Here is the final WiB of 2017 – ending neatly at the end of the year precisely. And everything that I finished this week was to try and finish ReadHarder – and it worked! As it’s the end of the year, I’ve rationalised the ongoing books – and given up on the Rushdie – I wasn’t enjoying it and I’ve got lots of other things I’d rather read in 2018.
Read:
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Meridian by Alice Walker
French Poems of the Great War translated by Ian Higgins
Revolutionary Ride by Lois Pryce
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
Started:
Second Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones
Still reading:
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown
I was so busy trying to finish ReadHarder that I only bought one book – in the Waterstone’s sale and no ebooks. Not too bad really.
Yeah. This is a day late, but you had a nice bonus post yesterday, so I don’t feel too sorry for you. And as it’s been another one of those weeks – all reading plans derailed by the need to catch up on Christmas preparations – you weren’t really missing out on much anyway!
Read:
Christmas at the Grange by T E Kinsey
A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters
Started:
The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown
Still reading:
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
French Poems of the Great War translated by Ian Higgins
Meridian by Alice Walker
A couple of books bought – but I blame the stress of Christmas!
Yes. I know. This is late. And short. But Christmas preps + work + Noirville = stressed and behind Verity. Sorry. Normal service will be resumed soon. I hope. Or at least if it doesn’t I’m going to cry. Any how. It was also a hard choice this week – I loved the new Gail Carriger novella, Romancing the Werewolf, but it’s only been a few weeks since Imprudence was my BotW. I also read a lot of Christmassy books – some of which you’ll be hearing about soon so I couldn’t use them either. So this week’s BotW is the very unseasonal Suddenly Last Summer by Sarah Morgan, because I read two of the three Snow Crystal books last week, back to back, because they were so much fun.
Suddenly Last Summer is the middle book of the three – the other two are Christmas-themed – and I read the first one in December last year and then the third one last week when it was on offer for this Christmas and I discovered I already had this on my kindle waiting for me. Yes. I have so many books on my Kindle that I don’t know what’s on there. I don’t know why that surprises you given everything you know about my to-read pile. Moving on, so this is the story of Sean-the-surgeon and Elise-the-French-chef. Sean is too busy for a relationship – not that that stops women from trying – and Elise has sworn off relationships for good. They had a fling the previous year – and spark is still there. Will they be able to work things out to get a happy ending?
Well they do of course, because this is Romancelandia, but the fun is watching them get there. The chemistry between Sean and Elise is great – they have a firey passionate relationship that starts out as just a physical thing (or at least they tell themselves that) but develops into something more than they were expecting or can handle. This also has a really strong sense of place and family ties. It’s set in and around the Snow Crystal resort that Sean’s family owns and he has a very conflicted relationship with the resort and it affects how he gets on with his family. Sean loves the place – or at least he does when he spends enough time there to remember how much he likes the outdoor life and the things that come with it, but he hates the responsibility that comes the family’s ownership of the resort and how it affected his father and stopped him from being able to do what he wanted. Elise is French and is struggling with events that happened in Paris in her past and that is colouring how she makes all of her relationsjips. Watching the two of them work through their issues – because as always with Sarah Morgan, love doesn’t solve the problem – is really rewarding.
I read this at totally the wrong time of year, but I still really enjoyed it. In fact it made a nice break from Christmas stories and Noir. As I’ve said before, Sarah Morgan writes great romances where characters have real problems to solve and where finding love isn’t the protagonist’s main goal – they’re trying to sort their lives out in some way and finding love is a delightful side effect of that. Morgan is a prolific writer and there always seems to be one of her books on offer for 99p on Kindle – as I write this it’s former BotW Moonlight over Manhattan, which I highly recommend.
Suddenly Last Summer is available on Kindle, Kobo and in paperback if you can find it – Amazon have it, but I suspect you’ll have to order it in to your local bookshop rather than find it on the shelves.
Still reading #Noirville entries this week and less of everything else. Still a nice week of reading though, even if I do have way too many books on the go at once as I try and finish off my #ReadHarder challenge. I suspect this week won’t be much better – because it’s Christmas party week.
Read:
Maybe This Christmas by Sarah Morgan
Paris for One by Jojo Moyes
Suddenly Last Summer by Sarah Morgan
Christmas in New York by Holly Greene
Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger
Started:
Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookshop by Robin Sloan
Meridian by Alice Walker
Still reading:
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
Runout Groove by Andrew Cartmel
French Poems of the Great War translated by Ian Higgins
A couple of Christmas ebooks bought or preordered, but really quite restrained.
As we get closer and closer to Christmas, it’s getting harder and harder for me to pick BotW’s that don’t infringe on my Christmas reading suggestion posts. Hence why this week’s choice is Rumer Godden’s China Court – a book which I still can’t make up my mind what I think about it, several days after I finished reading it.
Another train based photo…
China Court is the story of the homecoming of Tracy, who arrives back at her grandmother’s house the day after her grandma has died. Brought up in America, Tracy spent the favourite part of her childhood living at China Court and is worried about what her grandmother’s death may mean for the old house. But as well as being about Tracy’s return, the book is also the story of family who have lived in the house over the years and their trials and tribulations.
