American imports, binge reads, Book of the Week, fiction, new releases, reviews, romance, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: Thank You for Listening

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Taking a break from the Girls Own and book conference related content for this week’s book of the week. This is another recent release – the same day as Husband Material in fact – and one that I had heard a lot of buzz about and discovered was on offer while I was writing the August offers Recommendsday post.

Thank you for Listening is a romantic comedy about a former actress who became an audiobook narrator after an accident halter her on screen career. When Sewanee is sent to an audiobook convention by her boss she has a whirlwind night in Vegas with a mystery man. But when she returns to California, she finds an offer to narrate a beloved romance novelist’s final book. The trouble is, she doesn’t do romance novels any more, but money could pay for her beloved grandmother’s nursing home care so she resurrects her old pseudonym and starts recording the book with one of the genres hottest and most secretive male narrators, Brock McKnight. There’s a steady back and forth of chatter between them, but as secrets are revealed, can Sewanee get the happily ever after that she doesn’t believe in?

Julia Whelan is a renowned audiobook narrator so this is is filled with insider titbits from her experience as well as being a love letter to the romance genre. They even joke about how many tropes they’re ticking off more than once. And it’s a delight. Swan is an intriguing leading character, with a complicated family and some issues to deal with. And the shadowy and mysterious Brock has great banter. And, well, it’s very well put together – with a swoony ending and a nod and a wink to fans of the genre. What more could you want.

If I could have read this in one sitting I would have – but unfortunately I had to go to work, so instead I decided not to go to the theatre one of my London nights and instead read this on the sofa at the hostel, and then in my bunk when it got too noisy. No greater testament really.

My copy of Thank You For Listening came from Kindle for the bargain price of £1.99. It’s also on Kobo for the same price and available in paperback from Thursday – although how easily it will be to actually find I don’t know – Waterstones (Foyles’ owners) are having some distribution issues. I will try and remember to check Foyles’ romance section a few weeks after release…

Happy reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 8 – August 14

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Two nights in London for work? Check. Three nights at book conference? Check. More chatting than book reading? Check. I mean I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about my weekend talking Girl’s Own books, but today basically all you need to know is that I mostly listened to talks about books and bought books rwther than actually reading them!

Read:

Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham

Something Wilder by Christina Lauren

Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan

No Castanets at the Wells by Lorna Hill

Started:

Piglettes by Clémentine Beauvais

Still reading:

Godemersham Park by Gill Hornby*

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor

Femina by Janina Ramirez*

Castle Shade by Laurie R King

Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell

The Twist of the Knife by Anthony Horowitz*

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra*

About 20 actual books and a couple of ebooks too. And I’m not even sorry about it!

Bonus photo: a return to student life for the weekend!

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 adjacent, film, not a book

Not a Book: Parent Trap

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To keep the children’s book theme going while I’m at conference, today’s not a book is one of my favourite children films – which also happens to be based on a middle grade book!

Let’s make something clear to start with: I’m talking about the Hayley Mills Parent Trap. Yes I’ve watched the Lindsay Logan version, but by the time that came out I had already seen the original and I was not about to be won over! I first stumbled over the second half of this film on tv one weekend afternoon when I was an early teen and was astonished to find a film that seemed to have the plot of one of my favourite books from primary school – except set in America. The book in question is Erich Kästner’s Lottie and Lisa – which I had been borrowing as my reading book from the school library about once a term (maybe more) since I had finished the reading grade levels. I think it might have been the first time that I’d come across a book adaptation that had really been adapted and changed for the film. Or at least the first time I realised I had! And apologies if you’ve never see the film – because the trailer does do the entire plot, but hey.

Instead of 1930s Vienna, we’re in contemporary America but our two separated at birth twins still meet at camp. In the book they’re younger than the movie’s thirteen going on fourteen, but the plan is the same – switch places and meet the parent they don’t remember and try to engineer a reconciliation. And yes, as a rational adult I know that splitting up twins when they’re tiny and never telling them that the other exists is wrong, but oh boy do I love it as a plot. And because it’s Disney their lives look glossy and fabulous. Sharon lives in a fancy house in Boston with her mum, delightful grandpa and uptight grandma but Susan lives on a California ranch with a lake that she swims in, her own horse and what would be called now an indoor/outdoor life style. It just looks so cool. Why wouldn’t the twins want to get their parents back together so they can stay at the ranch forever.

I also love Maureen O’Hara and Brian Keith as the warring parents. They’re not bit characters in Sharon and Susan’s story – they’ve got proper plot and a love story of their own. In fact I’d argue that O’Hara’s Maggie is the best part – with great outfits and all the best lines as she does her part in outfoxing her ex’s new girlfriend. Just try to ignore the bit where she punches Mitch in the eye! And then there’s the technical achievement of getting Haley Mills to play two characters at once in the pre-CGI era. It was like magic – and the explainer video on my DVD of how they did it is fascinating. It’s such a technical achievement.

Honestly I could go on for hours about how much I love this film, but I’ve written enough and now I need to stop because I want to go and watch it again on Disney+!

