Another strange week for me. I’m not entirely sure why, but long days and commuter trains may again have something to do with my inability to settle down to a book as well as usual. In the traditional one post two days late or two posts a day late each, the latter option has won – and January Stats will be tomorrow with Book of the Week on Wednesday.
Read:
My American Duchess by Eloisa James
Freeze my Margarita by Lauren Henderson
Bettany’s on the Home Front by Helen Barber
The Marble Collector by Cecilia Ahern
Rivers of London: Body Work 1 by Ben Aaronovich, Andrew Cartmel and Lee Sullivan
Mystery of the Skeleton Key by Bernard Capes
Started:
The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin
Whispers Underground by Ben Aaranovich
Still reading:
The Edge of the Fall by Kate Williams
Sisters on Bread Street by Frances Brody
Barbara the Slut and Other People by Lauren Holmes
One e-book comic bought – and a pre-ordered novella arrived. I’m still clutching my book tokens and trying to resist the urge to spend!
A fit of indecision and some standing only train journeys are to blame for the somewhat shorter than usual list. I’ve started a few good books though and adopted a short stories by the bed policy. I’ll keep you posted!
Read:
London Rain by Nicola Upson
Death with an Ocean View by Nora Charles
Princes at War by Deborah Cadbury
Queen Lucia by E F Benson
Started:
Sisters on Bread Street by Frances Brody
The Marble Collector by Cecilia Ahern
Barbara the Slut and Other People by Lauren Holmes
My American Duchess by Eloisa James
Still reading:
Freeze my Margarita by Lauren Henderson
The Edge of the Fall by Kate Williams
I don’t think I bought any books this week – but I did get a book token as a belated gift, so a spree may be imminent!
So, it was my birthday last week and we went to Barcelona to celebrate for a few days. Thus there was reading time on flights, in departure lounges, late at night etc. So a fun week’s reading.
Read:
My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
The Girl from the Opera House by Nancy Carson
Geek Drama by Holly Smale
Far in the Wilds by Deanna Raybourn
Black Rubber Dress by Lauren Henderson
The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells by Virginia MacGregor
Charlotte Bronte’s Secret Lover by Jolien Janzing
Stars over Sunset Boulevard by Susan Meissner
Lady of Devices by Shelley Adina
Started:
Death with an Ocean View by Nora Charles
Freeze my Margarita by Lauren Henderson
Still reading:
Princes at War by Deborah Cadbury
The Edge of the Fall by Kate Williams
Queen Lucia by E F Benson
I did have a bit of a spending spree on books though (twice) but it’s my birthday so I’m allowed – right?!
I think I have a problem with time travel romances. I love time-slip novels – like Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series – which have two parallel narratives set in different times. I love straight historicals. But I can’t think of a time travel romance – or even time travelling novel that I loved – unless you’re including Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (a couple of hours on the Time turner doesn’t count in my book) or the Thursday Next Series (which is more dimension jumping than time travel). And after reading a time-traveller the other week, I started to wonder why.
Fundamentally, I think that I find it very hard to believe there’ll be a happy outcome – and that’s what you want in romances – because one is either going to have to go back to their own time and be miserable, or one is going to have to stay where they are, and I never believe that that will continue to be happy past the last page. After all, one member of the duo is living out of their time – either with a massive amount of knowledge about the future and the advances there are or with a massive gap in their knowledge of the modern world – and on top of that, everyone they ever knew/loved is either dead or not yet born and thus they’ll never see them again. I text my sister daily, and speak to my mum at least twice a week – and can’t imagine voluntarily chosing to put myself out of contact with them permenantly – and leave them wondering what has happened to me.
And that’s before you get to the fact that I’ve watched a lot of Scifi and fantasy TV over the years – from Star Trek to Crime Traveller and most of the variants in between – and have had it drilled into me that when you’re messing around in the past it’s very easy to change the timeline of the future and destroy the world. And most books just ignore The Implications and don’t mention it or skim over it somehow.
Am I over thinking this? Probably. But that’s the kind of person I am. I once spent 20 minutes crying on my Grandma’s lap because I’d just realised that Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria’s grandson – and wouldn’t she have been so upset if she’d realised he’d started a war against his grandma’s country. Yes. I was a strange 8 year old. But that gives you a clue as to how my mind works.
