Category: week in books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: February 10 – February 16

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An interesting week in reading and one where I’m really not sure what my Book of the Week is going to be tomorrow.  I’m sure it’ll come to me. It usually does. This week coming I have a lot of earlies and a lot of nights away from home, so we’ll see what happens to the reading list because of that…

Read:

The Threat Level Remains Severe by Rowena MacDonald*

Essex Poison by Ian Sansom

In the Crypt with a Candlestick by Daisy Waugh*

World of Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies

Year of the King by Antony Sher

The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long

Burnout by Emily Nagoski*

Started:

An Unsuitable Woman by Cat Gordon

Still reading:

Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia

Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg*

I wish I could say that I was restrained last week and didn’t buy any books, but I can’t.  Little Sister is stuck in China with nothing to do, so I bought a bunch of Kindle Daily Deals because we share a kindle account. Also the prequel for Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series came out so I had to buy that too.

Bonus photo: Regular readers will be aware of my love of Terry Pratchett – and so this week’s bonus is the Discworld Emporium’s Valentine’s message from the Guild of Seamstresses – which my sister sent me andwhich made me laugh a lot.

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley.

Book of the Week, new releases

Book of the Week: Miss Austen

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So a bit of a strange week in reading.  I really enjoyed Alexa Martin’s Blitzed – but I gave a rave to Intercepted in May last year, so it’s inside my statute of limitations for repeats really.  There were a few things that I really didn’t like and a few more that I was a bit ho-hum about. But I also finished Miss Austen – which I wrote about in my 2020 preview post, so I thought I ought to revisit it now I have some thoughts.

Miss Austen: Spotted in the wild in Heffers at the end of January

So, the plot: in 1840 Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra goes to stay with the family of her long dead fiancé, in a quest to find a cache of letters sent by her sister.  It’s 20 years since Jane died, and Cassandra sees herself as the guardian of her sister’s legacy and image.  What is in those letters – and what damage could they do to the picture that Cassandra has carefully nurtured of her sister?  The story jumps backwards and forwards between the present day – where Cassandra is an unexpected (and not altogether welcome) visitor in a household in turmoil and Cassandra’s past with Jane, where her future looked to be going down a different path.

As I said in my 2020 preview, I will always take a second look at an Austen-related book.  Some of them work better for me than others – I loved Death Comes to Pemberley and still regularly recommend Eligible, but couldn’t stand Pemberley and didn’t even finish Longbourne. This is billed as the untold story of the most important person in Jane’s life and that was the hook that drew me in.  I finished it nearly a week ago and I’m still trying to decide what I thought of it. I liked the writing style and it has some really witty moments – both in the Jane and Cassandra timeline and in the Cassandra and the Fowle’s timeline. I’m not enough of an Austen scholar to be able to pick holes in the accuracy – which is probably a good thing for my enjoyment. But I’m still not sure what it was trying to do – things happened, but I think it petered out a bit at the end.  Several people have asked me about it and I’ve struggled to articulate what exactly the problem was. Thinking about it now, I think that it maybe that the plot is sold as being about the hunt for the letters, but actually when you’re reading it that isn’t as central to the action as you expect. But I did enjoy it – Cassandra’s time as an old, meddling house guest is fun – as is her sparring with the maid. Cassandra and Jane’s relationship with their sister-in-law Mary is fun – as Mary insists that her husband was the better writer, and the sisters wonder if she will spot herself in Jane’s work.  There are some other interesting characters though and Jane and Cassandra feel very real and true.

It feels strange to pick it as a BotW in a way, because this isn’t a whole-hearted thumbs up – and I can’t even explain some of my thoughts about the book very well.  But I have kept thinking about it since I finished it last week and so that makes it worthy of a bit more attention than just a shrug and move on.  It’s also had a lot of buzz – and it’s not often that I’ve read a literary fiction book like this early doors! I see a TV adaptation is in the works, and I will definitely watch that to see how it all translates.

My copy of Miss Austen came from NetGalley, but it is out now in hardback – and should be available in any decently stocked bookshop – as my photo from Heffers proves. It’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: February 3 – February 9

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A busy week at work – including a weekend, so lots of train reading here, hence the growing list of still reading – there are actual books and non-fiction that my brain has been too fried for. Still I have days off now, so fingers crossed…

Read:

Geekerella by Ashley Poston

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby*

How to Keep a Secret by Sarah Morgan*

The Princess and the Fangirl by Ashley Poston

One Enchanted Evening by Anton du Beke*

2019 Holiday Epilogues by Cat Sebastian

Redressed by Cat Sebastian

Blitzed by Alexa Martin

Started:

The Threat Level Remains Severe by Rowena MacDonald*

Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg*

Still reading:

Burnout by Emily Nagoski*

Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia

Essex Poison by Ian Sansom

Year of the King by Antony Sher

One book bought, two ebooks bought (including that copy of Love Lettering I mentioned in my post) and two more pre-ordered. And one of my existing preorders turned up.

