Tag: short stories

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Scattered Showers

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A familiar name on the cover of this week’s pick, but this time it’s a short story collection from Rainbow Rowell and not a novel

Scattered Showers is a collection of short stories and novellas, some of which have been published before and some of which have some familiar faces from other Rowell novels. My edition is also very, very pretty. You can’t see it in the photo, but the long edge is sprayed in rainbow colours and the type itself is a sort of dark pinky purple colour that is really nice.

I think my favourite might be the last in the book – about two characters waiting to be used by a writer. It’s a bit meta but it really is charming. But it was also nice to spend time with Simon and Baz again and I loved the text conversation short story with the women from Attachments, and also the college dorm story set in the same world as Fangirl. And that’s already at half the book without mentioning the two that I had already read which are also good. Some old friends and some new friends and really it’s a lovely way to spend a few hours.

My copy was a preorder because it’s a nice signed one, but it should be fairly easy to get hold of this in hardback – I saw it in a shop just the other week – but it’s also on Kindle and Kobo. And a couple are available on their own too on Kindle Unlimited if you just want to sample a bit of the range.

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: January Quick Reviews

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Only two books this month, you’ll probably understand why when you see the stats tomorrow. There was nearly a third, but I fell asleep with 50 pages to go on Tuesday night and didn’t finish it before the end of the month and I do try not to cheat!

Death Spins the Wheel by George Bellairs

It’s been a while since I mentioned an Inspector Littlejohn mystery, as I’ve read nearly all of the ones that are easily available at the moment. But Death Spins the Wheel popped up and it’s a good one. Once again on the Isle of Man, it features an elderly lady who comes to the island to gamble at the casino and then turns up dead. There’s one strand of the plot that I’m wildly dubious about (if you know me and read it you’ll know what!) but I liked the actual resolution and the familiar characters. Maybe don’t start here, but if you’re reading them as they pop up on Kindle Unlimited then it’s definitely worth a look.

Vermeer to Eternity by Anthony Horowitz

Another author I’ve written about relatively frequently, but this is another KU read – this time a really quite satisfying short story with a really neat premise and two interesting characters. If you’ve read the Hawthorn novels, you’ll probably see some similarities to “Anthony” as seen in them, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

And that’s it for stuff I haven’t already talked about in January – or at least it is unless you want repeats or rereads! I wonder if I’ll manage more than two in February?

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, Christmas books, cozy crime, detective

Book of the Week: The Christmas Card Crime

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Cheating again this week because I finished this on Monday, but really there is only so long you can recommend Christmas-themed books for and the first week of January is past that limit, but also seems a little early to be starting putting together the Christmas-themed books post for 2022, although to be fair, I have started it in the spring before!

The Christmas Card Crime is another of those charming British Library Crime Classics collections that I mentioned in my Christmas books post last week. So yes, it’s also slightly cheating to be picking this for BotW so soon after that post – although in fairness I did read the other one in November so it seems less recent to me! This has less of the names that the casual crime fan will have heard of and but many of them are regulars in the BLCC stable – like E C R Lorac and John Bude – and some of them are more towards the thriller/chiller end of the mystery spectrum. Most are good, a couple didn’t suit me but overall it was a nice way to spend a post-Christmas afternoon hiding from the rain. It should be noted that there is one story in here that overlaps with A Surprise for Christmas – and it’s one of the really good ones, so I was glad I had borrowed them both from Kindle Unlimited rather than bought them outright.

You can get The Christmas Card Crime as an actual paperback from the British Library shop or you can get it on Kindle – it will reappear on other platforms once it has rotated out of the KU selection.

Happy Reading!

American imports, Book of the Week

Book of the Week: You Think It, I’ll Say It

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This is going to be late and short. I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for the lack of witty commentary on yesterday’s Week in Books [ed: the commentary is meant to be witty? Try harder], any how, to business.

I’ve written about Curtis Sittenfeld before – I spent a lot of time telling people how good Eligible was back when that first came out. I’ve read most of her books now, and I had the paperback of this on a preorder than Amazon mysteriously cancelled. So I was very happy when my library hold on this came through for me. You Think It, I’ll Say It is a collection of short stories which feels very applicable to modern day life. There’s the former shy girl who gets to meet her high school nemesis years later and see how it all turned out. A woman flirting with adultery with a man in her social circle. It’s tough to pick a favourite, but having spent a lot of time reading blogs, dissecting blogs and watching the rise of influence culture, the woman who takes an unhealthy interest in the career of an Instagram influence-cum-lifestyle guru she once knew might be mine.

