May Roundup

Well what a difference a month makes – after the showers in April we had the May Flowers and the heat, although as the month ends and we go to a bumper bank holiday bonanza the weather has cooled somewhat. The reading perhaps has not.

Crime is the major theme, mainly because the Crime Fiction Alphabet started towards the end of May. Each week, taking a letter of the alphabet in turn, post something – crime and book related obviously! I knew what B was going to be, as I read that book last month, but the review has only just appeared which is why I am highlighting it to you again – Barry Lyga and I Hunt Killers.  So for A I could have concentrated on Agatha Christie and some ways I did, but I actually picked the wonderful Ariadne Oliver for this one and the book Third Girl. Two ticks – one for the Crime Fiction Alphabet and one for reading AC’s books! Crime for the alphabet continued rather unexpectedly with Ann Cleeves and Silent Voices*. This came up as a Kindle Daily Deal for 99p and because the television adaptation had just been on (cynically probably why the offer was on as well!) I thought I would give it a go. Excellent read and C was done so one step ahead of June. I am trying not to get in a pickle about this challenge, so if I post late well I post late but I will try my best to keep to the schedule.

Crime took a very different turn with Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body by M.C. Beaton which was a review copy for newbooks magazine, hopefully my review will appear in the next issue. I had jumped a number of books to read this, and I know I need to go back and read some more, as there was plenty that had happen to Agatha that I knew nothing about. Anyway, it is another tick for one of my personal challenges for this year so that is good.

A new book and author to me in the crime variety was James Runcie – Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.  This has been mentioned on many blogs over the past few months and now the book has arrived it is simply wonderful and I cannot believe I am going to have to wait so long for the next one. It was a netgalley review, but I actually want to go out and buy this book so it can live happily in my home waiting for the next instalment. Wonderful short stories that all interconnect about Sidney Chambers, a Canon, young for his age in the Fifties who seems to have a nose for crime.

I went for some authors I knew in the month of May. A rather boring month at work where I am really quite fed up, I wanted some comfort in reading. This came in two forms – Katie Fforde and Going Dutch and Trisha Ashley and Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues. The former is an author I have only discovered this year, which I have wittered on about before now. I am so enjoying her work and delighting in all those I have not read.  The latter is actually Trisha’s new novel, and returns to Sticklepond where a previous book Chocolate Wishes was set. I do not think I have perhaps given the book enough coverage considering it is the most recently published but please if you have time pop and see my review. I so want to live in Sticklepond and be part of a community with some fantastic people and be able to bake cakes and savouries and eat chocolate! Trisha also has released a short story for the Jubilee do go and have a look here.

Familiar authors continued with P.G.Wodehouse but an unfamiliar tale – Leave it to Psmith. This is in fact a double whammy of Wodehouse I discovered. Psmith is a character that features in his own set of stories. In this particular one he is at Blandings. I have read nothing of either, sticking in the past to Jeeves and Wooster. However, to learn of Blandings coming to the BBC. I wanted to have a go. What I got was a priceless piece of witty literature and I am so grateful that I actually discovered Wodehouse in my late teens and early twenties and can continue to enjoy him.

My final book does not fit into any of the themes, genres or categories above and it is a return to novels which looking back I have not read for a while. The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn* is a debut novel and what a debut. Set during and after the First World War, this romantic tale pulls you right in, weaving some sort of spell over me as I had to keep reading it.

So that was May, and I finished it reading Room by Emma Donoghue which is my book club’s choice and that review will appear and count in June!

So on with June then!

* Book review yet to appear on this blog.