My Favorite Reads: Guilty Pleasures

My Favorite Reads is a meme hosted by Alyce from At Home With Books.  You simply discuss a book you enjoyed before you started blogging!  In my last post, I mentioned that Laura Lee Guhrke has written at least two of my favorite romances.  Here's the earlier of those two:



Guilty Pleasures by Laura Lee Guhrke

This has got to be one of best romance novels I've ever read.  You know how you come to expect certain things in genre books, so you're anticipating all the plot points before they happen?  Well, in Guilty Pleasures, LLG defied all my expectations and gave me a practically perfect romance.  It's full of great characters, true love, adventure, and mystery that add to the story.  (I know you're thinking the cover sucks, but it actually makes sense once you read the book.)

The shy and bookish Daphne Wade has been in love with the Duke of Tremore for years.  Of course she's in love with him--he's intelligent, handsome, dashing, and rich.  What's not to love?  Daphne, meanwhile, is a "spinster" and so poor she's actually employed--as a restorer for some of Tremore's ancient artifacts.  This part at the very beginning of the book was, in all honesty, somewhat annoying.  But fear not!  Daphne soon overhears Tremore declare she's completely unattractive, and then she's pissed.  Naturally, it's immediately after she decides she never wants anything to do with him that he starts to notice her.

Guilty Pleasures has a sort of Cinderella-esque charm to it, although I wouldn't call it a Cinderella story exactly.  The romance between Daphne and Anthony (Tremore) is so wonderful because they're likeable, believable characters; and I loved the secondary characters as well.  If you like historical romance and you haven't read it yet, get thee to a bookstore and buy Guilty Pleasures.  NOW.

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Fall into Romance

Image by Clearly Ambiguous

With the changing of the seasons, a lot of people change their reading habits. Several people have blogged about this before, like MJMBecky from One Literature Nut and Amy from My Friend Amy. Going back to school means you have a whole different set of books to read, and a change in pace at work or in school often affects the time people can devote to reading.

I don't really change my reading habits that much based on the seasons except for one thing--I start to read a lot more romance. I guess I just need the warm fuzzies or something. Here are a few romances I'm really excited to read this fall:



Tempt Me at Twilight by Lisa Kleypas

Book 300 in the Hathaway series. Haha, not really--it's not that bad yet. But it's getting there. Kleypas is one of my favorite writers, so I'm excited about this new book. I wish there was going to be another Rom hero in it, though.



Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran

Duran might be my new favorite romance writer. After Bound By Your Touch, I'm very excited to read this book, which features James' best friend, Phin.



With Seduction in Mind by Laura Lee Guhrke

Okay, seriously, this is the crappiest cover I've seen in a while. Even by romance novel standards it's pretty bad. Now if there was a guy on cover....

Anywhooo, LLG (don't ask me to type her name because I'm constantly misspelling it) is another one of my favorite writers and has written two of my favoritest romance novels evarrr, so I'm certifiably excited about this book. What is it about? I haz no idea. It doth not matter, my lovelies--I am buying it.



Storm of Visions: The Chosen Ones by Christina Dodd

I really liked Dodd's first paranormal series, so the new one should be just as good (should be). The last series was about a group of men who shifted into animals because of a deal with the devil. This one appears to be about people with extrasensory perception.



The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber

I first heard about this book from Katiebabs at Babling About Books & More, and it sounded totally cool. It's a Victorian Gothic ghost story and romance. So I gave in and bought it. I think it's going to be a great book to read during the fall--I mean, who doesn't love Victorian Gothic ghost stories with romance, right? And according to the lovely Mandi at Smexy Books, the hero is modeled off of Alan Rickman! Rawrrrrrrr.



What books are you looking forward to reading this fall?

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Why I Don't Rate My Reviews--A Manifesto

From the cover of The New Yorker Magazine, Nov. 6, 2006

Recently Shannon Hale at Squeetus Blog posted a very interesting and complicated question to people who review books on their blogs. I'm not going to adress all the of issues she brought up, but the part about rating reviews really caught my attention:

If you review a book but don't rate, why not? What do you feel is your role as reviewer?

When I first started reviewing books--seriously reviewing them, not just saying, "Hey, I read this book and I liked it"--I didn't even consider doing ratings. The reason was simply that I wanted people to read my review, not jump immediately to the rating. Also, the way I feel about a book can't be summed up in a rating--not consistently, at any rate. Ratings carry the weight of being objective, and the fact is I'm rarely objective when it comes to books. I'm not even sure I want to be objective: reading books is a completely personal experience for me. Yes, I could say that, objectively, such-and-such book was good, but please. Bor-ing! I'm forced to be objective when I write papers for work; I don't want to do that for my fun writing.

