After the disappointment of the airport the other week, I was in Waterstones this week and finally there are some new books starting to appear – or at least books I hadn’t seen before…
Firstly there’s a new group biography from Paula Byrne. I haven’t read much Thomas Hardy – although I have visited some of his houses – but I’ve read and liked several of her previous books like The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, Kick, and Mad World so it maybe that I end up picking this up at some point too.
The new Kiley Reid is also out now too. Such a Fun Age was such a sensation I’m interested to see how Come and Get It does – the cover is very pretty but it did strike me how different it is from that previous one.
I don’t think this is that new (last summer for the hardback I think) but it is in a time period that I’m interested in – this is about a former cinema director who travels across Europe with his family who include a member of Oswald Mosley’s party and a communist. I’ll have to do a bit more research before I read it because it has the potential to be grim as anything but I’m quite interested.
Speaking of Oswald Mosley adjacent fiction – I hadn’t realised Jessica Fellowes’ Mitford mystery series was still going, but apparently it is and this is the final one. I keep meaning to go back and give these another try, but the tbr pile is so very huge it just hasn’t happened yet…
And finally there was a big old display of the new Sarah J Maas – freshly released that day and which Gower Street had opened at midnight for which is why I mention it because it gave me such vivid flashbacks to my younger years!
After the disappointment of the airport last week, I have actually spotted some of the Christmas releases in the wild, so here we are with this Saturday’s post!
So to start with, thank you Sainsbury’s for being super useful, and not just for decaf coffee for my mum and dad. Their chart selection has a lot of those Christmas new releases if you’re thinking about gift buying and getting some loyalty points to help you in January! Obviously the Britney Spears memoir has had huge amounts of talk, and I’ve already mentioned the Patrick Stewart book too, but they’ve also got Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new book, Dawn French’s tour tie in, Billy Connelly and one I’ve been keeping an eye out for, Phillippa Gregory’s non fiction book about women in history. And then there’s the fiction options, with the latest batch of celebrity novels and some big names like Sophie Kinsella and Sarah Morgan.
Next acrosswe have some more of the Christmas releases – I saw Michael Palin at work the other week while he was doing the promotional trail for his book Great Uncle Harry, and David Mitchell has done a bunch of the talk shows for his book about the monarchy as has Miriam Margolyes about her latest memoir. We also have a sighting in the wild of the new V E Schwab. Then there’s the usual batch of cook books, the traditional Alan Partridge book and Clare Balding. I’ve also read a bunch of Dan Jones’s history books but haven’t read any of his historical fiction yet – Wolves of Winter of the second in what going to be a trilogy – if you’re in the US, this second one doesn’t come out where you are until January.
Next up, more cook books, plus Strictly start Johannes Radebe’s memoir and buzzy autumn release Yellowface, which I have read and didn’t love but I know lots of people who have really entered it. Plus the usual batch of best seller authors like John Grisham and Jo Nesbo. Then there’s an Anthony Horowitz James Bond and Lessons in Chemistry – the adaptation of which has just dropped on Apple TV!
The next shelf was a bit patchy, so I’m skipping it, but you can see the interesting bits in the edges of this photo and the last one – so Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and the S J Parris on the last picture and the Mary Berry baking book on this one! Finally, right down the end her we have some Colleen Hoover (because is it even a book selection without her at the moment!) plus a few more of the high selling, long running favourites. And then there’s the kids books obviously!
And that’s your lot for today, hourly is been at least somewhat useful as you plan your Christmas book purchasing – and don’t worry, I’ll have some recommendations coming up in the next few woods to!
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!
Do you remember how excited I got only a few weeks ago about the romance section at Waterstones Piccadilly? Well I went in this week to try and find the new Alexis Hall in the wild and guess what… it had gone! They’ve reorganised it all already and now it’s smaller (I think) and at the back. The whole of that front section is now Crime and Thriller. I have no words but I do have a few pictures.
I say it’s smaller but I’m not actually sure, it just felt more cramped. The photo above is the main section and then on the left there is a Pride section – which is a mix of fiction and non fiction LGTBQIA+ books – including some Alexis Hall but not the one I was looking for!
Then the main romance bit is to the right. I don’t think it was properly set up – there were still gaps all over place on shelves elsewhere on the floor and trolleys of books too as you can see in the picture below.
I only had about ten minutes to wander around – so I couldn’t properly dig into what had gone awol, but I thought I should probably do an update as I’d been so excited about the old configuration…
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!
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!
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…
A year ago on Friday coming, I went for a wander around Waterstones Piccadilly on my way down the the Mall to look at the tributes to the Queen. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was starting shingles and it was the start of a really rotten time. But a year on I’ve been back in to have a look at what I think is the best romance section in central London.
