Down The TBR

Here is another audiobook I decided not to finish as it just didn’t grab me. I think I gave it a good go, but there was just too much wrong with it.

This is a story set some years after the events of Pride and Prejudice. It’s an imagining of ‘what happened in the happily ever after’ from the viewpoint of one of the supporting characters in P&P. Interesting angle!

The first thing that happens in the book (so I don’t consider it a spoiler) is that Mr and Mrs Collins’s young son Tom dies. We find out that he had always been sickly and unfortunately dies aged just four. The couple have two daughters as well.

The loss is monumental and crippling. Charlotte and her husband are both stricken, although we of course see it mostly from Charlotte’s point of view—she is adrift, for a while she is lost at sea in her grief.

Charlotte starts to worry about how to provide for her daughters as they have no brother to protect and take care of them. The Longborn estate, we are to understand, is still as entailed as ever, and she now empathises with Mrs Bennet’s erstwhile worries about her daughters. Alas, as I have quit the book, I will never find out whether and how she solves the issue.

I partly abandoned this because the plot was all over the place. There is no red thread, it just sort of casts about. There are some happenings at home, some secret stuff with Miss De Bourgh, some Roma arrive into the neighbourhood, then she goes to visit at Pemberley, there is a foreigner there…

Miss De Bourgh is inexplicably loquacious and speaks way more than Charlotte. Everyone speaks more than Charlotte and it’s supposed to be a book about her! Charlotte mainly seems to monologue in her head with too much tell, too little show.

This is Helen Moffett’s debut novel and I am not sure it was a good idea for one’s first try. Writing about Jane the GOAT Austen’s characters and (seemingly? maybe?) trying to emulate her language is a tall order that I am not sure should be attempted at all.

If you then make a big departure from how some of the characters were in P&P, you do risk losing your reader, and that was another big part of why I did not finish the book.

I’ve just discovered this book podcast and have only listened to the Circe episode (21. July 2026) and enjoyed it so much I wanted to share it with others.

It’s intelligent and lovely and I hope you enjoy!

This was the second Lisa Jewell audiobook I chose in the library app after enjoying Don't Let Him In and it was very entertaining. It was another good pick for an avid podcast listener like myself, and it was particularly interesting because they had made efforts in the production to make parts of it sound like a podcast. There were multiple readers, there were some subtle sound effects, a narrator that made it sound like these were discovered recordings after some terrible crime. Together, it all gave the book the feel of a documentary—and all the while the title is "None of this is true"! Delightful.

The story is about Alix, a podcaster and married mum of two living in London, who meets Josie on the evening both women are celebrating their 45th birthdays in the same restaurant. Josie is also a married mum of two living in the same area, and it turns out they were both born in the same hospital. However, the similarities end there, and now they are living very different lives which becomes a point of fascination for Josie. She seems to look at Alix and see all the things she doesn't have herself. She inveigles her way into Alix's podcast studio where she proceeds to tell a shocking and disturbing tale of how her life took the turns that it did—and now Alix is hooked. Even to the point that she will allow Josie into her house, which is an opportunity Josie does not let slide.

This is a slow psychological thriller rather than a fast-paced action one. The draw are the characters, the unease they can create, the slowly growing feelings of discontent and menace. The two women are well written and have depth, and although the main storyline is quite far-fetched, it is grounded in lives that are believable enough to keep you engaged (although some more than others).

The batlike gargoyle stooped down low, transfixed by a gowan flower. He plucked it. Held it up to Aisling Cathedral's looming edifice. "Which is more intricate?" he mused. "The design of men, trying to reach gods, or that of gods, trying to reach men?"

My hammer collided with a chunk of granite. "What is either to the intricacies of women, who reach both?" (p.84)

A few weeks ago I was browsing in Waterstones where I got drawn to a table stacked just with copies of this book. They had beautiful sprayed edges with a velvety dark background and pretty, romantic medieval imagery and as I picked one up, an employee walking by skidded to a stop next to me. 'I read 200 books last year,' she said, 'and this one was my number one'. With a recommendation like that, my expectations were inevitably high.

