This may well be a slightly shorter than usual BotW post – the dodgy elbow is making typing hurt and I’m not sure I’m at my finest. But I’m going to give it a go because this was hands down my favourite book that I finished last week and it deserves a big old mention here.
This a collection of the best bits of advice from the Dear Coquette blog which I happened upon felicitously at a time when I needed a pep talk and cheering up. It did a marvelous job of both – and there is now a waiting list to borrow my copy. I got told off by The Boy for reading too much of it out loud to him because “there’ll be nothing left for me to read myself”. A few selected quotes also went down a storm on Litsy and on Twitter.
Most of the advice in here is about relationships in their various forms – the book is split into sections – on things like love, family and dating. The Coquette is smart, witty, brutally honest and very, very frank. It’s like the advice you wish your friends would give you, but would be too afraid to hand out yourself in return. I don’t always agree with the Coquette’s world view, but it’s always well argued and thought provoking.
I’m not sure I’ll be lending my copy to my mum (not that she’s asked for it yet) but I can see myself giving this as a Christmas book to a few people who I think might appreciate The Coquette’s view of the world. My copy was a proof copy (which the Coquette said she was mortified it still existed on Twitter!), but you can get a shiny proper hardback copy now – get it from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo. The paperback is out in April.
As I mentioned yesterday, I did a lot of hours at work last week and not as much reading as I had been hoping, but graphic novels featured heavily in what did get read. But before I talk about this week’s BotW I just wanted to mention that I’m reviewing on Novelicious again today – if you want to see what I thought about Mary Balogh’s latest Someone to Love you can click here. With that shameless bit of self-promotion over, lets talk about Lumberjanes Volume Three: A Terrible Plan.
Do you like my pretty checked table cloth? It was my granny’s and seemed appropriate!
I’ve mentioned Lumberjanes here before in last year’s Christmas books for kids post and it continues to be a great fun, hundred miles an hour journey through summer at a slightly eccentric camp for girls. The adventures are bonkers, the characters are great and the underlying messages are nothing but positive. In this volume we join our intrepid heroines as they try to earn badges and escape from dinosaurs (which totally makes sense in the context of the book) whilst we find out more about what some of the girls’ lives are like at home and their feelings about themselves.
This has some different artists to some of the previous issues and at times I didn’t like the drawings as much as I have previously – but that is more about my dislike of things changing in general (which all ties into my dislike of non-matching sets of books, and changes in cover design) because the art work is still beautiful. I’m not the target market for this, but I still enjoyed reading it a lot and want to get the next volume asap. I also want to give it to all the little girls I know as an example of female friendships and that girls can do whatever they want to do without boys to help them. I’m even debating lending my copies to the nieces – and I’m not a big lender of books!
You should be able to get Lumberjanes from any good comic shop – and please do find a comic shop to support. Amazon are only offering 31p off the RRP on this at time of writing – so why not go and support an independent shop – go to the Comic Shop Locator and put in your post code and it’ll tell you. My local store is incredibly friendly and happy to get anything in for me that isn’t in stock – and you can order online from him too if you really don’t want to leave your house. And either way it’ll give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside for supporting the little guy not the corporate giant!
As you may have seen, I didn’t read much last week. It was a busy, stressful week at work and my brain was fried. And then there wasn’t a lot to chose from for BotW. And I know I’ve done an Angela Thirkell BotW before (not that long ago) but although this has its problems, it was still my favourite of the books I read last week.
Cheerfulness Breaks In sees the start of the Second World War and all the changes that brings. It starts with Rose Birkett finally getting married (after having been engaged goodness knows how many times) and is very funny as that flighty damsel wonders if she can squeeze in a trip to the cinema on the morning of her wedding. Then she’s off abroad with her serviceman husband and everything starts to change. Some men are conscripted and go away, some are left at home fretting about how they’ll be treated because they haven’t been conscripted. All the jolly hockey sticks girls throw themselves into nursing and the war effort and waves of evacuees arrive. There are some very funny and poignant sections in here.