Say hello to the hardbacks and for once I haven’t read many of them beyond Happy Place, although it does remind me that I do need to read some Jilly Cooper at some point.
I could have spent so much money, but lucky I managed to bear in mind the fact that I had limited space in my suitcase and rucksack. Anyway, here in the wild we have all sorts – including Bromance Book Club, a stack of Mary Baloghs and Trisha Ashleys – fun fact, this is the store Trisha has her meet ups, which is where I met one of my best friends in person for the first time! Books, bringing people together!
This next phot has the Alexis Hall selection, plus the Emily Henrys, some Jasmine Guillory and a Louise Hare that I have waiting on my kindle.
I mean I could go all day with the pictures and analysis of the romance section – because it has definitely got bigger. There’s more than I e shown you here – tables as well as the bookcase and the double sided half displays you can see at the bottom here. It’s honestly a delight, although it hasn’t got the level of air conditioning you would like when it’s 30 degrees out.
What did I buy? Well, you’ll have to wait and see. Next weekend, I promise! Meanwhile, have a bonus picture of the downstairs fiction table, complete with Lessons in Chemistry, Before the Memory Fades and Whalebone Theatre which Readers in My Family tell me I need to read, fast, and Jonathan Coe’s Bourneville, which is apt because I’m due to go there this week coking!
* which is why the post didn’t go up until a few weeks after the visit!
As I mentioned on Monday, I made a trip into town ash Sunday and did two bookshops. And as The Works seemed to have a lot of books I have read and recommended it seemed like I should do a post for those of you who fancy a 3 for £6 deal (or two)
Firstly: please note my first sighting of The Unsinkable Greta James in the wild – I didn’t see the hardback in stores (I ordered it) but here is the paperback. Next to it is The Fiancée Farce, which I own but haven’t read, but I have enjoyed some of Alexandria Bellefleure’s other romances. Also on the TBR pile are The Fake Up and The Setup – I will get to it, I promise. And then there is very recent BotW Mrs Nash’s Ashes!
Next across from that is probably the bookshelf in a store I have read most of this year! There’s a healthy stack of Christina Lauren:Roomies was a BotW, I have Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating on the pile and I’ve read but didn’t love Dating You, Hating You – it violated my no sabotage at work as a love language rule! Daisy Jones and the Six has already had one mention this week but it was also a BotW, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was a BotW as was The Thursday Murder Cluband The Man Who Died Twicewas too – and I wrote a whole series post. The Marlow Murder Club is one of the crop of similar series that have cropped up since – and I’ve read that and the sequel and they were fun.
Slightly less here, but still a good group – although now we’re out of the 3 for £6 group. There’s one of my favourite books of last year – Lessons in Chemistry – which I recently loaned to a colleague who loved it – and two Ali Hazelwoods Love Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis. I’ve read all of the Heartstopper – not long now for the final part – but I haven’t (yet) got into Sarah Jane Maas (although I have a friend who loves her), or Elle Kennedy or Lucy Score (or Colleen Hoover on the last shelves) and I had a bad experience with my first Tessa Bailey so I know she’s not for me – although (again) I know people who love her.
And finally, actually this is the one with the most I’ve read! Dead Romantics was a BotW (as was Poston’s latest don’t forget!), I’ve read The Kiss Curse too (and have Hex Appeal on the Kindle too), I’ve read both the Amy Leas and the Richard Coles and another Heartstopper. I read The Problem with Perfect last week – it was another of my flawed options for BotW this week – Weather Girl is not as good as Business or Pleasure but it is fun. I’ve read Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels and it didn’t work for me, but as it has sequels (one of which you can see here!) it clearly did for others. I would rather read Gail Carriger – but if you’ve read her you might like it. And finally I really need to read the Jesse Sutanto.
And so to sum up: an excellent time for you to go to The Works – as long as you don’t mind carrying books home with you. You’ll have to wait until the next Books Incoming to see what I took home with me though!
A super quick hit today – just to take a quick look at which of the recent releases I spotted in Gower Street last week.
Hello hardbacks – no surprise it’s Emily Henry and Curtis Sittenfeld getting the front facing spots for romance along with Tom Hanks and the new Emma Cline. The Happy Couple was a new spot for me, but Death of a Book Seller has been popping up all over.
If you’re after paperback romance, this is what they had – and I’ve read four of the ones in this side and own another one.
And on the other side of the table I’ve read two, and own two more. And no I’m deliberately not telling you which, apart from Dead Romantics of course!
And finally, they’re not new, but here’s a bonus picture of a lot of Amelia Peabody in the wild. And yes, I did sit down and read all the best bits of Thunder in the Sky, because it is my favourite and if you have it as an actual book it’s so easy to find the best bits…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 