JanetLetters of Opinionarchetypes / Beauty-and-the-Beast / Dracula / Fifty Shades of Grey / Frankenstein / genre critique / mythology / Transcendence / tropes / Twilight / vampires12 Comments

The idea for this essay started with a question: what is it about Twilight and its derivations, especially Fifty Shades of Grey and Transcendence, that allow these variations to represent “fresh” and “new” in the retelling? I’m not interested in whether these books are good or bad, nor am I ... more >

September 13, 2015

The Stylus Problem

JaneLetters of OpinioniOS / stylus11 Comments

The most recent iteration of the iPad was announced last Wednesday. The larger device designed for professionals and to compete with products like the Microsoft surface Pro is being sold with a stylus. The Internet rushed to post this image: . (Bonus video archive) Steve Jobs hated input devices. I ... more >

JaneLetters of OpinionBookshelf / DIK / print books / shelf-worthy30 Comments

Several years ago, I was reading a book that had a name I found really, really jarring. It was so jarring that it was affecting my ability to read the book. It was just the name, though, so I powered up my computer, opened the ebook file and did a ... more >

August 16, 2015

Can a subscription service ever afford romance readers?

JaneLetters of Opinion32 Comments

In the space of a month, Scribd dropped over 70% of the romance catalog and Amazon retooled the way it paid authors under the Kindle Unlimited program. Both Scribd and Kindle Unlimited’s movements signaled (to me) that the cost of romance readers was too damn high for these subscription services. ... more >

JanineLetters of OpinionHolocaust / inspirational romance / Jewish characters / Nazis118 Comments

ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS Janine: I asked Sunita, who read this book in its entirety, to join me for this discussion. As one whose relatives died in Auschwitz, I could only bring myself to read 35% of Breslin’s novel, the first 145 pages. So there are questions I can’t answer, ... more >

SunitaEssays / Letters of Opiniondiversity / reading67 Comments

Note to readers: This column was originally posted at my small personal blog. We thought it might interest DA’s readers too. Reading diverse books and diverse authors (in terms of non-white and non-straight authors) has been a goal of quite a few online readers, in romanceland, SFF, and mainstream fiction more ... more >