Tag: book round-ups

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Habemus Papam

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It’s Wednesday, and as we have a Papal conclave starting next week, I’m bringing you a Recommendsday themed around the Vatican City and or the Catholic Church. You’re welcome.

Of course one of the big movies of Oscar season was Conclave, which is based on a book of the same name by Robert Harris. So you could read that or if you haven’t already seen the film, now might be the perfect time! But before Conclave, if you’d asked me to think of a book that’s set around the Vatican I would have said Angels and Demons, which is the first book in Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series. This has the Illuminati and a bomb in the Holy See on the eve of Conclave. This was the third Dan Brown I read, 20 or so years ago and I had started to spot his tropes and patterns by that point, but there’s a reason he’s sold so many books – he’s very easy to read, particularly if you’re not a big reader. There’s a sixth book coming in the autumn – and all of the others have also had strong links to religion in some way. I still think the Da Vinci Code is probably the best of them though.

After not having thought about these books for probably actual years, I’m now mentioning Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde myseries twice in just a couple of weeks – as book five in that series The Vatican Murders (if you’re buying on Kindle) or Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (if you’re buying in paperback) sees Wilde and Conan Doyle in the Holy See in the aftermath of the death of Pope Pius IX – my review from all the way back in 2016 (!) says it’s a bit like a Victorian Da Vinci Code, so it would seem like a really apt choice for this post!

Not set in the Vatican, but very much about the Catholic Church is Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose. I mentioned this last year in my post of books set in Italy, but it also fits here. Like The Da Vinci Code, it’s one of the best selling books ever published – with about 50 million copies worldwide compared to 80 million for the Da Vinci Code – but people are a lot less sniffy about this one than they are about Robert Langdon. As I’ve said before I read it as part of my history degree because of all the research and detail that Eco put into this, and its set in the fourteen century during the Avignon Papacy. Fun fact: there hasn’t been a French Pope since all of that went down, which didn’t stop the French media from really, really hoping the new Pope would be French during their coverage of the Conclave after the death of Pope John Paul II, which happened while I was living in France. Ahem. Anyway, back to In the Name of the Rose: this has got lots to unpick in it – from the Sherlock Holmesian hero – William of Baskerville – to spotting the deliberate anacronisms and errors and working out why they’re there. There was a TV adaptation five or so years ago (which I found way more gruesome than the book) which was an Italian and German co-production but also featured Rupert Everett in the cast. It was shown on BBC Two (that’s how I watched it) and I enjoyed it but thought some of the dubbing was clunky as well as the simplification of the plot but it’s very expensively done (and they spent the money better than Disney+ did on the Shardlake adaptation) – it’s still available to rent from Amazon should the mood take you.

On my to read list in this sort of area is Katte Mosse’s Labyrinth which has got an archaeological mystery set around some bodies discovered near Carcassone and a crusade 800 years earlier. To be honest the only reason I haven’t read this yet is because it is absolutely huge and my record with very long books right now is not great. I’m pretty sure I’ve got some Medici fiction somewhere on my shelves too – but I can’t remember if it’s Papal-Medici or other Medici doing things around Florence! And I’m also pretty sure I’ve got some Father Brown on my shelves somewhere too.

But what I’m actually doing at the moment is listening to Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, which is his satire on religion and philosophy and the role of religion in politics. It would have been Sir Terry’s birthday this week and it’s been ages since I read this – and the shiny new recording has Andy Serkis narrating it which is a lot of fun. And in a weird quirk of fate, I’ve just had an email saying it’s actually the Audible Daily Deal today (Wednesday) so if you don’t already own it, now is your chance…

Happy Humpday everyone.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: January Quick Reviews

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The first month of 2025 is over and so I’m back with another whistle-stop tour through a couple of books that I read last month that I didn’t already tell you about.

