Category: week in books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 21 – September 27

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I got my reading mojo back a bit this week – which is good. A couple of fun new releases, a buzzed about book or two and a glom on a series. The still reading list is still too long, but I’m working on it. And yes I know, I always say that, but I mean it every week!

Read:

Doing It Over by Catherine Bybee

Hoax by Brian Stelter

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

The Duke who Didn’t by Courtney Milan**

Naughty Brits by Sarah MacLean, Sophie Jordan, Louisa Edwards, Tessa Gratton and Sierra Simone**

Staying for Good by Catherine Bybee

Lumberjanes Vol 15 by Shannon Waters et al

Making it Right by Catherine Bybee

Started:

Team of Five by Kate Andersen Brower

Baby-Sitters Club: Kirsty’s Great Idea by Anne M Martin and Raina Telgemaier

Still reading:

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley

The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

A Medal for Murder by Frances Brody

Vanishing Act by Charlie Hodges*

Still not counting, still don’t care

Bonus photo: Sunny autumnal afternoon in the park.

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

Book of the Week, historical, historical

Book of the Week: Her Last Flight

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As mentioned in yesterday’s post, it was somewhat of a strange week last week for me, reading wise. Still don’t quite know why, but I do know that I really, really enjoyed Beatriz Wiliams’ latest book at the start of the week, so it made for a really easy pick for Book of the Week. Which is good, because decision making is not my strongest suit at the moment.

Cover of Her Last Flight

It’s 1947 and former war correspondent Janey Everett is researching a planned biography of a forgotten aviation pioneer. Sam Mallory was a Great War fighter pilot who went on to take part in flying races and barnstorming displays before going missing while flying planes in the Spanish Civil War. Her quest for the truth takes her to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, to talk to Irene Lindquist, owner of an island hopping airline, who she thinks might actually be Irene Foster, Sam’s former student whose mysterious disappearance during a round the world flight in 1937 remains an unsolved mystery. At first Irene won’t engage with Janey, but when she finds out that Janey has found the wreck of Mallory’s airplane in a Spanish desert, she starts to reconsider. And that’s as much as I’m going to tell you about the plot.

It’s an incredibly readable story with two fascinating women at the heart of it. Structurally, it is split between Janey’s first person account and extracts from a book about Irene – so a time-slip novel with a bit of a twist. It works really, really well. I have a slightly patchy history with Beatriz William’s books – but when she works for me, it really works and this might be my favourite so far. It’s a complete page turner – it’s tense and emotional at times and it’s got plenty of twists (only one of which I predicted). I would say this is a perfect beach read, but it feels like beaches are back to being a long way off again, even if the weather has been lovely for the last week.

I’ve read a few books around aviatrixes – fiction and non fiction – if you read this and like it try Deanna Raybourn’s City of Jasmine for another fictional aviatrix or for a fictionalised account of a real aviatrix, try Paula McLain’s Circling the Sun about Beryl Markham. If you just want time-slip novels in general – try Lauren Willig or Chanel Cleeton. My copy of Her Last Flight came from the library, but it’s just come out in paperback. I still haven’t been in to a bookshop so I can’t speak for how easy it will be to get hold of, but as ever, give your local indie a call and I’m sure they’ll be able to order it in if they don’t have it in stock. It’s also available on Kindle and Kobo and as an audiobook.

Happy Reading!

 

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 14 – September 20

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I lost all motivation and ability to concentrate at some point this week. And it coincided with a weekend at work which are always tricky for me. I don’t know why or what did messed with my reading mojo, but hopefully it’s not going to last. Cross your fingers for me.

Read:

Lumberjanes Vol 14 by Shannon Waters et al

Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams

The Perfect Hope by Nora Roberts

A Duke, the Lady and a Baby by Vanessa Riley

Starboard Secrets by Hope Callaghan

Started:

Doing It Over by Catherine Bybee

Vanishing Act by Charlie Hodges*

Still reading:

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley

The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

Hoax by Brian Stelter

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

A Medal for Murder by Frances Brody

Still not counting.

Bonus photo: a Bloomsbury mews at dusk on Saturday night. Way out of my price range, but so pretty!

