A busy week in life and reading. Am I on a bit of a Simon Brett binge? Yes. But actually most of them are books I haven’t read before that have been sitting on the virtual TBR so that is progress on the backlog right? And I have started another 50 pages and out run through the bookshelf which has weeded some books off the pile because I don’t like them and don’t want to read the rest. Again, progress of a sort.
Most read author: Charlaine Harris, with the Lily Bard reread
Books bought: moving on….
Books read in 2024: 336
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 754
A pretty solid month by figures, but still more than I’d like in novellas rather than actual books because that means it’s not reducing either the physical TBR pile or the Netgalley list. Still in the main they’re coming via KU so at least it means I’m getting value out of that membership!
Bonus picture: is it wrong to be proud of a cake?! Any way, I made this and I was so…
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including 7 this month!
This week I’m back in the cozy crime genre for my pick, and with a first in a series so I’m abiding by the rules (yes, those rules I set myself!).
And so the plot: Lena’s just landed a job as the assistant to her favourite writer, Camilla Graham and moved to a small town in Indiana. Lena has always wanted to be a writer and now she gets to learn from her idol. Lena’s best friend already lives in Blue Lake – in fact she’s the one who met Camilla first, but Lena quickly gets stuck into small town life and meeting the locals – including a notorious recluse and the chief detective. But when a body turns up on her boss’s land, and strange things start happening at the house Lena can’t help but start investigating…
This has a fairly classic cozy crime set up in many ways – small town, two potential love interests for the heroine and a developing group of friends. But the writing as a profession is fun and the actual murder plot is good and allows the development of Lena and Camilla’s working relationship as well as doing some world building work too. There’s also a secondary investigation going on that is setting up more for the series, so it feels quite action packed – and I mean that in a good way. At the moment Lena seems to be picking my least favourite of the two love interests but there’s plenty of scope for either him to grow on me or for her to change her mind. This is my first book by Julia Buckley, and there another five in this series and she has a couple of other series too so that’s something to look forward to, if I can just get the tbr under control…
I read this one in paperback, but it’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.
So… did I watch three episodes of Rivals back to back on Thursday night and a fourth on Friday while I was staying with a friend? Yes. Did this affect the amount of stuff I’ve read this week. Yes. Do I regret not having Disney + at the moment so I can watch the other four episodes? Absolutely. Is it for the best that I don’t have it at the moment? Also yes, but we’ll see how long my will power lasts because the last episode of Only Murders in the Buildingseries four hits Disney+ this week… Anyway, to the actual books I did read, and I still need to do a bit of work at getting that long-running list down, but I may have got a little distracted by trying to get a couple more states ticked off my 50 states list for the year…
I think Thursday this week was the biggest book release day of the year, but sadly I haven’t made it into a bookshop in the last two days – but instead I was in Waterstones Piccadilly on Monday and had a good wander.
There is one of those 24th October releases on this photo though – some kind person had put The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year out on the shelves a couple of days early, so of course I snapped that up. Apart from that the romance display was still fairly Halloween orientated – with Casket Case, Haunt Your Heart Out, The Wedding Witch, My Vampire Plus-One and Morbidly Yours from this season’s crop of spooky releases.
I was really pleased to see Kingmaker on a table – and I’m hoping the fact that there’s only five copies means there were more and they’ve sold a bunch. I also keep coming across mentions of Pamela Harriman at the moment, but I’ve got no idea whether it’s because the book has got people talking or it’s that thing you get where you notice things you would have missed because you’ve recently encountered some form of media about them!
And finally, on the new and reviewed history shelf has three of the history hardbacks from this autumn’s releases that I’m interested in – namely the new Helen Castor and Dan Jones, who are two historians whose work I find really interesting and readable even if their areas of expertise are different to the periods that I am usually the most interested in, and then The Scapegoatagain, which I mentioned last week.
And that’s your lot. I will endeavour to make it into a bookshop this week to see what else I can spot from the autumn new releases. After all I’m soon going to have to come up with a list of books I’d like for Christmas. Oh and I found a Waterstones voucher in my purse today from my Christmas gifts last year, that I only have six weeks left to spend…
Another Thursday, another new book to highlight. This time it’s the new Adele Buck book, The Anti-social Season, which is the second in her first responders series and came out today in the UK – and on Tuesday in the US. The first in the series was Fake Flame which I reviewed back when in May when it came out here. That was about a fake relationship between a university professor and a firefighter after her ex tried to win her back with a public proposal which she tried to set on fire. This time it is Christmas themed and has a female firefighter who is about to hang up her active duty hose and a male librarian who is tasked with teaching her about her new job as the squad’s social media manager. I love the fact that the genders are the reverse of what you normally find in a firefighter romance – or a romance involving a librarian – so I can’t wait to read it – I have it on pre-order so it should have dropped onto my Kindle by the time you read this!
If you want to buy it, it’s available now on Kindle and Kobo. And as a bonus, Fake Flame is 99p on Kindle and Kobo at the moment too.
Autumn is new TV season, and the run up to Christmas (and THanksgiving in the US) is the big movie release season, so I thought this week I’d mention the books that are about to hit the screens of various sizes before the end of the year.
