Last week I said there was more from Óbidos and so here it is!
This is the Livraria do Mercado, which is a bookshop and an organic market. I have no idea what the proportion of books to produce is when it comes to sales, but in terms of the look of the place, it’s mostly books!
I also have no idea what how the prices for the produce stack up compared to in the other stores, but it seemed to be good quality and I know I’d be happy to buy my veggies in a bookshop – after all I’ve done my fair share of book buying in supermarkets over the years, and this is definitely the better way around!
It’s mostly Portuguese books (obviously) but they have also got a section with foreign language novels – including lots of Portuguese authors in translation and, in English at least, some very random secondhand books!
You’ve already seen this one, but this is the book exchange – and this is all English books (or the vast majority anyway). It’s run by volunteers who have moved to the area and raises money for local charities. As you know, I picked up a few books while I was there!
And that’s it! Have a great weekend and I hope you have a comfy spot and a good book to read in it!
Happy Friday everyone, I said last Friday that I thought that we were about to go on a bit of a run of crime series posts, and here we are with it
I’ve mentioned this series before, but as the fifth book is out now – and I’ve read it – the time seems right to do a bit of a recap. This is Anthony Horowitz’s mystery series where a fictionalised version of himself is working with Nathanial Hawthorne, an ex-policeman turned private investigator, to write what turns into a series of books about murder investigations Hawthorne has worked on. Book-Horowitz fits in these true crime books alongside his other work – writing novels, working on TV series, promoting his work – and often this leads to more crimes to investigate.
Hawthorn is a mysterious character – we are told the circumstances surrounding his departure from the police force, but not by him and any details about his life he does give up to BookHorowitz are done grudgingly or when his hand is forced. BookHorowitz is a Captain Hastings figure – stumbling through cases, drawing all the wrong conclusions but often thinking he is doing better than Hawthorne.
The first four books in the series have been written in the first person – but the new book is a bit of a departure, with BookHorowitz fulfilling a publishing contract by writing about one of Hawthorne’s prior cases, and giving us sections in the third person from the “book” and then first person sections as BookHorowitz goes through the process of finding out the details about the case – and about some new developments in the backstory.
Once I get going with these (and that usually means I need to actually sit down and get at least 50 pages in), they’re incredibly easy to read, and I really appreciate the meta-ness of it all as Horowitz weaves the fiction into his real biography. And I love how bumbling he makes himself – it’s fun and funny to read. As I said last week, I’m still hoping that he’ll write another Magpie Murder, but I’ll happily accept more in this series!
I would definitely start at the beginning if you’re going to read these – you don’t need to have read the others to follow the new one, but you’ll definitely get more out of it if you do. And they should be fairly easy to get hold of – the new one was in the airport bookshop last week and I fairly frequently see them on the tables in Waterstones and Foyles. And obviously they’re on Kindle and Kobo and audiobook too. Just watch out – because we’ve had a couple of different cover designs now, so you might find a few different styles out there if you’re looking at the paperbacks.
There are a few notable books out this week (like the new Emily Henry) but I wanted to flag the new book from Libby Page, which comes out today and is a follow up to The Lido, which I loved when it came out in 2018 so I’m looking forward to seeing where she’s taking it now.
I keep saying that it was a sightseeing holiday not a reading one – so I don’t have a What I Read on my Holidays post today – instead as I had such a wonderful time wandering around Italy – three provinces in one holiday! – I’m going to point you at the Books set in Italy post I wrote at Easter because I’m in the mood for more Italian-set books at the moment!
I said yesterday I didn’t know what I was going to write about today, but it all became clear to me while I was trying to get to sleep last night, even if this is slightly rule breaking.
It’s rule breaking because The Darkest Sin is not the first book in the series – but I didn’t realise that when I bought it and I haven’t read the first in the series. I picked this off the shelf to take on holiday because it is set in Florence and we were going to Tuscany so it seemed fitting – and it was really good.
Cesare Aldo is an investigator at one of the criminal courts in Florence, a city full of factions, alliances and secrets. When he is sent to a convent to investigate reports of night-time intruders, he finds rivalries and secrets – and that’s even before the body of a naked man is found inside the convent. Alongside this, a constable of the same court finds the body of a missing colleague, that was pulled from the river near his childhood home. who would have dared kill a court officers – and if Carlo Strocchi can find out, it could secure him the promotion he yearns for. But Florence is dangerous and treacherous and the answers could prove a bigger problem than the mysteries.
