Actually quite a productive week in reading. The New Year self improvement kick has extended into February, the Elizabeth Peters re-read continues (and we finished the audiobook of He Shall Thunder in the Sky on Sunday, so technically that could go on the list again, but twice in three weeks seems a little much), and there’s a relisten of the audiobook of the Unknown Ajax on there too. And I’m making progress on the list of lingerers.
Bonus photo: After the death of Christopher Plummer on Friday, I went on a bit of a Captain von Trapp gif fest on Twitter, and happened to see my Frequently used gif list, which I thought was actually a pretty good summary of my currently life and interest, so I post it here for your amusement.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
Library books: 6 (all ebooks except 1 borrowed at a hotel)
Non-fiction books: 4
Favourite book this month: I mean I read He Shall Thunder in the Sky twice. And the Falcon at the Portal too, but of the stuff I hadn’t read before, it’s hard. Maybe The House in the Cerulean Sea.
Most read author: Elizabeth Peters by a country mile. 3000+ pages, plus more than a dozen hours of audiobook time…
Books bought: I mean I think 8 new ones, plus ebooks of a couple of Amelia Peabody books that I borrowed from the library first time out
Books read in 2021: 31
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 595
I mean basically lets just call it the month of the Peabody-Emersons. Because so much of my reading this month was from that series – and it was all I wanted to read for long periods. And I’m not even sorry about it.
Bonus picture: The bonus picture this month is another snowy picture from the start of last week, and was taken by my dad. Some people would say that it’s Christmassy and Not Right for January, but I just think it looks so quintessentially British countryside in winter that I just had to use it.
*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels ( 4this month)
In putting this post together, I realised that amidst the flood of end of year posts, I didn’t do a mini reviews for December. To be fair though, I think I had already written about pretty much everything I enjoyed. As previously discussed ad nauseam in the middle of January I had a severe case of loss of reading mojo that saw me retreat to the safety of old favourites. But before that there were a couple of books I read and wanted to mention to you.
The Hatmakers by Tamzin Merchant*
This is a delightful middle grade story about an alternative version of Britain where there are magical families of makers who each make one thing. Our heroine, Cordelia, is a hatmaker. But after her father goes missing at sea, she finds it hard to concentrate on the hat her family are meant to be making for the king. But soon she’s swept up in trying to foil a plot against her family – and the makers. I really enjoyed this. I think it would appeal to a lot of children – it’s a fast paced adventure with enough peril, but not too scary and a magical world with consistent rules that are easy to make sense off. NetGalley told me it was out in January – but Amazon tells me it’s actually out mid-February. Either way, I will buy for the middle graders in my life.
If the Boot Fits by Rebekah Weatherspoon
I don’t know how I missed that this was meant to be a Cinderella retelling until after I had finished and I was looking at other reviews. I can only chalk that up to the fact that I just automatically put holds on Weatherspoon’s new books without even looking at the plots – she’s just that reliable at turning out great romances! Anyway this features an aspiring screenwriter, who is trapped as the PA/dogsbody to an obnoxious second generation Hollywood starlet, who hooks up with the newest Oscar-winning actor at a post-Oscars party and then accidentally takes his statuette home with her. Amanda then runs into Sam again at his family ranch, where a friend is getting married. There’s a lot of dancing around whether they want to have a relationship or just a fling, and it’s all very romantic. The denouement is fun – although I wanted a little more comeuppance for our baddie. This came out in October and should be fairly easy to get hold of on Kindle, I don’t know about the paperback.
The House on Cocoa Beach by Beatriz Williams*
This is a twisty, historical romantic suspense novel about Virginia who travels to Florida in search of answers after the death of her husband. Virginia and Simon were estranged at the time of his death and as she tries to unravel what led up to his death, the reader discovers the story of their relationship. The narrative is split between 1917 when they met while she was working as an ambulance driver in France and their subsequent romance and 1922 as the story of their romance unravels. I got more and more anxious for Virginia as the story went on and the twists kept coming, but I was pleased/happy with the resolution. I’ve written about Beatriz Williams on here before and although I didn’t like it as much as I liked Her Last Flight, it is a lot of fun. In the US this is titled just Cocoa Beach, and it’s also connected to Williams’s earlier novel A Certain Age (Virginia is the sister of one of the characters in A Certain Age) but you don’t need to have read the previous book for this to make sense (I had in fact forgotten what happened in A Certain Age and it didn’t cause me any problems). If we were going to the beach right now, it would be a great beach read. This came out a couple of years back (when I got a copy from NetGalley and promptly forgot about it) and is available on Kindle and in paperback – in the BeforeTimes I used to find physical copies of Williams’s books in the bookshops and the libraries.
