Tag: books in the wild

book round-ups, bookshops

Books in the Wild: Spotted in Foyles

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So I wandered into Foyles on the way to a West End theatre last week and spotted a few interesting things and so here I am.

The first was the third in Andrew Cartmel’s Paperback Sleuth series, Like a Bullet, which was out on the shelves a little early. Sidenote: I both love and hate when that happens. I love it when it’s not something I’ve pre-ordered, I hate it when it is, especially when it’s a day or two before release and I’m in London and the pre-ordered copy is going to arrive at my house while I’m away. This has happened more than once. Anyway, this was out on the shelves super early because it’s still not officially out (the publication date is Tuesday coming) and yet I still managed to resist it, despite the fact I love reading something early, because I still haven’t read book two in the series, and I like to read in order as you know.

Next up is the new book from Alicia Thompson, Never Been Shipped. And I want to say that her publishers are doing a great job with her covers because at this point I think I own three of her books and I haven’t read any of them and I had to resist buying this one hard on that front. And it’s because the covers are so gorgeous they just make you pick the books up and then the blurbs are great too. This one came out at the start of June and once again I am tempted!

I also managed to resist this Dan Jones. I hadn’t seen it before; but it looks like Summer of Blood is actually a much older book of his and possibly getting a fresh lease of life because of his successful historical fiction books. And in fact the final book in that trilogy is out at the end of July. Anyway, the fourteenth century is a bit earlier than my main areas of interest when it comes to history, but Dan Jones is so good that I do often make an exception for him. But there are huge numbers of nonfiction books on the tbr pile at the moment so I stayed strong.

As you know, I’m always looking for new mystery series to read (thank you for those recommendations last week by the way) and this was the book that stood out to me in the crime and thriller section this time. It’s got a gorgeous cover and the plot summary is also intriguing: it’s set I. The 1920s and has a bank clerk trying to solve a murder while trying not to get in trouble with the law himself because of his sexuality. The blurb says it’s perfect for fans of Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey series and given that I read the final three of those that I hadn’t read last month that is clearly me.

And finally here’s that new paperback of the first Tuga book in the flesh. It definitely feels like a tropical holiday and it’s a style I like but I also think it’s a better representation of what the vibe of the book is than the original one did, even if that was pretty too. that’s the lot for now. In some ways the bookshop trip was better than the show I went to afterwards. It was certainly cheaper!

Have a great weekend everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Upper Street Bookshop

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Happy Saturday everyone, I’ve been to a new bookshop!

I was in Angel for an event and took the chance to dive into Upper Street bookshop on my way back to Central London, and of course I bought books…

Let’s start with the fact that I really liked the selection of books. They had the popular stuff that I was expecting but alongside some stuff I hadn’t seen before too.

I’m particularly talking about the non-fiction selection where there was some really interesting stuff that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. I mean I’m sure they had it, but just not on the first table inside the door. And yes this is the selection where I found the books bought!

I love a blind date with a book stand too – and outside is great. I have so many books that I don’t dare buy them though because when I have I always get a book I already have! I had a lovely time wandering around, if I have a criticism, it’s that I would like a better romance selection and more crime and mystery books (that aren’t in the blind date section) but I could say that about a lot of bookshops and I get that they have to stock what they sell.

Have a great weekend everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Brighton Waterstones

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I’m sure you didn’t think that I was going to do a whole week based around the seaside without giving you a bookshop visit did you? In fact it was one of the first places that we went after we arrived – as we walked past it on our way from the railway station to the seafront and of course the early visit meant I could leave the purchases at the hotel along with my rucksack so I didn’t have to carry them all around with me!

Lets start with the fact that this is a big store, over a lot of floors and they’ve got a really large selection of new hardback fiction right as you come in the door. And as ever, I’m focussing this post on the stuff that interests me – that I read and that I’ve been looking out for and not on the whole store! Brighton has got quite a distinct identity – it was the first place to elect an MP from the Green Party back in 2010, it’s got lots of students and a large LGBTQIA community so I was interested to see their book selections.

And across those new fiction shelves, as well as recent releases I’ve read and written about, like the Curtis Sittenfeld short stories collection and The Rest of Our Lives, there’s also stuff on my pile like The Three Lives of Cate Kay and books that I’ve seen reviewed in the latest edition of Literary Review like Call Me Ishmaelle and the new Katie Kitamura.

