This is wonderful article. I like this. Just order mine the other day!!! I was like you too Marline, but I broke down!!! I’m excited for pistol, yoke & busted!!! So excited!!!!http://onlinesolution.info/?ca…
Had no idea you’d even heard of the Vicar of Dibley in the US! My all time favourite episode is The Handsome Stranger with Richard Armitage. Brilliant!
January 21, 2012 | Saturday at 6:39 am | 27 Comments
Lisa's email about the book she's seeking made me snort laugh.
I'm trying to find the first romance novel I ever read. I liked it
enough that I kept reading romances, but I think it was probably much
worse than I thought. I want to reread it...but I can't find it!
It's been bothering me for ages now. Please, can the bitchery help?
The heroine is an orphan/thief in historical London. She dreams of a
better life and spends her time practicing a refined accent and making
hats. She also has a brother.
The hero is rich, but he works - a lawyer maybe, or a doctor? His
best friend is a layabout who is waiting on his aunt to cough up her
inheritance.
January 21, 2012 | Saturday at 3:36 am | 7 Comments
Marisa has the same problem I do: she remembers a ton of details, but not the names of the characters or the title of the book:
I am looking for a book I got from the library forever ago and can't find.
Of course, I can't remember the title or the character names, but I can
remember some other details.
It's historical and in England, but I'm not sure when. It starts off with
the hero at the church after a failed marriage attempt. (The girl was in
love with someone else, so he let her out of the engagement, much to the
annoyance of her family.) He has been trying to secure a wife for a while
now. The heroine comes in and offers herself for marriage, citing some
reasonable argument for why he should accept even though he doesn't know her
(dowry?). He accepts, they get married and go off to live in his big house
(he has some kind of title). I remember she has this little dog that she
takes nearly everywhere.
January 21, 2012 | Saturday at 12:24 am | 23 Comments
Ilex emailed me a HaBO query in the form of an IM conversation she had with a friend about this book. It's hilarious.
I was wondering if HaBO could, well, HaBO. I'm your pretty standard, used-to-sneak-my-mom's-harlequins-during-highschool-algebra type. Unfortunately, my mom can't remember this particular gem, and I (and now my friend below) would kill to find this cracktastic romance now. (Okay, maybe we'd just kill bugs, but still...) It's taken me so long to get around to emailing you on this matter, however, that I've decided to just c/p our conversation for simplicity's sake. We had been discussing the re-issue of Nora Roberts' backlist when the topic came up...
<<me>> hey you might know
<<friend>> dude 1986!!!!
<<me>> there was this book i read of my mom's and i think it was one of the gold-framed covered - maybe the later silhouettes or something but it was about this executive ceo type and his assistant and he's the stereotypical cold bastard but they go to some kind of executive shindig and he gets drunk and she has to get…
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January 20, 2012 | Friday at 8:51 am | 42 Comments
Lynz sent me this link, and said, "I was channel-surfing the other day and paused when I saw a shot of an attractive man taking his shirt off - wow, that's a really awkward first sentence, I should start thinking more before I write. Anyway, my attention was thoroughly caught and I stopped to watch the video. Seconds later, what did I see but a Harlequin Suspense being used as a fan? I was thinking the video was really cute, until I hit the 2:20 mark, at which point I realized that it was the Best. Music video. Ever. Once I stopped laughing at the ending, I realized that other romance readers might get a kick out of it. Which made me think of you! "
Lynz is right - I thought this was adorable. And someone involved in the making of this video really likes romance novels.
Cool thing I learned: the video was produced with the help of MuchFACT, which is a Canadian fund that helps Canadian musicians produce music videos. Interesting fact: "Many of Canada's most influential…
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January 19, 2012 | Thursday at 3:54 pm | 11 Comments
This book was a big departure from what I usually read. I don't as a rule like Austen sequels, and I don't like sequel stories that take place within the same family. Sometimes the portrayal of the same people by two different authors, especially when one is Jane Freaking Austen, is so jarring and different I can't read either book for awhile, the classic and its sequel.
When the author enquired whether I'd be interested in this book, I was caught between my usual "No, thank you" reaction to Austen Sequels, and the opportunity to read about Mary Bennet, who was the sister after Jane and Elizabeth that I most liked and wanted to find happiness. I'm glad I read this book, as it was familiar and enjoyable, though it didn't leave me with the almost mental exhaustion and feeling of admiration as I had finishing Pride & Prejudice, which, the first time I read it, was so compelling and absorbing I was all wrung out when I was done.
January 19, 2012 | Thursday at 8:21 am | 58 Comments
I got this as a recommendation from…. Aw, hell, there isn’t a name attached to the rec, but Sarah sent in on because “it’s fun when your head explodes!”
