As I mentioned at the weekend, we’ve been watching Drive to Survive here and it has awoken in me a desire to read some more books set in the motorsport world – but NOT biographies – I’ve got plenty of those – but fiction whether it’s romance or something more women’s fiction or saga-y.
I think I’ve only ever read one romance with a motorsport setting – Erin McCarthy’s Flat Out Sexy – which iirc is a Nascar-type set up, although it may be Indy Cars , it’s definitely in the US racing scene though – which features a driver’s widow falling in love with a hot shot rookie and having to work out if she (and her kids) can cope with being a part of the racing scene again. On the Mystery-thriller-romance front, one of the earlier Other Janet Evanovich series featured a Nascar driver – but i’ve read both of them and i didn’t love them.
So if anyone knows of any books set in a travelling motorsport series – glamourous settings, a bit of a closed group (both with the team and then the paddock as a whole), I am absolutely here for that. Bonus points if the heroine is the racing driver or part of the team rather than being a a rich airhead…
Now I said in yesterday’s post about Better Luck Next Time that it is not a romance. And I absolutely standby that. But I know that a lot of people who read my blog read romances, so for Recommendsday today here are three books set on ranches that *are* romances!
If the Boot Fits by Rebekah Weatherspoon
A Cinderella retelling with a downtrodden PA and an Oscar winning actor who have a fraught first encounter when she accidentally takes his goody bag – containing his statuette – home with her and then end up at the same wedding at his family ranch. I wanted more comeuppance for the villain of the piece but enjoyed the dancing around about whether Sam and Amanda are just a fling or if they want it to be something more. The first book in this series – A Cowboy to Remember was a BotW just over two years ago and that’s just as much fun – even if it does have an amnesia plotline which is usually something I hate – and there’s a third book in the series that I haven’t read yet, but have on my watch list.
Black Hills by Nora Roberts
I haven’t read a lot of Nora Roberts, but I read Black Hills for the 50 states challenge in 2020. This is a romantic suspense with a long slow build and a resolution that happened a little too quickly for me after the build up. But how often have you heard me complain about romances wrapping up too quickly? Yeah, I know, a lot. When they were kids living on neighbouring ranches, Lil and Coop found the body of a dead hiker. Now they’re adults Lil is running a wildlife reserve and Coop is back in town taking a break from his life as an investigator to look after his grandparents. When pranks on the ranch turn into the killing of a cougar, the two start investigating only to find that the trail leads back to that body from long ago. Can they find the culprit before a killer finds them?
Summer Nights with a Cowboy by Caitlin Crews*
This isn’t out until later in the month and it’s *slightly* cheating, because although it is in Crews’ Kittridge Ranch series, our hero Zack is running away from the ranch and rebelling by being the town’s sheriff. The heroine is Janie, a travelling nurse who has come to Cold River to find out more about her family’s past. Zack is suspicious of Jamie’s reasons for being in town and Janie can’t work out why she’s so drawn to the glowering guy who lives across the road. There are charm lessons and a hero who has to come to a reassessment about what he thinks his parents’ relationship is about. Probably the least ranch-y of this group, but worth a look.
NB: these are all contemporaries because historical romances in ranches are Westerns and I just dont really do westerns – and not just because so many of them are mail order bride stories… If you want one though, go read one of Beverly Jenkins’ ones – like Wild Rain.
And for the third week in a row I’ve picked something other than romance or mystery for BotW. Today we’re in the historical fiction portion of my reading life for one of my library books that was coming due and which I really did enjoyed as I read it over the weekend.