Other things…
Beyond those two, there was a new Stockwell Park Orchestra book which sees the gang on tour in Germany and Belgium, I read another Inspector Littlejohn (which wasn’t my favourite but was still good), And I finally finished the San Andreas Shifters series – which is Gail Carriger writing as G L Carriger and follows a gay werewolf pack and their friends/hangers on in modern day (but with supernatural creatures) California. I’d been saving the last full length novel for a time of need and was reminded that I had it waiting when Miss Gail’s author newsletter flagged that there was a new short story in the series out. So I read them both.
This week’s BotW pick falls into the bonkers book category – and I just had to tell you all about it. A bit of background – my trains are not great on weekends, so when I work a weekend I stay over in London so that I can get to work on time on a Sunday morning. In the before times, it would be at one of the Youth Hostels near work, and I would go out to the theatre after work, or meet friends for drinks. In lockdown, the hostels are closed, so I’m in hotels. And this weekend’s hotel has a Design Aesthetic that includes putting old books in your room as decorative features. And Rex Lee, Gypsy Flyer from 1928 was on my bedside table and I *had* to read it.
When we meet Rex at the start of the book, he’s just left his friends at the military flying school because he’s inherited a hardware store in California. He is very unhappy about this, because being a pilot is his dream. On the train to the coast, he reads a story about Slim Lindy and his record breaking flights (it’s basically Lindberg) and decides that he wants to be just like him. When we rejoin Rex, he’s flying a taxi plane between an island off the California coast and the mainland. Just as the summer season is starting to end, he gets tangled up in adventure and saves the day and saves people’s lives. And thus the pattern for the rest of the book is set – because gypsy here is being used in the same way as it is in the theatre for dancers who move from show to show (see: the plot of A Chorus Line). Next up, Rex is flying fire spotting planes in Oregon, where he’s in charge of a group of pilots, stands up to authority figures, saves the day and saves people’s lives. Then he flies a mail plane, where he saves the day even more. And he saved the day a lot in Oregon. He ends up stopping a war. I kid you not.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. All of the saving involves crashes, near crashes, people clinging to the outside of the plane – either to balance it out, or on one notable occasion to hold a wheel on so the plane can take off – and stunt flying. Lots of stunt flying. I know I’m giving a lot of spoilery detail here, but I’m not seriously expecting that many of you are going to go out and buy it – and those of you who do will buy it exactly because of this sort of craziness. And trust me when I say there’s much more in the book than I’ve told you about.
All in all, it was the perfect way to spend a few hours on Saturday night, once I’d finished watching Drag Race. As regular readers will know, when it comes to old school children’s books, I mostly read Girls Own, but I’m not exactly averse to some Boys Own adventures when the opportunity arises. An obscure part of the University of Missouri: Kansas City’s website tells me that the author, the marvellously named Thomson Burtis, was actually a pilot who did a lot of different types of flying, but I can’t work out if that’s from jacket copy, and his Wikipedia page doesn’t mention anything about that. I suspect that if you are (or were) a Biggles (or Worrals) reader, this series would float your boat.
Anyway, I have no idea where you would get a copy of this if you want it – there are copies on Abebooks, but there all in the US and the shipping is *insane* – it’s definitely not worth spending £30+ on. But if you see any of the other titles in the series – there are 11 – in a second hand bookshop then maybe give it a try.
Another busy week in reading. I’m at the point in Amelia Peabody where the books are really long, but I also got a bit of my normal reading mojo back too. January is also over, so coming up this week we’ll have some minireviews on Wednesday and the January stats on Thursday because the week starts on a Monday. Aside from the reading, it was a busy week, with some grim weather – from icy and treacherous underfoot through torrential rain. Perfect weather to sit and read a book. If only there weren’t other things that I have to do too!
Bonus photo: The Amelia Peabody re-read continues, and as I was out on my lunchtime walk at work one day this week I walked past the front of the Royal Institute of British Architecture which has some pylons – although they’re art deco rather than Egyptian!
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley
As I have now mentioned a few times now, I’m on an Amelia Peabody re-reading spree at the moment, but I am reading a few new things too and as last week was the Presidential Inauguration in the US, I’ve gone for a US politics book for this week’s BotW.