Vanishing Box by Elly Griffiths

Let’s start this month with a rule breaking mid-series book. But there’s a reason for this I promise. Vanishing Box is the fourth in Griffiths’ series set in Brighton in the early 1950s. It’s been five years since I read the third book but my mum’s book club picked the first one just before Christmas and it reminded me that I had forgotten to go and read any more of them. And this is a good instalment in the series. The general premise is that Edgar Stephens is a police detective but in World War 2 he worked in a shadowy unit with Max Mephisto who is a magician. They fall back into each other’s orbit during the first book (The Zigzag Girl) and have stayed there since. This book sees Max performing on the bill of a variety show in Brighton and Edgar investigating the death of a flower shop worker who happened to be living in the same boarding house as some of the other performers on the bill with Max. You could read this without reading the rest of the series, but it will definitely work best if you’ve got the background.

Natural Selection by Elin Hilderbrand

A short story on the list this month – this is an Amazon Original that follows Sophia, a New Yorker who has finally found a man she can see herself settling down with, but who finds herself on a couples trip alone after an emergency means he has to bail on her as they’re about to board the flight. This sends Sophia on a journey of self discovery – the holiday was his choice – so Sophia finds herself the fish out of a water on a once in a lifetime trip to the Galapagos Islands – without her boyfriend, without her phone signal (most of the time) and too embarrassed to talk to anyone about what’s going on. Hildebrand packs a lot into just over 50 pages and I found it surprisingly emotional as well as satisfying.

Not in My Book by Katie Holt*

As I previewed this when it came out, I thought I ought to follow up now I’ve read it. This is an enemies to lovers romance about two writers who are forced to write a book together after they take their classroom rivalry one step too far for their professor to let slide. If New Adult was still a thing, I would say that this is squarely in that area, but it’s not really any more so I don’t really know what to call it. And I think for some people this is going to work really well. It’s being compared to Sally Thorne‘s The Hating Game in the blurb and I think that’s pretty fair, but I think these two are maybe meaner to each other than those two. And that was my problem: they’re awful to each other and although I enjoyed it once they started getting along, as soon as there is any hint of conflict they revert to saying the most hurtful things they can to each other, and that’s just not my thing. Maybe it’s the age of the main characters and I’m just too old for that now – but it ended up being the end of the trope that I find hard to get on board with.

And that’s your lot for this month – a reminder of the Books of the Week from January: White House by the Sea, Deadly Summer Nights, Dark Tort and The Paradise Problem.

Happy Reading!

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.

Recommendsday, reviews

Recommendsday: November Quick Reviews

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Another month over, and as you probably saw on Monday, a mega reading list to finish the month off, because we were on holiday. Only one of these is actually something finished on the holiday – but I promise you will hear more about a bunch of those holiday books at some point. However in the meantime here’s a three of the books I read in November and haven’t told you about yet!

Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin

I’m slowly working my way through the Gervase Fen series – so slowly in fact that they’ve now started a fresh redesign since I started reading them. I’ve now read six of the ten slightly out of order as this is in fact book seven. It sees Gervase entangled with the movie making set and trying to untangle the mystery around the death of a young actress who threw herself from Waterloo Bridge one night after a party. I had part of the solution figured out, but not all the whys and wherefores so it was a good read finding out.

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans*

The Second World War is over and Valentine Vere-Thissett is on his way home. Except the war has changed his world – his elder brother has been killed, leaving him with a title he doesn’t want and and now the fate of his family home, built in the 1500s, in his hands. I have really enjoyed a lot of Lissa Evans’s novels, but for some reason this one didn’t quite work as well as I wanted it to. It’s got all the elements – a reluctant younger son taking over, post war setting, an ill-assorted group of people thrown together, but just this time, it didn’t provoke as strong a set of emotions as her books usually do. It’s still good, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not brilliant, and I was hoping for brilliant.

