Think for yourself...

"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." - Voltaire


As a librarian and a reader the idea of banning or censoring books is anathema to me.  I can think of no greater waste of time and/or energy than trying to keep people from reading.  My job is selecting materials for people to read and I remind myself daily that it isn't my job to judge a book moral or immoral, right or wrong.  It is my job to provide access to the information, ideas and thoughts contained within those books, regardless of how I may feel about them personally.  So remember to support you local library, authors and booksellers as they fight to stop censorship, not just this week, but every day.
ALA Banned Books Week
Top 10 most challenged books -2009

PS.  The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier has been in the top 10 most challenged books almost every year since it was published in 1974.  It remains one of the most thought provoking books I have ever read, YA or otherwise...

A purrfectly wonderful romance...

Liz Carlyle is so consistently good that one almost starts to take her for granted.  Her historical romances are always well-written and compelling.  Her characters are well-developed, interesting and rarely TSTL.  Her books are a marvelous blend of humor and angst with a heaping helping of hotness thrown in the mix just to keep it spicy!  Her latest book, One Touch of Scandal, continues her long string of entertaining historicals.  
OToS in the first in a new trilogy by LC featuring the Fraternitas Aureae Crucis.  This is one of those groups or clubs that occasionally appear in romance novels where the members all seem to be devilishly handsome and full of secrets.  This type of thing is not one of my favorite devices in a romance, but LC uses it effectively and never lets it take over the narrative.  It actually lends a nice, almost gothic, tone to the book. OToS opens with our heroine, Grace Gauthier about to be engaged to her employer.  The engagement is cut short when someone murders her intended and the police decide that Grace is their top suspect. Grace goes to the aforementioned  gentlemen's club in search of a family friend who may be able to help her out of this mess.  Instead of finding the family friend, she meets Lord Ruthveyn, a dark and mysterious war hero (I told you these clubs are full of dark and mysterious guys) who agrees to help her prove her innocence.  It's at this point, that we almost had a problem.  Turns out that LC has added a touch of the paranormal to her latest and we all know how I feel about paranormals (not good, in case you don't know), but I kept reading and found that this twist didn't bother me too much.  Seems the dark and mysterious Lord Ruthveyn has some very helpful psychic abilities.  Thanks to LC's careful handling, this element never overwhelms the rest of the story and thus, I was able to move on.  Per usual, with LC, the characters were well drawn and complex. I liked them both and enjoyed watching their relationship develop. The mystery is well-plotted and compelling.  The book is just, in a word, smooth. 
  
So, once again, Liz Carlyle has turned out yet another stylishly written, wickedly entertaining read.  Oh, and one more thing, as a bonus for the cat lovers amongst us, LC has made Lord Ruthveyn a cat lover!  He has two lovely felines named Silk and Satin on which he dotes.  Is there anything sexier than a dark and mysterious man who also loves cats?  Not in my book.


PS.  Liz Carlyle and her publisher, Avon are sponsoring a great charity tie-in to the release of One Touch of Scandal.  Here's the info, please go and help LC and Avon support cat rescue.  
http://www.avonromance.com/2010/09/27/welcome-liz-carlyle/

This is how it starts...

This morning I was enjoying my coffee and thinking about some friends that I have asked to guest blog for me.  A couple of them read heavily in genres that I don't usually read and I wanted to get some suggestions from them on their faves.  One friend of mine reads quite a bit of contemporary romance.  I never read contemporaries anymore and we had recently had an interesting discussion as to why that is.  I remember enjoying contemporary romances in middle school and high school. That was in the late 70s, early 80s before I abandoned romance reading in college. Most of the contemporaries I loved were from British authors (even then I liked to imagine myself in London) and they were pretty formulaic, but I can't really say why, even after I rediscovered historical romance, I have no interest in today's contemporaries.

