Quite a strange week in books: I know I need to read Christmas books and books that will help me tick off the last few states in my 50 states challenge, and yet here I am reading hustorical crime and girl’s own. What am I like…
One ebook and one book bought. Restraining myself in the hopes of getting more books this time next week…
Bonus photo: the ice rink in Hannover square on Tuesday night – I didn’t skate, I justdrank mulled wine and caught up with a friend while watching other people skate!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
I’m taking a break from the usual schedule today as there’s one week to go before Christmas and I thought it was time to recommend some books for your last minute gift buying. And as Him Indoors has been grousing at me this week that he couldn’t get any of the books I wanted in store when he went in to Waterstones, I’ve tried to keep it simple and easy for you and stick to stuff that should be easily available.
I’m going to start with Murdle, because I can think of several people in my life who would like it. It’s a book of murder mystery puzzles – there’s a hundred in it and there’s also a second book of even more Murdles with a hundred more. If you have a puzzler in your life – and it turns out I’m turning into one (daily routine now includes a sudoku, a mini crossword, a bigger crossword and NYT’s Connections puzzle, plus their history quiz once a week) then this would be a good stocking filler for you. I’ve seen it in every bookshop I’ve been into this year.
If you’re buying for an occasional reader, who likes their TV, I know it sounds basic, but I’m going to suggest the books and authors who have been turned into the big adaptations this year. So depending on what you know they’ve watched, it could be one of Taylor Jenkins Reid‘s other books if they’ve seen Daisy Jones and the Six, because she has enough that you have options beyond the one that’s been adapted or Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry because that’s her only one so far. There’s also the fifth volume of Heartstopper which has just come out, and would be perfect for people who have been watching that on Netflix. Alice Oseman also has some tie-in titles as well as other novels if you know that you have someone you’re buying for who is into Heartstopper.
R F Kuang’s Yellowface has been the buzzy book of the autumn season – I’ve read it and I didn’t love it, but I know people who have and it’s definitely one that’s going to generate discussion and turn up at bookgroups, so if you have someone who is in a book club, that wouldn’t be a bad bet. The risk of course is that they’ve read it already, which also applies to Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow which is in paperback now – but Zevin also has other books that you get buy if you think your person has read that one. Kuang’s other books are epic historical fantasy type novels, so if you have someone who liked Yellowface but doesn’t do fantasy then you might want to try something like the new Emma Kline, The Guest. I read Kline’s The Girls and enjoyed it, but I haven’t read this (yet) because just the description makes me stressed and anxious, but has had good reviews and gets on the people who read this enjoyed that lists for Yellowface (and vice versa).
On the non-fiction front, there’s lots of memoirs out this year from celebs of various eras – so you could do the Britney Spears for people who were teenagers when she burst onto the scene, there’s another Miriam Margoyles for people who enjoy her on chat shows, there’s Patrick Stewart for the Star Trek/X-Men fans, Billy Connely for the comedy fans and 900 pages of Barbra Streisand’s long awaited memoir for those film and musical watchers that can face something that heavy – and it doesn’t have an index so you can’t even skip to the bits you’re most interested in!
There is also a crop of books written by podcasters and personalities of various kinds – so if you know what your giftee is into on that front there are plenty of options – from Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO book, through Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Tools for a Life and cookbooks galore.
Hopefully there are enough ideas here for you – if not, just go to a bookshop and have a little wander – you might be amazed what you find!
Have a great Sunday – and good luck with the final pre-Christmas stretch!
Here we are with the pre-Christmas book haul. The Judi Dench was a whole saga, because the first copy went missing in the post and I didn’t think Simon at Big Green Books would have another one, but I got really lucky and he had a return. Which I got delivered to my parents’ house just to be safe! Then there’s a little batch of career novels which I treated myself to, another of the Edward Marston ship mysteries and two books from Foyles last week because I can’t help myself! Now depending on the amount of books I get for Christmas you may get a Christmas special books incoming, but I’m not sure yet, so I’m reserving the right to change my mind and bundle it all into January!