Rachel Maddow is an MSNBC host and journalist and Michael Yarvitz is her producer. Bag Man is the book of their Peabody-winning podcast of the same name about Spiro T Agnew. If you’ve heard of Agnew at all, it’s probably as part of a trivia question about some aspect of Gerald Ford being the only person to serve as US vice-president and President without having been elected to either office. Maybe, if you did a module on US 20th Century history like I did at GCSE, you’ll know that he was Nixon’s vice-president and half think that he resigned over something to do with Watergate. If that’s the case, you’re wrong. Agnew actually resigned as part of a corruption scandal – as prosecutors were closing in on charges of bribery, conspiracy and more, he agreed a deal with prosecutors where he would plead no contest to a tax charge in return for his resignation and not getting any jail time. All this was going on in the background of the Watergate scandal – and fears at the Department of Justice that if Nixon resigned, he would be replaced by Agnew who they had evidence had taken bribes – and was still taking bribes even as he worked in the White House.
I was absolutely engrossed in this – to the point where I’ve both read the book and listened to the podcast alongside it. The podcast has all the key points – and you get to hear actual audio from inside the White House as Nixon and his staff discussed what was going on, but the book can go into more details about everything. As an MSBC host, Maddow is towards the liberal end of the political spectrum and part of the reason for the podcast and the book are the parallels between Agnew’s style of defence and that of President Trump, as well as the fact that his case is the basis for the ruling that the President cannot be prosecuted while in office (but the vice-president can) that President Trump often cited. But even without that the story of Spiro Agnew is one that should be better known – when Agnew pled no contest in court, the prosecutors submitted a document detailing what Agnew was doing – involving actual cash in literal envelopes in return for giving state contracts. Agnew is a bombastic character who commanded enormous support from the Republican Party by being further to the right than Nixon. In the final part of the podcast, some of the guests set out the idea that the removal of Agnew may have made Nixon’s impeachment easier – because one of the things holding the Democrats back was the idea that if Nixon went, then Agnew would be president instead. 1973 was a hell of a year for American politics, while everyone was looking at Watergate, all this was going on at the same time and has mostly been forgotten.
I love a politics book and this is definitely that. But if you’re hesitating because you’re all politics-ed out at the moment, then I would say that it also fits in to the group of really good, easy to read narrative non-fiction and history books that I’ve recommended before – like Bad Blood, Catch and Kill and Furious Hours. My copy came from the library, but it’s available now on Kindle but it feels pricey at £10.99 and for a slightly better £6.39 on Kobo as well as as a hardback but if you’re interested in this one, obviously the first part of the podcast would be an easy (and cost free!) place to start.
Given that I’ve read 2000 pages plus of the adventures of the Emerson family in the last week and a bit, and that Goodreads lets you now count rereads (which it didn’t when I started these weekly posts a few years back, I’ve decided as an experiment to start including completed rereads in this list. I’m only adding them on to the Read list, not the in progress because I don’t need any more pressure and I often only read my favourite bits of books, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do about the first couple of weeks of the year, but I’ll work that out when we see what my rereading levels are actually like…
As I mentioned in the Week in Books, I spent a fair bit of time last week (and now this week too) re-reading Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody series, but that’s not quite the whole story. During lockdown, Him Indoors and I actually started listening to the audiobooks of the series together. He’s never read the books before, and I have, some of them a lot of times, and it’s been a lot of fun rediscovering the series through his (fresh) eyes. I’ve mentioned the series a few times before as part of round-uptypeposts, but it’s been a few years and I thought it was probably time to give Amelia a post of her own.
Anyway, the set up: at the start of the first book it’s 1880-something and Amelia is heading to Egypt after the death of her father. She’d been the dutiful stay at home daughter until his death, but has decided that she’s now ready for adventures of her own (much to the disgust of her brothers) and heads for Egypt (via Rome) to see some ancient ruins. On her way she picks up a companion – Evelyn – who she rescues from the clutches of a fortune hunter and then heads off to look at some archaeology in action. The archaeologists she meets are grumpy Radcliffe Emerson and his brother Walter, who are excavating a tomb in Armana. Radcliffe emphatically does not want Amelia around, but soon they’re competing to solve a mystery. And by the end of the first book, well, it’s a a spoiler (but I think that’s unavoidable in a 20 book series) they’re married with a baby on the way.
