So, I’m down to the final book in the Ruth Galloway binge, and I paced myself and only let myself start it at the weekend – and didn’t let myself finish it. Whatever will I do when I’ve finished them? Well the answer should be read the April books from NetGalley, but we all know that what should happen and what actually happens can be radically different things when it comes to me! Ahem
Favourite book: I mean one of the Ruth Galloways, I just don’t know which one…
Most read author: Elly Griffiths – 12 Ruth Galloway books…
Books bought: still too many
Books read in 2025: 94
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 780
A pretty good month in reading all in, although it has presented a problem or two. A massive, massive binge like I’ve been on with the Ruth Galloway series reduces the options for Books of the Week – because of my rules about repeat authors and later books in series – and that in its turn presents issues for the Quick Reviews, as you could see on Wednesday. But given that I’ve very nearly finished the series now, April should be better on that front. I might even finish a non-fiction book…
Bonus picture: Progress on this year’s Beat the to-read Pile bookshelf – we are ahead of schedule! Reader, it will not last. It never lasts! Also: boy oh boy can’t you see the Ruth Galloway binge impact – in volume and colours.
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including 2 this month!
Pinch, punch, first day of the month etc to you all – and watch out for April Fool’s jokes today. I used to enjoy going through the newspapers on April first to try and spot the joke stories and adverts. I have a long ago memory of one for a car company (BMW I think) boasting about a new feature on their cars that would turn the oven on from the car to help you with the dinner prep when you got home. I remember how outlandish it seemed at the time – and now here we are in the smart home era with devices of all sorts controllable from your phone – should you want to. Anyway, to today’s book…
The Rest of Our Lives follows Tom, who drives his 18-year-old daughter to college in Pittsburgh – and then keeps driving. Various aspects of his life are not going to plan and he drifts himself into a road trip to try and escape. Years earlier when his wife had an affair, Tom had decided that when their youngest child left for college he would leave the marriage – and that moment has now arrived. But it’s also arrived at a moment when he’s just been suspended from his job after his students complained about the politics of his law class, and he’s got a health issue that he’s busy ignoring but from the descriptions you get of it, he really shouldn’t be.
I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this from the blurb – it could have been a Rich People Problems novel but it’s actually more of a mid life crisis novel. Tom’s in denial about his health, doesn’t want to tell his wife about his work situation or to deal with the underlying issue in their relationship so he finds an excuse to up and run. He doesn’t seem to have anyone in his life that he can talk to properly about things, so you see him find excuses for what he’s doing to the people he meets – right up until the point that he can’t any more. It’s not a long book, but it’s got a lot going on and leaves you with some things to think about as it deals with male loneliness, morality and mortality. It doesn’t have the level of resolution that I get from my regular reads of mystery and romance – but I enjoyed it never the less and it’s a thought provoking read that I think would work really well for book clubs and people who like to read book-club type books.
The Rest of Our Lives came out last week. My copy came via NetGalley, but as you can see I’ve already seen it in the shops, so you should be able to get hold of it ok. And of course it’s also in Kindle and Kobo for £3.99 at time of posting, which is pretty good for a new release hardback.
A somewhat steady week in books because it was an incredibly busy week in reality life – I went to a concert on Monday night, my sister came to visit, I had two leaving dos to go to, we went to see Dr. Strangelove and then went to see Him Indoors’ family for Mother’s Day. And when I write it all out like that it’s suddenly not a surprise that the list is a little shorter than usual. And it’s nearly the end of March and I have no idea what’s going to go in the quick reviews on account of the fact that a good proportion of the books I’ve read this month have been Ruth Galloway ones. And I’ve got tickets to a show tonight so not a huge amount of time to finish anything else…
It’s daylight during my train ride to work at the moment (until the clocks change at the weekend, but lets gloss over that) and the weather is improving (mostly) so today I’ve got some spring-like books for you.
Obviously lets start with Elizabeth von Arnim’s Enchanted April. I’ve written a whole post about it already and I really do love it. I actually (finally) have the movie version to watch on the Tivo (it was shown on BBC Four a few weeks back) and I have been saving it until it started to feel spring-y. Which is maybe this weekend?
