My Week in Books – 7th April 2024

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My Week in Books

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I shared My Top 5 March 2024 Reads.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was on the rain-related theme of April Showers (perhaps February, March and April showers would be more apt if you’re in the UK) 

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Thursday – I shared my Q&A with author Angel Dionne about her debut short story collection, Sardines.

Friday – I published my review of The Wager by David Grann.

Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for the #6Degrees of Separation meme. My chain had a distinctly Shakespearean theme.

New arrivals

Strange Sally DiamondStrange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent (Penguin) 

Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died.

Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don’t always mean what they say.

But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally’s life will be thrown into chaos once again . . .

The Zone of InterestThe Zone of Interest by Martin Amis (Vintage)

Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn’t show you your reflection. It showed you your soul — it showed you who you really were.

The wizard couldn’t look at it without turning away. The king couldn’t look at it. The courtiers couldn’t look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.

The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting. Can love survive the mirror? Can we even meet each other’s eye, after we have seen who we really are?

The Ministry of TimeThe Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (eARC, Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley)

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel.

Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?

French WindowsFrench Windows by Antoine Laurain (eARC, Gallic Books)

Nathalia, a young photographer, has been seeing a therapist. Having accidentally photographed a murder, she finds that she can no longer do her job. 

Instead, Doctor Faber suggests that she write about the neighbours she idly observes in the building across the street. But as these written snapshots become increasingly detailed, he starts to wonder how she can possibly know so much about them.

With each session, Doctor Faber and his mysterious patient will get closer and closer to the truth. But are the stories Nathalia submits each week as she claims…

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: Bonjour, Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan
  • Author Q&A: The Callas Imprint by Sophia Lambton
  • Author Q&A: A Place Without Pain by Simon Bourke
  • Book Review: Sword of the War God by Tim Hodkinson
  • Book Review: Girl Friends by Alex Dahl

#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Hamnet to Juliet & Romeo

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It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

Book cover of Shakespeare-LandThis month we’re invited to pick a travel guide as our starting book.  I’ve selected this one – Shakespeare-Land by Walter Jerrold, illustrated by E.W. Haslehurst – from my collection of books in the ‘Beautiful England series’. (I possess twelve in all, picked up in secondhand bookshops over the years.)

Links from each title in the chain will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

The cover illustration of Shakespeare-Land is Anne Hathaway’s cottage, so my first link is to Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell which is the fictionalised story of the death of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway’s son, Hamnet. (Although Shakespeare’s wife is usually referred to as Anne, in the book she is called Agnes reflecting how her name appeared in her father’s will.)

My next link takes us from events in the life of Shakespeare to events in the life of one of his creations, King Lear. Or to be precise, Lear’s unnamed wife who is the subject of Learwife by JR Thorpe.

A quote from King Lear is the source of the title of If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio, a thriller set in an elite college in which drama students study and perform only the works of Shakespeare.

One of the plays from which they perform scenes is Julius Caesar.  The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder, an epistolary novel which depicts events leading up to the assassination of Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BC. (At this point, fans of the Carry On films are allowed to exclaim, ‘Infamy, infamy. They’ve all got it in for me.’)

A quotation from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar provides my next link.  The Fault In Our Stars by John Green references Cassius’s lines in Act 1, Scene 3, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” 

The Fault In Our Stars features two people in love who face the prospect of dying young. Given the Shakespearean theme, I expect you know where I’m going here. Well, I am, sort of… Juliet and Romeo by David Hewson is the famous love story retold as a romantic thriller and with the focus very much on Juliet.

My chain has taken me on a journey of Shakespearean proportions. Where did your chain take you this month?

#6Degrees of Separation April