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It's my theory that a lot of readers skim. Not in the sense of barely glancing at each page to find the end of the umpteenth boring sex scene, but rather not reading every single word--just reading for meaning.

It's how I used to read. Just a few glances per page, and I'd get the gist of the story. But then a couple of things happened: a teacher told me I was 'wrong' to speed-read like that, and I fell in love with words. Now I read every single word.

I can still skim. It feels like shifting into neutral and coasting down a hill. Like the way you have to unfocus your eyes to see those hidden 3-D pictures. It's not as easy as it once was, but sometimes it's the only way to get through a book.

And I swear it must be why readers love so many books that I find nearly unreadable.

I've read two books recently that were so poorly written I described the experience of reading them as being like reading a foreign language that I didn't know very well. The second one got nearly uniformly excellent reviews on Amazon. The premise was interesting, but the writing completely obscured the story. Commas and hyphens were spread through the text like sprinkles on a cupcake and with just about as much regard for placement. Misspellings and word substitutions abounded. Words were just blatantly misused. Sentence structure was a mess, with phrases and clauses tacked on and going nowhere. Plot threads were introduced and dropped. Explanations for events were either non-existent or unbelievable.

I can understand when someone's taste doesn't coincide with mine. But it was always a mystery to me how people could overlook what to me was unreadable writing. I admit to being a bit of a grammar/spelling geek, but I'll ignore the occasional typo, even miss it if I'm involved enough in a story. But some books have more than the occasional typo. And I don't think it can be attributed to knowledge. I'm decent at grammar and spelling, but I'm not an expert. I don't have an English degree. I've never written a book.

The light bulb went on when I read a post on skimming on Kathleen O'Reilly's blog (wonderful writer, by the way). If you skim, you'll miss all those small mistakes that drive me crazy, and even what I think of as big mistakes--like inadequate motivation for actions, or the distance between reader and character caused by 'telling' rather than 'showing'--become invisible.

Of course, you'll also miss when an author puts words together so beautifully you have to read a sentence over again just for the pure enjoyment of it.

I envy the skimmers in a way--they're able to enjoy books that I just can't enjoy. And I am in no way saying, like the teacher who chastised me for speed-reading (it was the 70s--teachers were often Not Very Nice), that readers who skim are wrong or that I'm a 'better' reader because I don't.

But I'll put up with not enjoying books with a perfectly nice story but poor or mediocre writing for the sheer joy of finding a book where it all comes together--characters, plot, and words.

It would break my heart, I think, to only see a Jennifer Crusie book or a Laura Kinsale book as the sum of its plot, to not be able to distinguish between mediocre writing with a good story and excellent writing with a good story.

I know a lot of readers believe that writing skills are all a matter of personal taste, but I never said everyone would agree with my theories.

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Categories: Theories, Reading

Labels: reading, theories

I'm not talking about the hardcore ideologues. I'm talking about average, everyday Americans. It occurred to me while writing yesterday's post that much of what divides us is semantics.

But just so I'm clear: assume every time I say 'we all' or mention 'conservatives' or 'liberals,' I'm talking about average, reasonable people, not the fringe elements.

During the 2004 election, one email list I'm on (readers, mostly women) engaged in a lively but mostly respectful political debate, and the idea most of us came away with was that we had more in common than we thought we did. We had many of the same concerns. We didn't even always differ in what we thought the solutions were. Where we differed was in which party we thought would address our concerns better, and the priority we attached to those concerns.

I don't know anyone who's not concerned about crime, poverty, education, terrorism, health care, unemployment, Social Security, etc., etc.

We're not even all that far apart on hot-button issues:

• Liberals don't think abortion should be the main form of birth control.
  
• Conservatives don't think there should be thousands of unwanted children being born and abandoned or neglected.
  
  
• Liberals don't think all men should be castrated.
  
• Conservatives don't think all women should be subservient.
  
  
• Liberals don't think we should all be forced to become gay.
  
• Conservatives don't think gays should be imprisoned, tortured, or killed.

• Liberals don't think murderers should be set free to kill again.
  
• Conservatives don't think we should execute petty criminals.

• Liberals don't think minorities should be handed life on a silver platter.
  
• Conservatives aren't white supremacists.

• Liberals don't want to turn the other cheek or cave in to terrorist threats.
  
• Conservatives don't want to kill a few thousand American soldiers for oil.
  

Somewhere in the middle of these gross exaggerations each side promotes as being the view of the other side is where the opinions of most of us lie.

The exaggerations polarize us, make us distrust whichever half of the country is not us. They get people to the polls to vote, mainly for whichever extreme we find less distasteful.

If we could sit down and talk without sound bites, without rhetoric, I believe we'd find we have a lot more in common than we think. And we could, very possibly, find compromises in the vast middle ground.

But that's not the way it works.

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Categories: Theories, Politics

Labels: politics, theories

I hear it all the time, from intelligent, independent, career-minded women: "I'm not a feminist, but..."

This I find hard to believe. If you're not a feminist, shouldn't you be sticking to "a woman's place," keeping house, raising babies, leaving the decisions and the bread-winning up to the man of the house?

I am, let's face it, a housewife, much as I loathe the term. I don't have a paying job. I'm married, I stay at home with my kids, and have, except for a couple of years, ever since the first one was born. I didn't plan it that way, but I don't regret it. But I definitely consider myself a feminist.

All that means to me is that I believe women and men should be treated equally under the law. That they should have equal opportunities. That they should receive equal pay for equal work. And that women's work and women's literature should be accorded equal respect to men's. (More on this in another theory)

Unfortunately, "feminist" has taken on additional meanings of man-hating and agendas I and many other women don't agree with--hence the frequent comment of "I'm not a feminist, but..." Equal opportunities doesn't mean identical results. Take a job in construction, for example, for which the person has to routinely lift heavy loads. Popular wisdom says that feminists think there should be equal numbers of men and women in such jobs. Now, Buffy could do it, and if there are women who can and want do the job, I believe nothing should stand in their way. But to require equal numbers isn't feminist, it's foolish.

The man-hating part is even more irritating. Men are not the enemy. Those who stand in the way of equality are from both genders.

The genders do have differences as groups. In general, boys tend to be more physically-oriented, and girls to be more emotionally-oriented. In general, males tend to focus on one task at a time, females tend to have a wider focus. It's not true of all members of either sex. There are women who are physical and focused, and men who are emotional and have a wider outlook. There are women who love sports and hate shopping, and men who love shopping and hate sports. And as many variations of typical male and female behaviors as there are people. Still, the differences do hold true in general. But get this: neither typically male behavior nor typically female behavior is wrong. Neither is bad. A typical man's inability to multi-task is not due to mental laziness, but rather to the way his mind works. A typical woman's emotional reaction to an offense isn't due to weakness or manipulation, but rather to the way her mind works. You might as well say that an oak tree is wrong because it doesn't have needles like a pine tree. It's just the way they are.

Insisting on numerical equality, that typical male behavior is wrong, and that men are the enemy distracts from the goal of ensuring women have equal rights. When something as basic as paying women and men doing the same job the same salary is obscured by demanding that there be equal numbers of men and women in the infantry, those who are making those demands aren't feminist, because they're not working for women as a whole. They're making us look foolish and driving reasonable people away from basic feminist goals.

The more of us who admit we're feminist while eschewing the more radical agenda, the more we can claim ownership of the word.

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Categories: Theories, TWBTS

Labels: the war between the sexes, theories

I recently read two books--romances--one contemporary and one historical--in which the main conflict between the hero and heroine was trust. It irritated me, because the characters had only just met each other, and yet were demanding the other trust them.

So I've been thinking about trust.

More even than love, I think, trust is the core of a good relationship.

Which is likely what the authors were trying to convey in the books that irritated me so much, but it was nonsensical for virtual strangers.

Back in theory # 1, I mentioned that the first step in training a husband is to pick the right one. And that goes for this theory as well. Those two romance authors did have one thing right--you shouldn't marry someone you don't trust.

Partly, trust is something you either have or you don't. But it can also be nurtured and developed. Modern life doesn't make trusting easy. Messages abound that people are untrustworthy, and even that you're naive at best or deliberately deluding yourself if you trust your spouse. Women's magazines are full of articles about "how to tell if he's cheating." Both sexes are bombarded with advice on how to protect yourself in the inevitable event of divorce. And we're all raised not to trust each other. Men only want one thing. Women will marry you then divorce you and take your house and your kids away. Both sexes view the other with suspicion.

Even worse, women know that men are hopeless with kids or with housework, that they're uncommunicative and that they're not in touch with their emotions. Men know that women are overly emotional, illogical, hopeless with anything mechanical, and addicted to shopping.

With all that, trusting your partner completely seems idiotic.

Marriages without complete trust can work, and the partners can be happy. But it's better with trust. Imagine having no doubt in your mind that your spouse will be there for you no matter what. Literally in sickness and health, for richer and poorer. Imagine being able to share your secrets and dreams freely without fear of rejection or ridicule. Imagine not having to keep track of your spouse's household chores as well as your own. That's what trust can give you.

The most important thing is being able to trust in your love for each other and your commitment to the relationship. Everything else stems from that. If you love your partner and are committed to the relationship, you're not going to do something that damages or endangers it, whether that's cheating or draining the savings account.