I’m reading this year’s Sarah Morgan Christmas book at the moment, so I’m using it to take the opportunity to remind you about her O’Neil Brothers/Snow Crystal books – which are pretty Christmassy all in – and a pretty decent price at the moment. In a slightly bonkers twist, the Kindle omnibus is more expensive than buying them individually, but if you just want the Christmas ones, you can do both of those for about £6.50 all in.
This is out this week and is a Pride and Prejudice retelling set on the set of a musical version of Pride and Prejudice. It’s also got different titles if you’re in the UK or US. Here it’s Enemies to Lovers, elsewhere it’s The Stage Kiss. I’m not going to lie, this didn’t entirely work for me, on account of both the hero and heroine being very mean at times, and being inside Darcy’s head in the early stages not making me like him more! But I know that I’m picky when it comes to P&P retellings, so I mention it anyway because I know the are a lot of people on the look out for Lizzy and Darcy in as many forms as possible. Eligible is still the best one though!
It’s starting to feel proper Christmassy now, so it’s time for the festive reading recommendations. And I’ve broken it down into two again this year – the new releases for Christmas 2023 and books from previous years that I’ve read this year.
So lets start with Jeevanki Charika’s Picture Perfect, which has a heroine who needs to find her inspiration as a photographer again after a bad break up and a hero who needs someone to take on a group holiday to make his ex jealous and try to win her back. This is a fun and festive (New Year not Christmas!) fake relationship romance that sees the two characters become better versions of themselves as they pretend to be in a relationship. I found Vimal’s perspective to be quite stressful to read because of his issues with reading social cues (I was going to say social anxiety but I’m not quite sure that is quite what it is) but I really liked Niro as a character and I loved her passion for photography and the way that pretending to be Vimal’s girlfriend gave her the confidence to stand up for him and to come out of her shell. You might remember that Charika’s previous book Playing for Love was a BotW in 2022 and this has characters in common with that.
I did a series post about Susan Mallery’s Happily Inc series a couple of weeks back, and Home Sweet Christmas this is a twin storyline Christmas romance set in another one of Mallery’s quirky small towns – this time Wishing Tree, the Christmas themed-town which is frankly bonkers, but still seems to work some how. One storyline has Camryn, who has moved back to the town that she grew up after the death of her mum and is newly responsible for her younger half sisters and the family’s gift wrapping business (just go with it). She’s trying to work out what her life and future looks like now and whether she wants to risk a relationship again. She starts a definitely temporary relationship with Jake, whose family own the local resort. The other has River, new to town and trying to find her place and put down some roots. Her friends persuade her to put her name in the hat for the town’s Snow Queen – and soon she’s doing events with Dylan, a hot local carpenter. Some of this really worked for me, but Jake’s mom crossed the boundary from strangely well informed and well placed and into manipulative and meddling and it really messed with my enjoyment of the rest of the book. I think there was probably too much plot on each story for them to both go into one book, but it was still a fun, easy Christmas read.
And finally let’s go for some classic crime, with another British Library Crime Classic holiday collection – this time A Surprise for Christmas. It’s got G K Chesterton, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham along with several other names you might recognise from other BLCC books. I’m not usually a big short story reader, but at Christmas I do quite like them, and it’s a nice way to find new authors to watch out for in the BLCC collection – I think that’s how I found Christiana Brand, but I wouldn’t swear to that.
Yes, I’m cheating because I finished this on Monday, but as ever they’re my rules and I’m allowed to break them if I want and nothing else on last week’s list qualifies for a variety of reasons. So here we are.
It’s 1957 and Henry and Effie are on honeymoon in Cape May, New Jersey. They’re staying at Effie’s uncle’s house, where she spent some of her childhood summer holidays. Except the season is over and the place is deserted. Or nearly deserted. Staying at the house down the street is Clara, now a beautiful socialite but formerly one of the children Effie used to sometimes play with. With her are her lover Max and Alma, Max’s half sister. Over the course of their trip, under the influence of a lot of gin, Effie and Henry’s marriage will be tested and the pattern of their lives will be set as they run riot through the town, swept up in the glamour and decadence of their new friends.
