May 14 2012
Dear Remittance Girl, Your novella, Gaijin, caught me by surprise. A friend recommended it to me on Twitter and then loaned it to me through my Kindle. I had heard about it and investigated purchasing it once before, but shied away from making an actual purchase. Somehow, I wasn’t expecting as much thoughtfulness as I [...]
May 10 2012
On Sunday, April 22, I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Part 1 of my report on the festival Part 2 of my festival recap And now for Part 3: Fiction: Love, Actually My friend Bettie and I left the Anne Rice panel while Anne Rice was taking questions from the audience and [...]
May 9 2012
I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Sunday, April 22. The first part of my report on the festival can be found at this link. And now onto Part 2. Anne Rice in Conversation with Scott Timberg After the mornings panels described in part 1 of my report, we stopped at the [...]
May 8 2012
Dear Ms. Hancock, After reading and reviewing your impressive novella, Ghost in the Machine, I was eager for more of your work and curious as to what your writing was like in other genres. Silent Surrender, your new Spice Brief, caught my attention and I decided to try it. Alexia arrives at the Rivera hotel [...]
May 8 2012
Last year on I attended the Los Angeles Festival of Books and reported on the event for DA. My biggest negative takeaway that year was that the romance genre was not represented at the festival. This year (Halleluja!) they actually had a panel devoted to romance. A single, lonely panel mind you, but it [...]
Apr 26 2012
I was really, really lucky in my choices of reading material in February and early March. Five of the nine books I read between the beginning of February and the first day of spring have been books I would grade at B+ or above, which means that they’re recommended (by me) reads. It made me [...]
Apr 20 2012
Dear Ms. Putney, I was a big fan of your books in the 1990s. They came along at a time when I had not read anything like them. If the characters made mistakes or committed wrongs, your books actually examined the of the characters’ motives for doing so in some depth. And your characters actually [...]
Apr 5 2012
Dear Mr. Ness, I feel like quite the scrooge because while I liked your YA novel, A Monster Calls, I didn’t love it the way everyone else I’ve seen reviewing it seems to have done. The book has a powerful and moving story of how it came to be. The idea behind it was the [...]
Mar 26 2012
Dear Ms. Neville, I should probably preface this review by saying that I’ve chatted with you on Twitter and what I know of you, I really like. Ever since they met in The Dangerous Viscount, book two of your Burgundy Book Club series, I’ve wanted to see Minerva Montrose and the Marquis of Blakeney (known [...]
Mar 21 2012
Dear Mr. Aaronovitch, I’ve been recommending enough books here lately that I have started to worry that my grades are overgenerous. But when a book is as much fun as your debut urban fantasy/police procedural, Midnight Riot, what is a reviewer to do? I picked up Midnight Riot (also known as Rivers of London in [...]
Mar 14 2012
The following review contains SPOILERS. The spoilers from late in the book are hidden, but others are visible. If you have never read A Promise of Spring and prefer to avoid spoilers, read this review at your own risk. Dear Ms. Balogh, A Promise of Spring, now being reprinted in a 2-in-1 volume with The [...]
Feb 29 2012
Dear Ms. Balogh, I first read The Temporary Wife, one of your most beloved trad regencies, several years ago. At the time, I liked it but was distracted by an initial similarity to another of your regencies, The Ideal Wife, which I had read first and liked even better. The opening premises of the two [...]
Feb 23 2012
It’s been over three months (!) since my last “What Janine is Reading” post. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to do one of these – the holidays got in the way, but it’s been six weeks since they ended and for that I don’t have a great excuse. Here’s what I [...]
Feb 6 2012
Dear Ms. Jewel, I loved your 2009 book, Scandal, and very much enjoyed Indiscreet, which came out later the same year. So when I learned that you were publishing a new historical called Not Wicked Enough I got excited, and asked Jane if she could send me the ARC. Having now read it, I have [...]
Jan 23 2012
Dear Ms. Carey, Kushiel’s Dart, your fantasy novel, is the story of Phedre, who begins life in the Night Court of Terre D’Ange. The Night Court is peopled by prostitutes, known in this world as Servants of Naamah, the goddess of such things. Terre D’Ange is modeled on Renaissance France, but with some substantial differences, [...]
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