A couple of quick reviews

 

So we've had 'No-mow May' here in the UK and that's my excuse for one of my lawns looking like this. In actuality my gardener, who cuts the grass, couldn't do it last week as it was raining too hard. And if I'm honest, I absolutely love how cheerful this looks and how many insects and birds it attracts. These are not dandelions, as some people think, but something called Catsear (Hyphochaeris radicata) and they're what happens when you don't keep a perfect lawn. I have lots of lovely clover too and the bees 'really' love that! Important to keep them happy these days. 

Anyway, this is a book blog not a horticultural, 'Monty Don' fangirl page. :-)

My first book for June (started in May in fact) was A Book of Bones by John Connolly. Anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time knows how much I adore this series. This is book 17 and my interest is not flagging at all. 

So this is basically a continuation of book 16, The Woman in the Woods, which I see I did not review properly. In that, an individual named Quayle wreaked havoc all over the US, but ultimately in Maine, looking for the missing pages to an Atlas which, when complete, will alter the world - and not in a good way. Quayle returns to London after these events and it's there that Parker, Louis and Angel head after a stop-over in The Netherlands to gather information. In the UK, the body of a woman has been found in an abandoned village near Hadrian's Wall, connected to The Familists from book 16. The police are investigating and realise that there's a connection to other bodies discovered all over England. When Parker arrives in the UK is he going to be a help or a hindrance to their enquiries? This was 675 pages long but as usual with John Connolly, it didn't feel like it at all: I whipped through it. It's different to others in the series in that it's half police procedural as Connolly concentrates a lot on the Northumberland police trying to trace the woman's killer. There are also little 'weird' stories inserted into the text, from the past. This worked very well for me and added to the mystery of what The Fractured Atlas is. What Parker actually is - and Louis and Angel - is also known to readers of this series, oddly one of the police officers actually put her finger right on it but was joking when she said it. That was a bit of an 'Oh' moment. I've just discovered that there's more about the history of this 'Atlas' in Connolly's second book of short stories, Night Music, which I own but haven't read. I shall be doing that thing very soon. I must add that this is not a series for people who don't want to read about people dying in nasty ways. And Connolly does not mind who he kills. It's not quite Game of Thrones, but not everyone survives! Just sayin'. I plan to try and catch up with this series this year, I have five left to read as book 22 came out last month. 

Next, Death Rites by Sarah Ward. I thought the author was new to me but when I checked I realised I'd read In Bitter Chill, the first of her Peak District series about DC Childs. Death Rites is the first book in her 'Carla James' series, set in New England. 

Carla James is an English archaeologist from Oxford. She lost her husband recently and is looking for a change of scenery to take her mind off her loss. She gets a position at an elite university in the town of Jericho, 'somewhere' in New England. The body of a woman is found in a country area outside the town. It's surrounded by various objects or artifacts and Carla is called in for her opinion on these. None of it makes a lot of sense to her but she can't resist continuing to look into the murder, and that's when she starts to find connections with a handful of other killings and suicides that have happened over the last few years: the connections could lean towards the occult. The police actively try to dissuade her from investigating but their antipathy does nothing but spur her on. But who, on the university campus can she trust? And why won't the police listen to her? So this was very well written and pacey - a pageturner so I read it quickly. I think I saw the series mentioned by a blogging friend but I'm afraid I can't remember who. I found Carla a bit annoying at first, possibly too pushy and overstepping the mark at times. Then I saw how obstructive the police were being and I started to get annoyed that they couldn't see what was in front of them... and it didn't help that they were not pleasant people. At one stage Carla does not know who to turn to for help and I have to confess to thinking, 'Call Charlie Parker!' The setting of a New England university town felt realistic, we drove through a few when we were over there at various times. But I do wish the author had said which state it was in. There is apparently a Jericho in Vermont and it looks lovely, but too small to have a uni. Anyway, an interesting start to a new series. Will I read more? I'm not sure. It was good enough but I have a 'lot' of books on my tbr mountain, so we'll see. 

So now I have to choose a new book... think about me at this difficult time.

