It seems like we might have brought some summery weather home with us from Gran Canaria! And considering I was back at work from Tuesday, I’m actually pretty pleased with this list of reading last week. All I need to do now is get the hammock set up in the back garden ready for some quality reading time in the sunny weather.
The Unforgettable Loretta, Darling by Katherine Blake*
One ebook bought
Bonus picture: Saturday afternoon in the countryside. There is a boules tournament going on just out of shot, which is less quintessentially British, but this view just made me thing of Constable paintings for some reason.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
As I said yesterday, in a rare turn of events, I read all of the physical books I took on holiday with me, and this was one of them – an airport sized paperback version in case you can’t tell from the photo.
This is a potted history of how Formula One came to its current moment – massively popular and finally breaking America for the first time, in part thanks to the Netflix series Drive to Survive. This takes you through the many evolutions of the sport, to explain how the sport evolved into the sport-entertainment behemoth that it is today. The authors are journalists from the Wall Street Journal – who have previously broken down (in book form) the global success of the English Premier League. This is not a history of who won what and when – it’s a look at the evolution of the sport, the key characters and moments and particularly the business of F1.
Now regular readers will know that I’m a big motorsports fan, and Formula One is the series that I’ve been watching the longest* and I know a fair bit about it because I live with a massive petrol head who has been a subscriber to F1 Racing/GP Racing for about 20 years. I’ve watched with interest over the last few years the changes that have happened in the sport since Bernie Ecclestone was deposed from his throne as puppet master in Chief and new fans have arrived in the sport – including my own sister, who despite growing up in the same household as me, has never previously been interested in the sport – and still doesn’t watch the races, she just watches Drive to Survive when it comes out.
And this is a book aimed at fans like my sister (although maybe not my sister, because she’s heard me tell some of these stories before!), who are new to the sport and want to understand a bit more of the history and the personalities. I didn’t learn a lot that I didn’t already know, but I wasn’t expecting to – and it was all put together incredibly well and in a really readable way. I was interested in what stayed in and what got left out – I’m not sure Graham Hill got a mention, and neither really did the trend of the driver pool becoming ever more dominated by sons of previous drivers.
But that’s not what this book is here to do – it’s going to talk you through how the sport started, how Bernie Ecclestone took control of it and made himself a billionaire, the geniuses who have designed the cars that changed the sport – and how it all came together at the perfect moment when the series of Drive to Survive covering the 2019 season hit Netflix just before Covid hit and the world shut down. It briefly touches on the way fears that some people have about the Netflix-isation of the sport, but doesn’t go into the realms of speculation about what might happen next – for which I am thankful!
Him Indoors hasn’t read it yet – and I await his verdict when he does, because he knows the history more than I do and will undoubtedly spot some errors – but the only glaring one I spotted was late on when they described the famously Finnish Valtteri Bottas as Estonian – which given how his most famous Drive to Survive moment is probably the one where he’s naked in a Sauna (and he’s posted another Sauna videos on Instagram just three days ago as I write this) and he’s the latest in a long line of Finnish F1 drivers (many of them quirky) and Estonia to my knowledge has never had an F1 driver is a bit of a howler, but I’ll forgive them (as long as they fix it in the paperback!)
My copy came from the airport bookshop, but it’s out now in hardback if you’re not at the airport – my hometown Waterstones has click and collect copies available so you should find it pretty easily – as well as on Kindle and Kobo.
*I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the three things I watched on TV with my dad when I was little were Formula One, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Worzel Gummidge. How many episodes of Worzel we actually watched I don’t know, but it stuck in my head. The other two, we watched a lot.
So we’ve been on holiday! A week in the sunshine means I’ve read a lot of books – and I finished Travellers in the Third Reich!!! All it took was (another) holiday and I got it done. And it is very good – the only reason it’s taken so long is because it’s long and a tough subject. Anyway, my other major holiday achievement was that I finished all three of the actual books I took with me – one from home and two that I bought at the airport. I think this is the first time this has ever happened.
Bonus picture: A scene from our holiday hike. That’s me striding away from the camera on my way to the bottom of the giant rock. And it might look flat here, but this is the plateau after a bit of a steep climb!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Last week was a bumper week of new romance releases, and Annabel Monaghan’s new book was one of them. And this choice may not be a surprise to those of you who study the reading lists each Monday.
Ali’s mum died two years ago, a year later her husband left her and she’s been trying to keep her head above water ever since juggling her kids and her career as a professional organiser. But the first time she put proper clothes (ie not joggers and a baggy t shirt) on in months to take the dog to the dog park she meets a man who she is fairly sure is flirting with her. And the more she gets to know Ethan, the more she likes him. But he’s only in town for the summer, so it’s just a summer romance – isn’t it?
As you may remember, I really loved Nora Goes off Script – but I didn’t like Monaghan’s follow up last year the same way. This however was a lovely return to what I wanted. It’s pretty low stakes and low conflict between the romantic leads, but there is plenty of stuff to work through for the heroine to get her happy ending. And I was rooting for her the whole time. My only real complaint is that I wanted more comeuppance for Ali’s ex husband for being so horrid and dismissive of her. But she’s definitely the winner in the end – and she does it for herself too, not because Ethan makes it happens for her – which is my biggest gripe with the Legally Blonde musical vs the film and I can rant at you about that all day if you set me going!
