Weekly Reading Round-Up
Happy Friday, all!
With book launch fast approaching (FOUR DAYS!), I’ve been clutching my comfort reads like a teddy bear. Which is really thematically appropriate now that I think about it, since teddy bears were named after Teddy Roosevelt, and Teddy Roosevelt is a significant side character in Two Wars and a Wedding.
But before I revert to my comfort reads, I did read one new book (and by new book, I mean published more recently than 1950!) this week: a YA called These Fleeting Shadows, which was a little bit T. Kingfisher, a little bit Mexican Gothic, and a little bit Inheritance Games, in which a teenager with a troubled past finds herself heir to the creepy family mansion to which family members are bound by strange magic and a deeply disturbing history that threatens to envelop them all…. All is not as it seems.
Aside from that, it’s been all Gamadge all the time! Gamadge is basically New York’s answer to Lord Peter Wimsey, a gentleman sleuth whose books span the 1930s and 40s, as he’s called in to the solve the mysteries and murders of the no-longer-quite-so-moneyed in their decaying Fifth Avenue mansions and Hudson Valley retreats. They’re terribly soothing. But I made the mistake, the first time I read them, of reading them out of order any which way based on what was available at the library/which blurb sounded more interesting. Bad call. I’m reading them in order now and they make so much more sense!
This week was The Book of the Dead, in which a forgotten edition of Shakespeare leads to the discovery of a daring deception (and murder!); Any Shape or Form, which is basically a locked garden mystery (if there is such a thing); and Somewhere in the House, in which a sealed up room in an old mansion is opened for the first time in twenty years, and, guess what?, there’s a corpse in there! (Isn’t there always?)
I have a number of rides on planes, trains, and automobiles coming up, so I’ve been hoarding new books to read while I’m on book tour next week. I do love airplane reading….
What have you been reading this week?
So what is the first book in the Gamadge series to start with?
The first book in the series is “Unexpected Night”– it’s not my favorite. It’s a little flatter and less engaging than the others. But it’s worth reading them in order….
I LOVED Tasha’s newest Lady Emily book, everyone is in for a Scottish treat in October and I hope everyone loves Jeremy’s Great Aunts, called the Greats, as much as I do. Now I’m reading ‘A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians’ which is Regency Magic but HEAVILY on the French Revolution. It’s interesting in how the magic is woven into the real history.
I know this is an older post but I’m loving the book I’m reading so much I had to come ask if you’ve read it yet.? It’s called A Dreadful Splendor by B. R. Myers. I’m nearly finished and so obsessed I can be seen reading while taking my daily walks. How was Mexican Gothic? I was thinking about picking that one up soon.
No! I haven’t read it– I’ll have to go look it up now. I did enjoy “Mexican Gothic”, although I liked “The Hacienda” even more.