is fairly typical for me. I also need to remember to keep track of this so I don’t forget them by the autumn! Anyway – more physical books than ebooks, but also still not the long runners. Hey ho. Better luck this week…
Read:
A Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh
The Vanishing Box by Elly Griffiths
Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh
White House by the Sea by Kate Storey
Deadly Directors Cut by Vicki Delany
Murder under the Mistletoe by Rev Richard Coles
Fangirl the Manga: Vol 4 by Rainbow Rowell and Gabi Nam
Natural Selection by Elin Hilderbrand
Started:
The Fan Who Knew Too Much by Nev Fountain
Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson
Still reading:
The Favourites by Layne Fargo*
A Traveller in Time by Alison Utley
Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher
Well… I may have been in to Waterstones Piccadilly, and I may have bought two books and ordered two more. I’ve read two of them and started a third (the fourth hasn’t arrived yet). And I bought an ebook too. Oops.
Bonus picture: Shaftesbury Avenue on the way back from that Waterstones jaunt on Monday night – in a rare moment I haven’t seen any of the shows whose theatres you can see. But I do intend to change that asap with Oliver!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
