Essays & Musings
What We’ve Been Thinking About
Thoughts on books, reading, culture, and the literary life.
Midweek Minis
March 25, 2015Melanie’s reads: Gunpowder Alchemy by Jeannie Lin After all the raving about it this past year, I was really looking forward to this one. Honestly, though, I just couldn’t get…
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Taboo or not Taboo
March 20, 2015One of the ideas I’ve had for this blog is The Taboo Bookclub. I envision that, every month or so, we’d pick a book for discussion that has a taboo…
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Monday Minis
March 16, 2015Dabney’s reads: I first read Chase Me in November and loved it. Just loved it. So, while stuck in a surgery center waiting room for most of a Friday morning, I…
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A Few of My Favorite Scenes
March 13, 2015There’s been a lot in the media lately about women and desire and what it is, exactly, that flips the female switch from watching “The Bachelor” to wanting to do the…
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An interview (and giveaway) with author Stella Riley
March 11, 2015Back in 2013 when AAR staffers were asked to choose their top ten romances, one of my choices was A Splendid Defiance by the British author, Stella Riley. It’s a…
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A Guest Pandora’s Box: Erin Nicholas’s Getting Dirty
March 6, 2015Hello everyone and welcome to the second of our AAR blog columns. The basic idea is that we’re going to choose a book every month and have a hopefully-not-too-lengthy discussion…
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Midweek Minis
March 4, 2015When Good Earls Go Bad: A Victorian Valentine’s Day Novella by Megan Frampton is a quick read and one I’d recommend to anyone who likes frothy, fun historical romance. Ms. Frampton…
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a Pandora’s Box: Karina Bliss’s Rise
February 27, 2015Acclaimed literary biographer Elizabeth Winston writes about long-dead heroes. So bad-boy rock icon Zander Freedman couldn’t possibly tempt her to write his memoir. Except the man is a mass of fascinating contradictions–manipulative,…
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Dabney’s Best of 2014 List
February 11, 2015My romance reading in 2014 can be summed up in one word: Contemporary. When I look at the almost 200 romances I read last year, only a quarter of them…
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Talking with Larissa Brown about Beautiful Wreck, knitting, Iceland, and old Norse
February 9, 2015One of my goals for 2015 is to read all the romances my colleagues here at AAR picked as their choice for Best of 2014. (That column is here.) The first one…
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A Guest Pandora’s Box: Judith Ivory’s Beast
February 6, 2015Hello everyone and welcome to the first in what we hope will be on-going series here on the AAR blog. Every month or so we’re going to choose a romance…
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Maggie’s Best of 2014 List
February 4, 2015What constitutes a DIK/5 Star/Best of romance? For me, a DIK romance is a book that delights me, with characters I at least like (but normally, I love them) and…
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