Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 29th March 2020

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared my review of The Canary Keeper by Clare Carson as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was a freebie on the theme of genre. I chose to focus on books with a positive message, sharing some recommendations for Books To Read In Troubled Times. 

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…and have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading. I also joined the blog tour for dual time historical novel The Walls We Build by Jules Hayes.

Thursday – I directed the spotlight on some books in my TBR pile.

Friday – I shared my thoughts on So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernières.

Saturday – I shared details of the book I’m planning to read for The 1920 Club reading challenge.

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media this week.

New arrivals

A bumper crop this week including books for blog tours, an audiobook and some NetGalley titles I just couldn’t resist. 

The Bell in the LakeThe Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting (e-book, courtesy of Quercus and NetGalley)

Norway, 1880. Young, inquisitive Astrid is unlike the other girls in the secluded village at the end of the valley. She dreams of a life that consists of more than marrying, having children, and eventually dying from hard work in the fields. And then the young pastor Kai Schweigaard comes into her life.

Kai Schweigaard has taken over the small parish of Butangen, with its 700-year-old stave church. The old church is one of the few remaining examples of early Christianisation, with effigies of pagan deities carved into the wooden walls. And the bells – two sister bells forged in the 16th century, in memory of the Siamese twins Halfrid and Gunhild Hekne – are said to have supernatural powers. Legend has it that they ring of their own accord when danger is imminent.

But the pastor wants to tear it down, to replace it with a more modern, larger church. He has already contacted the Kunstakademie in Dresden, which is sending its talented architecture student Gerhard Schönauer to oversee the removal of the church and its reconstruction in the German city. For Astrid this is a provocation too far.

But Astrid falls in love with Gerhard. He is so different from the young men in Butangen: modern, cosmopolitan, elegant, he even smells different. And she must make a choice: for her homeland and the pastor, or for an uncertain future in Germany. Then the bells begin to ring . . .

20200324_135536Hammer To Fall by John Lawton (hardcover, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

It’s London, the swinging sixties, and by rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, in the wake of an embarrassing disaster for MI6, Wilderness has been posted to remote northern Finland in a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad.

Bored by his work, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness finds another way to make money: smuggling vodka across the border into the USSR. He strikes a deal with old KGB pal Kostya, who explains to him there is a vodka shortage in the Soviet Union – but there is something fishy about Kostya’s sudden appearance in Finland and intelligence from London points to a connection to cobalt mining in the region, a critical component in the casing of the atomic bomb. Wilderness’s posting is getting more interesting by the minute, but more dangerous too.

Moving from the no-man’s-land of Cold War Finland to the wild days of the Prague Spring, and populated by old friends (including Inspector Troy) and old enemies alike, Hammer to Fall is a gripping tale of deception and skulduggery, of art and politics, a page-turning story of the always riveting life of the British spy.

Shadowplay AudiobookShadowplay by Joseph O’Connor (audiobook)

1878. The Lyceum Theatre, London. Three extraordinary people begin their life together. Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker.

Bram is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. But the Chief is determined that nothing will get in the way of his manager’s devotion to the Lyceum and to himself. And both men are enchanted by the beauty and boldness of the elusive Ellen.

20200325_131512-1Patrol by Fred Majdalany (paperback, courtesy of Imperial War Museum and Random Things Tours)

1943, the North African desert. Major Tim Sheldon, an exhausted and battle-weary infantry officer, is asked to carry out a futile and unexpected patrol mission. He’d been on many patrols, but this was to be the longest and most dangerous of all. Fred Majdalany’s superb novel of the men who fought in the North African campaign puts this so-called minor mission at center stage, as over the course of the day and during the patrol itself, Sheldon looks back on his time as a soldier, considers his future, and contemplates the meaning of fear.

20200325_131506-1Warriors for the Working Day by Peter Elstob (paperback, courtesy of Imperial War Museum and Random Things Tours)

Based on Peter Elstob’s own wartime experiences, Warriors for the Working Day follows one tank crew as they proceed from the beaches of Normandy into newly liberated Western Europe, evoking the claustrophobia, heat, and intensity of tank warfare in brilliant detail. Published to great acclaim in 1960, the classic novel has been translated into several languages.

This repackaged edition includes a contextual introduction by an Imperial War Museums historian.

510+6-1hr3L._SX398_BO1,204,203,200_Youth & The Bright Medusa by Willa Cather (e-book)

Youth and the Bright Medusa is a collection of short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1920. Several were published in an earlier collection, The Troll Garden.

The collection contains the following stories: “Coming, Aphrodite!” a.k.a. “Coming, Eden Bower!”, “The Diamond Mine”, “A Gold Slipper”, “Scandal”, “Paul’s Case”, “A Wagner Matinee”, “The Sculptor’s Funeral” and “A Death in the Desert”.

