Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 23rd August 2020

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared my review of The Girl From Vichy by Andie Newton as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books That Would Make Great Movies. I also featured a memoir about the ups and downs of a family’s move to France, What Have We Got Toulouse? by Nikki McArthur.

Wednesday – It wouldn’t be “hump day” without WWW Wednesday, the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…as well as have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading. I also shared my review of The Wanderers by Tim Pears, the second book in his Walter Scott Prize nominated West Country trilogy.

Thursday – I published my publication day review of A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson.

Friday –  I introduced my Buchan of the Month for August, A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan.

Saturday – I published my review of The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, book number 16 on my 20 Books of Summer list, the annual reading challenge hosted by Cathy at 746Books. It was also the last book I needed to complete the When Are You Reading? Challenge hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

Phew! What a busy week… As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or so generously shared my blog posts on social media.

New arrivals

9781785769108Charlotte by Helen Moffett (Hardcover, courtesy of Manilla Press and Readers First)

Everybody thinks that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is twenty-seven years old, unmarried, plain, and seemingly without ambition. When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her best friend Lizzy Bennet is angry at her for undervaluing herself. Yet the decision is the only way Charlotte knows to provide for her future, and marriage will propel her into a new world, of duty, marriage, children, grief and ultimately illicit love, and a kind of freedom.

Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints of women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off, showing us a woman determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence.

Talland House Front coverTalland Houseby Maggie Humm (eARC, courtesy of She Writes Press and Random Things Tours)

Royal Academy, London 1919: Lily has put her student days in St. Ives, Cornwall, behind her – a time when her substitute mother, Mrs. Ramsay, seemingly disliked Lily’s portrait of her, and Louis Grier, her tutor, never seduced her as she hoped he would. In the years since, she’s been a suffragette and a nurse in WWI, and now she’s a successful artist with a painting displayed at the Royal Academy.

Then Louis appears at the exhibition with the news that Mrs. Ramsay has died under suspicious circumstances. Talking to Louis, Lily realizes two things: she must find out more about her beloved Mrs. Ramsay’s death (and her sometimes-violent husband, Mr. Ramsay); and she still loves Louis.

Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Talland House takes Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story outside the confines of Woolf’s novel – as a student in 1900, as a young woman becoming a professional artist, her loves and friendships, mourning her dead mother, and solving the mystery of her friend Mrs. Ramsay’s sudden death.

Talland House is both a story for our present time, exploring the tensions women experience between their public careers and private loves, and a story of a specific moment in our past – a time when women first began to be truly independent.

 

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Night of Shooting Stars by Ben Pastor
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Questions I’d Ask Authors
  • Book Review: The Bitch by Pilar Quintana
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Night of the Flood by Zoe Somerville
  • Blog Tour/Extract: Son of Escobar – First Born by Roberto Sendoya Escobar
  • Buchan of the Month/Book Review: A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan

#WWWWednesday – 19th August 2020

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

A book for #ARCAugust and one of my 20 Books of Summer

9780008244330A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson (eARC, courtesy of 4th Estate via NetGalley)

Nik felt the mistake in his bones. The man in the snakeskin suit reached down towards him and pulled Nik upright by the collar of his coat. Nik didn’t see what happened next but he felt the wall. He cried out and then someone hit him and he closed his eyes and waited for it to be over.

London, 1967. Nik Christou has been a rent boy since he was 15. He knows the ins and outs of Piccadilly Circus, how to spot a pretty policeman and to interpret a fleeting glance. One summer night his life is turned upside down, first by violence and then by an accusation of murder.

Anna Treadway, fleeing the ghosts of her past, works as a dresser in Soho’s Galaxy theatre. She has learned never to place too much trust in the long arm of the law and, convinced Nik is innocent she determines to find him an alibi.

Merrian Wallis, devoted wife to an MP with a tarnished reputation, just wants proof that her husband couldn’t have been involved.

But how do you recognise the truth when everyone around you is playing a role – and when any spark of scandal is quickly snuffed out by those with power? As Anna searches for clues amongst a cast of MPs, actors, members of gentlemen’s clubs and a hundred different nightly clients, will anyone be willing to come forward and save Nik from his fate?

TheMusicShopThe Music Shop by Rachel Joyce 

1988. Frank owns a music shop. It is jam-packed with records of every speed, size and genre. Classical, jazz, punk – as long as it’s vinyl he sells it. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need.

Then into his life walks Ilse Brauchmann. Ilse asks Frank to teach her about music. His instinct is to turn and run. And yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with her pea-green coat and her eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems. And Frank has old wounds that threaten to re-open and a past he will never leave behind…

Recently finished

Links from the title will take you to my review.

Katheryn Howard: The Tainted Queen (Six Tudor Queens #5) by Alison Weir (eARC, courtesy of Headline via NetGalley)

The Girl from Vichy by Andie Newton (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

The Wanderers (The West Country Trilogy #2) by Tim Pears (audiobook)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Night of the Shooting Stars_FINALThe Night of Shooting Stars (Martin Bora #7) by Ben Pastor (eARC, courtesy of Bitter Lemon Press and Random Things Tours)

Bora is ordered to investigate the murder of Walter Niemeyer, a dazzling clairvoyant, a star since the days of the Weimar Republic. For years he has mystified Germany with his astounding prophecies. Bora’s inquiry, supported by former S.A member Florian Grimm, resurrects memories of the excessive and brilliant world of Jazz Age cabarets and locales. Around them, in the oppressive summer heat, constant allied bombing, war-weary Berlin teems with refugees and nearly a million foreign labourers.

Soon Bora realizes that there is much more at stake than murder in a paranoid city where everyone suspects everyone, and where persistent rumours whisper about a conspiracy aimed at the very heart of the Nazi hierarchy. Could the charming Emmy Pletsch, who works for Claus von Stauffenberg, be a key to understanding what is going on? Bora eventually meets with Stauffenberg, facing an anguishing moral dilemma, as a German soldier and as a man.