Category: Recommendsday

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Lost Heirs part 1

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Inspired by the latest Veronica Speedwell, today’s Recommendsday is books featuring lost heirs. They’re a staple of the mystery and romance genres, which as you know are two of my favourites, so I’m splitting the recommendations up and I’ve still had to restrain myself!

And this week we’re starting with mystery novels – where lost heir plots tend to revolve around whether a mysterious or reappeared person is who they say they are or if they are a fake. It’s a think that actually happened in history – Perkin Warbeck for example – but I’m mystery novels it’s usually an inheritance rather than a crown that the possible pretender is about to come into. It’s not a plot you can really do in the age of DNA, or at least it requires some creativity. So let’s start with a Golden Age Classic – Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar. In it a man called Brat Farrar appears and claims to be Patrick Ashby, the eldest son of the Ashby family who disappeared when he was 13 and thought to have drowned. He knows Patrick’s mannerisms and the story of his early life and it seems like he may pull it off, until secrets start to emerge…

Sweet Danger is my favourite of all the Albert Campion books (I think), and I listen to the audiobook or read it at least once a the year. In it Albert is trying to find the lost heir to a tiny Balkan principality and meets the family who claim they’re the rightful heirs. There’s also a ruthless crime Lord, witchcraft and the start of a romantic strand in the series – which I promise is not the main reason I like it! It’s actually a really good adventure caper as well as a mystery – and there’s no actual murder. You could also probably make a case that Agatha Christie’s Nemesis is a lost heir book in a way as well – as the mystery that Miss Marple is trying to solve is whether a a deceased millionaire’s son murdered a young woman or not – the son in question having disappeared.

Most historical mystery series will do a lost heir – or variation thereon at some point. In the Phryne Fisher series it happens fairly early on in the series – within the first half dozen in fact – and as the blurb is a little bit cryptic about it I shall be too, but you can probably work it out. The Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series has one relatively early on too – Justice Hall – the sixth in the series but really to appreciate it you need to have read the previous book O Jerusalem too, and they work really well back to back. In the Daisy Dalrymple books it happens much later in the series – Heirs of the Body is the 21st mystery (out of 23) and the whole plot revolves around finding which of four options is the heir to the viscountcy in Daisy’s family.

I’m fairly sure there are more of them that I’ve forgotten about – I’ve been mulling it over before I fall asleep at night and I’m fairly sure I haven’t remembered all the options I came up with, but that’s always the way with things that come to you as you drop off to sleep! But as I said, I have another post planned, and even if it’s meant to be all romances, I can always throw a mystery in if I remember something amazing…

Happy Wednesday

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Time Travel-y books

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After Friday’s Series I Love post about The Chronicles of St Marys, this week’s Recommendsday is on Time travel-y books – so called because it is a little bit more of a if you like x then try y post, as there are not a lot of directly similar books out there!

I’m going to start with time travel-y caper comedies and I have two for you. Firstly there’s To Say Nothing Of the Dog by Connie Willis. This was a book of the week five (!) years ago and back then I mentioned that you should read it if you like the Chronicles of St Marys – so I’m delighted to see that past me and present me are so consistent! This features a time traveller called Ned with a bad case of Time Lag (like jet lag but with time) who is sent to the nineteenth century to recover from the demands of an American Benefactor, but can’t remember what the job is that he was sent to do there. As an added bonus there’s stacks of Golden Age Crime references – my Goodreads review sums it up as: Time travel + history + humour + Peter Wimsey references galore = right up Verity’s street.

Then there’s the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. They’ve had a Series I love post before, but it was nearly two years ago, so it’s just about within the rules. Thursday’s not so much travelling through time as travelling through literature, but as she’s trying to stop people from changing literature, it’s a similar sort of feel to St Marys in a way. And it’s very, very funny. Although the fact that the Victorian-era Crimean War hasn’t ended in Thursday’s alternate reality 1986 feels a bit different in 2022 than it did when I first read then in 2013! Another one to start at the beginning – which is The Eyre Affair.

Moving on to less comedy, and less time travel-y but still moving through time is How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. Our hero in this, Tom, has lived for an insanely long amount of time – we see him at various points in history from Elizabethan era Britain to Jazz Age Paris to his currently life as a history teacher in modern day London. The most important thing is that he can’t fall in love. Except of course he does. I read this 5 years ago and really enjoyed it – writing this has made me think that I should go for a reread – or maybe read the other Matt Haig book I have sitting on the tbr shelf.