Each book in the series covers a different archaeological season, and across the course of the series, the Emersons age and develop a little gang – including their son Ramses and his friends. The first books in the series are all written as Amelia’s diaries – introduced by an editor – but once Ramses grows up, the narrative is supplemented by extracts from the “recently discovered Manuscript H” which follows the younger members of the family. One of the things that Him Indoors has enjoyed the most about the series is the shift in how you view Amelia and how cleverly Peters moves the series on as it moves through times from Late Victorian through to the 1910s. Amelia is a feminist for her times and is wearing divided skirts and later trousers when it was still a bit of a scandal – but as her family grows up you see her grapple with the fact that the generation below her are doing things that she thinks scandalous – and have freedoms that even she never allowed herself. We’ve reached the 1911 season on our listening (book 11) together and I’m hopping with glee at all the fun he has to come. To be honest, books 10 to 13 are among my favourites in terms of character development and I couldn’t help myself in getting a little ahead of the audiobooks and reading ahead to get to all my favourite parts.
There are catchphrases – “another shirt ruined” and describing her husband as “the greatest Egyptologist of this or any other time” and variants thereof – and running stories like Amelia’s obsession with “the so-called Master Criminal” who they (first) encounter a couple of books in to the series. And Elizabeth Peters is a pen name for Barbara Mertz, who was an Egyptologist in real life and so there’s lots of proper archeological detail. She’s cleverly woven the exploits of the Emersons in with the activities of the real-life archaeologists who were working at the same time – like Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. As well as being a feminist, Amelia is also quite forward thinking when it comes to what she things about Empire and her attitudes to the local people that she meets. It’s hard to categorise the series, but they’re basically historical mystery romances with a side order of parodying Victorian-era adventure novels. I’ve previously described them as a Victorian female Indiana Jones, but funnier and I stand by that. As I’ve mentioned before, if you like series like Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell, then you should be reading Amelia Peabody. And if you’ve already read them, may I suggest Peters’ Vicky Bliss series – which is modern-set and has a link back to the Emersons as well.
If this has given you an urge to read the series, definitely start at the beginning, and the first book is only £1.99 on Kindle and Kobo at the moment. I’ve discovered/remembered in re-reading that first time out I borrowed a bunch of them as physical copies from the library (well it was 2012!), so I have gaps in my e-book collection, which I suspect I will be filling in shortly.
It’s been a few months since I posted oneofthese, but given that the days are all blurring into one again with the sameness and we’re back in lockdown here, I thought I’d drop in another set of recommendations for things to do to survive the Coronavirus. Today: it’s TV. There’s not necessarily a bookish link to all of these – they’re just things that I’ve liked – and so if you enjoy the sort of books that I write about, you might want to check out.
Call My Agent (Dix Pour Cent) – Netflix
And this first recommendation is the reason that I’m posting this this week – because the fourth and final series drops on Netflix today (Thursday). Call My Agent is a French TV series about a talent agency and their stars. The French title – dix pour cent – refers to the ten percent commission that agents take from their clients. Each episode has a different French actor or personality playing themself with a fresh drama to solve, but the heart of the series are the agents – Andrea, Gabriel, Mattias and Arlette (and her dog Jean Gabin) who almost cause themselves as many problems as they solve (see Andrea’s affair with the woman from the tax authorities) and their assistants Noemie, Hervé and Camille. It’s funny, but it’s not a sitcom. It’s a drama, but the stakes aren’t life or death or traumatic. It’s just a rollicking good journey through the world of celebrity. I can’t wait to see what the final series has in store for the gang – and how it all ends.
Staged (BBC iPlayer)
The first series of this (which the clip above is from) was out in Lockdown one – and now they’re back with a second. David Tennant and Michael Sheen basically bicker over zoom for 20 minutes as they try to rehearse a play. Oh and it has great cameos. Series two is on the iPlayer now, I’ve only watched the first episode so far (because of getting all caught up on Call My Agent before the new series) but it seems to be picking up where it left off, but even more meta! I know some people find this just too theatre-luvvie and in jokey, but I’m a theatre nerd who is missing going to see shows so much so I guess I’m smack bang in the target audience. The episodes are short so it’s a nice bite sized watch. The only problem is that it may be over too soon.
