Category: week in books

Book of the Week, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: A Game of Cat and Killer

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Happy Tuesday everyone. After last week’s Japanese fiction Recommendsday it just so happens that I’ve got another Japanese novel in translation today – it’s actually a new release in English and it’s got a very different feel from the ones I mentioned last week…

Yoshitaro Katayama is not an ideal candidate to be a detective: he doesn’t like heights, he’s socially awkward and he’d rather not come into contact with dead bodies. But his father was detective and it was his dying wish for his son. And so here he is. One morning he’s offer the choice of looking at some gruesome crime scene photos of a murdered young woman or going to the college she was a student at to conduct investigations. He chooses the latter, but soon there are more bodies and he has acquired a cat which belonged to one of the victims. He’s not keen on having a pet, until she starts to show an unusual level of interest in the case…

Now I know there are a lot of cozy mysteries with cats (often talking cats) in them. This is not one of those. Katayama also has a sister that he lives with and worries a lot about, and an auntie who is trying to arrange him a marriage but this is not cozy. Do not be deceived. This is a serial killer mystery which happens to have a cat. The detective is a bit hapless but the crimes he is investigating are anything but.

This originally came out in the late 1970s and is the first in a long running series by Jiro Akagawa that has only just making it into English. Considering their age they felt surprisingly current – obviously there are no mobile phones or computers but apart from that they could have been now. Of course that could be down to the choices Haydn Trowell has made in the translation. The murders were a bit on the gruesome side for what I’m used to reading, but I am interested enough in what happens to detective Katayama next that I may pick up the next one when it comes out in a few months time.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out today in Kindle and Kobo and all the usual formats. I have no sense of how easy (or otherwise) this will be to get in hard copy, but it’s got physical copies listed so it may be possible

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 21 – September 27

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It was one theatre trip and a concert in the end – and a non-fiction book, which always takes me longer than fiction. And we’re hurtling towards the end of September too, which is terrifying. Hey ho, we will get there. A quieter week this week (I hope) with plenty of opportunities for reading.

Read:

Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanne Tesori

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers

Hollywood Whispers by Eileen Cope*

Baekjo Laundry Has a Neat Answer to All Your Problems by Lee Jae-in*

Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters

Get Over It, April Evans by Ashley Herring Blake

Safe Harbor by Nicola Yoon

Started:

The Final Problem by Arturo Perez-Reverte

A Game of Cat and Killer by Jiro Akagawa*

The Gentleman’s Book of Vice by Jess Everlee*

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Three books and one ebook. I couldn’t help myself – I went to five different bookshops…

Bonus picture: Biscuit Moomins in the window of a shop in Notting Hill.

*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: To Brew or Not to Brew

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It’s Tuesday again, and as I said yesterday a the weather is turning autumnal, so my reading is turning towards mysteries. And at the weekend I started in on a couple of the cozy crime paperbacks that I had on the shelf – and one of them is my pick today.

The heroine of To Brew or Not to Brew is Max (short for Maxine) who is in the process of setting up her own craft brew pub in Pittsburgh. She’s trained as a brewmaster in Germany and has bought a building that used to be part of a (larger and now closed) brewery to open her business in. But it seems like someone doesn’t want her to open – what starts as acts of sabotage turn fatal as her assistant is found dead in the brewery. The police (in the form of her homicide detective dad) think that it’s accidental, but Max isn’t convinced and sets out to investigate herself. Along the way she reconnects with a school crush and adopts a kitten, but will her business (and Max herself!) survive until the grand opening?

There are so many cozy crime novels that are small food-and-or-drink businesses, but this felt like a nice change. There’s a bit of suspension of disbelief required when it comes to Max’s dad being in anyway involved in the police case, but that’s a fairly common thing in cozy crime to be honest – see also businesses managing to remain open and solvent despite bodies turning up all over the place. I also thought that the setting felt very distinctive – I haven’t been to Pittsburgh but it felt like it was grounded in the reality of an actual real place rather than something that would have been the same if it had been set in any other city.

