Sunday Soup - December 15

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

The soup is a bit of a leftover concoction this week. You ever make that soup? Where you've got odds and ends that are maybe not the freshest tidbits but they're too good to just let go? Yeah, I've got some stuff stored up from a few weeks back now, so bear with me.  

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...
✽I have a half-finished post in my draft folder about posts on reviewing that have influenced me.  My canon, if you will. Just this morning, I found a new one to add to the canon: the Mmph, by Mary Ann Rivers. While it's not about reviewing particularly, it IS about reader reaction, which is maybe 80% of reviewing, in my opinion. Just go read it, if you haven't already.

✽Lavyrle Spencer is one of the first authors that I went completely nuts for. I still have a fairly extensive collection of her work in hardback. Morning Glory is one of my favorites, partly because it is set in the 30s or 40s, which makes it really unusual, and that plus the rural aspect made me think of how my grandmother raised her family, so I felt an extra tie to the narrative. So I absolutely loved Willa's close reading published in Heroes and Heartbreakers.  I feel a re-read coming on.

✽Your Ability to Can Even - I just saw this yesterday via a link at The Art of Simple. I kind of adore internet expressionism (I just made that up), mainly for humorous effect. This article is an eloquent and passionate defense of this evolving "dialect."

✽Romance makes NPR Best Books Aside from being a nice utility for helping you choose books for others, the romance genre is well represented. Lauren Dane, Anne Gracie, Sherry Thomas, Juliana Gray, Sarah MacLean, Molly O'Keefe, and Kristan Higgins do the genre proud.

✽I have not read Nenia Campbell before, but somewhere along the way I followed a link to her post about having been banned/dropped from Amazon.  I have to admit, I really really love the convenience that Amazon has brought to my life.  I love my Kindle. Probably 3/4s of my Christmas shopping this year was via Amazon. I live locally to HQ and my professional network includes a fair number of current and past employees. But I worry about how much power they have in the market place. I know a little bit about the backend systems that support their business, and it is WORRISOME that a bug in their search code can ruin livelihoods. Like Nenia, I'm baffled as to why her book was dropped given other dreck that is categorically "worse" in terms of content that violates some mysterious code of standards.  Worrisome.

✽Cara McKenna is a favorite author of mine, and I love what she has to say at Romance for Feminists about reading and writing sex in romance. Also, I just finished her title Unbound, and thought it was marvelous.

✽I get so excited when there's a new post at Badass Romance. I'm really not a fan of straight historical fiction (ie, not historical romance) because I almost always find it stilted and dusty-dry. However, Pamela's review of Executioner's Song has me very interested. Although it might be that I just like reading the review.

What I'm reading
✽Currently in progress I've got Laura Kinsale's Prince of Midnight. I really feel like Kinsale and Mary Jo Putney created the whole subgenre of the damaged hero.  Putting his damage right there in the narrative instead of leaving him as closed to the reader as he is to the heroine.( Perhaps with some help from Anne Rice in the Angsty Vampire sub-subcategory.) It's no secret that I'm a Kinsale fan, and this book is no exception. I am given to understand that this book contains a sex-on-horseback scene, but I haven't seen it yet so I'll have to keep you posted.

✽I've got Sarah MacLean's One Good Earl Deserves Another going in dead-tree format too. She takes the bluestocking trope to a bit of an extreme here, with a bookish heroine who is determined to understand her vows before taking them-- with a different man, of course. I'm finding the premise to be a bit... is "disingenuous" the right word? Possibly "silly" is the better one. Not entirely believable. But I like these characters and their interactions and the building external conflicts enough to keep going.

✽I'm not sure where the rec for Chaos Born by Rebekah Turner came from, but it was a good read. It would benefit from a draconian editor, as there is a fair amount of homonym abuse and things like "contact" instead of "contract".  It's an interesting, complicated world. One standout element is that the heroine is lame, and it's not just window-dressing.  It affects how she does (or fails to do) her job. Readers with an interest in disabled heroines should give it a look.

