Tag: books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: March 12 – March 18

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Ok, so it might not look like the long-runners shelf has improved much this week, it really has – I’ve done some serious time on the non-fiction entries and I’m hoping to get some more done this week coming.  I will sort this out!

Read:

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

A Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferris

Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

Full Speed by Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes

Started:

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club by Sophie Green

Blame it on the Duke by Leonora Bell

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

If I didn’t get many long-runners finished, I didn’t buy any books either.  Small victories!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: March 5 – March 11

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It’s been a bit of a week.  And the Still Reading list grows ever longer.  I really must do better, but weekend working doesn’t lend itself to reading time.

Read:

Hopjoy was Here by Colin Watson

First Kiss of Spring by Emily March

Rivers of London: Cry Fox 4 by Ben Aaronovitch et al

Stiff Competition by Micah Persell

Where There’s Smoke by Peter Murphy

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

Started:

Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

A couple of ebooks bought – there were some good deals and I was at work at the weekend, it leads to book buying…

Authors I love, Book of the Week, new releases, women's fiction

Book of the Week: The House of Hopes and Dreams

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In a change from recent form, it’s not a crime pick this week – but perhaps the pick won’t be a surprise to regular readers with an eye on the new release lists. I’m a long-time Trisha Ashley fan, and she has a new novel out this week and I was lucky enough to have an advance copy sent to me by the publishers. If you follow me on Litsy (I’m @Verity there) you’ll have seen me get excited about this when it arrived and it’s taken a lot of willpower to save it until close to release to read it.

Proof copy of The House of Hopes and Dreams

The House of Hope and Dreams follows Carey and Angel, who’ve been friends since art college, although life has taken them in slightly different directions. At the start of the novel TV interior designer Carey is in hospital recovering after nearly losing his leg after being knocked off his bike. He’s been dumped from his show, but when a lawyer arrives to tell him that he’s inherited a minor historic house in Lancashire it looks like he may have a new project. Angel’s life had been turned upside down after the death of her partner – who she’d been working with at his stained glass company for more than a decade. She’s lost her job and her home, but luckily her skills are exactly what her old friend is looking for and there’s space for her at Mossby. Soon Angel is setting up a workshop so she can repair Mossby’s unique windows and Carey is working on a new TV series about the renovation of the house and the secrets that it’s hiding. But how long will it take the two of them to work out that there’s more to their relationship than just friendship?

If you were to ask me about my book catnip, high on the list are old houses, competency porn (aka heroines who are really good at what they do) and friends to lovers stories, so straight away this ticks a lot of boxes for me. And this is back in a corner of Lancashire that has a lot of old friends from previous visits to TrishaWorld – Carey’s house is just up the road from Middlemoss so you get a few glimpses at old friends from novels gone by. This is a little sadder in the backstory and less funny than some of her other books, but I relaxed happily back into it and although I always had a very fair idea where everything was going, it was an enjoyable ride to get there.

If you’re very familiar with Ashley’s books (and I speak as someone who has read everything she’s published except her historical novel) then this may feel a bit like a Greatest Hits album – which I found a bit of a mixed blessing. But I think there’s a lot here for newer fans to love, especially people who’ve only started reading her in her last couple of novels and haven’t come across this part of her imaginary corner of England before. And they’ll be able to go away and discover more of it with the side characters in this, which in turn may lead them to my absolute favour of Ashley’s novels, A Winter’s Tale (another story about an old house with secrets) .

The House of Hopes and Dreams is out on Thursday – you should be able to find it in supermarkets (that’s where I picked up my first Trisha) and bookshops, or if you can’t wait here are the preorder links for Amazon and Kindle. I’ll be buying one too – because my preview copy doesn’t have the recipes in the back!

if you want to go and read some of my previous ramblings about Trisha’s world, try here, here and here.

Happy reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 26 – March 4

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The ongoing list seems to be getting longer rather than shorter – despite all my best efforts.  I think it’s because I’ve got so many non-fiction books on there and they take me longer to read than the lighter fiction does – and I’ve often got them as hardbacks, which means I don’t take them to work with me.

Read:

The New Girl and Nancy by Dorita Fairley Bruce

Murder on the Pilgrims Way by Julie Wassmer

Make Me Want by Katee Robert

On the Edge of Scandal by Tamsen Parker

On the Brink of Passion by Tamsen Parker

Maybe This Time by Nicole McLaughlin

The House of Hopes and Dreams by Trisha Ashley

A Killing in C Sharp by Alexia Gordon

A Country Escape by Katie Fforde

Started:

Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

One ebook bought.  That’s it. Progress!

books, stats

February Stats

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New books read this month: 28*

Books from the to-read pile: 11

Ebooks read: 16

Books from the Library book pile: 1

Non-fiction books: 3

#ReadHarder categories completed: 3

Pop Sugar categories completed: 3

Most read author: Dorita Fairley Bruce, Tamsen Parker and Colin Watson (2 books each)

Books read this year: 62

Books bought: 9 ebooks and 5 books

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf: 521 (I don’t have copies of all of these!)

*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics (0 this month)

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 19 – February 25

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Actually a better week’s reading than I was expecting  – the Deborah Cadbury was 400 pages long so for a while there wasn’t a lot on this list at all, but in the end it all came together when I finished off a few books that had been lingering on the Goodreads shelf.

