This is another mega week of new books ahead of the summer – I don’t think it’s quite as big a week as the first one of the month, but it’s pretty mega.
Firstly two of my anticipated not sequels post are out – Kirsty Greenwood’s Love of my Afterlife and the new Kevin Kwan. But as the popularity of sports romances increases there’s also a Wimbledon-set Tennis romance Match Point by Katherine Reilly which comes just a couple of weeks before the tournament in SW19 and the same week as the new Roger Federer documentary…
Over in cozy crime corner, Ellie Alexander is starting a new series – with the first two out on the same day. I had an advance copy of Body in the Bookstore – and I’ve read it – and now I have the second, A Murder at the Movies, thanks to the wonders of Kindle Unlimited are both out this week. In historical mysteries there is The Stranger’s Companion which is set on the Channel Island of Sark and A Curtain Twitcher’s Book of Murder which is set in the 1960s
And that’s just the ones on my (virtual pile)! So have a great Thursday everyone, try not to buy too many books…
As I said yesterday, in a rare turn of events, I read all of the physical books I took on holiday with me, and this was one of them – an airport sized paperback version in case you can’t tell from the photo.
This is a potted history of how Formula One came to its current moment – massively popular and finally breaking America for the first time, in part thanks to the Netflix series Drive to Survive. This takes you through the many evolutions of the sport, to explain how the sport evolved into the sport-entertainment behemoth that it is today. The authors are journalists from the Wall Street Journal – who have previously broken down (in book form) the global success of the English Premier League. This is not a history of who won what and when – it’s a look at the evolution of the sport, the key characters and moments and particularly the business of F1.
Now regular readers will know that I’m a big motorsports fan, and Formula One is the series that I’ve been watching the longest* and I know a fair bit about it because I live with a massive petrol head who has been a subscriber to F1 Racing/GP Racing for about 20 years. I’ve watched with interest over the last few years the changes that have happened in the sport since Bernie Ecclestone was deposed from his throne as puppet master in Chief and new fans have arrived in the sport – including my own sister, who despite growing up in the same household as me, has never previously been interested in the sport – and still doesn’t watch the races, she just watches Drive to Survive when it comes out.
And this is a book aimed at fans like my sister (although maybe not my sister, because she’s heard me tell some of these stories before!), who are new to the sport and want to understand a bit more of the history and the personalities. I didn’t learn a lot that I didn’t already know, but I wasn’t expecting to – and it was all put together incredibly well and in a really readable way. I was interested in what stayed in and what got left out – I’m not sure Graham Hill got a mention, and neither really did the trend of the driver pool becoming ever more dominated by sons of previous drivers.
But that’s not what this book is here to do – it’s going to talk you through how the sport started, how Bernie Ecclestone took control of it and made himself a billionaire, the geniuses who have designed the cars that changed the sport – and how it all came together at the perfect moment when the series of Drive to Survive covering the 2019 season hit Netflix just before Covid hit and the world shut down. It briefly touches on the way fears that some people have about the Netflix-isation of the sport, but doesn’t go into the realms of speculation about what might happen next – for which I am thankful!
Him Indoors hasn’t read it yet – and I await his verdict when he does, because he knows the history more than I do and will undoubtedly spot some errors – but the only glaring one I spotted was late on when they described the famously Finnish Valtteri Bottas as Estonian – which given how his most famous Drive to Survive moment is probably the one where he’s naked in a Sauna (and he’s posted another Sauna videos on Instagram just three days ago as I write this) and he’s the latest in a long line of Finnish F1 drivers (many of them quirky) and Estonia to my knowledge has never had an F1 driver is a bit of a howler, but I’ll forgive them (as long as they fix it in the paperback!)
My copy came from the airport bookshop, but it’s out now in hardback if you’re not at the airport – my hometown Waterstones has click and collect copies available so you should find it pretty easily – as well as on Kindle and Kobo.
*I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the three things I watched on TV with my dad when I was little were Formula One, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Worzel Gummidge. How many episodes of Worzel we actually watched I don’t know, but it stuck in my head. The other two, we watched a lot.
So we’ve been on holiday! A week in the sunshine means I’ve read a lot of books – and I finished Travellers in the Third Reich!!! All it took was (another) holiday and I got it done. And it is very good – the only reason it’s taken so long is because it’s long and a tough subject. Anyway, my other major holiday achievement was that I finished all three of the actual books I took with me – one from home and two that I bought at the airport. I think this is the first time this has ever happened.
