Tag: book review

Children's books, Gift suggestions

Buy a Book for Christmas: Ideas for Children

veritywilde

After Books for Guys and Books for Girls, I give you Books for Kids!  I buy books for all my nieces and young cousins every year.  I think boys and girls should be encouraged to read books with male and female protagonists, so hopefully there’s something for everyone, but obviously these are going to be influenced by what I’ve read and what the girls have read and told me they liked.   I don’t have kids, so if some of my suggestions seem really obvious to those of you reading who are parents, I’m sorry.

Under Fives

An oldie but a goodie to start for the upper end of this age group – Janet and Alan Ahlberg‘s The Jolly Christmas Postman.  They need to be past the ripping things apart stage and be able to cope with the little letters without losing them.  Mog is everywhere this Christmas, and it’s totally deserved – Judith Kerr writes wonderful children’s books.  My favourites are obvious ones like The Tiger Who Came to Tea and all the Mog books, but also The Great Granny Gang.  Jon Klassen‘s books have gone down well with the little people I buy for – I’m still getting fish drawings based on This Is Not My Hat.  I also like Chris Naughton‘s books like Oh No! George – but Little Sis-the-teacher reckons she prefers her picture books with more detail so you can get the kids to describe them.  And finally, if you haven’t already seen them, Oliver Jeffers‘ books are gorgeous – I love Lost and Found.

Five to Eight year olds

The Nieces are in love with Jenny Colgan‘s Polly and the Puffin – we got a postcard with a puffin on it from their latest holiday and a note saying it was because of the book.  If you want to give something educational, but also absolutely beautiful and engrossing, go and find a copy of Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski‘s Maps in your local bookshop.  I think this is gorgeous and it teaches stuff subtly as well, a bit like Richard Scarry did for younger kids.  Their Welcome to Mamoko is equally beautiful.  I’m also debating buying My Sewing Machine book for the nieces – as they have a Grandma who is big into sewing and patchwork – but I’m not sure it’s fair to let her in for the extra work!

Eight to Twelve year olds

School Ship Tobermory by Alexander McCall Smith went down well with Eldest Niece (just under this age bracket, but a keen reader) – who wouldn’t love a story about a boarding school that’s on a tall ship?  I read it and thought it was fun and clever and modern.  In Waterstones last week I saw some lovely new editions of Noel Streatfeild‘s Shoe Books.  I haven’t read them all, but Ballet Shoes is amazing – although I was a little annoyed there wasn’t a similarly pretty version of White Boots (which I still have on my shelf upstairs) which is sometimes called Skating Shoes to make it fit the series. If you want to give some classics, my local branch of The Works had a variety of Enid Blyton Boxsets – including Famous Five, Secret Seven and The Faraway Tree – although I can’t find all of them on the website.

Secret Seven mysteries
Finally a photo I hear you cry! Is this the most picture challenge gift post of the set? Just you wait…

Also mentioned here before are Robin Stevens‘ Wells and Wong mysteries – I can’t wait for Eldest Niece to hit the right age (I think murders are a bit scary for her yet), Murder is Unladylike is the first one, but First Class Murder is the latest and is all you’d hope for from  a book that is boarding school story meets Murder on the Orient Express.  For the top end of this age bracket, I’d also suggest Simon Mayo‘s Itch (which I’ve read) and its sequels Itch Rocks and Itchcraft (which I haven’t) which are sciencey thriller chase stories.

Teen/Young Adult

No surprise that I’m going to recommend Gail Carriger‘s Finishing School series.  Her books are one of my obsessions – I’m currently working my way through her audiobooks on my walks too and from work.  Etiquette and Espionage is the first one, and would be a great gift for someone who has read St Clares/Malory Towers or similar when they were younger.  I really enjoyed the Geek Girl series earlier this year, which would make a great choice for a girl who is into her clothes and fashion, but which isn’t afraid to show the less glamourous side of modelling as well as the difficulties of not fitting in at school.