Books read in May

I can't believe it's almost the end of May, before we know it we'll be halfway through the year. Scary. I'm very behind with book reviews, so I shall do a quick catch-up in this post and see if I can keep rather more up to date in June. Hoho.

I read six books in May and these are they:

20. The Shell House Detectives - Emylia Hall

21. The Man in the Dark - Susan Scarlett

22. A Thousand Feasts - Nigel Slater. A collection of memoir 'essays' of his travels, mainly concerning food. Japan features heavily but also Scandinavia, the Middle-East. Beautiful, lyrical writing as always. 

23. Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh.   

This was an excellent sci-fi yarn, set on a large asteroid type rock, Gaea, where a group of refugees have taken up residence and created a warrior training society. They want to avenge the destruction of Earth by the Majoda who have now formed a confederation of planets. We follow Kyr, a female Amazonian type fighter, leader of her section and one of the best fighters on Gaea as she waits to see where she is assigned after training. What happens is a shock and she follows others who abandon Gaea, only to discover that nothing is as it seemed. This was very good, but it does divide the crowd a bit on Goodreads, and I can see why. Kyr is a bit one-dimensional, but she's been brain-washed since birth so... I liked the ideas and world building and the aliens. I thought it was a very solid sci-fi yarn.

 

24. Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters

Oddly enough, this one features another blonde-haired Amazonian lead female character in the shape of one, Vicky Bliss. She's an art historian come adventurer, sort of a female Indianna Jones figure. There's a long lost cabinet/sculpture thing by a Reformation artist to be found, so her and her boyfriend decide on a competition to be the first to find it. Off they pop to a castle in Germany and all kinds of weird shenanigans ensue. I only gave this a 3 star rating on Goodreads because it grated quite a lot with me. I know it was written in 1973 so a bit of latitude is required but the constant 'which is better? men or women?'  got quite annoying and I didn't care for the way Vicky and her boyfriend treated or spoke to each other. And why didn't they work together? It didn't make sense. There was a decent sense of Germany and its villages and castles so that was a plus. But in all honesty, I was disappointed by this one. The author is more famous for her Amelia Peabody books, of which I've read a couple - they're okay but I never felt the need to read all of them. I supsect this author is just not for me.

25. Sisters Making Mischief - Maddie Please.

A complete change for my last book of May. A contemporary fiction offering that centres on Joy Chandler. Joy is newly divorced and in her sixties, Hubby having left her for his secretary. He was a piece of work quite frankly and the family, a son and daughter and their various wives, husbands and kiddies, are not much better. Joy provides a wonderful Christmas for them... it's a disaster because they're so awful... so Joy ups and goes to France to visit her sister, Isabel, in Brittany. Here she starts to relax, help out a bit with gites and the antiques, meets new people and realises she's better off without Hubby, which we all could've told her from the start. This was a great deal of fun with nice characterisation and a really good sense of rural Britany and its people. Eugenie, the French, hypochondriac mother-in-law was a hoot and the French love interest bearing a resemblance to Harrison Ford didn't harm either. Enjoyed this a lot. 

 

So actually, that was not a bad reading month. Out of six books, just one I felt was a bit average and slightly disappointing, the rest were all very readable, particularly The Shell House Detectives, The Man in the Dark and Sisters Making Mischief. So nothing to complain about there. 

My current read is this:

 

This is book number 17 of John Connolly's wonderfully creepy and weird Charlie Parker series. Most of the books take place in the USA but the action this time has moved to The Netherlands and then the UK, up near the border of England and Scotland beside Hadrian's Wall. And it doesn't disappoint. John Connolly continues to be my favourite author and his Charlie Parker books my favourite series. 

I hope you all had a good May and are keeping well and reading lots of good books! 

 

Catching up

I seem to be in a perpetual state of 'Catching up' so it's nothing new that I'm three books behind with my reviews. Let's see if I can be brief for once. (Hint: nope, didn't manage it, 'bout time I stopped kidding myself I can do it. )

First up, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson.

