Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Celebrity
June 03, 2011 | Friday | 12 Comments
This book was a departure from romance reading for me. Spoiled is not a romance. It’s a YA novel, with a minor romantic element, and a long-distance relationship element. Without meaning to I stepped out of the genre and thoroughly enjoyed myself. But be ye aware, this is not a romance. That said, I really enjoyed it. It’s freaking hilarious. It is funny and fluffy and sudsy and silly. Really, you have to like silly humor a bit to enjoy this book. In fact, it can be summed up in two words: Chanandaler Bong. If you get that reference, and…
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August 18, 2010 | Wednesday | 15 Comments
I have heard from a few readers here that they love Jane Porter’s books. One reader mentioned in particular her sense of humor and her friendly heroines. So when this book arrived I read it in a matter of days. It had a line up of things that I generally jump into as fast as I can: - a heroine who has picked up her old life and moved to a place that’s familiar and yet completely foreign - exchanging city life for rural life - facing real actual contemporary problems that aren’t easy - finding oneself in charge and…
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March 02, 2010 | Tuesday | 24 Comments
Three years ago, U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde worked closely with Jack Pallas on an investigation that went totally FUBAR. His career was in the toilet, and he blamed her for totally screwing him over. He ended up in the remote wilds of some place that wasn’t Chicago nursing a big old asshurt over how wrong things went and doesn’t expect to see her again - until she overhears a murder in a hotel room next door to her own, and Pallas is assigned to the case. I don’t think I can do justice to how freaking fun this book is.…
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October 06, 2009 | Tuesday | 22 Comments
Lindsay Bingham is a small town girl who finds herself in St. Michel, a small European country similar to Monaco, as a bridesmaid to her friend Sophie, who is marring the crown prince of said country. At the wedding, she meets the gaze of one hot celebrity chef, Carlos Montigo, and the attraction is immediate. As Carlos goes off to fetch champagne for them both after a short but charged conversation on the balcony, another man, a television producer, asks her to dance and drops an amazing opportunity in her lap: television show hostess for his newly-purchased cooking network. Sophie,…
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September 26, 2009 | Saturday | 27 Comments
If this book were portioned out and divided into thirds, two of the thirds would be so outstanding, so fun and awesome and interesting and innovative that I could go on for awhile on the things I enjoyed about them. The remaining portion dulls the sparkle and joy of those other two, because the flaws are contained in a character and in the structure of the tension. Let’s start with the good parts: Edwards has created an absolutely fun new hero: the happy alpha. Adam Temple is the chef at the helm of a new restaurant, Market, specializing in locally…
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September 17, 2009 | Thursday | 31 Comments
Once, long ago, I had a guy friend ask me out to dinner. Now, we were pretty much “just friends”, but I thought he was sweet and cute and I enjoyed his company, so I happily agreed to what sounded rather date-like (especially since he told me to dress “nice”). Off we went, with him telling me that where we were going was a “surprise”. Then we pulled up in front of a church. I asked him why we were stopping and he said he needed to run in really quick and asked if I would mind coming along. Once…
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April 14, 2009 | Tuesday | 16 Comments
Nightline (CBS in the USA) is doing a segment on Harlequin’s 60th Anniversary. Unfortunately for me, Nightline is one WAY the hell past my bedtime, but I’ll be asking the DVR to save it for me. However, there is a video on ABCnews.com showing many a random celebrity reading an excerpt of a Harlequin. The silliness factor: high. The accompanying article: enough of a business slant that my WTF-o-meter didn’t go screaming.
But I am a little fearful that the Nightlight segment set to air tonight is going to be more condescending than not.