I had a copy of Summer Romance pre-ordered (although I also got approved for it on NetGalley on release day!) and it’s out now on Kindle and Kobo for your summer enjoyment.
Well that was a week. I’m trying to get ahead on my summer reading so I can recommend some of them but there’s just so much good stuff. And yes I did buy the final Maisie Dobbs, on release day, in hardback – but I am trying to pace myself with it so it’s not over too soon. And given that it is a hardback and I don’t want to wreck it, that may be easier than if I had bought the kindle version!
I’m hoping I’m getting into my summer reading stride. Of course it could all go terribly wrong – and it frequently has in the past – but I’m choosing to be optimistic. I think the weird and unpredictable weather has helped with this, because when it’s not sunny outside it’s nice to read summer-y books to hope that the nice (but hopefully not too boiling) weather is coming soon.
As I said yesterday, it was a busy week last week, but I did have time to finish The Reunion – which I started before the Lagos trip, but couldn’t take with me because I was too far through to make it worth it. And given how much I enjoyed it, it was an obvious choice for today’s pick.
Liv is an actress working in LA. As a teenager, she was star of a wildly popular TV show – Girl on the Verge – and she spent a lot of her teenage years having to live up to and in the shadow of her character on the show. Now it’s twenty years since the show’s premiere and a streaming service is getting the original cast back together for a reunion episode. The fans are excited to see some unfinished business from the original finale resolved, but for Liv, it’s about seeing Ransom Joel again. He was her character’s love interest on the show – and her best friend and confidante in real life. But as the show ended he told her he needed space from her and left her reeling. Once they’re back on set together, they fall back into their old habits – but can this time have a different ending?
If you watched any of the WB shows back in the day, you’ll understand what this is trying to evoke – and there have been enough old tv shows getting reunions like this since the advent of the streaming services that it all feels pretty plausible. I was a teenager in the heyday of these sorts of series so I was a total sucker for the premise of this, but The Reunion has the worrying words “a novel” on the front – which can sometimes mean “we’ve written a blurb that suggests it’s a romance novel, but don’t get your hopes up for a happy ending” so I was slightly apprehensive going into this. But I think in this case, “a novel” is warning you more that this is about Liv and how she grows and develops as much as it is about her relationship with Ransom. There is not a lot of tension in their relationship – and when there was an issue, I had the culprit pegged pretty fast. But I still enjoyed it – I’m at a place at the moment where I don’t really want high angst and drama in my reading, so a meander through the life of an actress and a reunion of a show that reminded me a lot of the sort of thing that I used to watch was pretty perfect for me at the moment.
This looks like Kayla Olsen’s first book in this sort of area – I see some dystopian future type stuff on her good reads page, but nothing else giving these sorts of vibes – so I hope she does more because this was a really nice way to spend a few hours. My copy of The Reunion came from Foyles (in store, although they claim to have no click and collect copies at the moment), but it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.
So it turns out that despite there being no time difference between Nigeria and the UK, it can still make you exhausted. To be honest, I think it was the night flight home that was the big problem – and then I had (another) super busy week on top. Hopefully this week will be calmer/better/easier!
This was the other book that came out the week before last – and so they’ve both now been BotW picks. So that’s two new books in a row, two romances in a row – although this one is set in the past – and two books I’ve been looking forward to that haven’t let me down!
It’s 1960 and baseball player Eddie O’Leary is having the worst time of his life: after being trading to the New York Robin, his swing has vanished and he doesn’t know how to get it back. On top of that all his teammates hate him after comments he made on TV after finding out he was being trading live on air. Mark Bailey is an arts writer, except that recently he hasn’t been writing much at all. So when he’s assigned to ghost write a weekly column for the city’s most notorious baseballer, he is distinctly unenthusiastic. But when he meets Eddie he finds someone who might be as lonely as he is and there’s a definite pull between them. But it’s 1960 and Eddie is a professional sportsman, and Mark doesn’t want to be anyone’s secret (again) so nothing can happen right?
This is in the same world as Sebastian’s earlier book We Could Be So Goodwhich was also a BotW pick here. That was set at the same newspaper that Mark works at – and you’ll see some familiar faces here if you’ve read that book too. This is a grumpy-sunshine type story and is very, very slow burn for some very valid reasons for the characters, but it’s very satisfying watching these two figure out their stuff and get their acts together. I read it across two evenings – and would have read it faster if I didn’t have to do actual work.
My copy was on Kindle, but it’s also on Kobo and in paperback.
So I got back yesterday morning from a work trip to Nigeria! I spent a week in Lagos and it was amazing – but so very, very hot! Obviously one of the books on this list was last week’s BotW, and I had to leave The Reunion at home (because I was already a third through it) so that didn’t get finished this week – but I did finish the Shardlake, so swings and roundabouts! This week coming is a much more normal week so we’ll see what happens next.