And the table next to it has got the really new stuff – like that third Magpie Murders, which I really want to read but is Very Very Big in hardback and so I’m going to have to wait for the Kindle edition to drop to a sensible price. And there’s also the new Gregory Maguire on the far left there – Elphie – where he’s returning to the world he created in Wicked although I have to say I thought he’d covered Elphaba’s childhood in that but it’s a long, long time since I (tried to) read that.

I am of course all about the crime at the moment because romance moving towards Romantasy and contemporary romance having ever younger protagonists is not really what I want right now, so here we have some mystery books. And I was impressed/horrified at how many of this lot I’ve read already – or have on the pile. ON this side I’ve read the SJ Bennet, the Richard Osman and the Anthony Horowitz and I have the Golden Spoon and Vera Wong (as previously mentioned) on the Kindle waiting to be read. I also want to read Displeasure Island which is the sequel to Grave Expectations, but haven’t bought it yet.

And on this side my hit rate is even higher: I’ve read Knife Skills for Beginners (and its sequel, A Fatal Crossing, the Grantchester, the Andrew Cartmel (which is one of the non Vinyl Detective ones), Death and Croissants, The Marlow Murder Club, the Richard Coles and the Agatha Raisin.

Even more crime here – and my hit rate is lower, but it does include one of my purchases which was of course A Case of Mice and Murder – but also Seven Lively Suspects and another Canon Clement along with a bunch of covers that look too dark for me, although I am trying to adjust my snap judgments on that front after Ruth Galloway.

And finally, this had the new Vinyl Detective which I would have bought and read if my pre-order wasn’t already at home and the final Maisie Dobbs which is now out in paperback. I was going to do the romance section, but basically, I’d read so few of them that it felt a little bit pointless. I would say I should try and change that, but we all know how big my To-Read Pile is right now so I’m not making any promises.

Have a great Saturday everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Quinns Bookshop

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I’ve been wandering around bookshops again… and this time it’s an indie: Quinns Bookshop in Market Harborough. And I’m going to call this one small but perfectly formed, because it’s got a really well chosen selection in quite a small space.

This is the delightful window table display – you’ll spot a few that I’ve read there – like A Case of Mice and Murder and The Cracked Mirror – and real mix of other things, including a couple of tasters of new releases in Murders at Gull’s Nest and 10 Marchfield Square. Murder at Gull’s Nest is a 1950s-set, seaside murder mystery featuring a former nun and 10 Marchfield Square is a cozy mystery set in a small residential square in London that says it’s The Maid meets Only Murders in the Building. So I think we can agree that I’m probably going to read both of those at some point. But I’m really trying hard not to buy hardback fiction at the moment.

Opposite the window display we’ve got some paperback fiction, including The Ministry of Time (Which I really need to get around to) and The Cat Who Saved the Library (which I read the other week) and the intriguing looking The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wasteland, which is a fantasy novel about a trip on the Great Trans-Siberian Express between Beijing and Moscow.

I find the easiest way for me to assess bookshops on this front is the Crime selection – because it’s where I’m reading most and a lot of what I read is relatively recently published. And you can see they’ve got the crime sign up in the back corner there, and I was really impressed with this – there’s a stuff from the authors that you’ll see all over the place, some less obvious stuff that I haven’t come across or seen around before and then some stuff that I’ve read from authors or series that you don’t see in shops with selections of this size as much – or don’t see in hardcopy much at all.

And if you’re wondering: yes I did nearly by a paperback copy of a book I had in the kindle backlog that I had never seen in the flesh before. It would not be the first time, but I ended up buying something completely fresh to me – I could tell it wasn’t the first in the series, but I liked the sample that I read so I bought it any way!

They’ve also got an art section and some lovely bookish gifts – I bought some wrapping paper but it was hard to resist the tote bags. Basically the only thing that stopped me was the fact that I’ve got so very, very many of them and Him Indoors is getting antsy about the numbers lingering around the house. And he’s already ignoring the to-read shelf overspill so I can’t try it on too much…

Have a great weekend everyone!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Supermarket update

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I finally made it into a supermarket with more than a single carcase of books, and so here I am with a quick update on what’s in the supermarket (and how much the selection has shrunk). This is my nearest Big Tesco. They used to have one side of a whole aisle in books, but things have changed. I used to be able to go in there and pick up however many books were in their deal no problem. Less so these days and the deals have got less good too – no blanket 2 for £x any more. Hey ho.

