My Week in Books – 26th May 2024

My Week in Books

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I made a visit Down The TBR Hole to decide the whether books I’ve still to read should stay or go. Spoiler: most of them stayed!

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Authors I’d Love A New Book From

Wednesday – I published my review of The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley as part of the blog tour. And 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 – To celebrate mark the start of the General Election campaign in the UK, I shared a list of Ten Novels About Politics

Friday – I published my long overdue review of All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman.

Saturday – I shared an update on my progress with this year’s When Are You Reading? Challenge


New arrivals

The Heart in WinterThe Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (eARC, Canongate via NetGalley)

He was ready to die for love. He just needed to find the right girl.

October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers.

Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.

A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .

The Days of Our BirthThe Days of Our Birth by Charlie Laidlaw (eARC, courtesy of the author)

It was a perfect relationship until time pulled them apart.

The Days of Our Birth delves into the intricate bond between Peter and Sarah as they navigate their formative years. Spanning from their sixth birthday through two decades, the narrative unfolds against the backdrop of Sarah’s placement on the autism spectrum.

With a blend of humour and poignancy, the book intricately weaves together themes of love and friendship, unravelling the tale of two individuals who grapple with their emotions for each other, even though they remain unacknowledged.

A beautiful story sensitively told about how love and friendship can conquer everything, including time, to a point.

In This Ravishing WorldIn This Ravishing World by Nina Schuyler (eARC, Regal House via NetGalley)

In This Ravishing World is a sweeping, impassioned short story collection, ringing out with joy, despair, and hope for the natural world. Nine connected stories unfold, bringing together an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis.

An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his bleak urban reality. A scientist working to solve the plastic problem grapples with whether to have a child. A ballet dancer endeavors to inhabit the consciousness of a rat.

In This Ravishing World is a full-throated chorus— with Nature joining in— marveling at the exquisite beauty of our world, and pleading, raging, and ultimately urging all of its inhabitants toward activism and resistance.


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading


Planned posts

  • Book Review: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
  • Book Review: The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis
  • Book Review: Estella’s Revenge by Barbara Havelocke
  • #6Degrees of Separation
  • Blog Tour/Giveaway: Code Name Kingfisher by Liz Kessler

#WWWWednesday – 22nd May 2024

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

Book cover of Estella's Revenge by Barbara HavelockeEstella’s Revenge by Barbara Havelocke (Hera) 

You know Miss Havisham. The world’s most famous jilted bride. This is her daughter’s story.

Raised in the darkness of Satis House where the clocks never tick, the beautiful Estella is bred to hate men and to keep her heart cold as the grave. She knows she doesn’t feel things quite like other people do but is this just the result of her strange upbringing?

As she watches the brutal treatment of women around her, hatred hardens into a core of vengeance and when she finds herself married to the abusive Drummle, she is forced to make a deadly choice: Should she embrace the darkness within her and exact her revenge?

Book cover of The Ministry of Time by Kaliane BradleyThe Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre 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?


Recently finished

A Plague of Serpents (Daniel Pursglove #4) by K. J. Maitland (Headline)

The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley (Allison & Busby)


What Cathy Will Read Next

Book cover A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter MurrayA Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Property might be theft. But the housing market is murder.

My name is Al. I live in wealthy people’s second homes while their real owners are away. I don’t rob them, I don’t damage anything. I’m more an unofficial house-sitter than an actual criminal.

Life is good. Or it was – until last night, when my friends and I broke into the wrong place, on the wrong day, and someone wound up dead.

And now … now we’re in a great deal of trouble.