American imports, Book of the Week, cozy crime

Book of the Week: The Semester of Our Discontent

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Last week was almost entirely taken up with cozy crimes, many of them the first in series as I’m on the hunt for another one to add to my lists.  It’s proving a harder quest than I had imagined.  Quite a few of the books that I read last week had a problem (or two).  But in the end I settled on the first book in Cynthia Kuhn’s Lila McLean series – mostly on the basis that I went out and requested the second book from NetGalley after I finished it – which is out later this month – and then read that too.

Cover of The Semester of Our Discontent
I like the simplicity of the cover – it looks classy to me.

So, in the Semester of Our Discontent we met Lila, newly appointed English professor at a small but prestigious university.  But no sooner has she arrived at Stonedale than she has more to worry about than whether she’s going to get enough published to get tenure when she finds one of her colleagues dead.  Her cousin (also on the staff and up for tenure) is one of the prince suspects, so Lila starts gathering evidence alongside teaching and settling in to her new job.

Now as a Brit, I had to google tenure the first time I can across it in a book a few years back, because it wasn’t something I had come across in the UK system, but this actually explains it really quite well and it made sense to me (or at least as much sense as it can make!) without slowing down the plot or doing an info dump.  There’s a large cast of characters in this, who don’t always get a chance to become more than just names* but the people you do get to know are engaging and three dimensional.  There’s definitely set up here for running threads for the series, but it’s done much less obviously than some of the other books I read last week.

There are a couple of moments that are a bit over the top (and I can’t tell you what) but Lila’s investigations are sensible enough and she never strays over the Too Stupid to Live or the Why the Monkeys Hasn’t She Been Arrested lines – which again was a problem in some of the other books that I read this week.

The Semester of Our Discontent isn’t perfect, but it’s engaging and readable and the depiction of campus life feels like it has plenty of potential for plots that don’t neccesarily revolve around loads of bodies**.  And at time of writing its available for the bargain price of 99p on Kindle.  It’s also available, but more expensive (£2.04) on Kobo.  The second book, The Art of Vanishing, is available on the 28th – Kindle and Kobo are taking pre-orders now, and again at time of writing Kindle is the cheaper.  They’re both published by Henery Press, who were the source of a fair few of my cozies last week, and they have more links to outlets where you can buy on their websites as well as sign up to their newsletter, which sometimes has freebies.  Wink wink.

Happy reading!

*Although this is sorted out in book 2

**As demonstrated in book 2

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: January 30 – February 5

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So it turns out that I read almost nothing but cozy crime this week.  I realised this was happening on Friday and decided to roll with it and work my way through some advance copies I had waiting on the kindle.

Read:

A List of Cages by Robin Roe

Cropped to Death by Christina Freeburn

The Semester of Our Discontent by Cynthia Kuhn

River City Dead by Nancy G West

The Art of Vanishing by Cynthia Kuhn

Tell Me No Lies by Lynn Chandler-Willis

Fatal Brushstroke by Sybill Johnson

Started:

Copy Cap Murder by Jenn McKinlay

Still reading:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

Shock and Awe by Simon Reynolds

Three ebooks bought this week – but no actual books, I’m not sure whether that’s progress or not!

books

Hate Reading

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I hate writing bad reviews.  I have a tendency to grade books too generously on Goodreads (but I’m doing better at that).  My 50-page-and-out rule means that these days I don’t force myself to carry on with books that I’m not enjoying. One of the reasons that my regular review post is Book of the Week is because it’s a positive idea – I’m writing about books I’ve enjoyed reading, because that it is the point of reading for me a lot of the time – to enjoy something.  But in the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself writing reviews on Goodreads for a couple of stinkers.  And it got me to thinking about hate reading.

So if I don’t read books I’m not enjoying, what is hate reading I hear you ask?  Well, it’s when you hate a book – whether it’s for the characters, the plot, the bad writing etc – but keep going until the end either because you’re so boggled by what’s happening that you need to see what happens next or because you’re getting some sort of perverse pleasure from spotting the mistakes, contradictions and general craziness.*

If it’s the former, one book is usually enough.  You can strike that author off your to-read list, unless you’ve got compelling evidence that you’ve just picked the one stinker in a line of great books.  If it’s the latter, well.  I have an author who I read only because I find it so cathartic to get angry about their mistakes – some of which have been going on for several novels in a series now and most of which could have been fixed by a halfway decent editor or proof reader.

But then comes my dilemma – what do I write about them?  I can’t recommend them (well I can, but only to a very select audience) and it seems dishonest not to explain what my problem with them was.  So I don’t write about them here – because this is a positive bookish space – but over on Goodreads, I review everything I read, so usually they get a low star-rating and a Goodreads review with spoiler tags so that I can complain about the problems without spoiling the plot for anyone else.

