Category: week in books

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.

Book of the Week, Fantasy, romance

Book of the Week: Swordheart

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This was a really easy pick today. Yes I read books last week that are out this week, but actually this was my favourite thing I read AND it has a sequel out today, which I’m going to have to sit on my hands not to buy straightaway because I loved this so much. And you can hear about one of this week’s new releases tomorrow, because I wrote a Recommendsday for three of the new August books that I’ve read and you can thank me for that later.

Halla has been housekeeper to her great uncle since her husband died. But now Uncle Silas is dead, she’s inherited his property and her cousin and his mother have locked her in her room until she’ll agree to marry him. She’d rather die than marry clammy handed Alver, so after a few days imprisonment and increasingly desparate she takes the sword that’s mounted on the wall in its scabbard to see if she might be able to use it to commit suicide. But when she unsheathes it, a man appears. Sarkis is an immortal warrior trapped inside the enchanted sword. He is usually fighting battles or carrying out assassinations but now he’s bound to protect Halla. What follows is a journey back and forth across the land to try and secure Halla’s safety and her inheritance and an experience quite unlike anything Sarkis has had in the centuries since he was trapped in the sword.

I really, really enjoyed this. It’s got great characters, a good central problem to solve and brilliant world building that is never info-dumped on you. This is set in the same world as some of Kingfishers other series but I haven’t read any of them (yet!) and I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. I’m on a big run of cozy fantasy at the moment and this was exactly what I was hoping it might be. I’ve written before about my patchy record with fantasy and also with knowing what I’m going to like in the genre, but this hit smack into my reading wheelhouse and was just what I needed after a distinctly mixed week in some of my other reading. It was a brilliant palate cleanser after a book that I really, really disliked and I would happily have followed Halla and Sarkis around for another hundred pages – and it’s already a 400 page book.

I picked this up in The Spicy Librarian after seeing it in various shops for ages – including reading the first few pages in Foyles a year or so back and enjoying it but not being able to justify buying it at the time – and seeing various people in my bookish communities raving about them for a while. On the one hand, I regret not reading this sooner, on the other, as I said at the top I now don’t have to wait to read the next in the series- and for people who read this when it first came out it’s been an eight year wait! The new one is called Daggerbound, and it’s about The Dervish, one of Sarkis’s comrades – and there’s a third one coming next year about Angharad. I’m already very excited.

Swordheart should be super easy to get hold of – I’ve seen it in almost every bookshop with a fantasy or romantasy section for the last year or so – and it’s in Kindle and Kobo. I had been waiting for it to go on offer since I read the start in Foyles, but I hadn’t spotted it happening yet, so maybe the new one will be the moment for an offer?

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 17 – August 23

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A super busy week last week, but not too awful week in reading all together. This coming week is even busier, so we’ll see how I go, but I have at least finished all of my August new releases from NetGalley before the end of the month which is practically a first. If only I had finished the July ones. Or the June ones.

Read:

The Double Turn by Carol Carnac

My Name is MacKenzie Bly by Lissa Evans

The Truth About Love by Stephanie Laurens

The Comeback by Mel Giedroyc*

At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie

Swordheart by T Kingfisher

The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious by Scott Lynch

Started:

n/a

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Nothing bought!

Bonus picture: The orchestra pit at The Car Man.

*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: Honey Bee Mine

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It’s Tuesday again and I’m back again with another romance book pick – but this time it’s a bit of a weepy one, in a good way though, not in a not-really-a-romance-because-someone-dies way. I previewed Sarah T Dubb’s second book in the lookahead at the start of the year and so it’s probably not a surprise that this would be my pick once I read it.

Penny Becker is a bee keeper, and she’s also trying to keep her family’s farm going. She grew up on the farm with her mother and grandmother – after her grandfather and her father upped and left their relative partners. Penny never stops working – and she never relies on anyone other than herself because it always ends in tears. The last time she did try to let someone in, it resulted in a failed expansion plan, the loan for which is the reason the farm might be about to be foreclosed on. She really needs the annual honey festival to be a success to save the farm. Zander Bouras spent his childhood summers on his grandfather’s farm next door and he really, really hated it. He is not at all happy to be back in town for the summer, but his ex-wife wants to spend summer in town with her parents and where his son goes, Zander goes. And so he’s back in town and he’s taking the summer off from his life as a restauranteur to deal with the property his grandfather left him. As a teen he hated Penny for her perfect life, but his son is really into bees and so he and Penny are forced into each other’s orbit and need to learn to work together.

I was expecting the enemies bit of the enemies to lovers trope to last a bit longer than it did, but actually Zander and Penny get past their issues relatively quickly and this is more of a small town romance where one half of the couple really, really isn’t planning on staying in town and where the other is keeping some pretty big secrets. And I’ll admit I did want Penny to use her words and explain what was going on to someone, anyone other than just her co-worker, but he was encouraging her to let people in and Penny’s reluctance to ask for help felt very logical given the circumstances of her life. And this isn’t always doing what you expect it to do, and there’s one particular thing I was half expecting to occur that didn’t and in the end, I didn’t really mind because I was too invested in how Zander and Penny were going to find their way to a happy ending.