But – and there is a but – it does feel a bit dated because of some of the scenes with the evacuees and the Mixo-Lydians. Thirkell’s view of the upper class/lower class divide is not as simplistic as some, because there are good people among the evacuated people – and some real idiots among the posh ones, but it is quite broad strokes, and strokes that favour the country people over the urban people. But then Thirkell was writing this at the time these things were actually happening, so I’m chalking it up as having attitudes “of its time” and giving it a slight pass. I suspect this is the reason why this one is an ebook only re-release from Virago rather than a pretty paperback like a lot of the others have had.
It’s available on Kindle or Kobo or you can pick up a secondhand paperback copy – but it’s not the best of Thirkell so don’t start here – go with Summer Half for some of the characters from this or Northbridge Rectory (actually the book after this in the series) or start at the beginning with High Rising.
If you remember my post about comfort reading, you’ll remember me saying that I one of the genres I turn to is cozy crime. And I’ve been reading an awful lot of them recently, so I have books (and series) to recommend. There are definite trends in cozies, and so I’ve tried to provide some variety – and also go for new/newer series that you might not have come across before. I have lots of old favourites too, but here are some new (or at least new-to-me) series to take a look at.
Max Tudor by GM Malliet
This is the 5th Max Tudor – currently waiting on the to-read pile!
Max Tudor is a vicar – who was in the secret service before he was ordained – which is a nice touch which explains why the police might be willing to have him involved in their investigations (always a problem when your “detective” isn’t actually a police man). He’s unmarried – and the subject of matchmaking among his parishioners – and his eventual choice makes for some nice conflict of its own. I’ve read the first four books in the series (which are all named after seasons) and am keeping my eyes open for the next two. These are fun, clever and witty – even if the author needs to remember that no Land Rover owner would ever call their vehicle a Rover!
Headlines in High Heels by LynDee Walker
I wanted to include some competence porn in here – because I do love a book where the main character is good at their job. Reporters/journalists make great leads in cozy crime series – because they have an excuse for coming across bodies – or at least getting involved in solving mysteries in a way that say… cupcake bakers don’t. But there are some pitfalls. I’ve recently been infuriated by a reporter in a book not doing their basic fact checking (it did come back and bite them, but they shouldn’t/wouldn’t have done it and it shouldn’t be a plot device) and while Nichelle Clarke does have a slightly dodgy (for her job) relationship, for the most part she’s a conscientious reporter who does the job properly. And the cases are interesting too. It didn’t surprise me to find out that the author is a journalist…
Mainely Needlepoint by Lea Wait
I’ve read three (of the four) books in this series and they are well put together mysteries set in Maine. At the start of the series, our heroine, Angie returns to her home town after ten years when her missing mother is finally found. She soon ends up helping her grandmother with her needlework business and sets about trying to reintegrate in a town where she struggled as a child as she tries to work out what she wants in her life. I like Angie, and while these books don’t have the humour in them that I prefer in my cozies, they are interesting and page turning mysteries, even if I do find the references to guns and concealed carry a little disturbing and off-putting as a Brit who is not used to guns being around in every day life!
Amory Ames by Ashley Weaver
Another photo of a book taken on a train. I know. I’m so predictable!
I do love a good book set in the period between the wars – it’s my book sweet spot. So many good series are tucked up in here – my beloved Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion and the early Inspector Alleyns all written at the time and series like Phyrne Fisher, Daisy Dalrymple and the Lord Edward Corinth series. And Ashley Weaver’s Amory Ames series has potential. Amory is a wealthy young woman who has married a playboy and is regretting it. Milo is handsome and charming – but, Amory fears, unreliable and possibly (probably) unfaithful. There are only three books in the series so far – and I’ve read two of them – but this has a complicated central relationship and a sparky heroine and the mysteries are well worked out. I have high hopes for book three.
So there you are. As you can see, I’ve read at least two books in all of these series, more in some cases, because cosy series can take a while to hit their stride… And this feels like only the tip of my cozy crime reading iceberg – to get to this (slender) list of recommendations I’ve read a few turkeys as well! And if this not enough cozy crime for you, in a nice piece of serendipity, I did a similar post this time last year, and those recommendations still stand too! And don’t forget previous BotW picks Death of a Nobody (and Death of a Diva), Earthly Delights and Murder on the Half Shell.