London mews close, with cobbles

An * next to a 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, mystery

Book of the Week: Death at the Seaside

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So as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we went on a little break last week – although I’ve still been going in to work twice a week, Him Indoors has been working from home since April and has barely been further than a couple of miles from the house and he was going stir crazy and just wanted to go and see some different walls other than our own. So after I ruled out anywhere abroad (I can’t cope with the stress of the changing travel regulations), he found us a lovely log cabin to stay in in woods in Yorkshire and we pootled off up there for three nights. And this week’s BotW was purchased on our trip to Whitby – and is set in the town – so feels like a really good choice.

It’s 1920-something and as nothing ever happens in August, private investigator Kate Shackleton is taking a holiday. She’s planned a two week break in Whitby to visit a school friend and her daughter. But before she goes to see Alma, Kate takes a walk through the town and finds herself outside the jewellery shop where she and her late husband (who was killed in the War) bought her engagement ring. Determined to make a fresh memory she goes inside – and stumbles on a body. And as if that wasn’t enough to be dealing with, her friend’s daughter – Felicity hasn’t come home. Soon Kate is hard at work investigating once more.

This is the eighth book in Frances Brody’s Kate Shackleton series, but you really don’t have to have read the rest of the series to enjoy this. I’ve read four of the series so far – way out of order – and it’s not like some of the other 1920s set series (like Daisy Dalrymple or Maisie Dobbs) where there are big personal life developments that you need to read in order – or at least there aren’t in the ones that I’ve read! Kate is smart and competent and sensible – which are all things I really like in my detectives. This has a clever mystery with plenty of twists and an interesting cast of supporting characters. And I know this only applies to me, I got a real thrill about reading a book set in Whitby right after visiting the town. Brody does a really good job of describing what the town was like in the 1920s, and putting Kate in places that people who are familiar with the town will recognise. And in case you were worried: Dracula is not involved in the mystery!

I bought my copy of Death at the Seaside from The Whitby Bookshop, but you should be able to get hold of them fairly easily in a reasonably sized bookshop with a mystery section. They’re also available on Kindle and Kobo and as audiobooks. The series is still going on – the eleventh book is out in October – and as I bought a couple of other books in the series at the same time as this one you can probably expect to see more of these on the weekly reading lists!

Happy Reading!

 

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 7 – September 13

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So it wasn’t to somewhere hot and abroad, but we did go away for a few days last week. And during our appropriately socially distant break, I got a bit of reading done. After making a really good start on my NetGalley reading this month, I’ve fallen back a bit – not only did I buy a couple of books for the holiday, I have library books coming due and  I’m behind on the bookshelf (check out the August Stats if you don’t believe me) and I’m trying to catch up. I’m also trying to pace myself with Rodham and make it last a bit, but who knows how long that will last for.

Read:

Tales from the Folly by Ben Aaronovitch

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi*

Dover One by Joyce Porter

Death at the Seaside by Frances Brody

A Leader in the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer

Mrs Pargeter’s Pound of Flesh by Simon Brett

The Art of Drag by Jake Hall, Sofie Birkin, Helen Li et al

Murder on a Girls’ Night Out by Anne George

Started:

Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams

A Medal for Murder by Frances Brody

Still reading:

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley

The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

Hoax by Brian Stelter

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Still not counting.

Bonus photo: This was our home for our little break – a log cabin in woods in Yorkshire. Isn’t it gorgeous? Not the place to be reading anything creepy though!

A log cabin with a grassy plant covered roof in woods

An * next to a 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, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: The Thursday Murder Club

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Well, well, well. As you might have noticed I managed to bring the ongoing list down a bit last week. I’m quite pleased with myself, but my book of the week is one of the many that came out last Thursday. I wasn’t intending on this being the featured review this week – it’s not exactly low profile, but it was the book that I liked the most last week and thought that I would have the most to say about. Also I had a very wafty weekend and spent more time watching Formula One and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader: Making the Team than I did reading, so some of the other stuff I had planned for the week didn’t get read…

