Essays & Musings
What We’ve Been Thinking About
Thoughts on books, reading, culture, and the literary life.
The Best of 2015’s Romantic Suspense (Thus Far)
July 8, 2015Each January the AAR Annual Reader Poll is a major event here, celebrating the best in romance published for the first time the previous year. And each year many readers…
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How To Lose Money and Annoy Romance Fans: A Story of Scribd.
July 6, 2015About a year ago, I tried the free trial offered by eBook subscription service Scribd. The number and variety of titles were astonishing, and there were books from both major…
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Girls in the Game
July 3, 2015In honor of the FIFA Women’s World Cup I thought I’d write about some of my favorite romances starring female athletes. It’s not a huge subgenre (certainly not in comparison…
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Thank You, My Friend
July 1, 2015I was born in 1961. I grew up in a time and place where sex, drugs, and rock and roll were things all the cool kids did. So was psychoanalysis….
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The Audiobook of Beyond the Sunrise is a DIK!
June 29, 2015Mary Balogh’s 1992 novel Beyond the Sunrise boasts a storyline quite unlike those found in the other books of hers I’ve read in that it’s mostly plot, rather than character driven….
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The Sweet Raunchy Joy of “Catastrophe”
June 26, 2015Over the past week my almost 18 year old niece–she’s living with me for a month, brave soul–and I watched all six episodes of Amazon’s original show Catastrophe. And original it…
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Midweek Minis: The Late June Edition
June 24, 2015It’s been hotter than the devil’s backside where I live so, whenever possible, I’m staying indoors. And when the thermostat is still topping 100 degrees at the end of the day,…
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A Guest Pandora’s Box: Ginn Hale’s Lord of White Hell
June 12, 2015Hello everyone and welcome to our monthly AAR blog column. The basic idea is we choose a book every month and have a discussion about it. We being Elisabeth Lane…
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“Not tonight, dear. I have a headache.” Or not.
June 10, 2015I’ve been thinking about what turns women–OK, me–on. And by turns me on I mean interested in engaging in getting busy with my main squeeze. I’ve been pondering this for two…
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A Pandora’s Box: Mary Balogh’s Only a Promise
June 5, 2015Today, Dabney and Maggie tackle the latest Survivor’s Club by Mary Balogh, Only a Promise. The book comes out on Tuesday, June 9th. We’ve tried to avoid overt spoilers. Maggie summarizes the…
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Midweek Minis, the early June edition
June 3, 2015It’s another edition of the midweek minis. This time we have three AAR reviewers, Caz, Maggie, and Dabney, sharing the short scoop on seven books and one series. Have you read…
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Pitch Perfect 2. I liked it. Here’s why.
May 25, 2015I just returned from seeing Pitch Perfect 2 with my 19 year old daughter. We both enjoyed it thoroughly. I, however, am in the minority in my social media feeds….
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