Now is the point where I should mention Terry Pratchett. You’re aware of my love for him, but actually Thief of Time is one of the Discworld books that it’s been ages since I read, which is nice because writing this post has started me on a reread. Or rather listen because I’ve gone for the audiobook this time. Anyway this one has Death, Death’s granddaughter Susan, the History Monks, an attempt to build the world’s most accurate clock which will actually cause the end of the world and more. Enjoy!

I’m going to finish with some children’s stuff – because there’s loads of time travel or messing with time in kids books. Firstly Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, which features a little boy who hears the clock strike thirteen one night while he’s staying at his aunt and uncles. When he gets up to see what’s happening he discovers that the back door now leads to the garden as it was in the 1880s – and it all goes from there. Then there’s A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – which is is an adventure story about children looking for their parents that happens to involve other planets and alien-y beings – I liked it, but I know some people have issues with this in the same way that they have issues with the Narnia books if you know what I mean. And then not so much time travel as ghosts is the Green Knowe series by Lucy M Boston, which are about an old house that the same family has lived in for centuries and the different people who have lived there who appear to the present day children of the house as spirits. I’ve not explained that very well, but I loved the first one in the series particularly when I was a kid. I reread that first one a few years ago and it still held up – I have them all on the shelf downstairs, I really should get around to rereading them all…

Anyway, happy Wednesday everyone!

Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: People who end up marrying the person they’re trying to save someone else from

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Long title I know, but all the shorter versions didn’t really cut it! Two weeks ago for Recommendsday we had Reformed Rakes in honour of Anthony Bridgerton. Today’s post is in honour of Kate – who in the book is 26 and on the shelf, but in the TV series is putting her younger sister first. So I went looking for historical romances with characters who are unmarried and trying to save someone important to them from marrying someone they think is unsuitable (and end up marrying the unsuitable person themselves) Before I get to my suggestions, I’ve read a lot of articles with reaction to the Sharma family in series two Bridgerton and what it means for South Asian representation – among them this one from Bustle and this from Glamour. Well worth a look. Anyway, to the books!

And it turns out it’s actually really hard to find heroines who aren’t desperate to jump off the shelf and who are saving someone from their heroes. I thought this was going to be a walk in the park – after all, I’ve read a lot of romances over the years. But I’ve put in proper time on this and unless I’m missing some super obvious options – or my search strings are out – it’s a tougher ask than I thought! I can find plenty of spinsters who want one night to find out what passion is (but aren’t expecting it to go beyond that), or who enter marriages of convenience because it’s the least bad option and then fall in love. But not a lot of Kates. But maybe that’s why the Bridgerton series are special?

In The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting, Sir John Hartlebury is definitely not a spinster but he is uninterested in marriage and High Society – so KJ Charles’s novel is actually quite close – Hart is trying to rescue his niece from dashing fortune hunter Robin Loxleigh, but ends up falling for Robin himself. There’s a slight Pretty Woman type situation that ends up going on, but handled well and without many of the pitfalls of that sort of thing.

The Georgette Heyers that are closest are probably Black Sheep or Lady of Quality – the key difference from The Viscount Who Loved me being neither of them end up marrying the man they’re trying to save their relation from. In Black Sheep our heroine, Abigail, is busy saving her niece from a fortune hunter when she falls in love with the fortune hunter’s uncle – just returned from India having made a packet. In Lady of Quality, Annis rescues a runaway heiress and falls in love with the heiress’s guardian. Ok so they’re not quite the same, but it’s closer than some of the other options – Frederica is trying to get her sister a dashing match and ends up falling for the cousin who has agreed to help them (rather than stopping her sister from marrying him), Hester in Sprig Muslin is an older heroine who is not expecting to marry, but she’s not trying to save anyone from Gareth – in fact she turns down his first proposal because although she (secretly) loves him, he doesn’t love her and Mary in Devil’s Cub is not so much determined to not to marry as doesn’t like the options she’s got, and although she does marry her sister’s original beau, he wasn’t planning on marrying her sister just absconding with her (Vidal, such a dastardly rake until he falls in love. Ahem).