✽I also sped through Driven by Eve Silver (see what I did there?). I'm not sure what it says about me, but I'm really pulled toward post-apocalyptic romance lately, and this is a really good one. The hero is fascinating; the world is dark (and cold), and the twist about the heroine and her history was great. I did find the science a bit questionable but it made the backstory work, so you kinda have to go with it. I recommend, anyway, and the next book, Hidden, is on my want list.

✽I finished up Nora Roberts' Dark Witch. While Roberts always delivers a good read, IMO, this wasn't her best ever. I find myself liking her non-paranormals better.  It won't stop me from reading the rest of the trilogy though.  That's just how I roll.

On Tap... what soup isn't a little better with a slosh or two?
I might discontinue this feature for a little while - I haven't been very adventurous lately, so I don't feel like I have anything very interesting to say. Tis the season for Sam Adams Cream Ale and Blue Moon Seasonal Abbey Ale, two of my very favorites. However, I did notice that the latest Sam Adams collection contains something called "Cherry Chocolate Bock" which I really, really want to try -- but there are too many things I don't really want in the collection.  It's a dilemma.

Sunday Soup - November 10

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...

✽To be honest, this week's kerfuffle about what authors are allowed to say and what reviewers are allowed to say just makes me go:

I feel like the same thing just gets re-hashed over and over again, and the line is not clear and never will be. If people criticize you or your work, take from it what you find useful and move along. Honest reactions should be respected.  Personal attacks are best ignored, IMO, but if you must respond, I would suggest limiting your response to ONE interaction, along the lines of "I saw what you wrote and felt it was uncalled for. I welcome honest critique of my work, but your attack on [ ] was out of line."  Then mute, block, ignore, step away.  Because if you're going to fling shit, no matter how much your target deserves it, you're going to end up smelling bad too.

Notice that I have suggestions, not prescriptions, for what Everyone Should Do, because everyone has a different tolerance for debate, flames, and what I would term negativity. Also, I have been at this internet thing long enough to know that my odds of changing anyone's behavior is vanishingly small, and I prefer not to waste my energy.

✽On a related note, if we could agree on a book bloggers' motto, what would it be?  Something short and pithy... I rather like: "I read, therefore I blog."  I was trying to get some kind of play on "veni, vedi, vici" with something like "I read, I opined, I blogged," but I don't think I can get that to work. :D  What do you think? do you have a motto?

✽Amazon has floated an offer to independent bookstores to carry Kindles. Reaction has been mixed:

• Melville Publishing House reports
• International Business Times.
• Publishers Weekly
• And my favorite, McNally Jackson's very succinct response.

OK, no, it hasn't been mixed at all. 

✽New to me: Bloggers Recommend - a bit more litfic/generalized that works for me, but if you're looking for a small number of standout titles, it looks like a good blog to check out.

What I'm reading
✽I was in the mood for a contemporary, so I picked up Kristan Higgins' The Next Best Thing, which fit the bill perfectly.  Light and sweet, Higgins ramps up the poignancy with a story of a young widow falling for her deceased husband's brother.

✽I hit the bookstore last week, as I imagine most of us did, with so many big names releasing the same week.  It's boggling really.  Have a look at Jackie's roundup, if you don't believe me. The new acquisition that has me hiding from my children this week is Devon Monk's Hell Bent, a new series spun off from her popular (and beloved by me, anyway) Allie Beckstrom series.  It truly is a different series though, as the Allie Beckstrom climactic ending broke up and changed all the magical rules.  A few years later, one of my favorite characters becomes the focal point for the subsequent fallout and realignment of power structures.  I'm about halfway through and loving it. I also came home with Thea Harrison's last two full length Elder Races books, which I'm just so behind on but adore.

✽On the electronic front, I had pre-ordered Nora Roberts' Dark Witch, and ordered a Laura Kinsale title (Prince of Midnight) that I somehow missed in my original Kinsale binge. Many of her titles are being released in electronic and e-format, so now is a good time to re-read or catch up. Shout out to Blithely Bookish for her review last September that I finally dug out of my feed reader. I also nabbed Driven by Eve Silver - it was on a discount price and I've been on a post-apocolyptic kick recently thanks to Joss Ware and Kit Rocha.