Trust goes against all we've learned about protecting ourselves, and I wholly agree that trust shouldn't be given profligately. But a spouse isn't just anyone. This is the one person you've decided to spend the rest of your life with. That's huge. It's overwhelming, if you think about it. So if you're willing to combine your life with theirs, it's not such a big leap to trust them, is it?

But we don't. We come into relationships prepared for failure. We hold a little bit of our selves back, protecting ourselves from heartbreak. We don't trust because we expect that trust to be broken. And in doing so, we risk the thing we're guarding against.

How do you develop trust? You start in small ways. Look at the small things in your relationship that indicate a lack of trust and change them. Then as trust grows in small things, move on to the bigger ones. People do tend to live up to--or down to--expectations.

• Do you criticize her driving even though she's never had an accident? Stop. Trust that she's a competent driver.
  
• Do you remind him to take the trash out every Tuesday even though he's only forgotten once? Stop. Trust that he knows it needs to be done.
• Do you hesitate to leave him alone with the children? Stop. Trust that he loves the children, too, and even if he doesn't do things the same as you, it's not necessarily bad.
• Do you keep quiet about the details of your daily life? Stop. Trust that she loves you and is interested in you.
• Do you hesitate to reveal your sexual fantasies? Stop. Trust that he loves you, wants to please you, and won't reject you.
• Do you check up on her when she's out with friends or out of town on a business trip, suspecting that she's cheating? Stop. Trust that she loves you and that she's committed to the relationship.
• Do you keep a tight rein on the finances? Stop. Trust that he's concerned about the family and won't plunge you into debt.
  

I can hear the objections now. The trash will pile up, the kids will be dirty & unfed, we'll be up to our ears in debt, he'll think I'm a pervert, and I'll be the last one to realize he's cheating and making a fool of me. That's the risk. That's why trusting is so powerful. Nothing worth having comes without risk.

You don't trust in a vacuum. This is your one-and-only, remember? There are reasons why you chose this person. Remember them. And talk. Not criticizing, not instructing, not threatening or demanding, just discussing. It doesn't happen overnight, nor should it. It takes a lot of practice, and it's a huge leap of faith. It's not for a marriage that's already in trouble. Obviously, you'd be foolish to blindly trust a spouse who's already got one foot out the door.

Which leads me to another theory: communication. You shouldn't trust blindly. And that's where communication comes in.

If you're communicating, you know this person. You love them, that's why you're married. And when you take the risk of trusting them completely, it sets you free.

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Categories: Theories, Relationships

Labels: relationships, theories

I first started thinking about this back in college, one day when I was loitering around outside the student union. An ordinary-looking boy came up to me and asked me what time it was. I looked at my watch, told him the time, he thanked me, and went on his way. Pretty unremarkable. Except that before he'd asked me the time, he'd asked two other girls. They were both wearing watches and standing alone, as I was, but they both refused to answer. Not only that, they gave him looks of utter disdain.

I may have missed something, but it appeared that the only thing he did wrong was having a penis.

Now I see the daughters of women like this being taught that boys are the enemy. Boys only want one thing. Boys are loud, dirty, crude, rude animals that you might eventually use for procreation or for when your vibrator runs out of batteries, but otherwise they're pretty much useless.

How is this helping our daughters? How is this feminism? Even worse, what is this doing to our sons? Believe it or not, boys are people, too. They have feelings, hopes, and dreams, just like girls do. They're not evil incarnate. They're not all budding criminals. They're just people.

I consider myself a feminist. I think the ERA should be part of the Constitution, and that women should be legally equal to men. But I don't think that turning men into the enemy is the way to achieve it.

I was going to go into my definition of feminist, but that's another theory.

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Categories: Theories, TWBTS

Labels: the war between the sexes, theories

I don't think that all people can be classified as either gay or straight. Neither do I think that it's all in your head. I believe that there's a spectrum, that everyone's sexual orientation falls somewhere along a line between 100% gay and 100% straight, and that a person is born with their point on the line fixed.

It seems to account for those who change orientation, those who are bisexual, and those who are primarily one or the other but enjoy a little taste of the other side.
I always think of Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ as a good example. She seemed very happy with Oz initially, then she fell in love with Tara. The show portrays her as 100% gay in the later seasons, but to me, that makes no sense. Was she faking it with Oz, repressing her true self? Or did she have a complete change in sexual orientation? I don't think either is true. It makes so much more sense to me that her sexual orientation lay somewhere in the middle, and that it was the persons of Oz and Tara that she was attracted to rather than their gender.

I've seen objections to this theory from both political sides, but the objections seem to me to be mostly political: if all homosexuals aren't 100% gay, then they can be "cured," or forced or convinced to change their ways. But unless you believe homosexuality is a bad or perverted thing, it really doesn't matter if someone is 100% gay, or if they're only 60% gay and while they enjoy the opposite sex, they simply prefer their own.

The continuum theory also explains the stereotypical homophobe--he's probably somewhere in the middle of the continuum, but represses any homosexual feelings because he believes they're perverse, wrong, or evil.

Of course, I don't think that this theory will be publicly accepted for a long time, if ever--even if it's scientifically proven. On the straight side, it's easier for people to accept someone who's completely different than to accept that someone who lives differently differs from themselves only in degree. And it's probably easier for gays to avoid religious or societal guilt if they're completely different from what's proposed as "normal," with no overlap. Which unfortunately leaves a lot of guilt and non-acceptance for all those in the middle, making them either perverse or in denial.

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Categories: Theories

Labels: theories

I have a huge TBR (To Be Read) pile. And I have a system to choose which book to read next. (Of course I do--I'm a wee bit compulsive.) It's random, in a mathematical sort of way, but after reading about a TBR challenge online, I decided to do that myself, too--add a little unpredictable element to picking the next books to read. Of course, the one I read about online was really dull--things like "read a romantic suspense," or "read a Regency romance." Yawn. So mine's more interesting. At least I think so.

TBR Challenge for October:
Read a book with the name of a color in the title.

I picked the first one on the shelf that fit the description: Black Wind_ by Clive & Dirk Cussler. Liked the book, but this wasn't a rousing success yet, as I doggedly kept reading despite numerous interruptions, keeping me from enjoying the book as much as I probably would have otherwise. Hopefully November's TBR Challenge will work out better.


Categories: TBRChallenge

Labels: books, tbr challenge

That's pretty much it. The whole theory. It explains so much.

Like the people driving 100 mph+ in pea-soup fog tonight. Or our daughter's girlfriend who can't bring herself to leave her boyfriend even though he's in jail for the second time in a year. Or politics. Idiocy explains a lot of things in politics.


Categories: Theories

Labels: theories

CFS = Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and I've had it for 4½ years. It's a negative diagnosis--meaning it's what they say you have when your symptoms can't be explained by anything else. I'm not going to debate any of that, just write down what works for me, because I need reminding again.

• Rest. Not that I had a lot of choice, at first. I remember well (and so does my family, which makes them very supportive) times during the first 6 months when it was all I could do to get from my bed to the bathroom. But I've learned that even when I'm doing well, I can't ignore the need to rest. Normal people, when they're feeling a bit tired out, can afford to push themselves. I can't. I'll be paying for it ten-fold if I do. So whenever I feel my eyes start to cross, or I start to feel jittery, it's time to lie down. And it does need to be lying down. Just sitting doesn't do the trick--I'm not sure why. Maybe it's not relaxing enough.

  Resting needs to be done at periodic intervals throughout the day, too, not just when I'm already feeling tired. I keep from getting too frustrated by the need for rest by reading, as evidenced by the long lists of books I've read each month.

  Talking, at least for me, is not resting. Even if I'm lying down, conversation requires energy that I'm trying to conserve. That was one of the hardest things to explain to my mom and daughter, for whom talking is like oxygen.
  

• Graduated exercise. Not 10 minutes a day the first week, followed by 20 minutes a day the second week, like I've seen on some websites. No wonder so many fellow CFS-sufferers (I hate that word, but couldn't think of a better one) have given up on exercise! A program like that was obviously not developed by someone with the condition. It takes a long time to work up to 10 minutes of exercise.

  I started with one minute. That's right. One. And if I've had a relapse, that's where I start again. Hard as it may be to believe, that one minute is exhausting. But it's important. Then I add time each day in 15-second intervals. Yes. 15-seconds. I said gradual, and I meant it. Whenever I've tried to speed things up, I've ended up back in bed. Exercise is not the same as general activity like housework or shopping or playing with the kids, though those activities need to be increased on a gradual level as well, just not quite as strictly. Exercise is important to rebuild the muscles and stamina, in a way that general activity just doesn't touch.
  

• Diet. I always feel better when I eat healthy--lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains. The irony is, of course, that healthy food is a lot harder to prepare, and when I'm at my worst, I'm just not up to it. So I do what I can.

• Supplements. I've experimented somewhat, done my own "clinical trials" based on what I've learned from other people with the condition. I take a multivitamin with minerals, an extra 500 mg of vitamin C, and 120 mg of Gingko Biloba. The gingko was the only thing that seemed to make a difference, & I've stuck with it.
  
  
• Medical care. Hah. Let's just skip that one. Six months of appointment after appointment, test after test. An initial diagnosis of CFS about 2 months in from a neurologist, repeated a couple of months later from a rheumatologist. Oh, and a rather amusing diagnosis from an infectious disease doc who said that if I'd been sick for 6 months, he'd say I had CFS, but since I'd only been sick for 5½ months at that time, then that obviously wasn't it. The other docs I saw (and there were a lot) didn't believe in CFS, like it was a religion or something. And there was the doc who actually told me I was "obviously" depressed (though he wasn't a psychiatrist, and I answered his two perfunctory questions in the negative), and that I should just take some Prozac and go away, and quit wasting medical resources. Seriously. So I quit going to doctors.