This is the first installment in The Stonewater Kingdom series. The main character, Sybil, is a diviner who lives at Aisling Cathedral with 5 others like her. Their job is to foretell the future for those who pay--lord and commoner alike. As their ten years of service are drawing to a close, other changes are coming. A young new king sets out on a tour of his kingdom, and shortly after his visit to the cathedral, the diviners start to vanish without a trace one by one. Sybil has no choice but to put her trust in one of the king's most irreverent and heretical knights if she ever wants to find her sisters.

I have to admit, at first I was rather underwhelmed and couldn't see what would make this book the best someone had read all year. It's interesting and entertaining, it's well written, but it's not mind-blowing. It was just a run of the mill fantasy / romantasy novel. My favourite bits were the sudden bursts of humour (the gargoyle made me laugh out loud on several occasions).

But once you get further in, some of the bigger themes start to reveal themselves: greed as the first, then power, religion, systems of control--the story is actually very clever and has a lot of bite. It's sharp and unflinching commentary that really hits home. Maybe the best part of it is how it subverts the fantasy genre when it comes to the magic, the deities and the superstitions you might at first just go along with because 'it's that kind of a book'. You become an active participant through your complacence. Very clever.

It's quite original and it's well executed, but for me, it's not the best I have read. My praise is not on the level of that of the Waterstones lady. I enjoyed it, but that's about it--I am not even sure I necessarily want to read the second book in the series. Don't get me wrong, it has some beautiful gems spread throughout the pages--see the little excerpt at the top of the page, and the gargoyle is an absolutely precious soul. It just hasn't left me--at this time--wanting more.

There were a couple of oddities regarding this book that I haven't really encountered elsewhere that seem worth mentioning. The title and the name of the author were printed on the front page in some silvery material, nearly all of which rubbed off on my hands while I was reading it, leaving my hands covered in glitter. The words were not even properly embossed on the page, so they've basically simply been erased. The same goes for the author's name on the spine because that's apparently where my hands held it. It seems like a design flaw, unless it's meant to be a message of some sort… although I doubt it. And then in the first few pages, where you can read the praise for the book, the same paragraph is attributed to two different authors, Amélie Wen Zhao and Allison Saft. I do typically read those before I start a book and it gave me a bad impression of the editing work. Luckily, those were the only issues I saw, and the rest of the book was very enjoyable.

This is the book that was inspired by Ballerina Farm and the controversies embedded in that whole concept--stuff I've been consuming with a big bucket of popcorn in my lap over the past few years, so I was intrigued to see what the book would be like.

I am not sure I've ever read 391 pages as fast as these ones. It helps that I was off work and the heatwave made anything else rather unfeasible, but that is still wild.

In brief, it is a novel about Natalie Heller Mills, a young, very religious Christian woman in the US who marries young, drops out of college (Harvard, no less), is almost immediately disappointed in her husband and then goes on to create a career for herself as a virtue-signalling Instagrammer who pretends to run a ranch 'just like in the olden days'.

The whole operation is, naturally, built on a small loan gift of 5 mio. dollars from her politician father-in-law, out-of-frame nannies, state of the art kitchen appliances and a crew of around 20 part-time ranch hands as well as a barrel of pesticides here and there, but who's counting. :)

Then, one day, Natalie wakes up, and everything looks different. In fact, everything looks like she has stepped back in time and is actually living in the pioneer days like she was cosplaying to do before.

In the first 30 pages, I thought, 'This is about as subtle as a mallet to the head.' There is at least one barb on every page, and they are flying in every direction. It was a fascinating deep dive into the special brand of religious rigour these public figures build their brands on, and just no end of commentary on the patriarchy, religion, misogyny, the attention economy, rage bait and all the things that are blasted at us every time we visit the internet these days.

The author did a good job of describing Natalie's gradual development from a floundering but ambitious young wife stuck in a marriage she won't allow herself to leave, to an unhinged propagandist who seems deeply co-dependent with an audience who loves to hate her—and whom she loves to hate right back.

