Tag: best books

Best of..., book round-ups

Best Books of 2024: New to Me Fiction

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As ever, as well as reading a lot of new fiction, I’ve read a whole bunch of not new fiction that is still very good, and given that the non-fiction best of was a mix of new releases and old, it would be remiss of me not to complete the set with the old (so to speak) fiction. And I’m working from published longest ago to most recent for reasons that will become obvious very shortly…

Rivals by Jilly Cooper

TV-tie in cover of Rivals

Ok, I’m starting with the one on this list that I should absolutely have read before now, and which you’re going to have the least trouble getting hold of because the adaptation is (rightly) everywhere at the moment. As I said in my BotW review at the start of December the very 80s attitudes in the adaptation are there (and even more so) in the book. So if you didn’t get on with that aspect of the TV version (or don’t like books like that in general) than your mileage may vary. But I absolutely raced through it – Goodreads tells me it’s the longest book I’ve read this year (over 700 pages) and yet I read it in under three days. And only one of those days was a weekend (and that was the one where i only had about 100 pages to go and finished it on a plane) – so that’s fast even for me. Season Two has now been announced for the adaptation, and we can only hope that the scripts are already written (or at least part written) and so they can get on with filming it asap…

The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams

Paperback copy of the Golden Hour

Beatriz Williams’s 2019 novel fits neatly into a couple of my reading interests – fiction set in the first half of the twentieth century, Edward and Mrs Simpson-related fiction and spy and espionage stuff that’s not too, too terrifying. This has a split narrative between Nassau in 1941, where Lulu has been sent to write an article about the former King and now governor of the Bahamas and his wife; and a sanatorium in Switzerland atthe start of the twentieth century. The blurb majors on the Windsor connection, but they’re not really the centre – that’s Lulu. I continue to be about three books behind on Williams’ solo releases because they just seem to be harder to get hold of here, but whenever I read them I really do enjoy them.

A Murder Inside by Frances Brody

Paperback copy of A Murder Inside

It’s the late 1960s and Nell Lewis has just been made governor of a new women’s open prison in Yorkshire. The job was going to be challenging enough before a body was found on the grounds and so Nell sets out to solve the crime and protect the women inmates from the suspicion of the local community. I really liked the set up and the 1960s setting – I haven’t read a lot of mystery series set in this time period, or at least not stuff that wasn’t contemporary to it when it was written. I’m not sure how many books it’s going to be possible to set around this one prison, but there are currently two of them we’ll see how the second ends when I get around to reading it. Frances Brody has published another in her Kate Shackleton series since this came out, so it may be that she’s going to try and run the two series in parallel to start with and see how it goes. I hope so, because I do like Kate, and I think there’s plenty more that she can investigate too.

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

Laurie has just returned to her home town in Maine to sort out the estate of her 90-year-old aunt. She’s also recently cancelled her wedding and ended that relationship and is about to turn 40. Among her aunt’s possessions and mementos of travels around the world she finds a wooden duck and a love letter that references “if you’re desperate, there’s always the ducks”. And so Laurie sets out to discover the history of the duck – and in doing so gets caught up in antiques dealers and con artists and late night dates at the library with her high school boyfriend. This was Holmes’s follow-up to Evvie Drake Starts Over, and although both of them have A Novel written on the front, I would say this is further towards the Women’s Fiction end of the spectrum than the other one was. It has a satisfying ending, but it’s a grown up one – not a throw everything you know about yourself away and give yourself over to The New one. I really enjoyed it – and the only reason it wasn’t a BotW is because I read it the same week as The Rom-Commers (which is on the best new fiction list). Was my late November-early December holiday a real high point in my reading this year or is it recency bias – who can tell, but I did read a whole bunch of books I’d been saving on that holiday as a treat.