It’s 1938 and Ward is a cowboy working at a dude ranch just outside Reno that caters to women who are visiting town to get a quickie divorce. To qualify for a divorce, they need to satisfy the residency requirements and that’s where the Flying Leap fits in – we’re told it was even designed by a Hollywood set designer. Ward’s family lost their money in the Great Depression – which also forced him to drop out of university and he’s got the job at the Flying Leap because of his handsome good looks. No one at the ranch knows about his somewhat well heeled previous life and he likes to keep it that way, enjoying the assumptions that the guests make about him – they think he’s pretty but dumb and using his looks to try and get ahead. He, in return, thinks he has the women who visit the ranch all figured out, but one particular group are different. Among them is Nina, the heiress and aviatrix, back for her third divorce and Emily who says the bravest thing she has ever done is to drive to the ranch leaving her cheating husband behind. Over the course of their stay friendships and relationships are made and broken.
Don’t worry, it’s not miserable, for all that I’ve put broken in that last sentence. It’s a cleverly put together glimpse at the six weeks at the ranch that changed Ward’s life. It’s more bittersweet than anything else, if we’re using book blurb code phrases, and it is not a romance – if you’re a romance reader, I’ve described this as historical fiction for a reason! But if you want some 1930s hi jinx with an interesting premise that I hadn’t come across before, then this would make a great choice for your sun lounger or sofa.
As I said at the top, my copy of Better Luck Next Time came from the library but it turns out that I’ve managed to be accidentally timely as it comes ot in paperback this Thursday! It’s hard to work out if it’ll be available in stores, but I suggest it’s going to be an order in job as that’s what her other novels are on Foyles’ website. But of course it’s available on Kindle and Kobo as well as in audiobook from the usual sources.
So I didn’t go to the theatre last week, but it was another busy one. A real mix of reading too – with a few library books coming due that I finished off and more of the aforementioned Sookie Stackhouse reread as well. Probably not making as much progress on the NetGalley list as I should be so might have to tackle that a bit more this week…
I had a mega book buying spree – Virago were doing their designer hardbacks at fifty percent off and I filled in a few gaps in the collection. I just couldn’t help myself.
Bonus photo: I know, not the most exciting picture this week, but at least it looks a bit like spring is coming – this was Fitzroy Square on the walk to work last week!
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
What have I been doing this weekend? A little light shopping, ironing, cooking and watching the new series of Netflix’s Drive to Survive.
Something you may not know about me if you only know me from this blog is that I love motorsport. I mean I really, really love motorsport and even then it’s not quite as much as Him Indoors loves motorsport. The MotoGP season started last weekend and we spent a lot of time with the bikes on the TV. Next week, the Formula One season starts – but this weekend the latest series of Netflix’s show about F1 dropped.
If you don’t follow F1, last season was one of the most controversial ever and lots of fans have been talking about the Netflixification of F1. I’ve just finished watching all the NFL seasons of All or Nothing on Amazon and have started the NHL season. And if you watch a few of them, you’ll spot the difference approaches to dealing with a season – DTS is a bit of an outlier in that it doesn’t take things chronologically, but instead jumps back and forth as it focuses on one team or one story each episode. You could argue that this approach is why it’s sucked in so many non-F1 fans – it follows the characters and has more off track footage than the actual race. There is a MotoGP season documentary coming soon too – I’m looking forwards to see what they’ve decided to do.
Certainly DTS has brought a whole load of new fans to the sport – the US Grand Prix added extra grandstands because the demand for tickets was so high. For me, having watched every race of the season already, I’m watching DTS for the behind the scenes content, but also to see which stories they decided to follow through the season and how they’ve put their narrative together. It’s Formula One Jim, but not as we know it.
Bonus picture: we visited Monaco a few years ago in the weeks after the F1 Grand Prix so we saw them dismantling the race track when we walked the route of the circuit! This is the pit complex.
Why is this post called Downstairs Pratchetts? Because the Tiffany Aching books live upstairs with the middle grade books so that’s the upstairs Pratchetts. And why aren’t there more of them? Well when I first read them I was a teenager, so there is the family set at my parents’ house. I’ve done most of my rereads via audiobook or ebook, so this is just the start of what I’m hoping will be a selection of my favourites in delightful hardback form. Because these really are very pretty.
