Tag: to-read pile

book round-ups, previews, Uncategorized

Books incoming: February edition

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Honestly I am amazed at my own restraint. No seriously. And actually I’m also pretty transparent. The Jenn McKinlay is the book I told you I bought in the Cupcake Bakery post. Poison for a Teacher is because of Death Goes On Skis. Lions of Fifth Avenue is because I was shopping for a birthday book for my mum (hi mum!) and bought this for myself at the same time, and the Unforgettable Guinevere St Clare is something I had my eye on for the 50 States Challenge last year so I treated myself to it for this year’s edition. There are two more books that haven’t arrived yet – I put in an order for the Antony Sher memoir and also a book about musicals, but everything else has been an ebook or a preorder…

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: February 7 – February 13

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Another really busy week, finishing in me staying up until all hours on Sunday night watching the Rams win the Super Bowl. I continue to try and work my way through the Paustovsky, but it is slow going and other books are really quite tempting as being easier and lighter going…

Read:

Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

Shady Hollow by Juneau Black*

The Prize Racket by Isabel Rogers

Rivers of London: Monday, Monday by Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel et al

Prologue to Murder by Lauren Elliot

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers

Started:

Paper Lion by George Plimpton

Lemon Meringue Pie Murder by Joanna Fluke

Still reading:

The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky*

Home Work by Julie Andrews

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Three pre-orders and another Nancy Spain. All in actual copies. I don’t think I bought any kindle books last week, which might be a record in recent weeks…

Bonus photo: Another week – another trip to the theatre. This time it was to see Heathers at The Other Palace. I did three theatre trips in nine days – which is almost back to pre-pandemic levels so was really quite reassuring and normal!

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 31 – February 6

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Okay – blimey Charlie the Konstantin Paustovsky is long. And I also had two nights out in London last week. So the Still Reading list is looking longer – as the Nancy Spain and the Julie Andrews are actual books. But I might have finished one of them if it wasn’t for the arrival of The Two Mrs Abbotts on Saturday – which was my first pick from the Persephone Book a Month subscription I got given for Christmas, and which I just couldn’t resist reading straightaway!

Read:

The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers

The Smuggler’s Secret by Annabelle Sami*

Flying High by Perdita Cargill*

The Dead Side of the Mike by Simon Brett

Seeing a Large Cat by Elizabeth Peters

The Two Mrs Abbotts by D E Stevenson

Started:

Shady Hollow by Juneau Black*

The Prize Racket by Isabel Rogers

Still reading:

Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain

The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky*

Home Work by Julie Andrews

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Bonus photo: As part of the London trip on Saturday, as well as going to see Elizabeth and Mary, we went for a wander around the National Gallery, where as well as seeing the Blue Boy, I spotted this rather faboulous John Singer Sargent.

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 24 – January 30

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This is a week of mostly audiobooks. Can’t quite figure out why, except that the Paustovsky book is really long and I’ve been trying to prioritise reading it, and I’ve done a lot of cooking and wandering around this week and that’s when I tend to listen to audiobooks. I wish I had more exciting things to say today, but really this has been a busy week and my brain is frazzled!

Read:

Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham

Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L Sayers

Too Much Blood by Simon Brett

Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh

Capital Crimes ed Martin Edwards

Beware False Profits by Emilie Richards

Started:

The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian

Home Work by Julie Andrews

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Still reading:

Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain

The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky*

Several preorders dropped onto the kindle, and as mentioned in the post, I bought the next Cupcake Bakery book in the series…

Bonus photo: did I go to Ikea after work on Tuesday and buy more houseplants? Why yes I did!

Houseplants in an ikea trolley

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

not a book

Bookshelfie: Romance and cozy crime

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In the last Bookshelfie post we were in the front of the house, with books in my fanciest set of shelves. Today, we’re at the back of the house and a much more crammed full shelf, where you will spot some old friends of mine – including a stack you may recognise from yesterday’s Series I Love post! And you can also see a couple of problems I have here too. Last time out, I mentioned my shelving issues with the Viragos, well here we have the shelving issue with the Gail Carriger. No, I don’t know why my Heartless is a different size to the rest of the set. Yes, I do know why the Custard Protocol changed size – the publishing deal changed and they have a different cover model to the US version as well as the difference in sizes.

Then there is the historical romance collection. And the eagle eyed will spot that I have a UK edition of Brazen and the Beast and a US one. The UK one is because I wanted Sarah MacLean to sign it when I went to her tea party. The US one is because I couldn’t bear the non matching set. Behind the front row of Sarah Macleans are the Eloisa James’s – mostly in US mass markets, but a few in UK paperback. Also hiding in the back row are my Julia Quinn books – which are a mix of my favourite Bridgertons and then a selection from the Bevelstoke and Smythe-Smith series.