Happy reading – and apologies if this has got a little expensive for you…
Two non-fiction books in a row as BotWs? This is unprecedented I hear you say. Well yes, given that I read (on average) 1 non-fiction book a month, this is quite unusual. But both these books were very, very good and truly deserve their spots as my Books of the Week.
Phoebe Robinson is an actress and comedian, and one half of the Two Dope Girls podcast (the other half is former Daily Show star Jessica Williams) – which I need to add to my ever growing list of podcast subscriptions. Her book of essays, You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain takes a look at the daily life of a young black woman in America today. As a stand-up comedian she’s used to finding the funny side of things and looking for humour in situations, and she is very, very good at that – so good in fact that at times I found myself sitting back and thinking “hang on, she’s being funny, but this is seriously bad”.
This book deals with serious and sensitive issues – stereotypes, bigotry, coded language and more – and it does it directly, apologetically but with such an engaging voice that you never feel like you’re being shouted at or lectured. Robinson writes at length about the “Angry Black Woman” trope – and the difficulties that it creates in her life, in trying to get her voice and her opinions heard and valued, but she also discusses – at some length – her ranking of U2 in the order she’d like to sleep with them and how a female president would change the world.
I’ve thought long and hard about how to describe this book and its effect on me. I finished it a week ago and I’m still digesting it. This whole book is measured, articulate, affecting and thought provoking. And on top of all that, its so, so funny. It should be compulsory reading – particularly at a time when the world seems so divided and divisive.
My copy came via NetGalley, but you can get one from Amazon, Waterstones (who have it mislabelled as by Jessica Williams who wrote the foreword) and Foyles (mislabelled again) and on Kindle and Kobo. You can even have Phoebe herself reading it on Audible. And I suspect it may even make it in to the non fiction sections at some of the bigger WH Smiths and supermarkets. It certainly deserves to.
I know, I know, I know. This is a day late. I have excuses – relating to post nightshift haze and then a few days away and only remembering I hadn’t written this post at 11pm after a couple of cocktails. And as drunk blogging doesn’t end well, I thought it could wait til the cool light of day and rational thought, especially as this week’s pick is Important to me.
So this week’s BotW is Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors and Trailblazers who changed history. Written by Sam Maggs, this is a series of potted biographies of women who you may not have heard of, but who have played an important role in various areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Espionage and Adventure – aka areas that tend to be seen as traditionally masculine. There are 25 featured women – but at least the same again get bite-sized mentions too. I’m a history graduate (admittedly specialising in British and European history) and there were a lot of names here that I had never come across before – and many fascinating stories.
I’m definitely not the target market for this – which is written (I think) very much with tweens/early teens in mind – and some of the language started to annoy me a little, but that’s because it’s written in a vernacular that is not really mine, although I do think that the choice of language will appeal to the intended audience. It’s got lovely illustrations for the 25 women, which is a nice touch. My copy was an e-galley for my kindle e-reader so I don’t think I got the full effect, but from what I’ve seen the actual book itself looks attractive and appealing.
This would make a good book for an upper-primary school/middle school age girl and would also be a great addition to school libraries for that sort of age of child. I’ve said there that it would be a good book for a girl – because I think young girls need reminding that they can have adventures too, and be brave and daring and that careers in things like science and tech aren’t just for boys. But boys need reminding that too – and that there have been women through history doing important things, often against the odds and against societal expectations. I saw this video last week, and it may have been the nightshifts, but it got me all emotional. And it’s an important message for children to get – girls can be anything, do anything – nothing is a man’s job – or a woman’s job.
Anyway, lecture over. As I said, my copy was an e-galley via NetGalley, but this is out now and you can get it from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles as well as on Kindle and Kobo – although I think it would look best in the hardback actual book.
Where did that week go? Blimey. This week’s BotW is A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen – slightly by default, as I’m working on a post about cosy crime series and don’t want to repeat, and can’t tell you about Corinna Chapman again (oh the perils of binge-reading series). Anyhow. A Royal Pain is book 2 in the Her Royal Spyness series. The series name makes me cringe, but I picked this (and another in the series) in The Works the other week in the hope that it would help scratch my Daisy Dalrymple/Phryne Fisher itch as I wait for new books in either of those series. And in the most part it did.