And why did I pick this shelf today? Well it’s seven years today since Sir Terry died so it seemed fitting. I wrote at the time about how much he and his books meant to me. And I wrote again when I read the last book. So here’s another excuse to talk Sir Terry and his wonderful worlds. My first books in this collection are the ones that I revisit the most. And as we know I like sets and they’ve helpfully broken the Discworld down into strands, I’ll probably get the rest of the ones that are in these sets. Although there are some new paperbacks coming too. And a fresh set of audiobooks with new narrators, which I’m quite excited about because although I love Stephen Briggs he hasn’t done all of them and I don’t like the Nigel Planer version. I know. I’m sorry.
Happy Friday everyone. The last few Fridays we’ve been doing Series I Love, today we have a new type of post – Series to Binge. What is the distinction? Well principally it needs to be a series where you can read the books back to back without spotting the formula and getting annoyed. Now a series having a formula doesn’t make it a bad thing – and in the usual pattern of reading when you get each book as it comes out – you don’t necessarily notice it. But when you’re a reader like me who finds something you like and then rattles through as many of them as you can get your hands on as fast as possible, you do sometimes start to notice things. There are some series that I really like but that, I wouldn’t recommend you to read back to back to back – like some of the cozy crimes. Him Indoors likes to read Steph Plum when we’re on holiday – but he can only do about three before it gets a bit repetitive for him.
The Sookie Stackhouse series however, you absolutely can read one after the other. Or at least I can – I read three back to back the other week and started a fourth, put the fourth down for a few days to read other things last week, came back to it this week, finished it and went straight on to the fifth. In fact, in terms of how angry some of the fandom got with the way that it ended, it’s probably best to read them back to back (as you can now) rather than reading them as they came out – because it leaves less time to get involved in the speculation about who Sookie is going to end up with (which is why some of the fans were so disappointed). Coming back and reading them again, I’m spotting even more things that point at the way it turned out, but that’s another story.
Anyway, for those of you who haven’t come across the series before – it’s also known as the Southern Vampire Mysteries or the True Blood books – they’re about a telepathic waitress from a small town in Louisiana. A couple of years prior to the start of the books, the world’s vampire population went public and in the first book Sookie meets the new vampire that’s moved into her town and gets sucked into the problems of the local vampire population. Across the course of the series, Sookie discovers more and more about the supernatural world – and that’s what makes them so bingeable – each book adds something new or takes her somewhere different, so they don’t get samey. For example book two is in Dallas, book three is in Mississippi and introduces some extra complexity to how the vampire world is organised and how some of the other supernaturals get on with the vampires. Book four adds in more supernaturals and more complications and so on and so on. You get the idea and as you can tell you need to read them in order!
I do also need to add a proviso – these books are violent. There’s death and killing – and sexual violence too. I’ve read all the books – and I’m reading them again – but I’ve never watched the TV series because I’m fairly sure it’s going to be too violent for me. I can cope with it on the page but not on screen, much to Him Indoor’s confusion. I do normally tell you when I’m recommending something violent – and it’s sort of why I don’t say that I *love* this series – because the violence can get a bit much and I feel a bit weird about saying that I love something that has such a high body count. But then I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (for all it’s problems) so maybe I’m just being contrary. Anyway, if you need something to binge to take your mind off the outside world – and you fancy some urban fantasy then this may be your thing.
They should be fairly easy to get hold of – there are omnibus editions on kindle (as you can see from the image as well as the individual books. I have the omnibus of the first three (which I read on holiday in Greece nearly a decade ago) and then picked the rest up from various charity shops – and then got rid of them in the house move – so this time I’m borrowing the ones I don’t have from the library. All in all they should be an easy to get hold of binge.
I honestly don’t know how I had missed that this was coming. Linda Holmes’ debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over, was one of my favourite new releases of 2019 and I’ve been really looking forward to whatever she wrote next.
