The Bride’s Week in Review – 8 May

Not really that much to report this week. The Book God and I headed into town to meet up with some friends for lunch in Paddington, an area that I don’t know terribly well. We had a really nice time catching up over decent Italian food 🙂

I had a bout of insomnia that night, totally unconnected with eating out I’m sure, but it gave me the opportunity to watch a couple of fox cubs playing with a stick on our drive. I love foxes, even though they occasionally disrupt my garden, and these two were particularly adorable.

I spent a lot of time watching videos on the various aspects of the coronation ritual in advance of spending most of Saturday watching King Charles III being crowned. I’m a sucker for all that pop and pageantry, and my little historian’s heart thoroughly enjoyed seeing things that I’d only ever read about previously.

Which brings me to books. or at least the one book that I finished this week – Who Loses, Who Wins: The Journals of Kenneth Rose v2 1979-2014. I read the first volume last month and enjoyed them so much I immediately moved on to this one. Kenneth Rose was a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, a well-regarded biographer and moved in political and Royal circles, so he heard a lot of gossip and knew very much what was going on in those worlds. It was fascinating to read his contemporaneous thoughts about the breakdown of the then Prince of Wales’ marriage, his relationship with the now Queen Camilla and what everyone thought at the time – they would never marry, they would but she would never be Queen etc. and to look at what is happening now and how wrong people were. Just goes to show that the passage of time an change many things.

Only two books arrived on my virtual shelves this week:

• A Killer’s Game (Daniela Vega #1) by Isabella Maldonado – An FBI agent with a background in cryptography. A brilliant game maker bent on revenge. A deadly battle of wits and wills. And a book I snaffled for free!
• Our Hideous Progeny by CE McGill – a pre-order, this is the story of Victor Frankenstein’s great-niece aiming to follow in his footsteps. Frankenstein is a book that I have tried and failed (so far) to read but this was very tempting. Especially with that cover!

I’m also currently reading:

• Joe Country by Mick Herron
• The Morbid Age by Richard Overy
• Dark Dead Things Issue 1

Hoping to finish at least two of these before the weekend.

I’m also contemplating two projects; one is setting up a Substack for my film and TV series thoughts, and the other is whether I’m going to take part in this years 20 Books of Summer challenge.

Watch this space!