Read:

The Pajama Frame by Diane Vallere

Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking by Deborah Cadbury

Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh

England Expects by Sara Sheridan

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens

Bright Young Things by Alison Maloney

Started:

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

The New Girl and Nancy by Dorita Fairley Bruce

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

Two ebooks bought – and one book acquired at an author teaparty on Sunday.  So not bad at all.

Adventure, Book of the Week, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

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There were a few options for this week’s BotW pick, but I have plans for some of them, but also this was my favourite book that I read last week and makes a nice companion or compliment to last week’s choice. Last week I picked A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia, which was a book set in the interwar period but written now, this week it’s The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith, which is a genuine forgotten Golden Age mystery. It was also another book from the massive unread pile on my Kindle and I’m so pleased I impulse bought it at some point in the distant past.

The cover of The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

Patrica Wentworth’s The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith was originally published in 1923 and tells the story of a young woman who is swept into an adventure after a chance meeting when she’s down on her luck, with nowhere to stay and be t to no money. In one of those astonishing coincidences that you find in some books, it transpires that a Jane has a cousin who is practically her double and who is being held hostage by her father and a shadowy group that he is associated with. The cousin has a fiancé who is desperate to elope with her and run off to foreign climes and Jane ends up switching places with Renata and taking over her identity. What follows is a breathless espionage adventure thriller with a dash of romance and a dollop of murder.

It rattles along at a breathless pace that doesn’t really give you a chance to notice the bonkersness until you’ve finished and stop to think. I raced through it once I actually sat down properly to read it and then went off to trawl Kindle for more books by Patricia Wentworth in my budget. A certain amount of suspension of belief is necessary – there are anarchists and secret passages and shadowy forces at work as well as the lookalike cousins – but you liked The 39 Steps, or the more adventure-y Albert Campion novels, then you need to read this.

The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith is included in Kindle Unlimited if you’re part of that scheme, or you can buy it on Kindle or as a paperback. At time of writing it’s £1.99 on Kindle, but I’m fairly sure I picked it up for free, so it might be worth adding to your watch list to see if the price drops.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 12 – February 18

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I’m really trying to get a handle on the long-running backlog in the Still Reading list – but it’s taking some time, because there’s chunky hardback non-fiction in there and literary prize winners.  I will get there in the end though.  Some of the books on the read list this week have been marked as being in the process of being read on my Goodreads account for some time – so I’m taking that as a partial win on that front.

Read:

Dimsie Among the Prefects by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher

The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith by Patricia Wentworth

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

The Gift of a Family by Sarah Morgan

Fire on the Ice by Tamsen Parker

The Chimneys of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

Bump in the Night by Colin Watson

Started:

England Expects by Sara Sheridan

Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens

Three actual books and two ebooks bought…

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 5 – February 11

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A strange week of reading all in all.  I finished a bunch of books that I had started the previous week, but then started a load more that I didn’t manage to finish – either because of work and real life commitments or because I was so far into them they broke my rules about not taking books with less than 100 pages to go to work with me.  Oh and I’m trying to pace myself and make A Spoonful of Murder last, because otherwise I’ve got a *really* long wait for the next Wells and Wong book!

Read:

The Husband List by Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly

The Song of the Abbey by Elsie J Oxenham

A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia by Clara Benson

The Lark by E Nesbit

Medal Up by Nicole Flockton and Fiona M Marsden

Started:

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens

Dimsie Among the Prefects by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

Five ebooks (all on sale) bought on Sunday in a moment of weak willpower related to working all weekend!

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Duke of Pleasure

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I was still suffering from the after effects of my virus from hell last week, so not a lot of reading got done – as you can see from yesterday’s Week in Books post.  But luckily one of the books that I did finish hit the spot.  My brain is still a bit fried and over tired, so apologies that this post is going to be shorter than usual.

Copy of Duke of Pleasure

Duke of Pleasure is the eleventh book in the Maiden Lane series – but only the second one of them that I’ve read.  The Maiden Lane series – or at least the ones of them that I’ve read – are set in the early to mid eighteenth century (around the 1730s) and have characters from the ton mixing it with the less fortunate in the East End and the Stews.  Duke of Pleasure sees Hugh Fitzroy, the titular Duke (of Kyle) on an errand from the government to break up a secret society known as the Lords of Chaos.  When Hugh is ambushed in an alley, he’s helped out of trouble by the legendary Ghost of St Giles – who turns out to be a woman.  Alf has survived on the streets by disguising herself as a man.  During the day she’s a street urchin, dealing in information, but by night she’s a masked vigilante flitting across the rooftops.  When Hugh hires Alf to work for him, how long with Alf be able to maintain his disguise as his two worlds collide?

Regular readers to my posts about romance will be aware that one of my favourite historical romance tropes is people in diguise.  Usually it’s women dressed as men – Twelfth Night, Heyer’s These Old Shades – ocassionally it’s the other way around – Heyer’s Maskeraders – but really, I’ll read anything about people in disguise.  And this scratched that itch nicely for me.  It’s a bit overblown at times – a bastard son of the king working as a spy can have that effect – but I just couldn’t put it down.  Alf is a great character and I liked Hugh’s complicated family and backstory.  It all wrapped up very quickly in the end, but the set up for the next book was intriguing.  I got this one from the library – I can only hope they’ve got a few more!

You should be able to get hold of this from your preferred purveyor of romantic fiction – Amazon have it in Kindle and paperback – but I suspect you may have to have a rummage for it in the bookshops.

Happy reading!