  Which was probably a good thing, as I've seen way too many people with CFS getting sicker and sicker because their doctors keep adding on one medication after another. Antidepressants, because, duh--becoming a virtual invalid is rather depressing. And then medications to deal with the side effects of the antidepressants. I'm doing better than most of them, and I'm not medicated.
  
  

• Avoiding stress. It's difficult, when I'm lying down for one of my half-hour rest periods, to avoid looking around at the dust, or worrying that I'm messing up my kids' lives. I've learned/am still learning to let things go, to prioritize. I can't do everything.
  
  
• Overdoing it. Don't. I can pinpoint when my latest relapse, that I'm still recovering from, started. February. I spent over an hour shoveling the driveway and sweeping the snow off the sidewalk. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I'd been doing so well, I'd forgotten that I couldn't do that.

• Support. The importance of this can't be overlooked, and I have to say, I am the most fortunate person I know in this regard. My husband has been an absolute rock, and my mom and kids have been great, too. I had to learn to let go of my need for independence, though, and accept their help and support. It wasn't easy.
  

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Categories: Theories

Labels: theories

This is the last of the catch-up on the book lists. Here's what I read in September:

1. ***** Rogue Warrior _by Richard Marcinko. Autobiography. Interesting, fun, readable. Warning about the prolific cursing if it bothers you.
2. **** The Sword of Shannara_ by Terry Brooks. Fantasy. Finally finished reading this one with the boys. It does have a LOT of similarities to LOTR, but it's more readable.
3. **** The Last Bride _by Sandra Landry. Time-travel romance. Hah. The exception that proves the rule. It's got ghosts. It's got reincarnation. And the time-travel ties them together. But it works. The ghosts & reincarnation are PART OF THE STORY. And it doesn't go off on long boring tangents about something that happened to some dead people who nobody cares about because they were thoroughly unlikeable. Er. Speaking of tangents. Anyway. The heroine's reaction to the time travel was great--very realistic. I had a question or two at the end, which is why it didn't get an extra half star, but all in all, a good story.
4. ****½ Sacred Sins_ by Nora Roberts. Romantic suspense. Tess's bleeding heart-ness made me want to *smack* her upside the head. I suspect, though, that Nora just didn't get the balance quite right for me--I think she took it for granted that we'd realize Tess cared about the victims, but it wasn't that evident to me.
5. Taking Care of Business:
   **** "Driven" by LuAnn McLane. Heh. Did this make anyone else think of Jenny Crusie & Bob Mayer? (though the main things didn't fit--they're not in a romance, he approached her for a collaboration; the details do: Maui, romantic comedy, tough guy) Cute story, though.
   ***½ "What Happens in Vegas" by Patricia Ryan. The 3½ stars is deceptive. The first half of the story is ho-hum dull. Some bimbo-y chick acting dumb and some dull guy playing blackjack. Then we find out that the sleazebag owner of the casino wants her to find out how the dull guy keeps winning, but I still don't care. Then... there's a VERY hot sex scene. An example for the next time there's a conversation about taking sex scenes out of context. This one works out of context--it probably works BETTER out of context, because I really didn't care at all about these characters. And no, it's not in the details, it's in the way she writes about the details. *sigh* I wish more authors understood that. So maybe 2½ stars for the story itself, but that sex scene bumped it up a star.
   **** "Brushstrokes" by Toni Blake. Cute story. Matchmaking grandma sets up artist granddaughter with commitment-phobic bar owner by getting him to hire her to paint his bar. She ends up painting angels on his ceiling, & he keeps trying to tell her to quit, but he can't bring himself to. Points for inventiveness in the sex scenes.
6. **** The King Is Dead _by Ellery Queen. Mystery. Classic locked-door mystery, and a take-over-the-world conspiracy along with it as an added bonus. Fun stuff.
7. ****½ Lady Whilton's Wedding_ by Barbara Metzger. Regency romance. Written in omniscient POV, which is highly unusual, but very cool. Reminiscent of Arsenic & Old Lace _with a dead body that keeps disappearing, and some hilariously bumbling petty criminals. This would make a fabulous movie.
   
8. ***** Local Custom_ by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Science fiction. Thanks, JenB! Oh, this is fabulous, wonderful, excellent--somebody get me a thesaurus, would you? Loved it. It says "science fiction" on the spine, and it is s.f, but it's also a damn good romance--better than a lot of books that say "romance" on the spine. No pulled punches, nothing easy for these characters, and the premise of a cross-cultural romance is done so incredibly well, as the characters have to become aware of the assumptions they make because of their cultures. Also, it's a little thing, but it made me smile that the heroine is 6 foot tall with brown skin, and the hero, well, it doesn't say how tall he is, but he is shorter, and his skin is gold, IIRC. I'm so tired of heroines who are described as being about 1/4 of the hero's size, and who are glow-in-the-dark pale, so this was just a little extra. Must go find more books by Lee & Miller.
   
9. ****½ An Enchanted Affair _by Barbara Metzger. Regency romance. Again with the omniscient POV, though it's not quite so pronounced as in the previous one. Another unusual Regency, in a different way from LWW. The heroine in this one can see fairies, which makes people think she's odd. She's an heiress, her parents die, & her greedy uncle takes over, alternately punishing her and ignoring her. She routinely escapes to the "haunted" woods, but this is threatened when the impoverished duke who owns them decides to sell the timber. She proposes marriage to him as beneficial to both--saving her woods & getting her out from under her uncle's thumb, and paying off his debts. Surprisingly complex for such a short book (228 p.).
10. ****½ Thin Air_ by Robert B. Parker. Mystery. I just love the character of Spenser. Quite a lot like Harry Dresden--not surprisingly: Jim cites Parker as one of his influences. A woman is missing, her husband is a cop & friend of Spenser's. When the cop is shot, Spenser goes looking for the wife. Surprisingly complex, and the ending was... different. In a good way. The periodic glimpses into what was happening with the wife were reminiscent of when Nora shows us what the killer is thinking in the In Death books, and I had the same reaction to it: it's interesting, but it takes something away from the mystery, & I'd prefer the book without it.
    
11. **½ The Windmill _by Stephanie Gertler. Women's fiction. The usual whiny, unlikeable characters who can't be bothered to actually TALK to each other. About 2/3 of the way through the book, though, the husband's secret/story got mildly interesting, so I'll give it an extra half star for that.
12. ***½ Housebound _by Anne Stuart. Contemporary category romance. Pretty standard Cinderella story. The heroine's the only "untalented" one in a family of demanding, self-absorbed artists. All she has is the huge old family house that's falling down around her. The rest of the family wants to sell, & the hero's a lawyer who's come to check out the house & make an offer on behalf of his dead wife's father's company. Complicating things further, the heroine is engaged to a man her sister is in love with (& vice versa), and the sister, believing she's lost the man she wants, is after the hero. Oh, and the heroine initially mistakes the hero for her brother's gay lover. Nice story, but nothing exceptional.
13. **** Hostile Makeover_ by Ellen Byerrum. Mystery. An ugly but nice woman became beautiful via a TV show like The Swan, and now she's a vicious supermodel. She tells Lacey Smithsonian, fashion reporter, that she's afraid someone's trying to kill her and asks Lacey to find out who. She's killed, and Lacey does find out who. Lacey's judgmental mother & sister come to visit & cramp her style. Cute series, but I really cannot understand why Lacey puts up with a boyfriend who spends more time with his conniving ex-wife than with her.
    
14. ****½ Home at Last _by Jerri Corgiat. Contemporary romance. Third in the series. This one is the story of Mari, the youngest sister, who tried to derail the romance in the first book. She's a hard character to like--a typical youngest child: self-centered & spoiled, used to getting her own way. An affair with a married man effectively derailed her career, & now she's out of a job, out of money, & pressured by her sisters to stay with her mother who's recovering after a heart attack. She renews her acquaintance with a childhood best friend, Andy, who she remembers as an always-in-trouble drunk. There's also a secondary plot thread about Jon's (from the first book) now-teenage son Michael who's having psychological problems and the effect it's having on Jon & Lil's marriage. I docked this one a half star because Mari was so hard to like, but the writing is superb. The story's all about family and acceptance & blame, and though it has those women's fiction-y themes, its tone (and happy ending) is pure romance. Not a comfortable book to read, but very satisfying.
15. ***** The Naked Sun _by Isaac Asimov. Science fiction. And mystery. An earthman, a police detective, is sent to Solaria to solve a murder in a place where the robots outnumber the humans thousands to one, and the humans only interact via "viewing" (holograms, kind of like Roarke's meetings). His partner is the robot he worked with before, who's masquerading as a human. A sequel to I, Robot.
16. **** Dangerous Passions_ by Lynn Kerstan. Historical romance. Actually, historical romantic suspense. 2nd in the series about a secret organization called the Black Phoenix, which recruits people to do undercover work--in this case, to solve a series of murders. I'd have liked this better, except the heroine, who began the book plotting revenge against the hero, persisted in believing the worst of him despite plentiful evidence to the contrary. Argh.
17. ** The Crossword Connection _by Nero Blanc. Mystery. Blah. Stilted dialogue--heck, all the writing is stilted, the characters act weirdly--without motivation to do so. Gratuitous use of italics. Then there's the character that calls the heroine's fiance "Poly---crates" every single time he uses the name. And it's "deduced" that a golf club could not be a murder weapon because...get this: the victim wasn't wearing golfing clothes. WTF?? And the killer sending cryptic crossword puzzles was just tedious. My impression is that this was *about* the 6 crossword puzzles contained in the book. The story, such as it was, was just filler.
    