This has been sitting on the tbr pile for some considerable time, but this weekend I felt in need of something a bit different. The cover has a blurb that compares it to The Great Gatsby, and I can sort of see why – Clara’s world is a heady alcoholic world of yachts by day, illicit wanderings by night and gallons of alcohol. Effie and Henry are the outsiders – from Georgia compared to the other three’s big city sophistication and the reader can see that they’re heading for trouble and heartbreak.
The narrative follows just Henry and his actions, which is a little frustrating because I wanted to know what Effie was thinking and doing, but given that the author is a man, possibly for the best as I didn’t always love the way the sex scenes were written as it was so maybe I would have liked the book less if I’d been given more of Effie’s inner life. So, not perfect but I still read it in just over 24 hours so it’s very readable despite that. It’s not really Rich People Problems, because Effie and Henry definitely aren’t rich, but it is Rich People Problems-adjacent – in that the rich people are the ones who are causing the problems!
This was Chip Cheek’s debut – and I’d read more from him if/when it appears. I had my copy of this in the NetGalley backlog (!) but it’s on offer on Kindle and Kobo for £1.99 at the moment which is a pretty good deal. I can’t say I remember seeing it in bookshops, but I’m also not sure I ever specifically looked for it and it’s had a couple of different covers now too. Anyway, worth a check if you’re at a shop with a fairly decent literary fiction selection.
So this week is a weird mix of audiobooks, cozy crime and checking which states I’m missing on Read across the USA 2023… And of course we continue to gear up for Christmas and all that that entails. Can I get everything done in time? Will I prioritise reading over present buying? Who can tell…
Happy Sunday everyone, I’m back again with my latest binge watch, this time brought to you thanks to three months free Disney+ from my mobile phone provider!
So in case you’ve missed it, the set up here is that three strangers living in the same New York apartment building discover a shared interest in true crime after another resident of the building is found murdered. And as they investigate the murder together, the launch their own true crime podcast about it called… Only Murders in the Building. Oh and it’s a comedy. Steve Martin is Charles-Hayden Savage, star of a 90s crime drama but currently struggling for work, Martin’s long time friend and sometime collaborator Martin Short plays Oliver Putnam, a washed up theatre director and Selena Gomez is Mabel Mora, an artist living in her aunt’s unit in the Arconia.
At the end of each season, someone new gets murdered – and that case will be the subject of the next season – with Charles, Oliver and Mabel implicated in some sort of way in the crime. And I’m really trying not to say too much about the rest of the plot, because all the season build on each other and I don’t want to spoil anything. The episodes are all sitcom length (aka about 26-28 minutes, an American TV half hour) and it’s incredibly easy to binge. I think we did all of season one and two across about 4 (weekend) nights, and then waited a few weeks for all the season three episodes to be released before we binged that one – again across only a couple of nights. I know it sounds a bit weird to have a comedy series about murders, but it really works – and if you’ve listened to any true crime podcasts there are plenty of jokes here about them too – especially in season two.
Despite my caution above about spoilers, I’ve put the trailers for all three series in here (and I don’t think they’re going to ruin anything), because I think it’s fun to see how the show has developed – and how the guest stars have got bigger and bigger. At the start, aside from the main trio it’s faces you might recognise from TV but who have been bigger stars on stage (or at least they have if you know your Broadway) but by series three we have Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd (and not just as cameos) as well as Matthew Broderick (to complete original The Producers Broadway duo as Nathan Lane was in series one) and Jesse Williams – who did twelve years on Greys Anatomy and did a Tony nominated turn on Broadway in 2022 too, just to complete all the theatre links. And there are a lot of theatre links here. I started looking at how many people in the cast had won or been nominated for Tony Awards and it’s insane. Along with Short, Lane and Broderick who all have at least one, I counted at least 8 other Tony nominees or winners in the cast across the three seasons.
It’s been renewed for season four, but given that we’ve just had an actor and writers strike, who knows whether it will actually appear in autumn 2024 or whether we’ll have to wait a bit longer. It’s getting its US TV debut (on ABC) in the new years, so I guess it may come to UK TV at some point too – although it hasn’t so far. But if you happen to have a Disney+ subscription (or someone gives you one for Christmas) this is a really fun way to spend about 15 hours…
Christmas is coming and you know what that means – I go back over my wish list of books from the year and pick the ones I haven’t been able to justify buying but really want to read and ask for them for Christmas gifts. My family have already had the key books from the list sent to them, so I’m hoping some of them might already be wrapped up with a tag with my name on somewhere!
