Lovely weather last week meant time to lay in the hammock and read. And there was some really good stuff in there. I’ll certainly be talking about a few of them. Slight rearrangment to the posts this week because of the start of the month falling on a Monday – I’ve decided to do things as usual with a Book of the Week tomorrow and #Recommendsday mini reviews on Wednesday – and so you won’t be getting May stats until Thursday. I think that makes most sense.
I didn’t read many books last week, but I did read a lot of pages of various non-fiction books and this was my favourite of them.
First in Line is Kate Andersen Brower’s book about the American vice presidents of the modern era. Part group biography, part examination of the shifting nature of the role, it also takes a look at the early days of the Trump White House and the role of Mike Pence in the administration. Looking at 13 vice-presidents as well as the responsibilities of the job and how a presidential running mate is selected, Brower has spoken to all six of the living vice presidents – and the insight this gives the book is great. Brower’s writing style is breezy and accessible and the book is peppered with anecdotes and personal stories.
The first six chapters cover the broad strokes of the role – the vetting process, where the VP lives, what the VP does and the basics of the various different types of relationships that there can be between the President and his second in command. The final seven chapters then take a more in depth look at the different partnerships in the second half of the twentieth century – from Eisenhower and Nixon onwards. I don’t think you need much background knowledge going into this – if you know the vague outlines of what happened in America post World War 2 you should be fine.
I found this fascinating. I knew the vague outlines of the process by which the vice president is selected and what the role of the job is, but I hadn’t really realised that the VP’s official residence was such a recent development – or how widely the relationships between the Commander in Chief and his deputy had varied. All the relationships are interesting, but I found the contrast between Nixon and Bush really fascinating – both were Republican vice presidents who became presidents but they had very different experiences.
Brower is somewhat of a specialist in writing about the occupants of the White House – her first book (which I haven’t read yet), The Residence, is about the house itself, her second (which I have) was about the modern First Ladies, and her latest book – which came out as an ebook last week and will be out in hardback next month – is called The Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the age of Trump, and looks at what it is like to be one of the living former presidents at the moment. She’s spoken to President Trump as part of the process – she’s written a teaser article in the current edition of Vanity Fair – if you want a taste you can read it here.
And finally – you know how sometimes you read a bit in a book and it really resonates with your experience? Well at the bottom of page 288, Brower says:
Unlike [Dick] Cheney, who had no interest in the presidency, when he was vice president, when Pence goes to the Hill to “touch gloves’ as he says, on a weekly basis, he insists on walking through the Capitol Rotunda so that tourists can get their photos taken with him.
And here is my photo of Mike Pence doing exactly that on the day that I toured the Capitol right at the end of my posting in Washington a couple of years ago. If you want to read First in Line it’s available as an ebook on Kindle or Kobo as well as in hardback. I suspect you might have to order it in though rather than find it in stock when you call your local indie. I’d also recommend First Ladies and having read both (albeit some time apart) I don’t think there was a lot of repetition.
So lots of nonfiction reading this week, but also lots of problems with concentrating. And it’s been super busy – including my turn to work the weekend. So a short list. But I’m hoping for some quality bank holiday Monday reading time in the hammock.
She-Merchants, Buchaneers and Gentlewomen by Katie Hickman
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stevenson*
The Cactus by Sarah Haywood*
Still not counting.
Bonus photo: unexpected peonies in my garden! We haven’t been here quite a year yet, so this is the first time we’ve seen them. And yes. I know there are weeds in the pavers. It’s on the list…
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley.
I said yesterday that I had a harder week concentrating last week so retreated to favourite authors, and this came out last week so it was perfectly timed. It’s the first part of a trilogy, and I can’t for the life of me find a pre-order link for part two and it is driving me mad. Anyway, to the book.
Will Darling made it through the Great War. After signing up at the start, he made it back to Britain with a lot of medals and a lot more mental scarring. But it turned out that the country he’d been fighting for didn’t really have much use for him. Sometime just before getting rock bottom he writes to a great uncle he’s never met and gets invited to help out at his book shop. But when the great uncle dies he finds himself caught between the War Office and some very unsavoury characters who want a secret he doesn’t possess. Enter Kim Secretan, attractive and helpful but with a murky past. And maybe present. But Will is trapped in a game of cat and mouse over a deadly secret – and Kim might be the only person who can save him.
The blurb says that this is a m/m romance in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction and I think that’s pretty spot on. It reminded me of some of the thrillers I’ve read by authors like Molly Thynne and some of the more adventure-y Albert Campion stories. A warning for the romance readers thought: this is very much part one of the story – and everything is not tied up at the end. If you only want Happily Ever Afters, maybe wait until the whole series is out and then you can read right the way through to the end without having to wait. I could just about handle not having proper resolution because the story and the characters were so much fun. I’ve read about half a dozen of KJ Charles books before, but they were all Victorian set. I raced through it and if it has been possible I would have gone straight on to the next part. But it isn’t so I’m having to wait. I happen to like a 1920s setting more than a Victorian one, and I love an adventure story, so this ticked all my boxes really – and I love that authors are moving into this period a bit more. If you read and liked Hither, Page last year, then this would scratch that itch while you wait for another instalment there. Although obviously: more waiting!
