Category: week in books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 8 – September 14

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A slightly more normal week in reading, despite a theatre trip and a day out at a car show and various other bits and bobs. It’s definitely starting to get a bit autumnal though, so perhaps the day trips and evenings out will start to turn into quiet cozy nights in in the next few weeks?!

Read:

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

The Murder Wheel by Tom Mead

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead

Chris at the Kennels by Patricia Baldwin

A Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid by Rob Reiner

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Started:

The Vanderbeekers on the Road by Karina Yan Glaser

Still reading:

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

I don’t think I bought anything, but I did get a gift – the Patricia Baldwin as seen in Books Incoming, which is already read and off the pile.

Bonus picture: yes, I’ve already been to seen The Producers in its return to the West End!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 1 – September 7

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I’m not actually sure what happened this week. To the reading list I mean. I know what I was doing, and I don’t think I had substantively less reading time than any other week, and I definitely wasn’t out in the evenings in the way that I sometimes am. But here we are. A shorter than usual list, and one where I have no idea what I’m doing for BotW tomorrow…

Read:

Bell, Book and Scandal by Jill Churchill

Oh Say Can You Fudge by Nancy CoCo

The Sussex Murders by Ian Sansom

A Matter of Pedigree by Leslie Meier*

For The Love by Jen Hatmaker

The Accidental Florist by Jill Churchill

Started:

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

A Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid by Rob Reiner

Still reading:

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Three books bought on my trip to Waterstones Piccadilly, one pre-order arrived and two ebooks.

Bonus picture: this is unacceptable for the first weekend in a September. A plague on you local garden centre!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week, cozy crime, detective, first in series, mystery, reviews

Book of the Week: The Last Supper

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It’s been more than a month since I picked a murder mystery for book of the week. Can you believe it? I can’t – and even when I went back and checked I still sort of didn’t believe it. But it’s true, so who says there’s no variety in my reading. And there’s more murder mysteries coming tomorrow in the Quick Reviews, but first let’s talk about The Last Supper.

Prudence Bulstrode is a retired TV chef. But when one of her former rivals is found dead in the garden of a house where she was catering a shooting weekend, Prudence is called in to replace her. Farleigh Manor is notorious for an unsolved murder from a century ago, but when Prudence arrives she is soon convinced that Deirdre’s death wasn’t a tragic accident but murder. And while her granddaughter, who she brought along to keep her out of getting into (even more) trouble starts investigating the old murder, Prudence sets out to solve the new one.

Rosemary Shrager is a chef who has been a semi regular on British TV for about 20 years now and before that she ran her own catering company, so the setting for this falls very much into her area of expertise and it shows. I personally have never been on a shooting weekend, but it very much felt like she had and all is those details really worked. I also found this quite humorous – with the tension and generation gap between Prudence and Suki, but couldn’t work whether that was deliberate or not. But does it matter if it was or wasn’t? The only disappointment to me was the eventual solution to the murder, which without giving spoilers about what precisely happened, I didn’t quite feel like the reader had all of the pieces for it to work as well as I wanted it to.

But it was a fun read that I finished in an afternoon and evening and I will definitely keep an eye out for the sequel (there are two now) to see if the humour was deliberate!

I bought my copy of The Last Supper secondhand and I’ve seen it in the shops fairly regularly. And it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 25 – August 31

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I can’t believe it’s September already. I mean the weather last week was pretty autumnal so maybe I can believe it, but anyway, the end of the school holidays is basically here and I will try and find a silver lining in the fact that hopefully it means that Central London will be a little bit quieter soon. Any way a pretty solid week in reading given that there was a bank holiday, I went to a concert and had a night out with a friend.

Read:

Cultish by Amanda Montell

Resort to Murder by T P Fielden

The Truth by Terry Pratchett

A Quarter Past Dead by T P Fielden

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann*

The Last Supper by Rosemary Shrager

Started:

Bell, Book and Scandal by Jane Churchill

The Sussex Murders by Ian Sansom

Still reading:

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Three e-books and three actual books, including two in Saucy Books

Bonus picture: Martha Wainwright at Cadogan Hall on Saturday night. It was great.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week, Children's books

Book of the Week: The Wombles at Work

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Happy Tuesday everyone and I hope that those of you who had a bank holiday yesterday had an excellent day. This week’s pick is a nostalgic trip down memory lane for me, because I read several of the Wombles books when I was at primary school, so when I saw this in the same edition as the school library had at a book sale a few months ago, I snapped it up.

