Tag: to-read pile

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: March 26 – April 1

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Another really busy week – at work and with things to do and people to see for Easter.  Not quite as much read as I wanted to, but some times real life is more important than reading.  I’ve been working on some of the long runners too – just not enough to get any more of them finished.  This week is going to be the week.  I hope.

Read:

Mirror, Mirror by Cara Delavigne

The Girls of Dancey Dene by MB Manwell

Pillow Stalk by Diane Vallere

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

Fire and Fury by Michael Woolf

Started:

n/a – I finished all the new stuff I started and was concentrating on long runners…

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club by Sophie Green

Blame it on the Duke by Leonora Bell

Three books bought – in a moment of weakness when I went into Foyles.  Oops.  That said, I’ve just been going through my list of NetGalley books to get it straight in my head and in my journal where I track what I’ve got to read and have realised that I’m massively over committed for April, and have a reasonable sized backlog too, so I think that’s going to be a handy reminder to me not to buy more books until I’ve got that more under control.

Book of the Week, Fantasy, historical

Book of the Week: Sorcerer to the Crown

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After that run of (excellent) murder mysteries a few weeks back, I’m trying to make sure there’s a bit of variety in the BotW posts – obviously reading material permitting – and this week we have some magical historical fiction action for a change, with Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown, which you may have spotted on the Week in Books lists just a few times.  This was mostly because I started reading it and then it got buried in a pile and a bit forgotten about because I didn’t want to make it all battered by putting it in my work bag.  But as you can see, in the end I found a way of dealing with it and it made it to work and back a couple of times while I read it and is still in fairly pristine nick…

Copy of Sorcerer to the Crown
It’s been a while since we had a Reading-on-the-Train photo…

Sorcerer to the Crown is the story of Zacharias, the new Sorcerer to the British king and his new apprentice, Prunella.  Now women are only allowed to be witches, and grudgingly at that, but Prunella seems to have more magic at her untrained fingertips than she knows what to do with and Zacharias thinks she might be able to help him work out what has happened to England’s supply of magic, and at the same time help him reform English Magick in general.  Prunella has other plans though.  She’s trying to find out where she came from and what the mysterious gift is that her father seems to have left her.  On top of all that, Zacharias is a freed slave and despite the fact that he was the adopted son of the previous Sorcerer to the Crown, his skin colour means that the other magicians are disinclined to follow his lead – especially given the rumours surrounding the circumstances of the death of his predecessor.  That plus an impulsive and impetuous young girl makes for a fairly explosive combination.

I found the story is a little slow to get going, but once it does there is plenty of adventure and action.  I wanted to know a more about the world that we were and how it worked sooner, but a lot of information is held back from the reader for a long time.  This makes it very hard for you to get a sense of where you are and to get your bearings early on.  Prunella is a great character, full of derring-do and get up and go, but I didn’t find her very likeable.  Zacharias is more promising, but because he’s so caught up in rules and problems and on top of that is a bit wet, so I found it a bit hard to find some one to like and root for.  But he was definitely on the side of right, and Prunella probably was, so that helped!

I had heard a lot of talk about Sorcerer to the Crown and lots of recommendations from bookish people, but in the end I liked rather that loved it.  A sequel is coming I believe and I’ll probably look for that at the library rather than buying it outright.  That said, this was still the best book that I read last week, and so for that reason it’s a merited BotW.  It’s also inspired me to write a post about magical worlds, so you can expect to see that at some point in the near future, once I’ve done a little bit more reading!

My copy of Sorcerer to the Crown came from Big Green Bookshop, but you should be able get from any good bookshop with a reasonable fiction section.  Or you can get it online from Amazon or in Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: March 19 – March 25

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Some progress on the long-runners, but over all not as much progress this week as I would have liked.  Roll on next week.

Read:

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

Emily Windsnap and the Falls of Forgotten Island by Liz Kessler

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

Devil’s Breath by GM Malliet

Uneasy Prey by Annette Dashovy

Started:

The Girls of Dancey Dene by MB Manwell

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club by Sophie Green

Blame it on the Duke by Leonora Bell

And I bought a couple of books – well three – this week as well, but one of them was the paperback version of something I already have read (to complete the set on my bookshelves) so that doesn’t count!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: March 12 – March 18

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Ok, so it might not look like the long-runners shelf has improved much this week, it really has – I’ve done some serious time on the non-fiction entries and I’m hoping to get some more done this week coming.  I will sort this out!

Read:

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

A Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferris

Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

Full Speed by Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes

Started:

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club by Sophie Green

Blame it on the Duke by Leonora Bell

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

If I didn’t get many long-runners finished, I didn’t buy any books either.  Small victories!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: March 5 – March 11

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It’s been a bit of a week.  And the Still Reading list grows ever longer.  I really must do better, but weekend working doesn’t lend itself to reading time.