Cover of The Thursday Murder Club

First, before I get to the plot, I have been excited about this book since it was announced more than a year ago. If you’re in the UK, you’ll know Richard Osman as the one with all the answers on Pointless or the host of House of Games. He’s got a lovely way about him on Twitter, he always comes across very well any time you hear him talking and the plot synopsis sounded great. In fact it all sounded so good that I was worried it couldn’t live up to my expectations – especially as a debut novel. I mean murder mysteries aren’t exactly easy to pull off.  The fact that I’m writing about this here, indicates that I have good news for you! Anyway, to the plot.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron all live at frankly rather nice sounding retirement village in Kent. Every Thursday they take over the Jigsaw room meet up to discuss unsolved murders (under the guise of a society for fans of Japanese opera to keep away the nosy). Then the owner of the retirement village is found dead, just after a consultation meeting about an expansion. Now they have a live case to solve – they’ve got the skills to do it, but will they manage it before it’s too late?

Now reading that plot synposis you’ll think that you’ve read stories like this before. And yes this does have some similarities with cozy crime series featuring an older protagonist. But it’s not really a cozy crime. The mystery is twistier and more complicated. I can’t say much about the solution, because that would be spoiling things and you know that I don’t do that, but it doesn’t quite fit the cozy format. And as well as the mystery, there are proper side plots. It’s all told as a mix of narrative and Joyce’s diary – which really works as she is the newest member of the club and gets to do a lot of the exposition – but all four members of the Club are properly realised characters with backstories that you hear about, hopes, worries and fears. And the two police officers are great too. It’s also got a strain of melancholy to it – they are old people and they’re not done with life, but they do worry that this might be the “last time” that they do something and worry about the things they have lost (and in some cases develop strategies to try and combat this). Oh and it’s funny. Dryly funny and witty not pratfalls and stupidity funny. Wry observances and witty asides type funny. It’s great. I would happily have spend another 100 pages with the gang.  If there’s another one, you can sign me up to read it now.

My copy of The Thursday Murder Club came from NetGalley, but you should be able to get this everywhere. I’ve been out to London today and walked up Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road and could see it in the front section in the Big Foyles and it was in the Window at the Waterstones. It’s that sort of release – probably in the supermarkets too, and definitely in the airport bookshops, if you’re lucky enough to be going somewhere. When I went looking for links, Amazon was out of stock of actual copies – which means it’s an even smarter choice to order if from your local indie. And of course it’s out in Kindle, Kobo and Ebook.

Happy Reading!

 

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 31 – September 6

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The schools are going back and the holidays are over. Normal life is resuming. Or is it? Can it ever? Well who knows, but these are still quite strange times. However, I’ve used whatever back to school energy I could summon to reduce the number of books on the Still Reading List a bit. I’m quite pleased with me. In relative terms anyway.

Read:

Real Men Knit by Kwana Johnson

She Represents by Caitlin Donohue*

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman*

The Last Boyfriend by Nora Roberts

Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho

Uneasy Lies the Crown by Tasha Alexander

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward*

Started:

Hoax by Brian Stelter

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Murder on a Girls’ Night Out by Anne George

Still reading:

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley

The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi*

Still not counting.

Bonus photo: the latest addition to the to read pile. Isn’t it beautiful? And it’s signed. And I got a Reading is Fundamental print too. Thank you Foyles.

Copy of The Art of Drag

An * next to a 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, women's fiction

Book of the Week: The Miseducation of Evie Epworth

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Weird week in reading really. Tried a new series, finished another series, read some self-help/empowerment, continued my binge of Inspector Littlejohn. Didn’t finish a few other things I should have done, and didn’t like the new Kevin Kwan enough to write about it here. So. This is not quite a new release – but nearly. It came out in July, but of course I have only just got to it because: reading slump, indecision, too much choice etc.

Cover of the Miseducation of Evie Epworth

It’s 1962, and sixteen-year-old Evie is standing on the edge of adulthood, but the fastest milk bottle delivery girl in East Yorkshire doesn’t know what to do with her life.  She’s dreaming of the bright lights of London, but she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life and her two Adam Faith posters (brooding Adam and sophisticated Adam) don’t have any answers for her. But before she can go anywhere, she has a few problems demanding her attention: her widowed father has fallen prey to a much younger woman, who Evie is fairly sure is a gold digger – and it’s putting the family farm under threat. In her quest to save the family, she makes friends with one of her neighbours and starts to discover life beyond rural England.