Anyway, I bought my copy of Slippery Creatures on pre-order and it’s out now on Kindle and Kobo and in paperback via Amazon (in what looks possibly like print on demand because I can’t find it via Waterstones or Foyles).
Another week where I found it really hard to concentrate on a book – although you may not thing that’s the case from the list! Mostly new (to me) books from old favourite authors this week, becaause that’s all my brain could cope with, although I am making progress on She-Merchants… but it requires proper concentration!
It was a busy week of reading last week, but one book really stood out – and stood out so much I couldn’t save it for a non-fiction round up post as was my original plan! I have got posts lined up featuring some of the other books I read last week – including a Series I love post about Gail Carriger’s Parasolverse. Anyway, back to this week’s BotW.
Bad Blood tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos. You’ve probably heard of them – probably because you heard about what happened. Anyway, if you haven’t, here’s the summary. In the mid 2010s Holmes had positioned herself as the female Steve Jobs – a visionary college dropout whose Silicon Valley startup was promising to revolutionise medicine with their new blood testing technique. She raised billions of dollars in venture capital, was on the cover of major magazines, won awards and was invited to events at the White House. And then it all came crashing down – the tech didn’t work and never had. This is the inside story of Theranos, written by the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story after digging into the web of secrecy and deceit and facing up to some very expensive lawyers!
As usual, I’m somewhat behind the curve here – as the book came out in 2018 and I’ve only just got to it, but it absolutely blew my mind last week. Like Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill this is an incredibly readable piece of non-fiction reporting that reads a bit like a thriller – and if it was fiction you would say that it is too far fetched and that maybe the author should have reined it in a bit. But no, it all happened. My only real problem with the book is that it doesn’t really answer the question of *why* Elizabeth Holmes did what she did. It shows you how it was done, and all the ins and outs of that, but it doesn’t offer any explanation about what her plan was – and how she thought it would all play out. Also it had never occurred to me that I could call my self an inventor if I just thought of an idea and then paid people to try and make it work! I was always an arts person at school rather than a science one, so I can imagine how people like me might have been taken in by her spiel but I was surprised that she was able to get the idea past so many actual science and medical people.
The Theranos saga has also been made into a documentary by HBO, which I haven’t watched yet but really want to. It’s currently available to buy from some streaming services, but I’m hoping it will eventually turn up on a channel on my actual TV. I’ve put the trailer in the bottom for those of you who are interested. If you want to read Bad Blood, it’s available on Kindle and Kobo for £3.99 at the moment, as well as in paperback. The UK edition of the paperback looks to be with a big publisher, so I’d hope it would be easy to obtain from your Independent bookseller of choice.
Had a lovely chat with my book club friends over Zoom yesterday afternoon, which really perked me up. Also the weather was glorious on Saturday so I spent a lot of that out reading in the hammock. So that all made up for anything else that had gone wrong in the week. In case you missed them, I wrote about VE Day 75 and the Rivers of London books last week, as well as all my usual stuff, like Mini Reviews from April.
There are Mini Reviews from April coming up tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s another BotW post. And for the second week running it’s not a mystery. Logging Off is a comedy but it does have romantic elements, so don’t panic, I’m not that far outside my current trends.
Andy Bellows has got a problem – he’s feeling awful. He’s got insomnia, anxiety and neck-ache, on top of the IBS he’s had for years. When he googles his symptoms, the internet convinces him that he’s got a fatal illness, so he heads to the doctors. But what the doctor diagnoses is an unhealthy reliance on the internet and modern technology and instead of getting a death sentence, Andy is prescribed a digital detox. He’s is convinced the doctor is wrong, but his best friend convinces him to give it a go. Soon Andy is trying to navigate the world the old-fashioned way and realising how different it is without a smartphone in his hand. But when a story about his detox appears in the local paper, he becomes a hero to other people who are worried they have the same problems – and suddenly Andy has a new problem to deal with. Will Andy ever be able to figure out how to balance his life?
It might seem a bit of a strange choice to pick a book about a digital detox at a time when most of us are using technology more than ever to keep in touch with family and friends, but this made me laugh so much that I couldn’t help myself. Admittedly it took me a little bit to get into – but I’m blaming that on the poo-splosion incident near the start, which was too close to humiliation humour for me* but that’s just me. Andy’s adventures without his phone were funny and relatable, the secondary characters are great and I thought the resolution was really clever. It also reminds you not to take what you see on the internet too seriously as a model for your own life and will make you think about your own technology consumption – especially if you’re reading it on a Kindle like I was – but in a good way not in a boring preachy way that will make you feel bad about it. I mean I work in a tech heavy and tech reliant job and I was definitely thinking “well at least I don’t do that” rather than “uh oh, I have a problem” while I was reading it.