Her religious upbringing had trained her to perform long before any cameras were pointed at her. She smiles when she's miserable and all her put-on meekness is a stone veneer over absolutely caustic take downs of her husband that start early on, like on page 28 when she prays, 'And please give my husband a spine. I'm tired of him needing to borrow mine.'

Her piousness is convulsive and desperate, like an ill-fitting glove, and I kept thinking about that episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Malcolm gives himself an ulcer by holding back his usual biting remarks. Her inner voice polices her in an increasingly frantic manner, to the point that it feels like there are two different voices in there fighting for the upper hand. (Which must make this fun as an audio book!)

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆Spoilers⋆✴︎˚｡⋆Spoilers⋆✴︎˚｡⋆Spoilers⋆✴︎˚｡⋆Spoilers⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

I got this in the library app just a few days ago when I wanted something ad free to listen to while cleaning and doing jobs around the house. I ended up getting quite engrossed in it and listened to long chunks of it each day until I reached the end.

It was an entertaining story, partly because I am a big consumer of podcasts on romance fraud and scams and so perhaps is author Lisa Jewell. The antagonist certainly fit many of the tropes known in true crime cases, but this being fiction, it has some extra layers of nefariousness to make the story extra juicy.

It was fascinating to watch the man at work, spinning his tales, deftly deflecting suspicions. By his own admission, he enjoyed having to think on his feet and seemed to thrive on it where some of us would crumple under the stress. But it was even more fascinating watching things slowly unravel for him, and it got delightfully comical whenever the whole thing descended into a simple lack of object permanence.

Although some specifics were fairly outlandish, the overall modus operandi was realistic—it felt like so many of the real-life stories covered in podcasts and documentaries. That’s what made it compelling, the parts that felt real. What this book could give us that most of those podcasts and documentaries don’t is the antagonist’s point of view. And it was executed well.

The ending was good and fit the story. It could have easily been trite, but even those last paragraphs were full of emotion and weight.

I quit this audiobook at just under an hour because it was so bad.

I had to join a waitlist for this in my library’s app. I was interested, I was keen, I was more than ready to like it. But, oh my word, it was utter shite.

Within 15 minutes, I hated everybody mentioned, including the author. Even so, I pushed on because surely it would get better? At nearly an hour, I had to face facts and ditch it.

Why didn’t she use a ghostwriter? Why didn’t the editor do something about the inexplicable shark attack story that went on and on and on? Why was there a waitlist?

I am not sure who this book is for, maybe other Silicon Valley careerists? I don’t care. Bye, Felicia.

I picked up this book at the library because I was attracted to the cover with two people posting letters in a pillar post box and the little envelope drawing on the spine. The post is great. I send post every week. This title clearly signals an epistolary novel so I couldn’t resist.

The story is about Betty and Guy who randomly meet at a paintball event and after some friendly banter part their ways never to see each other again. However, big events change the course of both of their lives and they get back in touch and develop a friendship through postcards and letters.

Overall, it’s a mostly forgettable book. Some of it is clumsy. There are some editing oversights too which give the novel a shabbier look—literally syntax issues. Then there is a jump to emotions that you can’t really take all that seriously because it feels like it’s based on nothing. The author isn’t bringing the reader along well enough. I got to 100 pages in and was still wondering whether I would finish it (out of 381 pages).

To be fair, it’s quite funny, but… it’s clumsy. Too much exposition, even when it’s technically delivered as dialogue, and that makes it unnatural. People say very implausible things. It’s the sort of situation where family members will rehash in detail what happened ln their childhood like it was news to everyone and it’s obviously for the benefit of the reader.

It has some fun and lovely turns of phrase that I liked, such as:

(After someone says ‘Life’s too short not to do what you want.’) The ‘you’ settles on me.

-

And I’m staring my madness in the face.

-

The obvious questions, what he’s doing here and why, go off like popcorn in my head but I can’t quite catch them.

Sometimes there is too much tell and too little show. People are very explicit and eloquent about their feelings rather than just embodying them.

Some resolutions certainly feel like short-circuits that were chosen out of necessity to tie a neat bow on absolutely everything.