Geek Girl Picture Perfect
This is the third Geek Girl book – I read the others on Kindle, but at least I have this one to photograph!

I read Jenny Valentine‘s Fire Colour One back in the summer and it would make a good choice for someone who’s read The Fault in Our Stars (they’ll almost certainly already have TFIOS, but I’ve put the link in anyway), but doesn’t quite want to cry as much again.  One which will make you cry (especially if you’ve read other Pratchetts) is the final Tiffany Aching book The Shepherd’s Crown.  I spoke about it at length earlier this year, but I really think that this book is the culmination of a brilliant series.  If you’ve got someone who’s read Harry Potter and/or The Hobbit and is looking for the next move, start them on The Wee Free Men and you may be the originator of a Discworld love affair.  If you’re buying for someone who’s not as much of a reader, may I suggest the first Lumberjanes book.  I loved this graphic novel, and even The Boy pronounced it “quite good, but it ended just as it got interesting”, which presumably bodes well for Part Two.

Lumberjanes
And thank goodness for Lumberjanes. Just you wait until tomorrow though. That’s even worse!

Finally, if in doubt, there’s always a book token.  But lots of your old favourites from when you were that age may still be in print, but out of fashion, so the kids may not have them. my mum’s getting My Naughty Little Sister for one of the little girls she buys for this year.  I bought Eldest Niece The Worst Witch for her birthday in the summer (and I’ve heard a passage from The Worst Witch being used in a school entry reading comprehension test!) and I think she’s since asked for more of them.  Meg and Mog, Hairy McLairy, The Enormous Crocodile and Peace at Last are all still out there too.

Miss Parts 1 and two?  Here’s Books for Him and Books for Her. Coming next, the final part: What books do I want for Christmas?

detective, reviews

Book of the Week: Silent Nights

veritywilde

This week’s BotW sees normal service well and true resumed with Silent Nights – a book of Golden Age detective short stories set at or around Christmas.  This is one of the British Crime Library’s reissues – I’ve read quite a few now and have discovered some really good authors that I was previously unaware of and who help me with my cravings for “proper” classic crime.

As well as familiar names like Dorothy L Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle and lesser known but still in print authors like Margery Allingham, there are others I hadn’t heard of before and who I’ll now try and investigate.  Some of them have had long out of print titles recently republished in the same series, some of them are even more obscure than that.

There’s also a really good variety of types of mystery.  The Conan Doyle is a Sherlock Holmes, complete with leaps of deduction unfathomable to the normal person, The Sayers is a Wimsey locked room-esque short story about a missing necklace.  There’s also really quite creepy suspense in the form of Ethel Lina White’s Waxworks, a story based around a chess problem, another which leaves you to work out who was arrested (with an explanation at the back of the book) and a poisoning with a really nasty old man.

I enjoyed all of the stories in Silent Nights.  The weak point for me was the chess-based story, but that was because chess isn’t really my game.  I also really appreciated the biographical notes about each of the authors at the start of the stories – complete with information about other notable titles.

If you’re looking for some Christmas reading, this might be a nice, bite-sized place to start, and equally it would make a nice present for any fan of classic crime – particularly those who haven’t ventured much beyond the obvious suspects.  It’s also not violent or graphic so might work for the cozy-crime lover in your life too.  Talking of Christmas present ideas, I have many more to share with you – and they’ll be posted very soon as I know this is prime Christmas shopping time!

My copy of Silent Nights came from NetGalley*, but you can the very pretty paperback from Amazon or I’ve seen it on the speciality Christmas displays in several Waterstones stores as well as Foyles in Charing Cross Road – so it may have made it into your local bookshop too.  And the Kindle version is a bargain £2.99 at time of writing, so you could treat yourself to a bit of festive sleuthing without having too big an impact on your Christmas Present Buying Fund!  Several of the other British Library Crime Classics are a similar price, I can recommend Mavis Doriel Hay – Her festive story Santa Klaus Murder as well as Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell are all under £3 at the moment – as well as books by J Jefferson Farjeon and Christopher Sprigg.**

 

* And as usual, I only feature books here that I genuinely like – I’ve read 25 books from NetGalley in the last quarter, but only a few of those have made it to a review on here (although they all get reviewed over on Goodreads).