Having not read the prior book in the series, I don’t know how much of the backstory in this had already been revealed in that – and what would have been a twist to a reader already familiar with Aldo. But going in blind, this was a twisty and page turning thriller with clever, well-drawn characters – not just in the main characters but in the supporting roles too. Sixteenth Century Florence is also a character in this – you can hear it and smell it and sense the danger lurking all around.
As I said yesterday, it was a doing and seeing sort of holiday not a lazing around one – so I was still finishing this on the plane home, and I was actually annoyed when the plane landed sooner than I expected and I had to leave it unfinished for a few hours while we made our way home. I’ll definitely be looking for more of these – I want to find out what the first book told you and see what happens next!
You can get The Darkest Sin on Kindle and Kobo and in paperback. There are three books in the series available now – with a fourth coming in the autumn.
We’ve been on holiday, but it was a sightseeing and doing things sort of holiday, not a lying on a sun lounger one, so the book list isn’t quite what you might expect from a holiday week. But I had a wonderful time and I don’t care. No idea what I’m writing about tomorrow though. I’m sure something will come to me though. It usually does. Given that Taylor Swift has a new album out I should probably have tried harder to finish The Breakup Tour right?
A slightly random film review today, because this is not new, and there was no particular reason why we watched it the other week, except that it was there.
This is a biopic about the early career of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the US Supreme Court Justice who died in the latter stages of President Trump’s term. If all you know about her is that she was a judge, this will fill you in on how she got to that position, and how tough things were for women who wanted to be lawyers in the mid-twentieth century. In fact there are portions of this that will probably make you really angry – they definitely did me anyway.
It has its flaws – it’s quite old fashioned in style, I don’t think Armie Hammer is great, and it probably should have done more about her later achievements than a couple of credit cards at the end, but as a primer to go and watch a documentary or read a biography, it’s pretty good.
Well as you know I’ve been on my travels recently, so this Saturday and next it’s the highlights of my trip to Obidos’s bookshops… And part one is the Livraria de Santiago, because why not when it looks like this!
It’s an ex-church, it’s gorgeous and the book selection is excellent.
I mean look at it. It’s just such a nice mix of old and new, and it’s so full of books!
Here are the two ends of RF/Rebecca Kuang – do note that in Portuguese they’re both under RF Kuang.
Also there was a Mallory Towers omnibus and how could I not take a picture!
There’s also a fair few romance novels – in translation and by local authors – and plenty of YA. All in all, great fun.
And to finish, here’s the outside – which is out to keep the fact it’s a bookshop secret!
It feelso like there may be a run of series post about murder mysteries in the near future, so here I am today with a romance series, just because I finally finished the third of these last week and I even mentioned the fact there’s an offer on the first one in this month’s kindle offers post. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2bbzQHrYdg/?igsh=MTZoNWYwb245OWM1eA==
This is a trilogy of books following a group of friends in the town of Bright Falls. Delilah returns to town she grew up in (and hated)in the first book to photograph her step sister’s wedding and finds herself drawn to her stepsister’s best friend Clare. The second sees Astrid, the aforementioned stepsister, rebuilding her life by renovating a historic inn and fighting with the inn owner’s granddaughter. And the final boom sees Iris, the final member of the group and romance author seeking to solve her writers block with a part in a queer retelling of a Shakespeare play and a fake relationship with her love interest in the play.
So as you can tell from those summaries, several of my favourite tropes crop up here – enemies to lovers, fake relationships and returning to a small town, oh and house renovations. The dialogue is fun and the extended friendship group is a delight and if you’ve ever read a small town romance and wished the town in question was a bit less straight, these could be the romances foryou.They’re fun and queer and that’s not even an issue that comes up as worth commenting on.
These were Ashley Herring Blake’s first romance novels and this is it for this series – but she has a festive romance coming this year, featuring two exes finding themselves stuck together at Christmas and the first in a new series coming in 2025 too so plenty to look forward to if you read these and like them.
Well technically only this week if you’re in the US – it was last week for those of us in the UK. Anyway all that really matters is that mid April sees the release the fifth in Anthony Horowitz’s incredibly meta murder mystery series in which a fictionalised version of himself keeps getting mixed up in murders while working with a former police detective. I’ve already started this and I do really like this series, although of his two meta series I do prefer Magpie Murders, but I get that those are much harder to make into more than a couple of books, so I’ll definitely take this!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 