It’s time for Wednesday links, y’all! We have some site stuff to announce and some romance recommendation links to send your TBR into overload.
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In case you missed it, we created an Amazon store for books we’d recommend and titles that we consider bestsellers from the last two weeks.
Our SBTB Recommends store features books that have earned a B grade or higher on the site (going back about two months). We also have a Bestsellers tab, where we list books that have sold 50 or more copies through the site in the past two weeks. It’s updated daily as we check sales and it gets refreshed completely every two weeks.
We’re also going back through the archives (to about the beginning of 2014) and adding more titles, so it’s not complete as of yet.
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If you’re looking to diversify your reading, Bustle has a great list of books by Indian authors you may have missed last year:
So many great books by Indian authors released in 2016 as well. Reading about people who don’t look like you, who have a different culture, religion, orientation than you, is incredibly important right now. But what’s more, it’s important that Indian authors are able to write about whatever they want—it can be frustrating when it seems like the only books that are published are about people struggling under backbreaking misery living in the slums or rural villages of India. While those are important stories, they’re not representative of the larger Indian diaspora. What excites me about the books by Indian authors that released in 2016 is their range—they didn’t all have to even be about being Indian.
The author, Swapna Krishna, also includes a link for titles forthcoming in 2017 too!
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Our 12th anniversary is coming up January 31st, and of course, we’ll be doing a giveaway. Stay tuned!
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If you attended the Women’s March over the weekend or are looking to increase your activism, the Women’s March website has launched “10 Actions in 100 Days” to keep the momentum going.
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Goodreads is celebrating “Romance Week” from February 6th through Valentine’s Day. To prep, they’ve compiled a list of the Top 100 Romance Novels on their site. What do you think of the list? I’m also curious how they calculated the books. Is it based on ratings? Number of reviews?
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My roommate linked me to Pack Up & Go, a travel agency that plans a 3-day vacation with a surprise destination. You fill out a questionnaire, along with your budget (which covers the flight and lodging), and they send you an envelope. Inside, they give you tips and advice on what sort of clothing to pack. You don’t actually find out where you’re going until the day of your travel. My boyfriend and I might give it a try! Anyone else interested in traveling to a mystery destination?
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iGo Keyjuice Keyring
The iGo is an itty bitty tool that unfolds to one USB connection, plus a USB and a USB Micro, so you can plug your phone into your laptop, or into a portable battery. Excellent for tiny emergency kits, too.
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Introducing the SBTB Live Scream! Last week, Sarah did a live stream chat (we’re calling it a Live Scream) for about an hour. After enjoying it so much, we’d like to do it every couple weeks in order to increase engagement with the rest of the Bitchery. The next Live Scream is scheduled for Saturday, January 28 at 2:30 EST. At the designated time, you can join Sarah here!
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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Anyone else interested in traveling to a mystery destination?
When I go to an unfamiliar location in my own town, I do a drive-by the day before to scout the best route and parking conditions. I’m having a little chest pain just knowing this service exists because it means there’s a possibility that someday one of the sadists in my life might inflict it on me as a “gift.”
Pack up & Go just gave me HUGE plot bunnies! Think of the possibilities! Now I just need time to write them
Pack Up & Go sounds great to me but my husband would not handle going to an unknown destination well. He gets upset if we travel to a different part of the Outer Banks! LOL Maybe I need to take a vacation with my peeps.
The 10 Actions in a Hundred Days has a lot of potential. If just a fraction of Saturday’s marchers do something to help in their communities or let their local representation know how they feel, there could be a remarkable grassroots effect. As Shirley Chisholm said, “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”
That Goodreads list leaves me feeling underwhelmed. I would love to know how they selected those books.
Pack up & Go sounds fantastic! Problem is, they send you somewhere within 3 travel hours of your departure city. I live 3 hours by air from the nearest major US city outside of Alaska (Seattle). I think this isn’t much of an option for me unless I move to the Lower 48. Guess I’ll just keep dreaming…
I can’t take any romance best of list that doesn’t include one single Loretta Chase book seriously.
That romance list was . . . odd. I did a quick count and I’ve only read 23 of them. (I do have another 18 on my Kindle TBR pile, which is actually more than I initially thought looking through the titles.) Very few of them would be on my personal top 100 list, frankly.
Thrilled to see the lists of Indian books here! My TBR just exploded. As a part of the Indian diaspora I often turn to books to try and figure out my cultural identity, so I’m really pleased that there seem to be a lot of books featuring people like me coming out this year.
I love the concept of “Pack Up And Go” — but one of the best parts of a vacation, for me, is the exhaustive planning, poring over possible activities and itineraries, reading restaurant reviews, etc.
Actually – maybe it would be good therapy for me 😉
The Goodreads list reminded me strongly of their first list of contenders in the Goodreads Choice awards, which were very Nicholas Sparks type book and unhappy ending heavy. I thought they’d wised up after about a million romance readers and authors schooled them on the definition of Romance Novel. But I guess there’s no institutional memory? Or maybe the person who did that list has moved on to better things? Either way, this list is not good. And I’d even have given them a pass if they said it was calculated using reader shelving, but they obviously made distinctions for historical romance, paranormal romance because they say so in the intro.
I guess I have some feelings about this…
The Goodreads list is very underwhelming. I’ve read about 3/4 of the offerings and only 7 would I recommend to others and only 2 are keepers. Meh…
I’m not a big fan of ambiguous endings or Nicholas Sparks style books so most of the list was a miss for me.
That GoodReads list is pretty disappointing. Any list that doesn’t include at least one Kathleen Woodiwiss or Roberta Gellis title is immediately suspect.
Yeah, the GR list – I think it was either put together by a computer or by a person who has never read a modern romance. Sparks? Gone with the Wind? Huh? Very little modern contemporary romance either.
And I don’t even like a surprise birthday party or surprise presents – a surprise vacation would destroy me. The last two spontaneous day trips we took – already on vacation, had some free time, and I just said to the kids “we’re taking the next train wherever, it will come back, it will be fine” type of things – Did Not End Well. (Unless you count a whole new flavor of family joke at mom’s expense as ending well).
I agree on the GR list. It seemed kinda bizarre. I have read 42 of them and have an additional 4 on my TBR pile but where’s the Julie Long, Loretta Chase, Courtney Milan?
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Thank you so much for the the shout out, Amanda! We would love to plan a trip for you and your boyfriend! If anyone has any questions or would like any more information about our trips, please feel free to shoot us at email at hello@packupgo.com !
That GoodReads list is…awful. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really great books on it, but overall it’s pretty bad. Even the authors that have books included didn’t necessarily have their best ones? It’s odd.