A Body on the Doorstep by Marty Wingate

It’s 1921 and Mabel Canning has moved to London to try and strike out on her own and be a Modern Woman. To this end she’s got a job with the Useful Women’s Agency, but one one of her assignments a dead body turns up on the doorstep when she answers the door. And of course she can’t help but get drawn in to trying to figure out what happened to him. This was the latest in my quest to find a new historical mystery series to fill the gap left by the end of the Daisy Dalrymple books. And it’s not bad – the mystery isn’t the most complicated, but it’s got a fair bit of set up to do and characters to introduce as the first in the series so I don’t mind that too much. It’s in KU so I will likely read more of them as and when I get a chance.

And there you are, that’s your lot today – but a quick reminder of the November Books of the Month, which were Rivals, Top of the Climb, The Anti-Social Season and Death at the Dress Rehearsal

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: June Quick Reviews

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As I said on Sunday, I’ve already written about so many books this month that I don’t have much left to tell you about. But I’ve managed to write a few sentences about a couple more books from the June pile for you!

Jean Tours a Hospital by Doreen Swinburne

I’m starting with something completely left field that I’m not expecting any of you will ever read. This was one of my purchases at Book Conference last summer and as the title suggests is a career book encouraging girls into nursing for a profession. It’s not a great work of literature, but it is a fascinating look at what nursing was like in the 1950s – lots of cleaning, nothing disposable, lots of people on bedrest and not a drop of blood insight on Jean’s tour! Of course nursing is for girls and doctoring is for boys and there is the usual suggestion that if you’re a good girl you might get to marry a doctor but there’s also some interesting (for the time) ideas from the Matron about nursing becoming a degree subject. Not a masterpiece, but fun half hour for what I paid for it!

Final Acts ed Martin Edwards

This is another collection of classic crime short stories all set in or around theatres. I know I mention the BLCC stuff a lot – but usually in the context of the novels (see last week’s BotW for example) because I find the short story collections can be a bit patchy. But this one is a good one, with some big names you’ll recognise including Dorothy L Sayers doing a not Wimsey story and Ngaio Marsh Alleyn short, and some smaller names you may have read full length novels from like Christianna Brand. I do like a theatre-set story (be it murder mysteries or romances) so maybe that biased me, but it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment so worth a look.

Piece of Cake by Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul*

This is a contemporary romance set in Nashville about a woman working at a struggling wedding magazine who has to work with a social media star on a video series that they hope will secure the magazine’s future. I read the previous book from these authors (borrowed it from the library) and liked the premise but thought that there was too much going on and that the romantic element was unsatisfying because all the options had issues. So I read this to see how the authors managed to redeem Claire – who was the villain of the piece in the last book. And the answer is: they didn’t really. And therein lies the problem. If you haven’t read the previous book, you spend a lot of the time wondering how bad she could really have been – and then when you find out what she did, I assume you lose any sympathy you have left for her – if you’ve managed to keep any with the “oh I’m so poor” thing, whilst living in a flat of her own and driving an expensive car. But, on the plus side – this has less plot elements and there is only one romantic option and he seems like an OK kind of guy – it’s just the heroine that’s the problem. So all in all, I think this is probably a sign that these authors are not for me. But it may work better for other people as these things often do and so I mention it anyway.

And that’s your lot. As I said on Monday, we have half year review posts coming, but a quick reminder of the Books of the Month from June: A Calamity of Mannerings, The True Love Experiment, Mrs Nash’s Ashes and Twice Around the Clock. And don’t forget there was also a new Summer Romance round up and Romances with heroes with kids too if you need a reminder of why I had so few options for this month’s quick reviews!

book related, book round-ups

Father’s Day

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It’s Father’s Day today – so Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. And for those of you who don’t have your dad around any more, I hope you’re doing ok too.