So what we have here I would say are the usual suspects – dominated by thrillers and murder mysteries from the big names, with a few bits of women’s fiction, romance, and non-fiction thrown in. There’s the new Ali Hazelwood and the Vera Wong sequel – which would have been my purchases if you’d held me down and said I have to buy something – but I still haven’t read the first Vera Wong (note to self, do sort that out) and the Deep End has a heroine who is a college athlete and I’m not sure I can cope with such young protagonists at the moment!

I was starting to worry that this was going to be the first book selection I’ve seen in ages with no Richard Osman, but there they are on the top left – just The Thursday Murder Club books though, no We Solve Murders. This was about the point where I started thinking what a strange mix of books this was – with new releases all mixed in with the older books and no “best sellers” list visible to explain why. I guess this is probably down to the fact that it’s a smaller selection, but if there’s logic to the display, it escapes me!

And finally we have a small selection of hardbacks and it’s the same sort of genres but the mix is a bit difference – this leans more into the women’s fiction end of things, as do the paperbacks at the bottom half of the shelf. I was hoping they might have the Anthony Horowitz on a good deal, but no. There’s a lot of sagas here of various types and other historical fiction. I feel like this Tesco has always had a lot of sagas, so maybe that’s what the locals like around here, although if you’re a saga reader my experience is that you also tend to be a fast reader and so whether this would keep you happy for many weeks I’m not sure!

And as a bonus contrast: These are from my local little-Asda:

I think this might actually be a better selection – it’s got the new Rebecca Yarros and the previous two, along with some Cassandra Clare and other hardback Romantasy. It’s also got a few more recent of the paperback releases.

Like Tesco, this has sagas but it’s also got a lot of Sarah J Maas to continue the romantasy trend that Tesco was almost totally missing. And it’s got a better selection of romance too – especially considering the size of display. And going back to my earlier point about the reduction in size of the book selection at the Big Tesco – this is one less carcase of books at the Asda than at the Tesco and one is a 24 hour mega market and the other is not.

Have a great Saturday everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Verity Wanders

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Here we go again, this week’s Saturday post is basically the result of me wandering around a lot of bookshops over the last few weeks and having some thoughts about it and about me and my reading habits.

Firstly, I think we’re living in a really interesting time for cover design at the moment. I think we went through a whole phase of being able to work out pretty much what genre a book was in just by looking at the cover – and now: not so much. Or at least not so much at the moment. I mean we all know what I read most of the time, and I still picked up a bunch of these to read the backs because of the covers. And some of them were intriguing, but we all know that I’d buy one and it would sit on the shelves for actual years as I picked almost everything else to read first!

Moving towards stuff that I might actually read, we’ve got some new hardback crime fiction, which actually makes me feel guilty all over again – because I have Alex Hay’s last book, at least one Tom Hindle and the Oskar Jensen that Helle’s Hound is a sequel to still waiting to be read. Lets move on quickly before I feel any worse.

Having just said that I’m feeling bad for not reading things, this has the book I acutally bought on it – I was in Foyles on the Tuesday before Show Don’t Tell was published and was delighted to see it out early – and signed. So I bought it. And I’ve read it now. Sue me

Moving on, this is actually my local Waterstones and the tower they use for new hardbacks. This is the crime side and it is interesting to me that this is the first place (I think) that I’ve seen Steph Plum 31 in the flesh, which as it came out in the autumn is a surprise. It’s also the first time I’ve come across A Trial in Three Acts – which like the Curtis Sittenfeld was out on the shelves a few days early – this was taken last Saturday and it only came out officially two days ago. Sidenote: it’s enough to make me think twice about pre-ordering books if I might be able to get a copy from an actual bookshop a few days early, but authors need pre-orders. What a dilemma. Anyway, a Trial in Three Acts is a legal mystery about a murder committed live on stage. And as we all know I love a theatre-set mystery, so this just went onto my list of books to look out for at the airport! Also, I love the cover of A Stolen Heart, which it seems is the second book set in Soviet-controlled Kyiv in 1919. As we know, I like to read in order, so I’ll have to find the first one in this series in a shop (or as a Kindle sample) and have a read because it sounds intriguing but also like it has huge potential to be Too Grim.