Flying Solo is out in mid June and is set in the same town as Evvie Drake. According to the blurb, our heroine Laurie is returning to her hometown to handle the estate of her great aunt. While she’s back, she discovers a love letter to her unmarried aunt and gets caught up in “a righteous caper” to track down a mysterious wooden duck that goes missing from her aunt’s possessions. Doesn’t that sound excellent? I’m super excited anyway, and currently figuring out the best way of getting my hands on it!
Yes, yes, I’m a day late for International Women’s day, but for Recommendsday this week, I’ve gone for books about or by interesting women, because it seems fitting somehow. And yes, I meant to read a whole bunch of books ahead of writing this post but see all my previous notes about my inability to read stuff that’s not romance or mystery. I know. Best laid plans. But maybe I’ll have read some of them by next year!
Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen
Anne Helen Petersen deconstructs eleven women who have been deemed unruly or too much in some way. It’s such a good insight into the forces that drive perception of women – and the boundaries that are still there and the celebrities pushing against them. I read this a couple of years back – and it was a BotW at the time -and as I said thenI didn’t always like all the personalities involved here then, and I like some of them even less now, but Peterson’s arguments are really compelling and I had to examine my own thinking and challenge myself a little about my own perceptions after reading this.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shelterly
This is honestly a fabulous book shining a light on a formidable group of women who fought against a system stacked against them and played a key role in the US side of the space race. It is really, really good. I’ve read books about the Mercury 7 and the early American Astronauts but I hadn’t really got any idea of the maths and actual process behind their achievements until I read this. And I am in awe of people who can figure out not just the maths of it, but which maths is actually needed because my brain absolutely does not work like that at all. Really, really good. And then you can watch the film afterwards and see how they adapted it!
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I can’t believe it’s nearly eight years since Maya Angelou died and I wrote about the impact her writing had on me. As I said back then this was on the extended reading list when I was studying Color Purple and Oranges are Not the Only Fruit at A Level. I can’t even begin to explain the impact it had on me (although I did try in that post). I bought the other volumes of Angelou’s autobiography and have taken them around with me from house to house ever since. The writing is amazing, her story – in this volume – is heartbreaking but she overcomes. if you haven’t already read this, you really should
First Women by Kate Anderson Brower
This group biography is six years old now, and my notes about it from when I read it (in early 2017) are that it is written from a point of view that seemed to be expecting that Hillary Clinton would win, but if you want a group biography of the First Ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama during their time in the White House and afterwards this is a good place to start. Very well researched and very interesting.
I know I said that I was mostly reading romance and mystery at the moment, but I’m veering outside that today for this week’s BotW, with a new release book that’s looking at the influencer economy and how it is changing our daily lives.
This is a sobering look at the changes that social media has brought to the world – particularly when it comes to the blurring of lines between real and fake and the Wild West of promotions, adverts and sponcon. Symeon Brown is a correspondent at Channel Four news and in his first book he examines realities of influencer culture – and what lies behind the carefully curated lives that people are presenting on social media platforms. And it turns out that what is behind the glossy facade is even murkier than you are imagining. For every success story, there are countless people handing over their own money in the hopes of being the next big thing.
Across the course of the book, Brown takes you through the full range of online smoke and mirrors – from predatory plastic surgery firms taking advantage of young women who want to look more like their filtered photos, the promises of quick riches through crypto currencies or various new types of MLMs, streamers who get paid to be racially abused, influencers who are making serious money out of activism and much, much more. But at the centre of it all there are a lot of vulnerable people desperate for a better future who are being preyed on or exploited.
I’ve recommended books about scammers or frauds here before, but they’ve usually been about single people or companies perpetuating a con – whereas this covers a huge range of ways that people are being bamboozled as part of online hustle culture. It’s well written and hard to put down – and it’s going to give you a lot to think about. Very, very sobering.
Get Rich or Lie Trying came out last week – my copy came from NetGalley – but it’s available now in hardback and on Kindle and Kobo.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 