I was thinking about some of my favourite dads in books for today’s post – and threw the question out to my little sister who suggested Mr Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (mainly for the comebacks not the actual parenting), Bridget’s dad from Bridget Jones’s Diary and Arthur Weasley from Harry Potter, all of which I can get on board with. I’d add Sam Vimes from Discworld to the list – in several of the Watch books he worried that he wasn’t a “good” man, in his early days he was a drunk, but he’s devoted to his son, Young Sam, and comes home every night to read Where’s My Cow to him – which when you know Vimes is quite a big turn around.

I’m also going to throw Thursday Next‘s dad into the mix – ok so he’s travelling through time hiding from the Chronoguard, but he drops in on Thursday whenever he can and tries to help and offer her advice when he can. Technically not their dad but their guardian, I’m still going to include Arthur from The House in the Cerulean Sea because he will do anything to keep his kids safe. On the same front, Mr Tom from Goodnight Mr Tom gets the nod from me too – after all he does adopt William – and by the end of the book William is calling him dad. Obviously the traditional choice in any list of great dad’s in books is Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, so you can take that one as read.

What I will say is that in writing this, I realised how many of my favourite books have dead or absent dads, which is a bit of a concern – but then the dead parent is a big thing in children’s books of a certain age – and often the drama in a historical novels is generated by the death of a father and the impact it has on the family – see Calamity of Mannerings most recently, but also a lot of the Georgette Heyer heroines and a lot of the more recent historical romance heroines too.

Which dads would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

Have a good Sunday everyone.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Enemies to Lovers Romances

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As my top romance pick of the year was an Enemies to Lovers romance, I thought it was about time that I did a Recommendsday post about one of my absolutely favourite romance tropes! And honestly, it actually turned out to be quite difficult to find ones I haven’t already written about before – particularly contemporary ones because so many of them have already been Books of the Week!

My much-loved TV tie-in edition of Pride and Prejudice

Lets start off with something very obvious: Pride and Prejudice. This is the grandaddy of them all. If you’ve never read it, you should, but there are also stacks of retellings of it from pretty much every different twist you can think of. My favourite is probably still Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, which is set in modern day (well modern five years ago) Cincinnatti, which has a lot of the wit that makes Austen so much fun but which you don’t always get in the retellings.

Next up, The Viscount Who Loved Me – second I Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series and the basis for the upcoming next season on Netflix. Who knows how they’ll make it play out in the TV series (although the first one was quite faithful to The Duke and I) but in the book Kate is determined to save her older sister from marriage to reformed rake Anthony Bridgerton. Anthony has decided that he needs to marry (for reasons that you don’t really ever get to the bottom of in the book) but is determined not to marry for love (for reasons that you do discover). The two of them really don’t get on – until they do and it is delightful. Read it before the second series drops at the end of March.

Very worn copy of Regency Buck

I mentioned Regency Buck years ago in a post about comfort reads (and even longer ago in my post about Georgette Heyer), but it is one of my favourite historical romances with this trope. Judith and her brother come to London against the wishes of the guardian that they have never met. Of course they discover the Duke of Worth is the annoying man they met en route, the son of a man their father was friends with. Judith spends most of the book fighting against Worth’s every word and the reader isn’t really sure what he is up to until the reveal – which makes the resolution all the more satisfying. Side note: if anyone has come up with a modern (non problematic) twist on the guardian and ward trope, let me know in the comments!

Before I move on, I’ve featured a lot of Sarah MacLean books here before, and she does a great line in truly epic grovelling – which does often goes hand in hand with the enemies to lovers trope – like Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart, which is the last in her Love By Numbers series and has a deeply rule following hero who thinks the rule-breaker heroine is trying to trap him him to marriage. The Rogue Not Taken is also an enemies to lovers.

Cover of Act Like It

I have featured a lot of contemporary romances with this trope, to the point where it is hard to find stuff I haven’t already recommended! Basically all Lucy Parker’s books are enemies to lovers – but as well as Battle Royal being my favourite romance of last year, Headliners, The Austen Playbook and Pretty Face have been books of the week and Making Up got a mention in a summer reading post too. So that only leaves me with Act Like It that I haven’t already given a big old plug to. So here it is: it’s a fake relationship between two actors who can’t stand each other, to try and help a bad boy actor to rehab his image. It’s the first in the London Celebrities series, and when I read it I had a few issues with some of the British-isms not being right (Parker is from New Zealand) but even writing about it here has made me want to read it again!