In other slightly tenuous options, you could also probably count Alexa Tarabotti, the heroine of the Parasol Protectorate is a confirmed spinster at the start of the series in Soulless – but she’s not looking or trying to save anyone. Ditto Amelia Peabody in Crocodile on the Sandbank – whose age ends up being quietly reduced once it’s clear it’s gong to be a series and we’re going to keep going through til Ramses is an adult… Phyrne Fisher is also determinedly unmarried, but it doesn’t stop her from having as many boyfriends as she wants, so it really doesn’t count for this purpose!

And there you have it. An awful lot of work on my part, for not a huge amount of results. Tell me all the books that do this that I’ve forgotten about – or that I should have read – in the comments!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March Quick reviews

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Another month, another batch of mini reviews. I’ve already written about so many books this month, I was almost surprised that I had anything left to write about, and yet here are three more…

Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomons

Ari is a weather presenter at a Seattle TV station. Russell is one of the station’s sport reporters. Both of them are being driven mad by their bosses. Ari wants Torrence – the station’s star meterologist – to give her more mentoring but Torrence is too distracted by fighting with her ex husband – the station’s news director Seth. Russell wants off the college sports beat and onto pro sports, but Seth is paying too much attention to his fight with his exwife to take him seriously. After a disastrous Christmas party, Ari and Russell decide to team up to try and get Torrence and Seth back together. But over the course of their plan, the two of them end up spending a lot of time together too… I liked this a lot more than I liked the first book in the series – for some reason the romance in this just clicked for me. Ari and Russell make a great couple and each of them have valid reasons for avoiding relationships, but they work through them like sensible people (for the most part) rather than having dramatic Big Misunderstandings all the time. I also loved the fact that it had a Jewish hero and heroine – which is something I’d like to read more of! Lots of fun – would probably have been BotW if I hadn’t read Better Luck Next Time the same week.

With Love from Rose Bend by Naima Simone*

Owen is a former football player in hiding from the world after the accident that caused him to call time on his career. Leo is hiding from adult relationships by being constantly busy running her family’s business. Leo wants Owen to judge a contest at a town festival – but when she turned up at his house to ask him, she realises he’s the man she has a steamy one night stand with a year ago. And it gets slightly more complicated than that as a fake relationship element is added to the mix too. I’ve mentioned before that I like a sports romance and I also like a competent heroine and this ticked my noses in that front. Lovey weekend afternoon reading!

Sex Cult Nun by Faith Jones

Now this is a weird one. I’ve included it here because I think some of you will have seen it on my lists and known exactly why I was reading it – my ongoing interest in weird religious stuff -and wondered why I haven’t written about it’s so now I am and here is your answer: it is brutal. It’s bleak. It’s filled with child abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual abuse, neglect. But it’s also not as well written as say Educated and I don’t think the author has really come to terms with what happened to her, so it doesn’t actually really get you anywhere or give you a takeaway at the end. So it ends up just being a lot of really grim abuse without as much breaking away from it as you want/expect/hope.

And that’s the lot – and I know that’s a bit of a downbeat note to end on, but I couldn’t make any other order of the reviews feel any better!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Reformed Rakes

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So some of you may already have finished the new series of Bridgerton, which is based on the second book in the series – the Viscount who Loved Me. In case you need a recap, our hero Anthony is a reformed rake and the heroine Kate doesn’t think she’s ever going to get married but is determined to stop him marrying her sister because she doesn’t think he’ll make a good husband. So if you’ve watched the series and want to read something similar I am here for you. And so today we are looking at historical romances with reformed rakes for heroes.

And I’m going to start with the daddy of all rakes (in my eyes at least) the Duke of Villiers from Eloisa James’s Desperate Duchesses series. You don’t need to have read the five previous books in the series, but if you have by the time he gets his own book A Duke of Her Own, you’ve seen him being all rake-y through all the previous books – he’s even got the children to prove it and isn’t hiding them. Which probably explains why his matrimonial options are not huge. But that makes the happy ending (when it comes) even better. When this series originally came out, this one wasn’t initially published in the UK, but I was so keen to find out what happened that I ordered myself a copy from the US. But that’s not a problem now because you can get it on Kindle.

In Sabrina Jeffries The Truth About Lord Stoneville, the hero has been raking it up since the death of his parents but has to reform himself because his grandmother is threatening to disinherit him. The plot involves a fake engagement, an American heroine and a very feisty matriarch. It’s also the first in a series – with all of Stoneville’s siblings also having to get married if they don’t want to lose their inheritance from her.

