Weekly Roundup - 21 April, 2021
Welcome all to the Verse & Prose Weekly Roundup. It's been another busy week for us; with daylight savings over it feels as though there just isn't enough time in the day. Anyone else struggling with this? If this is the first Weekly Roundup post you've come across, fear not, as it's only the second of a weekly blog post we've started to keep all our friends and customers in the loop on what's new, what's hot, and what's not, at the Verse & Prose store.
It's come to my attention this week that the blog on our site is not very user friendly. When a comment is left on our posts we are not notified and we can't reply through our admin, which means that we don't actually know when a comment is left on one our posts. First-world problems, I know. We've changed the settings so that your comments need to be approved by a moderator before being published. All comments will be approved, of course, and this way we are notified of your comments and can reply asap. We are also looking at apps that could make the blog more interactive, but in the meantime, please still do comment and share.
We had planned on stocking a larger range of brand new/unused books by the middle of this year, but we've scrapped that idea for now. We'll be focusing solely on secondhand books for the time being. We still have a small, but cool, selection of brand new/unused books for sale, so please do check them out.
Also, just a little note on shopping with us; we go to great lengths to make sure that the condition of our secondhand books are described as accurately as possible. The condition of each book is described in detail, then photographed, with a description of each photo. The photos may not always seem clear, but you can zoom on them to get a better look at each book. Please do that, zoom so you know what you're getting.
What's New In Store:
We had a smaller stack of titles added to our store this week compared to last week, but there are still some great titles in there. Fiction-wise we've added a couple of Australian classics: My Brilliant Career & My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin is our Book of the Week this week, and an absolute bargain as it contains two novels by the legendary Australian writer/poet. And a copy of the hilarious Keep It Simple Stupid by Peter Goldsworthy. We have a copy of The Temple of My Familiar by the wonderful Alice Walker, and a copy of the beautiful and poignant last novel of American novelist Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night. If you're after a bit of action, we have a copy of William Boyd's modern classic thriller Restless, and French writer Hannelore Cayre's crime story, The Godmother.
Moving onto non-fiction, we have a couple of Australian titles, including: Her Father's Daughter, Alice Pung's moving memoir that delves into her family's traumatic, yet rich, history. And a copy of Andrew P. Street's The Short and Excruciatingly Embarrassing Reign of Captain Abbott, the title of which is, I think, spot-on, and needs no explanation. We also have a copy of Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist, Thomas Keneally. Schindler's Ark is, as most of you will know, is the novel that was turned into the Academy Award winning Steven Spielberg film, Schindler's List. We also have a copy of The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir by fashion icon, Andre Leon Talley, and lastly, The Outliers: The Story of Success by the ever-popular Malcolm Gladwell.
Those are just some of the titles we've added this week, there's much more, including a bunch of titles that we've chucked in the Bargain Bin, where all books are $4 or under. So please do jump online and have a browse.
What I've Been Reading:
I've had my head buried in a few books this week. I just finished The Void Moon by Michael Connelly. I'm a huge crime fiction fan and can't get enough of Michael Connelly's novels. I've read all the books in the Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller series, and almost everything else he's ever written. The Void Moon is one of his older novels that I'd missed somehow. The protagonist of the story is Cassie Black, an ex-thief who's recently been let out of an eight-year stretch behind bars and is trying the stay on the straight-and-narrow. Unforeseen circumstances force Cassie back for one last job, ripping-off a high-roller at the Cleopatra casino in Las Vegas, the site of her last job which ended with the death of her partner and lover, Max, and sent her to prison. This job also goes wrong and sets the psychotic private investigator and casino attack dog, Jack Karch, at Cassie's heels. A game of cat-and-mouse ensues as Jack Karch tracks Cassie from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and back again, leaving a trail of dead bodies as he goes. The complex history between Cassie, Jack Karch, her ex-partner/lover Max, and the Cleopatra casino and its manager, Vincent Grimaldi, slowly reveals itself as the story unfolds, with a big twist at the end that neither Cassie or Jack Karch could have seen coming. Void Moon has all the ingredients of a Michael Connelly novel; a smart and likeable, yet highly conflicted main character, formidable adversaries, an exciting plot with unexpected twists, and L.A as the backdrop. The Void Moon is highly entertaining, and hard to put down. If you're after a fun and easy read, you can't go wrong with The Void Moon.
We don't have any copies of The Void Moon, but we do have other Michael Connelly titles in stock in our Crime Fiction and Bargain Bin categories.
That's it for this week. Have a great week, everyone. Until next week...
Hev.