Author! Author!

That minx Kristie is always trying something new. Just the other day she started a new feature on her blog called 'Author Spotlight'. For this first time she chose one of my all time favorites, Theresa Weir who now writes as Anne Frasier.

I have every one of the books Kristie talks about on her blog. At the time I was reading Ms. Weir I hadn't been reading very many category romances believing they weren't as long as stand alones and therefore could not be as good. Lay your hands on the old Silhouette Intimate Moments IGUANA BAY by Ms. Weir and see if you don't change your mind.

I've missed the unique and strong voice in contemporary romantic fiction that was Theresa Weir. Go over to Kristie's site and take a look, she has given a short blurb about each book.

Since it's been literally years (and years) since I'd read any of my Theresa Weir keepers I asked Kristie if the books were holding up well and whether or not they felt dated. Check out the comments. A couple people mentioned the books did just fine.

I'm looking at those keeper shelves again thinking maybe, just maybe I need to pull one of those Weir books down for next month's TBR day. She's a wonderful writer. If you haven't tried Theresa Weir yet, you really should.

The Quest

From Wikipedia:

A quest is a journey towards a goal used in mythology and literature as a plot. Quests can be found in the folklore of every nation. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero(ine)*, and the overcoming of many obstacles, typically including much travel.

The first part of your quest, should you decide to make it, is to go read what our heroine has to say about the journey. When a reader you know, love and trust tells you a book is a 6 out 5 you sort of stand up and take notice.

The book?

BROKEN WING by Judith James

Go ahead and read an excerpt. Then you can go buy it at Borders or Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Its available now and we probably shouldn't wait.

6 out of 5?

Nope.

Not waiting.

The TBB List

Acrylics on Canvas 16x20, 2007 Private Collection

Just about every reader I know has some version of a list for books they'd like to have. This list can be books they are searching for or books they want to buy as soon as it is released. Or, if the reader is like me, both.

I used to be a subscriber of ROMANTIC TIMES magazine. Each month I would read the synopsis and reviews of books and make my list. You can still sort of do this from their web site, however as much as I love the e-world, it's just not the same. I loved flipping back and forth through the pages in RT and looking at those reviews and ratings.

RT also had a great feature in the back of the magazine. There was a future releases section that listed books by publisher and then by author. The feature usually listed books for the future release two months ahead of the magazine date. Very nifty for the obsessive list maker.

When I quit RT (Lady Barrow got on my nerves) I didn't realize what a vacuum it would leave in my book buying and list making. The past year or so I've been dissatisfied with my by hook or crook method of blog news or browsing sites trying to keep some sort of list.

All you non-list makers can go ahead and mock now. But I can think of nothing worse than missing a book in a series or a favorite author's release...and it's happened. There was the time I completely missed Linda Howard's DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. ::GASP!:: I know. Tragedy in the making. I can barely bring myself to talk about it even now. (You know I'm kidding...right? Although it WAS tragic, I did eventually get the book. Eventually being the key word there.)

Anyway, I was lamenting about having no good place to look for upcoming books in a convo with the roomies in SF. Kristie mentioned a site on-line that was supposed to be fabulous for finding future releases. Of course I got home and couldn't remember it and had to email her. Yay for Kristie because sent me the info right away.

So I told you all of THAT just so I could share this awesome link to FictionDB with you. There are so many ways to look up books. You can look up releases by author, genre or month. This, my friends is why EVERYBODY loves Kristie. She knows the coolest stuff.

Thanks KJ! You've made me very happy. Now I gotta go and beef up the TBB list.

Easter, Catching Up and the Winner Is...

Easter Brunch was great. My boys were happy with the baskets the "Easter Bunny" brought them. Lots of talking and laughing at brunch. There was talk about house remodels, my sister and SIL both in the trenches getting prices, etc. Also lots of talk about my goddaughter/niece's wedding in October. Her fiance is from a fairly good sized Italian family too. Should be very loud and lots of fun. Another big topic was summer and vacations. Nice weather has arrived and I think we all have a bit of Spring Fever.

Changing subjects now, on my TBR post last week I said I had an extra copy of WINTER WOMAN to give away. I only had three names to draw from and felt bad I didn't have three copies of the book to give away. Anyway there had to be a winner and that person is:

PHYL

Phyl, please email me your snail mail addy at: RnG1180@aol.com. Becky since you live close by, if you are interested in reading the book I will gladly loan you mine since I'm pretty sure I'm keeping it. Let me know if you are interested.