But then Sarah at Monkey Bear Reviews did a blog on grading books, and I started to think about changing my anti-rating practice. It definitely seems that people like the convenience of a rating when perusing blogs (I admit even I find that convenient), and really what could it hurt?

There's still the problem of consistency, however. If I reviewed the same type of books over and over, I might feel more comfortable doing a ratings system, because then I would know at least all of the books would be relatively comparable. But how can a romance novel and a book about Egyptian Art stand against one another in a ratings system? I have totally different expectations for either book. Furthermore, I kind of pride myself on writing reviews in different styles for every book I read--not sure if I succeed, but that's the goal. To my mind, this makes a rating system rather pointless.

I admit I use ratings on other sites like Goodreads and Amazon, but they've turned into a personal code for me that wouldn't be useful to anyone else. For example, one star means I didn't finish the book; two stars means I skimmed it. They really have nothing to do with how good the book might be.

So I think Shannon is definitely correct when she suggests that a lack of ratings is a reflection of what I feel my role as a reviewer is. I want to capture the ephemeral experience of a book when I write about it. Ratings simply don't fit in with that goal.

Do you use ratings when you review books? Why or why not?

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Summer Finales

I saw the finales of two summer series this week, and both of them disappointed me to a certain certain extent.



The first was Burn Notice (yes, I know this show ended a while ago, but I'm only now caught up). For those of you who haven't been keeping up, Michael got dropped by some super-secret spy organization because he said he wanted out. So then all his old spy frenemies started popping up out of the woodwork. That was kind of entertaining, but also dangerous; so Michael decided he wanted back in. Again. Fiona and Sam were both totally against this, and Fi declared she was going to move back to Ireland. Sadly, her moving alerted Harry Dresden to her wherabouts and he kidnapped her, thus forcing Michael to chose between saving Fi or re-enterting the intelligence community.

Now, I love the character of Fiona on this show. In fact, if the show was all about Fi, I'd be down with that. But I've never liked Fiona and Michael as a romantic couple. I think it's just the fact that Michael is never attracted to, involved, or even seen flirting with another woman--it just seems waaaayyyy too convenient. Like she's there and she's obviously attracted to him, so when he wants a little action he can just ring her up. And when he wants to get back into his spy thing, he just says adios and leaves. That's fine if it's part of the show; I just don't view it as a romantic subplot. And I want my romantic subplots, dammit!

Nevertheless, the writers have been forcing a Michael/Fiona romance down our throats for the entire season, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be until the finale, which had a totally lame wrap up. Fiona finally admits she's still in love with Michael (she's obviously a glutton for punishment), and blah blah blah, he saves the girl. But instead of admitting anything (feelings-wise), he just says, "We're not any good at this." Really?!?!? I hadn't noticed.

Let's face it, Fi and Michael's relationship has nooo future right now. They either need to break up and see other people, or get married. And think we all know the get married part isn't going to happen.



The second show was Merlin. I still love this show, but WTF was the deal with the season finale? Arthur acts like a prat (as usual), and gets bitten by a poisonous monster. Merlin finds out the only way to save his life is to go to a magical island and ask the sorcerers there for intervene. But Arthur's life comes with a price: someone else's life. Illogically, Merlin decides to trade Nimueh (yep, she's there too, and apparently she only owns one dress) his life for Arthur's. But Nimueh twicks him and takes Merlin's mother's life instead. Why I don't know. So Merlin decides to try to trade his life again, because it worked so well the first time (is this summary making any sense? I thought not). Fast forward fast forward, Gaius decides to trade his life for Merlin's mum's, Merlin puts the hurt on Nimueh, and Gaius comes back to life.

What the hell?

Okay, we still have the problem of who traded who's life for Arthur's and then Merlin's mom, so is she still going to die? I'm totally confused. And why did Gaius come back to life again?

Also, there was no denoumet, just Merlin screaming to heavens because old guy Gaius was dead; and then, poof! He's alive again and the show is over. Is this supposed to make me want to watch next season??? Not that I won't watch, mind you, but that's a pretty lame ending to the season.

What summer series have you been watching?

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TSS-The Sunday Sun

A song for you this Sunday:

This last week has been pretty stressful for me, what with starting a new job.  Because we're going through training, our hours have been very irregular--one day we'll working 4-11 PM, the next day we'll work 9-4 AM.  As a result, I've been very tired and haven't been able to blog or even read that much, which makes me sad.  It has become clear, though, that with my new job I'm going to have to prioritize more about when it comes to blogging.  I think reading obviously has to be my number one priority.  I'm still reading--and not even halfway through--the book I started the week before last, The Oracles of Delphi Keep, just because I leave it until late at night to read, and then I'm so tired I can only get through a page.  Same thing with writing, another activity I traditionally leave until after midnight--I'm just too tired after working to put together sentences, it seems like.  So I think I'm going to start flipping my activities so I can devote more free time to read and writing, and leave going through other people's blogs and commenting for my days off.