***Spoilers***

I recently discovered that ‘Christmas crime’ is an entire sub-genre of crime novels–some cosier than others. This one is not exactly what I would call cosy (my main exposure to cosy crime being ‘The Mystery at the Second-Hand Shop’ by Anna Grue, a book with multiple murders made ‘cosy’ by frequent mentions of the protagonist’s soft and round form as well as all her baking). It is actually quite tense, and the main character is someone who has a lot to hide, even from us readers. This adds a lot of interest to the story.

The Christmas Emporium is an old-fashioned and exclusive specialty shop in London (somewhere in the Square Mile, from what I could gather) where a number of shoppers turn up for a special, invite-only opportunity to shop on Christmas Eve. However, when they try to leave, they find themselves locked in, cut-off from the outside and unable to call for help. What at first looks like an inconvenient mishap quickly turns sinister as the night claims its first victim and the group realise they are being hunted. But why? Does anything connect them, or are they just a random group of strangers being hunted for sport by a madman?

Not being versed in crime novels, I was well into the book before I felt certain I had worked out whodunnit, and just as I was lulled into a false sense of security, two or three more twists towards the end of the book both thrilled and delighted me. Give the protagonist depth, and you give depth to the whole book, and in this case the protagonist is both complex and not necessarily likable. That ‘tang’ is just what is needed to offset all the ‘sweetness’ associated with a Christmas setting.

Maybe that is why Christmas crime novels are a thing–there is something in the juxtaposition of all the sugar-sweet decor, music and tradition on one side, and the shock of death on the other. Luckily, in this book, the author does not overdo the cosiness. Maybe some of the tie-ins at the end are a bit much and there is a bit of a Small-Universe Syndrome, but like I said, I am not that versed in crime novels and maybe that is just the done thing.

Here is another author I first found through a podcast: Dr Rangan Chatterjee has a long-running podcast called Feel Better, Live More, and he’s also been a guest on numerous others. He has also written other books and was in the BBC series Doctor in the House. So he has spent a lot of time communicating to the masses about health and encouraging people to take ownership of their own well-being.

However, apart from a number of his podcast episodes, I haven’t read or watched his other stuff, and this was the first book of his that I’ve read.

It was a quick read because, although the book looks hefty, it is actually quite airy and contains a lot of large and calming photos as well as visual elements that give it a very nice presentation. There are particularly some wonderful nature photos and a photo of a very lush allotment that brought me right back to my childhood. Somehow they just exuded peace and quiet and, more specifically, being disconnected from devices. I couldn’t tell you why specifically devices, I just know I love looking at those photos.

The text is broken down into manageable pieces, there is just enough repetition to reinforce the main points without talking down to you, and the book actually starts with a really helpful overview of everything the chapters contain so you can see all the concepts at a glance. The language is straightforward and relatable, the hallmarks of all good pop science.

It is not a book you must read from start to finish and it’s built with that in mind. It’s very easy to dip in and out of, go to the parts that are most relevant to you, and use what you want.

The 4 pillars are Relax, Eat, Move, and Sleep, and he writes that the decision to start with Relax was deliberate because we as a society are so stressed (just look around you this December!). The layout and design of the book have a very calming effect–it is a calming book to read. Clearly, I have chosen myself a theme this winter.

The challenge with a book like this is not to get overwhelmed by the many different exercises and guidelines you could be implementing in your life. There are so many that you could spend hours doing them each day and then struggle to fit in a job and family or social life around them. That would not be realistic, and Dr Chatterjee addresses this himself: Do what you can–the more, the better–and then go for it again tomorrow.

That feeling of pressure was why I stopped listening to his podcast a long time ago now. He was going too much in the direction of all the optimisation bros out there. He would have many different guests on who would talk about interventions of their own, and he would typically say, ‘That sounds very interesting, I’m going to try this myself’, or, ‘I’m going to try this with my family’. I was getting stressed out on his behalf. I thought–when do you have time for anything else? When do you work? When do you sleep? Go out? Travel? There are millions of these optimisations out there. They can’t become another job or obligation.