Sarah T Dubb says at the start of the book that this wasn’t the second book that she was planning to release after Birding With Benefits and this did make me a bit teary eyed at times – in a good way, not a miserable one which I don’t remember from Birding, but honestly, like her prior novel this has relatable characters who are imperfect and dealing with it – even if it’s a completely new group of people in a completely different state to Birding – and maybe one day we will see the original second book too. Either way, I’ll be looking for the next book from Dubb whenever it appears.

This one is available in Kindle and Kobo. I pre-ordered the paperback but when it turned up (back in March!) it was definitely an American edition and I don’t think I’ve seen this in a store yet so I don’t know how easy it will be to get a proper copy. If I spot it I’ll try and mention it though.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 10 – August 16

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After another sweltering week, it’s meant to be getting a bit cooler. I can’t work out if this is going to help or hinder my reading – the heat has made me stay indoors more but also made it harder to concentrate. If it gets significantly cooler it will be very tempting to go out and get some fresh air. But given my recent experiences of getting out have left me a sweaty mess because of the humidity as well as the heat, may be I’ll still be sheltering in areas with air conditioning! We’re at a slightly funny point in the book release cycle – the summer books are already out, but the autumn ones haven’t quite started yet. I should be using this to catch up on things in the NetGalley backlog, but what I’m actually doing is reading books that I bought at Bristol and picking things up from the actual pile, reading 10 pages and then putting them down again. I blame the heat.

Read:

The Lion’s Tusk by Robert Jackson Bennett

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

A Labyrinth of Honeybees by Heather Fawcett

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead

Continental Christie by Agatha Christie

Helen, Television Dancer by Linda Graeme

Honey Bee Mine by Sarah T Dubb

Henrietta by Sophie Irwin*

Started:

The Truth About Love by Stephanie Laurens

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Nothing bought. A very well behaved week.

Bonus picture: a Parachutist on their way down on Sunday at the Balloon Festival. We went to take a look because a) it’s really nearby and b) it seemed slightly cooler. But in fact it was deceptive and the humidity was grim. Still at least we saw the parachutes, even if the only hot air ballons we saw were the baskets waiting to be re-gassed.

*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 Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy

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Happy Tuesday everyone, this week’s choice was one of the easiest that I have recently made. I started this one on Sunday night and finished it on Tuesday and I would have finished it sooner if I hadn’t had to work. Anyway, to the book.

Osric is a member of an order of assassins, Aurienne is a healer and a member of an enemy order. But Osric needs an expert healer – he’s injured and his order doesn’t let members retire. Luckily Aurienne desperately needs funding to help find a cure for a disease that’s ravaging children. And that is how the two of them find themselves flung together. As Aurienne (reluctantly) tries to heal Osric, the two of them discover that there may be some thing bigger behind the reoccurrence of the Pox. The trouble is that the longer the two of them spend in each other’s company, the harder it is to ignore the attraction between them – no matter how much they want to ignore it.

This was just a total delight. Really, it absolutely was. It’s got witty banter, two main characters who really don’t want to like each other but who really need each other and the forced proximity is truly epic. If I have a gripe with it, it’s that you don’t get all the answers in this book – but that’s also good news because it means there is a sequel, which came out in July. I wish I’d read this sooner – because the sequel was on NetGalley if only I’d known and now I’m going to have to pay money (and quite a lot of money) for it if I want to know what happens next any time soon.

I have a very mixed record on fantasy, but this is exactly the sort of end of fantasy that I like. It’s not cozy but it’s not to terribly high concept for me to deal with. Snarky banter is one of my favourite things in books and this has some of the best banter I’ve recently encountered as well as a brilliant inner monologue from the two leads to keep you going when they’re not actively fighting with each other. And the slow burn and forced proximity is excellent. it’s just so good. So, so good.

This one is super easy to get hold of – I’ve seen it in bookshops all over the place in the last year and just never got around to picking it up (more fool me) and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too. Place your bets now on how long I manage to resist the sequel!

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 3 – August 9

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Happy Monday. I would say I’m braced for another heatwave, but to be honest it feels like it has started already. It was really quite hot in London on Saturday, albeit not in the 30s, and it was so hot at home yesterday I was glad we hadn’t gone to the MotoGP at Silverstone – even though the races were exciting – because I would have been absolutely sure to get sunburn and a dehydration headache. Anyway, more excitement coming up this week with at least one more theatre trip, hopefully the air con will be working there. Anyway, on the reading front, it was a fairly ok week. I’m making fast progress down the conference purchases when I’m at home – the beauty of middle grade books is that they don’t take long to read – which is making me feel less bad about the enormous state of the pile in general.

Read:

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie

The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley

Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk by Travis Baldree

The Wednesday Witches Club by Sarah Beth Durst

Helen in Musical Comedy by Linda Graeme

Death at the Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh

The Murder on the Enriqueta by Molly Thynne

Started:

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead

Helen, Television Dancer by Linda Graeme

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

It’s offers post writing o’clock again so there were a few Kindle purchases. No actual books though

Bonus picture: The Strand and its little gaggle of theatres. I often forget that although the West End is (mostly) clustered around Shaftesbury Avenue, these three plus the Lyceum, the Duchess, the Novello, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Aldwych are all very close together too. And on Saturday night it seemed like most of them had finished their shows just in time for their patrons to be clogging the pavement as we were walking back to Euston…

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