And finally, more new fiction, more lovely covers, more books I hadn’t heard about mixed in with books that I have. I have now picked up The House With Nine Locks at least three times because of the gorgeous cover before reading the back and remembering that blurbs that include “a dangerous game of cat and mouse with fanatical and brutal detective” and the phrase “morally complex” are usually Not For Me. See also 33 Place Brugmann which has the word “devastating” in the blurb and is about occupied Brussels in World War 2. I have also picked up The Book of Gold more than once – but it is the first (and so far only published) book in a promised trilogy so that can wait!

Have a great Saturday!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The RSC

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Happy Saturday everyone. Today I have another post in my occasional series of shops that do a very specialised selection of books as part of their offer: namely the Royal Shakespeare Company’s gift shop at their theatre in Stratford Upon Avon. As you know I was there a couple of weeks back to see Twelfth Night – which ended its run last weekend, so there may have been a little tweakage by now, but I suspect in the main the book selection is fairly consistent – although clearly other bits of the shop will change with the shows.

Lets start with the lovely collection of books about Shakespeare, about acting in Shakespeare or about theatre in the era of Shakespeare. There are a few exceptions but that’s basically the theme of this whole bookcase – among them there’s Judi Dench’s book about her experience being in lots and lots of Shakespeare which is pretty well known and Simon Russell Beale’s book about his experiences – which is less well known. There’s the Bill Bryson books, plus Harriet Walter’s new-this-autumn book about what the women of Shakespeare’s plays might have said.

Next up we have this case of novels that are Shakespeare related in some way and the start of a very large selection of play texts and books about teaching Shakespeare. If you’re a student whose got to study one of the plays or you’ve got to teach it, this would be a great place to have a look at the options.

Because there are so many. So very many. And of course there are also play texts for other shows that the RSC has put one – the Christmas show in the Swan theatre this year was The Red Shoes, and you can also so that they’ve got Marlowe’s Edward II there which is currently in rehearsal ahead of a run starting in late February.

And then there’s books about acting, and a bit of a general miscellany of books that don’t really fit anywhere else but are sort of related to the Shakespeare and acting. Basically if you’re interested in Shakespeare and/or acting, this is probably the best selection you’re going to get outside a really giant specialist bookshop near somewhere with lots of students (like Blackwells or Heffers)

And finally they’ve got loads of other stuff too, but I really did love the baby clothes – they may be too young to go to the theatre themselves yet, but there’s no reason you can’t start them on there way with a babygro with an appropriate quote!

Have a great Saturday everyone!

books

Books in the Wild: New Releases!

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Last week was the biggest book release week of the year, and so I’ve been in the bookshops to check out the new arrivals. Because of course I have, what else would you have expected of me?!

Apologies for the angle – there was a table of non fiction in the way of the straight shot, but here are the foodie and celebrity books front and centre at Waterstones Gower Street. I’m not going to talk you through all of them, just the ones that are interesting to me. If you haven’t watched Stanley Tucci‘s TV programmes where he goes around Italy eating amazing food, then you’ve missed out. This is his second book off the back of the success of those series – this one is a diary of the food he ate over a year. The Nigel Slater is a similar sort of collection of food writing rather than recipes. Rebel Sounds I hadn’t seen before, and actually came out at the end of September, but it’s a look at the role music played in the twentieth century in resistance to oppression of various types. And From Here to the Great Unknown is the big celebrity autobiography/memoir of the year – it’s Lisa Marie Presley, as finished by her daughter Riley Keogh after her mother’s death. I had a read of the start of this one and it’s using different fonts for the bits written by Lisa Marie and Riley and actually I’m more interested to read it now than I was before.

More new non-fiction here, and again I’m not going to talk you through them all. But The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker is a history of the high street from Annie Gray, who wrote The Greedy Queen, which I enjoyed when I read it five or so years ago. The Scapegoat is about George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham and final favourite of James I. I’m pretty across the Tudors, and the Hanoverians, but I’m not as good with the Stuarts – particularly the early ones, so this in my area of interest, although we know how long it can take me to get around to a hardback history book… And the other in this category is Augustus the Strong, about an eighteenth century ruler of Poland and Saxony and which is described as a study in failed statecraft, as he left Poland so damaged that it disappeared as a state.