Constance Haverhill is currently on the south coast of England, acting as a companion to the mother of her previous employer, a Lady of the Manor type, who kept Constance's mother close by as they had been close friends for years. Sadly, her mother has now died. Constance has been running the estate farm but now her brother is back from WW1 with a wife and Constance, for several reasons, is not required. So here she is, temporarily in a seaside town with no idea what her future holds. Enter Poppy Wirrall who has been riding a motorbike during the war and doesn't want to give it up. So she's starting a business ferrying women about the town in a sidecar attached to her motorbike. It's not long before Constance is involved with Poppy and her business and that of trying to entice Poppy's brother, who lost his leg in the war, to help restore an old aircraft. I think I first heard about this book on Constance from Staircase Wit's blog. It was one of her favourite books from last year (I think) and I can see why as it's a delight. Yes, it's full of get-up-and-go and fun ideas. But it also has serious issues as a theme, that of men returning from the war and needing their old jobs back, or new ones. And it was really hard for the women too because they had learnt independence and liked being useful. And some, like Constance, were cast adrift with nowhere to go and no prospects: she needed a job to live. The book is full of interesting, very individual characters whose lives and futures I became very caught up in. It maybe overdid the female angle just a smidgeon but I could forgive this quirky book that because it was so well written and 'fun'. 

Next, The Shell House Detectives by Emylia Hall.

Ally Bright, a woman in her sixties, has a beach house on the coast of Cornwall. She's been a widow for a year, her husband, Bill, was a retired policeman, still rather immersed in the community, whereas Ally liked to live a more solitary life as an artist. Her peace is shattered one night when a young man, in quite an agitated state, knocks on her door looking for her husband. Feeling unable to help him, Ally sends him away. Next day, ex-policeman, Jayden, is one of the people to find the young man at the bottom of a cliff, barely alive. Did he jump or was he pushed? Ally, feeling partly responsible, and Jayden, missing his policing days, set about finding out. This was so good. For my money, it wasn't purely a murder mystery story. The found family aspect, the concentration on the characters, what their lives were and why they were as they were, made this more of contemporary fiction book with a strong element of crime. I would also not put this into the 'cosy' crime genre. What I also loved about the book was its very strong sense of place. I know the area where it's set, the north Cornish coast, not up near the Devon border, but right down in the Penzance/St. Ives area of West Penwith. As someone from that area, it was the perfect setting. I already have book 2 on my Kindle, it takes place at Chistmas so I may well leave it until November or December to read that.

Lastly, The Man in the Dark by Susan Scarlett, written in 1940 by the author, Noel Streatfeild, of Ballet Shoes fame.

Marda Mayne is 26, and the eldest sibling of a GP and his wife. Until now she's worked as a dispenser in her father's surgery but finances suddenly become tight and Marda decides to find another paying job. She's taken on by one, James Longford, as a companion to his 17 year old American ward, Shirley, who is about to come and live with him, having lost her father. James was blinded in a racing car accident and has withdrawn into himself, becoming a recluse as he doesn't want to be a burden or to have his friends pity him. It doesn't take sparky Marda long to realise that things in this mausoleum of a household need to change and with Shirley's help the two set about their mission to bring light and joy back into the house. So, this was a delightful, undemanding read, no mention of the war so I presume it wasn't actually written in 1940 but possibly a few years earlier. The whole point of the story was that of bringing James back into the real world and that was well done. I liked Marda and her sparkiness and common sense, Shirley was a trifle more annoying, especially her rather overt attentions to James but her heart was in the right place, unlike James' awful sister. This is a lovely, gentle, amusing read, republished by Dean Street Press, that I would recommend to anyone feeling the need for that kind of thing at the moment. At £2.99 the Kindle versions of these republished books are very reasonable and I have quite a collection now. 

I was going to say that that's me up to date but I've actually also just finished Nigel Slater's new book of memoir type essays, A Thousand Feasts, mainly about food, but I'll talk about that another time as this post is long enough. I'll just leave you with this bookish quote from him, which made me laugh:

 Annotations tell a story too. My aunt put a simple pencil tick in every Mills and Boon romance she borrowed from the library so she could spot those she'd read. An entire literary lifetime of stories of 'doctor falls in love with nurse'. I have a cookery book, picked up in a charming shop near Kew gardens, that is annotated by the previous owner. A recipe for 'Moist fruit cake' comes with the grumpy addition, 'No it isn't'.