As usual, most of this list is hardback non-fiction. Because when you have as big a to-read pile as I do, you can’t justify £20 and up on a book. But these do also tend to be the sort of books that never go on kindle deal and will still be relatively expensive in paper back. So actually maybe it’s sensible to buy them in hardback. So let’s start withAstor by Anderson Cooper – his book on the Vanderbilts was a gift request a few years ago in one of those hazy Covid years when I didn’t do a Christmas request post and just sent the list directly to my family (thanks mum and dad for buying it) and now the CNN anchor and his collaborator have switched focus away from Cooper’s own family to another of the Gilded Age big names.
Also firmly in the Rich People Problems area of my wheel house, Jonathan Miles’s Once Upon a Time World looks at the growth and development of the French Riviera. I’ve already read Anne De Courcy’s book about Chanel and the Riviera (again thanks mum) and Mary S Lovell’s book The Riviera Set, but I had a nosy at this in Daunt this week and it looks very readable and like it might have some new and different stuff to those other two. Or at least not huge amounts of crossover.
Moving on to another of my areas of special interest – Hollywood. Michael Schulman’s Oscar Wars came out at the start of the year and I’m always interested in machinations – and this promises behind the scenes details from Oscar history and new dramas we haven’t heard about before. While we were on holiday in September, I readNick de Semlyen’s Wild and Crazy Guys which is about the comedians who came out of sketch shows in the early 80s, so to even it out i would also like to read Shawn Levy’s In On the Joke about female stand ups in the 50s and 60s. I liked Levy’s The Castle on Sunset, and he seemed in that to have all the right connections to get some interesting stuff for this.
Laurence Leamer’s Hitchcock’s Blondes as the title suggests is about the blonde actresses who starred in Hitchcock movies. I’ve already read a bit about a few of them and Hitchcock has popped up in a bunch of my other reading and I’ve come to the conclusion that he was pretty toxic but I’d like to read the details! I’d also like to read Deliberate Cruelty by Roseanne Montillo which is about one of Truman Capote’s Swans who he accused of murder in the thinly disguised short story that brought about his social downfall.
And then the fiction. I loved Stephen Rowley’s The Guncleback when I read it, and the editor was also great. For some reason his books are really hard to get over here so his latest,The Celebrantsis on this list because I can’t justify the imported paperback (and it took years for imported copies The Guncle to hit Foyles Charing Cross Road’s shelves) and it doesn’t come in kindle in the UK.
And as if I hadn’t already put enough Rich People books on this list already, I’m going there in the fiction too with Social Engagement by Avery Carpenter Forrey. The blurb for this has a heroine whose wedding had imploded just hours after the vows and promises to show you how she got there. The reviews veer between “this is brilliant and funny” and “I hate the heroine, she causes her own problems” so I’m optimistic it could be right up my street. In a similar vein, I’d love to find Becky Chalsen’s Kismetunder the tree – this has a pair of twins and their childhood friend turned husband to one twin on holiday on Fire Ireland and trouble brewing around the other twin’s wedding and their thirtieth birthdays…
I mentioned Beatriz Williams’ latest back when it came out, but I still don’t own The Beach at Summerly and given all the spy stories in the news at the moment, the appeal of a novel about Cold War era-espionage has not decreased at all! I also still haven’t read the latest Veronica Speedwell, although as the next one comes out in the new year there’s a chance it will go on offer on kindle in the run up to that. And I don’t own any of them in actual physical copies yet, so getting one poses a risk that I will want them all!
I think thats probably enough, isn’t it? I should say i had to revise this a few times as I realised that some of the books that I was putting on the list were books that were on last year’s list – which you can find here if you want it. And mum, if you’re reading I know there is more here than I sent to you guys but I picked the ones I thought you would mostly likely like to borrow to suggest to you all!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 