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Category: Reading

Posts in which we talk about reading habits and preferences

Read a Regency!!!! (part 3)

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So, does anyone want to report in on how the “Read a Regency” challenge is going? Has anyone read any good Regencies recently?

Here’s a list of some more award-winning Regencies. These all won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for best Regency:

1996 — THE DEVIL’S DUE by Rita Boucher
1997 — MY WAYWARD LADY by Evelyn Richardson
1998 — BEST LAID SCHEMES by Emma Jensen
1999 — MARIGOLD’S MARRIAGES by Sandra Heath
2000 — LORD NIGHTINGALE’S DEBUT by Judith A. Lansdowne
2001 — SUGARPLUM SURPRISES by Elisabeth Fairchild
2002 — THE DISCARDED DUKE by Nancy Butler
2003 — THE INDIFFERENT EARL by Blair Bancroft
2004 — A PASSIONATE ENDEAVOR by Sophia Nash

Has anyone read any of these? Any comments on them?

So, who’s been reading Regency Christmas stories?

I own every Signet Regency Christmas collection ever (I’m far older than I pretend to be) 🙂 and have read just
about every story in every one of them. They’re always enjoyable, and often fantastic!

Two of my favorite stories, both in the collection A REGENCY CHRISTMAS EVE (2000):

“The Christmas Thief” by Edith Layton. Funny, touching, and beautiful. First line:
On the day before Christmas, Lt. Major Maxwell Evers rose early, as was his habit, washed, dressed with care, and went out to steal a Christmas present.

“Little Miracles” by Barbara Metzger. Hilarious, sweet, and romantic. First lines:
They were as poor as church mice. No, they were the church mice.

Which are some of your favorite Regency Christmas stories? Or have you read any good Regency romances lately? Reports on either would be lovely!

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER, out now from Signet Regency!

Posted in Reading, Regency | Tagged | 9 Replies

All the family gathered ’round

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With all the holiday family-togetherness, and talking here about what a Regency Christmas might be like (no crowded malls! no animatronic Santas singing Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer!), I started considering romances which also feature relationships other than the main, h/h thing. Namely–family relationships.

We do see them a lot. You know, the ones where 30 siblings find their perfect loves in 30 books and have a big, happy reunion at the end of Book #30. My own family gatherings are seldom like this, and I imagine most family gatherings in the Regency weren’t, either. With my own family, someone is always not speaking to someone else. Someone gets drunk and cries and/or shrieks. The dog eats pizza and throws up on the carpet. My cousin’s kid takes his diaper off and runs around naked. You get the picture. It’s not so pretty. Hmm-now that I think about it, family reunions in the Regency probably weren’t like THAT, either. Georgian, maybe. 🙂

But there are books (even ones in mega-series!) that can capture the timeless best of families and friends. Their loyalty, their unconditional love, the way they might pick on you mercilessly but God help any outsider who dares to do the same. Family problems and stories never really get solved–they just go on and on, and we learn to live with them, and they become part of us. Some authors have captured these dynamics so well. Mary Balogh’s “Slightly” series. Mary Jo Putney’s Rogues. Gaelen Foley’s Knights. To name just a very few. (I’m sure I could find more if my shelves weren’t blocked by a Christmas tree and a heap of presents waiting to be wrapped). Jane Austen, of course, was ALL about family dynamics, and no one (with the probable exception of Shakespeare) had a greater grasp on the timeless give- and-take exasperation of relatives.

In my own books, I have lots of friends who have “made” families together, a few sisters, a couple of brothers, a mother or two. An aunt and uncle who are surrogate parents. Strangely, I find it harder to write about brothers than sisters, even though I have no sisters of my own. Families have made my characters who they are. They teach them how to love–or not to love!

What are some of your favorite “family” books or series? Why do you love them? Or hate them?

