A super busy week last week, but not too awful week in reading all together. This coming week is even busier, so we’ll see how I go, but I have at least finished all of my August new releases from NetGalley before the end of the month which is practically a first. If only I had finished the July ones. Or the June ones.
So this post is in three parts. First we have the books I bought on the way to conference, then the books after conference and then everything else. If you want to see what I bought *at* conference, you can find that post here.
Firstly we have my haul from The Spicy Librarian and the many, many charity shops that were between The Spicy Librarian and the car park on our way back to the car! From the Spicy Librarian we have Samantha Spük: Paranormal Wedding Planner, Death Meets Cute and Swordheart. I hadn’t come across the first two before but I’ve had my eye on Swordheart for a while and finally succumbed! From the charity shops we have Twelfth Knight which is (as you might be able to guess) a Twelfth Night retelling, but featuing e-sport (which you might not have guessed) and which ended up being a late addition to my friend’s talk about niche sports in children’s books, a Chanel Cleeton which I’ve had my eye out for, Thank you for Sharing which is an enemies to lovers romance and a Penelope Lively that I haven’t read but which is *technically* for my sister!
Then we have the Bath purchases. There are three from Persephone, which was as wonderful as ever, and then two Agatha Oddly’s from one of the charity shops near Persephone and finally A Little Buzzed and Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die from the brilliant selection at Mr B’s Emporium.
And as for everything else:
Yes! I managed to resist temptation, and so far in August (book Con was the last weekend in July) I haven’t bought *any* actual physical books. We will just ignore the ebook purchases… and obviously the fact that I’ve already talked about 14 book purchases in this post, let alone the nine I bought at conference, although it should be noted that five of them are already off the pile because I’ve read them already. Go me!
After another sweltering week, it’s meant to be getting a bit cooler. I can’t work out if this is going to help or hinder my reading – the heat has made me stay indoors more but also made it harder to concentrate. If it gets significantly cooler it will be very tempting to go out and get some fresh air. But given my recent experiences of getting out have left me a sweaty mess because of the humidity as well as the heat, may be I’ll still be sheltering in areas with air conditioning! We’re at a slightly funny point in the book release cycle – the summer books are already out, but the autumn ones haven’t quite started yet. I should be using this to catch up on things in the NetGalley backlog, but what I’m actually doing is reading books that I bought at Bristol and picking things up from the actual pile, reading 10 pages and then putting them down again. I blame the heat.
Bonus picture: a Parachutist on their way down on Sunday at the Balloon Festival. We went to take a look because a) it’s really nearby and b) it seemed slightly cooler. But in fact it was deceptive and the humidity was grim. Still at least we saw the parachutes, even if the only hot air ballons we saw were the baskets waiting to be re-gassed.
*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 Monday. I would say I’m braced for another heatwave, but to be honest it feels like it has started already. It was really quite hot in London on Saturday, albeit not in the 30s, and it was so hot at home yesterday I was glad we hadn’t gone to the MotoGP at Silverstone – even though the races were exciting – because I would have been absolutely sure to get sunburn and a dehydration headache. Anyway, more excitement coming up this week with at least one more theatre trip, hopefully the air con will be working there. Anyway, on the reading front, it was a fairly ok week. I’m making fast progress down the conference purchases when I’m at home – the beauty of middle grade books is that they don’t take long to read – which is making me feel less bad about the enormous state of the pile in general.
Read:
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie
The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley
It’s offers post writing o’clock again so there were a few Kindle purchases. No actual books though
Bonus picture: The Strand and its little gaggle of theatres. I often forget that although the West End is (mostly) clustered around Shaftesbury Avenue, these three plus the Lyceum, the Duchess, the Novello, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Aldwych are all very close together too. And on Saturday night it seemed like most of them had finished their shows just in time for their patrons to be clogging the pavement as we were walking back to Euston…
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Welcome to August everyone, all the usual start of the month stuff coming up over the next week or so. In the meantime, here’s the list from last week, which includes three of my Bristol purchases, three new releases (included one I mentioned in the Summer romance releases) and the last of the St Justs I hadn’t read which meant I could finally write that post on Friday! This week it’s meant to be hot and sticky again and I’ve got at least one theatre trip planned so we’ll see how all of that meshes with the reading list.
Welcome to the first of the Bristol Book Odyssey posts – the sale acquisitions. Here we have three hardback Drina books so that I can continue to compare the original text to the updated 1980s versions that I read as a child, Drina goes on Tour is probably my favourite of the whole series, it’s certainly the one that I read the most as a child, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the original tour experience of digs and exposure and the reveal of Drina’s secret went down.
There’s a strong dancing theme this conference as I also picked up three Linda books about ballet, musical comedy and television and then The Recluctant Ballerina, all by Linda Graeme. That Detestable New Girl was a recommendation and finally my quest to fill in some Dimsie gaps only resulted in the one book – but it does mean I have now read the first book and the events which are much referred to later on in the series.
And as a bonus before I go: a photo from the end of the book sale last Sunday – some much emptier boxes with and one gone entirely, and lots of loose books also gone so you can see the scale of the clearout!
I’m exhausted. I’ve had a fabulous time at book conference, but I’ve spent a lot of time talking about reading, listening to talks about reading and buying books to read rather than actually reading. So this list is short and I’ve already caused myself a major problem for tomorrow by writing about American Fantasy last week. Past Verity causing problems for Future Verity once more.
Where to start. About six on the way to book conference and another nine at book conference. And I’m writing this before our day out in Bath where we intend to visit even more book shops.
Bonus picture: Our (there’s a trio of us) sale table at the delegate sale on Sunday. The right hand side (all the less valuable stuff!) is (mostly) mine. I didn’t sell it all, but I came home with less books than I took with me – even when you include the stuff I bought at conference. Result.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Just to make a change, this Saturday this is part of the pile of books that I’m taking to Book Con with me to try and sell. This isn’t going to be a new regular feature (or at least I don’t think it is) but because there are not one but two book sales at conference, this is my attempt to try and make sure that I come home with less books than I take with me, and it may or may not be successful. It’s also my best opportunity to sell some of these rather than donate them to charity, because there are other people there who are interested in the same things as me.
They’ve all got much better collections than I have though so I have to be quite choosy about what I take – no point in taking any Chalet School, because they all have all of them (mostly in better editions than I do) or any Blyton (because those are rubbish to read as an adult) but the 80s and 90s stuff that I read when I was little may work better. We will see.
A rollercoaster week in many ways, ending late on Sunday night with extra time in the World Cup Final and me rereading a Dimsie book instead of something new. Who knows what I’ll write about tomorrow given that the two NetGalley books that I finished aren’t out for months, and there are a lot of later in series on the list too. Oh well, I’m sure it will come to me…
Remember this moment. The month when I only had one book to report. Genuinely one physical copy. Of course this won’t last because Book Con is next weekend and there is no way that I am coming back from that empty handed. The goal will be to come back with less books than I took, even if that means doing a drop off at a National Trust with a second hand bookshop on the way home. Anyway the one book that has come in is the fourth Perveen Mistry mystery. That’s it!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 