This is the third book in the series of children’s books about the Wombles, furry animals who live in burrows and clean up the mess that humans leave behind them. In The Wombles at Work, they are living in Hyde Park after being forced to move from Wimbledon Common. The overarching framing device for the book is that the Wombles are competing to come up with the best ways to fight pollution. Within that, the different strands of the plot sees the different Wombles trying to solve the various problems that they come across. So for example Tomsk saves a swan from choking to death on a net, a music festival takes place in the park and leaves lots of rubbish behind it, Madame Cholet is struggling with restrictions on how long she can have her stove on every day because the cooking can be smelt above ground and there are mysterious notes being left for the burrow.

When I bough this I wasn’t sure if this was one of the ones that I had already read or not, but in reading it, I realised that I hadn’t and that was also a delightful treat. I went off and had a look at the book summaries and I have definitely read the previous book where the Wombles had to move form Hyde Park, and fifth book the Wombles around the World where some of the burrow are sent around the world to find out more about other countries and other Wombles. I think I’ve read the book where they move back to Wimbledon common, but I’m not 100% sure. And I have the audiobook of the first one too because it’s read by Bernard Cribbins, which I listened to years ago and now want to listen to again! It’s easy to think that the problem of pollution and people wanting to care for the environment is a new thing, but when you go back and read the Wombles books – written in about eight years from the late 1960s through the 1970s, you realise that things really haven’t changed a lot. All of which means I think it would still be a great story to read as a middle grader today, even if the references to the Old Queen are more likely to be read as references to Elizabeth II rather than Victoria!

These were out of print for years and years which may explain that – my school library was the only place I ever remember seeing these and I’ve never come across them anywhere else before, and I suspect they may still be hard to find in the shops but they are at least on Kindle now.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 18 – August 24

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I’m in denial that August is nearly over, but the weather feels like it’s starting to change for the cooler, and the very early mornings are getting darker so it must be. Most of my reading time this week was spent on The Mitford Girls – which is 700 pages long and absolutely fascinating. It really does make me want to go off and read about more the various sisters and also the people around them, but I have so much non-fiction on the pile and they do tend to get slightly ignored in favour of fiction that I shall have to try and resist the urge to purchase more! And of the rest of the reading, aside from the Christie and Heyer which were on audio, the other three books were all from the pile, so if it wasn’t for that whole situation at the National Trust bookshops last week, I would be feeling quite good about myself. As it is, the pile is still larger than it was at the start of the month, and is looming at me from the corner of the sitting room and making me feel guilty.

Read:

Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie

Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer

The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell

The House of the Seven Mabels by Jill Churchill

City of Vengeance by D V Bishop

The Wombles at Work by Elizabeth Beresford

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Started:

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Cultish by Amanda Montell

Still reading:

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

One ebook bought, but that’s it. A positive relief after last week.

Bonus picture: an afternoon at the women’s World Cup rugby on Sunday.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: A Star is Bored

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Following on from The Celebrants two Tuesdays ago, today I’m writing about A Star is Born, which I discovered is written by Steven Rowley’s husband when I read the thanks for The Celebrants. And as I had on the pile already of course I went on to read that. And so here we are.

Charlie needs a new job and a gig as personal assistant to Kathi Kannon, an iconic Hollywood actress who played a character he had a figurine of as a child. He’s searching for meaning in his life and a way of moving on past his difficult childhood, she needs someone to organise her chaotic life. She’s impulsive and carefree, and everything that Charlie is not. She’s also Hollywood royalty with mental health and addiction issues and an octogenarian mother who was also an actress who lives next door.

Now if this sounds like Carrie Fisher (and her mum Debbie Reynolds) that might be because Bryon Lane worked as Fisher’s assistant for three years and says that that job inspired the novel. Now you can draw your own conclusions about how much of Kathi is Carrie and I can see from the reviews on Goodreads that it’s a polarising one. And if you’ve read any of Fisher’s memoirs that may also colour your opinions.

