It’s the start of Christmas release season, and the first big memoir of the festive calendar is out, and it’s from actor Patrick Stewart. Depending on your age he’s probably either Captain Picard or Professor X to you, but he’s had an incredible theatre career as well and this seems to be a full autobiography- from early days in acting (he trained with Brian Blessed!) through the RSC and off to Hollywood and back. This is the point where I mention that I was lucky enough to meet him a few years back while working on a piece about the RSC’s costume sale and he was a total delight. I had a flick through a copy in Foyles this week and the photo suggestion would suggest it’s heavy on the theatre career and lighter on the Star Trek despite the title, but I may be mistaken. He’s doing a tour to promote it – so expect to see him popping up on a chat show near you soon too.
Back in old Hollywood for this week’s BotW. It might have taken me a couple of weeks to actually get time to properly sit down and get into this, but once I did, it was worth it.
As I mentioned in my post about this on release day, this tells the story of Eileen Sullivan who made her way to Hollywood via Chicago as a 14 year old chaperoned by her grandmother where she became a silent movie star with the stage name Doreen O’Dare. When the reader meets her, it’s the 1960s and she’s on her way to a museum in Chicago where a dolls house she created is on display. The model then jumps backwards and forwards between Doreen’s early life and film career and her conversations with the museum curator about her dolls house which she built during the Depression to house her collection of miniatures and toured it around the country.
Doreen/Eileen and her dolls house are based on the real life silent movie star Colleen Moore – at least in terms of the Hollywood career, dolls house and some aspects of her later life. I didn’t know anything about Moore before I read the book – and was astonished when I went to read up afterwards how much of the story was based on truth. This is my first book by Kathleen Rooney and I enjoyed the writing style as well as the Old Hollywood setting. It’s hard to tell how you’d find this if you did know more about stars of silent movies, but given that I’m fairly into stuff like this and didn’t know anything about her – despite the fact that it turns out that she’s credited with popularising the bob (and in the pictures it’s basically Phryne’s bob) – I reckon people who do know about her may be in the minority!
So I would rate this as well worth a read if you liked Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and want more movie stars – even if this has less twists and secrets, and is set in a different time. It also has the added bonus of being in Kindle Unlimited, although my copy came via NetGalley .
Back at work after two lovely weeks off and normal service has been resumed. Well, sort of. This week is slightly heavy on the audiobooks of Agatha Christie (lots of post-holiday pottering to do and a need for something to listen to) and a little light on the actual book-reading but I’m reading some non fiction and that takes me longer. Onwards into October!
One book bought on Sunday in an excited rush amidst the new month kindle offers.
Bonus photo: the newest addition to my houseplantcollection – a spider plantbabyI got started myself.I’ve named her Cecily, to go with Cecil and Cecilia my two existing ones…
*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 knew this was coming didn’t you?? I can’t go on holiday and not tell you what I’ve spotted in the airport bookshops – especially since earlier in the summer I was speculating on what would be getting airport special editions! So happy Saturday everyone, here’s which books you should be able to get at the last minute before you step on a plane!
I’m starting with the fiction because I think that’s where most people start, and this is the airport exclusive section – aka the stuff you can only get in hardback elsewhere. And it had all the usual suspects I was expecting/hoping for. By which I mean I snagged the last copy of A Death in the Parish and got the new Richard Osman as well. Of the others Yellowface is the current buzzy book of the moment, obviously the Emily Henry Happy Place was the romance I was waiting for at the start of the summer and then it’s all the other big names you might expect – Jojo Moyes, Stephen King, Karin Slaughter, Jo Nesbo. Really Good Actually has come out in paperback this week, so I wouldn’t have bought that one in that format – even if I didn’t already have a hardback copy I haven’t got around to reading yet…
In general I would say that it felt like the store needed a bit of a restock/shelf replenishment, but the paperback selection was pretty much what I would have expected. I don’t know what happened to my photo of the top 12 books, but I can’t find it – but you can take it from me that it was the usual suspects that you would expect – you can see some of them on the edges – Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Lessons in Chemistry, some Coleen Hoover, Lee Child, the middle two Richard Osmans etc. This is actually the more interesting shelf – as well as Evelyn Hugo and more Colleen Hoover and some David Baldacci – there are a few things that you might not have read if you’re not a massive reader but that are outside some of the usual suspects. So there’s the Dan Jones Essex Boys historical fiction, Elena Armas who I’ve heard good things about, Rosie Walsh who writes women’s fiction thriller mysteries (and who used to write women’s fiction at the romance end of the scale as Lucy Robinson), Anthony Horowitz, Maggie O’Farrell and Jessie Burton.
And finally the airport non-fiction, where I’ve often found hardbacks that I couldn’t have justified buying otherwise (Traitor King I’m looking at you!), but this time was a bit disappointing – although if I hadn’t read Reach for the Stars I probably would have bought it – because it didn’t have enough history to tempt me, and much as I love F1, Drive to Survive and Guenter Steiner, I’m not interested in his book!
