Category: week in books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 25 – June 1

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We’re into June and I’m still playing outfit roulette in the mornings because the weather just can’t seem to sort itself out. But on the bright side, we’ve started to get the summer releases through. And on the even brighter side, I’ve finally finished that Cher Memoir. Admittedly there are still other long runner on that list I haven’t finished, but that’s the one that’s been sitting there the longest, so it’s definitely progress.

Read:

Beneath These Stones by Ann Granger

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

Shades of Murder by Ann Granger

A Restless Evil by Ann Granger

It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan

The Bookstore Family by Alice Hoffman

The June Paintings by Maggie Shipstead

Swan Song by Edmund Crispin

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Started:

Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson

Still reading:

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater*

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Two pre-orders arrived, two ebooks bought and a second hand paperback.

Bonus picture: I’m annoyed I didn’t take a screen grab on day 1500 exactly, but still it’s pretty impressive.

*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: On Turpentine Lane

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Amid all the murder mysteries last week there were a couple of other books – one of which was my first Elinor Lipman novel which is now my first non-mystery BotW in nearly a month – dragging the ratio of mystery to non-mystery so far this year up to 13 mystery to seven others!

Our heroine is Faith Frankel, 32 years old and back in her home town working in fundraising at a private school. Not in town (or answering her messages) is her boyfriend/fiancé Stuart, who has taken off on a cross country walk to find himself. In his absence Faith has bought herself a house – a fixer-upper bungalow – and is trying to get her life on track. But the history of the house may be less than peaceful – for starters the police turn up to search her basement for bloodstains. And her family life is less than peaceful too – her father is having a midlife crisis and has has left her mother to pursue his a new career as a painter of fake Chagalls and one of his new benefactors.

I know I said this wasn’t a mystery – and you’ll have noticed in that summary that there is a mysterious element to this, but really it’s not the main thrust of the plot – which is a delightful and some what madcap romantic comedy. It’s a bit chaotic and the plot developments just keep coming, making the pace really high and keeping you turning the pages. I was a little bit perplexed as to why someone as sensible as Faith was with such a freeloader as Stuart to start with, but I just gave up and went with it because he wasn’t really a presence in the book – but he did provide plenty of humour and acted as a catalyst for other events in the book. I would happily have read another 100 pages of the madness – but Lipman did tie it all up very neatly at the end so I can’t really complain too much.

This is in Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus at the moment, I’m not sure how easy the paperback woudl be to get hold of, because I’ve never really looked for Elinor Lipman in the shops. But of course this does give me an excuse…

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 19 – May 25

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It’s another Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK, so I hope those of you who aren’t working have a nice day and that the weather cooperates with whatever your plans are. There are three different football teams celebrating today, two of them with full on parades, so chances are there’ll be rain at some point! I continue to binge my way through the Mitchell and Markbys – and it’s surprising me how much I had forgotten from first time around. It makes them even more of a treat, but also harder to resist just going straight on to the next one! But I’ve still managed to get a few other things read this week – even if I didn’t get that much off the long-running list! Onwards we go…

Read:

A Touch of Mortality by Ann Granger

A Knife to Remember by Jill Churchill

A Word After Dying by Ann Granger

The Beast of Littleton Woods by T E Kinsey

Call the Dead Again by Ann Granger

Amelia’s Shadow by Marie Benedict

On Turpentine Lane by Elinor Lipman

Started:

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater*

Still reading:

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Three ebooks and a pre-order

Bonus picture: Rainbows and sunshine at the train station.

*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

Book of the Week: A Farewell to Yarns

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As you could see from the list yesterday, last week was mostly spent reading Mitchell and Markby books, but when I wasn’t reading those, I was reading another murder mystery from the early 1990s and that’s what I’m writing about today. And just to whet your appetite, I’ve got another series of a 1990s vintage coming to you on Friday. It’s like I’ve got a coherant theme happening… oh wait, I have. Two of them. Just you wait until tomorrow…

Anyway, Farewell to Yarns is the second book in a series featuring widowed single mum Jane Jeffry. It’s the run up to Christmas and as well as helping organise a church bazaar she’s got an old friend coming to visit her. Jane hasn’t seen Phyllis in years and surprised by the fact that she suddenly wants to visit her – and then is even more surprised when Phyllis turns up with a bratty son that no one knew she had. And then there’s a body and Jane can’t help but get involved in trying to figure out what happened.

Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in at the moment, but this is another really easy to read and fun (if you know what I mean) cozy murder mystery. It’s not long, but the plot is clever if slightly outlandish in places, but that doesn’t matter because if you were going to rule out slightly bonkers things in books you’d never read any cozy crime at all! Think of all those small towns with insanely high murder rates and small businesses continuing to thrive even though their owners keep stumbling across bodies on the premises. I haven’t read the first book in the series, but it didn’t matter at all because any background you need is explained in this – and it’s only the second book in the series so there aren’t too many running plots that you need to get your head around anyway.

This one is going to be harder to get hold of – I bought my copy (and another in the series) in the second hand bookshop at Baddesley Clinton and it’s not available on Kindle. But Amazon and Abebooks have copies and sensible prices, and I’m hoping that I might be able to pick up a few more in the series if I keep my eyes peeled!

Happy Reading

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 12 – May 18

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Well I said on Friday that I was on a mega-binge of Mitchell and Markby books, and you see the results of that here – in the read list and in the purchases because I had to buy them to keep reading. We had a lovely trip away at the weekend and it was a busy week at work so I’m choosing to blame that for the increasing length of the still reading list…

Read:

A Farewell to Yarns by Jill Churchill

Where Old Bones Lie by Ann Granger

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

A Fine Place for Death by Ann Granger

Flowers for his Funeral by Ann Granger

Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

A Candle for a Corpse by Ann Granger

Started:

N/a

Still reading:

The Beast of Littleton Woods by T E Kinsey

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Five books bought.

Bonus picture: Another photo from a sunny Sunday afternoon in the countryside. Just glorious.

*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, detective, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Underscore

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For this week’s pick I’m reporting back in with some good news: the new Vinyl Detective is pretty good.

The set up is this: the granddaughter of an Italian film music composer is trying to reissue his music. But because he was suspected of carrying out a murder, some of his masters were destroyed and records themselves are somewhat hard to find. So she enlists the Vinyl Detective to try and track down the rarest of them all for her – the one for the movie where the murder happened. Oh and if he can clear her grandfathers name that would be great. But trying to stop her are the grandchildren of the murder victim…

You may remember that I was a little trepidatious about this one, because I didn’t love the last book in the series. But this was a really good read. It’s got a good mystery, a real sense of the musical genre it’s tackling and lots of food. Plus the extended gang is very much in evidence if you have read the other books in the series. Plus as a bonus for me, there’s lots of action in and around Barnes and Richmond, which are both places that I have stayed in a fair bit in my efforts to avoid the long commute back and forth to London at various points.

I’m going to say this will work best if you’ve read at least some of the others in the series, but it’s also an excuse to post the shot of them all here and to comment on the fact that this book’s cover animal is a dog. You’re welcome. I’ve already seen this in the shops so in should be relatively easy to get hold of in paperback as well as in all the usual digital formats.

Happy Reading

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 5 – May 11

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So here’s the thing, despite the fact that I have a tonne of books waiting to be read, at the start of last week all my brain wanted to do was re-read Mitchell and Markby books. Now this started because I bought the first one second hand a few weeks back as you know, and started reading it on Sunday night. And then I ended up buying the next few on kindle so I could read on because when I read them originally I had borrowed them from a friend and I gave them back like the good girl I am. And then I really struggled to get started on anything new to me and so moved on to more familiar old friends – with new books in series that I like and a dash of Terry Pratchett. We will see where this week takes us…

Read:

Say it With Poison by Ann Granger

A Season for Murder by Ann Granger

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

Cold in the Earth by Ann Granger

Murder Among Us by Ann Granger

Underscore by Andrew Cartmel

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Started:

A Farewell to Yarns by Jill Churchill

The Beast of Littleton Woods by T E Kinsey

Still reading:

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Four books bought and one pre-order made. And of course another preorder arrived.

Bonus picture: we have a flower on the new(ish) arrival!