For me, Kathi’s hedonistic devil may care manic presence was there as a foil to Charlie’s own issues. He’s totally lost and allows the job to consume him and become his identity. It’s all amped up to eleven and Kathi’s antics seem purposefully extreme and exaggerated so that the reader is often thinking “come on Charlie, surely this is the thing that will make you wake up”. The blurb calls it hilarious, but a lot of the humour is too much towards the cringe for me, and I definitely wanted Charlie to pick himself up and grow some self worth well before he did. But by the end I was pleased with the journey that he had gone on and the person that had come out the other side.

Like The Celebrants, this one isn’t on Kindle and is going to be a special order, to the point where it’s not even listed on the Waterstones website. I’m not sure it’s a spend loads of money to get it type buy, but if it should come your way at a reasonable price it’s an interesting read. And I’d happy read another book by Byron Lane if that came my way.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 11 – August 17

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A good week – in life and in reading. We’ve wandered Norfolk, I read an entire book while sitting in a field at Sandringham waiting for bands to perform, and I’ve finished another non-fiction book – two now this month. Bravely I’ve started two more, here’s hoping they don’t end up on the long-running list…

Read:

Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford

Seams Like Murder by Dorothy Howell

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Grime and Punishment by Jill Churchill

Ask Not by Maureen Callahan

A Star is Bored by Byron Lane

The Stranger’s Companion by Mary Horlock*

Started:

The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell

City of Vengeance by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

Still reading:

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Um. Well yes. I may have lost my head a little in the National Trust bookshops. More on that at the weekend. And an ebook too.

Bonus picture: the library at Blickling Hall. Isn’t it awesome?

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: The Art of Catching Feelings

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Happy Tuesday everyone, I finally made a start on the Alicia Thompson backlog last week and here I am reporting back!

When Daphne goes to a baseball game days after she’s signed her divorce papers, she’s doing it because her ex wanted the ticket. So she gets drunk and then she heckles a player and seems to make him cry. The moment goes viral and she reaches out to him on social to apologise… except in all the drafting and redrafting she edits out the bit where she says she was the heckler. And so when Chris unexpectedly replies to her message it all gets complicated really fast. Chris is struggling with his own issues and finds himself strangely drawn to his new online friend. But how long can Daphne keep her secret and what happens when he finds out?

Let’s get the big problem over with right away: yes she’s basically catfishing him. And we’re meant to be fine with it – or at least get over it by the time it’s all resolved because: romance reasons. And so your mileage on this one may vary depending on your tolerance for that. I was mostly OK with it, but it took far too long for Daphne to come clean with Chris and I think there were ways that the book could have worked better if the dual identity situation had been resolved sooner.

And I realise that that sounds like I didn’t enjoy this, but I actually did – I read it in about 24 hours – and I liked the banter and the baseball setting and the development of Daphne’s character. I just wanted it to be better in a couple of areas. I wanted to see Daphne’s ex getting his comeuppance for his awful behaviour – which would have helped the reader understand her a bit better (and thus help with the deception thing) – which could just have been as simple as him being really annoyed at the success she sees as part of the plot.

I’ve seen this in Big Foyles and the Waterstones with the romance sections, so it should be fairly easy to get hold of this one (compared to some of my choices I mean) but it’s also on Kobo and Kindle.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 4 – August 10

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A pretty solid list this week, although slightly more classic crime than I was expecting! But another one off the long-running list so that’s good. And after being nudged in Waterstones the other day, I’ve got started on some of the Kennedy books on the shelf. And we had a nice weekend in Cumbria so I got to wander around one of my favourite bookshops again as well as everything else!

Read:

Heads You Lose by Christianna Brand

About That Kiss by Jill Shalvis

A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor*

The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson

Any Trope But You by Victoria Lavine*

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Sinister Spring by Agatha Christie

Started:

Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford

Ask Not by Maureen Callahan

Still reading:

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

A Star is Bored by Byron Lane

Four ebooks and two actual books.

Bonus picture: butterflies in Cumbria on Sunday

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.