This is the second Nick Spalding book I’ve read – I read Bricking It back in December 2015 and that was a BotW as well as getting a mention in my books about renovations post. I’m not to sure why it’s taken me so long to read him again, because I really enjoyed that too. Four and a bit years ago, my main complaint with Bricking It (according to my Goodreads review) was that the resolution was a bit too sudden, and this one doesn’t have that problem. There is a definite dilemma that Andy is going through and it resolves itself in stages – and you don’t really notice that it’s doing it until you realise that it’s done. Which is neat.
Anyway, this came out at the start of April, and I hope that the fact that everyone is stuck inside on their phones hasn’t discouraged people from buying it. My copy came from NetGalley, but you can get hold of it now on Kindle (it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment too!) or as a paperback or audiobook exclusively from Amazon.
Happy Reading!
*It’s hard to explain, but not good with humour based on embarrassment or humiliation. It’s why I struggle with Alan Partridge and The Office. They used to be one one after the other when I was at uni and I watched with my then boyfriend in the common room because everyone was and I didn’t want to be the boring one and I really struggled. When The Office Christmas Special was on, I watched it at home only to see if Tim and Dawn got a happy ending. To this day only you can make me come over all misty-eyed.
An interesting week in reading and an interesting week in general, which was somewhat derailed by a train failure on my way to work on Saturday – which not only made me late for work but also deprived me of an hour of reading time. Gah. On the brightside, I have a whole string of posts lined up for you because I had a rare burst of creativity in the middle of the week. I am almost pleased with myself.
She-Merchants, Buchaneers and Gentlewomen by Katie Hickman
The Cuckoos of Batch Magna by Peter Maughan
Still not counting how many books I’ve bought, but Defy and Defend came out on Sunday, so how could I not, and a copy of the new Roasting Tin cook book also found it’s way to my house.
Bonus photo: My mum found my grandpa’s nail scissors being pressed into use this week to cut twine in the garden, and there is a family joke about them never being used for their proper purpose. It made me laugh last week, so here is a photo my mum took of them, with a mug for scale.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley.
Another week, another Book of the Week post, but first another quick reminder about the Escapist Reading post from the end of last week. Anyway, back to today and taking a break from the romance and crimepicks of most of the month (and last month to be fair), this week’s pick is Greg Jenner’s latest book – Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen. I’ve got a whole stack of history books on the to-read pile and I’m hoping that my head is getting back to a place where I can concentrate on more serious reading now – I love history books, but I’ve had trouble getting my concentration going for them the last couple of months (gee, wonder why) but this broke through.
First up, I should say that I went to the same uni as Greg – and what’s more we both “worked” at the same student radio station – and although we weren’t in the same teams or social groups we do follow each other on Twitter. Anyway since then, Greg has gone on to be a successful public historian – he worked on the Horrible Histories series, hosts a two podcasts for the BBC, You’re Dead To Me (currently on hiatus in the middle of it second series) and the brand new Home School History (which I was listening to part of the time while writing this post) and done all sorts of exciting history stuff including his first book, A Million Years in a Day. Dead Famous came out last month and examines where the modern concept of “celebrity” comes from – how old is it, is it different to fame (or infamy) and how one goes about acquiring it. Over the course of the book he tells the stories of celebrities through history and works out how we got to where we are.
This was one of my hammock reads last week (as the sharp-eyed amongst you may noticed in yesterday’s bonus picture!) and it’s really good. I won’t spoil Greg’s thesis, but it’s well made and with a lot of really great historical figures to illustrate it. Greg has done some serious research into this – 1.4 million words worth on his laptop according to the Acknowledgments – but his writing style makes it so accessible and easy to understand. There are some history books that are scary and hard to read for the layman – sometimes even though they have a funky cover and an enticing blurb. But if you’ve ever heard Greg on radio, podcasts or seen him on TV, he writes exactly as he talks – which makes his books funny and chatty but with impeccable researching to back it up. Greg narrates his own audiobooks and they’re a fabulous listen – that’s how I read Greg’s first book and it was a real treat. As the title suggeests, this stops at 1950 – because Greg says everything after that has already been covered. If you’ve read books on modern celebrity – like Anne Helen Peterson’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud – this would make a really good companion piece to examine how we got here.
Yay! Pleased to hear @foxlanebooks is re-ordering more copies of #DeadFamous – if you'd like one, bought from a lovely indie bookseller, contact Kirstie! And if you'd like me to sign it for you, send me an email with your name & address, I'll send a personalised bookplate pic.twitter.com/RC2w7WJDO2
— Greg Jenner: 'DEAD FAMOUS OUT MARCH 19TH!' (@greg_jenner) April 26, 2020
I pre-ordered my copy (its signed!) from Kirsty at Fox Lane Books – and as you can see from the tweet above she is still taking orders and if you message Greg to tell him that you bought from her, he’ll send you a signed bookplate. It’s also available on Kindle and Kobo – and as an audiobook read by Greg.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 