Verity Reads Books (lots of them)
In which our heroine attempts to tame the to-read pile
New books read this month: 26*
Books from the to-read pile: 7
Ebooks read: 16
Books from the Library book pile: 2
Non-fiction books: 4
#ReadHarder categories completed: 1
Most read author: Nick Bryan an Ta-Nehisi Coates (2 each)
Books read this year: 262
Books bought: 6 (all ebooks)
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf: 529 (I don’t have copies of all of these!)
*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics (4 this month)
This week’s BotW is one I picked up as a Kindle Daily Deal a couple of weeks back: Anna and her Daughters by DE Stevenson. You may remember me waxing lyrical about my love for Miss Buncle and her book back in a #Recommendsday about Comfort reads a while back and this was the first non-Buncle book I’ve read by DE Stevenson.
The Plot: Anna’s husband has died and the family’s finances are in a mess. They’re going to have to sell the London house and move to somewhere smaller. Anna decides that she wants to go back to the area of Scotland that she grew up in and starts making plans. None of her three nearly grown up daughters are precisely keen on the idea, but only one, Jane, is prepared to make the best of it. Anna and the girls move – Helen and Rosalie are practically kicking and screaming – and start their new lives.
The story is told through Jane’s eyes – she’s the plain but clever sister, who would have gone to Oxford if it hadn’t been for the money problems. Helen is pretty, but selfish and used to getting her own way. Rosalie isn’t as pretty as Helen, but isn’t clever like Jane either and tends to drift along in Helen’s shadow. The combination of the three sisters makes for fascinating reading. Anna is remarkably clear sighted about her daughters in some ways – she sees their faults in a way that many parents do not. She tries to explain her attitude to Jane, who (justifiably) gets angry about the way that Helen treats people and the fact that she gets away with it.
As the book goes on we see the girls grow and change. Jane discovers a gift for writing, Rosalie chooses security and Helen continues to be Helen, regardless of the consequences. This book is very melodramatic in some ways but also feels like nothing much happens. I loved it. Especially when Miss Buncle gets a quick mention.
Anna and her Daughters is available in Kindle or you’ll have to go and find a secondhand paperback copy, which by the look of Amazon maybe expensive.
Happy Reading!
A busy week – but lots of train journeys. I read a book and a bit on the way to and the way back from meeting Sir Patrick Stewart (!) to make this video for work. Sorry not sorry!
Read:
Anna and Her Daughters by D E Stevenson
Bones to Pick by Linda Lovely
Ax to Grind by Tonya Kappes
Accidentally on Purpose by Jill Shalvis
The Midnight Peacock by Katherine Woodfine
Thrice the Brinded Cat hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley
Black Panther 1: A Nation Beneath Our Feet by Ta-Nehisi Coates et al
BuzzBooks 2017: Romance by various authors
Started:
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell
Still reading:
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
I spent two days painting and a day out watching the touring cars. You can tell…
Read:
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Wise Children by Angela Carter
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Rivers of London: Detective Stories 4 by Ben Aaronovitch et al
True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling
Started:
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
Still reading:
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
One ebook bought. So that’s ok. Sort of.
A slow start to the week, but actually in the end, I didn’t do too badly. Still a lot of books on the ongoing pile – but I’m blaming the building work for that!
Read:
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 2 by Ryan North
This Heart of Mine by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Hortense and the Shadow by Nathalie O’Hara
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Blood Will Stream by Nick Bryan
Started:
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Still reading:
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Two ebooks bought – but that’s it. So a bit better behaved from me!
Well, the combination of four nights away from home for work and then a lot of work on the house means not a lot read. As predicted really. What wasn’t predicted was the mass of books that I’ve got on the go at once because I’m so tired and my brain’s not working properly…
Read:
Nursing a Grudge by Diana Orgain
Rush Jobs by Nick Bryan
The Case of the Poisoned Chocolates by Anthony Berkley
Miss Seeton Quilts the Village by Hamilton Crane
Trapped in the Bargain Basement by Nick Bryan
Started:
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Two actual books bought and one ebook. Never mind.
New books read this month: 22*
Books from the to-read pile: 5
Ebooks read: 16
Books from the Library book pile: 1
Non-fiction books: 0 (but I have a couple on the go)
#ReadHarder categories completed: 1
Most read author: Susan Elizabeth Philips (4 in a massive binge)
Books read this year: 236
Books bought: 11 (8 ebooks, 4 books)
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf: 527 (I don’t have copies of all of these!)
