Academic-Issues

Thursday News: B&N unveils 2 new tablets; A look at print innovations;

Thursday News: B&N unveils 2 new tablets; A look at print innovations;

B&N announced two new tablets yesterday.  One is a 7″ and the other is a 9″ tablet. Their features don’t vary a great deal from the Kindle Fire or Google’s Nexus tablet but there is one stand out feature.  The new Nooks have profiles so that the family can share the same device but have(…)

Wednesday News and Deals: Romance novels are feminist documents

From reader Shula is this fantastic article about romances at The Awl.  According to the reader, “The Awl is one of a quartet of blogs (think Gawker media) that also includes The Hairpin, a ladyblog. What I thought particularly interesting was that instead of posting the article there, where one might assume something written by(…)

REVIEW: Demon Lover by Juliet Dark

REVIEW: Demon Lover by Juliet Dark

Dear Ms. Dark, This was an especially difficult book to grade. After much reflection, I have decided to recommend it because of the strength of the prose and what, I believe, are the very engaging middle sections of the book. However, despite the fact that Ballantine is billing this book as a paranormal romance, I(…)

REVIEW:  Fair Game by Josh Lanyon

REVIEW: Fair Game by Josh Lanyon

Dear Mr. Lanyon, My recent and much too delayed venture into m/m romance led naturally to your books, given their strong reviews and word-of-mouth and my predilection for mysteries.   I have your first two Adrien English books in my ebook TBR, but when I saw that you had a stand-alone coming out from Carina, I(…)

Thursday Midday Links Roundup: DWEBs Still Thwarting the Women

Tomorrow is the last day to Opt Out of the Google Book Settlement Agreement. You can do this online. The biggest question you have to answer is what do you get by opting in that you don’t get by opting out, other than $60 per book? The publishers are all participating and to the extent(…)

University Presses Look to Digital Publishing to Save Themselves

University presses are facing closures and lack of funding in these difficult economic times. Michael Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the National Academies Press urged university presses to rethink publication and scholarship: Scholarship must be “de-linked from print publication,” such that books are “the exception” and no longer the norm for disseminating new(…)

IASPR Open for Business

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance is open for membership! Go to the website and click on the “Join Today!” link. Or just go straight to the membership page! (Through the power of PayPal, they take all comers and all our various currencies all over the world. It is, after all, the(…)

REVIEW: Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan

Dear Ms. Wendell and Ms. Tan. I spent Wednesday through Saturday last week at the Popular Culture Association Conference in New Orleans attending all the Romance Area panels. There were papers about domesticity as it constructs Eve’s character in JD Robb’s novels, and the moral construction of Sookie Stackhouse and the vampires she interacts with(…)

Princeton Romance Conference

The website for “Love as the Practice of Freedom? Romance Fiction and American Culture” is finally live! This conference is on April 23-24, at Princeton University, and FREE! to the public. There are some pretty illustrious names presenting at the conference. Rather than repeat them all here (Eloisa James, Jenny Crusie, Beverly Jenkins, SB Sarah,(…)

REVIEW: The Night Villa by Carol Goodman

Dear Mrs. Goodman, When I got an ARC of your latest book, “The Night Villa,” I had no idea of what to expect. But it sounded intriguing and I put it in my TBR short stack. After all, one doesn’t find heroines who are Classics Professors every day of the week. I love books which(…)

Harvard to Publish Free Online?

The Harvard faculty will be deciding next week whether to start publishing their scholarship free online.   It would only pertain to their arts and sciences faculty.   In the current system scholarship is published in journals which subscriptions can be very costly.   The journals also are read by a very small population. Each author though could(…)

Call For Papers: Academia wants you!

The Professors at Teach Me Tonight, a very thoughtful and insightful blog about romance, are seeking individuals to submit papers for their work, The Mind of Love: New Approaches to Popular Romance. You don’t need to be an academic to offer an opinion piece, just the ability to author a thoughtful article on romance related(…)