Category: week in books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 18 – May 24

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A really solid week in reading, helped by a series of football matches that meant that I stayed in watching/listening to them while reading a book rather than going out to the theatre. And then the weather got really hot so it seemed like the sensible thing to do was to stay inside in the cool and read books. This week is due to be even hotter though…

Read:

A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Catching a Killer by F H Petford*

The French Market Murder by Greg Mosse*

Windsor vs Windsor by Bert Tyler-Moore*

Debts of Dishonour by Jill Paton Walsh

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Murder Off the Books by Tamara Berry

The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

Started:

The Bad Quarto by Jill Paton Walsh

Still reading:

Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronica Dapunt

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Two books bought.

Bonus picture: A view across the river from the side of St Paul’s Cathedral last week. I was going to say it was old London and new London – but then I realised you can’t see the old London in the picture so you’ll have to trust me on that!

*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, first in series, Thriller

Book of the Week: Call for the Dead

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Happy Tuesday everyone, and I’m kicking off a slightly espionage themed week here on the blog with a thriller that’s an absolute classic of the genre.

Cover of Call for the Dead

A Call for the Dead is the first novel that features John le Carré’s most famous creation. When a civil servant kills himself after being the subject of a routine security check, George Smiley finds himself in the firing line as the person who carried out said security check. In order to dodge the finger of blame from his boss, Maston, Smiley begins his own investigation into the death. He’s warned off the case – but that evening receives a letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans know more about this than Circus think? Smiley is determined to find out.

Le Carré is said to have created Smiley as an antidote to James Bond – rather than glamorous women and high octane chases, Smiley’s Circus is a world of anonymous men doing paperwork and following routine. But although that might sound boring, what is on the page is compulsively page turning as you try to work out what on earth is going on. I read this and went straight on to the next book in the series, A Murder of Quality, which is completely different in terms of what Smiley is investigating, but just as good. And fortunately for me I had the third book waiting for me when I finished the second. Because of course this is one of those situations where I have been buying up the books when they appear in Kindle sales (because I enjoyed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy so much) and then not getting around to reading them. But clearly this is the time to remedy that – it’s a classic for a reason. And it’s not a particularly long classic either – it’s under 200 pages but so much happens in it and it packs such a punch that it feels like a much longer book. So good.

You don’t need me to tell you how easy this is to get hold of – it was published in 1961 and it has been in print ever since in various iterations, including as a Penguin Classic. It’s available in every format, including as an audiobook written by the peerless Simon Russell Beale.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 11 – May 17

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Happy Monday everyone. I hope you used your weekend as wisely as I did – with a trip to see my sister and her family where we watched three episodes of Rivals, all of Eurovision and I read a lot of stories to a toddler. And despite all that, my reading list is still pretty good. Yay me?!

Read:

Major Bricket and the Body in the Bell Tower by Simon Brett*

Off With His Head by Ngaio Marsh

Murphy’s Law by Rhys Bowen

Henry VII by Seam Cunningham

Call for the Dead by John le Carré

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

A Murder of Quality by John le Carré

A Piece of Justice by Jill Paton Walsh

Started:

A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Catching a Killer by F H Petford*

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

Still reading:

Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronica Dapunt

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Three books bought – the rest of the Imogen Quy series, one of which I’ve already ready!

Bonus picture: There are a couple of new coffee shops on my walk to work, one of which has this board outside for fairy bread matcha. I’m tempted to try it except for three things: i don’t like coffee, I’m not sure i like matcha and it feels like it might be super sweet. But it looks so pretty!

*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 Wyndham Case

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It’s Tuesday again and I’m continuing my pattern of picking a mystery for Book of the Week fifty percent of the time this year! I was going to say every other week, but it’s not strictly every other week, it does go in patches – a couple of mysteries, a couple of romances, one mystery, one romance – you get the pictures. Anyway: The Wyndham Case.

St Agatha’s College, Cambridge has a collection of books donated to them in the seventeenth century. Unfortunately the books are now completely uninteresting to scholars and come with a lot of strings attached. And on this particular morning they also have a dead body lying in front of them. Imogen Quy is one of the first on the scene in her role as college nurse and isn’t convinced with the idea that it was suicide – or that the dead student was stealing books. And then another student is found dead in the college fountain.

I have been wanting to read the Imogen Quy series for a while, after enjoying Jill Paton Walsh’s Wimsey continuations and during my wanderings post-Word on the Water last week (more on this on Saturday) I bought this. And I’m so glad I did because I really enjoyed it and it was a proper one sitting read for me. In the introduction to that first Wimsey continuation, Paton Walsh mentions that Gaudy Night was one of the reasons why she wanted to go to Oxford and she’s done a really good job in this of creating her on fictional college, this time in Cambridge (which is where she lived). The mystery is pretty good and the collection of students that you encounter feels pretty realistic for the time that it was written (early 1990s). My mum was a solicitor at one point in her life – and she’s done a lot of fundraising over the years, so the complicated bequest of the Wyndham collection was particularly appealing to me as well.