Luckily there’s only been one occasion when I’ve been sent a book to read and review for Novelicious that has been truly dreadful, but it was a book which hadn’t been reviewed anywhere else at all, I was really concerned about the impact my review would have.  I explained the problem to my editor, who spoke to the publicist to give them the option for the review not to run.  I think it did go up in the end, but I felt less bad about the total pan I had given it, because they had had the warning.

I read a lot of books, and so many more of them good than bad, but when you’re having a run of stuff you don’t like – or in fact actively hate – like I have at recently, you just need to vent.  Thank you for reading it.  I’m off to find something good to read.

Happy Reading.

PS I haven’t named any names in this post (positive space remember), but if want to know what to avoid from my recent reading, you can visit my Goodreads profile, where you can see what I’ve been reading and the ratings I’ve given. I’m sure you’ll be able to work it out!

*Although none of the general craziness that I have come across has ever approached the general What the Feck-ery that you get in Smart Bitches, Trashy Books’s F+ review section.  I can understand if you just glom the whole section (I know I did when I first discovered it) but if you only want one as a sample, try their review of The Orca King II – but be aware, the language is… salty.

books, stats

January Stats

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New books read this month: 25*

Books from the to-read pile: 9

Ebooks read: 14

Books from the Library book pile: 1

Non-fiction books: 1

#ReadHarder categories completed: 6

Most read author: None – I read books by 25 different authors this month!

Books read this year: 25

Books bought: 12(ish) books – all bar 2 on my birthday trip and 1 ebook

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf: 493 (I don’t have copies of all of these!)

New year, new stats post.  Not many tweaks this year – but one is more visible than the others – and it’s my lovely #ReadHarder Bingo card down the bottom here.  I’ll be crossing more books off every month – or hoping to.  I’ve also made a #ReadHarder shelf on my Goodreads profile if you want to see more details about which books are the ones that tick boxes for the challenge.  Some books count for more than one category, and some categories I have (already) read more than one book which counts (I have 5 which would fit the published betwen 1900-1950 category!), so I’m not filling out the form yet, I’ll save that for the end of the year and try and pick some (at least) books I haven’t already talked about!

Read Harder challenge January update
I’m actually quite surprised how many I’ve already ticked off.

*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics (2 this month)

Book of the Week, fiction, mystery

Book of the Week: Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

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I had such a tough job picking a book for BotW this week, because I really didn’t read anything that I whole-heartedly loved.  I started reading a lot of books and then gave up on them, and I finished a few – including a real stinker.  But in the end I plumped for Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson.

Cover of Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars.
As I mention below, Im not quite sure the cover for this is quite right.

Anna Treadway is a dresser, working in a London theatre and living above a Turkish cafe in Soho in 1965.  When the actress who she works with disappears, she sets out to try and find her as the trail grows cold and the newspapers lose interest.   As she hunts for the mysterious Iolanthe Green she finds herself in new world of jazz clubs, police cells and backstreet doctors.

Whilst this wasn’t perfect, it was an interesting idea and a great cast of diverse characters. It’s got an interesting mystery that’s well thought through and several different plot strands which tie together quite nicely.  Underneath the mystery of where Iolanthe has gone there are issues of prejudice and race and people struggling to be heard and believed. From the look of the (UK) cover and some of the write ups I was expecting it to be ultimately more uplifting, but perhaps given the issues that it’s dealing with, I was being unrealistic.

This is Miranda Emmerson’s first novel and it does a great job of creating the atmosphere of 1960s London and the grimier side of life.  In fact that was what I liked best about it – the mix of people thrown together, some times living side by side without ever intersecting.  I think I would have liked more of Anna’s backstory and I wanted a bit more of what happened next at the end, but I pretty much always want more of what happened next at the end!

My copy came via NetGalley, but you can get Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars from Amazon, Foyles and Waterstones or on Kindle and Kobo.  It only came out a couple of weeks back so it’s hardcover and the ebooks are priced accordingly too I’m afraid.  The paperback is out in July, so it may drop a little then, if you want to add it to your wishlist and wait it out.

Happy Reading.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: January 23 – January 29

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I started the week (unexpectedly) doing a bit old 50 and out cull – nothing was capturing my fancy.  But it has got a few books off the virtual to-read pile.

Read:

The Flying Classroom by Erich Kästner

Danny Dingle’s Fantastic Finds: The Super-Sonic Submarine by Angie Lake

A Thrilling Term at Janeways by Elinor M Brent Dyer

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson

Murder of a Chocolate Covered Cherry by Denise Swanson

Started:

Shock and Awe by Simon Reynolds

Still reading:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

I didn’t buy any books this week – but I acquired quite a lot because the arts department upstairs at work is moving offices and everyone seems to be having a clear out of there shelves – meaning lots of books up for grabs.  Oops.