So there’s a couple things you should know: first, like many people, I went through a dinosaur phase in my misspent youth, so there’s that. Not a big enough of phase to want to become a paleontologist, but still, very interesting and whatnot. There are pictures of dinosaur poo on my twitter feed from my Christmas visit to the Science Museum of Minnesota.
Second, Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie. Ever. I know there are people who think it’s an example of Stockholm Syndrome and that it encourages the idea that women can change men, which I think is a simplistic reading of the text and we could get into it, but the core lesson, I think, is that if you want to be treated like a person, you have to act like a person. And sometimes it’s someone…
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January 18, 2012 | Wednesday at 8:42 pm | 26 Comments
In one day, so many sites went black, and students everywhere lost their minds because they couldn't use Wikipedia.
Many senators and representatives, including Orrin Hatch and Nancy Pelosi, publicly withdrew their support of SOPA and PIPA, and I heard at one point, though I can't find a link to confirm it, that so many people were calling their senators and congressional representative that the phone circuits overloaded.
Co sponsors backed out and removed their sponsorship of the bill, and according to one tweet, 29 legislators announced opposition.
Authors, musicians, actors and producers worked together to coordinate an effort to make sure that despite pots of money from the corporations who stood to benefit, the individual constituents would voice their opinions. ETA: Sarah MacLean's open letter to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand is particularly awesome.
I hoovered some cough medicine and called my senators, and made it most of the way through a conversation without honking. OK! Success!
PIPA goes to the floor for vote next week, and I'll be keeping watch for what happens. If you blacked out your site, called your senator or congressional rep, or, even if…
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Join Sarah and uber-librarian Jennifer Lohmann at the Durham County Southwest Regional Library (3605 Shannon Rd.) to discuss romance and the many excellent books in the genre!
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Sarah will be the guest emcee at the 3rd anniversary celebration of Lady Jane's Salon, the only romance-focused reading salon in New York. Guest authors that night will be Eloisa James and Lisa Dale, and the festivities begin at 7:00pm…
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I'll be at the NYPL Jefferson Market branch discussing romance, who reads it, why it's awesome, and (of course) recommending piles of books for people. If you're a romance fan in NYC, I hope you'll come down to join in…
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January 17, 2012 | Tuesday at 10:25 am | 25 Comments
Tomorrow from 8am EST until 8pm EST, Smart Bitches will be joining Reddit, Wikipedia English, Cheezburger, Failblog, Regretsy, Wordpress, Cakewrecks, BoingBoing, Tucows, MoveOn, DeviantArt, Mozilla, Twitpic, and many, many others by going dark to protest SOPA in the US House of Representatives, and PIPA in the US Senate, two bills that I feel threaten freedom of speech, privacy and internet development.
The purpose of the bills is to address and attempt to curb online piracy. As written, the bills allow corporations and the US Government to block entire websites based on poorly-defined terms. In my opinion, the bills give too much power to those who have much to gain by overusing it, granted by politicians with too little understanding of what these bills mean. The FAQ by CNET explains in greater detail, as does the BBC.
January 17, 2012 | Tuesday at 12:55 am | 28 Comments
DocTurtle has returned with Chapters 1 and 2 of The Iron Duke. Want to read along for future chapters? You can get a copy at Goodreads, Amazon, BN, Sony, or Kobo.
Chapter 1: Cool Britannia!
This book begins with a bang…particularly if by “bang” we mean a hand grenade filled with tiny bits of exposition. There’s a lot of ground to cover in seventeen pages, but Meljean Brook runs the route with a solid pace, and she takes time to set the mood while she’s at it. I’m enjoying the book so far.
Where are we? It’s London, at some unspecified steam-powered time in the speculative past. Coal-fueled cars compete with spidery rickshaws in the city streets, airships make regular rounds between Britain and the Continent, and nanotech-enhanced buggers compete with the recently-returned-from-the-New-World bounders for a slice of the smog-covered pie. It doesn’t get much cooler than this gadget-filled steampunky London that never was. (I promise to never again write a sentence with…
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January 16, 2012 | Monday at 12:46 am | 20 Comments
I found this book to be fun and fast paced and easy to jump in and out of, with a pretty good balance of emotion, drama, action, humor and tension between the main characters. I liked the heroine and the hero, I wanted them to figure out a way to be happy and together, and I loved their scenes together. In the larger context of the mystery they were trying to solve, I cared more about them than their progress in solving the case.
Adrian, Lord Smythe, is a spy known as Wolf. His wife, Sophia, is also a spy, known as Saint. Their identities are so secret, they have no idea about one another, and are pretty much strangers in their professional and personal lives. But when the war with France comes to an end, the secret agency in which they work is downsized and they are both laid off (my language, not the author's). Then, each receives a mysterious note to meet in some dark, drippy location at midnight where they discover they're both spies. Plus, there is a case that needs…
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I have found some sales on ebooks and paperbacks, as well as coupons that totally made me grin.
