Tag: books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 30 – November 5

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Well, I may have fallen a little behind in October, but the start of November has gone ok so far. Fingers crossed it continues!

Read:

Somebody at the Door by Raymond W Postgate

Intruder in the Dark by George Bellairs

The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog by Elizabeth Peters

Luke and Billy Finally Get a Clue by Cat Sebastian

Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham

Picture Perfect by Jeevani Charika*

Guaranteed to Bleed by Julie Mulhern

Death in Fine Condition by Andrew Cartmel

Started:

Silver Lady by Mary Jo Putney*

Murder on the Marmora by Edward Marston

Still reading:

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Animal, Vegetable, Criminal by Mary Roach

I may have bought a few books because of the fresh batch of Kindle offers. More on that on Wednesday…

Bonus photo: watching Lover Come Back on Saturday afternoon

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books

Books in the Wild: Airport update

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Him Indoors is on a jolly to the Med this weekend and kindly helped me out with some photos from the airport bookshop – bless his cotton socks he only sent me three, and it’s all fiction, but he’s trying and working out what he took photos of has been fun!

So we have biggest books – which is a very strange mix of stuff, but appears to be mostly classics, literary fiction and a few odds and ends of other bits and bobs – including that latest Richard Osman in the airport paperback.

Now I’m not going to lie, this doesn’t look very different from the selection when I went away in September – which is a maybe not a surprise – because he’s gone for the actual paperback fiction shelves – not the airport special editions – so its the big authors and big paperback editions – Lessons in Chemistry, older Thursday Murder Club, Coleen Hoover, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the Monica Heisey which appears to have been the big paperback release of the autumn – which surprised me because the hardback only came out in January.

And finally, even more paperback fiction and along with more of the same from the previous shelf, I see new Sarah Morgan, All the Light We Cannot See – which has a Netflix adaptation out this week, Babel by R F Kuang which seems to be popping up more places now that Kuang’s Yellowface is doing so well, the Secret Diary of Charles Ignatius Sancho and the new Janice Hallett Christmas mystery. From the glimpse of the airport non-fiction shelf next to it, it appears to have lots of the Walter Isaacson Elon Musk book and new Future of Geography book and potentially not a lot of the Christmas memoirs *but* Him Indoors might not have noticed them for photos – or understood the difference…

So what have we learned? Don’t rely on the airport for your big autumn memoirs, and that despite living with me (and reading some of my airport format purchases) I’m not sure Him Indoors notices that books come in different sizes!

Have a great Saturday!

Book of the Week, books, romance

Book of the Week: To Swoon and to Spar

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It was a long list last week, and there were a couple of options for this post, but I settled on To Swoon and to Spar because it’s really fun and it’s been a while since I picked a historical romance!

Viscount Penvale has spent his adult life trying to buy back his family’s home in Cornwall. When his uncle finally agrees to sell it to him, there is one condition: Penvale must marry his ward Jane. The two meet and although first impressions aren’t the best, both agree to a marriage of convenience. What Penvale doesn’t know is that Jane has been spending months persuading his uncle that Trethwick is haunted so that he would move out, and she’s going to use the same tactics to try and rid herself of her new husband. What could possibly go wrong?

This is the fourth book in Waters’ Regency Vows series, and Penvale was a side character in the other book in the series that I’ve read and given how close he seems to his friends I assume also the two that I haven’t, so I suspect I’ve read the series you’ll have some feelings about him already. And of course the faux haunting made it a good book to read in the run up to Halloween. It rattles along nicely and the plot has enough turns to keep you wondering what will happen next. I had a few minor niggles with some of the language choices – at one point Jane is surprised Penvale is still hungry as he’s eaten “an entire rasher of bacon” at breakfast – and I’m not sure Jane really would be surprised that Penvale hadn’t read a novel, but I enjoyed it enough that I let it off. Although I suppose as I’m mentioning it here, I haven’t really have I?! Anyway, there is a fifth book in the series coming next year and I’ll keep an eye out for that, and if any of the two I haven’t read come my way I wouldn’t say no to reading them.