18. **** Rebellion_ by Nora Roberts. Historical romance.
19. **** Someone to Believe In _by Kathryn Shay. Contemporary romance. I usually love Kathryn Shay's books, but the heroine in this one was just TSTL, IMO. The whole last couple chapters I just wanted to whack her upside the head. ARGH. The conflict between the h/h was fabulous, but it would have been SO much more effective if she hadn't been so stupid.
20. ****½ Brazen Virtue_ by Nora Roberts. Romantic suspense.
21. ***½ The Abducted Bride_ by Dorothy Mack. Regency romance. In a case of mistaken identity, Amy is drugged & abducted by the hero, who believes she's his errant wife. He chalks up the changes in her, and her insistence that she's not who he thinks she is to the fact that in the short time they WERE together, his wife changed dramatically, culminating in her running off with another man. He thinks it's just more of her scheming, though he's puzzled about what she thinks to gain. It's plausible, but there were times I thought Amy was just a little too accepting of the situation, & too quick to forgive in the end. And there's a thread of her brother spying in France that didn't quite go anywhere. Of course, part of that could be that it's such a short book.
22. *** Pawn of Prophecy_ by David Eddings. Fantasy. Hmmm. I'm still not quite sure what I think of this. It's very obviously The First Book In The Series, and things happen, but nothing's resolved. I really have to reserve judgment until after I read the next one.
23. ***** Third Time Lucky_ by Claire Cross. Contemporary romance. This was a re-read because Berkley reissued it as a trade paperback & sent it to me, and I didn't remember it well enough to write something about it. After I'd read a little way, I remembered it just fine, but then I WANTED to finish reading. Twice before, Nick has come into Phil's life and changed it for the better. Twice before, he's left without a word. Now he's back, asking for her help.
24. ***** Night Fires_ by Karen Harbaugh. Paranormal romance. A female vampire in the French revolution whose mission, given her by her priest as atonement for killing the men who'd turned her into a vampire, is to save those who would be killed. She meets up with an English assassin, and they join forces. The tone of this book is much more... real, gritty, honest... than the usual vampire romance. I think it's because we really see the deep-down emotions of the characters.
    
25. Twin Peaks_ by Susan Johnson & Jasmine Haynes.
    * "Wedding Surprise" by Susan Johnson. Contemporary romance. OMG, this was horrible. The "heroine" (and I use the word loosely) has sex with the twin brother of the guy she's been lusting after for months but hasn't worked up the guts to talk to yet. She finds out it was his twin, goes back & has sex with the twin again, then a couple of hours later hooks up with the "hero." When the hero finds out, he's angry, which makes her even more angry. He ends up apologizing, but she never does. Gak. Ick. Yuck. I loathed this woman. 100 pages, and probably a good 50% is sex scenes, but they're pretty dull, even though the rest of the pages are the heroine telling her best friend how good the twin is in bed (whereupon the friend decides to check it out for herself). Did I say yuck already?
    **** "Double the Pleasure" by Jasmine Haynes. Contemporary romance. I think I figured out the reason for the first story. Berkley's using Susan Johnson's name to sell this book, in hopes that it'll get Jasmine Haynes, who's a much better writer, noticed. Not sure it'll work, though, if everybody quits reading after that first horrendous story. Anyway. Secretary (admin asst) is in lust with her boss, but, well, he's her boss, so she doesn't do anything about it, until a woman calls to say she can't meet him at a bar, so the heroine decides to meet him there, posing as her twin sister. Kind of a simple plot, but it works, we get some nice emotions from the characters, and boy, does this one look great when compared with the first one.
    ****½ "Skin Deep" by Jasmine Haynes. Contemporary romance. Ah-ha! Finally checked the author bio. Jasmine Haynes = J. B. Skully, whose Max series Miki liked so much. The heroine in this story is the twin of the heroine in the previous one. She's been having phone sex with the hero for 2 years, and finally meets him in person. Like the first story in the book, there's a LOT of sex, but this time, there's a point to it. Like the characters in Lisa Valdez's Passion, this heroine can only connect through sex. She's been burned once before (and it's not the oh, my high school boyfriend stood me up--I can never trust a man again, which makes me roll my eyes. It's reasonable for her to feel that way.) Pretty much the story is about the difference between dominant (which the hero IS) and domineering (which he isn't, but the ex who hurt her was). Some really great scenes about the nature of control in a relationship. And, as a plus, the hero is shorter and balding. He's not a troll--he's got a good body, but he's not the usual 6'5" with flowing locks. Just a really good story. It's a shame these two got classified with a dull story like Johnson's, because sex is all that one has going for it. These have an actual story. *sigh* Another author on my to-look-for list. Darnitall.
26. **** Touch Me_ by Lucy Monroe. Historical romance. Heroine is raised in the West Indies, and is a partner in a shipping business. Another twin--her father accused her mother (wrongly, and illogically) of infidelity, & took their baby boy away from her as soon as he was born. He didn't know about the twin sister, so the mother hid her so he wouldn't take her away too. Heroine has to go to England to discover who's been embezzling from her uncle's company, & meets the hero when she takes passage on his ship. It's Regency era, but unusual, because Thea isn't high society, even though everyone's trying to get her to be. Theme about fathers, as the hero also has an issue with his father.
27. **** In from the Cold _by Nora Roberts. Historical romance.
28. ****½ First Dance _by Karen Kendall. Contemporary romance. This has got to be my favorite kind of romance--the romantic comedy with some depth to it. Heroine's a divorce lawyer, hero's also a lawyer. She practices in Manhattan, he practices in Fredericksburg!! (this has something to do with why I liked it so much, but not everything. But OMG, did I get homesick while I was reading this! Particularly when they took a trip to San Antonio. *sniff* Where was I? Anyway, we have semi-opposites, but they discover they're not as opposite as they think. And she has relationship issues that aren't just treated as an obstacle to the romance then dispensed with--they're dealt with honestly. He has issues, too, with his ex-wife, so he's not the supernaturally perfect hero, either. Completely a joy to read. It's actually 3rd in the Bridesmaid series--KK wrote the first & 3rd, other authors wrote the 2nd & 4th. I will be buying the 1st one, & the 4th came in my September/October box, but will probably look for the 2nd one used.
    
29. ***½ Charmed & Dangerous _by Candace Havens. Paranormal romance. A little uneven, but fun story about a witch who works freelance, protecting the prime minister & a sheik from magical threats. There's a love triangle between the witch, the sheik, and a warlock. The sheik's too good to be true, and some of the confusing/mysterious things didn't get explained (maybe they got saved for the next book?). It's written pseudo-diary style, a la Bridget Jones, but flip-flops between note-taking style (leaving out the subject of sentences, & other incomplete sentences) & a more regular narrative style, which got a bit distracting. Still, it was a first book, and it was fun. Probably not worth buying in trade size, though, which is what it is currently.
30. **½ First Love_ by Julie Kenner. Contemporary romance. 4th in the series that includes First Dance, above. At one point, this was down to one and a half stars. I'm so glad I read the Karen Kendall story first, or I'd never have worked up the interest to read it from this book. Part of the problem is that in a series of 4 books about the women in a wedding, the last one was the one about the bride. So we never saw what initially attracted the h/h to each other, how they met, or even why they're so much in love that they're getting married only a month after they met. And we never end up seeing it. The whole story is about the problems they have with the wedding. Her father is a 2-dimensional, stereotypical nouveau riche cut-rate motel king from New Jersey, tacky, belligerent, fill in the blanks. His whole purpose is to get her to call off the wedding because the groom's father wouldn't sell some property to him 15 years ago. And there are a zillion other things that go wrong with the wedding. And I think they're supposed to be amusing, and make us root for her, but I'm stuck back on wondering why the heck I should care. The first 2/3 of the book is: this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens... kind of like a little kid telling you about their day in excruciating detail. FINALLY, there's some conflict, near the end of the book, and the h/h actually have to work at something besides the mundane details for a change. It's a good conflict, but it's too little, too late.
31. **** The Tombs of Atuan_ by Ursula K. LeGuin. Fantasy. 2nd in the series that started with A Wizard of Earthsea. Think I liked this one better. Hope that's not just because the protag is female. The wizard from book 1 ends up trapped by the heroine in this one, a priestess for the Old Ones.
    

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Categories: Books, 5stars, 4.5stars, 4stars, 3.5stars, 3stars, 2.5stars, 2stars, 1star

Labels: books

Just getting the rest of the book lists up while I'm too sleep deprived to come up with any half-baked theories.

These are the books I read in August:

1. ***½ Lost in Temptation _by Lauren Royal. Historical romance. I usually really like her books, but this one kind of irritated me. And then I got irritated with myself because the things that irritated me were things that made it more historically realistic than most historical romances. So I docked it a half star for all that irritation.
The h/h have loved each other since they were teens, but can't marry because he's not titled. IMO, the heroine accepted this way too easily; the objection didn't ring true to me because the hero's also her brother's best friend, & the brother is her guardian. The other problem is that when they both meet again, he's inherited a title & thus is now eligible, however, there's a rumor that he killed his uncle, which is how he got the title, so if she marries him, her whole family will be disgraced, & her younger sisters won't be able to marry well. It took over half of the book for her to decide to investigate, & they were already married by that time. Argh.

