Check me out. A remarkably good and varied week in reading by recent standards. Non fiction, new fiction, contemporary romance, adventure and golden age crime. This week I have two nights away (only one last week) and a day out at the Commonwealth Games so who knows how much reading time I have. This could be the high point of the whole month!
Positively restrained – two Adele Bucks to enable the binge, but that’s it.
Bonus photo: The British Museum on Thursday evening as I walked past on my way to a gig at the Museum of Comedy.We’ve just started The Deeds of the Disturber as ournextAmelia Peabody relisten so it seemed apt for this week’s photo!
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Another TV show this Sunday – but this time not a new one, but an old favourite. It’s been really hot here in the UK this week, and sunny summer days always make me think of the Detectorists – of Lance and Andy wandering around in a field somewhere hunting for treasure.
Detectorists is the most gentle of gentle comedies. Andy and Lance are metal detectorists and members of a club for like minded people. They live in north Essex (near the Suffolk border) and are always on the hunt for the big find that will make their names and their fortunes. That’s it really. Some of the people in their lives don’t quite understand the appeal of spending their spare time scouring fields with a metal detector. There are rivalries with other metal detectorists. There are complications in their personal lives. But fundamentally no one dies or is at risk of dying and thus it is perfect. And the acting is perfect too. Toby Jones is great in everything he does (right back to the page in Ever After which was the first thing I ever saw him in!) and Mackenzie Crook wrote it as well as being in it. He is a detectorist in real life – and it’s got such love and gentleness about it as well as being really funny.
It started in 2014 but we watched it for the first time early in the pandemic – and we’ve watched it all the way through again twice now. It’s just so good and once you start watching it, you just can’t stop. A perfect low stakes binge watch. And there’s a new episode coming at Christmas which just makes me so happy, although I fear that some one may die/have died in that (if you watch it you’ll know who I’m talking about), but I’ll just be happy to have another hour or two in the company of the Danebury Metal Detectorists.
If you’re in the UK, you can find Detectorists on iPlayer – it says for the next four months. If you’re not in the UK, it should be available on one of the streaming services – Mr Google tells me you can buy it from all the usual suspects.
I struggled with what to call this shelf because, well, there’s no obvious theme. It’s mostly historical – fiction and non fiction – but with a sprinkling of romance, a couple of essay collections, some non fiction and translated fiction. But there’s a lot here that I have written about before. My love of Laurie Graham is well known – here you see one of my (three) copies of Gone with the Windsors, plus the rest of my hard copies of her books. I cannot tell you how much it annoys me that they’re many different sizes and formats. There’s a gaggle of previous BotWs too – Love Lettering, Evvie Drake Starts Over, and then stuff I’ve mentioned in other posts like The Editor, Flappers and the 1920s/Bright Young Things collection.
In the next reorganisation – whenever that happens – I suspect I’ll try and create a non fiction shelf somewhere and get the Laurie Graham’s onto a shelf with fiction. The trouble there is that large old hardback of Grand Duchess of Nowhere, which limits the options for them somewhat…
Oh I know. I’ve already written about one Phryne book this week and I did one of my very first Series I Love posts on the series, but today I thought I’d mention some of my other favourites now I’ve been back through them again. I mean obviously start at the beginning for preference – and Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates is also called Cocaine Blues depending on where in the world you are. I have that one on audiobook too and Stephanie Daniel did a great job of the audiobooks (with a few tiny exceptions, mostly around singing!) and it really does set everything up. But with that proviso out of the way, my particular favourite of the rest of the series are coming up!
Murder on the Ballerat Train is a creepy mystery – when an entire carriage of people is knocked out how can it be anything else? – and you also first meet Jane and Ruth who form a key part of the Fisher household going forward. I love a good theatre-set book (see postspassimadnauseum) and Ruddy Gore is one of these and a good mystery too. I’m not a operetta person really, but every time I read it I think that I must really get a ticket to see a good production of something Gilbert and Sullivan! Plus it has the bonus of being the first appearance of Lin Chung.
Away with the Fairies is another favourite – as I love the women’s magazine and its staff. It has a similar added appeal to me as Pym’s Publicity in Murder Must Advertise (which is on offer this month!) – seeing how things used to be done (or at least how Kerry Greenwood has managed to find out they were done!) as well as solving a mystery. And I like the Phryne out and about books too. I mentioned Death by Water a few weeks ago, but there are several other Phryne on holiday stories – like Dead Man’s Chest which has added early movie making to boot.