So, I decided I should do a bit of research.  Look up some of the old writers that I used to read and enjoy, see if they were still writing and if so, would their stuff still interest me.  After ploughing through a bunch of book sites and Amazon, I found Charlotte Lamb.  I used to love Ms. Lamb's books. They were intelligent and sexy and crazy emotional. Her men were sort of dark and angsty as well and we have covered how much I love a dark and angsty hero. I wondered what I would think of her books now?  I decided to find a few and revisit my teen years. It turns out that some of Ms. Lamb's titles are sort of hard to get. Seems others appreciate her work as much as I, and since she unfortunately passed away in 2000, some of her better known stuff has become either hard to find or very expensive.  I tracked down a few on Paper Back Book Swap (a great online book swap site that you should join immediately if you are not already a member) and found a few more on EBAY. One specific title I was looking for was being offered at a crazy price and I had all but given up on acquiring it, when I realized that it was also being offered in a lot of 75 CL books that was up for auction. The bids were low and so I entered a bid, thinking that I would most likely be outbid eventually, but nothing ventured and all that.  Imagine my surprise to open my email tonight and find that I am the proud owner of 75 Charlotte Lamb books!!!

See folks, this is how it happens.  I start thinking about something I read 25 years ago while relaxing with a cup of coffee and then, BOOM, the next thing you know I am welcoming 75 more books into a house already overrun with the things.  It is the fate of a reader it seems.  Please tell me that you have done this.  There must be other crazy people out there who can't seem to stop buying books.

Delicious Autumn!

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. 
- George Eliot


As you might guess by the title of this post, Autumn is my favorite season.  I love most everything about it, even the melancholy that it can inspire. I love the weather and the leaves and Halloween.  I love the shorter days and longer evenings and the feeling of change and movement that autumn seems to bring.  Autumn is also an amazing time to read.  There is nothing better than settling in on a cool autumn evening with a book.  I personally think that the best books to read during this season are those that have at least a slightly melancholy tone as well as a touch of horror.  In an attempt to insure that you have plenty stockpiled for the season, here's my top ten list of autumnal reads, in no particular order...

Harvest Home - Thomas Tryon

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury

Salem's Lot - Stephen King

The Vanishment - Jonathan Aycliffe

Nine Coaches Waiting - Mary Stewart

Early Autumn - Robert Parker

The Time of the Hunter's Moon - Victoria Holt

The Night Country - Stewart O'Nan

The Chatham School Affair - Thomas H. Cook

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Rupert!

Here's another in our new series of birthday posts for attractive British actors.  Showing at least a bit of restraint, I am limiting this to actors who have appeared in a number of literary adaptations.  Today's birthday wish goes out to Rupert Penry Jones.  RPJ might not be quite as well known in the states as some of his British brethren, but he meets our demanding criteria for inclusion in the British actors birthday posts.  He is British.  He is hot.  He has appeared in a zillion literary adaptations, including Persuasion, Jane Eyre, Casanova, The Four Feathers, Cold Comfort Farm and Hilary and Jackie.  For those who might not be familiar with him, here's a short clip of his work as Captain Frederick Wentworth from Jane Austen's Persuasion...



Although he is not my fave Capt. Wentworth (cough, Ciaran Hinds, cough, cough), he was certainly the best thing about this production of Persuasion.

Taking the Dark Road...

If you are a fan of historical mysteries and you haven't read the first three books in Deanna Raybourn's amazing Lady Julia Grey series then I must suggest that you do so immediately.  This is a fantastic series featuring excellent writing, wonderful characters, exacting period detail, and sharp as a tack dialogue.


I was thrilled to receive an arc of the latest Lady Julia Grey mystery and set down on a Saturday afternoon to lose myself in the world of Lady Julia and her soulmate and now, husband, Nicholas Brisbane.  The first three books in the series found Julia and Nicholas meeting over the body of her first husband, bonding over adventures involving her family and his and finally realizing that they are meant to be.  The newest book was bound to be a challenge for it would be the first to feature the couple as husband and wife.  These are two incredibly strong-willed people and I wondered if DR would be able to find a way to allow them to make all of the compromises a newly married couple must make and still retain their individuality.  I needn't have worried, because in DR's masterful hands Julia and Nicholas manage to navigate their way through the rocky waters of their new marriage and emerge not only stronger as a couple, but also with their individual character intact.