I did have the murderer figured out fairly early, but given that this was doing loads of set up for a series I can forgive it that. This came out in 2015 and there are two more, which I would definitely read if I can lay my hands on them but they’re not available on Kindle in the UK and I think I got lucky finding this one in Waterstones Piccadilly (lets not contemplate how long ago it was that this popped up in Books Incoming or I’ll get really depressed at my rate of progress on the pile). But I guess there’s always a chance that next time I go in there they’ll have the others I guess? Joyce Tremel has a couple of other series too which I’ll keep an eye for but I suspect they’re going to be as hard to find as the sequels to this are.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 14 – September 20

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A fairly solid week of reading, considering that I had two theatre trips and a *very* busy week. Not as much progress on the NetGalley list as I would have liked, but three books off the physical pile is pretty good for me, especially given the extreme levels of indecision I find myself with when I stand in front of the bookcase. It’s definitely starting to feel autumnal now and I’m being pulled towards murder mysteries even more than ever!

Read:

Whose Body by Dorothy L Sayers

When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between by Ruth Jones and James Corden

In Dog We Trust by Beth Kendrick

Rum Affair by Doroth Dunnett

To Brew or Not to Brew by Joyce Tremel

Sugar Plum Poisoned by Jenn McKinlay

The Tsubaki Stationery Store by Ito Ogawa*

Started:

Baekjo Laundry Has a Neat Answer to All Your Problems by Lee Jae-in*

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

One ebook bought.

Bonus picture: One last time at The Producers last Monday before it closed at the weekend. I love this show so much and this was a great production of it. I saw it five times across the Menier and the London run, which is the most I’ve seen a show in a very long time, certainly the most I’ve seen a show in a two year span since the heady days of We Will Rock You….

*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, new releases

Book of the Week: Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy

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I’m actually following up on a new release I mentioned a couple of weeks back for this week’s pick, because it really lived up to the promise of the blurb and the gorgeous cover and was a really great read.

At the start of the book Philippa is cycling to work as a university professor when she narrowly misses falling into a sinkhole as it opens up. This near miss gives her a wake up call and suddenly she doesn’t want to put up with the frustrations of her academic job any more – whether it’s the office that’s actually a cupboard or the (male) colleagues who seem to only value her for the fact they can force her to do the jobs they don’t want to. So she hands in her notice and throws her life in to chaos. Luckily she inherited her romance-author grandmother’s house (and boat) and so she moves back there to regroup. Unluckily the house is in need of some serious repair and also comes with a sitting tenant – her grandmother’s former co-writer (and cover model). As Philippa and Dylan start to navigate their awkward co-habitation situation they also get to know each other and eventually find outlines for six more novels in Philippa’s grandmothers fantasy pirate romance series, which they start to write together. But can Philippa actually find a new future outside of academia?

This has a really good slow burn romance with two characters who have a lot of issues to work through, but because Philippa has the backstop of selling the house (which is on prime ocean front land) the stakes are lower than you might expect. She does have the most awful parents that I have recently encountered in literature and I really, really wanted them to get a lot of comeuppance (more than they did get, I’m warning you). But Philippa and Dylan’s slow dance towards each other is worth putting up with the rage that her mother will generate in you (her siblings are better than her parents, mostly, but that’s not saying much). Philippa’s disillusionment with academia felt very real – as did her difficulty in letting go of her plan for her life and figuring out a new one. I think that’s very relatable for millennials especially, who graduated into the financial crisis of 2008 and feel like they’ve been trying to make their lives more secure ever since then.

And as a romance reader, I loved that Philippa’s grandmother was a romance author of the old school type and that romance novels were the answer to Philippa figuring herself out and finding love. This is a warm hug of a novel – well except for the leaking roof, and bracing sea breezes – and would make a great autumnal read as you curl up on a sofa and hide from the changing seasons. I haven’t read any of Jacqueline Firkins’ other books but I’m pretty sure I have at least one of them on the TBR so you may see that popping up on the weekly list soon too!