Also hidden in the back row are a couple of old favourites – there are three Melissa Nathan novels (how is it fifteen years since she died?) and my favourite Sarah Mason Playing James (I hope she’s still writing somewhere out there under a different name that I don’t know about), an aged Carole Matthews, Welcome to the Real World which is both the first book of hers I read and still my enduring favourite – it’s about an aspiring singer who gets her big break on a tv singing competition the same week she lands a job as PA to an opera singer who, unbeknown to her is the newest judge on the very talent show she’s about to be a contestant on. To the far sides of the front we have crime – historical crime on the left with Frances Brody and cozy crime on the right with Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery series (as discussed yesterday). Further back are some of her library lovers books as well as some odds and ends of other cozy crime series. And finally, there’s also the baseball I caught at Nationals Park when I was in D.C. – although I still deny that I elbowed anyone out of the way to get to it though and credit my success to catching practice with my dad back in primary school cricket days!

It’s not the most obvious of stuff to put on a shelf together at first glance, but I promise there is reason there: it’s favourite authors and books at my eyeline in fairly logical order. They’re all books that I might want to lay my hands on in a hurry for a reread. Case in point I took the photo for this post after I’d already written half of the post and wrote the whole thing on the sofa, only going to the shelf right at the end to check that it was the Nathan, Matthews and Mason in the back row – the only book I had forgotten was there was Bridget Jones! I definitely can’t claim the same level of familiarity with the other shelves in this bookcase. But that’s a story for another day…

The pile

On my wishlist: Historical Cozy Mystery series

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I am rapidly coming towards the end of the Mary Russell series – I’m about to start book 15 of 17 – so I’ve started looking out for a replacement series. I originally called this post historical mysteries and then realised that this week’s Book of the Week was a historical mystery, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I want the historical equivalent of a cozy crime and I probably want it set in the twentieth century. I tried twentieth century mystery in the title but that would also cover books that are a bit more violent than I want. I’m after a series I can binge while I wait for the next Phryne Fisher, Royal Spyness and Maisie Dobbs and to help fill the gap now Carola Dunn has retired and there are no more Daisy Dalrymples coming. I want Golden Age mystery level gore and clever solutions and if it can have a bit of a sense of humour about, so much the better.

The problem – as you can tell – is that I’ve already read a lot of series in this area, which makes it hard to find more. There are a lot of books on kindle that look like they might fit the brief but it can be hard to tell from the sample if they’re actually what your after – or all to easy to tell that it’s not. So if you have suggestions – do hit me up in the comments.

Before you do though, I have got a couple of books laid in to try. Now not all of these are series, but these are what I’ve picked up from the Works recently in the hope of finding a lead somewhere in there. Martin Edwards is the editor of all of those British Library Crime Classic anthologies and this is a sequel to a book of his I’ve read already. I’ve read one of the Sulari Gentil books already – and have another one on the pile too. Edward Marston had loads of series and this is just the one that appealed to me the most from the options. And Victoria Walters is a romantic fiction writer who has made the shift across so I think it might be in a style that appeals. So, suggest away!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 17 – January 23

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A good week in reading. I’ve already written about two of the new books on the list, and you’ll see that Gaudy Night is making it’s 2022 appearance on the list as the Wimsey re-listen continues (again). I’ve also managed to get through most of the books that I’d started but not finished, and I have a bunch of ideas percolating for posts because of them. In a very brave move, I’ve started reading some Russian Literature. Konstantin Paustovsky’s The Story of a Life has just been published in a new translation and I got a copy via NetGalley. It is very long and very dense, so it may well scupper my goal of finishing all the January NetGalley books in January, but I’m going to keep going at it, as much as I can manage in a day before my brain gets frazzled. I’ll keep you all posted…

Read:

The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor*

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers

A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle*

The Maid by Nita Prose*

The Wedding Setup by Charlotte Greene*

Spies in St Petersburg by Katherine Woodfine

Forever Young by Hayley Mills

Started:

The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky*

Beware False Profits by Emilie Richards

Capital Crimes ed Martin Edwards

Still reading:

Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain

As you’ll have seen in the Books Incoming post, a few things got added to the pile – four of them from my trip to the works at the start of last week and another bought while I was writing Recommendsday. Then there was one e-book purchase too. So not my most restrained week!

Bonus photo: This was Tuesday morning last week in the park – which you’ll be very familiar with by now, but the frost and the sunlight was just so beautiful I couldn’t help myself.

