Category: The pile

Nightshift hell.  You’ll notice a proliferation of childrens/YA books and Golden Age crime and comedy.  I managed a hundred or so pages of Elizabeth Gilbert on the way to my nightshift on Tuesday, but my brain was having trouble computing it, although I am enjoying it.

Read:

Not Quite a Wife by Mary Jo Putney

Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh

Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me by Lucy Robinson

Summer Half by Angela Thirkell

The Summer of Love by Sophie Pembroke

Started:

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

Still reading:

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Two books bought* – and a copy of the Secret Paris Cinema Club arrived for me from the lovely people at Quercus, so one book acquired too…

*And a couple of Chalet School ones which don’t count.

Nightshifts start today (Monday) so I spent this week concentrating on reading a couple of books that I have ahead of their release so that I can write reviews on them.  I’m not good at reading anything complex on Nightshifts (see my post about Nightshift reading matter here) and they run right up until the books come out, so I couldn’t guarantee that I’d manage to read them during the nights.  Plus I really wanted to read them!

Read:

The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House by Stephanie Lam

The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin

Pastors’ Wives by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

Beyond Seduction by Stephanie Laurens

August Folly by Angela Thirkell

Started:

Not Quite a Wife by Mary Jo Putney

Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh

Still reading:

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

I bought three books and a cook book this week.  Managed to resist the lure of a second-hand book stall at a fair today – and am still valiantly resisting the urge to buy myself the next Meg Langslow book – perhaps I’ll treat myself at the end of nightshifts!

As you’ll have seen from Friday’s post, I’ve given up on Titus Groan so that has gone from the list.  And I feel relieved.  Considering Flappers is 500 pages (and worth it) I don’t think I’ve done too badly this week.

Read:

Deception by M C Beaton

Flappers by Judith Mackrell

Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase by Louise Walters

A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh

Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay

Started:

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Beyond Seduction by Stephanie Laurens

Still reading:

 n/a

Only one free Kindle book acquired this week – and the rest of my last orders all turned up too.  I’m trying not to buy books because I know that I’ve got nightshifts coming up and they make me susceptible to buying stuff and I already have way too many books – even my sister told me the pile is out of control today!

A much more productive week than I was expecting – and some really good books in there – check out the reviews of American Blonde and The Storms of War.  It’s also been a very early Twentieth Century week – Flambards in the pre-Great War period, The Storms of War covering 1914-18, Laura Lamont starting in the 1920s and going through to the 1970s and American Blonde set in the 1940s! And that’s before you get to the fact that I’ve started Flappers  I also really enjoyed the Donna Andrews, the Meg Langslow series continues to provide me with a lot of laughs and it was great to fill in a gap in my Christina Jones back catalogue with Tickled Pink.

Read:

American Blonde by Jennifer Niven

Tickled Pink by Christina Jones

The Penguin Who Knew Too Much by Donna Andrews

Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub

The Storms of War by Kate Williams

Flambards by K M Peyton

Started:

Deception by M C Beaton

Flappers by Judith Mackrell

A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh

Still reading:

The Beach Hut Next Door by Veronica Henry

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

No books bought this week – so that’s progress of a sort.  Still, not all of last week’s splurge have arrived yet…

Not a good week.  I don’t know what went wrong.  I was so excited about #Sunathon but somewhere in the week it all went off the rails.  I had Monday and Tuesday off – and The Boy was off too so we had two lovely days together – but I didn’t do much reading.  Then I was away for work for a couple of days – and couldn’t take the Kate Williams with me because it’s a hard back and just takes up too much space.  Wednesday went really well though – as I read all of What Would Mary Berry do but on Thursday I was out at the theatre after work and didn’t read anything much at all.  Then on Friday afternoon I got rained on in my lunchbreak and on my way to the station after work and ended up reading bits of several different things on the way home from work and not really making any progress much on anything.  Then on top of that a busy weekend where I didn’t really read anything and this is where we’re at…

Read:

Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons

What Would Mary Berry Do by Claire Sandy

Started:

The Storms of War by Kate Williams

Tickled Pink by Christina Jones

The Beach Hut Next Door by Veronica Henry

Still reading:

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

American Blonde by Jennifer Niven

 And as far as book acquisition goes, a copy of a book that I’ve won appeared in the post – and I’ve ordered a few more, but they haven’t turned up yet, so I’m not sure whether to count them in the total or not… Oh and the Christina Jones that I started was a Kindle Freebie this week.  I’m trying not to think about the state of the July stats after this week.  Here’s hoping this week coming (four day shifts, home every night) is better.

Slightly derailed by an unexpected nightshift on Friday night but an unexpected Saturday evening at home meant I finished Bill Bryson which made everything look a lot better.   This week coming up is #sunathon – as dreamt up by @EmmaIsWriting – so I’ve put together some summery reads I’m hoping to be reading this week – you can look at them here.

Read:

Death Cloud (Young Sherlock Holmes 1) by Andrew Lane

Tiger Milk by Stephanie de Velasco

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

How the Scoundrel Seduces by Sabrina Jeffries

One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson

Started:

Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons

American Blonde by Jennifer Niven

Still reading:

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

Now as regular readers will know, nightshifts usually mean book buying in the early hours.  Well I resisted – this time the impulse buying was from ASOS’s sale…  So the bank balance did suffer – but not with a book splurge – which is an achievement!  Several arrived in the post – a twitter competition prize from Doubleday for #bookadayuk, a Goodreads review copy of The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (which isn’t due out until the very end of August so I feel very special to have that one) and Clare Sandy’s What Would Mary Berry Do which is out at the end of the month (and which the author sent to me so I’m very excited about that too).  I’ve been through my diary marking up when the various books I’ve been sent ahead of publication are due out – in the hope that I’ll schedule posts for the appropriate times – I think there’s nothing more annoying than finding out about a really good book that someone else has read and not being able to get hold of a copy yourself!

Despite appearances, I’ve actually made good progress this week – I’m more than half way through Tiger Milk now (thank you trip to the hairdresser!) and probably would have finished it already if I wasn’t working over the weekend, which necessitated taking a fresh book with me rather than a nearly finished one.  I did re-read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – but I can’t count that as it’s one I read over and over when I was at primary school, and I’ve finished my Phryne Fisher re-read too.

Read:

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell

Don’t Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli

Ivy Lane: Spring by Cathy Bramley

Started:

Death Cloud (Young Sherlock Holmes 1) by Andrew Lane

Still reading:

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

Tiger Milk by Stephanie de Velasco

One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson

As far as the buying goes – 4 from the charity shop and two from the Kindle means no net progress on reducing the pile – especially as Ivy Lane was on the Kindle.  Bad times all around!

I’m finding Tiger Milk (which was a Goodreads win) heavy going so far – and Bill Bryson is too big to take to work with me – so thee are some new lingerers on the pile, although of course Titus is still the King of Lingering.  I really enjoyed Michael Tolliver Lives though – and I’m desperate to know what happens next in the Harriet Evans – as my pleadings earlier in the week will attest!

Read:

Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

A Place for Us Part One by Harriet Evans

A Bone to Pick by Charlaine Harris

Tom Brown’s Body by Gladys Mitchell

Started:

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

Still reading:

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

Tiger Milk by Stephanie de Velasco

One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson

As far as purchases go – only two this week – but I’ve acquired two more – so the physical to-read pile isn’t even any smaller, because the Harriet Evans was on the Kindle.  When will I learn?  Still at least I only paid for two of them!