I did a whole post of books about fresh starts last year, but the other sort of book that I like to read at this time of year are coming of age or people discovering themselves type novels so books like Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle or Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm or even Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love.
It’s also a great time to read soothing books set in the countryside – often the sort of books where not a lot happens – like Diary of a Provincial Lady or some of the early Angela Thirkell Barsetshire novels.
And of course there are plenty of boarding school books set in the spring term – I honestly thought I had a list somewhere of which Chalet School books where set in which terms, but I cannot find it anywhere. This is very annoying to me. And I don’t have my actual collection to hand right now so I can’t even pick one and be sure-sure because the internet is not helpful for this. Urgh. Shall I just punt at Chalet Girls in Camp because by the nature of camping in Austria (in 1930) it has to have been Easter or later? Well I’ve done it now haven’t I?! It should at least be marginally easier to get hold of than Juliet Overseas because it was reprinted a lot more times. I’ve got at least two copies myself…
Another good week – nice books and good entertainment when I wasn’t reading with a theatre trip, Formula One on the TV (albeit still in a somewhat antisocial timezone) and a bit of a day out on Sunday too. And it’s starting to feel like spring. The temperatures have improved and it’s light when I catch the train to work now. Of course the clocks haven’t changed yet, so I’m about to be plunged back into darkness but I’ll enjoy a few days of being able to see the alpacas in the field when I go passed them while I can – it’s been a long old winter.
Ummmmm. A few. Because y’know I’m reading the Elly Griffiths back to back and acquiring the next one(s) in the series as I go…
Bonus picture: Kirby Hall this weekend, where we went out to get some culture
Hilariously, the secondhand book sale selection had one of the Puffin Island books in it – the first time I’ve seen any of them in person for ages. It’s like I willed it into being by writing about them on Friday!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Well I can confirm that I am in a full on binge of the Ruth Galloway series. I read three this week, but I also spent a couple of hours tramping around central London after work one day looking for the next in the series at a sensible price (new and secondhand shops, from Charing Cross Road to St Pancras. It was good exercise and in one shop another customer liked my bag (from Strand Books in New York) so much he asked if he could take a picture of it. So that was fun. Anyway, we’re halfway through March, I’m not halfway through my NetGalley books for the month, and I’m acquiring books at a rate of knots. But I’m having fun doing it and I did make some more progress on Cher’s memoir, so I’m not too cross at myself.
Well as you could tell from Books Incoming, quite a few. That is to say four paperbacks bought and a pre-order arrived plus one ebook and another book preordered.
Bonus picture: the rather delightful wool display system in a haberdashers store in Soho.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
This isn’t as bad as it could have been. I know it looks like a lot, but four of them are off the pile already because I’ve read three of the Elly Griffiths and the Curtis Sittenfeld are already read and on the normal shelves. One of those Griffiths plus the two Streatfields and the Georgette Heyer detective novel came from that Carlisle trip, the Anne De Courcy came from a trip to Gower Street Waterstones to pick up another Elly Griffiths, the Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies came from a trip to buy a book as a gift because I have poor will power and then the other two Elly Griffiths were secondhand purchases because I’m on a proper binge as you can tell from the Week in Books posts. And on that basis I expect there will be more of them next month…
Addendum: The willpower has been weak this week. More books have arrive since I took the top photo and as the original photo was already pretty full, I took another rather than restaging (and hauling everything back off the shelves) because if I didn’t it was only going to make next month’s photo even worse…
So here we have the preorder of the new book by Charlotte Stein that turned up on Thursday, another Edmund Crispin and three more Ruth Galloways, one of which is already read and off the to-read pile and onto the “needs to find a shelf for it” pile.
Another busy week in life and reading – complete with a migraine in the middle to add to the mix. Anyway, a good proportion of actual books, even if some of them were new purchases rather than from the shelf. And I did get another one off the long running list. Yay me.
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!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 