Bonus photo: I was working all weekend, so I stayed in London, which meant I got to go out on Saturday night. And I chose some Cabaret. I’ll leave you to guess which song was finishing in this photo (hint: it’s from a musical).

Michael Twaits singing

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley.

romance, week in books

Book of the Week: Love Lettering

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After a classic crime pick last week, this week it’s a romance – and one that’s had a lot of buzz. The buzz is good, because Kate Claybourn’s latest novel came out on December 31st – and so was too late for anyone’s 2019 roundups, but sort of doesn’t count as 2020 either. Anyway – to the plot.

Cover of Love Lettering

Meg Mackworth is know as “The Planner of Park Slope” because of her hand-lettering skills, which she puts to use designing custom journals for those in the know in New York City. But she has a secret – sometimes she weaves secret patterns into her work, like the one she left in a wedding program for a couple she was sure wasn’t going to last. When Reid, the handsome and mathematically-minded groom, appears in her shop a year later to demand how she knew his future wasn’t going to last, it looks like it’s coming back to haunt her. Grappling with a case of creative block, Meg comes up with a plan to try and fix the situation. As the two wander the city getting to know each other and opening up, a connection develops. But Meg can see signs everywhere of problems ahead – how can this lead to a happy ending?

From the description above, Meg sounds a bit like a Manic Pixie Dream girl – one of those characters from quirky movies with improbable jobs and glamourous lives. She’s not. She’s guarded, anxious, likes routine, hates confrontation and sees letters in everything that she does. Her relationship with Reid is such a slow burn – just to friendship, let alone to more. But it’s such a joy to watch develop. The games they invent as they’re walking around the city, the way it makes Meg develop confidence and her ideas as well as the romance. And on top of that, the book itselfs really well designed – it’s got different fonts and lettering dropped in so that you can see what Meg is seeing in her head. It’s just lovely.

Also I think we can conclude that the tense a book is written in doesn’t bother me – because I’ve seen several reviews mentioning that it’s written in first person present and they still liked it, but I didn’t even notice really. I was so swept away by the book that I was just thinking about what happened next. Thinking back now it does feel like it had a sense of movement and uncertainty that was generated by the present tense – but at the time I wasn’t even thinking about tenses – just about Meg and Reid.

I absolutely ate this up with a spoon. I mean – I borrowed this from the library, but it’s on offer for 99p on Kindle (and Kobo) at the moment, so I’ve bought it so I can go back to it now my loan is up, and I may also have pre-ordered the paperback (out in March) so I can see what the all the different letters look like in the print version. It is so much fun.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 27 – February 2

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Four late shifts last week – but I was driving part way to work for two of them, which cut my reading time substantially.  But still, some interesting stuff on there (although not a lot of NetGalley progress, oops) and a very easy choice for tomorrow’s Book of the Week.  In case you missed it on Saturday, here are my January stats – and coming up on Wednesday there’ll be some mini reviews of the best of the rest from January.

Read:

Love Lettering by Kate Claybourn

The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe

99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown

Paper Girls Vol 4 by Brian K Vaughan et al

Fence Vol 3 by CS Pacat et al

Wedding Cake Crush by Jenn McKinley

The Mind Readers by Margery Allingham

Started:

Geekerella by Ashley Poston

Essex Poison by Ian Sansom

Year of the King by Antony Sher

Still reading:

Burnout by Emily Nagoski*

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby*

Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia

Two ebooks bought – one of which was a copy of something I read from the library and wanted a copy of…

Bonus photo: I had a very boring week, so this week’s photo is courtesy of my dad – and my mum’s snowdrop display.  She has a bit of an obsession…

Snowdrops

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley.

Book of the Week, detective

Book of the Week: The Division Bell Mystery

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It was a bit of a post-holiday come down week in reading, in fact I only bought The Division Bell Mystery in Cambridgeon Sunday, but I read it on Sunday afternoon and evening and it was so good. And also, in case you missed it, it’s an important week for the British Parliament this week, so it seemed an apt pick.

