Verity Reads Books (lots of them)
In which our heroine attempts to tame the to-read pile
Yeah, remember the busy week last week? Well I shouldn’t have cheated and used Husband Material last week because I’m in an even worse situation this week. So I’m just going to post pictures of the Commonwealth Games athletics instead and promise to do better next week!
Two nights away from home, three theatre trips and an evening at the Commonwealth Games. Truly it is a miracle I read anything this week! But I did, go me. This week is looking equally frantic, so goodness knows what next week’s list will look like too.
Read:
Husband Material by Alexis Hall*
Murder at the Brightwell by Ashley Weaver
The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham
Death Wears a Mask by Ashley Weaver
A Dream of Sadlers Wells by Lorna Hill
Veronica Goes to the Wells by Lorna Hill
Started:
Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra*
The Twist of the Knife by Anthony Horowitz*
Still reading:
Godemersham Park by Gill Hornby*
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor
Femina by Janina Ramirez*
Castle Shade by Laurie R King
Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell
Two books in Foyles on Monday. I said the willpower wouldn’t last!
Bonus photo: theatre trio three – Glass Menagerie, which I studied at school but had never seen.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Yes I finished this on Monday – but it’s out today so it’s actually time appropriate. Check me out with the ever so slightly forward planning.
Husband Material is the sequel to Boyfriend Material which was a Book of the Week back when I read it in early 2021. We rejoin our erstwhile heroes two years into their actual relationship (as opposed to the fake one, see Boyfriend Material) and its all going well for Luc and Oliver. They’re making their relationship work – Luc’s trying not to bring the chaos and Oliver’s getting therapy and it’s all lovely. Except that suddenly everyone is getting married and Luc thinks maybe they’re meant to too, because that’s what you’re meant to do when you love each other, right? Right?
I have strongly mixed feelings on sequels usually. I know I’m always saying that I want more of the happily ever after at the end of my romance novels, but I appreciate that an actual novel needs tension and conflict. Most sequels do this by breaking the couple up and getting them back together (or variations thereof) and that often drives me mad. Particularly when the breakup is because of something you could solve by having a conversation. This does not do that. There is conflict, but I was not really ever worried that Luc and Oliver going to end up together – just how were they going to work it all out. And I can’t really explain any more than that without massive plot spoilers.
All the supporting cast are back too – Luc’s friends, his crazy mum, thankfully not too much of his awful dad. And there’s lots of banter and pop culture references. And if I didn’t quite love it as much as the first one, it was a pretty high bar to hit and it was lovely being back with some old friends for a few hours. This is apparently a universe now – so there’s a third book coming, but about a different couple, one of whom briefly featured in this book. So that’s fun too.
My copy of Husband Material came from NetGalley (thank you bookish gods) but it’s out today in Kindle, Kobo and delicious paperback, including from Words and Kisses where they have signed ones. You definitely need to have read Boyfriend Material to get the most out of this though.
Happy Reading!
Well it’s been an amazing week – Martha Wainwright, Commonwealth Games Gymnastics and then England won the women’s Euros. Is it any surprise that the list is slightly shorter that usual this week? It’s the end of the month too so we have the usual array of review posts coming up this week too. You’re welcome.
Read:
Mean Baby by Selma Blair
The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer
Infamous by Lex Croucher*
The Affair of the Blood Stained Egg Cozy by James Anderson
Riviera Gold by Laurie R King
Rhode Island Rooster by Charlotte Carter
My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith
Started:
Husband Material by Alexis Hall*
Castle Shade by Laurie R King
Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell
Still reading:
Godemersham Park by Gill Hornby*
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor
Femina by Janina Ramirez*
No books bought – despite that visit to Waterstones. Don’t worry. It won’t last!
Bonus photo: the giant bull from the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony in Birmingham city centre on Friday.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Making a change from the run of BotW picks recently, this week I’ve gone for something (pretty much) new and also that’s not a romance or a mystery. You can thank me later.