Have a great Sunday everyone.

The pile

Books incoming: August Edition

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A much smaller pile this month – partly because the Persephone subscription has finished and there was a strange lack of preorders but mostly because I was trying to restrain myself before book conference! Who knows what I will come home with. Anyway, I picked up Rhode Island Red on a whim after getting it suggested to me by Amazon. I ordered it from Foyles though, and after I’d read it and enjoyed it, picked up the second book when I popped into the shop the other week. Piglettes also came from that trip. And then After Sappho and I want to die but I want to eat Tteokpokki were in that same Foyles order as Rhode Island Red. It was a day of poor impulse control. What can I say!

Children's books, Series I love

Series I Love: Sadlers Wells

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I am off to book conference this weekend, so in honour of all the fun I’ll be having, this week’s series I love post is a Girls Own one.

Lorna Hill’s Sadlers Wells series follows a series of young women as they embark upon careers in dancing. The first book, A Dream of Sadlers Wells was first published in 1950 and follows newly orphaned Veronica Weston as she tries to carry on learning ballet despite having moved to live with her cousins in Northumberland. The second book follows Veronica as she embarks upon her training at Sadlers Wells ballet school (now the Royal Ballet) and the other books in the series all follow girls who have a link to Veronica somehow.

Despire being clumsy and coordinated, I loved ballet books when I was a child and moved on to Sadlers wells after I had started on the Drina series – as both had reissues at about the right time for me. But the Sadlers Wells ones were harder to find – and didn’t go the whole way to the end of the series, so some of the later ones I’ve only read in the last five or so years. And the end of the series isn’t a good as the start, but the first half dozen or so are just great. Because they focus on different people you also get glimpses of your old favourites as you carry on. In fact a bit like romance series, some of them set up the next heroine in the previous book!

And where Drina is a city girl through and through, nervously learning to love the Chiltern when she’s sent to school there for a term, she is worried about getting injured and ruining her dance career (and she does indeed twist her ankle at one point) the women of the Wells books embrace the outdoors. Veronica, Caroline, Jane and Mariella romp around the countryside on their ponies, swim in lakes and clamber around the hills. They made me want to visit Northumberland – although not learn to ride a horse.

It’s only thinking about it as an adult that I realise that, like many Girls Own books of the era, they’re subtly quite subversive in their way. In the first two books, Veronica refuses to give up her ambitions of a dancing career in the face of various trials and tribulations – but also in the face of a potential love interest. Sebastian is a musical prodigy and in one quite awful speech when he’s trying to persuade Veronica not to go to London, he says that women don’t have to have careers and could (and maybe should) leave it to the men. But Veronica carries on – and gets the success and the love too. In the later books you can see her and Sebastian, married but she’s still dancing. And if they don’t do a very good of listening to their daughter Vicki, they don’t really do a worse job than any of the other parents in the book! But the message is there – girls don’t have to just grow up and get married, they can do things and have a career too.

Happy weekend everyone.

books I want

Recommendations wanted: not quite My Fair Lady

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The second show I saw last week was the revival of My Fair Lady at the Coliseum. As ever I loved the music – which sounds amazing with the ENO orchestra – but really wished that Henry Higgins wasn’t such an dreadful misogynist and that Eliza had some better options for a happy ending. And as I walked home I realised that what I wanted to read next was something with a hero who teaches the heroine some sort of skill – but who isn’t actually awful – maybe a bit prickly or guarded but actually a big old softie on the inside. But I’ve been having trouble finding anything – so if you have a recommendation for anything like this, please put it in the comments!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: August Kindle offers

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It’s another month, so there’s a fresh batch of Kindle offers and I’ve been through them looking for the best bits and bobs. I’m sorry if this proves expensive for you – but trust me when I say that it’s as expensive for me as I put it all together!

Lets start off with some recent releases. The latest Veronica Speedwell, An Impossible Imposter is £1.99, which is a total bargain, and an earlier discount on this than I was expecting too. Even newer is the latest Christina Lauren, Something Wilder, which is 99p and came out towards the end of May. I was delighted to see as I’ve been really keen to read this as I really like Christina Lauren (as long as the characters aren’t pulling pranks on each other!). It’s not that long since Roomies was a Book of the Week – and obviously Unhoneymooners, Autoboyography and The Honey Don’t List have also been picks of various kinds too.

Also in new things I haven’t read yet, but are by authors I like and want to read is The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian, which is £1.99. And the previous book in the series, The Queer Principles of Kit Webb is the same price too. Bargain. In fact a whole bunch of Cat Sebastian is on offer at £1.99 right now – I’ve filled in all the gaps in my collections – basically if she wrote it it’s £1.99 – unless the two Page and Sommers books.

Back to the 99p bargains now but slightly older (as it came out last year), is Elizabeth Macneal’s Circus of Wonders which was also a Book of the Week and fellow 2021 BotW pick Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert. Another BotW from 2021, Lucy Parker’s Battle Royal is £1.99. Then there is a whole stack of stuff that’s on my kindle waiting to be read that’s on offer for 99p – including The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang (The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test were Books of the Week), Dating Dr Dil by Nisha Sharma, The Flames by Sophie Haydock and Lost Property by Helen Paris.

