A slightly shorter post than usual this week, but the decision of what to pick was easy. This week’s BotW is Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation. I’ve been meaning to read some Crusie for a while as Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has mentioned her several times on her podcast. She often recommends Bet me, but as I’ve got such a backlog, I’ve held back on buying any. Then I spotted this in a charity shop for £1 and buy one book, get one free and just couldn’t resist. Good decision.
Sophie is in Temptation to help her sister make a film. But curtains are twitching and trouble is coming. And the town’s mayor is a bit of a complication too… I don’t usually like contemporary romances (I often find them sickly sweet) but this is smart and funny and not all hearts and flowers. The back hints at a body count, but I was beginning to think I’d misinterpreted it as the body doesn’t turn up until two thirds of the way through! As always I would’ve liked a little more of the HEA at the end, but hey, I can’t have everything!
Now all I need to do is lay my hands on a copy of Bet Me!
Oh gosh. I had such trouble picking this. It came down to two choices – the latest Dandy Gilver book, which I devoured Sunday-into-Monday last week or Jojo Moyes Me Before You, which I was *sure* I had read, and then realised that I hadn’t and really ought to get in there quick before the sequel arrives on Thursday. But, if I make Me Before You this week’s BotW, then what happens if After You is amazing. But then what happens if After You isn’t awesome – and I haven’t said my piece on Me Before You. Basically, this boils down to a lesson in why I shouldn’t get behind with books. Which is what this whole blog is about. And you know I’ve written this whole opening paragraph without actually having decided – the post title just says Book of the Week and I’m still dithering.
Dandy
Jojo
Dandy
Jojo
Dang it. Double-header special it is.
So, lets start with Me Before You. I’m sure you’ve all read it already (as I said, I was convinced that I had too), but in case you’ve missed it, it tells the story of Lou, who loses her job at a cafe and finds a new one, working for Will Traynor – whose life was changed forever in a motorbike accident. If you haven’t read it and think I should say more about the plot, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to give too much away. But it’s funny and romantic and it had me surreptitiously crying in public. It could have been a very depressing book – there are some really serious issues in here and I was seriously worried that the ending was going to make me really miserable – but it’s not. A lot of research has clearly been done and it wears it very lightly. Will is clearly one individual, in a specific situation, who is making a certain choice – but there will be people out there who don’t like the way that this unfolds.*
On to Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom, which is the 10th in the interwar-set detective agency series and finds Dandy in the ballrooms of Glasgow investigating threats made against a dancer. I’ve read just over half of this series and this is as good as any of them. I love the dynamic between Alec and Dandy (although as I’ve not read a couple of the early books so I think I’ve missed some bits there) and the dance hall world of Glasgow is compelling. And despite the pretty covers, the plots are often quite dark and there’s a (relatively) high body count. They’re smart and different and don’t rely on murder mystery cliches, but without going for lots of sexual violence.
So there you go – two books of the week this week, a lot of dithering and another lesson in why a big book backlog isn’t good!
* And I wish there could have been a magic fix ending, but that’s not how real life works.
Tough choice for Book of the Week this week. An honourable mention goes to Trisha Ashley’s new novella A Vintage Christmas, but it’s quite short, and she has a new book out in October, so in the interests of keeping my powder dry, I’ll just leave you a Kindle link to it. Subtle right? There was another close contender, but I’ve reviewed that for Novelicious, so in the interests of not stealing their thunder, I won’t tell you what it is. Yet.
I Feel Bad About My Neck got the nod because, although it’s aimed at a slightly more mature lady than me, this collection of essays and general thoughts on life made me really laugh. In this, Ms Ephron takes a witty look at ageing, through the eyes of a baby boomer. I think my favourite is the one about maintenance – and how long women spend on upkeep!
Nora Ephron wrote the screen plays for two of my favourite films when I was a teenager – When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail and I laughed my way through her novel Heartburn a few years back. Heartburn is a fictionalised version of the break-up of her second marriage – and some of the themes from that reoccur here. This isn’t a long read, but it is a very fun one.
My enjoyment of this book was tinged with sadness – as Nora Ephron was already suffering with leukemia at the time that she wrote this, although almost no-one knew that she was ill right up until she died in 2012. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more of her other writing and it’s a shame there won’t be any more.
Crivens! This week’s BotW will come as no surprise – it’s the final Terry Pratchett novel, the 41st Discworld book and the fifth to feature Tiffany Aching. I managed to force myself to read it slowly (for me anyway) and made it last a week. I’m already listening to the audiobook on my walks to work.