Sam and Sadie first met when they were children. Then they didn’t see each other for years – until one day Sam sees Sadie on the subway platform. This chance meeting starts them on the road to success as video game designers. You follow Sam and Sadie over thirty years – as they play games, design games and grow up, always linked together but sometimes pulling in different directions.
You all know that I’ve been reading mostly stuff with happy endings or resolutions for the last *checks calendar* two years or so and this took me a little while to read because I wasn’t sure I was going to like how it all worked it. But I’m so glad I stuck with it because it is just wonderful – even if there was some crying involved, thankfully not on a train though. You watch Sam and Sadie grow and develop and try to help each other through life’s challenges. I can’t really say too much more than that because it’s going to give to much away.
I was a PC gamer when I was younger – mostly simulators like Sim City, the Sims and Transport Tycoon, but also Commander Keen and some of the other shareware games of that era, so I’ve played some of the games that Sam and Sadie played when they are kids and I understood the sort of games they were trying to create even if they weren’t my sort of games. But I don’t think you have to be a gamer to get this novel, don’t worry. It’s two people navigating friendship while working together. And it’s 400ish pages, so if you need a book for the beach this could be it!
I haven’t read any of Gabrielle Zevin’s books before, although I’ve had The Storied Life of A J Fikry on the list of books I would like to read at some point for years. But if her other books are anything like this one, I need to get to them sooner rather than later, just as soon as I’m in a more resilient state of mind, because this broke me at various points.
My copy of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow came via NetGalley but it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo and in hardback. And you should be able to get hold of it fairly easily because it’s had window displays in some bookshops which always a good sign – and Foyles have click and collect copies too.
Happy reading!
Check me out. A remarkably good and varied week in reading by recent standards. Non fiction, new fiction, contemporary romance, adventure and golden age crime. This week I have two nights away (only one last week) and a day out at the Commonwealth Games so who knows how much reading time I have. This could be the high point of the whole month!
Read:
Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh
Children of the Storm by Elizabeth Peters
That Woman by Anne Sebba
Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh
Method Acting by Adele Buck
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin*
Acting Lessons by Adele Buck
Fast Acting by Adele Buck
Started:
Infamous by Lex Croucher*
Femina by Janina Ramirez*
Riviera Gold by Laurie R King
Still reading:
Godemersham Park by Gill Hornby*
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Mean Baby by Selma Blair
Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor
Positively restrained – two Adele Bucks to enable the binge, but that’s it.
Bonus photo: The British Museum on Thursday evening as I walked past on my way to a gig at the Museum of Comedy. We’ve just started The Deeds of the Disturber as our next Amelia Peabody relisten so it seemed apt for this week’s photo!
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
So a slightly cheaty pick this week, as it’s not a book I haven’t read before, but as I finished the Phryne reread last week, I’m going to let myself break the rules!
Murder and Mendelssohn is the twentieth book in Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series and has a lot of the key threads in the series running through it. Inspector Jack Robinson asks Phryne for help investigating the murder of an unpopular conductor. Jack thinks the killer may come from among the choir he has been rehearsing so Phryne decides to infiltrate the choir and find out. But at the same time, one of her old friends from World War One is in town and needs her help keeping a mathematical genius alive.
My favourite Phrynes are the ones with a large cast of suspects, a love interest and a historical connection – and this has all of that. The full Fisher menage is here – with the exception of Lin Chung, and it has has Greenwood’s take on Sherlock Holmes in Rupert Sheffield, former codebreaker and current irritant to all around him except John Wilson.
I wouldn’t suggest you start the series here, because you’ll miss all the fun of getting to this point, but if you do make this your first taste of Miss Fisher, then it will give you a pretty good flavour of what everything is all about. One last thing – a warning: if you’ve watched the TV show, don’t expect this to be the same. I’ve enjoyed the series, but it’s a teatime drama and they have adapted the series to fit that – which means they’ve done a few things to Phryne’s love life, added some running plot strands that don’t exist in the book and reduced the size of the Fisher household somewhat. So treat them as separate entities if you can.