So in the spirit of the New Year, does anyone have any really good time travel recommendations for me? Books that I won’t buy and then ignore in favour of everything else ever because I’m convinced I’m going to hate them? Because I got a copy of the first Outlander 18 months ago because everyone else was raving about it – and I still haven’t read it. I took it on holiday with us back in 2014 as one of my paperbacks – and The Boy started reading it instead of me (he never takes enough books with him, but that’s another story) and he didn’t finish it either. It sat under our coffee table for another year after that.
Not a huge list this week – but The Hourglass Factory is 500 pages long – and it’s worth it. Busy week at work too and quick trains both ways several days (often on the way home in rush hour too) reducing the reading time.
Read:
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
The Night in Question by Laurie Graham
The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester
The Chalet School and Rosalie by Elinor M Brent Dyer
The Chase by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg
Started:
My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
The Edge of the Fall by Kate Williams
Queen Lucia by E F Benson
Still reading:
Princes at War by Deborah Cadbury
One short story pre-ordered – but I don’t think I’ve actually bought a book so far this year (the Deanna Raybourn spree was before New Year). I’m sure that will change though…
You may notice a theme in this week’s reading. Yes I went all out for the end of the Pink Carnation series and read another Lauren Willig I had on the kindle as well. And then while writing about Deanna Raybourn in my 2015 Obsessions post I found that a the book sale gods were smiling on me, and I could reading the rest of the Lady Julia Books safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t get left on a cliff hanger! I’m still trying to ration myself on the new Laurie Graham – by which I mean only letting myself read a bit more every few days to try and stop myself from bingeing. So far it’s working.
Read:
The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla by Lauren Willig
The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig
Whisper of Jasmine by Deanna Raybourn
The Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig
The Dark Enquiry by Deanna Raybourn
Bleakly Hall by Elaine di Rollo
Started:
n/a
Still reading:
The Night in Question by Laurie Graham
Princes at War by Deborah Cadbury
Oh dear. Massive Deanna Raybourn spending spree in the Kindle sale (as mentioned in my 2015 Obsessions post), then there was the only Hellions of Halsted Hall book I haven’t read on offer for 99p. How could I resist.
On Good Reads to-reads shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 425
New books read this month: 36*
Books from the Library Book pile: 1
Books from the to-read pile: 13
Ebooks read: 21
Most read author: I’m giving it to Lauren Willig – because I’ve read 2 of her novels and half of a third – as opposed to Debbie Macomber’s 2 books or Julia Williams’s one book and 3 (very) short stories.
Books read this year: 368
Books bought: 15 – all ebooks except 1
Loads of reading done this month – thank you week of tonsillitis – and I managed to resist the urge to buy books until the post-Christmas ebook sales kicked in. As far as the New Year’s Resolutions a library books and a non-fiction started – but not finished.
And thus the year comes to an end. I’ll be doing a more considered look at my reading stats over the last year in a few days – in the meantime, check out my post on my 2015 Obsessions!
*Includes some short stories/novellas (10 this month)
As you may have noticed, I am a total binge reader when I discover an author I like and promptly buy up their back catalogue (or borrow it from the library) to fulfill my desperate craving for another fix. This does not help the state of the to-read pile or my bank balance and can make me look a little unhinged. So here – for your amusement – are my big obsessions of 2015 and a few examples of the ridiculous lengths I’ve gone to…
Janet Evanovich
Can it really be true that I only read my first Janet Evanovich novel in April? Goodreads assures me that it is so and thus it must be. Since my first taste (Wicked Business), I’ve read 18 Stephanie Plums – and all four between the numbers fill-ins, the other two Wicked books, two Full books, two Fox and O’Hares and a standalone romance. So that’s 30 Janet Evanovich novels in less than nine months. This is why people think I’ve got a bit of a book problem.
I’ve read so much Janet Evanovich this year, I’ve a whole shelf of her books – non-matching of course!
Deanna Raybourn
I read Silent in the Grave back in January – and since then I’ve read three more of the Lady Julia series – with a fourth waiting for me on the shelf. And the only reason that that has been waiting is because the price of the next one has been so expensive. And ditto her standalone novels. But in a piece of glorious serendipity, they’re all on offer on Amazon Kindle at the moment – so last night I spent just under £20 on 8 (!) books and novellas – buying up the rest of Lady Julia, the first Veronica Speedwell and two standalones and their prequel novellas. Now that is what I call obsession…
Only four of my Deanna Raybourn’s are here – Silent in the Grave is on loan to Little Sis!