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged | 6 Replies

Catching Up Tuesday

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Is it Tuesday already???  Wow.  I have been working on two projects lately, plus planning a new one, plus trying to have some summer fun, so the week has really crept up on me.  So…what else have I been thinking about lately?

1) Winners!  The winner from my post last week launching One Naughty Night is…Lisa Wolff!  Email me at amccabe7551 AT yahoo.com with your mailing info and I will get a signed copy mailed out to you ASAP

2) Blogs and reviews.  Both good (yay!) and not-so-good (sad!).  It seems like the first week or so when a book is out brings several of them to my inbox every day.  Yesterday I was at the Grand Central Forever blog talking about how being a theater geek led me to the St. Claire family…

3) Watching “Call Me Maybe” takeoffs on YouTube

4) Which led me to “irrational celebrity hate lists” (not sure how).  We all have at least one, right?  Mine happens to be Kristin Stewart.  Ugh.  She just seems to stomp around looking profoundly angry that designers have thrown free clothes at her…

5) Maybe that means we also have irrational hate lists for character types?  The dotty old dowager?  The ditzy best friend?  Hmm.

6) Reading, of course.  I just finished Amor Towles’s amazing Rules of Civility, and now I can’t decide what to read next.  Any suggestions??

Who is on your irrational celebrity hate list??

 

Posted in Giveaways, Reading, Risky Book Talk | Tagged | 9 Replies

Angsty Angst

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I read in many genres, but one thing that stays consistent throughout all the genres I read is that I like there to be many, many dark moments.

I like it when I read something and I get that scared whoosh in the pit of my stomach as one of the book’s characters does or says something that moves them irrevocably towards a terrible end (although it’s not irrevocable, is it, since this is a romance, and we have an HEA. But at that moment it seems irrevocable).

I think that’s why I like Mary Balogh so much; her dark moments are so agonizingly painful for one or both of the characters. It’s too easy, as a writer, to want to keep things easy for your characters; after all, you created them, you like them, and they feel like friends (not to be all woo-woo, but that’s how I feel, at least).

But as writers, we have to make things difficult, or the ultimate payoff won’t be as sweet.
Some of my favorite authors–Anne Stuart, Stacia Kane, Karen Marie Moning, George R.R. Martin (still waiting for the payoff there), our own Carolyn Jewel, Brent Weeks–are amazing at tearing their characters apart as they try to reach some form of happiness.

Do you like the superdark moments in books? Which authors do it the best?

Megan

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged | 2 Replies

What I’m Reading Now

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So last week I mentioned I was reading Amor Towles’s Rules of Civility, and there were some comments about how beautiful the cover of this book is.  I decided I had to share it here since a) The cover really is totally gorgeous (and was what grabbed my attention in the first place) and b) The book itself was so amazingly good.  I read it in a couple of days and wanted it to go on longer.

It’s set in 1937, and has a very Fitzgerald-y feeling to the prose (one reviewer called it a “throwback” novel, which it is in the best sense of the word–very atmospheric, full of characters doing glamorous things with a dark underpinning and having witty conversations).  It opens in 1937, among the upper society of New York City, and is narrated by Katy Kontent, a young woman working in publishing and pulling herself up from a lower-class Russian Brighton Beach upbringing.  She and her friend Eve, out carousing in jazz clubs on New Year’s Eve, meet a handsome young banker named Tinker Gray, you think the story is heading one way, then–well, it doesn’t.  It’s almost Regency-esque in its complicated and detailed view of a very specific world.  I loved it.

I am always looking for books set in the 1920s and 1930s, such a rich setting that isn’t seen much in romance (though I think it definitely should be!).  I did one Undone short story set in the ’20s,The Girl in the Beaded Mask, and I would love to do more…

Right now I’ve started reading Sadie Jones’s The Uninvited Guests, since I’m still in a 1930s mood.  What have you been reading lately?  Do you like books set in this time period??

Posted in Reading | Tagged , , , | 5 Replies
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