Bones (Amazon Prime)
From one extreme to another – if Staged might be over too quickly, there are 12 whole series of Bones, adding up to nearly 250 episodes. I started watching this in September, after catching a couple of episodes on a tv channel and getting a little bit sucked in – probably due to my teen crush on Boreanz’s Angel on Buffy. Initially i was watching it while Him Indoors was doing other things. Then he got hooked and insisted that I didn’t watch without him. We’re now midway through the final season – as it’s one of those shows where it’s really easy just to have it on running episodes back to back for a whole evening. It’s a comedy drama crime procedural – Bones is Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) a forensic anthropologist and she gets paired up with FBI agent Seeley Booth to help him solve murders. As with all these things you need to not think too hard about whether any of this could actually happen – especially when it comes to investigating cases that they have a personal interest in, but it makes me laugh and although there are a lot of gross looking bodies around, it manages not to be too gory or too far down the psychological thriller end of things. It does go overboard sometimes – the episodes where Booth and Brennan go undercover as Buck and Wanda Moosejaw make my teeth itch – but the unresolved sexual tension in the first half of the show’s run is *really* good.
Pride and Prejudice (BBC, but available on Netflix)
And an old favourite to finish: I’m not sure that there’s anyone out there who hasn’t heard of the Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle Pride and Prejudice adaptation. I’ve watched it umpteen times over the years – when it first came out, then we owned it on video, I think at one point both my sister and I had it on DVD and if I happened across it on TV (UKTV Drama used to reshow it fairly regularly) then I would stop to watch. For me, it’s one of the ultimate comfort watches. I’ve already watched it twice through since Coronavirus started and Lizzy is about to read her letter from Jane about Lydia on my third watch through. The BBC showed it again earlier in lockdown (I think as part of the educational offer) which I recorded on the TiVo and means I can keep it handy. It’s also on Netflix – but it’s a *really* grotty print – it’s grainy 4:3 and the one I’ve got recorded looks much better, even if they’ve zoomed in on it to make it 16:9.
I’ve been back to a few of my other old favourites too – Miss Marple, Inspector Alleyn but you already know all about my love of those and one of my guilty favourites – Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team which is currently being repeated on ITVBe and should be everything that I hate, but I somehow love. I have a whole series sitting on the box waiting for Little Sis to return from China so we can have a sleepover and watch it together. It’s that sort of TV.
Anyway, if you’ve got any recommendations for me, pop them in the comments, otherwise – stay safe!
Along with 500+ pages of Amelia Peabody, I did read some new stuff last week – amongst it a book of Terry Pratchett essays that I had been saving because there’s only a limited amount of his writing that I haven’t already read, but also the rather charming The House in the Cerulean Sea by T J Klune.
Linus Baker leads a quiet orderly life. He works for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth as a case worker overseeing the well-being of children in government sanctioned orphanages. He’s been doing the same job for years and never moved up the ladder – and is happy with that – so when he is summoned by Extremely Upper Management it’s already enough to send him into a panic. Then he’s sent on a highly classified mission to an orphanage on an island where six “highly dangerous” children live along with their guardian Arthur Parnassus. As Linus investigates the home on Marsyas Island and its residents, he (and his cat) get to know the children – a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, a green blob of an as yet unidentified species, a Pomeranian and (most worryingly) the Antichrist – and Arthur and start to discover some of the island’s secrets. But at the end of the end of his allotted four weeks, he will be faced with difficult choice.
This is a wonderful story about what family is and finding your place in the world. It’s beautifully written and incredibly descriptive – I could absolutely see the island and its residents in my head and was rooting for them all all the way. It reminded me (in a weird but good way) of Studio Ghibli movies and the magical alternative reality worlds that they create. Its enough to make me wish that Hayao Miyazaki would make another film after the one he’s currently out of retirement to make! I’m struggling to think of books to compare it to, because it’s a bit different – I’m not alone though because the Goodreads “readers also enjoyed” list seems to be struggling too and the the genre list o has it down as both Adult and Young Adult as well as romance, fantasy, LGTB and (weirdly) audiobook. It’s turning up a few romances like the Honey Don’t List and Girl Gone Viral, which are not similar at all, but do suggest that I’m not the only contemporary romance reader who has enjoyed this one.
Anyway, if you’re in need of some escapist reading at the moment (and again, who isn’t really), this would be a lovely choice. It’ll make you think, but it has a resolution and I think you’ll be happy with it when you get there.
My copy of the House in the Cerulean Sea came from the library, but it’s available in Kindle, Kobo and audiobook as well as paperback – although that might be slightly harder to get hold of.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 