** Back on full disclosure again – I bought Murder Underground and Death of the Cherwell for myself, but have read various Farjeons and Sprigg’s Death of an Airman via NetGalley over the last year.

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Children's books, Series I love

Book of the Week: Shocks for the Chalet School

veritywilde

An unusual choice for BotW this week – Shocks for the Chalet School was one of my post-Paris purchases from Girls Gone By and it turned out to be that rarest of things – a Chalet School book that I hadn’t read.  I know. Who knew.  And this also gives me hope that there may be more!

  
Shocks for the Chalet School is the book where Emerence Hope bursts onto the scene.  Now I think that the reason why I thought that I had read this is partly because her early antics are talked about so much in the later books, and partly because it takes place at the same time as Chalet School in the Oberland.

For those of you who are not Chalet afficionados (and I appreciate that early/mid 20th century boarding stories may not be your speciality) a quick recap on where we stand at this point in the series: It’s after the war and the school is on St Briavels Island after the problem with the drains at Plas Howell. The new term means a whole new team of prefects – as the finishing branch is just starting in Switzerland and many of the Sixth formers have left to go there. Mary-Lou is still a Middle-schooler, Jo and her family are in Canada with Madge and her family and the book opens with news of the arrival of Jo’s Second Twins and a letter from former teacher Miss Stewart (now married) apologising for having unwittingly unleashed Emerence on the school.

With me so far?  Really all you need to know is that a (very) naughty new girl is arriving at an established boarding school, where an inexperienced team of prefects will have to try and deal with her.  Who knew it was that simple to explain!

I’ve mentioned my abiding love of the Chalet School before on this blog, and reading one for the first time reminds me how much.  Yes, they are dated – and in the Girls Gone By reprints you get the original unabridged text complete with smoking teachers and problematic racial sterotypes. They are of their time.  The plots are some times repetitive; Elinor M Brent-Dyer has favourites and doesn’t know how to make lists (or do continuity in some cases); there’s an unbelievably high number of dead parents and “kill or cure” operations; there are huge families, religious messages and you would never try and bring children up like this today.  But with an appropriately sceptical eye and a tongue in cheek where necessary, they are joyful.  No one gets bullied, very few problems are completely unsolvable, no one is homesick (for long at least), Joey (the series’ main heroine) can sing people out of comas and if you’re a good girl, you’ll get to marry a doctor and live happily ever after, popping out babies in a Chalet near the school!

  
Basically a new (to me) Chalet School book was exactly what I needed to bring me out of my World Events-based slump.  And I got an unabridged copy of Rivals for the Chalet School a couple of days later too so got to read the missing bits in that as well.

If you’re not already a boarding school fan, then these probably aren’t for you – so may I instead recommend Cathy Bramley’s Wickham Hall serialisation – the final part of which came out last week. 

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: The Astronaut Wives Club

veritywilde

This week’s BotW is a rare (ish) non-fiction choice – Lily Koppel’s The Astronaut Wives Club.  I’m not sure how I first came across this – but it had been sitting on my to-buy list for ages waiting for me to find an excuse to buy it – and the nightshifts came around…

  
The book is about the wives of the first several cohorts of US Astronauts – who they were, how their lives were changed when their husbands were picked and the consequences for them as their husbands went off into space.

This is quite a light read – it reads very much like a string of anecdotes tied together and because there are so many women you don’t get a lot of detail on any of them.  But it is a fascinating glimpse inside the space bubble – I’m sure I’m not alone in that my knowledge of space exploration is fairly limited (the basic facts plus a viewing or two of Apollo 13 and a few documentaries) and I’m not massively interested in science.  This book was perfect for me – it’s always the people that I’m interested in particularly the women who had to smile in front of the world’s media as they watched their partners blast into the unknown.