2. **** Butterfly_ by Kathryn Harvey. General fiction. Lots of intertwining story lines, culminating in a decades-long revenge plot.
3. ***** Romantic Fiction_ by Melanie La'Brooy. Chick lit. LOVED this. Didn't want it to end. There were a few problems with the writing, which kept it from being 5 stars, but the story and the voice were great. Set in Melbourne, Australia, which is unusual. The blurb on the front compares it to the TV show Friends, but IMO, the characters in the show were much more self-absorbed & shallow than these characters. Just a warning--there's blatant promiscuity in this one. It's mostly about a group of friends: Lucy, Meg, Chloe, Tom, who's Lucy's on-again-off-again bf, but always best friend, and Percy, who fell head-over-heels with Meg & just sort of stuck around.
4. **** Stars_ by Kathryn Harvey. General fiction. Again the intertwining story lines, this time including the twin sister of the main character from Butterfly. Revenge again, but from a different angle--more of a putting their lives back together again.
5. **** Beyond the Pale_ by Savannah Russe. Paranormal romance. Though, like MJD's U&U books, the romance isn't the main point. Vampire spies. I should have loved this, but it was just a little too uneven. Humor, angst, quirky family members, serious spy suspense, a hint of a love triangle. Hopefully in the next book, it'll fit together better.
6. ** Someone Like You _by Barbara Bretton. Women's fiction. 38's old. Okay. Gah. And 2 sisters in their 30s with preternaturally understanding long-term boyfriends can't commit because their father left their mother, ergo All Men Leave. I'm rolling my eyes here. Get over it already. I hated all the characters. Basically a typical women's fiction, and reminds me why I loathe this genre in general.
   
7. ***** The Ivy Tree_ by Mary Stewart. Gothic. Really old one, but it stands up well, if you like gothics. Good twists in this.
8. **½ Search for Love_ by Nora Roberts. Contemporary category romance.
9. ****½ Nice Girls Finish First_ by Alesia Holliday. Chick lit. Much fun. About Kirby Green, a vice president of marketing, who ends up in a bet with her boss--if she can't get someone to call her "nice" in one month, she loses her job. And her assistant, Brianna, an aspiring opera singer, who's TOO nice. Either of their stories would be fun on its own, but together, it adds an extra oomph, with the contrast of Kirby trying to be nicer and Brianna trying to be less nice. Brianna's lists are hilarious, and OMG, I LOVED that she had to try to GAIN 35 pounds. Wonder if it's too late to decide to become an opera singer??
   
10. **** Warrior Queen _by Alan Gold. historical fiction. About Boudica, the Celtic queen who united the tribes of Britain against the Romans. Really brought the legend to life.
    
11. *** Murder of a Smart Cookie _by Denise Swanson. mystery. The quotes from forwarded emails weren't quite as obvious and distracting in this one, so I gave it an extra star. Plus, the heroine is starting to get interested in the police chief instead of the funeral director, so that's looking up a little. Somebody who doesn't get tons of forwarded emails & hasn't seen all the jokes before would probably be more amused by this series than I am.
    
12. ***** Passion _by Lisa Valdez. Historical romance. O. M. G. Highly, highly recommended, but only if you're not squeamish about sex scenes, and only if you have plenty of ice water on hand--possibly a tubful. Let's see if I can stop raving long enough to give you the gist of the story: a chance meeting between a widow and a strange man leads to sex behind a screen in a... museum? (hey, I wasn't paying all that close attention to the setting--believe me, you wouldn't either. Suffice to say it was public.) And that's just the beginning. You know me & sex scenes--I usually skim. This one, I didn't have to. The book was emotionally honest and really really hot. I can't say enough good about it. I literally couldn't put it down until I finished it...and then I had to wake Carl up before I could go to sleep.
    
13. ***** Beyond Control _by Rebecca York. Paranormal romantic suspense. Probably not a good idea to read two such intense books back to back. But I had no idea. Love, love, love psychics in love scenes. More sex scenes I actually read. Think it's a trend?
    
14. ***** Survivor in Death_by J. D. Robb.
15. ****½ Lady Silence _by Blair Bancroft. Regency. Waif, unable to speak, turns up on hero's doorstep just as he's going off to war, & he gives her a place in his household. 6+ years later, he's back, she's all grown up & his mother's companion. She still doesn't speak. He's cynical & suspicious about that. Nice intrigue, but the best part is the emotions in this one.
    
16. *** Deer Leap_ by Martha Grimes. Mystery. I'm just not Martha Grimes's reader (except for Foul Matter, which is so different from the Richard Jury mysteries it could be a different author note: I just checked the Amazon reviews for Foul Matter, and wouldn't you know it--it got terrible reviews. And yet it's the only Martha Grimes book I actually liked.). *sigh* Yet another small English town that appears to be stuck in a cross between 1800 and 1950 (it was written & presumably takes place in 1985). Yet another young girl who roams around the town, completely independently, and who people tend to defer to. I suppose the mystery was okay, but it's tending to blur with the one in the Regency I read before this one, as both have similar historical tones, and both involve the mysterious history of a young girl who's in danger. Gotta say, it was better done in the Regency. Bah.
17. *** Good Night, Henry _by Jennifer Olds. Women's fiction. Pretty standard. Heroine raising 2 sons, check. Preternaturally understanding boyfriend (even to the point of not minding that her estranged husband moves into the guesthouse on the property), check. One of the kids has a handicap (one arm ends at the elbow), check. Beloved brother disappears, husband ran off after handicapped son was born, heroine can't trust any men because "they all go away," check. Ho-hum. And people say ROMANCE is predictable. Gah. The kids were pretty well done, with their reactions to their father returning, and to the younger boy's stump arm, so I gave it an extra star.
    
18. **** The Cobra Event_ by Richard Preston. Thriller. An epidemiology story. Very cool. Not great writing--lots of droning on & on about facts & figures, though not quite as bad as Clancy can get--but that's pretty standard for this type of book.
    
19. **½ Lyon's Gate_ by Catherine Coulter. Historical romance. Seriously choppy writing. I almost couldn't read it. It's kind of like a radio with static, you feel like you're missing every third word. I tried, with the first half of the book, then I skimmed the rest, and it went much better. The 3 stars is because it did have a good story, and some witty lines. If it hadn't been written like a series of notes jotted down, I'd have given it at least 4 stars. And the headhopping. I've always thought people were exaggerating when they said headhopping was confusing for readers. Not anymore. I got confused. Several times it said "she thought" and I had no idea which "she" was intended, because it obviously wasn't the same "she" as in the last thought. Bah. 2½ stars. I can't give this one 3.
20. *****+ Night Watch _by Terry Pratchett. Fantasy. A magical storm sends Vimes back in time, where he meets his mentor, and the young Vetinari, and a lot of the current members of the Watch.
    
21. ****½ Gilding the Lady_ by Nicole Byrd. Historical romance. I always enjoy Nicole Byrd's books. This one takes the long lost sister of the hero of her previous book, who'd ended up in a nasty orphanage & then sent out to work at a young age--lots of abuse, etc. Her brother finally found her & rescued her in the last book, & now, at 19, she's got to try to re-learn how to be a lady. A reckless earl sees her in a dispute with her governess on the street, & his friend bets him that he can't make her the toast of the ton. There's also a murder mystery & the ongoing search for the natural father of the heroine from the previous book & her brother (hero of a yet earlier book). Really nice series, and by the end of this book, we've picked up several more connections who are begging for their own books.
22. **** Cooking for Mr. Right _by Susan Volland. Contemporary romance, though the cover just says "fiction." Basically, it's My Best Friend's Wedding with recipes and a HEA.
    
23. ***½ Night Prayers_ by P. D. Cacek. Urban fantasy. This had been in my TBR pile for ages, & it had come highly recommended. Looks like a stylish vampire story, but... It kind of falls short. The editing is horrible--lots of misspelled words, even misnumbered pages. And the story's really uneven. It's kind of like a cross between MJD's Betsy stories and Ann Rice, and it's not sure which it wants to be. Lots of threads that are left up in the air. Frex, a huge buildup to how to make a human servant, and then it's just dropped. Lots of talk about the heroine not knowing anything about being a vampire, but she never learns, either. It seems really amateurish, but also the kind of book that people will praise very highly because of that, and also to prove how open-minded they are (the secondary vampire characters are lesbians).
24. **** Forbidden Magic _by Jo Beverley. Historical romance. Impoverished heroine wishes on a magic stone figure for a better life for herself & her 4 siblings, and the answer to her wish comes in the form of an earl who must marry immediately or be stuck with the bride his evil grandmother chooses for him. Hijinks ensue when she leaves the statue in her old house and tries to retrieve it without his knowledge. I'd give this an extra half star, but the heroine's stubborn insistence on not telling anyone anything went on just a wee bit too long.
25. ***** Two for the Dough_ by Janet Evanovich. Mystery. Re-read, of course. Just a quick palate-cleansing read.
    