My copy of To Swoon and to Spar came from that trip to The Works, so it hasn’t even been on the pile for very long which is unusual for me, and means you should be able to get hold of the paperback fairly easily I think. And it’s also available in Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 23 – October 29

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A really busy week in reading. Lots of books read – and lots of different genres. The audiobook re-listen is now deep into Albert Campion, which is fun. And we’re nearly at the end of October which means all the usual things for the blog this week.

Read:

Tis the Damn Season by Kimi Freeman*

Death of a Ghost by Margery Allingham

Mystery in Provence by Vivian Conroy

A Christmas to Remember by Beverly Jenkins

Flowers for the Judge by Margery Allingham

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa*

The Case of the Late Pig by Margery Allingham

Death on the Down Beat by Sebastian Farr

A Lady’s Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin

To Swoon and to Spar by Martha Walters

Started:

Somebody at the Door by Raymond W Postgate

Still reading:

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Animal, Vegetable, Criminal by Mary Roach

One pre-order arrived but that was it.

Bonus photo: this is the curtain call (they said we could film and photograph it) at the Coliseum on Wednesday for the final night of the ENO’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. My first Gilbert and Sullivan and it was really good and much funnier than I expected – not least because someone from my favourite comedy theatre company was in it!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book previews, books

Out this week: Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date

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I just wanted to mention that the third in Ashley Herring Blake’s Bright Falls series of F/f romances has come out this week. I read the first two back to back earlier this year and have been waiting for this one to finish off the set. Iris has been a secondary character in the other two and I’m really looking forward to seeing what her happy ending looks like. This is very much a trilogy (or at least I think it is) so do try and read the others first for maximum effect. And I promise I will report back when I’ve read it.

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Duke Actually

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Bit of a marginal choice this week, but I thought I’d do something different and throw in a rare Royal Romance read that’s also a Christmassy one – even if we’re not past Halloween yet!

Dani Martinez is a professor hoping for tenure. She’s also hoping her ex-husband will sign the divorce papers and has sworn off love completely. Trouble is, she’s about to be an attendant at a royal wedding and this involves some contact with the playboy duke the bride dumped for Dani’s friend. Max has issues of his own: his parents are awful, he’s finished his studies and doesn’t have a job, and now his engagement has been broken off, his parents are trying to find a replacement fiancée for him, stat. Dani and Max become unlikely friends, but it can never turn into anything more – can it?

This was absolutely delightful until about the 80 percent mark at which point it just didn’t quite stick the landing. I’m not quite sure what went wrong – whether it was too much to do in not enough time, if I just didn’t like the way Jenny Holiday decided to resolve the conflict/tension in the relationship or if it was a combination of the two but after an absolutely cracking unlikely friends, vanquishing the evil ex, rebuilding sibling relationships ride, it just didn’t quite end as well as I wanted it too. But it’s still pretty good – and better than a lot of the other romances I’ve tried lately, many of which haven’t even made it on to the list because I didn’t get further than 50 pages before I gave them up in a rage. And not always in a Sunday afternoon funk either!

This one is on offer on Kindle and Kobo at the moment, and it’s the second book in a trilogy of related romances which are also on offer. Enjoy!

bingeable series, series

Bingeable series: Aurora Teagarden

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It’s the run up to Halloween, so I was thinking that I probably ought to try and do a spooky or vampire-y series post at some point this month. Trouble is, I don’t read a lot of books with spooky or supernatural stuff in them. I’ve already written about Sookie Stackhouse (vampires! werewolves! all sorts!) and I’ve put more links to Terry Pratchett recently than I can shake a stick at (but I’ll throw you some more). But tangential thinking takes me to another Charlaine Harris series – albeit one that doesn’t have any supernatural shenanigans.

When we meet Aurora Teagarden in the first book, she’s a librarian in Lawrenceston, Georgia. Along with some of her friends, she’s part of a Real Murder club – who meet every month to discuss and analyse famous true crimes. Her mum doesn’t approve, but Aurora doesn’t see any harm in it until a member gets murdered – and the other group members are suspects. Of course she solves the murder, but it’s just the start because over the course of ten books she just keeps stumbling across bodies and murderers!