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Blitzed

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So, you may have noticed from yesterday’s WiB that I didn’t finish that many books last week. But that was not a problem when it came to picking a BotW, because one of the books that I did finish was Norman Ohler’s Blitzed.

It’s only in hardback at the moment I’m afraid, but I’m just happy it’s been translated at all.

Ohler’s thesis is that large amounts of drugs were consumed by Nazi troops as they steamrollered through Europe, that drugs were equally consumed by people on the homair front and that during the latter stages of the war (from around 1941 onwards) Hitler himself was dependent on hard drugs. Ohler backs up his assertions with primary source research using documents held in archives in Germany and in America and makes a persuasive case.

Now before I go any further, I need to say that although I have a history degree, I have, in the main, avoided study of Nazi Germany because I find it too unbearably terrible. Luckily my school stopped studying WW2 Germany at A-Level the year before I started sixth form* and at university I managed to avoid Twentieth Century history for all but one term** so I am no expert.

I found Ohler’s book incredibly readable and very well researched. It’s an appealing idea. The Nazis were off their heads on drugs. That’s why they did it. It’s comforting and reassuring – it was the drugs which made them do it – and means that you don’t have to worry about what you would have done in their place. I don’t think this is what Ohler is trying to say. In the case of Hitler he’s very specific that it doesn’t explain all of Hitler’s actions – just enabled him to maintain and continue his rule. As for the man on the street, or the soldier in a panzer regiment, the drugs enabled them to keep going for longer than otherwise. So I suppose what I’m saying is that this book shouldn’t be seen in isolation or viewed as the whole story. That would be far too simplistic. But it has new ideas and research I haven’t heard about before and is worth reading, if only so that you know what the historians are arguing about.  Because they are going to argue about this.

Get your copy of Blitzed from Amazon, Waterstones or Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo.  The paperback is out in May – pre-order on Amazon. Or if you don’t want to read the whole thing, Dan Snow interviewed Norman Ohler on his History Hit Podcast and it was reviewed in the December issue of Literary Review (subscription needed).

Happy Reading!

*We did Tudor England, the French Revolution, France 1814-1914 and the Italian Risorgimento which was much more to my taste.

** the second term of my first year, where my seminar tutor was a German Post Grad whose thesis was on “images of death in 20th Century Germany”.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: January 16 – January 22

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Well the week started with my birthday (yes I know, I was celebrating last week.  We take birthdays seriously in my house) and although I read a lot of American Wife and First Women I didn’t finish them, and I also spent a lot of the second half of the week reading about the handover of power in the US, the end of the Obama administration and the start of the Trump one.  So not a lot of books got finished.

Read:

Rivers of London: Night Witch by Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel and Lee Sullivan

A Killer Plot by Ellery Adams

Blitzed by Norman Ohler

Privates on Parade by Peter Nichols

Started:

A Thrilling Term at Janeways by Elinor M Brent Dyer

Still reading:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

I had a mega spending spree in Hay on Wye on my birthday (Monday) buying half a dozen books for myself and another couple as gifts for other people.  But beyond that I was very good and restrained.

American imports, books

Inauguration Reading?

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As you may have noticed (I think it’s hard to have missed it) Donald Trump is about to be sworn in as President of the United States.  It always seems strange to me that it takes America so long to swap over after elections, but here we are, today is Inauguration Day.  And being a news person, that means this week I’m thinking politics and books about politics.  Regular readers will know that I’ve been reading Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife for sometime – it’s been my bedside book, although this week it’s had an upgrade – and I’m also reading First Women which I got for Christmas.  All of which means my reading this week has been fairly American politics heavy.  I’m at work getting ready to watch The Donald take charge (oh the joys of scheduled posting), but if you’re not watching – or if you’ve watched and want more politics, here are some reading suggestions for you.

First Women and American Wife
My current politics-themed reading choices

Primary Colors By Anon (Joe Klein)

Primary Colors tells the story of Jack Stanton, a southern governor making a presidential run.  One of the blurbs coyly says that some characters and events ressemble real-life figures – but it doesn’t take much knowledge to work out that the people in question are the Clintons and that this is a fictionalised version of Bill’s presidential campaign.  I read this on holiday last year, and although it’s incredibly readable, I really hope that the machinations in this are an exaggeration.  If half of them go on in real life, it’s a worry.  Worth reading if you haven’t already – you’ll probably end up down a Wikipedia hole as you try and work out which bits are true(r) and which are made up.