Lily Koppel has done her research and has spoken to some of the women and come up with a very readable book telling the stories of a group of women who managed to support each other whilst competing with each other and never wanting to show weakness.  Well worth a read – if only to realise exactly how famous these men were and what a fishbowl their wives had to live in.

Get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo

Book of the Week, Chick lit, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: A Christmas Cracker

veritywilde

It will be absolutely no surprise to you regular readers that this week’s BotW is Trisha Ashley’s latest – A Christmas Cracker. You can see my previous musings on her work here, here and briefly here. I’m not usually a Christmas book in October kind of person (although I seem to have read a few of them already this year) but I’m always read to make an exception for Trisha.  Her books are totally my catnip.  Warm and humourous, with heroines on journeys and a variety of different types of heros.  Her heroines have usually made had problems in their love lives before – whether through picking Bad Men or through mistakes and misunderstandings.  I always think of them as second chance romances (as in slightly older people, and not their first love affair), but I know that the “proper” definition of that trope is the “we met when we were young but it didn’t work out, but now we’re trying again” type of story, although Trisha has written a couple of those and they’re really very good.

Why can I never get a good photo of a book with foil lettering on the cover?
The heroine of A Christmas Cracker is Tabby.  She’s ended up doing prison time for a crime she didn’t commit, her fiance has dumped her and given her cat away, one of her friends lied about her in court and her life is generally in tatters.  Then she gets a second chance from Mercy.  She’s been working in Africa for years, but has retired and come back to try and rescue the family cracker business, which is floundering.  She thinks that Tabby could be the breath of fresh air that it needs to save it from the chop.  But Mercy’s nephew Randall think’s Tabby is a con-woman and out for what she can get – he’s got his own plans for Marwood’s Christmas Crackers and he’s watching her like a hawk…

I’m hoping that you’ve read that and thought – “Gosh that sounds generally delightful and festive too” – and it really is (if you didn’t, I’m sorry – I haven’t done it justice).  Tabby is a wonderful and relatable heroine.  I was initially sceptical about a lead character who starts off the book in the clink, but I shouldn’t have doubted Trisha – it’s a masterstroke.  Trisha Ashley’s books have a long history of giving us quirky/fun older/elderly lady characters too (Great Aunt’s Hebe and Ottie in A Winter’s Tale, Mad Aunt Debo in Creature Comforts, I could go on) and Mercy is another great addition to the list – she’s a bundle of energy in light-up trainers who sees the best in everyone and will give hospitality to anyone.

Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about A Christmas Cracker – I got an e-copy via NetGalley – but I went out at the weekend to buy myself an actual copy as well.  And not just because I have all her other books in paperback (and most of them in ebook as well) and I have a thing about sets and completion, but because I wanted to read it again, in a proper book, so I can pick out my favourite scenes so I know where they are in the book so I can go back and read them again.

If you only read one Christmas book this year (or before December at any rate) make this it.  It should be everywhere – Tesco were selling it for a very special price of £2 at the weekend (so cheap that I almost wanted to go and buy it somewhere else in case it meant the author royalties would be smaller) and I’d expect it to be all over the place in the other supermarkets and bookshops.  If I’ve sold it to you as being so good that you can’t wait to go to a shop (and you wouldn’t be wrong), the Kindle and Kobo editions are £2.99 at time of writing. Prices aren’t quite as special for the paperback at the online retailers, but here are the Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles links just in case.

Book of the Week, historical, romance

Book of the Week: The Highwayman

veritywilde

Back into proper historical romance territory with this week’s BotW.  I read a couple of good books last week – but you’ve already heard enough about my love of Janet Evanovich and Lauren Willig and Kerrigan Byrne’s The Highwayman bucked the trend of not-so-good historicals that I’ve had recently.