I had to remind myself while reading this book not to take it as a checklist of all the things I now must start doing or else I am a failure. Rather, it is a menu from which to choose a few things each day or week as they fit in with my other circumstances. It is like eating different vegetables, which he also talks about–variety is part of the benefit.

The big overview table at the start of the book works really well as just such a menu, and I imagine that it was a deliberate choice by ether the author or the editor–and I must add that I feel the editor did a really great job here. Although Dr Chatterjee is an excellent communicator, it does feel like a professional editor’s hand pulled this up to the next level. Props to them.

I did have favourites among the interventions, and the screen-free sabbath is at the top of the list. (I think I will have one tomorrow!) The first time I did it, I was elated to find that I hardly felt any pull towards my phone even though I had been afraid that I had lost the ability to be offline. It was such a great feeling to realise that this was far from the truth and I enjoyed my day immensely–getting lots done, having a clearer head and thinking back to my childhood in the 80s.

I also connected with his point that we have outsourced our food choices to massive global corporations which is not a great place to be. They will of course care far less about our health than about shareholder value. In fact, our health can be actively targeted for the sake of shareholder value, so we need to step up for ourselves. The same point can be made about our attention in this attention economy. I find that this makes it easier to combat the phone. If it benefits Mark Zuckerberg, it can’t be good for me.

Another interesting point was that apparently, we in the West are increasingly becoming resistant to the hormone leptin, also known as the satiety hormone. So we’re never full, we’ve never had enough, and that sounds rather emblematic of a few other of our behaviour patterns.

There is a chapter with several exercises dedicated to waking up our ‘sleepy glutes’, something those of us who work at a desk likely know about. I intend to try those soon and see what they do for me. In the chapter about sleep, he points out that there is a tendency to view sleep as something optional rather than completely crucial to our health. Sleep is by some even seen as a weakness, and I am reminded of that statement by a Netflix executive that their greatest competitor is precisely sleep.

The full title of this book is Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A Little Book of Festive Joy, but you can see how that would have been a tad long to have as a blog post title. :)

I absolutely love Christmas. I did not grow up celebrating it but got into it as a teenager, not as a religious holiday--although that's of course what it is--but for its aesthetics, the special food and music, the special jumpers, the special films and the beautiful lights to brighten up a dark season.

I make a big deal out of it now as an adult and the more I add to it, the more stressful it has also become because there is so much I want to do but I only have a limited time to do it in. Then, things end fairly abruptly after New Year's Eve, while there is so much more winter left that could use soft, twinkling lights, cosy time with the family and good cheer.

A couple of years ago I heard about this book through the author Beth Kempton's podcast, and this year I have finally read it. I have been trying to 'crack the code' on December for a little while and hoped that this book would help me get there.

For me, the challenge with Christmas has been all the cards and gifts I have chosen to send to friends. I also have several friends' birthdays and other events in November and December so it can be a logistical obstacle course. I've tried preparing for it all earlier but somehow it doesn't really feel right to be thinking about Christmas presents in July, you know?

The book Calm Christmas is very interactive. First, there are many working questions throughout that encourage you to really think about your preferences and choices for Christmas, since Christmas is not just one thing for us all even though it does happen at the same time.

Then, there is an accompanying website with many more resources which is referenced multiple times. I have for example found an interesting looking list of gift ideas that will be helpful to me.

And finally, there is the podcast which is currently in its fifth season. I ended up with a stack of notes by the time I was done, and I do think I will be able to work them all into a roadmap for my own future Christmases.

Throughout the book are little anecdotes submitted to her by people from various countries, her own memories, little poems, etc. She does a decent job of creating a cosy atmosphere although I occasionally found the tone a bit much, even as a mega fan of Christmas.

One submission outright irked me until I read it more closely; a story in chapter 1 from someone describing going out at night to cut down trees in 'communist Bosnia':

'In mid-December we would go to the forest in the deep snow to cut down our tree. This was forbidden by the regime, but we did it anyway, as did many other people. You couldn't see any of them, and we didn't talk, but you could hear the thwack of axes all around.'

