Book 14 of 52: Someone to Love by Mary Balogh
I saw a recent tweet complaining that romance novels are boring because they’re predictable. The two leads get together in the end. How can they be interesting at all! What I wanted to say (but didn’t, because I am already too online) is that the predictability is the point. You don’t go into reading a crime novel thinking you won’t find out who did it in the end. The same is with romance novels: knowing there’s a happy ending is one of the reasons I sometimes pick one up. I don’t need to be surprised. I just want some enjoyable company. Which is how I once again selected a Mary Balogh book, this time Someone to Love, the first book in the Westcott series (Book 39 of 52 of 2022 was also a Westcott book). I’ve said this before, but I’ll sometimes buy three or four books in a romance series just to have on hand for when I need them. Two weekends ago, I had a brush with hypothermia (I went out running early to beat the rain, and I didn’t) and couldn’t focus on anything more than Donald Duck cartoons. When I started to feel better, I tried picking up a book to read but started and stopped four different ones. Which brought me to the stack of Balough’s books on my shelf. In this one, we have Anna Snow, a teacher at an orphanage where she was once an orphan herself. She is brought into the circle…
Friday Folio: March 17, 2023
Some personal news! My new ebook, Notes from a Hired Pen: Freelance Writing for Laid-Off Journalists (and Those Who Want to Quit) is now out! Hooray! It’s usually $10 but discounted to $7 for the launch. Oprah’s Book Club turns 100! Well, has chosen it’s 100th book. Toni Morrison is now on a stamp! I know some people are mad about Leigh Bardugo getting a reported eight-figure book deal. But she’s popular, her book sell, so…what? I’m way more annoyed about people who become famous…
Book 13 of 52: Corrections in Ink by Keri Blakinger
When Keri Blakinger first made big headlines, it wasn’t for a good reason. She was a former figure skater turned heroin addict, charged with a second-degree felony for having about $50,000 worth of the drug. She’s now a staff writer with the Marshall Project, covering prisons and jails. So how did Blakinger get from point A to point B? Or, really, from point A (skater) to B (felon) to C (respected journalist)? That’s what she writes about in her memoir Corrections in Ink, which came…
Friday Folio: March 10, 2023
Friday! Let’s hit it! Handling rare books? No cotton gloves please! Via The New York Times. There’s almost too much book banning news to cover. This New Yorker piece looks at how banning books isn’t protecting children (and yes I read a lot of books on the most banned list as a child and teenager, usually in class because my school taught them for the same reasons other folks want to ban them. Glad they did!) Like Terry Pratchett? Twenty of his early stories are…
Book 12 of 52: A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera
Luz Alana and James Evanston Sinclair are both in a pickle. Both are the children of distillers — she of a Dominican Republic rum family, he of Scotch whisky. Both are entitled to significant family wealth after the passing of their distilling parent. But each face a hurdle to claiming their wealth: they need to be married to inherit. What are they do to do? Marry each other of course. Fake marriages aren’t my favorite romance trope, but it mostly works in A Caribbean Heiress…
Book 65 of 52: A Gentleman in Moscow
Book 64 of 52: Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobson
Book 63 of 52: Baron by Joanna Shupe
Book 62 of 52: The Secret Apartment: Vet Stadium, a surreal memoir by Tom Garvey
Book 61 of 52: The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