Read:

Hopjoy was Here by Colin Watson

First Kiss of Spring by Emily March

Rivers of London: Cry Fox 4 by Ben Aaronovitch et al

Stiff Competition by Micah Persell

Where There’s Smoke by Peter Murphy

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

Started:

Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

A couple of ebooks bought – there were some good deals and I was at work at the weekend, it leads to book buying…

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 26 – March 4

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The ongoing list seems to be getting longer rather than shorter – despite all my best efforts.  I think it’s because I’ve got so many non-fiction books on there and they take me longer to read than the lighter fiction does – and I’ve often got them as hardbacks, which means I don’t take them to work with me.

Read:

The New Girl and Nancy by Dorita Fairley Bruce

Murder on the Pilgrims Way by Julie Wassmer

Make Me Want by Katee Robert

On the Edge of Scandal by Tamsen Parker

On the Brink of Passion by Tamsen Parker

Maybe This Time by Nicole McLaughlin

The House of Hopes and Dreams by Trisha Ashley

A Killing in C Sharp by Alexia Gordon

A Country Escape by Katie Fforde

Started:

Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

One ebook bought.  That’s it. Progress!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 19 – February 25

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Actually a better week’s reading than I was expecting  – the Deborah Cadbury was 400 pages long so for a while there wasn’t a lot on this list at all, but in the end it all came together when I finished off a few books that had been lingering on the Goodreads shelf.

Read:

The Pajama Frame by Diane Vallere

Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking by Deborah Cadbury

Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh

England Expects by Sara Sheridan

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens

Bright Young Things by Alison Maloney

Started:

The Long Weekend by Adrian Tinniswood

The New Girl and Nancy by Dorita Fairley Bruce

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

Two ebooks bought – and one book acquired at an author teaparty on Sunday.  So not bad at all.

Adventure, Book of the Week, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

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There were a few options for this week’s BotW pick, but I have plans for some of them, but also this was my favourite book that I read last week and makes a nice companion or compliment to last week’s choice. Last week I picked A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia, which was a book set in the interwar period but written now, this week it’s The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith, which is a genuine forgotten Golden Age mystery. It was also another book from the massive unread pile on my Kindle and I’m so pleased I impulse bought it at some point in the distant past.

The cover of The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

Patrica Wentworth’s The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith was originally published in 1923 and tells the story of a young woman who is swept into an adventure after a chance meeting when she’s down on her luck, with nowhere to stay and be t to no money. In one of those astonishing coincidences that you find in some books, it transpires that a Jane has a cousin who is practically her double and who is being held hostage by her father and a shadowy group that he is associated with. The cousin has a fiancé who is desperate to elope with her and run off to foreign climes and Jane ends up switching places with Renata and taking over her identity. What follows is a breathless espionage adventure thriller with a dash of romance and a dollop of murder.

It rattles along at a breathless pace that doesn’t really give you a chance to notice the bonkersness until you’ve finished and stop to think. I raced through it once I actually sat down properly to read it and then went off to trawl Kindle for more books by Patricia Wentworth in my budget. A certain amount of suspension of belief is necessary – there are anarchists and secret passages and shadowy forces at work as well as the lookalike cousins – but you liked The 39 Steps, or the more adventure-y Albert Campion novels, then you need to read this.

The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith is included in Kindle Unlimited if you’re part of that scheme, or you can buy it on Kindle or as a paperback. At time of writing it’s £1.99 on Kindle, but I’m fairly sure I picked it up for free, so it might be worth adding to your watch list to see if the price drops.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 12 – February 18

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I’m really trying to get a handle on the long-running backlog in the Still Reading list – but it’s taking some time, because there’s chunky hardback non-fiction in there and literary prize winners.  I will get there in the end though.  Some of the books on the read list this week have been marked as being in the process of being read on my Goodreads account for some time – so I’m taking that as a partial win on that front.

Read:

Dimsie Among the Prefects by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher

The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith by Patricia Wentworth

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

The Gift of a Family by Sarah Morgan

Fire on the Ice by Tamsen Parker

The Chimneys of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

Bump in the Night by Colin Watson

Started:

England Expects by Sara Sheridan

Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens

Three actual books and two ebooks bought…

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 5 – February 11

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A strange week of reading all in all.  I finished a bunch of books that I had started the previous week, but then started a load more that I didn’t manage to finish – either because of work and real life commitments or because I was so far into them they broke my rules about not taking books with less than 100 pages to go to work with me.  Oh and I’m trying to pace myself and make A Spoonful of Murder last, because otherwise I’ve got a *really* long wait for the next Wells and Wong book!

Read:

The Husband List by Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly

The Song of the Abbey by Elsie J Oxenham

A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia by Clara Benson

The Lark by E Nesbit

Medal Up by Nicole Flockton and Fiona M Marsden

Started:

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens

Dimsie Among the Prefects by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Still reading:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

Five ebooks (all on sale) bought on Sunday in a moment of weak willpower related to working all weekend!