The book opens with Julia's siblings Plum and Portia tracking the newly married Brisbanes down while they are on their honeymoon.  Portia requests their assistance in the matter of her ex-partner Jane.  Jane is recently widowed and expecting a child.  She is living on her husband's tea plantation in India and Portia is concerned about her safety, as well as her state of mind.  The group travels to India, where they set about figuring out if there was indeed foul play involved in Jane's husband's death.  Initially, I bemoaned the fact that this book was going to be set in India since England is my favorite setting for historical mysteries, but I soon changed my tune. The setting was perfect. The exotic locale pulled Nicholas and Julia out of their normal comfort zone and, in my opinion, placed them on a more even playing field.  As they begin investigating the strange occurrences around the plantation, they both are forced to deal with people and places terribly unfamiliar to them.  It was interesting to watch their different investigative styles emerge as they struggle with their individual desire to be the one to solve the mystery versus their obvious strength when they work as a team.  The plot was well-developed and the ending was a bit of a shocker. Although I started to suspect the truth about 3/4ths of the way through, I wasn't sure that DR would go in that direction, but I thought it provided a solid twist. 


The most satisfying aspect of the book for me was watching Nicholas and Julia figure out how to be husband and wife.  It was clear that the idea of melding their lives was causing both some real angst.  I was pleased to see that they continued to treat each other with the respect and affection that they have always shared.  The romance lover in me was thrilled to find that the intimacy of the marital bed had not dampened the heated attraction between the two. When Nicholas and Julia married at the end of the last book, I was alternately excited and concerned.  I was so happy that they were together finally, but wondered if DR would be able to keep their relationship interesting.  After reading Dark Road to Darjeeling, I feel nothing but optimistic that this relationship will continue to develop and grow in all kinds of intriguing ways.  While I have loved all three of the previous books in the series, I have to say that Dark Road to Darjeeling was pretty nearly flawless.  I came away from it anticipating all of the amazing adventures that the future holds for these two characters as well as the rest of the eccentric March clan.  Kudos Ms. Raybourn!  Keep 'em coming...


PS.  I don't always cast books as I'm reading them, but here are my picks to play Lady Julia and Nicholas:

I think Rachel Weisz and Richard Armitage would be absolutely perfect in the roles.  Who would you cast?

My letter to Virginia Coffman...

I wasted a couple of hours this weekend reading what may be the worst gothic romance ever.  I am sure you are thinking that I am exaggerating, but I'm telling you that not only was this a failed gothic, it was a boring and uninspired story, no matter the genre.  When I started this blog, I decided to avoid reviews of bad books.  Enjoying a book is a very subjective thing and I didn't want to get caught up in all the negativity, so I planned to feature books on the blog that I thought were, at the very least, solid examples of their genre.  That said, I feel it is my civic duty as a humanitarian and a librarian to warn people away from this book.

Now those of you who know me (and if you're reading this blog, it is safe to say that you know me since I'm pretty sure that my readership is still a very limited group), know that there is nothing I love more than a gothic romance.  I love everything about them.  I cut my teeth on DuMaurier and Holt.  I love the ancient, crumbling houses, the angst ridden, but heartstoppingly gorgeous heroes, I love the rainy/foggy/snowy weather that traps the innocent yet plucky heroine in said house with said hero. I even love the book covers that almost always feature a young woman in a gown running from a dark house.  I love all of the cliches.  I embrace them.  I celebrate them.  I will read a gothic no matter how bad the reviews are and I can almost always find something to appreciate about them.  This was not the case with A House at Sandalwood by Virginia Coffman.