26. **** Phantom Waltz_ by Catherine Anderson. Contemporary romance. This was the first of the Coulter family books, about a paraplegic heroine. Very emotional, as are all her books, but the hero was just too perfect to make it a 5-star book. At least she does her handicapped heroines well, making them realistic, and not the usual people who attained sainthood along with their handicaps. Very interesting and frank discussion of sex for a paraplegic.
27. **** Killing Cassidy _by Jeanne M. Dams. Mystery. Thanks, KL! Woman returns from England to investigate the murder of an old friend at the request of the deceased. The problem is, he died of pneumonia at the age of 96, and it seems that everyone loved him. Clever mystery, reminiscent of Christie. My only problem was that I didn't buy the motive.
28. **** Sweet Nothings_ by Catherine Anderson. Contemporary romance. The second of the Coulter family books, and, *gasp* nobody has a handicap. Although the heroine's ex-husband had her committed to an insane asylum. Which is, btw, part of the reason for 4 stars instead of 5. While I can buy most of that plot thread, I can't quite believe that there aren't any checks & balances to keep someone from drugging his wife and throwing her into a mental hospital to get control of her fortune--wouldn't drug tests be one of the first things they'd do?--or maybe I just hope it's unrealistic. Then there's the mother, who not only believed her son-in-law, she helped keep her daughter locked up, and when it all came out, she couldn't even bother to apologize. And finally, there was the tired plot of the heroine being hired to cook for the ranch hands and not making enough food, but everybody liked her so much they couldn't bring themselves to tell her--not only is it overused, but it was just left dangling. Argh. Really, though, those were minor irritations--they just stand out because the rest of the book was so good. The hero wasn't as perfect as his brother-in-law, and tended to step in it, and had to do a lot of apologizing.
29. ***½ Full Tilt_ by Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes. Mystery. Rather uneven story that's not sure if it's Knight Rider _or a romantic comedy or more serious romantic suspense. Lukewarm romance, 2-dimensional characters, but entertaining if you don't expect too much.
30. **** Extreme Exposure _by Pamela Clare. Romantic suspense. Journalism, politics, greed, & environmental issues.
    
31. **** The Wedding_ by Julie Garwood. Historical romance. Pretty standard, enjoyable medieval, with quirky heroine, emotionally clueless hero, a feud, and an evil stepmother. Lots of fun dialogue--frex, the heroine kept telling the hero they'd "start over." Dropped plot threads and a heroine whose "breasts are too large and hips are too narrow" and a modern voice keep this from being anything more than a cookie read (fun & yummy, but just a sweet snack, not a satisfying meal).
32. ****½ Twin Peril _by Susannah Carleton. Regency romance. Twin sisters--a good twin & an evil one, or at least one consumed by jealousy. The bad twin has decided to snare a duke--she doesn't particularly care if he likes her, or that she's not attracted to him--it's the title and fortune she's after, not the man. But the duke is smitten with her sister.
    
33. **** Absolute Trouble_ by Michelle Jerott. Contemporary romance. Heroine is an ex-cop who's asked by a friend & ex-lover to keep a witness to a murder safe. The witness is a male stripper with an agenda. A little uneven in spots, & it took me a while to warm up to them, but a nice story nonetheless.
34. *** Pale as the Dead_ by Fiona Mountain. Mystery. A genealogist is asked to find a photographer's missing girlfriend, because the girl is obsessed with an artist's model from 100+ years ago & the only clue he has is that she left him a journal from one of her ancestors. Yeah, I didn't get the premise, either. And the solution was... well, it didn't make a whole lot of sense. But the genealogical investigation itself was pretty fascinating, with a blend of actual historical figures & fictional ones.
    

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Categories: Books, 5+stars, 5stars, 4.5stars, 4stars, 3.5stars, 3stars, 2.5stars, 2stars

Labels: books

These are the books I read in July:

1. **** Lord Dancy's Delight by Emily Hendrickson. Kind of unfortunate that this was packaged as a 2-in-1 with the Redhead & the Rake, because the heroine in that one was surnamed Dancy, but she's absolutely no relation to the Lord Dancy in this one. Heroine raised by Chinese woman/companion is rescued by Lord Dancy 3 times, so she informs him she's now "his". And sees it as her duty to watch over him. She keeps rescuing him, which irritates the heck out of him, and is very much fun to read. The only problem is, I liked the hero's best friend much better than the hero, who was really a jerk to the heroine. Still gets 4 stars for being fun.
2. ***½ Hot Spot by Susan Johnson.
This trade-paperback-sized story wouldn't make a half-bad novella if you cut out all the frantic, self-consciously-written sex scenes. I know SJ is known for her sex scenes, but what I don't know is WHY. They're... dull. There's one in here--insert tab A into slot B, a couple of strokes to nearly-simultaneous climax, tab A's still functional, so repeat x3. Four times in all, in about the space of... oh, 20 minutes or so. No, no, no, this isn't hot. It's repetitious. And unrealistic, and not in a yummmy fantasy way. But the story itself, as I said, was actually pretty good. Heroine's a comic book store owner, hero designs computer games & is richer than... she calls him a kazillionnaire, which seems pretty appropriate. But somebody's broken into his office, trying to steal the details of his new game, & she looks like a suspect, and he doesn't talk about any details of his game desigining, so she thinks he's just saying he's a game designer when he's really a drug dealer. So they each suspect each other, while in the meantime they can't keep their hands (& other body parts) off each other. And there's a nice secondary romance between a confirmed bachelor & a divorced mom who's sworn off marriage.
3. ***** Remember When by Nora Roberts & J. D. Robb.
4. *** The Captain's Castaway by Christine Scheel. Uneven Regency about a young American woman who's cast adrift when the ship she & her father are taking to England begins to sink. She's rescued, the ship's captain thinks she might be a spy, she thinks her father's dead, then she gets a cryptic message from him, then the captain helps her find her father. And they fall in lurrve. Whoops. Almost forgot that part.
   
5. ****½ Close-Up by Virginia Kantra. FBI director's daughter kidnapped by a survival cult, escapes, meets up with suspended cop who's trying to rescue his sister from the cult. Lots of emotional depth.
6. ***** My Hero by Marianna Jameson. Crusie-esque, though I know Crusie doesn't like romances about romance authors. Southern romance author who's known for her beta heroes, whose career is stalled is told by her new editor to change her latest book: set it in the north, make the hero an alpha cop, and add more sex. She meets a cop from a wealthy family when she takes out his team in paintball. Lots of laughs, especially at the contrasts between their internal dialogue and what they actually say, and there's also a lot of emotional depth in between and underneath the laughs. Loved this one.
7. *** Three Bedrooms, One Corpse by Charlaine Harris. Mystery about someone who's killing women in for-sale houses. Intriguing mystery, and there was a romance, but the romance was pretty inexplicable--the 30-year-old heroine sees a guy with white hair and immediately has the hots for him. Felt like the first-person narrator was on valium or something, or that she was bored by the story.
8. ** Silver Feather by Cassie Edwards. Okay, she didn't have any of those "problems" in this one that get solved by a paragraph of explanation, but there really wasn't a coherent plot either. The actual romance could have been a short story, not even a novella--Indian boy & white girl are friends as children, vow eternal love at 14 & 10, then his parents are killed by her stepfather and he runs off. Eleven years later, they're reunited when she's driving a stagecoach disguised as a man. Other plots, like buttons made out of human bones, and an evil white man kidnaps her. The characters are all 2-dimensional stereotypes, and boring as heck. On the plus side, the chapters are short, and the font is big, and I got through this one in record time.
   
9. **** The Baby Contract by Lynn Erickson. Yeah, I don't like babies in my romances. But there are always exceptions, & this is one of them. A Harlequin romance from 1996, but you can see their trademark suspense even then. The heroine is pregnant & is abandoned by her boyfriend after he robs a convenience store. She's arrested and given a deal by the county attorney's office, who wants to use her to stop a baby-selling ring. Really nice characterization, especially for a category.
10. *** Love Underground by Alicia Fields. Hades & Persephone. I'd have liked this better if I hadn't read P. C. Cast's Goddess of Spring first. Pretty much a straight retelling of the myth, more than a romance, though it's billed as a romance. The main characters are only in about half of the book--the rest of the book is about other characters--Demeter, Hermes, Narcissa, etc.
    
11. ***** The Beautiful Stranger by Julia London. THIRD in the Rogues of Regent Street series, and I've only read the first one, and don't have the 2nd. Argh. Still, it didn't feel like I missed anything, and Julia London's writing is just so nicely emotional. The hero's blaming himself for his friend's suicide, so decides to clear up the friend's debt due to a bad investment in cattle in Scotland. Not going into details, but hero's evicting the heroine (widow of the friend's partner), so that's between them, plus he's English nobility and she's Scottish peasant, so there's that as well. Must order the second book next time I'm ordering books.
12. ***** The Girl She Left Behind by Karen Brichoux. Not funny enough for chick lit, not depressing enough or with an old enough heroine for women's fiction. Heroine left her musician husband at a gas station and has been traveling for 3 years until she returns to their hometown. Faces problems from the past and how things have and have not changed in her absence. Karen Brichoux really has a way with writing characters & stories that suck you in.
13. ****½ A Clean Kill by Leslie Glass. Mystery. NYPD detective April Woo. Must find at least one more in this series to determine if it's the author I like or just this particular story. Two young wealthy women are murdered, both are found by their nannies (er--the nannies of their children?). Nice mystery, & I liked the detective.
14. ***** The Chase by Cheryl Sawyer. Yeah, I really like this author. Big fat historical romance, this time about a Chasseur (a French soldier who fought for the English rather than be a POW) and a widow whose husband was killed by the French. The writing is just so lush and dense, the emotions intense, and the historical details fit perfectly into the story. I'd had this for a while, but waited to read it until we were on vacation because I wanted big chunks of uninterrupted time to savor it. Just perfect.
15. ****½ Highway Robberyby John Billheimer. No idea where or why I got this one, but this is another mystery I'm going to have to search for more books by the author. Hero's an engineer. Civil engineer, but still. I have a weakness for engineers. Much about local government corruption. Decades-old murder, and emotional angst in the hero's personal life.
16. ****½ Lassiter's Law by Rebecca York. Another nanny one. Weird. P.I. hired by a man who accuses the nanny of killing his wife & abducting his child. When the P.I. catches up with her, she says it was the father who killed the wife & she took the child to protect him. Romance, adventure, suspense, etc. Typical Rebecca York.
    