Sittenfeld’s writing is sharp and has got the balance right (for me at least) in these stories of enough happening to make things interesting, but not so much that you don’t get to know the characters well enough to care about how it all turns out. I don’t read a lot of short story collections, but this is a very good one. And – as much as you can tell on a kindle – they are all short stories, this is not a few stories plus a novella situation. If you liked Helen Ellis’s American Housewife, this did some of the same stuff for me, but without the horror or supernatural elements. If you haven’t read Sittenfeld before, I might still start you with Eligible, but that’s because it’s tough to top a retelling of Pride and Prejudice where Kitty and Lydia are cross-fit fiends, Mrs Bennet is a kleptomaniac and Jane is the sort of yoga instructor who would spent all her spare cash on crystals from Goop. It’s a high bar.

You should be able to get hold of a copy of You Think It, I’ll Say It from a good bookstore – Amazon even have a paperback now, despite my struggles with them!

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, LGTBQIA+

Book of the Week: Proud

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Picking a BotW this week was a mix of hard and actually quite easy this week. I read a lot of stuff, but actually didn’t love a lot of it – and some that I did like were by authors that I’ve already written a lot about. But then there was Proud. And it was Pride in London this weekend and I spent my Saturday walking through happy, rainbow-bedecked crowds – firstly on their way to the parade, which started by work and secondly wandering through the after parties in Soho on my way to the theatre in the evening and then back to my hostel afterwards.

Proud is a collection of Young Adult short stories poetry and art edited by Juno Dawson and featuring a mix of new and established LGTBQ+* authors. There’s a huge range of experiences and identities here – including a few that I haven’t seen represented much in my own reading.

I can’t pick a favourite of the stories, because they’re all good and there were several that I really liked. I love a Pride and Prejudice retelling, so I Hate Darcy Pemberley really appealed to me. But then so did The Courage of Dragons – a story about a group of Dungeons and Dragons playing friends who band together during prom to right some wrongs done to one of their number. And then there is Penguins – about prom and crushes and two male penguins who have fallen in love.

Although I read a lot of Middle Grade fiction, I don’t really read a lot of YA – because I find it can tend towards the depressing – particularly when dealing with LGTBQ+ issues. But this is the opposite of that – the stories are affirming and joyous and romantic which is exactly what you want in a book called Proud.

My copy came from NetGalley (yes, I know, I’m super behind because this came out in March and I’ve only just read it) but you should be able to get a copy of Proud from any good bookshop and it’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.

Here’s a bonus picture of the post-Pride march parties.

Partying in the street in Soho near the King Edward Theatre which has Rainbow flags on its big screens

Happy reading!

* I’m using LGTBQ+ here as this is how the book itself describes itself and its contributors.

Book News, Prize winners

Noirville winners!

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Yes, it’s taken a bit longer than planned, but the Noirville winners have finally been announced.  In case you missed my original post, I was super excited to be part of the competition amongst an illustrious group of judges.

Fahrenheit Noirville: short stories from the dark side banner picture.

You can read the winner’s list here – and I’m thrilled that pretty much all my favourites made the cut.  The standard was incredibly high though and it was really, really hard to separate the stories.  All the judging was done blind, so I was really excited to see who was behind the stories that I’d enjoyed reading so much.   So today I’ve got a whole load of new people to add to my twitter watch list so that I can see what they’re going to write next.

It was such a great experience to have the chance to be a judge on this.  It was also absolutely terrifying – definitely out of my comfort zone! The actual published book will be out in a couple of months and I can’t wait to see the finished book, and obviously hear what everyone else thinks about the collection.

Congratulations to all the winners – and commiserations to the people who missed out.  Here’s to the first Noirville Short Story collection – may it be the first of many!