I hope you're all well and finding as many good books to read as I am. :-)

I have been reading...

That header is telling a slight porky as I've not been reading a huge amount this month at all. Being busy, plus having family visiting has curtailed my reading a bit, but I do have three books to report on, one fiction, two non-fiction.

First up, City of Ruins by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. 

This is book 2 in the author's 'Diving' science-fiction series. The main protagonist is a woman known only as 'Boss' who dives abandoned space-craft wrecks in outer space. In book 1, Diving into the Wreck, the chance discovery of a Dignity ship from centuries ago, with lost technology from that era, changes the course of Boss's life. She's now running her own company investigating occurrances of this lost tech. and this takes her and a motley crew of people to the city of Vaycehn to look at something called 'death holes' which suddenly appear and swallow whole neighbourhoods. In order to investigate properly they must keep certain things secret from the authorities, such as the technology they suspect is somewhere deep in the newly discovered cave system under the city. So, if anything this was even better than book 1 and that got a 5 star rating from me. I loved all the cave explorations, what they discovered, the startling thing that happened and the results of that. I'm not giving much away you'll notice but this was seriously good and I'm so pleased to have discovered this series via Tracy.

Next, The Dream of Rome by Boris Johnson.

I've had this on my tbr shelf for about ten years, possibly longer (it was first published in 2007), and as I was looking for background books for my Latin studies, this jumped out at me as I loved Johnson's book on Winston Churchill. The Dream of Rome is like a book-long essay to be honest, exploring the Roman Empire, how they managed to maintain the peace for hundreds of years and why it came to an end. It starts with the first emperor, Augustus, and outlines what a piece of work he was: that was a real eye-opener although my Latin tutor had previously told me that he was a very ambivilent character. Fascinating stuff. Johnson's writing style suits me very well as he's funny and writes in a very accessible manner. I spent a lot of time laughing and I learnt a lot. I will say that this is a good 'starter' book for Roman studies, it's probably not much use to anyone who already knows a lot, I suspect there's not much new in it but I found Johnson's opinions interesting, particularly his way of comparing the Roman Empire to the EU. Some things I agreed with, some I did not, but I do like to listen to and consider 'all' points of view. A more academic viewpoint on the Romans would be the wonderful Mary Beard and I will be moving on to something by her soon, there's quite a lot of choice! And I would really like to read a deeper biography of Augustus, so must look to see what's available.

Lastly, a lovely friend sent me Traces by Patricia Wiltshire as she knew I shared her fascination with how murders are solved.

The author is a palynologist who didn't start out that way but always had a love of the natural world, especially plants. She was born in Wales to rather dysfunctional parents but adored her grandmother to bits. She did allsorts, which I now forget, before ending up qualified to help the police with murder enquiries. Palynology is the scientific study of pollen, spores, fungi, that sort of thing. It seems none of us can go anywhere at all without picking up evidence of where we've been, often in the shape of plant pollen on ourselves or in soil on our shoes, in the car and so on. So when someone is murdered, the study of the area where they're found versus what kind of plant pollen they have on them is vital in deciding where they were killed and who might have done the deed. I found the cases she described quite fascinating... true crime sort of thing. The biographical stuff was ok by me (some on Goodreads did not like that), I too was very attached to my grandmother so I could identify with that. I did find the author a bit prone to waffle, a bit too much repetition, but all in all this was a very interesting read and I'm glad to have increased my scientific knowledge just a little bit, which is not difficult as there's so little to begin with. :-)

So, the two books I'm currently reading are these:

 

Both are absolutely delightful. 

And this is the book themed jigsaw puzzle my daughter and I worked on over the Easter, 2,000 pieces and huge fun to do. Click on it for a clearer view.

 

So I hope you're all keeping well, enjoying spring if you're in the northern hemisphere, autumn if in the southern, and finding lots of lovely books to read.

Books read in March

Spring has definitely sprung here in the UK and because of all the rain we had in the winter everything is green and the spring flowers, especially the primroses, are really lovely this year.

 

I had what I would call a 'fun' reading month. Aside from one book, everything I read was enjoyable in an easy reading manner. Sometimes that's just the ticket.