Copy of The Division Bell Mystery

When a wealthy American businessman dies while having dinner inside Parliament, at first it looks like suicide, while he was alone in the room as voting was taking place but the evidence doesn’t add up.  Soon a young parliamentary private secretary plays amateur sleuth to try and work out what happened. This is a classic locked room myster, although I think you might need a bit of knowledge of how the House of Commons work for this to make sense. The Division Bell of the title is the bell that rings across the Palace of Westminster (and in some nearby drinking establishments) when MPs are called to  go and vote (which is called a division because they divide into two lobbies, the Ayes and the noes) but for the most part Ellen Wilkinson has explained everything you might need to know.  In fact Wilkinson, was one of the first female MPs and so the book is filled with insider details about what Westminster was like in the 1930s – and more than a few digs at the male-centric nature of it all.

I love a Golden Age crime novel as you know, and locked room mysteries are always fun. This is quite traditional/of its time in terms of structure – friendly cop, amateur detective with some skin in the game, tame reporter, but that’s probably to be expected! I basically read this in one sitting, which tells you a lot as well. Wilkinson is a fascinating person even before you add writing a Murder mystery into the mix (go google her) and on the basis of this, I wish she’d written more. The Division Bell Mystery is part of the British Library Crime Classics series – which is a fairly reliable source of forgotten mystery stories – I’ve featured several others as BotW before* – some are great, sometimes you can see why they might have been forgotten!  Heffers had a whole load of them on Sunday and they were on 3 for 2, so of course I got three.

If you’re not going to Heffers, then you should be able to find a copy from all of the usual sources as well as on Kindle (£2.99 at time of writing).  Most bookshops will have a selection of the British Library Crime Classics too if they don’t have this one.  I also recommend Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Haye – which seems to be one of the more commonly stocked books in the line.

Happy Reading!

*Previous BotW’s from the series include: The Sussex Downs Mystery, Death of an Airman, and The Cornish Coast Murder – all of which you can see in the photo of the Heffers display and Silent Nights, which I don’t think you can!

Shelf of British Library Crime Classic books and other mysteries

 

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 20 – January 26

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We got back from our holiday on Monday evening and then I had a couple of days before I went back to work, so the start of the week in reading went well – and then it got awfully busy when I went back to work – and we went away for the weekend and actually Went Outside!

Read:

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Gone Viking by Helen Russell*

The Case for Jamie by Brittany Cavallaro

Girl Squads by Sam Maggs*

Naturally Tan by Tan France*

Caramel Crush by Jenn McKinlay

The Division Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson

Started:

Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia

The Mind Readers by Margery Allingham

Still reading:

Burnout by Emily Nagoski*

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby*

Bonus photo: we went to Cambridge for the world for a concert and of course that meant I got to go and play in Heffers for an hour or so. And I spotted this gorgeous display for The Doll Factory, which of course was one of the books I read on holiday. So it seemed a little serendipitous!

Display of copies of The Doll Factory

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley.

Book of the Week, new releases, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: Headliners

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As you can tell from yesterday’s post, a lot of reading happened on the holiday. It was glorious. Sun, sea, sand and a nice mix of stuff from the digital TBR pile and upcoming books. And this week’s pick for Book of the Week even came out yesterday so that’s some actual good timing from me for once!

Cover of Headliners

Sabrina Carlton and Nick Davenport do not get along.  They’re professional rivals and have been sniping at each other across the airwaves for years.  But now the feuding TV presenters are being forced to work together on morning television – and if it doesn’t work, it could finish both of their careers.  The ratings are in the toilet and they’ve got the month leading up to Christmas to turn it around. As long as they don’t kill each other first.  But when mishaps start happening on set, it seems that they may have a common enemy.  And then there’s the fact that the general public seem to be developing a misapprehension that these two are secretly lusting after each other.  Which they’re totally not, right?

This is the fifth book in the London Celebrities series, and if you’ve read the previous installments, you’ve come across our leads before – Sabrina is the sister of Freddy, the heroine of the previous book, and we saw Sabrina’s combative professional relationship with Nick come to a head at the end of The Austen Playbook.  Now while you don’t have to have read the rest of the series to enjoy this, it will completely spoil the plot of The Austen Playbook if you haven’t read that one first.  Lucy Parker seems to specialise in enemies-to-lovers tropes and this is another really good one.  What I particularly liked about it is that once they’ve got over their issues with each other, they move on as a team and the rest of the plot is not about people constantly trying to sow doubt in each of their minds about the other or silly misunderstandings between them that could be solved with a conversation.