Sybil made a comment on the Winter Woman post that she really liked another Harlequin Historical, Turner's Woman which is also by Jenna Kernan. I happened to be near a UBS after swimming on Saturday so I popped in to see if they had it. Score!! I kept picking it up between chores on Saturday and finished it around 1 a.m. I really liked this one too. Yep, I think Jenna Kernan has joined the ranks of my auto-buys. If you like frontier type books or westerns I think you will really like her. She writes strong women, strong in heart, wit and character. The links on the book titles take you to excerpts.

I've caught up with all your posts from the past several days. I'm so excited about Kristie's news. That's just so awesome. To think I'll be roomies at RWA with someone so famous! Wow!

North and South

No not the American mini-series with Patrick Swayze based on the books by John Jakes. Although, if you like Civil War stories I recommend the books. GG and I both loved them when they came out some 18 years ago. Since they are historical they stand up pretty well.

No I'm talking about the BBC series. I just ordered the DVD from Amazon. KristieJ wrote about the series last week and it piqued my interest. Today I read her post insinuating that Richard Armitage, the male lead in the BBC North and South is her idea of Derek Craven from Lisa Kleypas' DREAMING OF YOU. You may have heard something about the current blogosphere debate about Derek versus Sebastian and who is the more fabulous of the two. Being firmly in the Sebastian St. Vincent from DEVIL IN WINTER camp Kristie's pictures and teasers nudged me to further check out this guy, Richard Armitage and the series. All of which lead me on a North and South google odyssey culminating in my ordering the darn thing. In the name of research people. It's in the name of research.

This long movie, or short mini series, looks very very good. Just how many times do you see a 5 star rating at Amazon when there are 216 reviews? Not many. About as often as I spend an afternoon googling and then providing more links in a single post than anyone would possibly bother with. Obsessions are a bitch aren't they? Or should I say curiosity killed the cat. Either way it isn't pretty.

Can we talk about books?

Books in Winter by Jessie Wilcox Smith

I've been tagged for a book meme by KristieJ and I decided what the heck I'll give it a whirl. Although I have to confess I did some estimating with my book count because I didn't take them all off the shelves to count. There are just too damn many to move. K? But if I erred it was on the conservative side I didn't round up.

1. Total number of books I own: Just me? Uh, 2302. Guess I don't have to worry about having something to read when I'm old...right?


2. Last book I bought: COMING UNDONE by Susan Andersen


3. Last book I read: AGNES AND THE HITMAN by Bob Mayer and Jennifer Crusie


4. Five books that mean a lot to me: This one is hard. The most I can say is that just for today these are the five books I'd choose. Tomorrow I might choose a different five books.

a. FAREWELL THE STRANGER by Saliee O'Brien. My first romance. A book found in my grandparents basement. I talked all about it here.

b. OVER THE EDGE by Suzanne Brockmann. This is special for a weird reason. In the book terrorists take over a plane. I finished this book the night of September 10, 2001. Just two weeks before we'd seen a repeat on 60 minutes about this guy Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. When 9/11 happened the first thing I said to GG was it was terrorists and I bet it was that Bin Laden guy. The primary love story isn't what resonated with me it was that Suzanne Brockmann had probably written the book a year (or more) earlier and captured the political times of the world we live in and the men and women who fight against terrorism.

c. SHADES OF TWILIGHT by Linda Howard. I just love the characters Roanna Davenport and Webb Tallant. It's about family, betrayal, dynastys. It's one of the few books I own that I've re-read more than once. I could name a couple of other of Howard's books, but I picked this one to represent them all.

d. JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte. I remember reading this and thinking that everyone deserves to be loved.

e. EXODUS and MILA 18 by Leon Uris. I mentioned MILA 18 before in a meme because this book was very powerful when I read it. These books were written about Jews after the WWII when they were trying to establish a home and country in Israel (Exodus) and about the Polish Jews resistance in the Warsaw ghetto (MILA 18). The books gave history a human face and made it real to me. I cried my eyes out.


5. Tag 5 people. I hate tagging people. I never know who to pick...but I always like reading what other people write. So if you read this and want to do it...please do. How's that?

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Does a mild mannered librarian and romance junkie by day who is a kickass super hero by by night wear a cape? Inquiring minds want to know.