My first Sarah MacLean book, as I’ve told you many times before, was Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake – and if you’re in the US it’s just come out in a new edition. Lisa Kleypas also has a lot of rake-y heroes – my favourite of them is probably Devil’s Daughter but I know lots of others Love Cold Hearted Rake. In the previous book of the week stakes, there’s also The Governess Game by Tessa Dare. And of course also in the Bridgerton series, is my favourite When He Was Wicked.

Happy Wednesday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: JFK-adjacent books

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Last month, I wrote a post of Vanderbilt-adjacent books after picking Vanderbilt as my Book of the Week. And while I was writing it, I realised that I’ve actually read quite a lot of books that could be described as JFK-adjacent at various points, so now I’ve finished The Editor, here is a look at the best of them – and believe me when I say I’ve read some bad ones too!

The graves of John F Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and their children who died in infancy.

Lets start with the non-fiction. And I’m going to start by saying that whether some of these will work for you will depend on how much you already know about the Kennedy clan. There are loads of biographies of each of the various members of the family, many of them really quite long. If you want a straight up biography of the man himself, the one I have read is Robert Dalek’s An Unfinished Life: John F Kennedy, which is long, but it is only one volume and it does give you a sense of what drove him and what the family was like. His dad comes across as being a particular type of nightmare – with massive ambitions for his kids that they could never live up to and that coloured all their relationships with other people as well. Of the non-politics members of the family, Kathleen Kennedy is possibly the most interesting – she had the family charisma and charm which she used to great effect while living in London while her father was the Ambassador. She married the heir to the Duke of Devonshire – who was then killed in combat. And she herself was dead long before her older brother became President. Paula Byrne wrote a biography of her called Kick – I think Byrne perhaps liked her subject a bit too much to grapple with some of the later parts of her life in depth, but it’s really good on most of her life and for what it was like to be one of the “other” Kennedys. I enjoyed it enough that it’s still on my bookshelves five years after I read it. There’s also (obviously) details about Jack and Jackie in Kate Andersen Brower’s books about the White House and its residents – I mentioned First Women the other week, but The Residence has a lot of detail about Jackie’s alterations and redecoration of the White House if that sort of thing interests you. You probably only need to pick one of them though – at least if you’re only reading for the Kennedy bits or if you’re planning to read them back to back!

There are also plenty of group biographies of the family out there but they do tend a bit towards the superficial – because there are a lot of Kennedy kids and thus a lot of Kennedy spouses! I read The Kennedy Wives by Amber Hunt and David Batcher around eight years ago – and even at that point I felt like I knew quite a lot of the detail already. But it was good for what happened to them all in the aftermath of JFK’s death – which is often where a lot of books stop. You will likely come away with the idea that the Kennedy men were hell to live with but that it is possible that some of the wives at least knew a little bit about what they were letting themselves in for. J Randy Tamborelli has also written about Jackie, Ethel and Joan – the wives of the political Kennedys – but it’s much older and I’ve not managed to get hold of it (yet). I have however read his biography of Marilyn Monroe – The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe – which had new (at the time in 2009) information about her relationship with not just JFK, but with Robert Kennedy and Pat Kennedy Lawford (and her husband Peter Lawford)

Dealey Plaza in Dallas, site of the assassination of JFK

On the fiction side of things, I’ve read several novels which feature Jackie Kennedy’s post JFK life, none of which I feel able to recommend – except if you want to be really annoyed! Most of them focus on the triangle between Jackie, Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas. I can however recommend Steven Rowley’s The Editor, which as I mentioned at the top I finished last week. His latest book The Guncle was a BotW last summer and I went looking for what else he had written and of the two options this jumped out at me. Set in the early 1990s, it’s about an aspiring writer whose first novel is bought by an editor at a major publisher – an editor who turns out to be Jackie Kennedy Onassis. The book follows him as he tries to works on his book with her help but also as she encourages him to work on his relationship with his own mother. She’s not the main character – and she’s a very enigmatic figure – so it’s not trying to see inside her head if that idea is something that worries you about novels about real people.