Frosty early morning in the park

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 10 – January 16

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Can confirm: a couple of things got in the way of the reading last week. Firstly, the figure skating was on – and you can’t read and pay attention to the skating – and secondly it was my birthday. On top of all the usual stuff, that means the list is shorter this week. Also Ashes of London is really long.

Read:

Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers

The Murder of Mary Russell by Laurie R King

The Hippopotamus Pool by Elizabeth Peters

Bookish and the Beast by Ashley Poston

Anthropology by Dan Rhodes

Started:

Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain

Spies in St Petersburg by Katherine Woodfine

Still reading:

Forever Young by Hayley Mills

The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor*

A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle*

I may have bought myself a couple of books as birthday gifts. But I was quite restrained really.

Bonus photo: In years past, the photo would have been of a trip for my birthday, but the omicron wave means this was my second birthday in a row at home (after almost a decade of going away for it!) so here I am on the sofa with some champagne and a book. And this very laptop in the background on the other sofa because I wasn’t paying proper attention to my backgrounds. I’ll never be an influencer will I?!

A copy of Death of Skis rests on a tartan rug while a hand holds a glass of champagne

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 3 – January 9

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Just when I thought I was finished with the Christmas reading, I read two more Christmas books. What am I like?! Keen eyed readers will notice that I’ve already finished one of my anticipated books and have started a second. And I’ve read one and started another from that pesky NetGalley backlog.  A couple of Wimsey’s are on here – as audiobooks – as I continue to relisten to them all as I putter around the place. I’m making good progress on Vanderbilt – which is a hardback so not quite as portable as some of the other options, otherwise I think it would be finished already! The end of year/start of year posting frenzy is coming to an end I think, but I do have some ideas for posts coming up to try and keep a bit of the momentum going, even if it’s not quite as much as it has been for the last three-ish weeks!

Read:

The Twelve Jays of Christmas by Donna Andrews

Death in the Wasteland by George Bellairs

Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers

Recipe for Redemption by Anna J Stewart*

Rare Danger by Beverly Jenkins

God Rest Ye Royal, Gentlemen by Rhys Bowen

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari*

The Christie Affair by Nina de Grammont*

Started

The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor*

A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle*

Still reading:

The Murder of Mary Russell by Laurie R King

Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe

Forever Young by Hayley Mills

Two books bought – one physical, one ebook.

Bonus photo: This week, as the only place I’ve been that isn’t my house is the park, the corner shop and Aldi, I thought I’d give you a change. Here’s an attempt to be creative – with some flower arranging…

An attempt at flower arranging

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

The pile

Coming Up…

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I’ve already written about my anticipated books and about my reading resolutions, so my last contribution to my New Year posts is a little look at the state of my to-read book shelves – virtual and physical – and what I’ve got waiting to be read.

On the non-fiction front, I’ve already started Anderson Cooper’s book about the Vanderbilt family, which I asked for for Christmas. On the memoir front I have the hardback of Miriam Margolyes’ book and I’ve started the Hayley Mills one on kindle. I’ve got David Attenborough’s new book, which I bought intending to give it to someone, but couldn’t bear to part with because it’s signed. In paperback I’ve got Jason Diamond’s book about the American suburbs, The Sprawl and Come Fly The World, about the women of Pan Am, which I picked up on the way to Gran Canaria because it appeared to my Shirley Flight instincts but didn’t manage to read while I was out there. There’s a lot more on there, but those are the ones I want to get to first.

There’s also plenty of fiction. In terms of series that I read, I’ve got the next in the Lady Sherlock series, Miss Moriarty, I Presume which came out in the autumn, the latest Dandy Gilver and the next Taylor and Rose mystery. Then off the back of the 50 states challenge, I’ve got the next in the Silver Six series and another in the Ministry is Murder series too. I’ve still got a Curtis Sittenfeld that I’ve been saving for a special occasion and a Stacy Halls that I bought off the back of enjoying Mrs England. I’ve got a couple of new crime series to try, and also some old school historical romances that I haven’t been in the mood for yet, but I’m sure I will be at some point.

Now why am I telling you all this? Well a couple of years back, I did a state of the to read pile post and it actually helped me get the motivation to read some of them. So I’m trying the same trick on myself again. If I’ve told you what’s on the shelf, and put some pictures up, I’ll have to have read some of them (at least) before I can do the same thing again. I’m not putting any time scales on it, because we all know that I’m a mood reader and there’s nothing more guaranteed to make me not want to read something than saying that I will or feeling forced to – it’s why I’m so bad with getting the NetGalley List done on time. But hey, I’ll try and get at least some of these read by the middle of the year. I might even check in with you if I do!