Tag: The pile

The pile

Books Incoming: Christmas 2025

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Ho ho ho, we’re already into the new year, but I’m flashing back to Christmas because Santa Claus brought me some books again this year and it’s delightful. Inevitably I will have acquired a stack more before it’s time for the January Books Incoming because of the sales and also my birthday. I am realistic about my will power. So here we have it:

So here we have it: there’s a new cook book, a crochet book because I sucuessfully made my first crochet project a few months back, three books from my Buy Me a Book for Christmas post – the Tim Curry memoir, the first Nora Breen book and The Author’s Guide to Murder and then my Christmas book to myself – Sarah McCammon’s The Exvangelicals. Becuase of course I bought myself a Christmas book, what else would you expect from me?!

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid-December edition

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Happy Saturday everyone, we’re in the middle of December and I’m back with a round up of the books that have arrived in the house over the last little while. I’m expecting to be doing a post-Christmas Books Incoming this month too, so consider this a first bite of the December cherry.

As you know, a couple of these are already off the pile – I read Second Chance Romance last week pretty much as soon as it arrived, although I paced myself while reading it to try and make it last. Strawberried Alive from Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery series is this year’s Arizona book for the Fifty States Challenge, and Sugar Plum Poisoned will be next years – as will One for the Books from her Library Lovers series for Connecticut. Actually there are quite a lot here that could end up being on the 50 states list next year – To Brew or Not to Brew is the first in a cozy mystery series set in Pennsylvania that I picked up in Waterstones Picadilly when I was checking out their Legami popup, Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town is a short story collection set in Alaska and the American West, Love is a War Song is a romantic comedy with a pop star and a cowboy set in Oklahoma and On Spine of Death is the sequel to last week’s Book of the Week Buried in a Good Book and set in Washington. That just leaves the non-states books and Do Admit is a graphic novel about the Mitford sisters while How to Spot a Fascist was a purchase in Riverside Books.

Happy Saturday!

books, stats

November Stats

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Books read this month: 30*

New books: 26

Re-reads: 4 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 6

NetGalley books read: 1

Kindle Unlimited read: 8

Ebooks: 11

Audiobooks: 4

Non-fiction books: 1

Favourite book: hard to pick – the Phryne Fisher was bittersweet but lovely, the Helen Ellis was fun and I still really, really love Romantic Comedy even if I didn’t love the audiobook narrator’s rendering of the male characters!

Books bought: moving on…

Most read author: Jenn McKinlay if we’re looking at the new reads, Dorothy L Sayers if we include the re-reads too.

Books read in 2025: 346

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 802

I wrote a whole list of books that I was going to read in November at the start of the month, and then about a week later I did an audit of the 50 states challenge and realised that I needed to throw the original list out of the window. And so my major achievement for the month is ticking 16 (!) states off the list. Eight of those were already on either the virtual pile or the physical pile and another four came from Kindle Unlimited, so that was pretty good too. Now I just need to keep the momentum going and tick the last states off – we’re into single figures now so it’s very, very doable…

Bonus picture: I finished the beat the to read shelf bookcase in my journal. All of those green colours are mysteries of various types so you can see a bit of a pattern there…

*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – 3 this month!

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid-November edition

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Happy Saturday everyone, I’m back with some more new arrivals in the house. Some of them are already off the pile though, so that’s good and one of them will help me with the 50 States Challenge, which is becoming ever more critical so that’s good too!

So here we have three more Jill Churchill books because I went a little mad on Abebooks. But two of them are safely off the pile already so they don’t really count. Also not really counting is The Dead Side of the Mike which is a Charles Paris novel, which I have already read and already own in ebook format. But I couldn’t resist this when I saw it on a charity donation shelf at a cafe in Cumbria. The shelf had a lot of Simon Brett of various types and I think I did well to just stick to one – and I picked this one because of the BBC microphone and all the tape. So this is also going off to a proper shelf and not the pile. Also from that charity shelf is the Edith Skom, which is set on Hawaii and so even if it is truly terrible, it is useful to me! Then we have the second Rosemary Shrager after I enjoyed The Last Supper so much. The Anthony Horowitz is The Marble Hall Murders, the latest Magpie Murders, which is less giant now it’s out in paperback and also was on offer. Another offer was Jonathan Miles’s The Once Upon a Time World which is a history of the French Riviera, which as you know is a firmly in my Rich People Problems non-fiction area and I have been waiting for an offer on for ages. And finally there is the new Katherine Center in paperback which I had preordered even though it came out in kindle months ago.

And finally as a bonus, because I had left Days at the Torunka Café at my parents’ house last month and it wasn’t in the picture for Books Incoming, here it is with this month’s books:

Have a great Saturday everyone.

books, stats

October Stats

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Books read this month: 32*

New books: 27

Re-reads: 3 (2 audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 7

NetGalley books read: 6

Kindle Unlimited read: 11

Ebooks: 3

Audiobooks: 4

Non-fiction books: 4

Favourite book: Probably What You Are Looking For is in the Library

Books bought: lets skip over this…

Most read author: Jill Churchill – two more Jane Jeffreys books

Books read in 2025: 314

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 802

So after the progress of September on the NetGalley and pile front, October wasn’t quite as strong. The bright side is that the six NetGalley books I did read include all of the October releases, so for once I’m keeping pace with that, but the list is being somewhat propped up by novella and Kindle Unlimited. A lot of them were me trying new mystery series – and not always to great success. But if you don’t try them you don’t know, and I guess at least I’m getting the value out of my KU subscription!

