It’s December! This month, for me, always tends to feel both agonizingly long and gone too quickly. I should be doing laundry this afternoon, but all of my free time is currently going to Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s truly a way better use of my time.
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Reader BetseyDub sent us this link on the lawsuit against writer Emma Cline. Content warning for harassment.
“What should have been a happy milestone — publishing my first novel — has turned into a yearslong nightmare perpetrated by someone I believed I had finally escaped from,” Cline said in a statement to the New York Times on Friday. “My only experience of publishing a novel has been one where I am under acute attack, with my sexual history weaponized against me by a cadre of male lawyers. I’ll never be able to get back the years I’ve now spent responding to an ex-boyfriend’s baseless legal assaults and ludicrous, billion-dollar claims instead of writing another book. That’s a loss I don’t know how to fully comprehend.”
It’s also a loss that this kind of shaming seems specifically designed to create. Cline being unable to write a new book is a feature, not a bug, of Reetz-Laiolo’s suit, and underlines what we stand to lose when women’s sexuality is used as a weapon against them.
It’s a disheartening read, but I’d like to keep the outrage against sexual predators going for as long as possible. I’m enjoying the latest string of news of horrible people getting called out in public.
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The NPR Book Concierge is out! If you’re unfamiliar with the yearly feature, the Book Concierge is an interactive page that lets you navigate, by genre, the best books of 2017. You can also look at books that fall into two or more categories – like scifi/fantasy & romance.
What do you think of the romance picks?
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There are a couple book events coming up! One is TONIGHT at The Strand in New York. The event will have authors Loretta Chase, Tessa Bailey, Joanna Shupe, Megan Frampton, and Tracey Livesay. Admission is $15, but in return, you get a $15 bookstore giftcard to use in store. So…it’s basically free.
If you’re in the New England area, Redheadedgirl is coordinating another Boston Meetup for December 17th. Click here for more details on getting to the meetup.
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Excited for the release of Alyssa Cole’s A Princess in Theory? Well, you can get a sneak peek at Bustle, which has an excerpt of the much-anticipated contemporary romance.
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Want to hear two Broadway stars cover a Taylor Swift song? Of course, you do.
It reminds of me “Cell Block Tango” in terms of the feel/lyrics.
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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!
My favorite part of DA:I was that immediately after I left Blackwall in prison, the rest of us had a fantastic party and no one said a word about his absence, so in my head cannon, we were celebrating getting rid of him. Not quite as satisfying as shanking Anders in DA2 (“Look, pal, we’ve all done some sociopathic things during this game, so I can’t judge you for that, but remember that time you called my boyfriend a dog? How about the time you wanted to hand him over to slavers? Payback time, mfer!”), but it was pretty good.
Carry on, non-gaming people.
@Ren: On Twitter, quite a few of us have been lamenting the fact that Varric isn’t a romance option yet.
@Amanda: Look, Fenris and I were very happy in DA2, but he knew from the beginning he was my second choice and I only settled because I couldn’t have Varric. I was celibate in protest in Inquisition. “I’ve got character creation right here, I can be literally anything that works for you, I will heal your wounded heart if you would just LET ME LOVE YOU. *unattractive sobbing*”
But honestly, I would rather have him forever out of reach than a victim of Bioware writers’ idea of “romance.” I would absolutely DNF a game when I got an assortment of dialogue options I would never say to my hairy little boo.
Good lord but that cover is great, so much better than the original. Makes me wish they’d do more of her songs. Now to go see if Spotify has it…
Oh, Cynthia Erivo has such a gorgeous, emotive voice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpsRWlTc3DI if you want to have your heart squished and shed a tear.
RE: NPR’s Book Concierge
I love the concierge interface. It’s intuitive and responsive, which makes exploring the books fun. But they don’t have a romance tag. They have a “love stories” tag, and of the 34 books tagged “love stories” in the 2017 list, I recognize 12 as romance novels (13, if we count erotica, and why not?). I haven’t read/don’t know the others, so I don’t want to guess their genres…though I feel like anything that declares itself “A Novel” on the cover is staking a claim to being litfic.
I guess what I’m saying is: it’s nice books in my genre are on their list. It would be better if MY GENRE were on their list.
Ok, back to report that I fell down the rabbit hole at Vox and, well, they have powerful, interesting stories but I can only take so much at a time.
I’ll return, the stories are that good, but do so in increments.
Off now for tea, cookies and a cozy.
I was coming back to say the exact same thing that @Deborah did, but she did it better than I was likely to, so +1 that NPR needs a Romance tag for next year. Let the non-Romance love stories be “novels with romantic elements” instead; no one is really confused by that description, and it doesn’t end up with Romance under-represented.
I do agree with all the Romance titles they chose, though I’d have been happier if they’d chosen more.
Inquisition is a better use of time than a lot of things! But…awww…my Blackwall! ;P Always funny to see who other people pick to befriend/romance/hate!
@San: For Inquisition, I’m a Cullen girl, all the way! Normally, I play a mage and all of the people I choose to romance have some dang hang up about magic. This time, I’m rolling as an archer and really loving it.
I was thinking about trying Cullen the next time around! that or Iron Bull….but Sera might get “lost” along the way somewhere, I don’t think I can take another whole game of her again. 😀
Just looked at the NPR Book Concierge and now my TBR list is even longer…. So many books, so little time!!