At first I thought he was claiming that Christmas had been forbidden in Bosnia, which is nonsense, but in fact he only says that cutting down trees was... because those would have been state-owned forests. But he doesn't go into that. Lol.

I also couldn't help noticing that the author mentions writing courses several times throughout the book--as something you might do if you spend less on Christmas and save money, as something you might gift, etc.--and it's hard not to feel like she's plugging her own courses. I am so allergic to advertising that it doesn't take a lot to put me off and this is definitely noticeable. (Fun fact, Beth Kempton's Way of the Fearless Writer is also on my TBR list.)

Calm Christmas is a cosy book and it is in many ways probably aspirational. I am aware that when I buy books, I am really wishing for more time to read; when I buy crafting supplies, I am wishing for more time to craft. Time is a big factor with books like this. The scarcest resource. Don't we all fantasise about doing everything more slowly and mindfully, properly enjoying the moment before it passes forever? When did you last take the time to anticipate something rather than just hurtle towards it?

That's the fantasy in Calm Christmas too, but it's a fantasy with some practical advice and worksheets to help you (maybe, hopefully) achieve it. A lot of it is common sense, but it's common sense presented very attractively, and you know what--although I managed to stress myself out with it all this November, I still experienced some peaceful, cosy, lovely moments while immersed in this book. My heart rate slowed down and I physically relaxed. I enjoyed writing my lists and reminders to help me make the most of it and 'get December right'.

The last two chapters of the book are for the time after Christmas so I will be revisiting the book later this year, and no doubt again next year. There is just so much to consider and choose from, and the challenge is not to let it become another thing to check off on an already bulging to do list, not to allow the book to be merely aspirational but a practical and useful tool.

I really like the idea in the last chapter to give ourselves a gentle January instead of launching into the new year super energetically and trying to reinvent ourselves when we really want to hibernate (and need to recover from the hectic month before). I was going to set some reading goals as my New Year's resolutions but maybe I will keep them very small and set seasonal goals throughout the year rather than having one giant goal.

*Light spoilers*

Bridget Jones’s Diary was published almost 30 years ago and I only just read it for the first time this summer. I had seen the film, of course–multiple times. I had seen the second one too but decided to get off that train there and haven’t watched any of the later ones.

This was a bit of a nostalgia trip: Bridget and her friends are forever calling each other, sometimes on their ‘portable phones’. She also smokes like a chimney and is ostensibly trying to stop, but it’s hard to fight a nasty habit when your life is a total mess. Book Bridget is, in fact, even more of a mess than film Bridget, but interestingly, she never really tips over into insufferable incompetent territory like I have seen so many other book heroines do in works that I now realise were probably trying to emulate Helen Fielding’s style of writing.

Her mother is worse. Her side story is crazier than in the film. I started out feeling quite sympathetic towards her, but it doesn’t take her long to go right off the rails and stamp out any warm feelings I may have initially felt.

There were several laugh-out-loud moments, but my favourite was when Bridget actually talks to her friends about Colin Firth (and Jennifer Ehle) and the 1995 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ adaptation. It was such a surreal moment for someone who has watched the film before reading the book, like watching space fold in on itself–it was incredibly meta and just hilarious.

I rewatched the film after reading the book, and I am fairly sure that Crispin Bonham-Carter, who plays Charles Bingley in the 1995 adaptation, has a cameo in it as one of the people talking to Salman Rushdie at the launch party of ‘Kafka’s Motorbike’. In true mid-90s fashion, I will not google this to verify (if Google is even capable of giving any answers any more).

There were some minor annoyances with the book: the diary shorthand can get to be a bit too much, and the same goes for the stats that go with every entry (weight, no. of cigarettes, scratch cards, etc.). I suppose that’s the trouble with gimmicks in books–they’re a fun novelty the first few times but then it quickly gets old. This is outweighed by the humour, however, and I didn’t want to open my blog with any other book than this one.

Read it for the humour and the nostalgia. Then watch the film again–it will soon be December, and I do think many people view the original Bridget Jones film as a Christmas film. If you’re in London, go to Borough Market where she used to live and step into the book.