Links and News

LinkstIt's a sad day here, with bad news, it seems, from every direction, from shootings to drought to cruelty. One thing I find in romance is optimism, a belief that things will work out, that it's important to keep going when shit gets awful, and I'm having a hard time today locating my optimism. It's around here somewhere. Maybe I need to read more books.

Either way, I have an assortment of links to neat and interesting things to interrupt the RITA Reader Review-a-palooza.

Be Ye Warned, I have a LOT of reviews to post, as I want to share all the reviews that people have submitted, and make sure that every book receives 1 review. I'll also have a poll on Friday to see if we can guess the RITA ® winners – and I'll update as the winners are announced on Friday. I apologize in advance for the flood of reviews, but I want to make sure everyone who sent in a review is featured. And big huge thanks to everyone who has participated. It's a lot of reviews, but it's a lot of fun to discuss the nominated books, too.

RITA ® is a registered service mark of Romance Writers of America, Inc. and is used with permission.

Link time!

Health and the Woman Movement by Dr MosherNews broke yesterday via WickedLilPixie of the class action suit filed by authors Judith Arnold, Gayle Wilson, and Linda Barrett against Harlequin LTD. There is a website about the case with the documents and further details. For a clear summary and commentary, have a look at Jane Litte's examination of the documents. The discussion is also incredibly educational.

Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes has responded by saying, “Our authors have been recompensed fairly and properly for their work, and we will be defending ourselves vigorously.”

Jenni sent this link to an older article about the discovery of one of the earliest known sex surveys, discovered in 1973 by an historian who was cataloging the papers of Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher, “who taught in Stanford's hygiene department around the turn of the 20th century.”

Seriously. This is amazing.

Mosher was an intellectual badass:

Mosher's scholarly aim soon became clear: to prove that women were not inferior to men, and that frailties chalked up to sex were really the effects of binding garments, insufficient exercise and mental conditioning. Her master's thesis, for example, showed that women breathe from the diaphragm, as men do, rather than from the chest, as was believed at the time. She concluded that this so-called biological difference was really due to tight corsetry.

This article is amazing – and Dr. Mosher herself was amazing, too. There are a few copies of her work in print, including an updated version of her book Health and the Woman Movement in paperback. How sad that someone so intellectually focused on women's sexuality passed into obscurity.

Thank you for the link, Jenni.

Weather.com asks that crucial question: Which came first, Fabio the hurricane name, or Fabio the Fabio?

I once did some copying of a work that dealt with Hurricane Ike, and hot damn if Eisenhower's picture wasn't superimposed on pictures of the hurricane. 

Via Eve Savage: what would happen to YA novel protagonists? Yahoo:Shine asked authors how their teen protagonists would turn out as adults. The answers, some of them, are very thoughtful.

If you use a lot of Kindle highlights (I do) this web app might rock your world: Findings collects all the lines you've highlighted and puts them in a very elegant and easily-shared interface. Link via Lifehacker, via Swiss Miss.

In case you missed it: Outlander: the series? COULD HAPPEN.

Susana Polo at The Mary Sue writes,

The seven books in the Outlander series are hard to pin down to a single genre: romance? historical fiction?science fiction? fantasy? military history? But with True Blood and Game of Thrones both on the air, it seems like it might be a pretty interesting experiment for networks, and one that could be spun in any number of ways depending on who picks it up.

Now those are some casting decisions that will be much discussed online.

It appears this Goodreads review, replete with animated gifs, is the king of all viral reviews of 50 Shades of Grey. Enjoy.

Ann wrote to me regarding Carrie S's recent Comic Con report:

 

In CarrieS's ComicCon report, she mentioned meeting the creators of Girl
Genius, and others in the comments enthused about the comic
. Let me
recommend it to you as a different sort of romance story that the readers
here might enjoy. 

It's intelligent, funny, dramatic, and has some excellent romance; they call
it gaslamp fantasy, having started it before steampunk came into fashion.
Phil and Kaja Foglio have been writing and drawing it for years, and it only
gets better. The TvTropes main page gives a good description (the
GirlGenius discussion board has over 850 pages).

I predict I'll be reading this for hours this evening. Who's with me? 

And finally: sales and things! 

Rock Hard Olivia Cunning is on sale at 80% off with code romance80 – July 20-22, 2012 at Kobo only.

Kobo also has a special section of new Harlequin Books, and you can use coupon codes on them, too. Want some coupon codes? There's jun2720de (20% July Only), for example. 

And here are two book sales I found:

  • Unlocked by Courtney Milan * $0.00 * A | BN | K | S
  • Hourglass by Myra McEntire * $1.59 -$1.99 * A | BN | K | S

And now, back to the reviews! 

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