As I mentioned at the weekend, we’ve been watching Drive to Survive here and it has awoken in me a desire to read some more books set in the motorsport world – but NOT biographies – I’ve got plenty of those – but fiction whether it’s romance or something more women’s fiction or saga-y.
I think I’ve only ever read one romance with a motorsport setting – Erin McCarthy’s Flat Out Sexy – which iirc is a Nascar-type set up, although it may be Indy Cars , it’s definitely in the US racing scene though – which features a driver’s widow falling in love with a hot shot rookie and having to work out if she (and her kids) can cope with being a part of the racing scene again. On the Mystery-thriller-romance front, one of the earlier Other Janet Evanovich series featured a Nascar driver – but i’ve read both of them and i didn’t love them.
So if anyone knows of any books set in a travelling motorsport series – glamourous settings, a bit of a closed group (both with the team and then the paddock as a whole), I am absolutely here for that. Bonus points if the heroine is the racing driver or part of the team rather than being a a rich airhead…
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!
I always love writing this post. It’s the easiest of the Christmas book posts for me to write, because I always have a big old list of books that I want but can’t justify buying. And given that I’ve been being really disciplined about not buying books as I try and shrink the to-read bookshelf down, this year the list is bigger than ever.
After my trip to the cinema to see Death of Stalin, I’ve got a yen to read more about Soviet Russia and I saw someone reading Frances Spufford’s Red Plenty on the train the other week and I would love to find that in my stocking, but Stalin and the Scientists by Simon Ings also looks like it might scratch that itch.
I may have gone to Foyles just to take pictures for this post
I’ve also been staring enviously at The House of Fiction by Phyllis Richardson which looks – as you might expect – at houses in fiction and how authors’ life experiences influenced the houses they created in their novels. Also on the bookish front, I would be happy to find The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler under the tree. And, although it might make me blush when I unwrap it, I really want to read Fern Riddell’s Victorian Guide to Sex. We all know that I read a lot of historical romance novels, and I would love to read some actual historical research into what people were really up to in the Nineteenth Century.
I’ve been lucky with managing to get my hands on a lot of the current-affairs-y nonfiction that I’ve been looking for this year, but I still haven’t managed to get a copy of Anne Helen Peterson’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise of the Unruly Woman
There aren’t a lot of memoirs on my list this year, but if you’ve been reading a while, you’ll know that I loved the Tales of the City series, so it’s probably not a surprise that Armistead Maupin’s memoir Logical Family is one of them. As far as biographies go, I keep staring at Tatiana de Rosenay’s Manderley Forever about Daphne Du Maurier, but I’m not sure I’m enough of a Du Maurier fan to get the most out of it.
These two were even on display right next to each other – I didn’t set this up!
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Short Stories by Lucia Berlin, which sounds like it might be right up my street. In terms of authors I love who have new books out that I haven’t been able to justify buying, I really want the new Sarah MacLean, Day of the Duchess, but only in the cheesy US mass market paperback edition or it won’t match the others in the series!
We’re (slowly) working our way through a complete rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I heard The Last Adventure of Constance Verity by A Lee Martinez described as being a book with a Buffy-ish feel, so that went straight on my Christmas list!
If you want to buy me something pretty for my bookshelf, I’m still lusting over a couple of the Virago Designer Modern Classics – the Daphne Du Maurier short story collections (which would go nicely with the de Rosenay wouldn’t they, wink wink) The Birds and Don’t Look Now, and Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train. I can’t justify buying them for myself just to add to a pretty bookshelf, but they would look nice. And if Virago did any more of these lovely clothbound babies, I would be first in line to buy!
I did pull these out form the shelf for the photo though…
I’m coming up a bit short on other bookish ideas – I’m well stocked for notebooks and pens – and I think if I get given any more book bags Him Indoors will throw a fit. As with last year, I still have a Literary Review subscription* and Vanity Fair and a bunch of newspaper subscriptions and I don’t have a lot of other ideas, unless someone wants to buy me Private Eye for a year or pay for another year of Fahrenheit Press (if they do a subscription again in 2018).
Anyway, that’s what I’m hoping to see in my stocking this year – and I’ll keep you posted on whether any of my wishlist actually appears! And in case you missed them, here are my Books for Him and Books for Her posts for ideas for what to buy your nearest and dearest this year!
Happy Shopping!
*It’s very good, the nonfiction reviews help me work out what I want to buy and the fiction reviews mean I can sound knowledgable about the latest literary fiction without having to read it thus giving me more time to devote to reading romance and cozy crime!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 