17. ***** Public Secrets by Nora Roberts.
18. ****½ The Good, the Bad, and the Undead by Kim Harrison. I really like this series, and she seems to be getting better by the book. Some interesting developments in the characters, nobody's all good or all bad, and it's completely up in the air as to what will happen in the next book (which is already in my tbr pile).
    
19. **½ The Sound of Us by Sarah Willis. Women's fiction about a woman in her late-40s who gets a wrong-number phone call late at night from a little girl who's home alone, and she steps in & gets involved.
    
20. **** Slay It With Flowers by Kate Collins. 2nd in the series. Abby's cousin's wedding is in jeopardy, as is Abby's fee for the flowers, when the best man turns up murdered.
21. *** Smoke in the Wind by Peter Tremayne. "mystery of ancient ireland." Interesting historical detail, nice mystery, but too much backstory and "as you know..." parts. Also had FOUR characters with names starting with the letter I. Rather confusing.
22. ***** Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. Re-read. Fabulous. Of course.
23. ***** Heart Choice by Robin D. Owens. Tough choices between the h/h in this one. Emotional, & great world-building, as usual.
24. ***** Divided in Death by J. D. Robb.
25. ****½ The Book of the Seven Delights< by Betina Krahn. Think The Mummy. Much fun when a librarian goes after the lost library of Alexandria in the company of a man who's being hunted by the French Foreign Legion for desertion.
    
26. ****½ Private Scandals by Nora Roberts.
27. ****½ Much Ado About Magic by Patricia Rice. Heroine is a member of a psychic family--her particular talent shows up in her paintings which show things that have happened or might happen in the future. One painting results in the hero being accused of his cousin's murder, but after the h/h meet, she draws a picture that lead them to believe the cousin is still alive. Quest to find the cousin, romance, psychic abilities, & the family members from previous books in this series.
28. ***** Academ's Fury by Jim Butcher. Re-read.
    
29. ***½ Her Perfect Earl by Bethany Brooks. What could have been a pretty standard Regency about a governess marrying an earl has twists--the heroine takes the job as governess to his 5 children (very Sound of Music-ish) to get her hands on a rare manuscript he has. The earl has this legacy of "perfection" which could have been better explored, and has to marry a "perfect" woman with a fortune to restore his home & pay his debts & provide for his children's future. This would have been a better story if it had had about 100 more pages so some of the plot lines could have been more thoroughly fleshed out.
30. ***** Origin in Death by J. D. Robb.
31. **** Dearly Depotted by Kate Collins. Takes up where Slay it With Flowers leaves off, Abby juggling her flower shop, murder, Marco (yum), her quirky employees, & her wacky family. Fun cozy mystery.
32. **** Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling.
33. What Dreams May Come:
    ****½ "Knightly Dreams" by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Medieval romance novel hero begs local witch to give him a way out of marrying the insipid heroine. Very clever & inventive. It would have been 5 stars except for the dull sex scenes. I got the impression that all 3 authors in this anthology were told to write lots of sex scenes. *sigh*
    ****½ "Shattered Dreams" by Rebecca York. High school sweethearts reunited when hero's psychic abilities put him in the heroine's head when she's in a car crash. Paranormal romantic suspense--she packs a lot of twists into this one, & the sex scenes don't overpower the story.
    **** "Road of Adventure" by Robin D. Owens. Another smart-aleck cat in this take-off of Heaven Can Wait. Not her best, but still a fun read. Suffers from the same directions to add more sex scenes as Kenyon's. Including a slow-then-fast scene which seemed more like shuffling the sex scene cards & picking 2 at random to use back to back than anything the characters would actually do. Not to get too detailed, but it really doesn't work that way.
34. ****½ Visions in Death by J. D. Robb.

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Yep, there are a zillion diet books out there, each one promising to make you thin by next week, or at least by next month, and more to the point, promising that it'll be painless and easy if you just follow their rules. Problem is, I do not do well with rules. Makes you wonder how I survived in the Army, doesn't it? Put me on a diet, and even if I have plenty to eat, I'm going to become a bitch.

So I came up with my own theory of dieting. You'll never see it in a book, because there's just not enough to it to fill up a book, and there's nothing earth-shatteringly exciting about it. But it is easy, and it's worked for me. No rude comments about why, if it works so great, I weigh more than I ought to, okay?

• Eat when you're hungry.
• Eat only when you're hungry.
• Stop eating as soon as you don't feel hungry anymore.
  
• Eat what you're hungry for.
  
• Savor your food.

That's it. It requires paying close attention to your body, which takes some practice. A lot of times, you'll think you're hungry when you're actually just thirsty or want a particular flavor in your mouth. Focus on how your stomach feels. Is there a hollow feeling? No? Then don't eat. Get a drink instead.

Notice I said stop eating as soon as you don't feel hungry anymore, not when you feel full. It takes your body a while to realize it's full. I've read that it can take 20 minutes or more. That's a lot of eating. If you're not sure if you're still hungry, stop eating for 10 minutes, then reassess.

If you're craving chocolate, or chips, carrot sticks are not going to do the trick. Some people might be able to summon the willpower to make the substitution, but I'm not one of them. If I'm craving chocolate, I'll eat one small piece of the most chocolatey chocolate I can find, let it melt in my mouth, and really savor the flavor. That's infinitely more satisfying for my chocolate craving than scarfing down a whole giant Snickers bar. For the salty craving, I take a small handful--2 or 3 chips--and nibble, enjoying every bitty bite. I get a lot more enjoyment out of that than my husband does stuffing 3 chips at a time into his mouth. You can't even hardly taste them.

As for meals, no matter what you're eating, take the time and deliberately enjoy it. Savor the various flavors and textures, really experience them, even if it's not your favorite. I used to loathe bananas until I started doing this. The more you engage your senses, the more satisfied your mind will feel.

Interestingly, once you've been doing this for a week or two, you'll begin really hating the feeling of being over-full--not because of self-loathing, but because it just feels uncomfortable. And that's the point when the pounds start to disappear, when there's no longer any compulsion to clean your plate, because it's just not worth feeling bloated afterwards.

Okay, I'm serious about it now. I just left about 1/4 of my plate of rather yummy tortellini because I wasn't hungry anymore. Let's see if I can manage to lose at least 10 pounds before the Christmas Ball.
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Categories: Theories

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Here's what I read in June.

1. *** Dangerous Diversions _by Margaret Evans Porter. Regency about a duke and an opera dancer. More details about the forming of the Regency & about theater at the time than about the actual romance. Interesting, though.
2. ***** The Time Traveler's Wife _by Audrey Niffenegger. O. M. G. I see what all the fuss is about. Quite a surprise to find an acclaimed book being as good as the buzz, let me tell you. It grabbed me by the throat from the beginning.
3. ** Toast of the Town_ by Margaret Evans Porter. Regency about an earl & an actress. Like the previous one, more about theaters than the romance. Plus, there was inexplicable back & forth between the two of them, which I really hate. Why do authors do that???
4. ****½ Tangle of Lies _by Patricia Potter. Romantic suspense. The heroine's mother is missing--turns out she's been arrested for a murder that took place over 30 years ago. And now somebody's after the heroine, and there are secrets on top of secrets. Nice twists, and a concealed identity that didn't irritate me.
5. **** My Lady DeBurgh _by Deborah Simmons. This is somewhere in the middle of a series of historicals about the hero's brothers. Really cute. He goes looking for someone to protect him from the "curse" that's got all his brothers marrying one after the other... and ends up finding the One, though he still resists, of course. Kind of silly, but a lot of fun.
6. ***** Portrait in Death_ by J. D. Robb
7. ***½ Getting Lucky _by Susan Andersen. Fun, but uneven. The descriptions of the heroine made it seem like she was stuck in the 1980s, even though the book's from 2003. Ironed designer jeans with stiletto heels? Maybe this is cutting edge fashion, and maybe most 30-somethings dress like this & do big hair & makeup to hang out around the house. Anyway, that, and the errors in the book really kept me from enjoying it as much as I might have otherwise. Also, it had the hero making a stupid assumption about the heroine & sticking with it despite all evidence to the contrary, which always makes me mad. The story about a fake kidnapping and the revitalization of two of the secondary characters' marriage, and the revenge story were all good. A good editor could make this a 5-star book.
8. ***** Seeing Red _by Jill Shalvis. Last of her firefighters, IIRC. This is also a reunion story, & you know how much I like those. The heroine left town & her best friend Joe after her father was killed in a warehouse fire. She returns home years later when there's another fire at that same warehouse & finds that Joe's a fire marshal. Both of them are emotionally scarred. Just a really good romantic suspense, with equal parts of both.
9. ***** The Martian Chronicles_ by Ray Bradbury. I thought I'd read this years ago, but I don't remember it. Anyway, Curran read it for school, so I thought I'd (re?)read it, too. Five stars because it's such a classic.
10. **** Lady Midnight _by Amanda McCabe. Longer Regency about an almost-courtesan who starts a new life after a shipwreck. Really good job with the emotions, and I hope there'll be a sequel about the hero's younger sister. There's a story there.
11. ****½ Aspen _by Lynn Erickson. Another oldie from them, but more recent than the previous ones I've read--1995 for this one. This is reminiscent of the more recent On the Edge, with a heroine who's good at heart, but really screwed up. They really delve into the psyche and don't pull any punches. I'd have given it 5 stars, but the ending was a little too pat, and there were some hints of things that didn't go anywhere. Not for everyone--it's really... raw is a good description. Wealthy political family that thinks they can get away with anything, & mostly do.
12. ****½ Carved in Stone_ by Vickie Taylor. Gargoyles. Interesting paranormal idea, IMO. No soul-mates, thank goodness--they've been done to death--seems everyone wants to emulate Feehan--but they do have an innate compulsion to procreate. ;) This has one of the best/most interesting/unusual sex scenes I've read since the mirror scene in Feehan's Dark Symphony. (note: I'm not talking about unusual positions or practices--I read Emma Holly for that.) Just really interestingly written.
    