You can get Murder and Mendelssohn in all the usual ebook formats – Kindle, Kobo and the rest – and that’s probably the easiest way to get hold of them.
Happy reading!
So a shorter list this week. Partly because I finished the Phryne Fisher re-read rather than read new stuff, partly because of an overnight in London where I went out, but mostly because of a nightshift on Friday, that made my brain tired and not great at concentrating, and also meant I slept through part of the weekend. What I will write about tomorrow I do not know. And we’ve got a mega heatwave continuing this week, so that may also fry my brain!
Read:
Murder and Mendelssohn by Kerry Greenwood
Death in Daylesford by Kerry Greenwood
Death at Victoria Dock by Kerry Greenwood
Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy by Chynna Clugston Flores et al
Heartstopper Vol 2 by Alice Oseman
Started:
That Woman by Anne Sebba
Still reading:
Godemersham Park by Gill Hornby*
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Mean Baby by Selma Blair
Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin*
Three actual books bought and two ebooks
Bonus photo: hostel life! Before the nightshift at the end of the week, there was a night away in London at the start of the week. And things are starting to get back to normal at the hostels – this was my first time back at my second favourite/choice one since October 2021 before the Omicron wave hit.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
As mentioned yesterday, not a lot of options this week for Book of the Week, but luckily I read a really interesting British Library Crime Classics book so all’s serene, even if slightly later in the day than recently!
Prudence Pinsent is the unmarried daughter of the Master of a (fictional) Cambridge college. On her way to visit her cousin in Suffolk, she meets an old friend who is investigating a drug smuggling gang and has connected it with both Prudence’s cousin’s estate and the colleges of Cambridge itself. Prudence is sure her cousin can’t be involved, so she decides she must investigate and find out who is.
I’ve written (at length!) about my love of Gaudy Night which is also set in a fictional college (at Oxford though, not Cambridge) and so the premise of this appealed to me a lot. And it’s funny and entertaining – and the mystery is good as well. Suffolk makes such an atmospheric setting for mysteries – like Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham – with eerie flats, fogs, water ways etc and then you have college life and academic personalities.
Lois Austen-Leigh is a relative of Jane Austen (several greats niece) and it is very tempting to say that the witty style must be a family trait. I haven’t read anything of hers before – as well as telling me about her famous relative, the forward said they have been very very rare until the British Library Crime Classics got hold of this, so I hope they publish some of the others too.
My copy came as part of my Kindle Unlimited subscription, which means it’s only available as an ebook on Kindle at the moment, but you can buy the paperback direct from the British Library shop should you so wish.
Happy reading!
Only two “new” books on the list this week. Oopsie daisy. But I have reached a good point in the Phryne Fisher series – Death by Water (as mentioned in the cruise ship mysteries) and Dead Man’s Chest are really good. And I finished the Vicky Bliss reread (as evidenced in the series I love post!) too. And on top of that there were two nights in London, one of which was spent watching Pretty Woman: the Musical and another recovering from the strains of a day of breaking political news. It was really quite a week!
Read:
Death by Water by Kerry Greenwood
The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters
Death at the Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh
The Incredible Crime by Lois Austen-Leigh
Dead Man’s Chest by Kerry Greenwood
Unnatural Habits by Kerry Greenwood
Shipped by Angie Hockman
Started:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin*
Still reading:
Godemersham Park by Gill Hornby*
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Mean Baby by Selma Blair
Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor
One preorder and the Persephone subscription arrived, but I didn’t make it to any bookshops during my stay in London, so that meant I managed not to buy more any *actual* books, which is good because the books incoming pile is already huge! I did however start compiling the July kindle offer post, which lead to a certain level of ebook acquisition – I think five.
Bonus photo:
There was a book fair at the church hall on Saturday! I had a good browse, but there weren’t any of my particular passions – and although there were a few books I was interested in, they all cost way too much money. It has however reminded me that I need to start compiling my lists ready for Bristol next month!
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