On Tap... what soup isn't a little better with a slosh or two?

I've decided I need to watch my calories a bit closer, so I have to strategize a bit with my beer consumption. So for Friday's happy hour, I decided to go with a stout, which is heavy enough to slow down my drinking. Young's Double Chocolate Stout was just the ticket - it's rich and sweet; it's basically an alcoholic brownie in a glass.

Sunday Soup - November 3

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...
✽HarperCollins to join the online bookselling business. I'm pretty happy about this. While I love the ease that Amazon has brought to buying and reading ebooks in particular, their near-monopoly makes me very uneasy. To me, an ideal outcome would be a reversal of the consolidation of publishing houses, all with good distribution platforms. Access to books means access to ideas, and as that shrinks to only a few outlets, I think that's BAD FOR CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT. Not to be dramatic or anything.

✽Big news for frequent travelers - you can now keep your e-readers on during takeoff and landing! I don't travel that often but when I do, that is a big deal for a book addict.  Note: I will probably still carry an emergency "real" book in the event of a battery problem.

✽In one of the week's more ridiculous stories, Yelp reviewers are suing for wages. I could see how an unexpected ruling in that case might affect review bloggers, for instance if publishers became wary of distributing review copies for fear that they'd be sued for wages.  Seems like crazycakes to me.

✽Ilona Andrews is working on something new and awesome and there's a little bit of it up on their website (and may I just say to the critiquing commentators? SHE DIDN'T ASK FOR YOUR ADVICE).

✽In general, I'm not big on reading challenges. The best way to make me dislike a book is to tell me that I have to read it. Even though I have always loved reading, I hated almost all of the assigned reading back in school.  Because it was assigned. But there are exceptions.  Jackie's New Author Challenge is so simple and such a good idea.  Because it's so easy to fall into familiar ruts, it sometimes take a nudge to get out of them.  If you need that sort of nudge or just enjoy the community of a good reading challenge, I really do recommend this one.  I will try to do better about linking up my New Author Reviews.

✽The latest in the ongoing dissection of the reader/author relationship, fan reaction to a YA trilogy-closer titled Allegiant hit a feverish pitch last week. I confess I just don't get the rhetoric around what an author "owes" fans, and how readers "should" read a story, and whether I'm being a "good" reader or not. Sure, I have been disappointed by authors before (I'm lookin' at you, J.R. Ward). I mean, a series that dwindles off into WTF or repetitive or boring territory might actually be more the norm than one that is just consistently fantastic from beginning to end. But... I don't take it personally. I don't get angry at the author. I don't think she owes me a specific kind of story. I don't understand readers who do. Perhaps this is the line that divides the fans from the fanatics.

What I'm reading
✽Nora Roberts, The Perfect Hope. Very enjoyable. The resolution of the ghost story seemed a bit too easy, but the main romance was entirely satisfying. I've also got her latest paranormal downloaded and waiting.

✽I'm almost done with Alexa Egan's Shadow's Curse and it might be a new favorite.  Dark, paranormal, Regency, but NOT the ton. Good stuff.

✽I finished up Wallbanger by Alice Clayton and thought it was a ton of fun. I found the premise a little off-putting at first: the couple start out as next door neighbors with thin walls, and she hears every little spank and, uh, meow.  Yeah. Clayton knows how to write Excruciating Embarrassment, I will say.  Light-hearted with nice character arcs and fun secondary characters.


On Tap... what soup isn't a little better with a slosh or two?
This week I'm all super happy that the Blue Moon Mountain Abbey Ale seasonal is out and about. This stuff is like candy to me. Love it. I haven't found the Elysian Pumpkin I mentioned before -- haven't made it to any of the Super Boozy places lately.

Sunday Soup - October 20

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...
✽Yet more deletions -- apparently, several online retailers are freezing up their self-publishing offerings to try to scrub them for porn, while also somehow attempting to not appear to be censoring. Good article at Gigaom, and an interesting personal slant from a successful author who also happens to have a deep technical understanding of what's being attempted.