On the non fiction front, Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, which I thought was really brilliant, is 99p as is Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, which is interesting but depressing and has just been turned into a TV miniseries. I don’t do ebook cookery books (I like to write on my recipes) but is you too Rukmini Iyer’s Green Barbecue is on offer. I love her Roasting Tin Books so much and this is the barbecue equivalent.

I’ve written about some of Anthony Horowitz’s other books – but I haven’t read any of his Sherlock Holmes or James Bond continuations, but two of them are on offer this month – The House of Silk and Forever and a Day. He’s also got a new book in one of his meta-y detective books out next week, but none of the previous Hawthorne books are on particularly good offers sadly.

In series you might be working your way through as they come on offer, this month’s Julia Quinn is Because of Miss Bridgerton which is the first of the Rokesby series which are prequels to the core Bridgerton books, and was a BotW here when it first came out. The 99p Georgette Heyer is The Toll-gate (one of my least favourites) with These Old Shades, Devil’s Cub, Beauvallet and a few others at £1.99. The Terry Pratchett is Sourcery which is the third in the Wizards sequence.

One final kids book to finish – The Great Troll War by Jasper Fforde is 99p. This is the most recent in the Last Dragonslayer series. I’ve only read the first one, but keep meaning to do the others.

Happy hump day everyone

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 1 – August 7

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Two nights away from home, three theatre trips and an evening at the Commonwealth Games. Truly it is a miracle I read anything this week! But I did, go me. This week is looking equally frantic, so goodness knows what next week’s list will look like too.

Read:

Husband Material by Alexis Hall*

Murder at the Brightwell by Ashley Weaver

The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham

Death Wears a Mask by Ashley Weaver

A Dream of Sadlers Wells by Lorna Hill

Veronica Goes to the Wells by Lorna Hill

Started:

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra*

The Twist of the Knife by Anthony Horowitz*

Still reading:

Godemersham Park by Gill Hornby*

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Another Time, Another Place by Jodi Taylor

Femina by Janina Ramirez*

Castle Shade by Laurie R King

Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell

Two books in Foyles on Monday. I said the willpower wouldn’t last!

Bonus photo: theatre trio three – Glass Menagerie, which I studied at school but had never seen.

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

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Jack Absolute Flies Again!

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Back in the theatre with this Sunday’s post because I had a wonderful night out on Monday night at the National Theatre. In fact it’s one of three trips to the theatre this week, which might be a record even for me!

So Jack Absolute Flies again is the new play by Richard Bean – who was behind the smash hit One Man, Two Guv’nors – and Oliver Chris. Like One Man… it’s based on another classic play, in this case Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, written in 1775. They’ve moved the action to 1940, and our sets of not so star crossed lovers are now taking part in the Battle of Britain.

If you haven’t seen the Rivals, it’s the story of Lydia Languish, a teenage heiress and Jack Absolute. It’s all very complicated with disguises but basically Lydia and Jack are in love but she wants a big romance and when Jack’s father arranges a marriage between Jack and Lydia she rejects it. Cue much tooling and groping. Or at least that’s what I think happens…

Funny story: I’ve technically seen The Rivals, but when we went to see it at the Southwark Playhouse more than a decade ago, it was an evening production on a Saturday night, after I’d worked a early shift at the radio station (and at the end of a six day week of earlies). No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stay away (and I had a nap in the interval in the hole it would improve things) and neither could Him Indoors. I’m still cross about it because it was a really cool venue and an excellent cast – including Celia Imrie – and I wish I’d managed to stay away. But it was in fact a legendary night in our relationship – where we both fell asleep on the train home and missed our stop and ended up three stops down the line, at the wrong end of Southend, three miles from home and not a cab in sight. And this was the pre-Uber era…

Anyway, back to Jack Absolute. It’s rather freely adapted, but there are still competing suitors for Lydia – this time from among the pilots – and it’s all a lot of fun, but with an undercurrent of peril behind it. And even if you haven’t heard of The Rivals, you’ve probably heard of one of its characters – Mrs Malaprop, who constantly uses words that sound like the one she means but… aren’t. Bean and Chris use this to maximum effect – often getting really quite saucy. The age recommendation is 12 plus – and I would endorse than unless you want to be trying to explain things you’d maybe rather not! Caroline Quentin is very good as the mangler of the English language – and does a good job of trying to steal every scene that she’s in.

Genuinely this was a funny and thought provoking evening and a clever update to the original which has gone it’s own way at times to add some interest and depth to some of the supporting characters. There’s a lot of fourth wall breaking which really worked for me and the projections for the flying scenes were very good too. I hope that this does really well – it was a bit empty around the top when I saw it on Monday, but tickets are very reasonably priced and it was very well worth the £20 I spent!

Jack Absolute Flies Again is at the National Theatre until September 3, and is coming to NT Live in cinemas in the autumn.