Bonus picture: A scene from our holiday hike. That’s me striding away from the camera on my way to the bottom of the giant rock. And it might look flat here, but this is the plateau after a bit of a steep climb!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
An eclectic selection this month. There are two Lumberjanes that I somehow didn’t get when they first came out, the two books I bought on the way to Lagos, the first Cesare Aldo which I ordered second hand after reading the first on holiday in April, a non-MaisieJacqueline Winspear and a Lauren Willig that I preordered ages ago and seems to have only just become available in paperback in the UK.
And what I realised after I took this photo is that – despite the fact that there is one Winspear in here so it should have jogged my memory, I forgot to include the final Maisie Dobbs in it. Now is that because I genuinely forgot or because my brain didn’t want to admit that I’d walked down to Waterstones Piccadilly on release day to buy it – and it a hardback at full price too. Thank goodness for a £10 Waterstones loyalty card reward. Even if that means I’ve already spent a lot of money there. And it’s not even the only bookshop I use…
Amidst all the romance releases last week, the sixteenth (!!!) in Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery series also emerged into the world. I’m still a few books behind – I still haven’t spotted number 14 in the bookstores that stock cozy crime, Amazon wants more than £11 for it in paperback (which is mad) and it’s not on kindle in the UK so I’ll have to wait. But this is my favourite of McKinlay’s series and the one where I think there’s the most potential for different locations for the characters to find bodies – particularly now they’re franchising the bakery. Although given how many bodies they find, would you want to franchise with them?! Anyway, go read my original series post about them and I’ll go off and chunter in a corner about the cost of US cozy crime mass market paperbacks in the UK!
Well that was a week. I’m trying to get ahead on my summer reading so I can recommend some of them but there’s just so much good stuff. And yes I did buy the final Maisie Dobbs, on release day, in hardback – but I am trying to pace myself with it so it’s not over too soon. And given that it is a hardback and I don’t want to wreck it, that may be easier than if I had bought the kindle version!
I wasn’t going to do this this week but then I went into my local The Works and they had a tonne of summer books and I though that I had to flag it to you all so you can get your holiday/vacation purchasing underway.
This is the new book section – and there’s a few that aren’t my thing but there’s the new Emily Henry, some of the big memoirs from Christmas at a bargain price (now coming out in paperback which is presumably why) the paperback of Yellowface, some TV tie-ins and cook books.
Let’s start by saying that if it wasn’t for NetGalley, pre-orders and airport purchasing, I would have spent a tonne of money because they have such good stuff at the moment. There’s the new Olivia Dade, the Tessa Bailey I bought on the way to Manila, Elle Kennedy, the new Amy Lea, and so many of the current New Adult favourites.
This is the slightly older but still not old enough to be in the 3 for £6 selection – all the Richard Osmans, Lessons in Chemistry, The Maid, the first Megan Clawson (the new one is in the first photo), Beth O’Leary and a tonne of sagas and crimes that are too much for me!
This shelf was where I learned that there are now three Finlay Donovan books! And I still haven’t read the first one. There’s a tonne of magic, sports romance, murder mystery and paranormal. Basically there are books for you in all the key genres that are trending at the moment no matter what sort of budget you’re working on. As long as you don’t read as many books as I do. For once I managed to resist purchasing, but that’s only because I was heading to buy a stack of books to give as a gift and couldn’t carry any more!
Fitzroy Square (location of Maisie’s office) in the sunshine
It pains me to say this, but the final Maisie Dobbs book has hit the stores this week. We know it’s the last one because Jacqueline Winspear has told us it is – in her newsletter and in the blurb for the book. We’ve reached the end of the Second World War and Maisie is looking to the future, so it does seem like a good point to end because the world is about to change, but that doesn’t stop be being sad about it. I’ve loved following Maisie’s life over seventeen books so far, there has been triumph but also quite a lot of tragedy and I’m hoping that book 18 sends her out to a bright new (happy) future. I’m hoping that this doesn’t mean that Jacqueline Winspear is stopping writing – although obviously I’ll live with it if she is retiring – but I’m holding on to the fact that she put out a standalone mystery last year, and that maybe she’s got a new idea that she wants to explore.
I’m hoping I’m getting into my summer reading stride. Of course it could all go terribly wrong – and it frequently has in the past – but I’m choosing to be optimistic. I think the weird and unpredictable weather has helped with this, because when it’s not sunny outside it’s nice to read summer-y books to hope that the nice (but hopefully not too boiling) weather is coming soon.
Most read author: Margery Allingham because of the ebooks
Books bought: 5 books and 6 ebooks and one preorder
Books read in 2024: 171
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 740
I’m going to call this the month of Kindle Unlimited, because it’s true really. I’ve read so much from there this month for various reasons, but it’s really justified its subscription price.
Bonus picture: another Lagos picture. Not that you can really tell!
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including 8 this month!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 