Pick the next AAR Good Time Book Club read!
It’s time to pick the next AAR Good Time Book Club read! In this first round, pick as many as you’re interested in!
Here are the choices. You must use the poll link if you want to vote! […]
the ask@AAR: What was the first romance novel you read?
While the first romance that ever really registered with me is Sweet, Savage Love (and I attribute that to it being the first book in which the sex was varied and, for the time, explicit), the first romance novel I read was–and I have no idea which–one of Barbara Cartland’s 723 books.
I read hundreds of Cartland’s books and they all blend together now in my head. There’s always a lovely young virginal woman, an older slightly rakish and devastatingly handsome hero, a villain who wants bad things to happen, a scene in a carriage, and at least one kiss that renders our heroine into a proverbial butter pat. […]
Desperately Seeking Non-Fiction Written by Women
Confession: I don’t read non-fiction. BUT. Everyone in my family are fanatical nonfiction readers and, as I look at the books they’re reading, I realize almost all the authors are male. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
That said, I’d like to start–gently, of course–suggesting some tomes by female authors. What do you love? These books can be about anything!
Happy Monday!
What would you take to a Desert Island. NO CHEATING!
OK, the ship you were on sank and you and the island partner of your dreams managed to make it safely to a remote island with no hope of immediate rescue. However, when you were jumping into the only raft that made it–with aforementioned castaway hottie–you were able to grab ONE book, ONE album, and ONE movie. (Fortunately, your raft had a generator, a CD player, and a TV with built in DVD player on it. WORK WITH ME PEOPLE!)
What would you take? Why? And no damn collected works or box sets allowed! […]
May TBR Challenge – Fairytales
Caz was going to fly solo for this month’s TBR Challenge post–Lynn will be back next month for your regular dual helping of TBR reviews. Dabney, who loves fairytale retellings, decided to step in. Enjoy!
Birarley by Aster Glenn Gray
I’m not a big fan of fairytale retellings, so I struggled a to come up with something for this month’s Challenge prompt and was almost at the point of just picking up a random book instead. But then I remembered Aster Glenn Gray’s Briarley – an m/m version of Beauty and the Beast – that I’d come across at the end of last year after enjoying Honeytrap. Problem solved! […]
Best Moms in Romance?
I was fortunate enough to spend yesterday, Mother’s Day, with my mom–truly the best mom and grandmother I could imagine. Until she retired at 79, she was a children’s librarian. We were talking about moms in books for kids–both of us think the best mothering is done by the mom in The Runaway Bunny–and it got me thinking about moms in romance.
There are, especially in contemporary romance, a lot of mom heroines, often single, but I can’t think of any that stand out to me right now. The moms I recall with pleasure are almost always secondary leads, often in historical romance or in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ novels.
Tessa, the mom of Ainsley, the hero in Lorraine Heath’s Waking Up With The Duke, is wonderful. Not only does she help her son and the woman he loves find their way to happiness, she has her own poignant love story that concludes with her proposing to her much younger […]
Best biography you’ve ever read?
My serious book club–as opposed to our Good Time Book Club and my we only read books that make us glad to be alive Book Club is currently reading Barack Obama’s A Promised Land. You’d think we’d love it. We’re all Obama fans, the book has five full stars at Amazon from over 100K readers but… nope. Only two women, enviable overachievers both of them, have managed to finish this 753 page book. It’s just too long or too detail oriented or the sentences are too hard to follow or too something. […]
What are you reading? Watching?
Now that I have been vaccinated–yay!–I have been doing less reading and watching than during the pandemic. For the past year, I’ve read several books a week (The best: Bench Player and Ten Things I Hate About the Duke and binged what seems like, in retrospect, countless shows. (The best: A Place to Call Home followed by The Queen’s Gambit.)
However, even though I’m reading and watching less, I am still doing both!
I am currently reading Last Hope Island and The Heiress Hunt. The first is taking me a while because I so rarely read nonfiction. The second, well, the jury’s out on this one. I loved the set up but, halfway into the book, want to send Maddie, the heroine, to Golden Rule School. Next up, is Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro and–I can’t wait–The Devil and the Heiress by Harper St. George. I’m watching, for the first time, Mad […]
Over the Big Mis
Last night my mom and I watched the 1995 rom com While You Were Sleeping and…. well, let’s just say it was not for us. (My mom, every 15 fifteen minutes: This makes no sense.) What we disliked the most about it–and there is a list–is its premise. None of the film would have been necessary–and that would have been a good thing–if Sandra Bullock’s Lucy had just said, with her famous I really just want to be loved smile, “Sorry, there’s been a big misunderstanding.” […]
the ask@AAR: Are you ready for romances set in the pandemic?
There’s been a slew of novels set in the pandemic on Netgalley recently and I for one am not here for them. I am so tired of lockdown and COVID and social isolation–the last thing I want to read for fun is something that highlights these things. Give me escapism baby! […]