Historical Romance
My love of historical romance has continued this year. In fact it’s turned into more of a quest – to find more authors who write my favourite sort of smart, witty, sexy romance novels. Because this is the problem with being a binge reader. You find someone that you like, you binge on their back catalogue and then you have to start following their publishing schedule like everyone else does – so you might have to wait a year before you can get another fix from them. So you need another author to read. In 2015 I’ve read some really good, some really bad and a lot of in between. Among the good were Sabrina Jeffries, Kerrigan Byrne, Johanna Shupe and Courtney Milan. I’m not going to mention the bad! There’s loads more I want to read – listening to the DBSA podcast each week will do that to you – but the prices of those sort of American-published romances are often really quite high over here – and fall into the same buying rules as the cozy crimes. So often I play roulette with NetGalley – requesting new releases there and hoping I like them. Sometimes it pays off – the aforementioned Byrne and Shupe for example – and sometimes it doesn’t…
Cozy Crime
I’ve always had a soft spot for the “lighter” end of the crime market, but I’ve really been rattling through various cozy murder mysteries this year. I’m still reading Donna Andrews (three of them this year) – but now I’m closer to the end of the series the books have got more expensive to buy and I have rules about what I’ll spend on a book that will only take me a couple of hours to read. So as a consequence my net has spread wider. Jenn McKinlay’s become firm favourite and there’s a bunch of other series I’ve dipped into too (again thanks to NetGalley) – to varying success. I feel more coming on in 2016.
All my Donna Andrews bar one are out on loan, but the McKinlay collection is growing!
Historical Crime
This is often the meeting of two of my other obsessions – Cozy crime and Historical romance. The Daisy Dalrymple and Phryne Fisher series were two of my discoveries of 2014 – and now I’ve read all of them, I’ve been searching for more – and not just those set in the 1920s and 1930s. That’s how I discovered Deanna Raybourn and started that obsession. But as well as Lady Julia, there’s Tasha Alexander’s Lady Emily and James Runcie’s Sidney Chambers. And then there’s the ones which are more crime-y and less romance – like Catriona McPherson’s Dandy Gilver, Carola Dunn’s Eleanor Trewynn. And no romance at all – like Flavia de Luce (because she’s a child!). So many good books.
I thought the light shining behind them was a nice touch…
So there you are. My five big obsessions of the year. Of course some would argue that books in general are my biggest obsession of them all. And they’d be right. There’s nothing like sitting down with a book and being transported to another world to make life seem better. You can live so many different lives and visit so many different places by reading a book. And then there’s the friends that you can make – real people I mean – because of books and the book community. The ones that you chat to on Twitter, the ones you meet at author events and who turn into proper friends and everything in between. Long may my book obsession continue.
Happy 2016 everyone – and thank you for reading my bookish wafflings. I hope you’ve enjoyed them – and I’m sure that there’s more where they came from.
More Christmas-y reading and a few tie-in short stories for last week’s Make a Christmas Wish. I’m trying to make the Laurie Graham last – I love her books so much and I know there’s going to be a longer wait than usual for her next one, so against all my usual behaviour I’m trying to pace myself!
Read:
A Wicked Way to Win an Earl by Anna Bradley
Four Weddings and a White Christmas by Jenny Oliver
My Christmas Wish by Julia Williams
Dad’s Christmas Wish by Julia Williams
Granny’s Christmas Wish by Julia Williams
Anything for You by Kristan Higgins
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Started:
Princes at War by Deborah Cadbury
Still reading:
The Night in Question by Laurie Graham
No books bought, but several received as gifts – and they were all ones that I had asked for so that’s excellent news. I’m going to try to continue to restrain myself, although if I see some good bargains I may not be able to!
Well this is what a week of Tonsillitis will do for the to-read pile! And a reasonable mix of actual books and ebooks too. I finally called time on Lair of Dreams this week – I tried again to get into it and I couldn’t. It’s been lingering way too long, so I’ve reluctantly given up on it.
Read:
Paint the Town Dead by Sybil Johnson
Bricking It by Nick Spalding
A Talent for Trickery by Alyssa Johnson
311 Pelican Court by Debbie Macomber
Agatha Raisin and the Blood of an Englishman by MC Beaton
74 Seaside Avenue by Debbie Macomber
Snowed in for Christmas by Clare Sandy
Christmas at Lilac Cottage by Holly Martin
The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham
Make a Christmas Wish by Julia Williams
A Christmas in Disguise by Katie Fforde
Started:
The Night in Question by Laurie Graham
A Wicked Way to Win an Earl by Anna Bradley
Still reading:
n/a
I managed to control myself and no books were ordered from my sickbed. Which is impressive. I did do some shopping – but it wasn’t for me!