As with the other books in the series, the dialogue is great – there is so much witty banter, and not just between the leads – the supporting characters get their share too. And I loved the situations that Nick and Sabrina found themselves in on the TV show – they’re exactly the sort of thing a ratings-obsessed editor might come up with and they’re funny but not in a cringey hide-behind-your-hands way.  And if you have read the rest of the series, there are some nice callbacks for you.  Obviously Freddy is in it, because she’s Sabrina’s sister, but there are also appearances from previous leads – and antagonists.  It was a real treat – I even made myself slow down and go away and read something else to make it last longer at one point because it was that good.  And don’t be put off by the fact that this is set in the run up to Christmas and it’s January, because it’s not that Christmasy – the Christmas deadline is just that, it’s not really the centre of the plot.  I  mean I read it on a beach in Lanzarote – and thought it was really a perfect book beach read, but equally it would lighten the winter gloom if you’re not fortunate enough to be somewhere relaxing and sunny!

My copy came from NetGalley, but Headliners is available now in Kindle and Kobo and as an audiobook.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 13 – January 19

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It was my birthday this week, so as is traditional we went away. But this time we went and got some winter sun so I had some quality reading time on the sun lounger.

Read:

If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane*

Show Trial by Thomas Doherty*

Maigret and the Murderer by Georges Simonon

Headliners by Lucy Parker*

Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall Smith*

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal*

How to be a Footballer by Peter Crouch

The Blood Card by Elly Griffiths

Black, Listed by Jeffrey Boakye*

Applied Electromagnetism by Susannah Nix

Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon

The Butterfly Bride by Vanessa Riley*

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs by Caitlin Doughty

Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer

Started:

Burnout by Emily Nagoski*

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby*

Gone Viking by Helen Russell*

Still reading:

The Case for Jamie by Brittany Cavallaro

Bonus photo: can confirm, we have been on holiday. Bliss.

View across a very quiet beach

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley.

Book of the Week, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: Sweet Talkin’ Lover

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Another Tuesday, another book of the week post.  I read a few books I really liked last week, and it was a close decision on what to pick, but I think Tracey Livesay’s new book was my favourite last week.

Cover of Sweet Talkin' Lover

Caila Harris is ambitious and driven. She’s given up her social life and is working all the hours she can to get her next promotion as she climbs the ladder in the beauty industry.  But when her beloved grandfather dies, she makes some bad decisions – and suddenly her chances of promotion are on the line.  The assignment she’s given to turn it around: go to a small southern town, and write the report that justifies shutting a factory down.  But when she gets to Bradleton, she runs into more trouble than she expected in the form of the town’s mayor, Wyatt Bradley. He’s determined to do whatever it takes to keep the plant open.  Soon sparks are flying between Caila and Mayor McHottie as the town calls him – but will their relationship survive if she finds out the sneaky tactics he’s using to try and keep her in town and when he finds out that the closure decision has already been made.

This is smart, fun and has a hero and heroine with great chemistry.  I like enemies/rivals to lovers as a trope and Sweet Talkin’ Lover does that really well. I also loved Caila’s relationship with her group of friends.  Livesay has said that the group is based on her own friendship group – and the holiday they’re on at the start is what they do every year. I love a ride-or-die friendship group in a story and these ladies really are that – and I’m looking forward to reading the books about the others, because this is the first in a series.

My only quibble with the book was from right at the end.  I didn’t quite believe that Wyatt’s family issues – either with his career or the way they treated Caila – were really all sorted out.  I believed that Wyatt and Caila wanted to make it work between them and that some of the roadblocks were removed, but I wasn’t quite confident that it was really all resolved enough to be confident that the happy ending was really going to be all ok if that makes sense. But that’s quite a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things.

Sweet Talkin’ Lover is Livesay’s print debut and came out in the middle of all the RWA problems.  She was also one of the resignations from the RWA board on Boxing Day (because of the way the Ethics Committee handled the complaint against Courtney Milan), so I think it’s fair to say that RWA messed up her Christmas and a big moment in her writing career.  And this book did not deserve to get swamped by RWA being a trashfire.

My copy of Sweet Talkin’ Lover came from the library, but its availalble now in Kindle, Kobo and as an audibook, but the paperback isn’t out in the UK until February 20.  I’ll try and remember to remind you.

Happy reading!