And finally there’s my favourite of the novels I’ve read about the Kennedys – The Importance of being Kennedy by Laurie Graham. Those of you who’ve been around a while will know how much I like Graham’s writing style and her books featuring real people. This was her next book after my beloved Gone With the Windsors and is another fictional person inserted into a real situation, in this case Nora Brennan, a nursery maid who takes a job with a family in Brookline Massachusetts that turns out to give her a ringside seat for history. She arrives when Joe jnr is a toddler and the book follows her through until Kathleen’s funeral. It’s sad when it needs to be, but it’s also witty and fun to read. If you’re only going to read one book from this post, maybe make it this one.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Romances on Ranches!

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Now I said in yesterday’s post about Better Luck Next Time that it is not a romance. And I absolutely standby that. But I know that a lot of people who read my blog read romances, so for Recommendsday today here are three books set on ranches that *are* romances!

If the Boot Fits by Rebekah Weatherspoon

A Cinderella retelling with a downtrodden PA and an Oscar winning actor who have a fraught first encounter when she accidentally takes his goody bag – containing his statuette – home with her and then end up at the same wedding at his family ranch. I wanted more comeuppance for the villain of the piece but enjoyed the dancing around about whether Sam and Amanda are just a fling or if they want it to be something more. The first book in this series – A Cowboy to Remember was a BotW just over two years ago and that’s just as much fun – even if it does have an amnesia plotline which is usually something I hate – and there’s a third book in the series that I haven’t read yet, but have on my watch list.

Black Hills by Nora Roberts

I haven’t read a lot of Nora Roberts, but I read Black Hills for the 50 states challenge in 2020. This is a romantic suspense with a long slow build and a resolution that happened a little too quickly for me after the build up. But how often have you heard me complain about romances wrapping up too quickly? Yeah, I know, a lot. When they were kids living on neighbouring ranches, Lil and Coop found the body of a dead hiker. Now they’re adults Lil is running a wildlife reserve and Coop is back in town taking a break from his life as an investigator to look after his grandparents. When pranks on the ranch turn into the killing of a cougar, the two start investigating only to find that the trail leads back to that body from long ago. Can they find the culprit before a killer finds them?

Summer Nights with a Cowboy by Caitlin Crews*

This isn’t out until later in the month and it’s *slightly* cheating, because although it is in Crews’ Kittridge Ranch series, our hero Zack is running away from the ranch and rebelling by being the town’s sheriff. The heroine is Janie, a travelling nurse who has come to Cold River to find out more about her family’s past. Zack is suspicious of Jamie’s reasons for being in town and Janie can’t work out why she’s so drawn to the glowering guy who lives across the road. There are charm lessons and a hero who has to come to a reassessment about what he thinks his parents’ relationship is about. Probably the least ranch-y of this group, but worth a look.

NB: these are all contemporaries because historical romances in ranches are Westerns and I just dont really do westerns – and not just because so many of them are mail order bride stories… If you want one though, go read one of Beverly Jenkins’ ones – like Wild Rain.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Interesting Women

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Yes, yes, I’m a day late for International Women’s day, but for Recommendsday this week, I’ve gone for books about or by interesting women, because it seems fitting somehow. And yes, I meant to read a whole bunch of books ahead of writing this post but see all my previous notes about my inability to read stuff that’s not romance or mystery. I know. Best laid plans. But maybe I’ll have read some of them by next year!

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen

Cover of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

Anne Helen Petersen deconstructs eleven women who have been deemed unruly or too much in some way. It’s such a good insight into the forces that drive perception of women – and the boundaries that are still there and the celebrities pushing against them. I read this a couple of years back – and it was a BotW at the time -and as I said thenI didn’t always like all the personalities involved here then, and I like some of them even less now, but Peterson’s arguments are really compelling and I had to examine my own thinking and challenge myself a little about my own perceptions after reading this.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shelterly

This is honestly a fabulous book shining a light on a formidable group of women who fought against a system stacked against them and played a key role in the US side of the space race. It is really, really good. I’ve read books about the Mercury 7 and the early American Astronauts but I hadn’t really got any idea of the maths and actual process behind their achievements until I read this. And I am in awe of people who can figure out not just the maths of it, but which maths is actually needed because my brain absolutely does not work like that at all. Really, really good. And then you can watch the film afterwards and see how they adapted it!