This took me a bit longer to get into than I was expecting, but once I was in, I was in. There was some early talk of magic and spells that threw me because it wasn’t what I was expecting, but it sorted itself out quite fast. I liked Evie’s voice and I really enjoyed discovering her world. It’s written as her diary, which means there’s a lot of fun as a reader in spotting the stuff that she’s missing because of her age and (relative) innocence. All the side characters are well drawn, and often hilarious, and I really enjoyed watching Evie’s future come together and seeing how everything worked out. It’s not perfect, but it’s lots of fun and laugh out loud funny at times. I’ll be looking to see what Matson Taylor writes next.

My copy of The Miseducation of Evie Epworth came from NetGalley, but it is a bargain 99p on Kindle and Kobo at the moment. It’s also out in audiobook and hardback and as it has got some quite impressive names on the blurbs and it’s a Radio 2 book club book so I’m hoping it’ll be easy to find in stores. And the cover is great so you should be able to spot it fairly easily if it is there.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 24 – August 30

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 I can’t believe that it’s the end of August today. I mean. Where did the summer go? Anyway, book of the week coming up tomorrow, mini reviews on Wednesday, August stats on Thursday and that’s your week. Or at least I think it is!

Read:

Paper Girls Vol 6 by Brian K Vaughan et al

The Miseducation of Evie Epworth by Matson Taylor*

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

Fall into Death by Emily Toll

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Toll the Bell for Murder by George Bellairs

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

Started:

Uneasy Lies the Crown by Tasha Alexander

Still reading:

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward*

Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho

The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

 Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi*

Real Men Knit by Kwana Johnson

Still not counting.

Bonus photo: my cousin’s dog’s puppies are growing, and their mum has the haunted, sleep deprived, what on earth hit me look of new mums every where.

A cocker spaniel and her puppies.

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

Book of the Week, fiction, historical, new releases

Book of the Week: V for Victory

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So as mentioned yesterday, a bit of a strange week of reading last week, but today’s BotW pick was a real joy. And for the second week in a row, it’s a book that’s actually coming out in the next few days. So I am both timely and slightly ahead of the game. Make a note, it doesn’t happen often – and two weeks in a row is a real rarity!

Cover of V for Victory

It’s 1944 and in their house on Hampstead Heath, Vee Sedge and her fifteen year old “ward” Noel are just about scraping by with a house full of lodgers selected for what they can teach Noel more than their ability to pay. When Vee witnesses a road accident and is called to court disaster beckons – as Vee is not actually the person she is pretending to be. As the household tries not to get its hopes up too far that the end of the war is in sight, Noel and Vee move towards a new future.

This is the third (and final?) book about this group of characters and ties together the story of Noel and Vee as we saw them in Crooked Heart, with Mattie from Old Baggage. I’ve written several different sentences to explain that fact and have settled on that slightly vague one as being the way not to give too much away about the other two. Now you could read this standalone, but you’ll get so much more from this if you’ve read the other two. And why wouldn’t you want to read the other two – Crooked Heart is Goodnight Mr Tom but if Mr Tom was the female equivalent of Private Walker and Old Baggage is about a feisty but ageing former suffragette looking for a new cause to fight for. Both were books of the week here, that’s how much Iiked them – and liked this to be coming back for a third mention!

V for Victory is funny and warm and moving and made me cry at the end. I mean what more could you want from a book? It also does really well at capturing the shades of grey of wartime – and of people in general. It’s just wonderful and a perfect read for a grey and miserable day. And we’ve had a few of those in the last week. I mean I’m writing this on the train to work, wearing welly boots and with a mac because it’s raining like it’s November in mid-August!

My copy of V for Victory came from NetGalley , but I’ll be buying a paperback once that comes out so I have the set. It’s out on Thursday in hardback (here’s a Foyles link), Kindle and Kobo. I still haven’t been into a bookshop in person, but I think that the last one was fairly easy to get hold of in bookstores, so I hope this will be too.

Happy Reading!