So, we’ve just passed the first anniversary of the death of Elizabeth II, and this week the third novel in S J Bennett’s Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series is finally published in the USA – so I’m taking the opportunity to remind you of my post about the series from November last year, which was when Murder Most Royal came out in the UK. When I wrote this series post, this was due to come out in the US in early 2024 – so there’s clearly been a delay on that, I’m not sure why – it could have been a knock on of the supply chain issues that pushed things like Sherry Thomas’s seventh Lady Sherlock book back from fall 2022 to early 2023, or maybe it was bumped back to avoid the Coronation? Anyway, if you’re in the UK, the paperback of this came out earlier in summer. The fourth book is due out here in February 2024 and is called A Death in Diamonds. It’s available to pre-order now, and judging by the blurb centres around a mystery set in 1957 – which if it is entirely set in 1957 will be a new departure for the series and might answer the question about what might happen with this series now the Queen is dead. I’m looking forward to reading it.
It would be remiss of me to let this week go by without mentioning that one of the books I flagged in my anticipated books of the second half 2023 has come out – V E Schwab’s The Fragile Threads of Power. As I mentioned in that previous post, this is a return to the Shades of Magic world, but in a new generation. That was an alternative Regency London that was one of three different worlds – Grey, Red and White London. Only magicians know as Antari could travel between the different realities, although a delicate balanced linked the three. There was (obviously) a climatic event at the end of the first trilogy, so I’m interested to see where it’s all gone now. I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually…
So as I mentioned in the Week in Books post, we’ve been on holiday, and although I’ve already told you about We Could Be So Good , The Lost Summers of Newport and The Mysterious Mr Badman, but I have a couple more reviews from my holiday week of reading. You’re welcome. And by a weird quirk, they’re all murder mysteries of various types. Who knew.
Lets start off with The Sea Breeze by S J T Riley. This came out last year and is a murder mystery set in 1950s Devon. A crime reporter at a London paper receives a call from an old friend after a boat is found abandoned in the harbour with one crew member dead and others missing. When he arrives in town, he finds his friend is missing and the locals are closing ranks against him. But that’s not going to stop him investigating. This throws you in without a lot of explanation and the pacing is a little spotty at times, but it’s a pretty well-executed murder mystery that will appeal to you if you like things like the BLCC titles that are set at sea (or near the sea).
Next up is A Death in the Parish, which is the second historical mystery from Reverend Richard Coles. I said that I would get to it didn’t I! I read the first Canon Clement book last year and I enjoyed that one, but this one definitely feels like he’s settling into writing cozy historical crime books. He’s established his late-1980s rural set up in the first one and in this one he gets to flesh out the characters and the world and show the aftermath of the events of the first one. And if you haven’t read the first one, this one will spoil the murderer in that – so that’s worth bearing in mind if you’re thinking of going in fresh to the series with this. But the mystery is good – and the clash between Daniel’s style of ministry and that of the vicar in the neighbouring parish is good, especially if you have ever been involved in a parish church and the various different factions that you get in one. There is a third one coming – and I thought I knew where some of the running strands were heading towards the end of the book, only for it to surprise me at the last so I’m looking forward to seeing where this is going to go next.
And finally and less successfully my latest attempt to try and find another mystery-thriller type series in the vein of things like Janet Evanovich’s Steph Plum or Carl Hiassen was Cultured by D P Lyle – which mentions both of those authors in its blurn. This is the sixth in a series (but it’s very clear that you can read them standalone) about a retired professional baseball player whose PI father gets him involved in investigations. In Cultured, he’s asked to try and infiltrate a self-improvement programme by an anxious mum after her daughter who was working there disappears. Is The Lindemann Method a scam? A Cult? A front for something else? Jake and his girlfriend Nicole are going to find out. This had all the elements that I wanted in the blurb, but just didn’t really work for me. It doesn’t really have the humour of Evanovich or Hiassen and Jake doesn’t have enough personality to carry a book. Add to that a lot of focus on how attractive the various women are, some unexpected changes of Point of View and pacing that means it doesn’t quite flow and it didn’t really work for me. Never mind.
That’s your lot for today, but there are a couple more things that I read on holiday that I suspect will pop up on here in the future – but I’m going to leave you guessing as to what they are!
On the same afternoon as I wandered into Waterstones Piccadilly, I also had a very nice half hour wandering Hatchards down the street, and today I present to you the fruit of my trip. Hatchards has been a bookshop since the last years of the eighteenth century and is London’s oldest bookshop. If you’re a historical romance reader, you’ll be familiar with the name as bookish heroines are always dropping in there to buy books. Sadly it does not have a romance section, but it does have some other stuff going for it!