There are four books in this series – and the bad news for the to-read pile is that I know that the bookshop I bought this from has the next two in the series, and it’s pretty easy for me to get back there in the not to distant future! I’m not telling you which bookshop it is in case you get there before me, because I don’t think they’re strictly in print anymore but they seem to be fairly easy to get second hand. And they’re also in Kindle, Kobo and on audio too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 4 – May 10

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Not my greatest week in reading – but that’s because I did two theatre trips, a weekend in Essex and local elections coverage. It was fun, but it was a lot. And the long runners are still lingering. I will have to try and do better this week. But this week is Eurovision week so…

Read:

Sconed to Death by Betty Hechtman*

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

Hattie Breaks a Leg by Patrick Gleason

Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh

Edward the Confessor by David A Woodman

The Wyndham Case by Jill Paton Walsh

The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters

Started:

Call for the Dead by John le Carré

Still reading:

Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronica Dapunt

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

A bad week for book buying – five ebooks as I was writing the Offers post, plus another six actual books from four different bookshops…

Bonus picture: back in my old stomping ground of Colchester at the weekend in glorious sunshine.

*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 previews, new releases

Book of the Week: Blue Devil Woman

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A slightly rule-breaking choice this week on an author repitition point, but I have a valid reason for this apart from the fact that this one comes out this week and so is timely. Read on and all will become clear. I promise.

Sierra and Benji were meant to be together – until the stillbirth of their baby ripped them apart. After their devastating loss, they struggled to carry on working together at Sierra’s family’s ranch and so Benji got a new job as a wrangler across the border in Utah. But when circumstances mean Benji is needed back at the ranch, the two of them have to find a way of working together – and may be that will also see them finding their way back to each other.

Now the baby loss isn’t mentioned in the blurb for this – it’s just called “a devastating twist of fate” but given that this has a big warning from the author before the book about the book being something you might want to avoid for people who are struggling with starting a family that I feel like it’s only fair to mention it. Also Blue Devil Woman is the second book in Sloane Fletcher’s Hunt Ranch series and it is mentioned in the first book because Sierra and Benji are the main secondary side characters in that. And that is one of the reasons that I wanted to write about it is because when I previewed that first book, Night Rider, and then reviewed it in Quick Reviews my main point was that the cover didn’t reflect the content – ie that it was very much a romantic suspense novel. So I wanted to read this second book both because I wanted to see how Sierra and Benji worked it out but also whether the working out of it was going to be a romantic suspense as well.

And the answer is that it’s much more of a straight romance novel. The tension in it doesn’t come from an external threat as it does in Night Rider, it comes from the loss that Sierra and Benji have suffered and the different ways that they are dealing (or not dealing) with it. And so the warning at the start about who this might be suitable for is very apt. I do think that for people in some circumstances this is going to be too much grief and loss. But with that said, I though that it needes something else within the plot to help propel it along – I felt like there was a lot of time spent covering the same ground over and over rather than moving the narrative on (*slight spoilers at the bottom) and then when we got to the resolution it was over a little quickly and felt a bit rushed.

Now I get that this isn’t an entirely positive review – and usually Book of the Week is my favourite thing I read in a week, and this doesn’t quite fit that. However it is the book that I read last week that I had the most to say about and so I feel justified in my choice!

My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out on Thursday in the UK in Kindle and in paperback, although strangely not until October on Kobo.

Happy Reading!

*after a certain amount of time I didn’t any more demonstrations that Sierra was dealing with her loss by ignoring it and keeping busy so that she couldn’t/didn’t think about it, and the way that she kept pushing Benji away started to get almost irritating because it felt like she was stuck in a moment she wasn’t willing to try and get out of. Now that may be a very accurate representation of baby loss, but when it’s the driving element in a romance plot and happening over and over, it started to feel like there wasn’t enough to the plot and the book either needed to be shorter or needed another element to it.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: April 27 – May 3

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It’s a bank holiday in the UK today – if you’re off work I hope you have a lovely time and that the weather where you are is good. And if (like me) you’re at work – I hope your day is easy and over fast and that you have the next bank holiday off! Anyway back down to earth after the two weeks off and a fairly solid list, helped by the fact that I was on the train every day. This week I’m staying in London a couple of nights and hoping to catch a show or too so the list may suffer accordingly. I am making progress on the still reading books – even though it might not look like it!

