Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Powells
January 06, 2011 | Thursday | 44 Comments
My much awaited copy of One Con Glory arrived on the same day that I was supposed to be preparing for my daughter’s seventh birthday party. Let me give you some context here. This is my only child. She is a girl so beautiful that I can’t believe she’s real, a kid who can take on five boys at recess during a spirited game of Star Wars and whup them all into submission while wearing pink sparkly tennis shoes that light up. So, when the book arrived in the mail, I did what any good mommy would do and set…
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October 13, 2010 | Wednesday | 13 Comments
I am a fan of forbidden attraction romances, but I often get a major case of the squicks from romances that are set in a workplace, particularly a nanny/babysitter employment situation. But Christie Ridgeway’s name and the description that indicated the kids were older and therefore the nanny was, too, was enough to convince me to give the book a try. Oh, holy smoke, there is some hot steamy attraction up in here. While the ending left me a little cold, the development of attraction and the negotiation of the relationship was steaming excellently hot. Kayla has been the nanny…
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October 05, 2010 | Tuesday | 134 Comments
The BookMatcher is Billie Bloebaum, book buyer for Powell’s in the Portland Airport, and she brings the art of handselling books based on interest to folks writing in online for her help. Today’s request is from ninjapenguin: If so, I have kind of an unusual request. See, thanks to your site, I have recently been introduced to the world of well-written romance novels. (Previously I had only been cognizant of the rather horrifyingly rape-tastic old school ones my grandmother would leave out.) Specifically, I have started reading, and consequently, falling hard for Georgette Heyer. But where do I go from…
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September 22, 2010 | Wednesday | 74 Comments
R., better known as RedHeadedGirl, is back with another wayback-when old-skool romance review, with plenty of layered WTFery to go around. Enjoy! You never forget your first. You don’t forget your first kiss (Mike, and I had to guilt him into kissing me, because he was too much of wuss to try, and I was too much of a girly-wuss to kiss first), your first flower (Dave, whose great moments were always involving flowers but didn’t have a lot to back that up), your first Doctor (Oh, Nine. Your time was too short. But fantastic!). This was my first romance. …
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September 02, 2010 | Thursday | 13 Comments
Our Bookmatcher, Billie Bloebaum from Powell’s Airport SuperEdition, has a HaBO request: Okay. Now it’s my turn to hope the Bitchery can help me out. It’s been close to thirty years since I read this book—sometime in the mid- to late-seventies. There’s a good chance that it was published in 1976 for the Bicentennial. It was a novel for younger readers and one of the featured characters was the Marquis de Lafayette. The book was possibly told in first person from the heroine’s perspective. I don’t remember much about the plot, except that there was a banquet fairly early on…
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August 16, 2010 | Monday | 69 Comments
Billie Bloebaum, romance book buyer for Powell’s in the Portland Airport, is exercising the power of her handselling abilities online, and fields requests for books to read. Kimberly writes in with a Bookmatcher request: Hi Sarah, I was wondering if you could help me out. I usually read urban fantasy or fantasy books with strong romance elements. I’m ready to move on and expand my horizons a little. I remember that you have done a feature called The Bookmatcher and was wondering if you would do one for me. I would love to read more space romances (think Linnea Sinclair-LOVE…
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June 21, 2010 | Monday | 8 Comments
It’s time for the first meeting of the Sizzling Summer Book Club, brought to you by me, All Romance eBooks, and caffeine. I’ll be convening the discussion at 10:00 pm EDT/7:00 pm PDT here at Smart Bitches in a live chat window. I’ll be asking questions, fielding comments, and hopefully we can all talk about the book live together - which is one part I’m terribly excited about. We’re discussing Tessa Dare’s One Dance with a Duke, and AllRomanceEbooks is still offering a 50% rebate on this book, so if you purchase it digitally through ARe, you get 50% as…
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April 15, 2010 | Thursday | 85 Comments
Billie Bloebaum, romance book buyer for Powell’s in the Portland Airport, is exercising the power of her handselling abilities online, and fields requests for books to read. Thanks, Billie! Today’s request is from Cara: I’m looking for some help finding romances with a particular kind of pairing. I would like books with heroines who are smart, rational, and happy, and generally unconcerned with “proper” social behavior, and heroes who are equally smart and rational as well as kind. Basically your anti -angry boner man. Books where these two pair up because they both problem-solve in adult and unconventional ways, and…
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March 23, 2010 | Tuesday | 29 Comments
After I wrote about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I received so many recommendations of outstanding mystery series, and I wanted to share with you.