As you can see I have the others in the series in paperback, but I wasn’t prepared to wait this time.
In the Chalk, something is brewing. Tiffany can feel it coming, the Kelda can feel it coming. An old enemy is gathering strength. To quote the back of the book, Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad. And there will be a reckoning.
And to be honest, that’s about all that I can say about the plot of The Shepherd’s Crown without giving too much away. I encountered a massive spoiler in the Audible sample a week before the book came out – and my sister ran into the Guardian review which reveals the same Major Event – and I’ve become really concious of the fact that I don’t want to ruin the story for anyone reading this the way that plot twist was spoilt for me.
What I can say about the book is that it made my cry, repeatedly. But it’s not a sad book. As the back cover says, it is a time of endings and beginnings, and they’re handled beautifully. It is a Young Adult book and there are Serious Issues in there, but it deals with them very well, with Sir Terry’s trademark wit and warmth. I laughed and smiled and really enjoyed Tiffany’s adventure.
I wish there were going to be more. But as I said earlier this year (in this post), we knew that the end was coming sooner than anyone could have wished for. I still want the Moist the Tax Collector book. I am greedy for more from the Discworld. And the afterword in Shepherd’s Crown drops tantalising hints about what could have been. But I absolutely respect (and agree with) Rhianna Pratchett’s decision that if her father is not here to write them, there will be no more new Discworld books.
To reiterate – No I don't intend on writing more Discworld novels, or giving anyone else permission to do so. They are sacred to dad.
— Rhianna Pratchett 🧙🏻♀️ (@rhipratchett) June 5, 2015
I will be involved with spin-offs, adaptations and tie-ins, but that's it. Discworld is his legacy. I shall make my own.
— Rhianna Pratchett 🧙🏻♀️ (@rhipratchett) June 5, 2015
And if the end had to come, The Shepherd’s Crown is a very good place to finish. There are plenty of old favourite characters and there are some new favourites too. Of all the Discworld regulars, Mistress Tiffany has more life ahead of her than the others (unless you count Young Sam Vimes) and so it seems fitting that she is the centre of the last book.
The Shepherd’s Crown doesn’t feel like a goodbye, like a world is coming to an end – it feels like the Great A’Tuin is still out there, swimming through space with the elephants and the Disc on his back, it’s just that we won’t get to hear about the goings on there anymore. And maybe that’s Sir Terry’s greatest achievement – he’s created a fantasy world so real that we can’t believe that it could stop.
It’s not as if I had a matching set to start with, so I’ll cope with the non-matchingness.
I’m planning to re-read the whole series. If you haven’t discovered Tiffany yet, start with The Wee Free Men and enjoy her whole journey. If you are a Discworld fan, who’s been hesitant about reading this, don’t worry. I don’t think this will be a disappointment to you. It is safe to read it. It feels right. You should be able to get hold of a copy of The Shepherd’s Crown anywhere which sells good books – but just in case: Amazon, Kindle, Foyles (sadly no discount), Waterstones.
Enjoy it. Make it last. Raise a glass to it’s creator. And mind how you go.
For those reading The Shepherd's Crown 'Mind how you go' are considered to be the Pratchett magic words.
As promised last week, here’s a link to my review of The Spider in the Corner of the Room on Novelicious. I’ve read some more stuff for Novelicious this week – and you’ll see links to them in future BotW posts. Now to business. This week’s BotW is Claire Sandy’s latest A Very Big House in the Country. I was so excited when this appeared in the post* – after all I raved about What Would Mary Berry Do? last summer. You may have noticed that this was on the reading list for a couple of weeks – and that is because I forced myself not to gobble this up in one sitting.**
The Herreras, the Littles and the Browns are sharing a massive Devon mansion for two long hot weeks of the summer holidays. There are secrets. There are romances. There’s something lurking in the bushes – and it may not just be the Herrera’s dog on the pull. There’s step-sons, trophy wives, a glamourous (and possibly slutty) nanny and an outdoor pool. And gallons of wine. Tongues will loosen, inhibitions will fall away and people may get a little too honest. When everyone packs up and heads out at the end of the summer will they all still be friends? And will everyone be going home in the same car they arrived in?
Ok. I know, there’s not a lot of plot in that little summary, but I think it gives you a flavour of the book. It’s warm, touching and funny, with a bit of a sarcastic edge. The house may be luxurious, but the book is very down to earth. You’ll probably recognise things from your own families and group holidays in this. Summer may be ending, but grab hold of its coattails and recapture the hot weather after a particularly wet bank holiday weekend with one last sun-lounger read.
