I strongly suspect that most romance authors do not have waist-length hair. Photographs and Phantoms is one of many, many romances I've read where the hero unbraids and/or brushes the heroine's hair and then they have passionate sex. You know what really disrupts passionate sex? Having to fish strands of hair out of sensitive locations. Even ( Read more... )

After reading two books, I consider Susanna Fraser an autobuy:  whenever she comes out with something new, if I have the money, I'll get the book.  Or I did.  Then she posted on her blog that she's working on a story whose heroine has the power to overhear werewolf telepathy.  I'll probably buy it anyway, but I think it's time for the long-promised ( Read more... )

My mom recommended this book since my whole family likes Jane Austen adaptations. I read the first half yesterday afternoon and finished it this morning. In between, I started composing a review in my head, but kept falling into the book's habit of finding descriptive words unexpected enough to be memorable and witty, but not completely unrelated ( Read more... )

Jesus Christ there is a lot of gross stuff in this book. Slavery is gross, living in 1800 was gross, and the breakdown of society involves a lot of bodily functions. James never forgets to mention that killing people in hideous ways also smells disgusting. Oh, and I could have gone my whole life without learning what it means to "derby-dose" ( Read more... )

I'm back to reading The Book of Night Women, which totally did not deserve getting put down in the middle.  I'll review it when I finish it, but it's made me think about writing style.  Three books I've read lately have been Written Differently.  One is The Paths of the Dead, by Steven Brust as the fictional historian Paarfi, with overlong ( Read more... )

A Marriage of Inconvenience stars Lucy, a clever woman of no more than common means, and the man who is honor-bound to marry her in spite of his attraction to a woman of his own class, thus adapting and re-focusing that classic of Austen's, Mansfield Park (1999 ( Read more... )

Paths of the Dead: Don't read The Viscount of Adrilankha out of order, even if you can't find parts. The beginning becomes redundant. Overdosed on Paarfi. However, bought another book by the same author immediately after finishing ( Read more... )

...words for election nights, apparently. Also the last words of The Count of Monte-Cristo, which I have just finished reading ( Read more... )

Sunrise. How 'bout that. I might've overdone it a bit, drinking green tea lemonade to stay awake through a 13-hour day. I have to be back at work in less than twelve hours now. I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to sleep ( Read more... )

First caveat: I'm not qualified to write this rant. These are just thoughts. I won't cling to them with my occasionally rabid self-righteousness. I've read all of two romance novels dealing with the Napoleonic Wars and not a whole lot more of the relevant history ( Read more... )