The totally cool Super Librarian Wendy took pity on my sad tale of having no decent UBS any more and told me about a great store in our area. We were able to meet today and not only did I score some awesome books (Cheryl St. John and Terri Brisbin!) we were able to have lunch together. It was great to meet Wendy and be able to talk, in person, about books and book stores and the blogs we have in common.

Now I'm hoping we can all convince her to go to Dallas so we can get the scoop from four different POVs and voices. While they each love romance Sybil, Jane, Kristie and Wendy all have their own inimitable voices. Frankly, I can't wait to hear, see and read their tales.

Thanks Wendy, it was fun AND I found a good UBS once again. As for the cape...I'll never tell.

SUGAR DADDY by Lisa Kleypas

I was going to hold my review for a couple of days, but it turns out that today is Lisa Kleypas day at Sybil's site The Good, the Bad and the Unread. So it seemed like the right time to post my review. Be sure to go over and check out what's going on at Sybil's. There are sure to be lots of Kleypas fans and other cool stuff.

Like everyone else who has enjoyed Lisa Kleypas' historicals I was wondering why she would switch to contemporarys and at the same time have it come out in hardcover? While I do consider myself a fan, I can't say I've loved every book Ms. Kleypas has written. So it begs the question why I would buy a hardcover contemporary doesn't it?

First of all with my Barnes and Noble discount and the book being on sale I ended up paying less for it than a trade paperback, which I've purchased with a whole lot less to recommend them than mostly good track record I have with Lisa Kleypas books.
Secondly, I have to admit I was hooked in by the cover blurb. I did read a couple of excerpts on line as well. I went back and forth but justified the go ahead to purchase when the price was discounted.

When I started this 371 page book for some reason I thought it was going to be an easy and quick read sort of like Eve Plum books by Evanovich are for me. I have no idea why I thought this except when I browsed the book I saw that each chapter started with a half page of justified paragraphs. Let me just say this isn't a breezy sort of easy read at all. I was happily surprised to find myself being more engrossed and drawn into Liberty's saga than I expected.

Here's a summary from RT:

Liberty Jones grew up in trailer-park poverty in rural Texas, the child of a widowed mother with a mysterious past and a current string of no-good boyfriends. But young Liberty is smart, determined and willing to work hard to make her dreams come true. She’s inexplicably drawn to Hardy Cates, the boy down the street who forever claimed her heart at age 13. But he too has ambitions, and they take him out of town and away from Liberty.

Soon alone and with a young sister to raise, Liberty finds herself in the big city, slowly growing up and piecing her life together.

I have to say that I was sometimes confused by the twists and turns this story took. Some of them were interesting, some of them made me feel like Ms. Kleypas was uncertain and didn't know herself what direction she wanted her characters to go. While this caused me to wrinkle my brow a time or two it didn't take me out of the story.

One of the things I liked best about the book was the struggle Liberty and her family endure. It made me wonder if Ms. Kleypas has ever felt the pinch and worry of empty kitchen cabinets without enough gas for the car to get to work. Having lived through those things for brief periods of time myself, I was brought back to my fearful past. It's pretty difficult to relate that sort of paralyzing fear without some experience or story having touched you personally. It's hard to relate to another person how it feels to look into the future and know you have to "hold on", pray that nothing goes wrong so you can dig yourself out of a hole or turn things around. Like I said, having been there I was touched by how accurately Ms. Kleypas captured those scary feelings.

Which brings me to one of the things I wasn't so happy with. Liberty receives help, assistance or a boost at very convenient and fortuitous times. Ms. Kleypas masks these well in the story telling but any discerning reader will see right through them.

I also had some issue with some of the choices the characters made that didn't seem appropriate to me as well as one character change or character reveal that didn't seem to go with my understanding of the character to that point in the story.

****SPOILER****

I'm speaking of course about Hardy Cates. What is revealed about his character or lack thereof at the end of the book did not reconcile for me with the Hardy we met as a young man. Yes, he leaves to pursue his personal goals, but the fact that he took such good care of his family, helped out Liberty's family and others in the trailer park, and didn't take advantage of Liberty's youthful love and devotion says something about his character that I don't think can go away in pursuit of his goals. I felt this to be particularly true because he is a young man himself at the time. In many other romance novels his treatment of Liberty, by leaving, would be seen as the ultimate act of love and sacrifice. It was difficult for me to believe that Hardy became so jaundiced on his journey to success that he would become as cold a user as Gage describes him to Liberty after the two men meet.