John F Kennedy: An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek

This is a proper weighty tome.  It covers all of JFK’s life – but not much of the fallout (and conspiracies) after his assassination.  I came away with a much better understanding of what he stood for and what his background.  It’s not salacious – although the other women do get mentioned – but you do get a lot of detail about his family background and his medical history and how all of this influenced him.  I came away with a strong dislike of his family and strongly mixed feelings about him, but it’s definitely worth it.

The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham

If you want a Kennedy fix, but don’t want a biography, (or if you’ve read the biography and still want more) try this.  Nora Brennan is newly arrived from Ireland when she gets a job as a nursery maid to a family in Brookline.  She ends up on the inside of American history as she looks after the Kennedy children and sees their parents try to build an empire.  It takes you through Joe’s time as Ambassador in the UK and WW2 and beyond.  Warning: you may not like many of them (detect a theme here with the Kennedys?) but it’s worth it for the wit and warmth.  The history is spot on as well which is what Laurie Graham does so well – if you like this, search out my favourite of hers Gone with the Windsors.

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman

Slightly left field this I’ll admit – because it’s not about American politics but an English aristocrat in the Eighteenth century.  But Georgiana (pronounced George-ay-na in this case not George-ee-ana like Pride and Prejudice) was a political activist as well as a famed beauty and the queen of fashionable society, and this biography deals with that as well as with her (very) complicated love life.  She’s another person who I didn’t like very much, but I was fascinated by her story.  A film of the book was made a few years back featuring Keira Knightley which I keep meaning to get around to watching.

The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Sick of modern politics?  Need a reminder of how bad things used to be?  Read this. Turns out Imperial Russia was even worse that I thought – and I’m only just at the latter stages of the war against Napoleon.  So far there’s been patricide, filicide, plain old homicide, usurpers, wifes sent to convents, imprisoned deposed rulers and so many horrible murders and inventive torture methods.  So many. So gruesome.  Some involved spikes.  I’m listening to the audiobook and I can confirm that I run faster when listening to tales of horrible doings – probably because I don’t want any of them catching up with me!

What’s next on my list?  Well I have Paula Byrne’s book, Kick, about JFK’s sister sitting on the pile, so I might read that.  In all the Kennedy books I’ve read so far she’s probably come off as the nicest of them although she died young and had a bit of a tragicl life.  And as she married the eldest son of the Duke of Devonshire – so it sort of ties in nicely with Georgiana too!

Book of the Week, fiction

Book of the Week: Crooked Heart

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Quite a tough decision on what to pick for BotW this week – there were several contenders. But in the end I’ve plumped for Lissa Evans’ Crooked Heart, which I devoured over the weekend while we were away for an extended jolly for my birthday.   This was another book which had ended up at the bottom of my to-read pile and resurfaced because of the Big Box Up and I’m so glad that it did.

Copy of Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans.
Mine had an extra cover on it – the actual cover is prettier.

 

Crooked Heart tells the story of Noel, who is evacuated to Hertfordshire in 1940.   Noel is an unusual 10 year old.  He’s been brought up by an old lady and is precocious and smart beyond his years.  He ends up with Vera – a 36 year old single mum struggling with debt, a recalcitrant and secretive son and her demanding mother.  Vera is sure there is some money to be made out of the war, but the trouble is that she’s not very good at making a plan and sticking to it.  But Noel is a different proposition.  He’s smart, he’s calm and he might be the answer to Vera’s problems.  But of course they’re not the only people making money from the war, and there are dangers other than air-raids in Noel’s new life.

I really enjoyed this.  Noel and Vera are engaging characters who make a good team.  Vera is almost a proto-Del Boy – but with Noel to help she has the chance of her deals actually going right.  In some ways Noel reminded me of  William in Goodnight Mr Tom (that’s a good thing) – Noel has had more advantages in his education and home life that William did, but he’s still a little boy who has had to grow up too fast and deal with things that children aren’t meant to deal with.  And one of the themes of Goodnight Mr Tom is finding your own family and your own place in life and there’s a lot of that here although Vee is very different to Tom.

It’s a heartwarming romp through the grey, greyer and uglier areas of life on the home front.  I could easily have read another 100 pages of Vee and Noel, but actually the ending is a brilliant touch.  I haven’t read any of Lissa Evans’ books before, but my little sister still has a copy Evans’ first novel, Spencer’s List, on her shelf which I bought for her back in the day 15 years ago, so I’m going to have to borrow that off her and read it.  Coincidentally someone posted a trailer on Facebook for the upcoming film Their Finest on the same day as I read this – and that’s based on Evans’ previous book Their Finest Hour and a Half, which I totally need to read now as well.

You can get a copy of Crooked Heart from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo.  And it looks like there might be a (slightly retitled) tie-in edition of Their Finest Hour and Half coming out too.

Happy Reading!