Tuesday Tea: What are you reading right now?
And would you recommend it?
Dave and I are reading books set in [city name redacted] for Season 7 of our podcast… coming very shortly! In between investigating historical fiction, family sagas, narrative nonfiction, and memoirs for the show, we’ve been sneaking in a few other things here and there.
I’m currently distracted by the cookbooks Graze and Peckish, both by Suzanne Lenzer. They’re love letters to meals devoted to delicious little bits, instead of the traditional protein+two veg+starch. If you lean favorably toward charcuterie at all, I think you would also like these cookbooks. One of the sections of Peckish is called ‘On Toast.’ That’s a 100% yes from me. (Sometimes for breakfast or lunch, I make us what I call ‘Cocktail Party Plates’ with a scoop of tuna salad, half a hard-boiled egg, some olives, crudité. It’s nothing too extraordinary but calling it a ‘Cocktail Party Plate’ feels fancy.)
I’ve also been indulging in books related to our upcoming Readers’ Weekend at Trevor Hall. I read the Downton Abbey-adjacent The House at Riverton by Kate Morton (4 stars; deliciously melodramatic and tragic), a twisty thriller by Ethel Lina White called The Spiral Staircase (you might remember I talked about her novel The Lady Vanishes in our episode about trains), and — perhaps my oddball favorite — Hollow Places: An Anthology of Modern Country House Poems. The poems are divided into categories like Ghosts & Echoes, Fixtures & Fittings, Arrivals & Departures. It’s nerdy fun!
Oh, I loved The House at Riverton by Kate Morton! I found it when looking for recommendations for someone going through Downton Abbey withdrawals. Been meaning to read more books by her (they always sound good) but haven't managed yet.
Currently reading Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. It's a little more pop fiction than I usually read, and it took me a bit to get into it. But by the halfway mark, I was HEAVILY invested in the characters and now I can't put it down. And there's an octopus. 🐙 Which just makes it even more awesome. I fell in love with octopuses when I read The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. 🐙❤️
I just finished The Spellshop, by Sara Beth Durst, and it immediately rose to my top 3 books for 2025. Read this if you want something sweet and lovely and cozy and romantic and empowering and clever, and centers inclusiveness, diversity, found family, and kindness. Three more words: sentient spider plant!