Coffman is a respected writer of gothics. Her career spanned decades and she turned out what some consider to be a classic with her Moura series.  I haven't read many works by Coffman.  I decided that I needed to remedy that when I stumbled on the above title.  I almost decided it wasn't for me when I realized that it was set in Hawaii.  Hawaii is not the Yorkshire Moors or even foggy San Francisco and it seemed an unlikely place to set a gothic.  Still, this one apparently took place on a private island.  An isolated spot controlled by a powerful man.  So far, so good.  So what if it sunny and beautiful, Hawaii gets the occasional storm, so I plowed on.  The next element that almost caused me to set it aside was that it was a contemporary.  Now I have always preferred historical gothics, but I have read a few decent contemporaries and since the book was published in 1974, I felt sure that I wouldn't be dealing with computers and cell phones and modern devices that might pull me out of the sense of isolation that is so often the key to a good gothic.  After having dealt with my initial quibbles, I settled in with hopes of losing myself  in the plight of our naive but plucky heroine.  The heroine was a not so naive, 33 year old Judith Cameron.  Convicted of the murder of her sister-in-law, Judith has been released and summoned to this lush Hawaiian island to care for her childlike niece, Deirdre.  Deirdre has recently married the handsome, successful Stephen Giles, but finds she is unable to handle the rigors of being a wife and the mistress of a home like Sandalwood.

At this point, any gothic reader worth their salt has already figured a few things out.  Stephen will be regretting his marriage to the incredibly annoying and emotionally stunted Deirdre.  He and Judith will be instantly attracted to each other.  Deirdre may very well have a screw loose.  At some point Deirdre will tragically lose her life, probably while trying to push Judith or Stephen off of one of the many cliffs on this island, and our hero and heroine will be left to console each other and to live out their days in this tropical paradise.  At least that is how Victoria Holt or I would have written it.  In fact, Coffman tells a far different tale.  Stephen is regretting his marriage, Judith and he are attracted to each other, Deirdre does seem to have a major screw loose, but instead of mining this set up for gothic gold, Coffman pulls a minor character murderer out of her hat, leaves poor, decent Stephen stuck with a wife who stopped maturing at around 12 years old and sends Judith off to pursue a new life back on the mainland, while wishing crazy niece and her hubby the best of luck in fixing their mess of a marriage!

WTF?  What kind of self-respecting gothic writer would do that to a reader.  I wasted two hours of my life waiting for some sort of romantic pay off and this is what I get???  Foul on the play, Virginia Coffman.  I was so incensed I briefly considered writing Ms. Coffman a letter outlining my outrage, however since she has been dead for some time, that seemed a somewhat futile gesture.  Nothing makes me see red like a genre writer who doesn't respect the genre.  You can change things up, throw in a curve ball every now and then, but to change all the rules midstream is truly unfair to genre readers.  So, in lieu of  the aforementioned letter, I decided that I would use my newly created blog to warn gothic romance fans to run, don't walk, run as fast as you can away from A House at Sandalwood. Gothic romance my foot!

They taste good to her...

Happy Birthday to one of my favorite poets and yes, I'm aware that no one reads poetry anymore, thank you.  Here are a couple of special gifts from WCW, maybe they'll provide a little motivation...

To a Poor Old Woman

munching a plum on   

the street a paper bag

of them in her hand

They taste good to her

They taste good   

to her. They taste

good to her

You can see it by

the way she gives herself

to the one half

sucked out in her hand

Comforted

a solace of ripe plums

seeming to fill the air

They taste good to her

Winter Trees

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

William Carlos Williams

Why are you so good Agatha Christie?

Could not let the day pass without a shout out to Dame Agatha on her 120th!  She was a master of mystery and mayhem and I have loved her since I was 10 years old.