*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, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Tea on Sunday

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Happy Tuesday everyone. I’m deeply confused about what day of the week it is and messing with my brain as I keep panicking that I’m forgetting to do things/should be somewhere that I’m not. Why is my brain like this? Anyway – to this week’s pick which sees me back with a British Library Crime Classic.

In Tea on Sunday, Alberta Mansbridge has invited an assortment of guests over for tea – among them her nephew, a friend she had fallen out with, her accountant, her doctor, an ex-prisoner she has been trying to rehabilitate and an Italian architect she has been sponsoring. But when they arrive they find that she has been murdered. The house is locked, and so her murderer must have been someone who she would have let into the flat. Our detective charged with working out who is responsible is Inspector Corby who discovers that there are plenty of options for who might have wanted the wealthy, elderly lady out of the way.

This written in 1973 but feels like it’s from an earlier period – except for the fact that some of the guests are of decidedly more modern occupations than you would have found in some of those books, or at least more explicit about what it is they do than you would have found in many of those mysteries. There have been a few patchy novels among my recent BLCC reading – but this is definitely a good one. Lettice Cooper was a prolific author, but not normally of mystery novels but I really liked her writing style so I shall look out for more from her. One of her other novels has been published by Persephone so that may be the easiest one for me to lay my hands on, should I ever get the current state of the pile under control.

Anyway, this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and I’ve seen it in paperback in the shops too as it’s a recent release.

Happy reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: April 28- May 4

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It’s a Bank Holiday in the UK today so if you have a day off work, I hope you’re enjoying it and sorry that the nice weather didn’t last. It’s also May, which means hopefully the nice weather will come back at some point, although we’re all bound to spend the next month getting our outfits wrong as we try and predict whether we need to be dressing for heat or cold. Anyway, continued progress on some fronts on the reading, and less so on others as there’s been a lot going on in real life. But I seem to be saying that a lot at the moment, so maybe this is just normal now? What a worrying thought.

Read:

Death on the Pier by Jamie West

The 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie

Death at the Matinee by Jamie West

Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine*

Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper

Death at the Playhouses by Stuart Douglas

Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer

Started:

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Still reading:

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Two books bought – one in Quinns, one in Oxfam.

Bonus picture: the narrow alley down to Quinns bookshop – which I always expect to be higher up the hill than it is…

*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, Fantasy, reviews

Book of the Week: Legends and Lattes

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Happy Tuesday everyone. The weather here in the UK is distinctly summery, and I’ve started to one again think about my lack of a summer jacket. But of course as we have a bank holiday coming on Monday, this will not last, and we will soon be plunged into rain and misery again. But I’m enjoying it while I can. Today’s pick has got what I would call strong autumnal vibes – but it was the perfect book for what I needed last week, which was comforting, low angst reading.

Viv has spent her adult life as a barbarian bounty hunter, but as we meet her at the start of Legends and Lattes, she is hanging up her sword. She’s got a plan for a new life and has just finished the last mission she needs to do to be ready to carry it out. And so she leaves her crew behind her and heads to the coastal town of Thune where she wants to open a coffee shop. Just a few issues: no one there knows what coffee is, she’s never run a shop before and not everyone wants her to be successful.

I’d heard lots of people say that this was really, really good and it totally lived up to the hype for me. As I said at the top, this is such a comforting read. The cover even says “low stakes” and although there is some peril here, that is pretty much exactly what you get. Viv sets up a coffee shop and creates herself a found family whilst facing down a few challenges. I can be a bit iffy with fantasy, but this is definitely at the end of things that I like – the world made sense, it’s high fantasy but in some ways it reminds me of the sort of fantasy you get from the Discworld, but with less peril and a lot less satire. It’s a proper hug of a book and I do love a found family type story. I bought this a while ago when it was on offer (based off all those recommendations) and had been saving this for a Time of Need, and it did exactly what I needed it to do.

I read Legends and Lattes on Kindle, but it’s also available on Kobo and as an audiobook – read by Travis Baldree himself as is also a prolific audiobook narrator. There’s a prequel called Bookshops and Bonedust which also features Viv which I now need to read, and a third book in the series coming in the autum.

Happy Reading!