10. A Mudlarking Year - Lara Maiklem 

11. Stone Maidens - Lloyd Devereux Richards 

12. Lady of Quality - Georgette Heyer 

13. The Aeneid - Virgil. I've been reading this for a few weeks and finished it a week or two ago. I'm not going to try to review it as I wouldn't have a clue where to start. But Virgil was a Roman writer who, it's thought, wrote this epic as a tribute to Emporer Augustus who was 'A piece of work' as we say these days. It charts the journey of Aeneas, after his defeat at Troy, to the shores of Italy where Rome was founded. It was an interesting read for various reasons but I found all the battles and descriptions a bit tedious. At some stage I will go back and reread Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey but not just yet. I am however enjoying this foray into the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome to connect with my Latin studies.

14. Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

This series is set thousands of years into Earth's future where humans are out among the stars. 'Boss' is a female who dives wrecks, not under the sea, but out in deep space: she's definitely a bit of a maverick. She lost her mother when she was a child, to a mysterious room known as the Room of Lost Souls. Boss was with her but somehow survived and no one knows how. She comes across a new wreck, an Earth ship thousands of years old, but it should not be in this part of space, it should actually be impossible for it to be where it is. So how is it here? So I have Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery to thank for this wonderful discovery. I thought I was up on sci-fi authors but I'd never heard of this series, or this author. This was top-notch science fiction writing, great characters - I liked Boss and her relationship with her mad scientist, ambivilent father a lot. The world building is excellent and the menace, because there is one, is so well depicted it actually scared me. That's good writing for you. I'm already halfway through book 2, City of Ruins, and if anything, it's even better. 

Tracy's review is HERE 

15. The Marriage Season by Jane Dunn.

Sybella Lovatt is a widow with a young son, her husband having died in the Peninsula War. She has a younger sister, Lucie, who is stunningly beautiful and Bella is determined to find her a good marriage. Off they trot to London to stay with Lucie's elderly godmother so that she can have a proper coming out. Shenanigans ensue of course, including various suitors, not only for Lucie but for Bella, who wasn't even looking. Shades of Sense and Sensibility in this one although Lucie is nowhere near as daft as Marianne and Bella not as self-sacrificing as Eleanor. It's more similar to several Georgette Heyers but, although not badly written at all, not quite on that level. It suffers a little from something I complain about a lot, too much intelligent speech and thoughts coming from very young children, in this case a three year old boy. I also thought the villain in it was too much of a cartoon character. All that said, it was fun, especially the interactions between Bella and Mr. Brabazon, and there were some decent period details. I have a couple more of the author's books on my Kindle so will read more at some stage.

So, that was my March reading month. Six books read, one non-fiction, five fiction, bit of a motley mix, as is usual with me, but no disappointments among them and that's as much as you can ask for really.

I hope you're all keeping well and have some good reading plans for the month of April. 

 

I have been reading...

 I thought it was time I did a quick catch-up of the three books I've read this month. It's been a little bit of a busy time, plus last weekend was the first anniversary of my husband, Peter's, passing away. The family came together of course and we quietly celebrated his memory. I don't know where the year went to be honest, but on the other hand it feels like I've been a widow for 'years'. Life is strange. 

Anyway. I started the month by finishing A Mudlarking Year by Lara Maiklem. 

This is a follow-up book to her Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames, which I reviewed HERE. In many ways this is a continuation of the story but this time she charts a whole year of finds on the Thames' foreshore, in chronological order, starting, of course, in January. It's like spending a year in London, experiencing the weather - it was a heatwave year - the people and the moods of the river itself. Lovers of London will love this. I don't 'love' London but I have a certain fondness for it, my mother was a Londoner so it's probably in my blood, but also Peter and I had many a holiday up there, sometimes alone, other times with American friends who actually knew it better than we did. One of the best points of Lara Maiklem's books, for me, is all of the investigating she does into the backgrounds of her finds and how much knowledge she imparts to the reader. And all in a very readable manner, dry history this is not. Another five star read from her, I do hope she's busy writing more books. 