This one is all up in the supermarkets – so you shouldn’t have any problems getting hold of it next time you happen to accidentally on purpose walk through the book aisle as you arrive in TescAsdWaitburys. But in case you can’t wait, here’s an Amazon link and a Kindle one and a Foyles one.
* My copy was sent to me by the author – but as per usual, my reviews are honest and BotW goes to my favourite book I read the previous week and this. was. it.
** I’m currently doing the same thing with The Shepherd’s Crown, because once it’s gone there Is No More New Pratchett and I don’t want it to be over yet.
I had a really hard time deciding what to pick for BotW this week. Like really hard. I read an awesome thriller – but it was for Novelicious so I can’t pick that, although I’ll try and remember to post a link here when that review goes up. I read some nice cozy crime and a bit of romance. And then three really fun women’s fiction books which it was hard to chose between. But I’ve gone for Kat French’s The Piano Man Project because sometimes you need a moody, troubled, Alpha hero – and Hal is a really good one.
Honeysuckle has a problem – and it’s not that her name is Honeysuckle. She needs a man to fix a… problem that she’s encountering. He needs to be good with his hands *wink wink*n- and so her friends decide a pianist may be the answer and start trying to set her up. But then there’s Honey’s new neighbour Hal – he’s anti-social, grumpy and troubled, but Honey keeps coming back to try and help. On top of all this the old people’s home where Honey works is under threat and she’s got to do something to try and save it.
This is touching and funny and has a darker edge perhaps than my summary above might suggest (I’m not going into why because it would be too much of a spoiler). It’s also a bit sexier than some of the other books you’ll find alongside it on the shelves. Author Kat French has an alter-ego who writes erotica and she’s brought some of that to the table in this. It’s not in 50 Shades territory, but it is a notch above what I’ve usually found in romantic comedies.
Honey does have a strong streak of trying to fix things/people which I guess might rub some readers up the wrong way, but I found her charming and caring and not a doormat. And there are problems in this book that aren’t fixable no matter how hard she tries – and I liked that. I found Hal a compelling hero – even though he’s hard work and demanding and doesn’t really appreciate Honey’s efforts on his behalf for a lot of the book.
The Piano Man Project was well in evidence in my local enormous supermarket this week – as you can see from the picture above – so it should be nice and easy to get hold of, but it’s also just 99p on Kindle at the moment so it’s a real bargain (Amazon have the paperback for £3.85 too which isn’t to shabby either).
This week’s BotW is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain – which has been sitting on my to-read pile for far too long What’s new. How many times have I said that now? But yes, once again, a really good book stuck in the backlog for ages. You’d think I’d learn by now, and yet The Pile is still out of control. Hey ho. Moving on.
The Paris Wife tells the story of the marriage between Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson. The novel is told predominantly from Hadley’s perspective, interspersed with occasional diary style snippets from Hemingway. Hadley and Ernest are clearly very much in love when they get married and this paints a very convincing portrait of a marriage torn apart by genius, ego, Jazz Age Paris, children and other women. You can see the train wreck coming and they can see it coming – but they don’t seem to be able to do anything to avert it. But this isn’t a miserable book, it’s sad in places, but it’s also fascinating.
Whilst I haven’t read a lot of Hemingway’s work, I have read a fair bit of F Scott Fitzgerald’s – who is another member of this crew – and as I’ve mentioned before, I love this interwar time period. After reading this, I’ve realised that I’ve got a bit of a glut of books about this set sitting on my shelves – not only Mrs Hemingway, but also Villa America and I think another one that I can’t remember the title of. I might have to space out reading them so I don’t get too confused/overloaded, but I am looking forward to reading them soon.
I wouldn’t expect you to have too much difficulty tracking this down in the bookshops – it’ll probably be on the shelves rather than the tables by now though. But here’s a link to Foyles and Kindle just in case.
This week’s book of the week is a rediscovered Classic crime novel, Christopher St John Spriggs’ Death of an Airman – first published in 1934 and now re-released as part of the British Library’s Crime Classics series. Regular readers of this blog will know that I love Golden Age Crime (and re-listen to a Peter Wimsey audiobook at least once a month) and this was right up my alley.
George Furnace is a flying instructor at Baston Aero Club – killed when his plane crashes. But the people who knew him are baffled – he was a skilled pilot and the plane was in perfect condition. Although the inquest decides it was death by misadventure, a visiting Australian bishop suspects the truth may be more complicated. Is it suicide? Or murder? Together with Inspector Bray a very cunning scheme is uncovered.