Due to nights, this week’s photo comes courtesy of my Instagram train books photos…
The Royal Spyness of the title is Lady Georgie, 34th in line to the throne and flat broke. She’s trying to make her own way in London with a secret job as a maid-in-disguise when the Queen lands her with the job of babysitting a Bavarian princess and accidentally-on-purpose putting introducing said princess to the Queen’s playboy son. Along the way they discover two bodies, and Georgie discovers that Princess Hanni drinks like a fish, has a vocabulary strongly influenced by American gangster films and keeps getting herself tangled up with the Communist party…
This isn’t ground breaking or perfect, but it is good fun and rattles along at enough of a pace that you don’t notice its flaws too much. I had the culprit figured out fairly relatively early on, but that’s not too much of a problem for me as long as I’m enjoying the story (which I was). I did feel like I was missing a few bits of backstory coming into the series in book two – and i suspect they are bits of backstory that couldn’t be explained without giving away too much about the previous book. A Royal Pain never hits the heights that the best of the Phryne Fisher and Daisy Dalrymple books do, but it avoids most of the pitfalls that some other books in this sub-genre suffer from which can induce book-flinging levels of rage in me and put me straight into hate-reading mode.
As I mentioned at the start, I have another in this series sitting on the to-read pile which I’ll happily read when I get a chance, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for more in the series. You can pick up a copy of A Royal Pain from Amazon, Kindle, Waterstones, Foyles, Kobo or The Works – which has the best price I’ve spotted and the very tempting 6 for £10 offer…
Gosh this was so hard this week. My favourite book I read last week was one I read to review for Novelicious (which is returning to the internets in full force very shortly) and my rules dictate that I can’t make that my book of the week here as well. My second favourite book of last week was the second Corinna Chapman book – and my rules dictate that I can’t pick that because I picked that series last week. So after that it’s not so much Book of the Week as Book I Quite Liked of the Week. And that’s not really in the spirit of the thing. I was prepared to cheat if I managed to finish one of the books I had on the go on Monday morning, but I didn’t so I couldn’t justify that either.
So what I’ve decided to do is write about Judith Teaches by Mabel Esther Allen – which I read last week and which interests me on a few levels. Judith Teaches was part of a series of career books for girls published by Bodley Head in the 50s. Various different authors wrote the books which each feature a different career suitable for young ladies to do before they got married (and had to give up working to look after their husbands). Other titles in the series cover jobs like floristry, farming and modelling as well as some becoming a doctor or being a veterinary student.
My newly reissued paperback copy of Judith Teaches. Check out the retro!
Judith Teaches covers the first year of the teaching of Judith and her friend Bronwen who get jobs at a secondary modern school straight out of training college. They have a friend who is already teaching at the same school who they share a flat with, and although the book mostly focuses on Judith you hear about the other girls lives as well. The three are clearly Nice Well Brought Up Grammar School/Boarding School girls who have a bit of a culture shock with the pupils at their new school (dirty! desperate to leave school to go work in the factory! not interested in reading! can’t spell!) and some of these sections feel very of their time. But it does cover the potential ups and downs of teaching in a way that would have given the school girls that it was aimed at a realistic look at what they might be letting themselves in for – not all the children will be clever, not all the other teachers will be friendly, it will be stressful and tiring and you won’t be able to please everyone – in a way that you don’t get in boarding school books (which as regular readers will know Mabel Esther Allen also wrote along with my beloved Drina books).
I don’t think I knowingly read a career book as a child – unless Shirley Flight, Air Hostess counts – as the only ones I ever remember seeing were about nursing and that only interested me (as a weekend job, while being a teacher during the week) for a few days when I was about 6, so I’m not sure how representative this is of the genre, but Judith Teaches gave me several interested hours of reading – and a few wry smiles. It also made me realise how far the world has come for women in 50 years. After all, no one’s going to expect me to give up my job if I get married and I don’t think anyone would think I’m over the hill yet. There’s still a long way to go – but I like to hope that my sort-of-nieces who are at primary school today won’t need a book to tell them that they could be a doctor if they wanted to.
Anyway, Judith Teaches has just been republished by Girls Gone By if you’re geeky like me and want to have a peruse for yourself.
As you may have seen from yesterday’s Week in Books, I had a bit of a strange week reading last week, having trouble settling down to books – and a few that I didn’t like. But choosing this week’s BotW was easy – Kerry Greenwood’s Earthly Delights.