 

Next, Stone Maidens by Lloyd Devereux Richards.

Christine Prusik is a forensic anthropologist attached to the FBI in Chicago. Teenage girls are disappearing and being discovered murdered in southern Indiana, and in the throat of each victim... a small stone carving. Prusik leads the team investigating the murders but is up against it as the men under her are not fully co-operating. Plus, she has mental issues connected to a visit to Papua New Guinea, where she had previously come across similar stone carvings. A suspect is indentified quite quickly, and everyone is sure he's their man... except Prusik. Ok, so this is a 'love it' or 'hate it' book according to Goodreads. Because I know nothing about the workings of anthropology depts. in the FBI I had no thought that the author might've got procedure wrong. To me it was quite a good, pacey sort of crime yarn, with an outcome I had vaguely considered, but still thought it was well done. I 'did' find it odd that Prusik was popping pills willy-nilly to keep herself stable and that got old quite quickly. Plus, it would be nice to have a female in a lead role where the author does not make her being a female such a problem for the men - to the point of jeopardising the case because they won't listen to her. Perhaps this does happen in real life, I don't know, but I find it over-used in crime fiction. Four stars because it is a well written and very pacey story and overall I did enjoy it. 

Fancying something completely different next, I moved on to a reread of a Regency romance and that was Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer.

Annis Wychwood is 29 and considers herself, if not an old maid then certainly 'on the shelf'. She has gone to great pains to create an independent life for herself in Bath but it's not easy to persuade her family to let her lead said independent life: her brother in particular is interfering. She becomes embroiled in the problems of a runaway, Lucilla Carleton, an orphan, but from a wealthy family who are suffocating her. This brings her into contact with Lucilla's uncle, Oliver Carleton, who has the reputation of being the rudest man in London. The family are not happy and Annis's life becomes difficult and complicated but she's certainly not bored any more! So of course, as with most of Heyer's Regencies, it's pretty obvious where this is heading but that's what us fans read her for. The writing is exquisite in all her books, she was funny and entertaining and, although there a few good writers of Regencies around these days (I'm told, I haven't tried many... but Sophie Irwin is quite good) no one compares to her, unless you count Jane Austen. Highly recommend for a romantic wallow. Five stars on Goodreads.  

I'm now at that stage where I need to choose a new book but haven't a clue what I fancy. I'm 12 pages from the end of this:

 Virgil's The Aeneid has been interesting but not what you would call a pageturner. A bit too battley for me, who came, how they were slaughtered, who their fathers were... Gods quite often it seemed to me... I couldn't keep track. But I'm pleased to actually get to the end! I'm going to try Ovid next and also go from Rome back to Greece and read one of the modern retold Greek myths written from the woman's point of view. I have a few collected on my Kindle.

Enjoy spring or autumn, depending on where you are and I hope you're well and finding lots of good books to read.

Some February reading

So, what with visitors and being busy and Latin lessons and a huge jigsaw puzzle... I've been a bit absent, and I didn't realise it had been three weeks since I last posted! Apologies. But I have been reading, a bit anyway, and so far this month I've read four books, so an update is more than overdue!

On the Marsh by Simon Barnes, could well end up being my favourite non-fiction book of the year. (I admit it's possibly a trifle early in the year for such sweeping statements.) Simon Barnes is quite a well-known British birder, writes books and has a column in the quarterly RSPB magazine. He bought ten acres of land next to a part of the Norfolk Broads and set about restoring it to a more natural condition. The book charts the first year of their work and the birds they see as they go about said work, or just sit with a drink and observe. Simon Barnes writes beautifully and with humour about their mission, but also his family and the people that come and give him advice... and the wonderful birds of course. I loved this book to bits and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys nature writing and, in particular, watching birds. And just look at that gorgeous cover! 5 stars on Goodreads.

 

Next up, Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Sutano.

