Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Category
August 13, 2011 | Saturday | 8 Comments
Y’all, it is HaBO-thon day! HaBOs all day, like a party with mysterious books everywhere. WOO! Pam sent this over, requesting help. You’d think this would be easy to find, but my Google-Fu and hers have come up empty. Silhouette Special Edition, probably from the 80s. Hero is a rock star. Cover has cherry blossoms on it, and I think the title is cherry blossom themed too. Took place partly in Japan. Had TONS of heartbreak…because hero was a rock star, and rockstars can be tools?? But tools in leather pants. I just remember LOVING IT. OK, I would totally…
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July 02, 2011 | Saturday | 0 Comments
Winner: The Moon That Night by Helen Brenna (Harlequin Superromance; Johanna Raisanen, editor) Finalists: ▪ The Baby’s Guardian by Delores Fossen (Harlequin Intrigue; Allison Lyons, editor) ▪ Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming by Paula Graves (Harlequin Intrigue; Allison Lyons, editor) ▪ To Catch a Killer by Kimberly Van Meter (Silhouette Romantic Suspense; Johanna Raisanen, editor) ▪ A Cop in Her Stocking by Ann Voss Peterson (Harlequin Intrigue; Allison Lyons, editor) ▪ Meltdown by Gail Barrett (Silhouette Romantic Suspense; Susan Litman, editor) ▪ The Moon That Night by Helen Brenna (Harlequin Superromance; Johanna Raisanen, editor) ▪ Perfect Partners? by C.J. Carmichael…
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July 02, 2011 | Saturday | 0 Comments
Winner: Welcome Home, Cowboy by Karen Templeton (Silhouette Special Edition; Gail Chasan, editor) Finalists: ▪ Breaking the Sheikh’s Rules in the Summer Sheikhs anthology by Abby Green (Mills & Boon; Meg Lewis, editor) ▪ Christmas Magic on the Mountain by Melissa McClone (Harlequin Romance; Joanne Grant, editor) ▪ Christmas with Her Boss by Marion Lennox (Harlequin Romance; Sheila Hodgson, editor) ▪ Dare She Date the Dreamy Doc? by Sarah Morgan (Mills & Boon Medical Romance; Kimberley Young, editor) ▪ Red-Hot Renegade by Kelly Hunter (Mills & Boon Modern Heat; Joanne Grant, editor) ▪ An Unexpected Father by Lisa Ruff (Harlequin…
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June 28, 2011 | Tuesday | 7 Comments
Runswithscissors reviewed this book for the RITA® Reader Challenge. It finaled in the Contemporary Series romance category. Plot Summary: The huge imposing castle and the barren terrain of Merkazad are a far cry from the modest farm and the emerald fields that horsewoman Iseult calls home. Or used to, until Sheikh Nadim bought her family’s stud farm. As part of the deal, she must work at his royal stables. Nadim enrages Iseultbut he also inspires a more unwelcome, unfamiliar feeling: desire. Drawn into Nadim’s sensual world, Iseult feels like a beautiful, confident woman for the first time. But she must…
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March 15, 2011 | Tuesday | 53 Comments
I had a request for the runners up in the reader nominations for the DABWAHA, so here are the top ten books, with the finalist and the nine runners up as nominated by readers in each category. An asterisk denotes a tie. YA 1. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Finalist) 2. Matched by Ally Condie 3. Linger by Maggie Stiefvater 4. The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong 5. The Duff by Kody Keplinger 6. Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly 7. The Iron King by Julie Kagawa 8. The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa 9. Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George 10*. Last…
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March 14, 2011 | Monday | 18 Comments
It’s time to fill out your brackets for the 2010 DABWAHA tournament of books. If you’re not familiar with it, the DABWAHA is a bracket-style tournament that echoes the NCAA basketball tourney, only instead of college basketball, we’re using reader votes to determine the book of the year. I’ve got a lot of DABWAHA news, in convenient bullet-list format. The reader nominations are in - and each category is now complete with 8 nominees, one in each picked by readers! I am going to post the top 10 reader nominations in each category - because you need more books to…
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October 20, 2010 | Wednesday | 15 Comments
Want some reading of the ranking and listing and charting variety? From Billie: The Overthinkingit.com Female Character Flowchart. There was a lot of sketching involved in the creation of that graphic. Holy smoke. And, in further links of awesomeness, Lauren Baratz-Logsted wrote up what she considers her Book Pyramid, which parallels the AMA Food Pyramid only instead of nutrition, it ranks books by the respect they receive. Yeah. This can’t end well for romance. I have to say, I grinned at her comment: On behalf of every sensible-minded person in publishing, Romance, I’d like to offer my apologies. You make…
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July 10, 2010 | Saturday | 80 Comments