And finally the next book in the series looks like it is going to be another house party book – and if it’s anything like Murder in the Dark it will be a lot of fun. That has some Bright Young Yhings having a final hurrah to see in the new year and features threats and kidnapping rather than actual murder, which does make for a nice change.
Murder in Williamstown is due out in the autumn – all the rest are available now and if anyone knows why my kindle doesn’t group Murder by Mendelssohn in the series with all the others, let me know! (I have Death in Daylesford in a different format so that’s also not there).
Ok so I haven’t finished this yet, but I wanted to give a mention to Dr Janina Ramirez’s new book, Femina, which is out today. She’s one of my favourite historians at the moment – I’ve enjoyed her TV shows and podcasts that she’s presented and been a guest on and I’m really enjoying her examination of the Middle Ages, looking at the women history has forgotten (or ignored). The Middle Ages are not one of the areas that I studied in much depth at university (I tended to stick to post 1485) but she has a very readable style and I’m learning a lot!
As you probably guessed from the fact that I’ve already started reading it, My copy came via NetGalley, but you should be able to buy Femina from all the usual places – Kindle, Kobo etc – and I’m hoping it will be in the bookshops too, like Foyles, even if I can’t see any click and collect copies at the moment.. Oh and Janina reads the audiobook herself.
I have once again been through the monthly Kindle offers to try and find the best books on offer – I would say it is to help you with your holiday reading but we all know that I’m just a dirty big enabler.
We’re very close to the release date for Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new book – and hard on the heels of me spotting it in paperback at the airport last month – her last book Malibu Rising – which is linked to the new one – is on offer for 99p. I loved it last summer and as you know I can’t wait for Carrie Soto to come out. A couple of her older books have been reduced for odd days here and there – I’ve picked up One True Loves and Maybe in Another Life for 99p already this month, so if you like her, it’s worth keeping an eye out.
I went to the launch of Lizzy Dent’s new book last month, but her debut novel The Summer Job is 99p at the moment. I wrote a whole post about Philippa Gregory last month – and this month White Princess is 99p, it’s the fifth in the series if you run both the series together, although written later than some of the books after it (you’ll understand if you read the post) and comes before Constant Princess which is not a magic book, but I don’t know if this one is or not (again, it’ll make sense if you read the post!)
If you’re building a Terry Pratchett collection, this months’ 99p books are The Last Continent and A Hat Full of Sky, while Jingo is £2.99. Also in fantasy, two of the three books in Andrew Caldecott’s Rotherweird series are 99p but irritatingly it’s the first one and the third one. Book two is £2.99. I suspect the offers are because Caldecott has a new book that has come out fairly recently. In other fantasy series, I read the first in Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series back in 2020 – I have several more on the Kindle waiting for met to get around to them – now including the sixth book in the series The Secret Chapter.
In books I read years ago there is One Day by David Nicholls – warning, it made me cry. I read Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto during my year in France (I remember vividly reading it in my incredibly hot hall of residence, which sort of matches the stifling atmosphere of a book about a hostage situation). I haven’t read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks since even longer ago – when I was doing that War Literature module at A Level – and it wasn’t my favourite then, but it is one of those books you’re meant to have read, so I include it here in case… they’re all also 99p too
Slightly more expensive, at £1.99, is one of my favourite non fiction books of last year – Andrew Lownie’s Traitor King. Also £1.99 is one of my childhood favourites – A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. The Cazalets series is one of my favourites – and my favourite of the whole series, Casting Off, is just 99p. Also an old favourite – this month Murder Must Advertise is the PeterWimsey book on offer. And the 99p Georgette Heyer is The Reluctant Widow, although loads of them are only £1.99 this month if you’re impatient and can’t wait for more to drop to 99p – you can find them via this list.
And finally, in books I haven’t read *yet* – the newest Susan Mallery The Summer Getaway and Martha Waters To Marry and To Meddle (the third in her Regency Vows series) are both 99p.
So a slightly cheaty pick this week, as it’s not a book I haven’t read before, but as I finished the Phryne reread last week, I’m going to let myself break the rules!
Murder and Mendelssohn is the twentieth book in Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series and has a lot of the key threads in the series running through it. Inspector Jack Robinson asks Phryne for help investigating the murder of an unpopular conductor. Jack thinks the killer may come from among the choir he has been rehearsing so Phryne decides to infiltrate the choir and find out. But at the same time, one of her old friends from World War One is in town and needs her help keeping a mathematical genius alive.