Read:

William II by John Gillingham

Swing, Brother, Swing by Ngaio Marsh

Mr Campion’s Fox by Mike Ripley

Richard I by Thomas Asbridge

Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh

Blue Devil Woman by Sloane Fletcher*

Banton of Paramount by Howard Gutner*

Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club by Mary-Jane Riley

Started:

Sconed to Death by Betty Hechtman*

Still reading:

Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronica Dapunt

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

One cookbook bought – but that’s it. And as cookbooks don’t go on the pile, they sort of don’t count as a book purchase!

Bonus picture: Spring time (but almost summertime heat!) in Regent’s Park.

*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, first in series, mystery

Book of the Week: How to Solve Your Own Murder

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Normal service has been resumed here – I’m back at work after the holiday and once again I’m picking a murder mystery book for my BotW. This was actually a book I finished after we got back from Greece rather than a holiday read – but there are three of my sunlounger books coming up tomorrow.

Cover of How to Solve Your Own Murder

It’s 1965 and Frances is visiting a fair with her friends when a fortune teller predicts that Frances will be murdered. That prediction – and figuring out who might want to murder her – becomes the driving obsession of Frances’s life. In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to meet her reclusive Aunt Frances at her country estate. But when she arrives, she finds Frances dead. Annie sets out to solve the murder – but can Annie keep herself safe while trying to work out who made the fortune teller’s prediction come true.

This is told in a split narrative between Annie’s present day and diary entries from Frances in the 1960s. Annie is an interesting heroine and knows next to nothing about Frances’s life for reasons that become clear as the book goes on and so also has no idea who the various personalities are that she’s meeting and who to trust. And because she doesn’t know Frances either it means that she doesn’t know how reliable a narrator Frances is. This makes for a deliciously discombobulating time for Annie as she races against time to solve the puzzle of her aunt’s death.

This is the first of what is now three books and the third, How to Cheat Your Own Death, is actually out today which sort of makes me topical for once even if reading this has taken me a year from buying this one to actually getting around to reading it. Which given my track record actually isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things.

This should be really easy to get hold of – I’ve seen it (and the second in the series) in all the bookshops and it’s on Kindle and Kobo as well.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: April 20 – April 26

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I’m safely home now, so I can exclusively reveal that we’ve been away on holiday for nearly two weeks. And that is why the reading lists this week and last week look so healthy – sun lounger time (and flights) mean more reading time – and why the still reading list looks as it does – the remaining ones are physical copies that were at home. I’ve got a Recommendsday coming up this week with some of my holiday reads, but more of them will be popping up over the next little while too because some of them were advance copies of books coming out over the next few months. Check me getting ahead – who even know I could do that!

Read:

Betrayal by Tom Bower

Murder on the Bernina Express by J G Colgan

The Chateau Murder by Greg Mosse

Played to Death by Mike Ripley*

The Shrew Detective: The Case of the Pilfered Pearls by Margi Preus*

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

Death by Noir by Olly Smith*

Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh

The Gatsby Gambit by Claire Anderson Wheeler*

Death and Fromage by Ian Moore

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

Started:

Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronica Dapunt

William II by John Gillingham

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Six ebooks and one preorder arrived (at my parents!)

Bonus picture: some beautiful Cretan countryside. You can’t see them but there was a herd of goats among the olive groves and their bells were tinkling madly as I took this.

*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, historical

Book of the Week: D is for Death

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Happy Tuesday everyone. And I’m back with a murder mystery this week after taking a break for romance with While You Were Seething last week.

It’s 1935 and Dora is on the run from a fiancée she didn’t want in the first place. When she arrives in London she finds he has followed her there and hides in the London Library together away from him. Except inside the library she finds a dead body. Now she’s inside her first murder investigation and she is not the girl to walk away. She’s a book lover who particularly likes detective fiction but who is also the sort of person who notices everything and she’s sure she can help Detective Inspector Fox. He however is not so convinced.

Harriet F Townson is actually Harriet Evans writing under a different name to differentiate this from her usual genre. Because this is a historical mystery romp. It really is a romp. Dora is a delightfully quirky heroine and the plot just rattles along as she makes new friends in London, meets old friends and tries to solve the crime. There are references galore to the golden age of crime – including one of the characters living in Mecklenberg Square – home of Dorothy L Sayers in real life (more on that tomorrow) and her creation Harriet Vane (in the Gaudy Night).

I raced through this in one evening basically and I really hope there is a sequel because Dora is a lot of fun and there are enough plot threads left hanging to suggest it’s a possibility. It was also nominated for a Crime Writers Association Award so that’s got to help to right? This has got comps in the blurb with the aforementioned Sayers as well as Margery Allingham, Enola Holmes (only watched the Netflix films) and I Capture the Castle which sounds a bit bonkers on the eclectic front but I sort of endorse that! If you (like me!) like series like Veronica Speedwell, Daisy Dalrymple or Phryne Fisher, this is definitely worth a look.

I read this on Kindle, but it’s also in Kobo and should be available in paperback too

Happy Reading!