Bonus picture: After the clock change, I’ve got sunrise on the train again – as opposed to dark until London – for a week or two. And this week the colours were amazing, although the frost in the fields is a sign of the weather to come…

*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – 9 this month!

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid October edition

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Genuinely I’m quite pleased with me this month. Honestly, I am. So all we have on the pile this month are my airport purchases – Entitled I’ve already read and is off the pile and Him Indoors is still reading Fast Money, so I haven’t got to that yet. I’m hoping it will be as interesting as The Formula was last year. Baking Spirits Bright is the sequel to Six Sweets Under which inexplicably dropped in price the other week and which I picked up to tick off Vermont in *next* year’s 50 States challenge. And then finally there is one missing from the photo which was an impulse purchase in Market Harborough this week but I managed to leave it in a bag in my parents car and haven’t got it back yet. It’s a new-to-English book by the author of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, called Days at the Torunka Café, and they had a signed edition, so how could I possibly resist. I’m mentioning it now because it would be cheating not to, and there’s no guarantee I won’t forget it next month. I also bought a Spot book, but that wasn’t for me so it doesn’t count!

books, stats

September Stats

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Books read this month: 33*

New books: 28

Re-reads: 5 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 9

NetGalley books read: 10

Kindle Unlimited read: 4

Ebooks: 5

Audiobooks: 5

Non-fiction books: 7 (!)

Favourite book: Breakneck

Books bought: 8 ebooks and some actual books…

Most read author: tough to tell – two Jill Churchill books, two Tom Mead, but also some quite long non-fiction which might be more than both!

Books read in 2025: 284

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 803

A pretty slow start to the month, but a solid month in reading in the end because of the holiday and more than four hours on the plane to Gran Canaria and back. I’m particularly pleased with the number of books from the NetGalley list this month – I’m still way behind, but it’s my best month in ages on that front, so I’m going to try and keep that going if I can, although the actual physical pile is worryingly huge at the moment so I need to try and get that down too!

Bonus picture: some more sunshine and palm trees from my reading spot on holiday!

*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – but not this month!

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid-September edition

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So this is slightly less bad than last month, in that in August there were ten books, and in this there are eight. We do have to remember though that I went so insane on our trip to Norfolk that I had to do an extra Books Incoming post to handle it and if I hadn’t done that, there would be 19 books in this post. Ahem. Anyway, here we have Dream on Ramona Riley and ZomRomCom which were my Saucy Books purchases and From Russia with Love which was my Penguin pop-up purchase and Fishing for Trouble and Buffalo West Wing which I bought in Piccadilly at the same time. That leaves the Spinal Tap book, which was a pre-order from Big Green, Hattie Steals the Show was a purchase and then Chris at the Kennels was a gift. And that’s all of them. Unless there’s one hiding somewhere that I forgot. But I don’t think there is…

books, stats

August Stats

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Books read this month: 32*

New books: 25

Re-reads: 6 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 10

NetGalley books read: 4

Kindle Unlimited read: 3

Ebooks: 5

Audiobooks: 9

Non-fiction books: 4

Favourite book: probably The Mitford Girls, even though I haven’t written about it yet!

Books bought: possibly slightly better than last month, but still way too many

Most read author: T P Fielden of the new stuff, but Agatha Christie and Nancy Mitford if you’re including the re-reads

Books read in 2025: 251

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 808

Another fairly solid month in reading – especially considering that the Mary Lowell Mitford book is 700 pages long and that takes time, and there aren’t a lot of short stories on this month’s list.

Bonus picture: yarn bombing in Northampton for the rugby, courtesy of my mum!

*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including 1 this month!

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid-August edition

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Oh this looks bad. Really bad. But it’s not as bad as it looks. Honestly. Let me explain: nearly a third of these were pre-orders, so really they shouldn’t count right? I mentioned the Nev Fountain on Thursday, and the new Dahlia, and I really should have mentioned the Elissa Sussman too, but it came out the same week as the Sarah MacLean. Then the Otto English and the Richard Coles were my airport purchases on the way to Ghana – and were the only books I took with me. Now I was so busy that week that I only read one of them, but that still means that that one is going straight from the incoming pile to the shelf. And A Howl of Wolves is going onto the shelf too because it’s that fourth Sam Clair that you can’t get on Kindle, so really buying it was the only way I was going to get to read it and thus finish the series. And then while I was buying it from Abebooks, I checked what else the seller had that was on my list, because you get postage on a scale if you’re buying more books from the same person, and that’s how/why I got the Jill Churchills. And then finally the Jackie, Ethel, Joan was my purchase in Waterstones last week. So really that’s the only one that counts as an impulse purchase. And that’s what I’m meant to be working on…

Happy Saturday!