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February 12, 2009 | Thursday | 28 Comments
Grab your suitcase and gas up the car: Nora Roberts’ Inn BoonsBoro is opening this weekend. In a spiffy article in USA Today, reporter Carol Memmott received a tour of the new building - and wrote up a lovely account of the inn and Nora’s career, with no sniffing down the nose at the romance genre. I might have to lie down a moment. My favorite quote is Nora, who is also known on Fandom_Wank as “Maid of Wyn,” talking about how difficult it was to come up with seven happy romantic couples on whom she could base the decor…
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December 17, 2008 | Wednesday | 30 Comments
There have been a few reviews published this week on The Jewel of Medina. USA Today was hardly complimentary, and the New York Times was so sniffy I’m suspecting nasal spray was involved.
But I’m handing out penalties to the Times and to writer Lorraine Adams, because there are some serious flags on the play in her review.
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December 12, 2008 | Friday | 17 Comments
You know, for a holiday during a repressive, recessive economy, we have some incredible gift options. From SBTB Swag to log underpants, your options are long, strong, and mighty. But really, personalization is IT. Like, your own customized, personalized David Hasselhoff poster. So, with great thanks to Harmony, I provide you with: the Hofftastic Holiday Contest. Craft your personal Hoff message where in the Hoff sends holiday Hoff greetings to the internet. Why the internet? Because the internet is the hot, teeming wellspring of his powerful celebrity. You can craft it to his HoffSpace fans, the YouTube folks who make…
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December 02, 2008 | Tuesday | 82 Comments
In order to get this review going, I have to get one thing out of the way: “Fuck me, he cleared it!” Ok, then. The buzz is a-building about Carrie Lofty’s What a Scoundrel Wants since the buzz-o-matic Ann Aguirre launched a viral contest to spread the word about Lofty’s debut with Kensington. I read this book a few weeks ago, and I have to say, Lofty set herself for a hell of a task: she took a legend with which most people were familiar, and a setting and time period that hadn’t been visited within the romance genre in…
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November 23, 2008 | Sunday | 22 Comments
According to Yahoo!News, burlesque star Dita Von Teese is suing Macmillan Publishing and a photo agency due to use of her image on Patti O’Shea’s In Twilight’s Shadow. The papers filed on Friday claim that Dita’s face is “a valuable and integral portion of her celebrity persona” and that the company “commercially exploited her image and likeness to their own gain.” Looking at the cover ( Larger popup version here) I wouldn’t have guessed that was Von Teese, though I’m reasonably familiar with what she looks like. She, or someone who alerted her, must have recognized the image and known…
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October 09, 2008 | Thursday | 65 Comments
Over at the LA Times book blog, Carolyn Kellogg examines the dilemma of cover art, and making sure that literary fiction novels sell ... perhaps at the expense of being taken seriously from a visual perspective.
Citing evidence such as GalleyCat’s side by side comparison of Sue Hepworth’s Zuzu’s Petals, and Bookninja’s contest to recast classic novels to appeal to popular markets like “romance, chick lit, thriller, scifi, fantasy, celebrity kids, etc”, Kellogg’s entry follows a 7 October article in The Independent that questions whether authors are being asked to “dumb down” their work to appeal to a larger readership.
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August 26, 2008 | Tuesday | 21 Comments
Anyone who gets the Publishers Lunch has received the news that Amazon acquired Shelfari. TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon dropped a cool million on the Shelf, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes that three weeks ago, Amazon acquired AbeBooks, which owns a share in Shelfari’s competitor, LibraryThing. While the nom-nom-nom-ing of the internet does make me raise a cautious brow, it also makes me wonder if Amazon is the only party with massive cash behind it that recognizes the potential power of book network marketing. Not marketing of books, but the marketing of book networks, and how powerful social networks are…
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June 20, 2008 | Friday | 25 Comments
Happy Friday! Have some links for fun and profit. If you figure out the profit thing, lemme know.
From Elizabeth: an older post from Mark Sarvas’ blog: the many many kinds of lit. I’m partial to “Clique lit” (when friends of bestselling authors write books) and “Flick lit” (novels optimized for film adaptation). But “Frick Lit” and “Tick Lit” made me snort diet Pepsi up my nose.
Elizabeth’s email was made 23% more awesome by the following true story:
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