An anonymous reader sent me this recap of her thoughts while reading Men of Danger, an erotic anthology headlined by Lora Leigh. Hannah’s Luck, by Lora Leigh You know you’re reading a Lora Leigh story when the hero is as terse as he is tumescent and the heroine is so copiously wet from the mere thought of him that she needs her own herd of lifeguards to rescue the surrounding populace from the continual flash-floods. The word “explode” is used in ways that are meant to be sexy but are, instead, very very disturbing. He wanted to feel that tight…
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February 04, 2010 | Thursday | 14 Comments
Harlequin has been doing these awesome blogger bundles where romance folks online select a few titles to package together. I’m in volume six: Books that Rocked my Socks. Once there was a blogger who didn’t think category romances could satisfy her needs…but quickly learned the error of her ways! Now Sarah of SBTB has hand-picked a selection of her favorite Harlequin category romances with intricate plots and memorable characters that she guarantees will change the mind of anyone who has ever sniffed at Harlequin titles and thought they were too little to have a big impact. Bundle includes: Sex, Straight…
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January 05, 2010 | Tuesday | 52 Comments
Sometimes, a romance is like a souffle. It’s all delicate and airy: there’s some fat and egg white for structure, and it’s sweet and light, and it can be satisfying, if not the most rib-sticking, satisfying thing you’ve ever eaten. But sometimes, because it’s a souffle, one little thing will break it, and the whole puffy thing that until that moment was fun and simple and pleasing will collapse while you stare in horror because there is NO WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED. An Unlikely Setup was following the path of one of my new favorite forms of category romance plot:…
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September 21, 2009 | Monday | 17 Comments
So I’ve been looking at ebook readers for a while, as I’m a voracious reader and I am rapidly running out of space for all my books. Like with my iPod I wanted the freedom to have options with my reading on the go, not to mention not having to lug heavy hardcovers. The main thing keeping me back at the time? The variety of formats and the price. There was no way I was going shelling out $350 Canadian for something when I couldn’t be sure I was going to be able to buy books wherever I want and…
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September 20, 2009 | Sunday | 5 Comments
I've had a couple of weeks to spend with my borrowed toy, and here's my impressions, based on my unscientific but personally demanding testing methods. Overall, I like it, but the technology still has some serious limitations that keep it from being a serious solution for my personal library growth issues. I knew there would be a learning curve, so I gave myself several days to just play with it. I tried a couple of freebie downloads, but really wasn't warming up to the e-paper format at all. Then I downloaded the new Jeaniene Frost release I'd been dying to…
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September 11, 2009 | Friday | 10 Comments
Heather Osborn, editor at Tor, and also individual of all around general awesome, likes to tweet her reactions to the upcoming Harlequin titles. She sent me the full list so those of you who aren’t on Twitter can enjoy, too. RIPPED! - He who smelt it, dealt it. THE SHARPSHOOTER’S SECRET SON - Proof he wasn’t shooting blanks, I guess. THE SHEIKH’S FORBIDDEN VIRGIN - Spoiler Alert! She’s 8. KEPT FOR HER BABY - But rejected for her sass. PROUD REVENGE, PASSIONATE WEDLOCK - PURPLEY PROSE. HIS HOUSEKEEPER BRIDE - Methinks a male fantasy slipped in when no-one was…
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September 09, 2009 | Wednesday | 26 Comments
Of the four category books that I have kept over the years – through numerous moves and countless reassessing of whether to keep this book or that – two of them were written by Anne Stuart. Somehow, I lost track of her over the years, so I was thrilled when I discovered the Ice series. I power-housed through those books! Yeah, the heroes are Alpha to a near-sociopathic degree. Yeah, more than one of them have come pretty close to actually killing the heroine before finding themselves overwhelmed with some previously-unknown reluctance, all the while trying desperately not to give…
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August 20, 2009 | Thursday | 33 Comments
And lo, this will be strewn far and wide as an example of pandering, but it’s really a humble request for help: Smart Bitches has been nominated in five categories for the Book Blogger Appreciation Awards: Most Humorous/Funniest Blog Most Eclectic Taste Blog Best Reviews Best Romance Reviews Most Collaborative Blog Yay! As part of the nomination process, we need to submit five entries per category that best highlight the content of the site. I’m poking through the archives now, and while we do have a “greatest hits” category - it takes a hell of a lot of bitchin’ power…
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