Essays & Musings
What We’ve Been Thinking About
Thoughts on books, reading, culture, and the literary life.
The seemingly endless technical problems at AAR
September 20, 2021On Sunday, after two of the plugins we use for comments and the forums were updated, five months of forums vanished and the forums themselves wouldn’t function properly. I spent…
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the ask@AAR: Do you read self-help books?
September 17, 2021Peeps–I’ve been a bit blue lately. I’m on crutches for six weeks–months after that with a cane–due to a soft tissue hip repair. Covid continues to threaten so many things….
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Seen any covers you love lately?
September 13, 2021Covers in romance come up again and again and, usually, readers are complaining. Whether it’s the Fabio-licious covers of the 1990s or the cartoon covers all over the place today,…
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the ask@AAR: What do you think about the current state of marketing in romance?
September 10, 2021There is chatter in Romancelandia about Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle. Where her first two books were romances, this novel–and I haven’t read it so I’m just repeating what I’ve…
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the ask@AAR: What love stories DO NOT stand the test of time?
September 3, 2021Reader Kris recently commented that when she reread Lisa Kleypas’ Dreaming of You it DID NOT hold up at all. She wrote: From Sarah saying NO to Derek not listening…
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What are you reading?
September 1, 2021I’ve been on a rereading binge. After the AAR Good Time Book Club read the surprisingly unsatisfying Fool Me Twice by the usually great Meredith Duran, I was inspired to…
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the ask@AAR: Another side in the endless kerfuffle about accuracy in historical romance.
August 27, 2021This week on Twitter, a famous historical romance author made the point that there are good reasons authors of historical romance break with convention. She argued authors do so not…
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The AAR Good Time Book Club: Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran
August 23, 2021Today we’re discussing Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran. In her B+ review, Blythe said: Fool Me Twice is easily my favorite Duran book of the last few years. After…
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the ask@AAR: Do you believe in destiny?
August 20, 2021I’ve just finished reading Pachinko which I loved. It’s a multigenerational tale of Koreans living in Japan during the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the themes the novel explores…
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Do you finish all the books you start?
August 16, 2021My rule for reading a book is, if after 100 pages more or less, I’m bored/irked/appalled, I quit. This, however, is just me. (For TV shows, it’s watch at least…
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The ask@AAR: What’s your favorite WWII novel?
August 13, 2021I am on my yearly week long vacation with my extended family of 21 and almost all the women in the group are reading books set in or around WWII….
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the ask@AAR: What stories make you ugly cry?
August 6, 2021As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent the last year listening to the Harry Potter books. I am currently at the end of book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,…
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What Should Surrogacy Require?
There are no rules. Maybe there should be.
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Sometimes a name is just a name
on offense, accommodation, and the value of getting the facts right
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A Novel Is Not a Safe Space
Books are allowed to offend you. You are allowed to close them. Everybody survives.
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