Now obviously not all these crime hardbacks are new, but there are a couple that are, and that I want to read. You know about the Richard Osman already, but I’m also interested in the Julian Clary – I read the introduction which made me laugh, and then started on the book and had to force myself to put it down before I accidentally bought it! There’s also the new Jackson Brody book – this is squarely in the “series I want to read, but haven’t got around to yet” as I’ve watched a couple of the TV adaptations and need to get the books they’re based on and read the others before I consider a hardback purchase. I’m also interested in Hells Bells, but that’s a sequel and I should probably read the previous one first. And finally there’s the new Jane Thynne down in the bottom left corner. I’ve read three of her five Clara Vine novels which are set in 1930s Berlin, but this is a standalone (or maybe the start of a new series), also in the 1930s but this time in London and Vienna.

And that’s your lot today – you’ll be surprised to hear I came away without purchasing anything, but that’s only because I was feeling so bad about the state of the pile and so many that I wanted were hardbacks…

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Eyrolles, Paris

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Last week I wrote about Shakespeare and Company, this week we’ve got the other bookshop I visited on that Paris trip – Eyrolles, which is just around the corner (in Paris terms) and also has a stationery section. My sort of shop. Sadly I forgot to take a photo of the front, so apologies for that.

The first time I went into a French bookshop, I think one of the biggest differences in noticed compared to a British one was the white spines. And then I noticed the size difference. And how many of them were published by Folio. It was only when I got my first French book back to the shelf that I noticed that they write the opposite way on the spine to British books. And it’s been… well a while since that first visit, and French publishing has changed reassuringly little. There are a few differences though

And it’s not just the nonfiction shelves, a lot of fiction is the same. Except for crime fiction. A lot of them get black spines. And I spent a lot of time in French bookshops during the year that I lived there, and I’ve still not really worked out what the rule is for what gets what on that front. And my French translations of Agatha Christie have yellow covers and spines.

The bit where I noticed a change was in the romance and Romantasy where there were they now seem to be using some of the same covers as other countries rather than going for something completely different: I mean look at the cover on the French translation of Casting Off that I bought – I think we’re on the fourth generation of covers for the Cazalet series in the UK and that is nothing like any of them.

I guess it’s too early to tell if this is the BookTok influence – meaning that people all over the world want their covers to match the ones they’ve seen the US book influencers waving, no matter which language it’s in, but considering how different I know the covers used to be (which I don’t with some of the other countries where I’ve seen the same trend) it’s where I’ve wondered about it the most.

But somethings don’t change – here you see that the spines might not be white, but they’re not all the wrap around cover-spine thing that we get so much in the UK. As I said, I bought a copy of Casting Off in French, some very nice stationery (I love Seyes ruled paper, and have produced some of my best handwriting on it over the years) and felt like proper Parisians, then we went off down the road to Shakespeare and Company to be touristy!

Have a great weekend

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Shakespeare and Company

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This week’s Recommendsday was inspired by the trip to Paris, so it’s only fair that I write about a Parisian bookshop – and this is probably Paris’s most famous bookshop of all.

It should first be noted that this is the second bookshop called Shakespeare and Company that Paris has had – the first was set up by Sylvia Beach just after the First World War and was where Hemingway and all the Lost Generation crowd hung around in the 1920s and 1930s. That Shakespeare and company was forced to shut down by the Nazis in 1941 and never reopened.

This Shakespeare and Company opened as La Mistral in 1951 and was renamed in 1964 on the 400th anniversary of Shakepeare’s birth in honour of Sylvia Beach and her store. And it is now iconic in its own right. It sells new, second-hand and antiquarian books and the crowds to get in start early. We came past about an hour before opening time on the day we visited and there were already a couple of people waiting. We went and had breakfast, stopped at another bookstore (about which more next week!) and came back and the queue had grown somewhat…

This is one of my photos from the queue – you can see some of the queue but also the wonderful (working) water fountain. Luckily it was quite a fast moving queue that morning – we were probably only waiting about ten or fifteen minutes to get in, which was less than I was expecting so I was pretty happy on that front.

You’re not allowed to take photos inside, so this is all I can offer – but you can see the sort of higgledy piggledy ambiance that’s going on, which is just the sort of bookshop that I love. There’s no rush to get you in and out and there are plenty of spots to sit if you want to – but we were a bit tight for time, so we had a really lovely wander around – I picked up that second hand Elizabeth Taylor you saw in Books Incoming and my sister got a cute childrens book – mine got the famous stamp, hers got the sticker, and we were very happy. It’s literally just across the river from Notre Dame, so if you’re heading there to see how the rebuild is going, it’s really easy to find.

Have a great weekend.