You might recognise Kerry Greenwood’s name because she’s the author of the Phryne Fisher series of murder mysteries set in 1920s Australia, which I adore and have been turned into a TV series – which I have thoughts about. This the first in her Corinna Chapman series – which is set in present day (or at least present day when they were written a few years back) Melbourne, where Corinna is a speciality baker who runs her own bakery in one of the slightly seedier areas. The bakery is proving a success, but suddenly she’s getting anonymous letters calling her a whore, a junkie has overdosed in the alley behind her shop, there’s a mysterious but gorgeous man showing an interest in her and her shop assistants are starving themselves to try and get a role on a TV show (any TV show). She’s determined to get to the bottom of the letters – which are upsetting and scaring her and her friends – and ends up getting sucked in to some of the other drama as well…
Although this is the first in the series, I had already read one of the later books and enjoyed it although I was missing some backstory. This fills some of those gaps in nicely and sets up the series as well as having an excellent mystery. Greenwood always creates great settings and quirky characters in the Phryne books – and she does the same here. Corinna is very different to Phryne, but she’s great fun, smart and warm-hearted, just like Miss Fisher. Her apartment building is a brilliantly quirky invention – as are many of the people who live there.
I didn’t love this the way that I love Phryne, but in the absence of a new book about the Fabuous Miss Fisher, I’ll happily work my way through these. I’ve been waiting for either the kindle price or the second hand price to drop on this series for ages – and these have all dropped from over £5 for the Kindle edition to just over £3, which is still on the top end of what I’m prepared to pay for ebooks, but is much more doable. I shouldn’t really be buying books, but when has that ever stopped me before. You can pick up your copy on Kindle or Kobo (which isn’t price-matching Amazon at time of writing sadly), in paperback from Amazon (if you’re prepared to shell out £11+ for a new copy or £8+ for a second hand one) or you can trawl the second hand shops because it’s out of stock and un-orderable at both Foyles and Waterstones.
It was a close call for BotW this week (I like it when that happens) – with Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians deserving an honourable mention here for being utterly readable and totally cracktastic. But my favourite thing I read last week was Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here.
My copy – which has a few marks from the commute…
Have you ever wondered what the rest of the kids were doing while Buffy and the Scooby Gang were off saving the world? You know, the ones who voted Buffy class defender at the prom – who admitted that they knew there was something strange about Sunnydale and that she always seemed to turn up to fix it? Or the rest of the kids at Hogwarts while Harry is busy fighting Voldemort? The ones who aren’t The Chosen One(s)? Well this is the book for you. The Rest of Us Just Live here follows Mikey and his friends in the run up to graduation.
At the start of the book, it’s under 5 weeks away and weird things are starting to happen in the town. It’s not the first time this has happened – and as always it’s the Indie kids who are fighting whatever the evil is that’s descended on town this time. Mikey and his gang aren’t Indie Kids (you need a name like Satchel or Finn to belong) so they just see the blue lights, the zombie deer and worry that the high school is going to get blown up (again). Each chapter starts with a summary of what the Indie Kids are up to and then you get into the nitty gritty of the daily life of Mikey and his friends. And they have problems of their own. Sure it’s not zombies or vampires – but alcoholism, eating disorders, Alzheimers, ambitious parents (of various types), OCD and being worshipped by cats and Mountain Lions are pretty tough too.
I’ve seen some criticism of this book for not a lot happening or being boring – but I never felt that at all. What the kids are going through may not be as dramatic as fighting flesh eating monsters, but it’s important – and it’s relatable. I was swept up in the dramas of what was happening in the kids lives – and I identified with them. I wasn’t the popular kid at school and although I loved Buffy I would never have managed to be in her gang, but I did feel like I might have made Mikey’s team.
It is more low key than many other YA high school novels and it’s not as angsty and melodramatic as them either, but it’s touching and bittersweet and in it’s own way wryly funny. If you’ve read all the stories about the Chosen Ones and want another side to the story, then this might well be the book for you especially if you’re a teenager or a student. After all the schools are back, the novelty of a new year and new teachers has worn off and it’s nice to be reminded that as bad as your school life is, it could be much worse.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