If you haven't read her then quit reading this and go and find yourself any one of the zillions of great books that she crafted. You'll quickly see how much contemporary mystery writers owe to the lady.  Christie has reportedly sold between 2 and 4 billion books and is listed in Guinness as the best selling mystery writer of all time.  Only the Bible and Shakespeare have outsold the Dame.  Her works have been adapted into movies, tv shows and even video games.  She has been honored in many ways, but one of my all time favorites remains this wonderful episode of the classic British tv series, Dr. Who.  Why is Agatha Christie so good?  I'll let David Tennant explain...

The Unicorn and the Wasp - Dr. Who

Also, kudos to Google for a very cool tribute today...

Google Christie Tribute

Well deserved for a woman who helped define the modern mystery novel.

Lovely, dark and deep...

OK, so you guys know I love angst in my romance, right?  How in the world have I not read an Anne Stuart book before this?  I have always heard about her love for dark and twisted, bordering on outright cruel heroes.  Her books are reportedly some of the angstiest out there, and yet I've not picked one up.  I changed that recently when I read all three of the books in her new House of Rohan trilogy in one week.  The verdict?  I enjoyed them.  I  sort of inhaled them actually.

Stuart definitely skews darker than most of the sugar sweet stuff I've been reading lately and I truly reveled in the slightly malevolent tone of her work. The new series follows various individuals in the Rohan family from Georgian times.  The men in the family are all associated with the Heavenly Hosts, a secret society that supports the pursuit of sin and pleasure above all else. The premise is a little bit hokey, but these societies did exist and since Stuart's characters don't take the groups all that seriously, the reader is allowed the same point of view.  The main thing their membership in the society does, is to allow Stuart to show how heartless and unfeeling her males are.  Sex is just entertainment and love is non-existent in their world, until of course they meet their heroines and fall madly in love.  Of the three, the third book, Breathless seemed the darkest to me.  The hero in Breathless is truly seeking revenge and seems to have little compunction about destroying the heroine, if need be.  The cool thing about Stuart is that she provides her dark heroes with a pretty good reason for being dark. The plot provides a rational justification for them to be jaded and cynical and she allows you to witness their progression and growth, as they begin to change.  Her writing is tight, witty and crisp.  Her characters are beautifully drawn and I loved how intelligent they all were.  No TSTL heroines here. These women are smart, strong and willing to get down and dirty when the situation calls for it.  

The first two books in the trilogy are available and the third is due out in October, so you can read them in order and close together and I think that adds to the enjoyment of the series.  As I understand it, Stuart has not written many historicals in the last few years, preferring to work on contemporary romances.  I hope this new trilogy is a signal that she is turning her talented hand back to historical romances.  Goodness knows we angst lovers need something to counter all that sweetness and light.

Kudos to a high school...

I'm sure that there will be some controversy about this, but I think it's great that this school is willing to try something new.  With the insane costs of textbooks these days, it seems that there ought to be a way to use e readers in an academic setting.  I look forward to hearing how this goes.

Clearwater High School Gives Kindles to Students

Interesting stuff!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my former boyfriend Colin Firth, who, unbelievably, turns 50 today!  Also a belated birthday wish to Hugh Grant who turned 50 yesterday.  Why are we celebrating british actors birthdays on a book blog? Well, they're hot and if that isn't enough (although it really should be), together they have appeared in over 40 literary adaptations!  Obviously they were both spectacular in that literary classic, Bridget Jones Diary, but who can ever the forget the literary adaptation to top all other literary adaptations...




Yummy!

This wouldn't be my list, but it isn't a bad one...

This list of Top 10 Horror titles from a critic at the Guardian doesn't include many that would be on my list, but all-in-all, it isn't a bad list.  If you're willing to expand your definition of horror a bit, most of these titles are pretty freaking scary!  Since Horror is a fave of mine, I'd love to hear your top 10...