I’m starting with the one you’re most likely to have already seen a trailer for even before I put it here, and that’s Wicked. It’s based on the musical which is quite a long way away from Gregory Maguire’s novel, but as they’ve split it into two parts, it sounds like they have used more of the book material for the film – which makes sense because the second half of the musical is less obviously spectacular than the first and the most well known songs are in the first – including the iconic Defying Gravity which is the ending of the first half in the musical and has been so heavily featured in all the promotional material that it has to be in the first part!
Excitingly Interior Chinatown has a brand new trailer today – ahead of it’s release in the US in mid November. Charles Yu has adapted it himself from his novel, which is about an background character in a police procedural drama who longs to be the main character. It won a National Book award the year it came out and was nominated for a couple more prizes. I read it in 2020 and although it was not entirely my thing (as we know that’s not unusual for Award-winners) but I thought it was really clever, inventive and mind bending. It’s on the list of things I might be able to watch with Him Indoors. Or at least let him start watching it to see if I’ll be able to cope. I just need to get Disney+ again first!
Already out there in the US, but frustratingly still without a confirmed date in the UK is the Moonflower Murders. I did mention this the other week when I posted that there is going to be another book in the Atticus Pünd/Susan Ryeland series, but I don’t care, because I think these are so fun and clever and I’m looking forward to seeing how book two translates to the screen – I doubted Anthony Horowitz before the seeing the Magpie Murders and I’m not making that mistake again. I’m sort of expecting that this is going to be in the Christmas TV offerings, so I might still have two months to wait…
This one is a bit of a cheat on two fronts because it’s already out there *and* I haven’t read the book, but the trailer made me laugh so I’m going with it anywhere. I’ve read about half a dozen of Carl Hiassen’s books – but not Bad Monkey – and I am a little worried this is going to be a bit too violent for me on screen – the novels fall into the same sort of humours crime-thriller-adventure area as Stephanie Plum does, but with a lot more gore on the page. This one is on Apple TV+, which I hardly ever have, so it may be a while before I can set Him Indoors on it to check it for me.
And finally, this is the one that I have no clue how I would be able to watch as it’s a Hallmark Movie, but the book itself sounds intriguing: The Chicken Sisters. It’sabout two families feuding over whose restaurant serves the best fried chicken and two sisters who have ended up on opposite sites try to settle it by taking part in a TV cooking show. It’s at least partially set in Kansas too – so if I can get hold of a copy of that, it might help me with one of my harder to get states in the 50 states challenge…
The Lily Bard binge reread is over, which means I’ll presumably find something else to fixate on imminently to distract me from reading the backlog. It was ever thus. That said, it wasn’t a bad week of reading, even if there are still a few on the long running pile. This week coming is going to be a busy one though, so we’ll see how that all plans out.
Bonus picture: party time in town on Saturday with an ABBA Tribute band to mark the end of the market square redevelopment. We were on our way to the cinema, so we didn’t stay that long!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
I’m having one of those spells where I’m finding it hard to settle down and read some of the things on the list – but instead bingeing through something else. In this case, it’s manifesting in Patti Benning novellas and some Charlaine Harris. Who can tell the mysterious ways my mind works, I certainly can’t. Anyway, the weather has been awful, it’s proper sit inside and read weather – I feel like my feet have been on the edge of being damp for about a month now it’s been so wet. Hey ho.
Well, as usual in kindle offers week, a few ebooks bought – and I still have some samples left to read for other things so potentially more to come there. Two books in Foyles which you’ve already seen and a couple more ordered (but not yet arrived)
Bonus picture: some Art at the Outernet last week – it’s very cool but it makes my head hurt quite quickly!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
You guys. It’s finally coming. I never thought it would. But it has a date now – an actual date, not just a year – and the date is on the publishers website as well as on Amazon. The eighth Thursday Next book is coming in 2025. And so before I start my re-read of the series ahead of the publication of Dark Reading Matter – “the eighth and last” in the series, I thought I’d remind you about them so you can join in too.
Back when I last wrote about the series, it had been eight years since book seven – it’s now been 12 and I had been thinking it might never happen – especially given that we’ve had a sequel to Shades of Grey from Fforde before we got another Thursday Next. And as ever I wonder how quick I am to spot this (see also yesterday’s post about the next H M The Queen Investigates) but I’m pretty sure this is pretty recent – Fforde’s own website isn’t updated with the release dates as I write this…
And if you want an explanation of the series, he has a good one on there which explains the fact that it’s a world where the Crimean war never ended, where time travel is possible as is entering a book and removing characters from existence. If you like books and reading, this is the sci-fi-fantasy-crime mash up for you. Also, it has this quote from Terry Pratchett.
‘Ingenious – I’ll watch Jasper Fforde nervously’
Terry Pratchett
As well as the Thursday Next novels, Fforde’s nursery crime series are set in the same universe so if you want to be a completist you can read those too. I probably will. Now the only question left is whether a) the cover of book eight will match and b) will I be able to cope with a hardback among my set of paperbacks. Who. Can. Tell.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 