I was excited by the prospect that Liberty would have this choice between these two dynamic men who both impacted her life so dramatically. I thought there was enough in the story about the two men without adding a hard edge to Hardy to make her choice more clear cut to the reader.

***END SPOILER***

Even with the blips I spoke of above, I was unable to put this book down. I enjoy reading a book that follows a character from childhood to adulthood. This interior POV about what shapes that person and their choices is one I thoroughly get into.

The last third of the book is the best part when we get to see Liberty as a young adult raising a child trying to make the right choices and decisions not only for her little sister but for her own life as well. It's not a big book about a big life (rich people notwithstanding) it's a story about choices. I liked it and, obviously from this long review, have been thinking about it since I read it.

Thanks to Sybil I went to Ms. Kleypas' site and was able to read an excerpt for a historical she is writing titled MINE TIL MIDNIGHT which is scheduled to be her next release. This is the story of Cam Rohan that Kleypas' fans have been waiting for.

Speaking of fans...if you haven't heard the news, one of Ms. Kleypas' biggest fans, Kristie(j) got a surprise package. I first read about it at Dear Author on Monday and had to go check it out. Kudos to Ms. Kleypas for recognizing a fan. You couldn't have chosen a more perfect or grateful recipient.

Some Other Books I've Read Lately

What a Gentleman Wants by Caroline Linden is Ms. Linden's second book. I bought this book after seeing this post on Kristie(J)'s site about publisher's promoting new authors by offering their books at a lower price. This book was only $4.99 new.

This is a British historical. I think it's the Regency period, but with no dates and few historical references, I'm not positive nor historically savvy enough to figure it out. Anyway the most important thing for me, again, is that I feel and believe the characters are behaving true to the time period.

Both Marcus Reece, Duke of Exeter and widow Hannah Prescott do that in WHAT A GENTLEMAN WANTS. They have been thrown together and married by proxy, and with no little trickery, by Marcus' twin brother David.

While I do have issues with how far and how long Marcus and Hannah stretch the true circumstances of their marriage, I was very involved in the emotional whirlwind each of them were caught in. Marcus has cut himself off from most feelings in order to function as he thinks a Duke must and Hannah is still recovering from her husband's death and the circumstances he left her and their daughter. This is a book with lots of sexual tension and longing. It is not overdone or stretched beyond what is either realistic or appropriate for the times. There is much more that could be explored to be sure, but I see so many possibilities in Ms. Linden's writing that I'm going looking for her first book What a Woman Needs.

I'm the Vampire, That's Why by Michelle Bardsley . This is a contemporary vampire book. A small farming town is attacked by a beast who is turning its' residents into vampires right and left. I'm the Vampire is very similar in tone to Katie MacAlister's vamp books. Ms. Bardsley does have humor and wit to spare, however, where she misses in this book, IMO, is that while Katie MacAlister's vamp books make you believe that odd bits of magic, vampires running around, and a bit of the surreal has happened to perfectly regular folks, this book just makes those things seem silly. It was a little over the top for me. Even with the moments that made my eyes roll, I also laughed, so I'm inclined to give Ms. Bardsley another try.

As You Desire by Connie Brockway I scrounged this book up at my UBS just because it was on the 2004 AAR 100 Romances list. I've read Brockway in the past and couldn't remember reading this particular book.

The best part about the book is that it takes place in Egypt in 1890. The author's web site describes it this way:

In Victorian-era Egypt, wunderkind Desdemona and deliciously disreputable Harry try not to fall in love as they race for a hidden treasure.

I enjoyed the back drop of the story very much. Even so, the book was only an okay read for me. I thought the heroine, Desdemona Carlisle, needed a little too much rescuing. I would have liked to understand more about any conflicts or feelings she had about being a genius child prodigy. It was only briefly touched on and I thought would have added depth and dimension to Desdemona.

As for Harry Braxton and his big secret...I figured it out almost immediately. I think knowing what we do, as readers, about both of these characters that his fear of discovery by the woman he loves was a little hard to swallow especially since he knows (because she told him) how she feels about him.

This was an enjoyable read. Light and fluffy. Harry and Desdemona are likeable and have some witty exchanges that are entertaining. However, this isn't a book I would put in my top 100.