First, Pam wrote: “May I also suggest, the next time you are interested in phenominal prose, breathtaking attention to the human psyche and darned good mysteries , that you look up Louise Penny? First in the series: Still Life.
I have all to date from Audible.com, and this is one series that ‘listens’ better than it ‘reads’, IMHO.”
Thanks, Pam!
And of course, Bookmatcher Billie Bloebaum had a list of books to recommend:
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January 20, 2010 | Wednesday | 34 Comments
Prince Joe is among the most beloved old categories. It’s a vintage Suzanne Brockmann, featuring her hallmark SEALs fighting terrorists while meeting up with fine noble women. When I mocked a bit of the novel on Twitter, the small taste of outrage that I would snark on Prince Joe leads me to believe that this review will not be too popular. Honestly, Prince Joe didn’t do it for me. Hark! A plot summary: Joe Catalanotto is a Navy SEAL who happens to look just like a selfish, boorish buttnoid of a prince of some small mythical country named -stan, and…
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January 07, 2010 | Thursday | 76 Comments
Time again for hand selling online, when book mastermind Billie Bloebaum from Powells books (stop by and say hi when you’re next at the Portland airport!) matches enquiring minds with required reading. Raney writes: I recently finished an epic jag of reading exclusively graphic novels and trade paperbacks (basically trying to catch up on that entire, wonderful genre that I apparently missed when hitting the library growing up.) I was lucky enough to come across The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman. I’ve always been a fan of zombie movies, but this was my first venture into another zombie medium (oh,…
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December 10, 2009 | Thursday | 7 Comments
Time again for hand selling online, when book mastermind Billie Bloebaum from Powells books (conveniently located in the Portland airport!) matches enquiring minds with required reading. Deborah writes: I adored Bewitching by Jill Barnett. I’ve read the rest of her books, some I liked, some I didn’t, but I was looking for another author or book that has the same good sense of humor and adventure. Billie says, “Barnett hasn’t had anything new since 2007 (before that it was 2002) and hasn’t written an historical since 1999. But, if you want historicals with magic, then Kathryne Kennedy (e.g. My Unfair…
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November 24, 2009 | Tuesday | 19 Comments
Time again for Billie Bloebaum, Powell’s Airport book buyer, matching readers to books - a dying art that I can’t get over. Amy writes: The last book I read that I really, really loved was “Sugar Queen” by Sarah Addison Allen. Billie: My first impulse is to go with Alice Hoffman or maybe ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ or ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ or ‘Chocolat’, but to find a good romance novel with a touch of magical realism that doesn’t veer into schmaltz is more of a challenge. ‘The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes’ by Crusie, Dreyer, and Stuart has that…
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September 12, 2009 | Saturday | 4 Comments
A house full of Jacks is not a winning hand for Mariah Eller. She knows she is in trouble when she is called to her inn to help deal with a group of trouble-making noblemen using fictitious names like Jack Sprat and Jack B. Nimble. She doesn’t know just how much trouble, even when she realizes that one of those trouble makers was her future king. Soon, she finds herself pressured to be a mistress to a prince and a bride to one of his subjects. I loved this book. Betina Krahn picked an interesting time for the setting –…
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September 03, 2009 | Thursday | 4 Comments
It is two pieces of awesome, and verily I am rocking out with the glee. First: Billie Bloebaum, romance buyer for Powell’s airport store in Portland, is now the romance blogger for PowellsBooks.blog. WORD. She’s had a few blog entries in the past, but now she’s going to be talking about romance, ebooks, and all things romance genre. Her first entry about romance? All about a pair of book I really, really really enjoyed: Jill Shalvis’ Double Play and Instant Attraction. Yay! In other news, did you know that you can buy ebooks from Powell’s? It’s true! Thanks to Darin,…
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