Essays & Musings
What We’ve Been Thinking About
Thoughts on books, reading, culture, and the literary life.
the ask@AAR: Do you watch The Bachelor? Or other reality TV shows?
January 22, 2021I am blessed with a lovely daughter who, despite all attempts on my part to discourage her, keeps encouraging me to watch The Bachelor (and its gender flipped twin, The…
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Writing to a Soundtrack: A Guest Post by Alexandra Y. Caluen
January 19, 2021I’m a longtime fan of a series by Carrie Vaughn about Kitty the werewolf. Kitty works in radio, and each book leads off with a short playlist. I always liked…
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The Best Book of 2020: Round Two
January 18, 2021And it’s down to 25 books. Hundreds of you picked your favorites in Round One and now it’s time to whittle the list down to your top ten. You may…
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the ask@AAR: What’s your least favorite insult leveled at romance?
January 15, 2021Elaine S, a long time AAR reader and commenter, recently sent us an exceedingly irritating article from Britain’s the Daily Mail about the upcoming romance to be published by the…
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The Best Book of 2020? The readers decide!
January 13, 2021Over the past year, we’ve reviewed and discussed hundreds of books published this year, some of which we loved. We’ve shared with you our reviewers’ Best of 2020 lists–the AAR…
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the ask@AAR: Who would you cast in Lord of Scoundrels and other favorite romances?
January 8, 2021In our lively discussion about Bridgerton, several readers have shared how much they lust for love Regé-Jean Page, the absurdly sexy British-Zimbabwean actor who plays Simon Basset aka the Duke…
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The Best of 2020 – Dabney’s list
January 7, 2021Here, in no particular order, are the books I enjoyed the most this year. The Searcher by Tana French I’ve been stanning Tana French since reading her first book, In…
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Winsome or Loathsome: Daphne Bridgerton
January 2, 2021Given the phenomenal interest in Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, we thought it would be fun to republish this! originally published on March 2, 2015 Welcome to our new column, Winsome…
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the ask@AAR: Do you have a reading resolution you’d like to share?
January 1, 2021It’s the first day of 2021 and, really, it’s not a moment too soon. Worst year ever? No. That goes to 1348 when the Black Death wiped out half of…
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the ask@AAR: What’s your favorite Bridgerton and why?
December 25, 2020Many of us sat down today and started streaming Bridgerton on Netflix. The TV show is such a big deal it’s been (positively) reviewed in both the Washington Post and…
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the ask@AAR: What’s your favorite holiday film?
December 18, 2020Every year, in December, there’s a bevy of social media postings and articles about how much people loathe Love, Actually. And, of course, there are a host of articles and…
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the ask@AAR: What’s the greatest sex scene in romance?
December 11, 2020Every year, for almost 20 years, the Literary Review has awarded a Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Here’s the criteria (we will not discuss that this award doesn’t consider romance…
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