My copy came from NetGalley but it was an Amazon First Reads pick in August before it came out at the start of September and is now in Kindle Unlimited so if you’re in that you can get it. That does mean it’s not on Kobo at the moment, and I also don’t have much of a sense of how easy it might be to find in the shops but I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 7 – September 13

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After a very changeable week of weather and a lot of time on the train, the list is somewhat back on track. I’ve got at least one theatre trip this week, so that may not last though. But I’m going to give it my best shot! There are some good reads on here though – and some less good – many of which you’re going to hear about in the posts to come.

Read:

The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White

Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch by Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent

Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy by Jacqueline Firkins*

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley*

The Vineyard Murder by Greg Mosse*

A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas

The Break-Up Pact by Emma Lord

Started:

The Tsubaki Stationery Store by Ito Ogawa*

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

One ebook bought.

Bonus picture: It’s that time of year again – the mornings are darker and that means I’m getting some spectacular sunrises on the train to work.

*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: The Author’s Guide to Murder

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For the second week running I’m picking a book I finished on Monday. I did this to myself last week by picking Vagabond and now I’m creating another potential problem for Future Verity. Fingers crossed the train journeys this week help me with a bigger reading list to chose from and break the cycle…

On a remote island off the Scottish coast, Castle Kinloch is a gothic mansion that’s been turned into a writers retreat in the hands of a literary superstar. Except Brett Saffron Paisley has just been found dead in the folly in the grounds and three American writers who were staying at the castle are among the prime suspects in the case. Kat de Noir writes erotica, Cassie Prigle writes cozy mysteries and Emma Endicott writes historical fiction – but the three of them say they’re working on a novel together, but the detective in charge of the case is suspicious.

This says “A Novel” on the front, but actually this is Williams, White and Willig doing a murder mystery that’s also a satire about the literary world. Now I will say that this is a big shift from what the three of them usually write – which is timeslip historical fiction like The Lost Summers of Newport – and I’m not sure they did a good enough job of setting that up for the regular reader. The characters are very caricaturist and I found it pretty hard going for the first half or so, then it improved as I realised that they were going for maximum ridiculous. Or at least I hope that’s what they were going for. By the end I was won over by the absolutely bonkers finale to the mystery strand and the fact that everyone got a happily ever after.

Basically I liked it when it was over more than I had during the reading process which makes this a bit of a strange one, but hey this has got very, very mixed reviews on Goodreads, so I thought it was worth writing about because I think that says something about the expectations management on this one for regular Williams, Willig and White readers and the blurb saying it’s Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote which really doesn’t describe what’s going on here either. I did love the nods to their other characters and real life authors in this but I definitely prefer their historical fiction – and I suspect if we get another book from the trio (and their usual publication schedule was every other year which should have made this year a year but I don’t see one on the schedule) then they’ll go back to that.

This one is an import from the US if you want it in an actual copy so you’re probably going to have to order it rather than stumble across it in a shop, but it is on Kindle and Kobo – although I think £6.99 is probably a bit much for how much I liked it!

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 31 – September 6

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Two mistakes this week that mean that the list is shorter: two nights at the theatre and committing to a non-fiction book. Add to that the fact that I wrote about the Tim Curry memoir last Tuesday despite finishing it on Monday and I’m in a bit of a bind for tomorrow. Hey ho. Many train journeys this week so hopefully reading balance will be resumed.

Read:

Vagabond by Tim Curry

A Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh

The Kennedys and the Windsors by Caroline Hallemann

The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

Laura Clark Is Away from Her Desk by Helen Russell*

That Detestable New Girl by Dora Chapman

Started:

The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White

Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch by Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

A bunch of Kindle books bought (because I was writing the offers post) but no actual hardcopies of anything.

Bonus picture: A sad victim of my fight with a buddleia over the weekend. So far, the buddleia is winning…

*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, memoirs, reviews

Book of the Week: Vagabond

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As I said yesterday, it was a bit of a grim week on a lot of fronts, one of which was the celebrity death front. And although I finished this on Monday so it’s technically cheating, it feels somehow right to make Tim Curry’s memoir this week’s pick.