The Reunion by Kayla Olsen

Liv was the star of a hit teen TV show and grew up on screen. Twenty years on, a reboot is in the offing and she finds herself back on set with all her old castmates – including her former boyfriend. She’s built herself a new life since the show – but this is her chance to try and get closure on what happened with her on and off screen love interest when the show ended. Once they’re back on set together, they fall into old habits – but will this time have a different ending? This was released in January 2023 and is part of what is now a growing collection of novels set around nostalgia for TV shows or movies – whether it’s characters transported into them, or former stars of them involved in romances some how. I’ve read a few of them, with mixed success, but this is a really good one*. Like Flying Solo it has “A Novel” written on the front of it – and in this case it means that the novel is more about Liv finding herself than completely centred on the romance between her and Ransom. This one is harder to get hold of I think – I bought it in Foyles and it’s definitely an American paperback size, but if you do spot it, I think it’s worth it.

Have a great day everyone!

*so is yesterday’s BotW pick, but it is much more Christmas-themed and also a new release so doesn’t fit in to this post.

Best of..., book round-ups

Best Books of 2024: Non Fiction

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After the best new fiction on Friday, here I am with my favourite non-fiction books of the year, which is very much a mix of new releases and not new releases, but also features a suspicious number of books that fall into one of my favourite periods of history – aka the first half of the 20th Century.

Kingmaker by Sonia Purnell*

I think this is my favourite of the new non-fiction that I’ve read this year. I love a look at how women exerted power in male-dominated environments, and this re-examination of Pamela Harriman – who has previously just been dismissed as a femme fatale/grande horizontale who worked her way through all the men she knew – is a really interesting one. Purnell makes a strong case – and appears to have the evidence to back it up due to the amount of personal papers that she had access to. I was so pleased to see this prominently displayed in the bookshops this autumn.

Capote’s Women by Lawrence Leamer

Cover of Capote's Women

Harriman is one of the women in the title of Lawrence Leamer’s book – and the other women were definitely among those who dismissed Harriman as a modern day courtesan – after all she had slept with several of their husbands (one of whom she later married). If you don’t want to commit to an entire book about Pamela (and Kingmaker is 500 pages long) then you can catch a glimpse of her war years and immediate aftermath in this book about Capote and the women who featured in his notorious Esquire article La Cote Basque, which blew up his friendships with them forever.

Murder by Kate Morgan*

If you read as much mystery fiction set in the past as I do, this might be right up your street. It’s an examination of the evolution of the crime of murder in legal terms in England. If you’ve ever wondered about how the differences between murder and manslaughter came about, or when various forms of insanity defences evolved, this is the book for you. It also covers some of the more recent developments in murder trials that have come out of tragedies like Aberfan – and whether or not they have worked as intended. And if you’re writing historical crime fiction this is probably a must read to make sure you’re getting the legal side of things right!

Going Infinite by Michael Lewis

Copy of Going Infinite

Another of my areas of special interest in non-fiction (aside from interwar history) are spectacular flops/business disasters/con men. And the rise and fall of Sam Bankman Fried and his crypto exchange are among the most spectacular of recent years. Of course the challenge of such a recent scandal as this is being up to date and this was originally published in 2023 just as the trial was starting and the paperback edition that I bought (on the way to Malaysia and then mostly read on the plane) came out not long after the sentencing. But the big reason for reading this rather than listening to one of the podcasts about the story (which have the ability to add new episodes as things evolve) is that Michael Lewis was already working on a book about SBF when the implosion happened – and thus was on the scene in a way no one else was. And have a bonus podcast recommendation – Spellcaster from Wondery is my pick of the SBF specials, although The Naked Emperor series of CBC’s Understood is also good (and I have their series about Celine Dion waiting to be listened to as well).

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jenette McCurdy

Cover of I'm Glad My Mom Died

It would be remiss of me not to include a memoir in this list – and this also fits into a special interest area: Hollywood. But Jenette McCurdy‘s memoir comes with some important caveats: this covers abuse of many different kinds as well as addiction and eating disorders. It is a tough read. A very tough read. But at the end it is hopeful that McCurdy – a former Nickelodeon child star – has come out of the other side, and not just because her mother is dead and can no longer emotionally manipulate and exploit her. I really hope that she is in a better place – this book really illustrates why so few child stars emerge from that early fame unscathed.