✽The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith has readers stirred up.  Mandi loved it, Jane Litte loved it, Brie abandoned it. These sorts of reactions make me pretty curious, but at the moment I'm holding off.  Doesn't sound like my kind of story, but you never know.

✽I absolutely loved this piece about the reader experience, and how authors craft it: Romantic Attractions: The Thrills and Spills of the Reader’s Theme Park. Great fun, and you have to love an extended, well-sustained metaphor.

✽I really enjoyed this highly personal piece from John Scalzi about the books that influenced him. There's no bloviating about how these are The Best or The Most Important, just ones that matter a lot to him, personally, and a few words on the how and the why.

Titles That Caught My Eye ... 
A new ingredient for the soup-- books I might read; I'd love to hear what you think about them if you've read any of them or are also anticipating them.

✽Sarah Antonelli is on my radar now, due to Jessica's review over at Radish. With a tagline like "Quirky Romance Novels for Grown Ups…and Smart Asses," I feel I have to give it a shot, even though the premise of a quantum physicist who is also an undercover spy gives me a bit of pause.

✽Couldn't help but nab Coreene Callahan's latest Fury novel: Fury of Desire. Looks like special pricing for this week too; a nice price at $3.99 for a full-length book.

✽Amy over at Unwrapping Romance reviewed a book this week that made my eyebrows go way way up: The Sheik Retold, giving authorial credit to both Victoria Vane, a modern author, and the original author, Edith Maude Hull.  I read the original over a year ago now and just have not been able to put my thoughts about it into any coherent order.  As to the re-telling, I believe the book is now public domain but I have all kinds of questions about the ethics of putting both names on that, and whether any contact was made with Hull's heirs to use her name. Still, I am pretty interested in reading it.

What I'm reading
✽Just finished up Nora Roberts' The Last Boyfriend. I love her books so much. I love the way she writes kisses, especially first kisses, and the way her characters' professions inform their points of view. I love the way she chooses professions that are about doing, and making. You don't see cubicle jockeys in these worlds; there's a physicality to the characters' lives that I just... well... love. OK, I'm repeating myself. But honestly, nobody does it like Nora.

✽I'm working my way through Jill Shalvis' Blue Flame, which was a special bonus on top of It Had to Be You.  I'm finding it a bit slow, but I'm also having an extremely interrupt-driven week at home, so it may or may not be any fault of the text.  I want to see the characters through, so it's got that going for it.  The hero is an injured firefighter, and it seems unusual to me that the injury is bad enough that he keeps attempting to do romance-hero-typical-physical things, and well, kinda failing. So the heroine just does them for him.  It's interestingly off-kilter that way.

✽I finished of the Kat Richardson SeaWitch that I mentioned last week.  Shivery-creepy and delicious.  Great ghost story and another new twist in the mythology.

On Tap... what soup isn't a little better with a slosh or two?
I haven't really tried anything new this week. I'm enjoying more of the Abita Pecan and Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. I guess I'm kind of over the pumpkin ales, although I actually did quite like the ones I tried. Since it is still October, and the pumpkin ales still abound, I did a bit of research on "best of" articles, and I liked HuffPo's list the best -- it includes broadly-available beers and based on 5 or 6 articles, I think they caught most everybody's top favorites in this list. The one I'm most interested in trying now is the Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale -- it's local, and highly regarded in quite a number of these "best of" lists.

I Y Andrea…

Do you have an Andrea? You should! Every book lover should.

Andrea works at my local Borders. On the days when she happens to be working and I happen to be browsing, it is a scary and wonderful thing – wonderful for my reading experience, scary for my budget.

Andrea loves romance, historical romance, romantic fantasy, romantic suspense, and most of the cross-over genres. Happily, her tastes align really well with mine and she reads everything. If I ask her who’s new and good, she’ll rattle off 3 or 4 names that I haven’t heard of. If I tell her I’m tired of historicals and I want something more contemporary, or paranormal, or fantasy, she’ll have something for me. About a year ago, I confessed that Nora Roberts’ Circle Trilogy had finally dragged me kicking and screaming into the realm of vampire romances, she talked me into reading JR Ward—I did not go willingly!-- and you all know how that turned out.