Farah and Dougan are best friends at the orphanage in the 1850s.  They handfast – but then A Bad Thing happens and they are parted.  Jump forward 20ish years and Farah is working as a clerk at Scotland Yard when Ruthless Villain Dorien Blackmore is brought in for questioning.  She’s promptly kidnapped so he can keep her safe from Forces Which Threaten Her. But will he capture her heart?

The Highwayman (which doesn’t actually have a lot of actual highwaying in the actual narrative, so don’t go expecting the Masqueraders in Victorian times people) hits a whole lot of my catnip including – without giving too much away – tortured hero! Smart heroine! Marriage of convenience*!  It also has a side order of some of my peeves – comedy Scottish accents, kilts, lairds, handfasting – but it is good enough and different enough that I didn’t care. It wasn’t perfect – even if you don’t have my dislike of the Highlander trope in general there were some language choices that didn’t work – but it rattled along quickly and there was so much happening that you didn’t notice too much.  I had a few things pegged fairly early on, but it Didn’t Matter.

As I said at the top, I’ve had a run of not great historical romances recently and this was a breath of fresh air – the Victorian setting made a change (and meant that we didn’t get too far into my least favourite bits about Scottish heros/stories) and Farah is a smart sensible woman who lives up to the billing.  Yes its quite dark.  Yes the hero is a Bad Boy who has done stuff that Can’t Be Fixed, but it is not at all miserable. As you can probably tell from all the Capital Letters its a bit melodramatic – in a good way.  I really enjoyed The Highwayman and will be looking out for the next in the Victorian Rebels series.

Get your copy from Amazon or on Kindle but don’t expect to find it in the supermarket – its not that sort of romance!

*It’s in the blurb on Goodreads I’m allowed to mention it

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Welcome to Temptation

veritywilde

A slightly shorter post than usual this week, but the decision of what to pick was easy. This week’s BotW is Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation. I’ve been meaning to read some Crusie for a while as Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has mentioned her several times on her podcast.  She often recommends Bet me, but as I’ve got such a backlog, I’ve held back on buying any. Then I spotted this in a charity shop for £1 and buy one book, get one free and just couldn’t resist. Good decision.

  
Sophie is in Temptation to help her sister make a film. But curtains are twitching and trouble is coming.  And the town’s mayor is a bit of a complication too… I don’t usually like contemporary romances (I often find them sickly sweet) but this is smart and funny and not all hearts and flowers.  The back hints at a body count, but I was beginning to think I’d misinterpreted it as the body doesn’t turn up until two thirds of the way through!  As always I would’ve liked a little more of the HEA at the end, but hey, I can’t have everything!

Now all I need to do is lay my hands on a copy of Bet Me!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: I Feel Bad About My Neck

veritywilde

Tough choice for Book of the Week this week.  An honourable mention goes to Trisha Ashley’s new novella A Vintage Christmas, but it’s quite short, and she has a new book out in October, so in the interests of keeping my powder dry, I’ll just leave you a Kindle link to it. Subtle right?  There was another close contender, but I’ve reviewed that for Novelicious, so in the interests of not stealing their thunder, I won’t tell you what it is. Yet.

  
I Feel Bad About My Neck got the nod because, although it’s aimed at a slightly more mature lady than me, this collection of essays and general thoughts on life made me really laugh.  In this, Ms Ephron takes a witty look at ageing, through the eyes of a baby boomer.  I think my favourite is the one about maintenance – and how long women spend on upkeep!

Nora Ephron wrote the screen plays for two of my favourite films when I was a teenager – When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail and I laughed my way through her novel Heartburn a few years back.  Heartburn is a fictionalised version of the break-up of her second marriage – and some of the themes from that reoccur here.  This isn’t a long read, but it is a very fun one.

My enjoyment of this book was tinged with sadness – as Nora Ephron was already suffering with leukemia at the time that she wrote this, although almost no-one knew that she was ill right up until she died in 2012. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more of her other writing and it’s a shame there won’t be any more.