This is brilliant. I’ll admit that I don’t know enough about flying (and in particular 1930s flying) to be able to tell you how accurate the aeroplane information is, but it certainly all made sense to me – and the titular death is brilliantly contrived. I didn’t figure out all the solution until very late on – at which point I appreciated how clever Spriggs had been in dropping hints earlier in the book which passed off as totally innocuous at the time.
I’ve now read about half a dozen titles in this British Library Crime series – and have really enjoyed discovering forgotten murder mysteries from my favourite era – which in many cases rival their more well known counterparts – the Wimseys, the Poirots etcs. The actual paperback copies look lovely (although they are a weird inbetween size) and some serious knowledge of the genre has clearly gone into the selection. I read two from the series last week – I didn’t enjoy the other one as much, but it was clearly an important book in the development of the genre – and I’ll keep looking out for more.
My copy came via NetGalley – but it should be out now in book shops (I’ve seen and bought titles in the series in both Waterstones and Foyles usually displayed with a couple of others from the series) but if you can’t wait to get to a proper book seller, then here are some links – Foyles, Waterstones, Amazon, Kindle – although I couldn’t find it on Kobo.
This week’s BotW is a rare non-fiction pick – and has been a big hit in our house. I picked it out a couple of months ago and gave it to The Boy to read last weekend when he’d done too much Janet Evanovich in a row. He laughed so hard at it and enjoyed it so much that I promoted it to the top of my to-read pile and read it too. And it is just joyous.
The Year of Living Danishly is the story of author Helen Russell and her husband Legoman who move to Jutland in Denmark after he gets a job with the Danish toy giants. As the country is reputed to be one of the happiest in the world, she sets out to find out whether the hype is true – and whether living a bit more Danishly can help everyone. Ms Russell does have some reservations about the Danes – they seem to have a bit of a herd mentality and some of their habits are a bit … odd – so this is quite a balanced look at the pros and cons of Danish life as she experienced it.
I absolutely fell in love with this book. It’s witty and engaging and an absolutely fascinating insight into a country that I knew very little about. I finished the book thinking that Denmark wouldn’t be a bad place to relocate too – even if the winters are dark and glacial. The Boy has an auntie and uncle in Denmark – so he had some personal experience of a few of the experiences detailed in the book – he can confirm that Danish kindergarten is fabulous and laid back – he just joined in with a class of them in the park some time in the early 80s and the teachers didn’t even bat an eyelid.
Even if you’re not a big non-fiction reader, this is well worth a look. It’s not dry or academic, it’s warm and enthralling and will leave you wondering what pickled herring tastes like (but maybe not enough to try it). Meanwhile, The Boy and I are thinking about making a trip to see his relatives in Copenhagen soon!
This week’s BotW post has been really tricky. If I picked my absolute favourite book from last week – can I then still include it in my holiday reads post (which is why I was reading it in the first place)? If I don’t pick my favourite, all my other options are going to be repeating previous favourite authors. If I do pick my favourite it’s a repeat as well. Tricky. So people, this week’s book of the week is Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich. Yes. I know. But There Were Reasons.
I do love a foil cover – but they’re really tricky to photograph
Plum Spooky is the fourth (and last as it stands) in the Between-the-Numbers Stephanie Plum books – which means it’s a bit like a normal Stephanie Plum but with a supernatural twist. They’re also the books where you meet Diesel – who goes on to get a series of his own (the second of which was my Evanovich Gateway Book back in April – see previous BotW post). Plum Spooky is the longest (a proper novel rather than a novella) and best of these fill-ins – it has the balance right between NormalSteph and SupernaturalStuff – and is a good read in it’s own right – not just because you like the other Plum books.
In Plum Spooky, Steph’s FTA has got messed up with the guy that Diesel is trying to find – and it all gets a little bit scary/weird in the Barrens – an area which reminds me a lot of the were-panther area in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Series. Spooky is very good at balancing the supernatural element of the story with the normal bounty hunter storylines from the regular series. Having Diesel around does mean less Ranger and Morelli action – but as these are meant to be slightly outside the mains series you couldn’t really have any action that impacts those relationships without causing ructions.
This is great fun – but probably best enjoyed with a bit of existing knowledge of the series – or if you know you like this sort of book. You should be able to get it from all the usual places – and probably your second-hand book store too.
This week I’ve planned my reading better. And that Summer Reading post is nearly ready, I promise. Just a few more books to read…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 