 

crime

Bonus Post: Noirville competition

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So, in exciting news, I’m going to be one of the judging panel for a short story competition for Fahrenheit Press.  I know.  Exciting times.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of what Fahrenheit Press are doing – I’ve hosted interviews with several of their authors (like Duncan MacMaster and Derek Farrell) and reviewed a hell of a lot more of their books (I started making a list, but I got embarrassed about how much of a fangirl it made me look. But there’s a tag.  You can search for it and point and laugh).  I’m in my second year of having an annual subscription to their stuff (a great gift for the crime reader in your life – as I said at Christmas!), and it’s meant I’ve read new authors, new to me authors and tried stuff that I wouldn’t have come across otherwise.  So I was thrilled to be asked, if a little nervous about it all.

I love the picture. It’s way more glamorous than I’ll ever be, so I’m hoping to get reflected glamour from it!
The rest of the panel are: Jo Perry – author of the Charlie and Rose series (as reviewed here a few weeks back), and book bloggers Kate Moloney (of Bibliophile Book Club), Gordon McGhie (of Grab This Book) and Janet Emson (of From First To Last Page).  I know.  I’m super punching above my weight. I’m going to be on my best behaviour and I’ve already got a spreadsheet planned to make sure I do this right.*

Details on how to enter are here if you’re so inclined.  Closing date for entries is the end of September.  And if you’re not entering yourself, I’ll be checking back in afterwards to let you know how it all went and (hopefully) rave about the amazing talent we’ve discovered.

*I did a recruitment selection course the other week and it scared me stupid.

Book of the Week, literary fiction, women's fiction

Book of the Week: Difficult Women

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This week’s BotW is Roxane Gay’s short story collection Difficult Women.  I’ve been reading this as my bedtime book for a few weeks (which is where short story collections often end up in my house!) and have really enjoyed reading.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
My copy of Difficult Women

Difficult Women is a collection of stories about very different women, all of whom might be termed “difficult”.  The term “difficult women” conjures images of angry or confrontational women, but that’s not necessarily who these women are.  These are women who don’t fit into neat categories.  They’re women who have had bad experiences.  There’s abuse, violence and infidelity and a whole host of trigger warnings here, but no two women are the same.  There’s poverty and privilege, there are single women, married women, violent women and women who are in fish out of water situations and there’s some sci fi too.

Some of the stories are sad.  But somehow this is not a sad book.   It’s thought provoking and clever and really beautifully written.  There were women that  liked, women I didn’t like and women who had life experiences a million miles from mine but there was always something in the story to make you feel empathy with the women, no matter how terribly they were behaving.

The last short story collection I raved about on here was American Housewife (I think) which is totally different to this, but both reminded me that when done well short story collections can be as satisfying as 500 page novels. I’ve been following Roxane Gay on Twitter for ages and have heard people raving about her but until now I’d only read odd stories in isolation or her essays.  I know I’ll be going out and finding more of her writing after reading this.

You can get hold of Difficult Women from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles and on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: American Housewife

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I know. I know. This is a day late. And I’m sorry. It’s been one of those weeks. Work has been quietly bonkers, I’ve been exhausted and time got away from me. Rather than rush something out to keep to schedule, I thought I’d take the extra time and do it properly.

So the BotW is Helen Ellis’s short story collection, American Housewife. These a a series of deliciously dark and funny bite-sized  tales, which I mostly read before bed. I’m not a massive short story reader, but they do make good bedtime reading because they have good obviously stopping places. And while these blackly humorous, there’s nothing here that’s going to give you nightmares. That said, Ellis doesn’t give you all the answers, some stories have distinctly ambiguous endings. Or even ambiguous middles.

Copy of American Housewife
I love the cover design – so simple and striking but appropriate for the book

I think my favourite story was the email war between two New York neighbours over their shared hallway. Or maybe the instructions on how to be a patron of the arts. Or the very unusual book club. Basically, there’s a lot of good stories here and I’m spoilt for choice.

If you fancy dipping your toe in the short story pond, this would be a very good place to start. And if you’re a short story fan, this should definitely be on your list. In fact I’d be surprised if it isn’t already. It is a hardback at the moment – and you’ll probably need to look in a proper bookshop for this (ie not the supermarket) or you can order it from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles. It’s also available on Kindle and Kobo – at the much friendlier price of £2.99 at time of writing.