The Bride looks back at January

Ummm…… it’s been a while……

But here we are in 2023 and it’s already the end of the first month so time to look at what I’ve achieved so far this year!

The Stats:

Books read = 7
Pages read = 2199
Progress against my reading goals = 10% (1 book ahead of schedule) (my goal for this year is to read 72 books).

I’ll be adding a new stat at the end of February which will be progress against my TBR reduction goals. The prompts I’m using have been set by Womble over on Runalong the Shelves (the post with the year’s plan is here). The only real restriction is that all the books you choose should have been in your hands before midnight on 31 December 2022

January’s prompt was to read the last book you bought before the deadline. I started off by choosing The Vessel by Adam Nevill, but though it is definitely something I do want to read it was just a bit too grim for a dull and wet January and has been added to my Set Aside for Now shelf..

So, I opted for something much lighter, namely The Greyhound of the Baskervilles, which is a slight but sweet re-telling of Conan Doyle’s Hound from the perspective of Septimus, the greyhound belonging to Sherlock Holmes. Great fun.

For the stretch goal, which was to read the oldest book on my TBR, I bent the rules a little bit and decided to read the oldest piece of fiction on my Kindle app. This turned out to be Monster Love by Carol Topolski which I apparently bought in January 2011. I was gripped by this novel but I also have Thoughts, so I’m hoping to review it shortly.

January’s TBR reduction goals are met, and for February I will be reading 28 short stories (almost certainly all horror) and 4 novellas (one for each week). Come back next month and see how I did.

More about this month’s books read, apart from the two already mentioned:

The Ends by James Smythe – the fourth and final book in The Anomaly Quartet. I enjoyed this book so much and I really should write about what it felt like to finish the final volume of a series that I have loved so much.

London Rules by Mick Herron (Slough House #5) – Mr B and I have been happily devouring the TV adaptations of these books so it made sense to get back into reading them before AppleTV catches up. This is probably my favourite yet and I’m looking forward to reading #6 in the not too distant future

The Corpse in the Waxworks by John Dickson Carr – a British Library Crime Classic release, this has what it says on the cover – a case in which a body is indeed found in a Parisian waxwork museum. Failed to identify the killer, sadly (me that is, not the detective).

Murder by Matchlight by ECR Lorac – another BL Crime Classic, this is set in the London blackout during the Blitz. I really like Lorac’s Scottish police detective and the unusual background. I love her books. Worked out who the murderer probably was but had no idea of motive or means.

True Crime Story by Joseph Knox – a twisty thriller told through e-mails and drafts of a true crime book, this features the author as a not entirely sympathetic character in his own novel. Recommended – but I’m probably the last person in the world to have read it, so you might want to ignore my advice 🙂

So, I feel like I’m off to a solid start. What have you guys been reading in 2023 so far?

Art in the Blood by Bonnie MacBird

My first book in this year’s 20 Books of Summer is by an author new to me, writing in one of my favourite genres – Sherlock Holmes stories.

It is the winter of 1888, and a very, very bored Sherlock Holmes is only pulled out of his deep fug by the receipt of a letter from France, written in code. The writer is a Parisian cabaret artist, Mlle de Victoire, who needs his help in finding her missing son. Her boy’s father is a British aristocrat married to an American who is raising the child as her own, and is also (the aristo) deeply involved in the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Winged Victory from Marseilles, the suspicion being that it is heading to England to be added to his art collection.

Holmes and Watson of course take on the case with some pressure from brother Mycroft, and find themselves dealing with a rival French detective and an additional mystery surrounding the deaths of children who had worked in said aristo’s Lancashire silk mills.

As you might expect, all of this is connected.

Like I said at the top of the post, I love a good Holmes pastiche (if that’s the right word?) and there was no way I was going to ignore this one, especially given the very favourable reviews at the time of publication and the gorgeous cover which is what caught my eye in the first place.

This was a really well-done story, building on Holmesian tradition in terms of relationship dynamics (especially Holmes-Watson-Mycroft but modernised in the way that the crimes that take place are described. The sadism of of one character is not only explicitly referenced but we get to see his brutality in action. The implicit abuse of children is also made explicit when the murderer is unmasked as a pederast (a word you don’t hear very often these days).

Holmes himself continues to be drug-addicted, abrupt and often callous bu driven by the desire to achieve justice, which is his saving grace I suppose. How Watson stands him I do not know, let alone how Mrs Hudson copes. But his complexity is what makes me to continue reading about him. I ahem stopped envisioning him as Basil Rathbone and am now imagining him as Jonny Lee Miller, albeit in a top hat.

I really enjoyed this story, so much that I have ordered the remainder of the series (a further three novels as of now) and am looking forward to reading them in the not too distant future.

My Week | 11 October ’20

It has been a very quiet week chez Bride. I’ve been somewhat under the weather and spending a lot of my time not sleeping well then napping, so on and so forth.

Naps are something new to me – when I was younger I just couldn’t sleep during the day unless I was ill, and now that I’m pushing 60 it’s staying awake that’s the problem 😀

I didn’t finish any books this week, and I’m still reading the third Malin Fors novel which I would like to complete as I’m itching to get into some creepy books for Hallowe’en season. I have a nice little list from which to select and I’m going to pick randomly from them as my fancy takes me.

I’m pleased to report that I only bought one book that wasn’t a pre-order, and that was Poems to Save the World With, selected and illustrated by one of my favourite artists, Chris Riddell.

I don’t read poetry very often but how can you resist a book which contains this image (to represent Ozymandias by Shelley):

What I have been doing instead of reading is decluttering my wardrobe, listening to podcasts (as always) and watching TV with Mr B. Season 1 of Evil has turned into something of a hit with us, and we were sad to see the end of S2 of The Boys – we both loved the comics and reckon the adaptation captures the spirit of the original, including the gore.

The big revelation has been Elementary. Yes, I know that I’m probably the last person in the universe to watch this, but in my defence Sherlock with Mr Cumberbatch got to me first, I had space for only one Holmes at a time, and I thought (wrongly) that the man himself may have been Americanised rather than just the setting moved to New York.

I admit it. I was wrong.

Not only is it really, really good but Jonny Lee Miller may be one of my absolutely favourite incarnations of Holmes (Basil Rathbone will always be my No. 1. I know his films are flawed. Don’t at me). I’m devouring the first season and looking forward to steadily working my way through the lot.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Hope you are all staying safe and well, and have a great reading week.