13. **** Rebecca _by Daphne DuMaurier. Classic I'd never read, so catching up on my education. Gothic, and like all gothics, the hero is really remote and emotionally non-communicative. The whole way through it kept reminding me of what I don't like about May-December romances, as the heroine (whose name we never know) reacts the way I'd think I would have at her age with a man his age--unsure, wanting to please.
    
14. **** Black Rose _by Nora Roberts.
15. The Shadows of Christmas Past: Both stories are about female veterinarians who can talk to animals, and both fit really well in the shorter length--they felt complete and not rushed.
    **** "Rocky Mountain Miracle" by Christine Feehan. Nice story about abused brothers learning to trust with the help of a woman who talks to animals.
    **** "A Touch of Harry" by Susan Sizemore. Another woman who talks to animals, this time paired up with a werewolf on the trail of some missing teen weres. She rescues a drugged wolf & ends up with a naked man in the cage in her clinic, and unknowingly hires him to find himself.
    
16. ***** Fire Me Up_ by Katie MacAlister. I know somebody complained that Jim (demon-in-dog-form) stole the scenes, but I absolutely loved this one. LOTS of fun, better than You Slay Me, IMO. Some real emotion between Aisling & Drake here, and REALLY nice sex scenes--and you know how critical I am of romance novel sex scenes. Who'd've thought fire was sexy??
17. ****½ Sacred _by Dennis Lehane. Definitely hard-boiled & gritty. Nice twists. Even a bit of romance. And the hero respects, admires, & treats his partner like an equal. Gotta love that.
    
18. *** The Americans _by John Jakes. End of the series, thank goodness. I'm not a fan. Too many unlikeable characters, and in this one, I think he tried way too hard to fit in every single thing that happened in the time period, having the Kents meet every single important person. Still, it's a nice look at history, so I'll give it 3 stars.
19. ***** Kiss an Angel_ by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Good thing this wasn't the first book of hers I read--it starts out with an arranged marriage. In a contemporary. I was really dubious, but I trusted she'd make me buy it, and she did. Circus stuff, and just an excellent, excellent job of characterization and conveying emotions.
    
20. **** Wild Kat _by Karen Kijewski. A whistleblower hires Kat when the harrassment turns violent. Lots of twists, lots of pain.
21. ***½ The Lady Lies _by Samantha Saxon. I wanted to like this one more than I did. And maybe if I re-read it, I would like it more. The problem? Too many characters. It's a Regency romantic suspense. I LOVE this sub-sub-genre. Makes me think of The Scarlet Pimpernel. But Regencies have the problem of people having too many names: John Whosit, Earl of Thisplace. He can be referred to as John, as Lord Thisplace, as the Earl, as my lord, and if he's recently come into the title, his old friends may still refer to him as John Whosit or just Whosit, and heaven help us if he has a nickname, or if he goes by a middle name. It's confusing as it is, but when you combine this with an overabundance of characters, it turns an enjoyable story into something you have to study. And in this one, we have spies, so there are code names as well. HELP! Other than that, though, it was really a good spy story. The heroine's a double agent, and the hero's trying to prove she's a French spy while she tries to stay incognito and find the real traitor.
    
22. ***** Imitation in Death _by J. D. Robb.
23. ****½ Sharing the Darkness_ by Marilyn Tracy. I'd bought this Silhouette Dreamscapes a year or more ago at the flea market just to round out the 5/$1 on categories. Thought it sounded okay. This was one of those times when I got a lot more than I expected. Really densely emotional, a telekinetic/psychic hero who's emotionally damaged, and a psychic heroine with her telekinetic/psychic son. I docked it a half star because I wanted to know more about what the bad guys wanted from them, but that's a tiny niggle. I'll be looking for more from this author--I hope there is more.
    
24. ***½ The Whispering Rocks_ by Sandra Heath. Gothic Regency. "Director's cut." Pretty standard for gothics: who's the hero & who's the villain? I've always liked gothics, even before I knew they were romances, but this one gets docked a star because I didn't get to see the relationship develop between the h/h. Which was always typical of gothics, but I find I'm less tolerant than I used to be.
25. **½ The Real Team _by Richard Marcinko. Mini autobiographies of 10 of the SEALs the characters in the Rogue Warrior books are based on, with a bit of "why we love Dick" and promo crap for his executive team-building company. Meh. But I did enjoy the snark and a bit of the inside look at the real people behind the characters.
26. **** Dangerous Depths _by Kathy Brandt. Third in this new mystery series from NAL. This one's grittier. The love child of The Reef_ and CSI. Good series. I recommend it if you like mystery. There's romance there, but the door's shut on the sex scenes, and, glory be, the heroine wasn't a relationship idiot--I've seen that WAY too many times lately.
27. ****½ The Snow Garden _by Christopher Rice. I have no idea why I had this. It was new and in trade paperback, & I'd never heard of the author before. Somebody must have recommended it--I'd think it was one of those free books you used to get from 1Bookstreet.com (buy $20 worth of books & you get a free book from a list of about 20 you'd never heard of before & that they obviously weren't able to sell otherwise), but they stopped doing that several years ago, & I don't think I've had this that long. But anyway, thanks whoever recommended this. Really gothic tone, a creepy murder mystery/best friend/secrets. Just sucked me right in.
28. ***** Homeport _by Nora Roberts.
29. ***½ The Color of Light _by Karen White. Both NAL and B/J were really pushing this one, and I don't know why. Women's fiction with a mystery & romance, and it wasn't bad, but it was really pretty standard. I could see all the plot twists coming a mile away, and I've read this identical plot dozens of times before.
    
30. **** Oceans of Fire _by Christine Feehan. The four stars is mainly out of loyalty, I have to admit. I enjoy the series, but I think the book could have been quite a bit shorter. And Abby? The man left you to SAVE FREAKIN' CHILDREN! And he's told you this. Get over yourself. ARGH. I'd have liked it much more if Abby wasn't such a self-centered twit.
31. *** Marching Orders_ by Bruce Lee. This is the WWII code book. Fascinating, but dry as dust. I'm not quite finished with it, as I can only read a few pages at a time before my eyes start to cross. LOL
32. ***** True North_ by Beverly Brandt, who is aka Jacey Ford. I bought all her BB books after reading the Jacey Fords, and this one, her first, was definitely not disappointing. Romantic comedy, not unlike Crusie--that is, it's funny & romantic, but it's got heart. Workaholic heroine's fiance take another woman on the romantic vacation she (the heroine) gave him for his birthday. Lots of fun.
33. **** The Beauty of Bond Street_ by Jacqueline Navin. Third in this series of historicals about a woman finding her late brother's illegitimate children and launching them into society (&, incidentally, finding them spouses). This one is a departure, in that the heroine isn't really the niece. The niece was her cousin, who died at birth, & when the letter from the solicitor came, she took the chance to escape the poverty she was headed for. Lots of nice emotional development, and 2 secondary romances, and a really intense ending.
34. **** Under Cover _by MaryJanice Davidson. If I understand correctly, these 3 connected stories were the result of a contest on Lori Foster's website. They're light & funny, much more Davidson's U&U style than her Secrets style.
35. ***½ The Rake and the Redhead_ by Emily Hendrickson. Slow-starting Regency reissue (in a 2-in-1--the 2nd book is in next month's list) about an English lord who's moving an entire village to get a better view and the young woman who tries to stop him. Some fun stuff, but I couldn't get over him tearing down all the houses for a whim. A little bit of intrigue about some missing jewels & paintings & hidden passageways.
    
36. **** Earthlight_ by Arthur C. Clarke. Classic sf from the 50s about a guy going to the moon to try to find a spy in the upcoming war between Earth & the Federation at ~ the year 2150. I had to LOL at one description that had a bunch of women using electric typewriters, and another that had women again entering computer code on punch cards. And those were the only women in the book, other than the protagonist's absent wife. Kinda sad that this was how he envisioned the future.
37. ***** Eleven on Top _by Janet Evanovich. The best of the newer books, by far, IMO.
    

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