My favourite Phrynes are the ones with a large cast of suspects, a love interest and a historical connection – and this has all of that. The full Fisher menage is here – with the exception of Lin Chung, and it has has Greenwood’s take on Sherlock Holmes in Rupert Sheffield, former codebreaker and current irritant to all around him except John Wilson.
I wouldn’t suggest you start the series here, because you’ll miss all the fun of getting to this point, but if you do make this your first taste of Miss Fisher, then it will give you a pretty good flavour of what everything is all about. One last thing – a warning: if you’ve watched the TV show, don’t expect this to be the same. I’ve enjoyed the series, but it’s a teatime drama and they have adapted the series to fit that – which means they’ve done a few things to Phryne’s love life, added some running plot strands that don’t exist in the book and reduced the size of the Fisher household somewhat. So treat them as separate entities if you can.
You can get Murder and Mendelssohn in all the usual ebook formats – Kindle, Kobo and the rest – and that’s probably the easiest way to get hold of them.
So a shorter list this week. Partly because I finished the Phryne Fisher re-read rather than read new stuff, partly because of an overnight in London where I went out, but mostly because of a nightshift on Friday, that made my brain tired and not great at concentrating, and also meant I slept through part of the weekend. What I will write about tomorrow I do not know. And we’ve got a mega heatwave continuing this week, so that may also fry my brain!
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin*
Three actual books bought and two ebooks
Bonus photo: hostel life! Before the nightshift at the end of the week, there was a night away in London at the start of the week. And things are starting to get back to normal at the hostels – this was my first time back at my second favourite/choice one since October 2021 before the Omicron wave hit.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Well you may remember that I read Bad Blood last year. And a few months back I watched the documentary about Elizabeth Holmes when it came around on Sky Documentaries. And then when I went to visit a friend for the weekend the other month, we watched the first seven episodes of The Dropout back to back – and would have finished it if that final episode had been available. And I currently have a Disney plus subscription so I’ve finally been able to finish it. And now I have thoughts!
In case you’ve forgotten, Elizabeth Holmes was the person behind Theranos, the medical start-up unicorn that claimed it was going to revolutionise diagnostic blood tests with its technology that could test for pretty much anything and everything using just a tiny finger prick sample of blood. Except as the John Carryrou book reveals, the technology never really existed the way they said it did, and the tech they had made didn’t work either. But Theranos still managed to raise billions of money from investors before it all came crashing down. Spoiler alert: Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani will be sentenced in the autumn, after they were convicted (in separate trials) of deceiving investors.
The Dropout is the dramatised version of the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes – from her days at university through to the implosion of Theranos. As you can probably tell by the fact we binged it in one night, I really enjoyed it! Obviously we will never know what the actual conversations were between Holmes and her then partner Sunny Balwani, but the writers of this have had a very good go at it – it’s like the most gripping and bonkers docudrama you’ve ever seen.
As you see from the trailer, Amanda Seyfried plays Elizabeth, which is a tricky task given the prominence Holmes had when the company was riding high and the personality quirks that she had like the strangely deep voice and her Steve Jobs wardrobe. But she’s really, really good. And she’s got the Emmy nomination this week to show for it. Naveen Andrews plays Sunny, and makes him a really intriguing character – more so than you might expect if you were told it was an older man in a relationship with the much younger woman whose company he is helping to run.
And we really enjoyed dissecting how they portrayed the leading characters. If this were a Reddit Am I The Asshole question, the answer is pretty much ESH – everybody sucks here – with the exception of a couple of the scientists and lab workers. Just a warning though, there are obviously real life impacts of the Theranos saga – the people who got the wrong results from their tests, but also the workers who tried to speak out and stop what was going on. And if you haven’t read the book, I suspect one particular even will make you really sad. I knew it was coming and it was still bad.
So, if you need something to binge watch and you currently have Disney +, then this might be a good way to pass a weekend. I really want to watch it again already.
Oh dear. Everything has gone a little bit bonkers hasn’t it. Whoopsie daisy. I could hardly get them all in the same photo. What you see here is the result of two different charity shops, two Persephone books arriving close together, the airport bookshop (and I’ve just realised that I’ve missed Great Circle out of the photo because it’s beside my bed and not on the new book pile on the bureau), a happy visit to the comic book store, a wander through WH Smith’s, a preorder arriving and a purchase to assist with the 50 states challenge. Just imagine what might have happened if I’d made it into Foyles during any of my trips to London!
Will I manage to be more restrained this month? Tune in in August to find out!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 