*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics (4 this month)
Oh the chaos. The first phase of plastering is done. And as I went to the MotoGP on Saturday and Sunday (it was amazing) I didn’t get caught up on my reading at the weekend either. But I don’t care! Or at least I’m trying not to. Decorating starts next weekend, so expect more of the same next week. Hey ho.
Read:
Heaven, Texas by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrett
Holiday in the Hamptons by Sarah Morgan
Calling You Home by Daniela Sacerdoti
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North et al
Started:
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
No books bought though – although one preorder did turn up. But that’s already been accounted for in the list, so it doesn’t count this week!
I’ve got renovations and building work on the mind at the moment – I wonder why – and so this week’s #Recommendsday post is about books featuring renovations or building projects. Let’s start with some murder mysteries.
First, a classic: Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie. New Zealander Gwenda and her husband have just moved into her new house, but as she starts to modernise it, all she does is uncover the house’s history. As far as she knows, she’s never been to England before, so why does she have a creeping dread every time she uses the stairs – and why are all the things that she wants to do to the house, features that the house used to have? It’s creepier than many of the Miss Marple books – and although it’s very good, it’s not my favourite of the Miss Marple stories, but I think that might be partly because the copy that we had at home when I was little had a cover with a pair of knitting needles stuck in someone’s head.
The fourth book in the Aurora Teagarden series, The Julius House, has a big renovation project in it when Roe’s husband to be buys her a notorious house where a family disappeared from some years previously. Roe is an amateur sleuth, fascinated by real life murders she can’t resist trying to figure out what happened to them. Houses feature a a few of the books in this series: in book two, A Bone to Pick, Roe inherits a house from a friend, and in book 3, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, she has a go at selling real estate and keeps stumbling over corpses.
Not quite a renovation, but Karen Rose Smith’s Caprice de Luce series features a house stager who solves crime. I’ve only read one of them – but as house stagers are something we really don’t have in the UK, I found her job fascinating, even though I had a couple of quibbles with the mystery. I have more in the series on my Amazon watch list though, so I liked it enough to want more.
Now, on to romance…
I’ve mentioned Jill Shalvis a few times recently, but the first book in her Lucky Harbor series – Simply Irresistible – features a heroine who is trying to renovate and relauch her late mother’s guest house. It’s a romance – and her contractor is her love interest and it’s fun and romantic and everything that you would expect from a Jill Shalvis novel.
Among Katie Fforde’s novels, there are a couple that have renovation projects – including Practically Perfect, where the heroine is an interior designer who is doing up a tiny cottage to showcase her skills and slightly tangentially one of my all time favourites of hers, Stately Pursuits – where house sitting turns into an attempt to save the house from redevelopment by getting it into a state where it can pay its own way as a historic home (and venue) open to the public.
And a couple more to finish:
I read Nick Spalding’s Bricking It a couple of years ago and laughed consistently the whole way through. It features two siblings trying to renovate a house they’ve inherited from their grandmother, with the added complication of taking part in a reality TV show. It’s got a cast of hilarious secondary characters and I loved the live TV scene – even though my inner broadcasting nerd (hello day job!) wasn’t sure if it would actually have been able to go down the way it did. Writing this has made me wonder why I haven’t read more of Nick Spalding’s stuff since.
And down here and not with the cozies because I’ve mentioned this series recently already, but the sixth Meg Langslow mystery, Owls Well That Ends Well, sees Meg start the renovations to the big old Victorian house that is such a centre piece for the rest of the series.
If after all that you want more buildings in books, I wrote a #Recommendsday about books with amazing houses back at the end of May.
Send me your suggestions for more renovation books in the comments or on Twitter – I’m @WildeV.
Happy reading!
As suspected, real life intruded on reading time this week, so not a huge amount read compared to some weeks. Hey ho, I’m sure it’ll sort itself out in the wash.
Read:
Designer Dirty Laundry by Diane Vallere
The Adventuress by Tasha Alexander
The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
Intrigue in Capri by Ashley Weaver
Death Around the Bend by T E Kinsey
Started:
Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
One book and seven ebooks because there were a whole bunch of deals. Oops.