Get yourself a copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo.

Book of the Week, books, reviews

Book of the Week: The Piano Man Project

veritywilde

I had a really hard time deciding what to pick for BotW this week.  Like really hard.  I read an awesome thriller – but it was for Novelicious so I can’t pick that, although I’ll try and remember to post a link here when that review goes up. I read some nice cozy crime and a bit of romance.  And then three really fun women’s fiction books which it was hard to chose between.  But I’ve gone for Kat French’s The Piano Man Project because sometimes you need a moody, troubled, Alpha hero – and Hal is a really good one.

  
Honeysuckle has a problem – and it’s not that her name is Honeysuckle.  She needs a man to fix a… problem that she’s encountering.  He needs to be good with his hands *wink wink*n- and so her friends decide a pianist may be the answer and start trying to set her up. But then there’s Honey’s new neighbour Hal – he’s anti-social, grumpy and troubled, but Honey keeps coming back to try and help.  On top of all this the old people’s home where Honey works is under threat and she’s got to do something to try and save it.

This is touching and funny and has a darker edge perhaps than my summary above might suggest (I’m not going into why because it would be too much of a spoiler).  It’s also a bit sexier than some of the other books you’ll find alongside it on the shelves.  Author Kat French has an alter-ego who writes erotica and she’s brought some of that to the table in this.  It’s not in 50 Shades territory, but it is a notch above what I’ve usually found in romantic comedies.

Honey does have a strong streak of trying to fix things/people which I guess might rub some readers up the wrong way, but I found her charming and caring and not a doormat.  And there are problems in this book that aren’t fixable no matter how hard she tries – and I liked that.  I found Hal a compelling hero – even though he’s hard work and demanding and doesn’t really appreciate Honey’s efforts on his behalf for a lot of the book.

The Piano Man Project was well in evidence in my local enormous supermarket this week – as you can see from the picture above – so it should be nice and easy to get hold of, but it’s also just 99p on Kindle at the moment so it’s a real bargain (Amazon have the paperback for £3.85 too which isn’t to shabby either).

Book of the Week, detective, Fantasy, reviews

Book of the Week: Rivers of London

veritywilde

So, last week was a holiday week and I read a fair few books (some of which will feature in a holiday reads post in the near future) but my favourite book of the week was Ben Aaronvitch’s Rivers of London.  This appeared on my radar as an if you like then you might like recommendation from someone/somewhere and I laid in a copy and saved it for one of my paperbacks for the holiday and it was so, so good.

I love the cover illustration, but I’m not sure it actually reflects the sort of book this is

Peter Grant is a newly non-probationary police constable in the Met.  He’s just been assigned to the unit which does the paperwork so everyone else doesn’t have to, when he tries to take a witness statement from a ghost after a particularly unusual murder in Covent Garden.  Then Chief Inspector Nightingale turns up and he’s suddenly an apprentice wizard.  And that’s where the fun begins.

This book is a total mash-up of some of my favourite things – it’s a police procedural (but not too thrillery chillery) with a strong fantasy element (magic! ghosts! spirits!), which knows exactly how its world works and isn’t going to dump it all on you at once, with a cast of intriguing and complex characters and a load of humour too.  So Urban Fantasy Crime Comedy. Maybe.  Anyway, it’s fabulous and I need to read the next one, not least because there are still some fairly important questions unresolved about the characters and the wider world.

You should be able to get a  copy of Rivers of London at any good bookshop – I checked a mid-sized WH Smith in a local supermarket shopping centre* and they had two copies and 3 other books from the series.  If you have poor impulse control (like me) the kindle edition is just £1.99 at time of writing. Or you can buy actual copies from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and the like.

* The sort of shopping centre that is based around a giant supermarket.  Like you get in France, but less classy as this particularly shopping centre was on the front page of the Daily Mail website the other week as the Tesco shoppers went a bit nuts over reduced price meat.