Dec 23 2010
Primarily the books published in English are about English speaking characters. Is there a market for stories about characters who speak another language? And would it really matter if the story is written in English (i.e. the dialogue is all translated?)
Jul 20 2010
I was perusing the HarperCollins catalog and came across the entry which noted Christine Feehan’s Dark Prince was going to be re-released in hardcover with 100 additional pages. I don’t know if this is a rewrite or just extra material. I mentioned on Twitter that I thought Christine Feehan was the mother of Paranormal Romance. [...]
Dec 23 2009
Do you buy books as gifts? There’s something wonderful about sharing one’s love for reading with another, particularly kids. Here’s my last minute holiday book gift guide. Share yours! Pre K to 1st grade: Nora Gaydos “Now I’m Reading” series. I like the collection of 10 books which help your child build her phonics skills. [...]
Nov 23 2009
New Moon was released this past weekend and grossed a whopping $140.7 million. Record shattering. New Moon also debuted at No. 5 on the NYT Bestseller Children’s list and spent 11 consecutive weeks on the list. There is obviously overlap between the readers and movie goers. So I ask you, will you see a movie [...]
Nov 1 2009
JMC posted last week about having problems with con artist protagonists. I’ve enjoyed the occasional assassin book such as Kelley Armstrong’s Nadia Stafford series or Barry Eisler’s John Rain series. Jenny Crusie seems to love the morally ambiguous protagonist with books like Welcome to Temptation, Faking It, and Agnes and the Hitman. I voted in [...]
Oct 15 2009
I was emailing with someone yesterday about books set in Minneapolis such as Sunshine by Robin McKinley, War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, contemporaries from Susan Johnson and Connie Brockway; the super fabulous Monkeewrench mystery books by PJ Tracy (they have a new one coming out next year!). Some authors really imbue their [...]
Sep 16 2009
There is so much I could write about in terms of names in books (and maybe that will be an upcoming Tuesday post) but for today, we have a poll inspired by author Christina Dodd who tweeted today: “For you as a reader, is it important that you can pronounce character names?” Yes is my [...]
Sep 3 2009
To give equal time to the women, I present the heroine poll. Do you like your heroines perfect or flawed, physically? Personally, I like both but if I had to choose (and I am making you if you want to vote) for the physically flawed heroine because perfection can be boring. Really beautiful heroines have [...]
Aug 28 2009
I’ll admit I’m a bit shallow. I like my heroes tall, at least 6′. I think other romance readers must as well because you rarely read about the short hero (even if the heroine is short, the hero must tower over her). Jayne Ann Krentz is about the only author I know who gets away [...]
Aug 26 2009
I asked this question of Sarah last week at Borders. My initial response was “the end, of course” because I love that feeling at the end of a good book. When I pondered this more, though, I came the realization that I am much more excited to start books than I am to finish them. [...]
Aug 23 2009
Reading slumps are a bad, bad thing. You start thinking that the genre sucks or that maybe you’ve changed so that the genre no longer appeals to you. You pick up ten books in your to be read pile and they all look horrible. The mere mention of a bookstore makes your lip curl in [...]
Aug 20 2009
This coming year will see a lot of re issues of older books. It’s financially convenient for publishers as they’ve already paid the advance on that book. Sometimes, though, our old favorites simply don’t hold up over time. Keishon, Avidbookreader, blogged about her recent re-reading of Sandra Brown’s Tiger Prince. Dated, Keishon wrote, but still [...]
Aug 17 2009
At the Popular Romance Studies: International Conference, organised by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR), there was a brief discussion to explore this question: Are older under-represented in the romance genre? If so, why? Good questions. The average age of heroine in U.S. romance novels is between 24-26 (and possibly younger in historical romance). And [...]
Aug 14 2009
McVane has kindly thought up some poll ideas for me. (They are hard, you guys!). I thought this topic was particularly apt given two things. First, there are some readers who believe that the best of romance is in the past and that what is being published today is good but will never live up [...]
Jul 23 2009
NOTE: I flushed the poll because there was some confusion about the “PUBLIC” nature of the criticism. I want the poll to reflect the temperature of whether public criticism is acceptable. Sorry for the restart. The website mistress of The Season (a place to find out about new historical romance releases) asked this question on [...]
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