In case you missed the last fifty years of pop culture, Tim Curry was an actor who first rose to prominence as Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror Show in a role he reprised in the movie version The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He went on to play an eclectic range of characters across his career – and if you’re a millennial he will likely have been a key figure in one of the movies or TV shows that defined your childhood – whether it is Muppet Treasure Island, Home Alone 2, Annie, The Wild Thornberries, The Worst Witch or Clue. And there are more I could have picked – he was that prolific. He had a stroke in 2012 but continued to do some voice work and occasional appearances after that.

Vagabond came out last autumn and was much awaited as Curry didn’t give a lot of interviews (although he was always great value when he did) and rarely revealed anything about his personal life. And if you’re looking for juicy scoops on that front, this is not that. He warns you right at the start he’s not talking about his love life and he sticks to that. What this is is a gallop through the rest of his life with a look at his early years it feels mostly because he thinks it helps you understand his attitude to life: his father was a navy chaplain whose job meant they moved around a lot and then died young (in his late 40s from a stroke), quite a distant relationship with his mother who didn’t understand him and a boarding school education all of which added up to a very self contained and independent adult. He does a really good job of making you feel like he’s revealing a lot about himself while actually keeping a lot back – basically a memoir on his own terms, which he sets out very clearly at the start.

I am one of those who first saw him in one of those 80s and 90s roles and then graduated to Rocky Horror as a teen and then missed out on seeing him as King Arthur in Spamalot because I was a penniless student at the wrong end of the country at the time. So I learned a lot about his career from reading the book but what I enjoyed the most about it was how much it felt like it was really in his voice. And I know I said that he didn’t give a lot of interviews, but the ones he did were memorable and of course he’s done so much voice work over the years that it is easy to imagine him saying the words as you read it – and he did read the audiobook and I can’t tell you the willpower it took not to also buy the audiobook when I had the hardback on the pile.

I’m glad that he got to tell his story on his terms – even if he wasn’t entirely sure about the whole concept as he said several times through the book. I’m annoyed at myself for the fact that it took him dying for me to bump the book to the top of the to-read pile but strangely it did feel like a good time to read it and having read all the obituaries and watched all the clips this week it was nice to read about his life in his own words – and spot where quotes had been lifted for the obits or stories that he had told in interviews popped up or were lightly referenced. But I enjoyed reading it and it’s out in paperback now and if I was running a bookshop I’d be putting it in an obvious place for people to happen across right now.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 24 – August 30

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Happy Bank Holiday Monday to all who celebrate it. Although to be fair last week didn’t feel like much of a week to celebrate. I was looking back at my photos from last week when I was writing this and saw the ones from the Proms on Monday – which was wonderful but feels like a life time ago given Dolly Parton on Tuesday night, Tim Curry on Wednesday and then of course the landslides in Nepal where the news on the numbers of missing just keeps getting worse and worse. But here we are. The list this week is short – I had the Proms, then I had a migraine, and then we did a last minute flit to the Far North to visit my sister for the weekend which we hadn’t planned. I read lots of books while we were there – but I don’t think Where is Pierre, That’s not my Dinosaur, Six Dinner Sid or any of the other dozen or so books I read my niece really count here. That said, Six Dinner Sid is a stone cold classic and I really loved Where is Pierre which I hadn’t seen before.

Read:

Nemesis by Agatha Christie

Murder-Sur-Mer by Hugh Morrison

Battle of Round House by Tananarive Due

The Cairndale Orphan by J M Miro

After Park by Patti Benning

Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie

Started:

Vagabond by Tim Curry

The Kennedys and the Windsors by Caroline Hallemann

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

After doing so well for the rest of the month and not buying anything I cracked – two books bought. But they weren’t impulse purchases, or at least not really. I promise I’ll explain in the next Books Incoming

Bonus picture: waiting for the American Classics Prom on Monday night – it’s on TV (or bits of it are) later this week, and it’s on BBC Sounds if you just want the audio. It’s worth it – especially the Rhapsody in Blue with the Marcus Roberts trio.

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