If you like cozy crime and you like Charlaine Harris, these will really work for you. I find Harris incredibly easy to read and her mystery plots are pretty solid. I can sometimes figure out who did it, but not always, and not usually particularly early in the book, and you can’t say that about everyone! Aurora is an engaging heroine and she manages not to fall into the too-stupid-to-live trap too often – and I like the slightly antagonistic relationship she has with the local police because it’s not *just* about the fact that she keeps poking her nose into their investigations – although that is also a factor. Sidenote: some series are better at managing the amateur and the police relationships than others – some go too cozy (why aren’t they bothered this person is inserting themselves?) or some too antagonistic (which is just anxiety inducing for the reader and not what I come to cozy crime for).

Anyway, I have one proviso to mention with this series; and that’s that the final two books were written after a considerable gap and are… perhaps not one hundred percent consistent with some aspects of the earlier stories but that’s probably only something oyu would notice if you really did binge-read these from start to finish. As to why there was such a big gap – or rather why Charlaine Harris came back to the series, well I would point the finger at the success of the Hallmark Movie versions of the books – which again, are not entirely consistent with the books but are among the better cozy crime TV adaptations that I’ve watched (and I’ve watched a few) and you can pretty much just see them as a separate thing.

They should be fairly easy to get hold of on Kindle, and there were definitely fairly comprehensive paperback releases of the first eight in the series (because that’s how i read them – from the works or the library) and the kindles have new covers now which suggests there may have also been a release at some point.

Happy Weekend everyone!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 2 – October 8

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Did I get distracted midway through the week by rereading the first couple of Mrs Pargeter books? Absolutely. Do I regret it? Not really! I also had a bit of a weed of the to-read pile on Sunday evening unintentionally because everything I started I didn’t like. Still every little helps doesn’t it.

Read:

Deeds of the Disturber by Elizabeth Peters

Ministry of Unladylike Activity by Robin Stevens

The Body in the Blitz by Robin Stevens*

Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang

A Nice Class of Corpse by Simon Brett

Three Times a Countess by Tina Gaudoin

Mrs, Presumed Dead by Simon Brett

Started:

Sweet Mercies by Anne Booth

Still reading:

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Animal, Vegetable, Criminal by Mary Roach

One ebook and one preorder.

Bonus photo: I do love a good stat milestone, even if I am still annoyed that I missed a day 900 days ago…

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books

Books in the Wild: Autumn releases

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As I mentioned on Thursday, we’ve hit the start of the Christmas book season, so I’ve been around Big Foyles (aka the Charing Cross Road branch) to take a look at the first batch of offerings.

I’m going to call this the celebrity memoir selection, even if they’re not all celeb memoirs! Anyway as well as the Patrick Stewart, we have another from Miriam Margoyles, plus Nick Frost, Timothy West, Kerry Washington, Joan Collins and Doon Mackichan. I may have flicked through the picture sections of several of these!

More celebrity memoirs or memoir adjacent books – Bernie Taupin is doing the talk shows this week promoting his, which was a surprise to me. I read Dylan Jones book about the New Romantics, so I’m sort of tempted by the Velvet Underground book, but realistically I know it would take me years to get to it!

Next up: Serious Non Fiction. the Helen Fry is the only one I might be interested in, so I include it just to prove it exists!

I’m including this one because it has the V E Schwab in the wild – it’s very, very chunky!

And finally in Foyles, have the Tech bro books (with added Rory Stewart). I’ve been trying to read not one but two articles about the Michael Lewis book, so really must try and finish them this weekend to see if I need to add it to my Christmas list, or maybe wait until Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial is over!

One last treat: On the way back to where I was staying, I went past the Tottenham Court Road Waterstones, and though they’re the same owners, it useful to see what they’re putting in the window of a smaller store – as a hint about what you might be able to pick up in the smaller shops – or even at the airport! Lots of the same suspects here but with the addition of David Mitchell’s history book, a bit of Peter Kay and Paris Fury. I did see the Michael Palin in Foyles (and I saw him in person the other day too, presumably on his way to do an interview on the press tour) it’s just not in my pictures!

Have a great Saturday everyone.