Over the years, she has introduced me to--among many others-- Loretta Chase, Stephanie Laurens, Christine Warren, Susan Anderson, Lois McMaster Bujold, CL Wilson, and of course, JR Ward. She has never, ever steered me wrong. So if she tells me I should read something, I read it.

Most recently, she suggested Grimspace by Ann Aguirre and Clockwork Heart, by Dru Pagliassotti. The first is more space-opera-ish than I usually read, but fun nevertheless. It reminded me a lot of Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books in terms of the pacing and the way the romance develops a bit over several books—well, I hope; the 2nd book is due out soon, with available excerpts and word is she has a contract for books 3 and 4.

Clockwork Heart is a bit more steam-punky, though it isn’t a typical speculative/ alternative earth history. It takes place on its own world, where the technology takes a couple of different twists from ours, primarily around a lack of semi-conductor technology and the use of a lighter-than-air metal called ondinium. Combined with a strict caste-based society, there’s an intriguing whodunit mystery along with a lovely romance. Both characters turn the assumptions of their castes upside down, and have a bit of a struggle to be able to truly *see* each other. The book has some interesting things to say about power structures and bigotry and the masks we wear with each other.

Andrea also recommended Joanna Bourne but they were stocked out. It’s next on my list though, because if Andrea says I should read it, (say it with me) I’m gonna read it!

Relational romance

Talking with Nicola about J.R. Ward’s heroes – and, specifically, why I am so drawn to that series, almost despite myself – I keep coming back to the non-romantic relationships in the books.

In the industry, these characters are called “secondary.” Hmph, I say. Secondary to what? To the romance? I’ll agree with that, but not with the idea that they are secondary to the action or the nature of the novel.

Let’s face it: Straight romance doesn’t have a ton of surprises to offer us. It can be well written or badly written, sweet or erotic, cozy or adventurous, but there’s rarely a question of whether it will end happily. It will end happily. That’s the point.

So how do we set one romance novel apart from the others? I would argue that the best books on the market today are the ones where the secondary (and tertiary!) characters are as real and engaging as the hero and heroine.

I thought I would make a list of authors (and/or series) that I love because of the secondary characters:

Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books
I wonder if this series (beginning with The Duke and I) would be nearly so fun without the initially-unseen-except-for-chapter-headings gossip queen Lady Whistledown. Or, I ask you, without the other seven siblings mucking things up (or solving things) for whichever Bridgerton is the present protagonist? One of my favorite Bridgerton scenes has almost nothing to do with “romance,” and everything to do with how the heroine fits in with the hero’s family. In this scene, Kate has been invited to play croquet (or Pall Mall), and they’re setting up the course in the hero (Anthony’s) absence:

"Let me take half of those,” Daphne said, reaching for the wickets in her brother’s hand. “Miss Sheffield and I … that is, Kate and I”—she flashed Kate a friendly grin—“will set up three of them and you and Simon can do the rest.”
Before Kate could even venture an opinion, Daphne had taken her by the arm and was leading her toward the lake.
“We have to make absolutely certain that Anthony loses his ball in the water,” Daphne muttered. “I have never forgiven him for last time. I thought Benedict and Colin were going to die laughing. And Anthony was the worst. He just stood there smirking. Smirking!” She turned to Kate with a most beleaguered expression. “No one smirks quite like my eldest brother.”
“I know,” Kate muttered under her breath.
Thankfully, the duchess hadn’t heard her. “If I could have killed him, I vow I would have.”
“What will happen once all your balls are lost in the lake?” Kate couldn’t resist asking. “I haven’t played with you lot yet, but you do seem rather competitive, and it seems …”
“That it would be inevitable?” Daphne finished for her. She grinned. “You’re probably right. We have no sense of sportsmanship when it comes to Pall Mall. When a Bridgerton picks up a mallet, we become the worst sorts of cheaters and liars. Truly, the game is less about winning than making sure the other players lose. … It seems a waste, I know, but worth it to humiliate my brothers.”