Daughters of NightDaughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (eARC, courtesy of Mantle and NetGalley)

London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline ‘Caro’ Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly-paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thieftaker, Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives.

But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro’s own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous than she can know . . .

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Philosopher’s Daughters by Alison Booth
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Signs You’re A Book Lover
  • Buchan of the Month/Book Review: A Lodge in the Wilderness by John Buchan
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay
  • 6 Degrees of Separation
  • Blog Blitz: Song of the Nightingale by Marilyn Pemberton
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Summer in Provence by Lucy Coleman

#WWWWednesday – 25th March 2020

whatcathyreadnext4 Comments

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

Two books for blog tours and a NetGalley ARC.

20200214_125432-1_kindlephoto-138190928On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (hardcover, courtesy of Jonathan Cape and Midas PR)

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born – a history whose epicentre is rooted in Vietnam – and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to the American moment, immersed as it is in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

The Philosophers DaughtersThe Philosopher’s Daughters by Alison Booth (e-book, courtesy of RedDoor Press and Random Things Tours)

London, 1891. Harriet Cameron is a talented young artist whose mother died when she was barely five. She and her beloved sister Sarah were brought up by their father, radical thinker James Cameron. After adventurer Henry Vincent arrives on the scene, the sisters’ lives are changed forever. Sarah, the beauty of the family, marries Henry and embarks on a voyage to Australia. Harriet, intensely missing Sarah, must decide whether to help her father with his life’s work or devote herself to painting.

When James Cameron dies unexpectedly, Harriet is overwhelmed by grief. Seeking distraction, she follows Sarah to Australia, and afterwards into the Northern Territory outback, where she is alienated by the casual violence and great injustices of outback life. Her rejuvenation begins with her friendship with an Aboriginal stockman and her growing love for the landscape. But this fragile happiness is soon threatened by murders at a nearby cattle station and by a menacing station hand seeking revenge.

A Thousand MoonsA Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry (eARC, courtesy of Faber & Faber and NetGalley)

Even when you come out of bloodshed and disaster in the end you have got to learn to live.

Narrated by Winona, the young Lakota orphan adopted by soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole in Days Without End, A Thousand Moons continues Sebastian Barry’s extraordinary fictional exploration of late nineteenth century America.

Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, educated and loved, Winona is employed by the lawyer Briscoe in the nearby town of Paris, as she tries to forge a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But the fragile harmony of this shared world, in the aftermath of the Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront let alone understand.

Told in Sebastian Barry’s gorgeous, lyrical prose, A Thousand Moons is a powerful, moving study of one woman’s journey, about her determination to write her own future, and about the enduring human capacity for love.

Recently finished

Links from titles will take you to my review.

The Canary Keeper PBThe Canary Keeper by Clare Carson (paperback, review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus)

In the grey mist of the early morning a body is dumped on the shore of the Thames by a boatman in a metal canoe. The city is soon alive with talk of the savage Esquimaux stalking Victorian London and an eye witness who claims the killer had an accomplice: a tall woman dressed in widow’s weeds, with the telltale look of the degenerate Irish.

Branna ‘Birdie’ Quinn had no good reason to be by the river that morning, but she did not kill the man. She’d seen him first the day before, desperate to give her a message she refused to hear. And now the Filth will see her hang for his murder, just like her father.

To save her life, Birdie must trace the dead man’s footsteps. Back onto the ship that carried him to his death, back to cold isles of Orkney that sheltered him, and up to the far north, a harsh and lawless land which holds more answers than she looks to find…

The Walls We Build_EbookThe Walls We Build by Jules Hayes  (eARC, review copy courtesy of Rachel’s Random Resources)

Three Friends… Growing up together around Winston Churchill’s estate in Westerham, Kent, Frank, Florence and Hilda are inseparable. But as WW2 casts its menacing shadow, friendships between the three grow complex, and Frank – now employed as Churchill’s bricklayer – makes choices that will haunt him beyond the grave, impacting his grandson’s life too.

Two Secrets …Shortly after Frank’s death in 2002, Florence writes to Richard, Frank’s grandson, hinting at the darkness hidden within his family. On investigation, disturbing secrets come to light, including a pivotal encounter between Frank and Churchill during the war and the existence of a mysterious relative in a psychiatric hospital.

​One Hidden Life … How much more does Florence dare reveal about Frank – and herself – and is Richard ready to hear?

​Set against the stunning backdrop of Chartwell, Churchill’s country home, comes a tragic story of misguided honour, thwarted love and redemption, reverberating through three generations and nine decades.

What Cathy (will) Read Next

20200314_134401A Lodge in the Wilderness by John Buchan (hardcover)

An imaginary conference is arranged by a multi-millionaire Francis Carey at Musuru, a lodge located on the East Kenyan Plateau some 9,000 feet above sea level, to discuss Empire. The conference is made up of nine men and nine women, taken from the upper and professional classes.