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

I can’t believe it’s nearly eight years since Maya Angelou died and I wrote about the impact her writing had on me. As I said back then this was on the extended reading list when I was studying Color Purple and Oranges are Not the Only Fruit at A Level. I can’t even begin to explain the impact it had on me (although I did try in that post). I bought the other volumes of Angelou’s autobiography and have taken them around with me from house to house ever since. The writing is amazing, her story – in this volume – is heartbreaking but she overcomes. if you haven’t already read this, you really should

First Women by Kate Anderson Brower

This group biography is six years old now, and my notes about it from when I read it (in early 2017) are that it is written from a point of view that seemed to be expecting that Hillary Clinton would win, but if you want a group biography of the First Ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama during their time in the White House and afterwards this is a good place to start. Very well researched and very interesting.

Happy Wednesday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Twists!

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So I started off trying to write a post about books with unreliable narrators, but even that seemed to give too much away. So I’ve refined it to books with twists in them – some of which may be unreliable narrators, some may not be. And I’m not telling you which and equally I’m not telling you which book that I’ve recently read that inspired this because: spoilers. Anyway, this little lot cover a range of genres so hopefully there’s something for everyone.

Anyway, I’m going to start with an all-time classic from the Queen of Crime, which is possibly the first of its type: Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. First published nearly 100 years ago, this was controversial when it was published – and has been described as breaking the rules of the murder mystery genre. If you’ve never read it, you really should – and don’t worry, the rules it break don’t include the one where you have to find out who did it! You could also add Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders and And Then There Were None to the list as well – but I’m sure if you’re hanging around here with me you’ll have read at least one of them, if not all of them.

Also in the classic novel section (although not murder mysteries), are Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel and Rebecca. They are varying degrees of Gothic and thrillers and both have both got under currents going on of various types. People will keep categorising both of these as romances, but do not be fooled – they are dark and creepy. They will leave you befuddled and wondering what just happened to you and how you feel about it all.

Next up Susanne Rindell’s The Other Typist. Set in 1920s New York, it’s about a young typist who works for the Police Department typing up confessions, and who is drawn into the underground world of speakeasies by a new typist who joins the pool. This came out in 2014 and was one of the most befuddling books I have read. Writing this has made me remember how much I enjoyed being perplexed – even if I didn’t love the ending, for reasons that I can’t go in to – so if I’m not careful I’ll end up buying some more of her books and adding further to the tbr pile!

Moving to something much less dark – and involving no murders – Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go Bernadette features teenager Bee discovering her mother’s past life after agoraphobic Bernadette disappears after a a school fundraiser goes awry. it’s funny and unpredictable and disconcerting and engaging and there is a trip to the Antarctic!

On top of these, there are also a few books I’ve written about already that might fit the bill: lets start with two by Taylor Jenkins Reid – both Daisy Jones and the Six and Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo have more going on than meets the eye. And more recently Rachel Hawkins’ The Wife Upstairs is Jane Eyre inspired, but still surprised me (a lot) when I read it last year.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Queen Elizabeth II

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It was the 70th anniversary of the Queen’s accession on Sunday, so this week I thought I’d make recommendsday about books either about or featuring Elizabeth II. Some of these are a little tenuous… but that’s the way I role!

I’m going to start with Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader. In it, the Queen discovers the joys of reading after coming across a mobile library and borrowing a book to be polite. Soon she’s asking guests about their reading matter when they meet her and turning up late for events because she needed to read “just one more page”. It’s only a novella but it’s really very funny.

I haven’t actually read a lot of non-fiction actually about the Queen directly, although I have read various biographies of people whose lives have intersected hers. In fact the only one I could find on my reading lists is by Angela Kelly, who is the Queen’s dresser and I can’t really recommend it because I learned even less from it than is expected – and I didn’t expect much as she is still working for the Queen and the book was approved!

On a slightly surreal note, there’s a bit of Elizabeth in Darling Ma’am – which is a book about Princess Margaret that is described as “a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography” which is about right. In actual fiction, the young Princess Elizabeth makes brief appearances in various books in the Royal Spyness series, as well as in my beloved Gone with the Windsors. Elizabeth and her sister Margaret play larger roles in Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal, but I had so many issues with that I nearly threw it at the wall – only the fact that I was reading it on the iPad stopped me!

Right, thats it – I’m off to try and work out which is the best of the actual biographies of Elizabeth II and dig out the Mountbatten book by the guy who wrote Traitor King for some more Elizabeth adjacent reading. And if anyone has read the new detective novel where the Queen is solving murders, let me know what it’s like in the comments – I keep seeing it but haven’t got around to taking a look yet!

Have a good Wednesday everyone!