Jennifer Crusie’s anything
I’ve often sold my friends on Jennifer Crusie’s books by telling them that they will never laugh as hard reading any other romance novel. She’s funny and the wit is sly, and a lot of it has to do with secondary characters acting as the voices of reason.

Let’s face it: The early stages of love make us all behave like idiots, and it’s only right that the love portrayed in romance novels should occasionally turn our heroes and heroines into idiots, too. And, to complete the cycle, that they have friends and families that will happily – gleefully, even – point it out.

Another thing to love about Crusie is that a lot of the tension in her romances comes from her couples having to deal with the insane vagaries of everyday life. They’re not so much beset by pirate ships and spy rings as they are plagued by families whose every-family-has-one craziness is magnified. Also? She’s not afraid to put a funny line in a woman’s mouth, and that’s a quality much to be prized. (Don’t you get sick of men being the only ones who are allowed to be overtly comic?)

Favorite Crusie book has got to be the utterly priceless Bet Me, although you honestly can’t go wrong with anything she writes, and you’ll definitely fall in love with her books co-written with Bob Mayer, and her books about the Dempsey family, starting with Welcome to Temptation.

Nora Roberts’ The Quinn Legacy
This is the story of three (well, four) adopted brothers who are dealing with their father’s death and the ongoing fight to keep custody of the fourth, significantly younger, brother. That tension and trouble runs throughout the first three books and it’s simply lovely.

As is usual for Roberts’s series, there are three basic “types”: The glamorous jetsetter sibling, the sensible, type-A sibling, and the salt-of-the-earth, quietly deep sibling. I think she does better cast development with the Quinns than with any other series; the brothers (all of whom end up with their own books) are nuanced and rude to each other and messy and imperfect in ways that are true to their typical Roberts archetype.

I’d argue that the secondary characters are fewer and shallower with Roberts than with other writers, but she’s one of the queens of the genre and this is her best work (imho), so I thought I should include it.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ football and golf books
Whaaa? Football and golf?

Football. And. Golf. Take it as an article of faith that anyone who loves character-driven, secondary-character packed romance will adore any SEP book that includes a pro athlete. (Which means football or golf; she hasn’t yet ventured into luge or pro wrestling, which would strain my faith as a reader.)

As I write this post, I’m discovering something interesting: I get really engaged in books that show the heroes (in particular) in a range of emotionally complicated situations (but that’s probably another blog post). SEP definitely deals those out, with difficult families, tenuous relationships, trust issues … you name it.

Perhaps my favorite SEP example is … hmph. It’s tough to isolate one, but I think it’s got to be Heaven, Texas, in which an entire town plays a role as a secondary character. There’s also the hero’s fantastic, widowed mother and the entire staff of the Curl Up and Dye hair salon. Gracie Snow (the heroine) ends up having to contend with all kinds of issues related to Bobby Tom Denton’s status as favorite son, and that means SEP got to really play around with the secondary characters and how they throw roadblocks in the path of, you know, True Love.


So, there you have it. My top picks for relational romances. Other authors who deserve a mention (but haven’t published anything that’s rung my bell in a while): Judith McNaught (try Perfect, a contemporary with one of my all-time favorite heroines) and Julie Garwood (The Secret should start you off well if you like historicals set in Scotland – or even if you don’t).

And, because I am on a serious fantasy and vampire kick right now, when I’m talking about relational, uh, quasi-romance, I simply must recommend all of Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld books (start with Bitten).

Finally, for fantasy books with great loving relationships and romance that’s stretched across a trilogy, Patricia Briggs’ Mercedes Thompson books (starting with Moon Called) and Anne Bishop’s Dark Jewels trilogy (my absolute favorite comfort books ever, starting with Daughter of the Blood) are must-reads, but be warned: They have some seriously dark themes and very graphic violence.