Essays & Musings
What We’ve Been Thinking About
Thoughts on books, reading, culture, and the literary life.
Romance Reading Quiz answers: Part One
October 6, 2020Whoa! Over 100 of you filled out yesterday’s quiz on your romance reading! You go! I’ll be sharing your responses over the next week. Here are your choices for: Out…
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It’s Monday and we have questions!
October 5, 2020Happy Monday! We thought it would be fun to do a little survey–we’ll share the results this week! Go!
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the ask@AAR: How’s the discussion here working out for you?
October 2, 2020One of the great joys of 2020 has been the tenor, complexity, and abundance of the conversations here at AAR. We’ve had so many excellent, interesting, and, yes, feisty discussions…
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the ask@AAR: What romance takes you to a far away place?
September 25, 2020I’ve just finished my annual re-read of Meredith Duran’s debut The Duke of Shadows. The first part is set in India during the ill-fated rebellion of 1857. The rebellion began…
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the ask@AAR: What American romances have given you a strong sense of place?
September 18, 2020Right now, three of my four children are driving across America, taking ten days to go from the East Coast to the West. One of them is moving to take…
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the ask@AAR: How do you feel about politics in fiction?
September 11, 2020I just finished reading two books, Maria Vale’s Season of the Wolf and Carl Hiaasen’s Squeeze Me. Both made me think about the role of politics in fiction. In Vale’s…
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Inspire desire with ‘the good bits’ from great books By Siobhan Fitzgerald, co-founder, thegoodbits.com
September 9, 2020Romance readers have long known the power of the erotic to awaken desire—but for the uninitiated it can be a shock. Imagine reading, or listening to, Sierra Simone’s Priest for…
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Wolves, the Wild, and the Other: An Interview (and giveaway) with Maria Vale
September 8, 2020I’m not drawn usually to shapeshifter stories but the rave reviews at AAR for Maria Vale’s series, The Legend of All Wolves, convinced me to read book one, The Last…
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Keeping Time: a Guest Post by Alexandra Y. Caluen
September 6, 2020There’s a group on Facebook for self-published authors that I follow, and recently there was a discussion about a crowd of Amazon reviewers who piled on to criticize an author…
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the ask@AAR: What’s your idea of a romantic meal?
September 4, 2020Yesterday was my–gasp–32nd anniversary and to celebrate Dr. Feelgood and I ordered takeout pizza from a place that specializes in Roman inspired thin, crunchy crust pizza. I made us each…
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The Wayback on Wednesday: Adele Ashworth on her Virgin Widow
September 2, 2020Adele Ashworth on her Virgin Widow I’ve been reading romance novels for a long time. A long time. Now, it’s true that for the first twenty-five years or so of…
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the ask@AAR is, today, an answer! Here’s what you’ve read and loved in 2020.
August 28, 2020Earlier this week, we asked you what you’d read and loved this year. Over 50 of you filled out our survey–thank you!–and the results were varied. And while it’s a…
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