Regular readers will know that I love a good family saga, and that I love time slip novels, and this is a bit of both – a huge cast of characters and two timelines, one present, one past – although the past one moves through time rather than being the story of just one person in the past. And although it took me a while to get into it (as evidenced by the length of time it spent in the Week in Books posts), once I had got into it, I didn’t want to put it down* because I wanted to know what happened.
At the start, there is a family tree, but also a note from the author asking you to only look at it if you really have to because her aim is for the family and their relationships to unroll in their own time and for you to work it out for yourself. I mostly managed that, but I did have to have a few looks at the family tree when I was picking the book back up again after a few days break.
I haven’t read a lot of Rumer Godden’s books – and most of what I have read have been her children’s books. And as I said at the start, I still can’t work out what I thought. The ending isn’t as satisfying as I wanted it to be – even though all the ingredients seem to be there for it to work. I didn’t like a lot of the characters – or what they were doing – but I really liked Tracy and her story line. Even writing this hasn’t really helped me work out what I though of this and whether I liked it or not. I still don’t know if it’s going to go on to the bookshelf, or get lent to mum or sent straight to the charity shop. Puzzling.
Coming soon: Christmas reading recommendations. While you’re waiting, don’t forget the Christmas gift guides – Him, Her and Me are still here.
Happy Reading!
*but I did, because I had to go to work. And I didn’t like it *quite* enough to break my rules about not taking books that I have less than 100 pages left to read to work with me.**
** Because it’s a waste of bag space if it’s not going to last me all the way down and most of the way back.
So I may have slipped up a bit in the book buying stakes this week – but it’s nearly Christmas and there are offers. My main task in the next few weeks has got to be finishing off #ReadHarder2017 – I’ve really got to pull my finger out now…
Read:
The One that Got Away by Melissa Pimentel
Need You Now by Emma Douglas
China Court by Rumer Godden
The Finch that Stole Christmas by Donna Andrews
The Christmas Surprise by Jenny Colgan
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Started:
Runout Groove by Andrew Cartmel
Paris for One by Jojo Moyes
French Poems of the Great War translated by Ian Higgins
Maybe This Christmas by Sarah Morgan
Still reading:
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
1 book and 3 ebooks bought – and 4 collectable Girl’s Own books, which count but sort of don’t!
A quickie and a bit of a cheat for this week’s BotW – I’ve been busy writing the Christmas gift posts and reading the books to put in them. I’ve written about Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow series before, although it’s the first time I’ve made one Book of the Week – mostly because the point when I was glomming on the early series was before I started writing BotW posts the way that I do now.
Anyway, Gone Gull is the 21st book in the series and sees Meg and her family spending the summer at her grandmother’s newly established craft centre. Meg is teaching blacksmithing, her husband is teaching acting and helping look after the children, her grandfather is teaching ornithology and her dad is on hand two. But it looks like someone may be trying to sabotage the centre and then one of the teachers is found dead. Soon Meg is investigating and trying to work out who has it in for Biscuit Mountain.
One of the joys of this series is the crazy extended family and almost all the regular characters in the series are here – there’s not much of Meg’s mum or brother, but that’s fine because it’s nice to get to know Meg’s Grandmother Cordelia better. The problem for a lot of long running murder series is that often it seems like the detecting character is the harbinger of doom (aka don’t be friends with Jessica Fletcher or you’ll end up dead) but one of my favourite things about this series is the way that Andrews manages to find different locations to take her characters so that it doesn’t feel quite so dangerous in Meg’s home town! It was also really nice to see Meg back at her anvil – her blacksmith business was prominent in the early books in the series, but had faded into the background somewhat while the twins were little.
These books fall at the humorous end of the cozy crime spectrum – they’re not laugh a minute, but as the pun-based titles suggest there’s plenty of fun in these – with eccentric characters and strange set ups. I’m nearly up to date with the series now – I thought I was bang up to date, but the Christmas book (How the Finch stole Christmas) came out at the end of October, although I suspect it’ll take a while before I can justify buying it.
As always with posts about series, I think you’re best starting at the beginning – a Murder with Peacocks is the first one and although it’s out of print new, there are secondhand copies on Amazon and it’s under £4 on Kindle as I write this. But actually, these are stand alone – the thing you miss by not going back to the start is the building of the cast of characters and Meg’s relationship. As well as meeting her ever expanding extended family over the course of the books, Meg doesn’t hurry into marriage – or into having children – which makes for a really fun journey for her and for the reader. I think a reader could have fun wherever they start the series – so what ever you decide:
In case you missed it over the weekend – here are my first two Christmas book suggestion posts: Books for Him and Books for Her. The post with books that I want for Christmas is coming this week. Meanwhile it’s been a murderous week of reading!
Read:
Gone Gull by Donna Andrews
And Death Goes To… by Laura Bradford
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Hollywood Hang Ten by Eve Goldberg
Rivers of London: Cry Fox 1 by Ben Aaronovitch et al
New Romancer 3 by Peter Milligan and Brett Parson
Historically Dead by Greta McKennan
Started:
The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
The One that Got Away by Melissa Pimentel
Still reading:
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
China Court by Rumer Godden
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
I bought quite a few books this week – but they were all presents, so they don’t count!