If you want to go old school romance, then a couple of Susan Elizabeth Philips’ Chicago Stars books also have enemies to lovers going on. Nobody’s Baby But Mine is that rare thing – a pregnancy romance that I like. And that surprised me because the heroine deliberately sets out to get pregnant by the hero which is so far from my thing. But Jane is actually a very different character than you would expect from that description- she’s a scientist who thinks she’s making a rational decision about her life. Cal, our hero is the quarterback of the team and is (unsurprisingly) unhappy about Jane’s entire plan for his only involvement in their baby’s life to be conception. It’s funny and touching and very escapist. The first in the series, It Had To Be You, is also an enemies to lovers, with a heroine who inherits a football team and the team’s extremely Alphahole head coach. But that has rape in Phoebe’s backstory which I know is a no-no for some people.

Other contemporary romances that have been Books of the Week include: Talia Hibbert’s Act your Age Eve Brown , Ali Hazelwood’s Love Hypothesis, Christina Lauren’s Unhoneymooners (see also The Honey-Don’t List which was in a Mini review roundup), Jen De Luca’s Well Met, Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material, Alisha Rai Hate to Want You and Kate Claybourn’s Love at First. All of those are relatively recent releases (as in new or new ish when I wrote about them) but if you want something else a bit older, then how about Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me – which is now nearly 20 years old (!) – and features a first date that’s the result of a bet…

One last book before I go and that doesn’t really fit into any of the other categories – Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On, which is the first of the trilogy set in the world at the centre of Cath’s fandom in Fangirl – and is the equivalent of Harry and Draco in Harry Potter books.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March 2021 Mini Reviews

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So we made it to the end of a year of the quarantimes. And despite the fact being back in March meant it felt like we’d never left March at all and the world had ground to a halt in 2020 and given us endless March, itwas actually quite a good month in my reading life. Here are a few books I enjoyed that I haven’t told you about yet.

Women vs Hollywood by Helen O’Hara

Hardback copy of Women vs Hollywood

Empire Magazine’s Helen O’Hara’s new book is an examination of pioneering women through Hollywood history and the ways in which they’ve been left out of the history of the silver screen. It also examines what could be done to help redress the balance and for films to tell some different stories from some different points of view. It’s impeccably researched and well argued and will left me wanting to go out and spend some money at the cinema on female-centric films. As the cinemas are still closed, I contented myself by watching Lady Bird and Emma. and a couple of Katherine Hepburn films.

The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear

Cover of the Consequences of Fear

I’ve written about the Maisie Dobbs series here before. And this is another engrossing and twisty instalment in the series. With long running series it’s always a challenge writing a review that doesn’t give away too much of the plot – or spoil earlier books in the series. But what I can say is that now the books have reached World War Two, Jacqueline Winspear is consistently finding interesting aspects of the conflict to entangle Maisie in, and if a few liberties are taken with the timeline, they are minor and you forgive them because it’s so page-turning and engrossing. This also sees some really interesting developments in Maisie’s personal life too – so all around this is a really good read.

You’re History by Leslie Chow*

Cover of You're History

What’s not to love about a book with a cover as gorgeous as this and I did enjoy it, but that comes with a few caveats. I think I was missing some of the background on some of the songs to get the most out of it. Although the names listed in the blurb are all people you will have heard of – Kate Bush, Nikki Minaj,  Janet Jackson, Taylor Swift and TLC – in quite a lot of cases it’s actually taking quite a deep, in depth dive into their musical back catalogues. Really I think it needs to come with a playlist so you can listen to the songs that are being talked about as you read the book, because unless you’re really, really into music you may get lost here unless you’ve done some prep work. I used to work at radio stations as well as watching a fair few music documentaries both general and artist specific, so I consider myself fairly well across music, and I still had to do a fair bit of googling. I have a goal to try and read more books about music and musicians – because when I do I invariably enjoy that – and this fits in to that but it’s not my favourite of the genre.