Vera Wong is the sixty year old owner of a tea shop in San Francisco. Sadly, it's a declining business with hardly any customers, which is a shame as Vera is an expert on Chinese tea. She has one son, who is rather neglectful, although Vera doesn't help matters by bombarding him with texts telling him how to run his life. Things change drastically when Vera comes down one morning to find a dead body in the shop. The police think the death was an accident but Vera feels otherwise and sets about investigating herself. Soon she has various suspects lined up, the dead man's wife/partner, his brother and two people the dead man was conning via a corrupt business deal. The trouble is, these suspects have rapidly become her friends. She cooks for them, looks after the dead man's child and so on, Vera doesn't want any of them to be a killer. So this was a bit of a slow burner. I was irritated by Vera at first but she slowly grew on me, it was clear she was lonely and only had people's best interests at heart. And all the wonderful descriptions of Chinese cooking and the umpteen dishes Vera made didn't actually harm either... Chinese being my favourite of the various cuisines (although Italian comes a close second.) It's very much a found family book, something I do enjoy, but it's also written with a great deal of warmth and humour which I also appreciate. 4 stars on Goodreads.

Next, A Lady's Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin.

Eliza Balfour has been married to the Earl of Somerest, twenty years her senior, for ten years, when she is suddenly widowed. It's not exactly a sad loss as the marriage was far from happy. A period of strict mourning must follow during which Eliza has to be careful not cause any scandal or the terms of the will mean she will be disinherited. Not wanting to stay in the mausoleum of a house, partly because she hates it but also it now belongs to the new earl whom Eliza was once going to marry, Eliza and her cousin, Margaret (loved Margaret!), set off for Bath. Eliza plans to live quietly but of course that doesn't happen or there would be no book. Lord Melville and his sister come into their lives, they are half Indian due to their father coming home from India with an Indian princess for a wife, and both are, if not exactly infamous, gossipped about a lot. Between the two men in her life, old love, the new Lord Somerset, and new love interest, Lord Melville, Eliza is very hard-put to stay out of trouble. I saw this mentioned on a You Tube channel and grabbed it for my Kindle out of interest. So glad I did as it was a wonderful Regency romp. There were definitely elements of two classic books in it, both from Jane Austen, Persuasion and Mansfield Park. The former because of the lost love returning (similar situation to Captain Wentworth), and the latter because Lord Melville and his sister reminded me of the Crawfords and their rather ambiguous lives. But most of all, this book was 'fun'. Beautifully written, so much going on, all of the characters well drawn and very individual, and a nice amount of humour to boot. I absolutely loved it. 5 stars on Goodreads. 

Lastly, Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne.

Reyna and Kianthe want to open a lovely bookshop together, with cake and tea provided and places to sit and chat and so on. Every bookworm's dream I imagine. But there's a problem. Reyna is a guard/assassin type working for the country's tyrant of a queen and leaving her employ would be treason. But after a particularly nasty incident she does a runner and heads north with Kianthe and her griffon. Kianthe has a griffon because she's basically the head mage of the world, so her disappearing into oblivion is not simple either. But they do it and end up in Tawney, which sounds a bit like a Norwegian Fjord type place where the winters are freezing and snowy, plus there are threatening dragons living in neighbouring valleys. So what happens next? Well, quite a lot and this was a fun, cosy fantasy read about found family and relationships (the romance element is quite strong). The fantasy is there in the shape of dragons and why they're attacking the village, and Kianthe's magic, but I would say it's not the strongest element of the book. I liked the world building and the bookshop was delightful but the books weren't ones you would recognise and it did feel slightly contrived. I gave this a 4 on Goodreads because it was undemanding fun, but its overall Goodreads rating of 3.74 is closer to the mark in my opinion.  

So that's  my reviewing up to date, it's unlikely I'll finish anything else now before the end of the month, so it's four books for me for February and that's fine.

I'm currently reading two books:

 

I read Lara Maiklem's Mudlark from 2019, last year, and loved it to bits. This is her new book and it's wonderful too.

 

Yes, still reading The Aeneid, I'm about halfway through. It's good in places, in others there's too much about battles and who was there and why and what they were wearing. But as background to my Latin lessons and to learn how connected the Greeks and Romans were, it's excellent. I plan to reread The Iliad this year and try some Ovid, but also read several of the modern retellings of Greek myths by people like Natalie Haynes, Pat Barker, Madeline Miller and so on.  

I hope you're all keeping well and have had an excellent reading month in February.