And I realise that’s a bit of a downer to end on. Sorry about that. But hey these things happen.

Have a good Sunday.

Best of..., book round-ups

Best Books of 2024: New Fiction

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We’re nearly there. It’s nearly the end of 2024 – and with that, it’s time for me to take a look at some of my favourite reads of the last year. This year I’ve split it up across a couple of posts, and first up we have the best New Fiction that I’ve read this year.

The Other Side of Disappearing

Cover of the Other Side of Disappearing

Kate Claybourn’s new novel came out in March, and was a Book of the Week when I got around to reading it in April. And you can click the link to read the full review, but it’s a road trip novel, as a reluctant participant in a podcast goes with her sister to try and find their mother, with the production crew in train. I liked it because of the way it portrayed the heroine’s relationship with her sister as well as the romance, but also because it was more uplifting than I was expecting considering it had a heroine who had been parentified because of the behaviour of her mother even before she abandoned them both. There’s still no news on when Claybourn’s next book is due, but I hope that it’s going in a similar sort of direction to this one because it was a really delightful read.

Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell

This was a rare case of me reading a Kindle sample and then abandoning all my usual rules about purchase prices to buy the book because I was so desperate to read it. And I’ve since seen it in two for ones in Foyles and at a big discount on Kindle, so if I had waited I would have saved a whole heap of cash. But this made me so nostalgic for the rom-coms of my teenage years. I loved You’ve Got Mail when it came out (still do now to be honest) and the description of this as You’ve Got Mail for a new generation is pretty much spot on. As I said in my review at the time, some people are going to have an issue with the way that the couple get together (their respective partners are cheating on them with each other, but they’re not split up) which is why I count it as “A Novel” not a romance, but I really, really liked it. Suzanne Rindell seems to be on an every other year sort of publication schedule, and I hope that her next one is as good as this.

The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

This is slightly cheating, and I’ve swapped it in since mid-year point where I picked Mona of the Manor instead. The Comfort of Ghosts is the last in a long series, and I try not to recommend books where you need to have read all the others to get the maximum impact from it. But it’s also rare for a series to finish so satisfyingly as the Maisie Dobbs one does. At the end of eighteen books, Maisie is sent off to a bright new future, all the loose ends are tidied up – including some that you had forgotten, but unlike some final books in mystery series, the mystery plot in this isn’t an add on to the rest, it’s properly thought out and integrated. It’s satisfying enough that although I’m sad that Maisie’s story is done, I’m happy to leave her at this point. Hopefully I’ll like Winspear’s next book as much, and if the White Lady is any indication I think I will

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

Cover of The Rom-Commers

This is the first of two books in this list that I read on my late November/early December holiday and is that recency bias showing? I don’t know. But when I looked at all my top rate books these were the ones I wanted to include. And this is the second book in this list that gave me all the nostalgia for the movies of my teenage years. Charlie is a great hero – with the gruff and abrasive exterior hiding a soft and sentimental interior that he is trying his best to hide from everyone. The banter is great, the critique of the movie industry is also fabulous if you’re someone like me who wants to know where the (less problematic) successors to Notting Hill, Never Been Kissed and Two Weeks Notice are.

Birding with Benefits by Sarah T Dubb

And this is the only book on this list which wasn’t a Book of the Week – and that’s because I read it the same week as the Rom-Commers and there can only be one BotW each week. The heroine of Birding With Benefits is Celeste. She’s newly single and about to be an empty nester, so she’s trying to put herself out there and find some adventures of her own. So of course she says yes to a friend who asks her to help one of his friends out at an event. The friend is John, and it turns out the event is Tuscon’s annual birdwatching contest – which John wants to win to help him launch his own guiding business and to a lesser extent to show his ex-girlfriend that he’s just fine. And so the unlikely duo begin a fake relationship for the duration of the contest and it soon turns into something more than either of them expected. It’s charming and fun – and made me care about birdwatching, which is something I never thought possible. It deserves its spot on this list.

Here’s to as many good books in 2025 – and have a great weekend everyone!