Happy Singles Day by Ann Marie Walker

Cover of Happy Singles Day

This is a sweet, fluffy holiday (by which I mean vacation not Christmas!) romance set on an island off North Carolina, with a widowed hero with a B&B he can’t face running since the death of his wife and the professional organiser who visits for an out of season holiday. Lucas is focussed on raising his daughter and ignoring the bills that are coming due – so his sister relists the B7B without telling him – until Paige is booked and on the way. When Paige arrives, she finds that her accomodation doesn’t quite match the online brochure and decides to return home. But bad weather means the ferry isn’t running and she’s stuck on the island… Nothing revelatory or surprising, but a nice fun weekend read featuring a grumpy hero, a sunny heroine, a bit of forced proximity, a cute kid and some puppies.

Flake by Matthew Dooley

Hardback copy of Flake

So this is a really genuinely charming graphic novel about an ice cream seller and his van and the rivalries and challenges he faces. Low key but remarkably emotional. It had been sat on my shelf for a few months – my friendly local comic book shop had managed to get me a copy just before her last lockdown started again and I had been saving it for a treat. And I was right that it was a treat because it was really, really good.

In case you missed any of them, the Books of the Week posts in March were Wild Rain, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, Mrs Tim of the Regiment and Heroes are my Weakness. And here are the links to the mini reviews from January and February.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: February 2021 Mini Reviews

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A bit of a strange month all in, because although I read a lot of stuff, there were a lot of series, and there weren’t a lot of books that I really liked that I haven’t already told you about. Still there are a few, so here we go again…

We Are Bellingcat by Elliot Higgins*

Cover of We Are Bellingcat

If you’re a casual news consumer you’ll probably have come across Bellingcat as a result of their investigation into the 2018 poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. But the open source investigation team has its roots further back – in the Arab Spring and the dawning of citizen journalism via social media. It’s an absolutely fascinating read, but a warning: if you worked in a newsroom in the period 2011-2015 (roughly) approach this book with care. I wanted to read this book because I was interested in their verification techniques, mission statement and how they work – after all my day job is in a newsroom. But reading it brought back some memories that I’d rather not think about. It’s not that the book is overly graphic – or even excessively so. But if you watched the sort of pictures they’re talking about first time around – most of which didn’t make the tv news because they were so graphic, you’ll find it coming back to you. I started at the BBC fulltime almost exactly ten years ago – and my first job was in picture intake. That first year – through the Arab Spring, Japanese Tsunami, Utoya Island, the assassination of Mummar Gaddafi – I saw so much really grim footage that I invented the Panda scale of how many times did I have to watch my video of baby pandas playing to cheer myself up. And I didn’t even get the worst of it. This brought back some of the images from that time that I thought I had forgotten. But if you’re interested in open source investigation and in how the masses of UGC (user generated content) from the conflicts of the last decade are being preserved and the hopes for how it might be used in the future- this is the book for you.

Teach Me by Olivia Dade

Cover of Teach Me

Not my first time writing about Olivia Dade – and I’ve read this series out of order – but this is a lovely romance between a newly divorced Dad and the teacher whose world history class he’s unwittingly stolen. What I really like about this whole series is that there is no stupid drama. Rose has reasons why she doesn’t trust people and why she won’t let people in. Martin has issues around his self worth. But there’s no big misunderstanding that could (should?) be resolved by a simple conversation, it’s all about two people working out if they are right for each other beyond just chemistry, and then starting to negotiate life together. And it’s very, very romantic despite – Dade is proving you don’t necessarily need high stakes drama to make a satisfying romance. And I don’t need any more angst at the moment, so this was perfect!