The good news is, after September, I think things at my job are going to slow down considerably.  I'll likely be able to read a lot at work then.  So that's something to look forward to... I guess.  Boring jobs, yay.



In other news, I've been nominated for five categories for Book Blogger Appreciation Week! *blush*  Thank you so much for nominating me, everyone--I really appreciate it.  I was nominated for best romance blog, most eclectic blog, best special topic blog, best commentator (that's nice!), and best series or feature on Mondays.  Hooray!  I'm honored that you guys thought of me when submitting your nominations.



I also joined yet another challenge.  I must needs stop myself, no?  But since I've been watching Merlin lately, I've really been wanting to read Arthurian-related books.  Irish on twitter let me know about Becky's Arthurian Challenge, so I signed up right away!  I've already decided I'm going to read The Once and Future King by TH White, Taliesin by Stephen Lawhead, Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliott, and re-read the Merlin books by Mary Stewart and The Broken Sword.  I might read something else if I come across anything interesting (I am open to suggestions). 

Lastly, Nymeth mentioned on Things Mean a Lot that she is also trying to reduce the size of her TBR pile, and gave herself some rules to follow for doing so.  I've decided to follow her lead and set up some personal guidelines, too.  So here we go:

• Once library books reach their renewal limit, I will not order them again until my TBR pile is down to one shelf.  If I'm not going to read them in a month, it's just not going to happen.  They need to go.
• I'm not going to join any more challenges (after the Arthurian Challenge, of course ^_^).
• No more buying books (not that I've been buying that many books lately anyway... except for that one book I just bought.  Ooops).
• I will not let myself be pressured into reading books other people loan me, no matter how much they pout and pester me about it (yes, I'm talking to you, Mom).

So there you go.  My three rules.  With these, I should have my TBR pile whittled down by, oh, never.  Haha.  Oh well--you really can't have too many books, right?

What are you reading this week?

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Book Blogger Appreciation Week Meme

1)  What has been one of the highlights of blogging for you?

Recommending a book I love to someone else and having them love it, too.  That's always great--spreadin' the love.  Also the opportunity to talk to authors who write the books I love.  And (it should go without saying) I love the wonderful book blogging community that makes writing and talking about books so much fun.

2)  What blogger has helped you out with your blog by answering questions, linking to you, or inspiring you?

There have been so many!  Rebecca from Lost In Books definitely inspired me to set up my Art History Challenge, and mjmbecky from One Literature Nut has also convinced me to join several challenges and helped me out with my blog on occassion.  As for inspiration, Bookish Ruth was the first blog I visited where I thought, "Hmm, it might be fun to have a blog just for books and whatnot." ^_^

3)  What one question do you have about BBAW that someone who participated last year could answer?

On a scale of one to a zillion, how much fun is it?

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My Favorite Reads: The Wind Singer

My Favorite Reads is a meme hosted by Alyce from At Home with Books.  You just talk about one of your favorite books from before you started blogging!  Today I'm talking about The Wind Singer, a YA novel by William Nicholson.

The Wind Singer takes place in a dystopian city called Aramanth.  Aramanth is organized by an extremely strict caste system, where what family you're born into determines practically everything in your life.  The main character is the precocious Kestrel, who stages a rebellion against the caste system in her school that sends her entire family to the lowest rung of the social ladder.  But Kestrel doesn't let that stop her from her vision of righting what she sees as the wrongs in Aramanth!  When she hears about The Wind Singer--a person who will restore harmony to Aramanth through the power of his/her voice--she sets out on a dangerous adventure outside the walls of Aramanth and into the desert territory of the evil Zars to find him or her.  Tagging along are Kestrel's brother, Pinpin, and their classmate and friend, Mumpo (who was my favorite character in the book).

Before writing novels, Nicholson was a screenwriter and wrote several blockbuster films, like Gladiator.  This is definitely reflected in The Wind Singer; you're plunged immediately into the world of Kestrel and Pinpin, and the action is pretty much non-stop until the end.  Although this is a long book, it goes by really fast.  I think I read all 500-ish pages in a day.  I literally could not put it down.  Plus, I loved all of the main charaters and was fascinated by the world of Aramanth. 

Essentially this is a great, fun, easily digested novel with a strong female lead that deals with themes of justice, equality, magic, and courage.  I can't recommend it enough!

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