Top 10 Horror Books

Ok, link is fixed and all is right with the world.  Horror fans should pay attention to two stories that he mentions,  The Birds by Daphne DuMaurier and the MR James classic, Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad.  These two are personal favorites and very scary stuff!

To glom or not to glom?

Do you glom?  Yes, I'm aware that glom has a multitude of meanings, but in this case we're discussing the one that involves a reader obsessively reading all of an author's backlist.  I am a big time glommer.  I confess that when I read a book that I love, it is a certainty that I will immediately set about locating and reading other books by that writer.  I think that glomming is an activity that has special appeal for genre readers.  Genre reading, by it's very nature, involves looking for some consistency from writers.  Whether you read, mysteries, science fiction, romance or any other genre, you've most likely identified consistent elements that make a book work for you.  So, it follows that if you love police procedurals and you find a writer who writes a fantastic procedural, you'll want to check out their backlist.

In my world, glomming can also involve reading an entire series, rather than the entire author backlist.  This is especially true of genre writers who may have three or four very different series running at once.  For example, I've recently been laid up recuperating from some minor surgery and I sort of stumbled onto a historical mystery series by Rhys Bowen.  Now Bowen writes three series and they appear to be quite different, so rather than glom her entire backlist, I limited my glomming activity to her Molly Murphy series.  I had tried one of her Constable Evans mysteries years ago and found it a bit to cozy for my taste (I can only read a cozy if there is a cat in it, it's a terrible personality flaw), but the MM series worked for me.  A big part of the charm was the setting of NYC at the turn of the century.  An author could not ask for a more exciting, tumultuous time or place and I'll read almost anything that uses this backdrop.  I decided to glom the series on the strength of setting and I've since worked my way through six of the nine titles available and I have the other three waiting at the library.  While I have a few qualms about this series, it has consistently delivered on the elements that appealed in the first title I read and that is really all a glommer can ask for.

So, any other glommers out there?

Shiny, happy people...

Is it just me?  Seems like every new romance I pick up these days involves shiny, happy people falling in love, facing a wee bit of angst and then moving happily into their lives together.  The latest example of this trend is Maya Rodale's, A Groom of One's Own.  Rodale is a new author for me and I've heard good things, so I was excited to give this one a shot.  The story involves the romantically challenged heroine, Sophie Harlow and the upright and respectable "double" Duke of Hamilton and Brandon.  Sophie is a society reporter for a London newspaper and she is assigned to cover the wedding of the Duke and his reluctant bride to be.  Sophie and the Duke have met prior to this assignment and both are struck by an immediate attraction, so most of the story involves them fighting their growing attraction while continuously thrust together for wedding preparations.  I realize I have sort of glossed over a plot recap here, but the plot really only serves as a vehicle to throw these two funny, intelligent, honorable people together and let us see how perfect they are for each other.  Although not known for my love of sweetness, I liked this book.  Rodale is a clever writer who knows how to turn a phrase.  Her dialogue moves beyond witty to laugh out loud funny at times.  Anyone looking for a sweet, sexy, well-written romance should rush out and grab this book.  That said, it left me thinking about the current state of the historical romance.

It seems that most of the books I pick up these days are historical only in the sense that the author has chosen to set them in the past.  This book could have been set in the present with very few changes.  The historical aspect of the work really had next to no effect on the rest of the story.  This book is very much part of the current trend which seems to involve merging a chick lit story with a historical time period and calling it a historical romance.  I don't really have an issue with this, publishing seems to lend itself to trends and this is obviously the latest, however it does leave me a wee bit nostalgic for a good, classic, angsty historical.  You long time romance readers know what I'm talking about.  I want an epic tale involving love, hate, separation, loss, villians, heartbreak, and enough angst to leave you with at least a few soaked hankies.

Does this kind of romance novel even exist anymore?  Is angst on the way out?  Am I the only reader who still likes the feeling of having my heart torn out? While I wait to hear your responses, I'm going to glom the other Maya Rodale titles, because really, she is a lot of fun to read.