These two reviews have turned out to be not quite so mini as I intended, so a quick rattle through a couple of other things: I listened to the audiobook of Strong Poison for the umpteenth time – I still find the mystery incredibly satisfying and Sayers portrayal of “bohemian” writers life, the interwar craze for Spiritualism and surplus women all make for something a little out of the ordinary run of murder mysteries of the time. And that’s before you get to the fact that it is the start of Peter and Harriet. I read The Sugared Game, the second part of the Will Darling Adventures by K J Charles and it was really good and I’m annoyed that there’s no date for the final part yet – although I do have Charles’s new book (in a different series) so that is something. And I also ended up listening to The Unknown Ajax again after I found out that her next series is about smugglers! Apart from that, I read some more romances – historical and contemporary- that I had too many quibbles with to fully recommend, and I carried on with the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series.

In case you missed any of them, the Books of the Week posts in February were: Beekeepers Apprentice, Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, Boyfriend Material and The Holdout. And January’s mini reviews are here.

Happy Reading!

Best of..., The pile

My 2019 Obsessions: Revisited

veritywilde

Well. Here we are again. And obviously 2020 has been a year like no other. When I came to try and write the end of year obsession posts, I realised that I  have no new obsessions – 2020 in my reading life has been fairly similar to last year – whether that’s because everything has been in a sort of stasis since March or because I haven’t been able to go into bookshops and find something new to be obsessed with, I don’t know. So only one obsessions post this year and this is it!

The Year of the Library 2

Collage of covers: Sex and Vanity, Killings at Kingfisher Hill, Vanderbeekes lost and found and The Gravity of Us

Like last year, I’ve read a huuuuuge number of ebooks from the library this year. It helped me finish the Read across the USA challenge, as well as enabling my binge-reading habits and keeping me from the worst excesses of book buying. I’ve also used it to try a lot of new books at a lower risk. And when I’ve liked them, I’ve often gone out and bought the next books in the series. And so the combination of always having library holds coming in – and buying sequels, it meas that as with last year, the TBR shelf is as full as it’s ever been. On top of that I think the library book situation has contributed to my enormous NetGalley backlog, because there’s always something due in a few days that I “should” be reading!  Tackling the NetGalley mountain is one of my priorities this year…

Another Year of Non-Fiction

Collage of the covers of Here for it, Money, Bad Blood and The Radium Girls

Some of my favourite books of the year have been non-fiction ones – I’ve been recommending Bad Blood to all and sundry, and I’m looking out for more books with a similar feeling to them. I also had another bumper year of American politics books – perhaps unsurprisingly given that it was the presidential election year – but I haven’t read as much history. That’s something I want to change in 2021 – I’ve missed it. I’ve got a stack of interesting group biographies and similar waiting on the to-read bookshelf, so hopefully I’ll get to them soon…

The Year of Contemporary Romance again

Collage of covvers of Spoiler Alert, Well Met, Real Men Knit and Snapped

I’m finding it hard to tell whether I read more contemporaries than I did last year, but I certainly carried on the trend. As I hoped this time last year, I’ve got better at figuring out what I’m likely to like though – so I’ve had less flops and got better at finding new-to-me authors who are writing the sort of books that I want to read.  This year I’ve been happy to read books set in The BeforeTimes (even if the authors didn’t know that’s what they were when they were writing them)  but mostly ones set in America because that always feels like it’s one step away from Real Life for me anyway. I’ve got no idea how things will go in 2021 though – because I can’t work out if I want to read books about people finding love in the Quarantimes – or if I just want the genre to completely ignore that anything is happening! I do think that when we can all go out and about again, it will be to a different sort of normal – and I don’t know how that’s going to work out in books.

Last year turned out very differently from what we had all hoped, so here’s hoping 2021 doesn’t throw quite so many curveballs at us all, and that at the end of the year I’ll have some different things to tell you about!