It won’t be there any more, because the auction is over but I couldn’t not mention the Freddie Mercury window that they had – as they were selling the auction catalogue book (and may well have been the only place to get it other than Sothebys). Other than that the downstairs is pretty much what you would expect from a long established bookshop – lots of serious fiction and non-fiction, which as you know is not my thing, so I’m not going to bother you with pictures of that. What I am going to show you is their crime section – which while not quite as big as the Waterstone’s Piccadilly one (which takes up the other half of the big front room that the romance section is in) but it is one of the biggest I’ve seen in central London (much bigger than Foyles Charing Cross Road) AND has the added bonus of also having some collectable second hand books as well as the new stuff.
I’m starting with this picture because I know most shops have tables of books, but most of them don’t have antique-looking dining tables full of books – if i was to guess how they were picking stuff to go on here I would say it’s the accessible end of detective, but with some wildcards thrown in . I was pretty pleased with how much of this I had read to be honest – including (but not limited to) The Christie Affair, The Maid, The Grantchester series, The Eyre Affair, The Mary Russell Mysteries, Death Goes on Skis, the Richard Coles and the Richard Osman.
This is the start of the alphabet – it goes around from your left as you walk in from the front – and as you can see it’s got a good selection of the classics you’ve heard of – like Margery Allingham’s Campion series, the long running cozy series like M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin and Hamish MacBeth, with the thrillers that are too scary for me and everything in between. And on the end you can see the expensive collectible stuff…
And you’ve got the same mix at the end of the alphabet – including the biggest selections of Maisie Dobbs paperbacks that I’ve recently seen, most of the Nicola Upson Josephine Tey mysteries, some Patricia Wentworths and The Three Dahlias along with a Jo Nesbo that’s clearlyin the wrong place!
As well as being in the right place in the alphabet so to speak in the crime room, there’s more British Library Crime Classics in the classic fiction section at the front of the first floor (you can see the Wodehouse and the Agatha Christie in the background) – including a whole bunch that I’ve written about – including Murder of a Lady, Death of a Bookseller, the Cheltenham Square Murder, These Names Mean Clues and more.
I just wanted to throw this in too – it’s the historical fiction selection – which has everything from Georgette Heyer, through the C J Sansom Tudor murder mysteries and the Andrew Taylor Restoration ones, with all the literary fiction bits in between!
And finally, they’ve also got a pretty good selection of the pretty Terry Pratchett Hardbacks that I’m not meant to be buying but find very hard to resist…
This week’s BotW is one of the books that I picked up on my buying spree while writing last week’s Kindle Offers and that I couldn’t help but read pretty much straightaway (within a week counts as straightaway for me) because it has a pretty cover and it was sitting there on my Kindle and Cat Sebastian is just so reliably good.
This is set in the world of newspapers in New York in the late 1950s. Nick is from the rough end of Brooklyn and has gone into journalism despite the disapproval of his family. Andy’s dad owns the paper and has sent him to work in the newsroom as part of the process of finding out how the business works. The two of them shouldn’t get on, and yet they do and soon they’re friends. Except that Nick really wishes it wasn’t just friends, but he knows that that’s all that’s possible. Isn’t it?
This is a very sweet slow burn love story. But its also low on angst and despite the 1950s setting you don’t need to worry too much about Bad Things Happening to characters because they’re gay. And you can argue about whether or not that is realistic or not, but I chose to believe that happy endings were possible and I think Cat Sebastian has done a really good job of figuring out a scenario where Nick and Alex can have one. I spent most of my time reading this with a big soppy smile on my face and really that’s what I needed. It’s sweet and romantic and it has a couple at the centre of it who get each other and want to make each others lives better in little ways and big ones. They’re both just happier when the other person is around them, preferably around them and happy. And there’s a really cute bit with a Cat. Perfect reading when you need a happy ending to make your day better.
I can see some people on Goodreads complaining about the fact that it’s written in the third person present, but honestly that bothered me so little that I didn’t even notice before I saw the reviews mentioning it. But to be honest, it’s very rare that the Point of View of a book bothers me – unless it’s second person, or the POV is inconsistent in some way. I can’t help that I’m not fussy like that!
As I mentioned at the top, I bought my copy on Kindle because it’s on offer at the moment for 99p, and the good news is it’s on offer on Kobo too. You’re welcome. I’m super pleased it’s on offer at the moment because it only came out in June and my experience with Cat Sebastian is that it’s unusual for her books to be at discount this quickly. So snap it up while you can and thank me later.
Something of an actual book reading spree I have to say. Partly because I got given a few Girls Own books at the weekend and they were sitting right in my eye line on the sofa and partly because the pile is getting wildly out of control. I should probably do a post about it but I’m not sure I can bring myself to contemplate it. Anyway, a real mixed bag of reading.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 