Wandering Wednesday, September 29

An odd mix of articles for this week, a few quite old (sorry) and some just gleaned today! 

  • Literary mashups. Whether you like them or not, it seems they're spreading, and according to the Guardian, children's classics are next.
  • Author Lauren Willig on editing her first novel for mass paperback -- and what she chose to change.
  • The Paris Review blog on welcoming a new translation of Madame Bovary.
  • Allegedly, people (always? often? usually?) read page 99 of a book to get a sense of whether they want to purchase it or not.  Now there's a test for authors to see if their book would pass.
  • An appropriate article for Banned Books Week: what are books good for?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alyssa Cole's A Prince on Paper

Image
Love was for brave fools and Johan was entirely too clever and too cowardly to succumb to it.

Take one international playboy and one wallflower determined to change the story people tell of her and you get this wickedly charming romance.

A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole
Avon, 2019
Digital ARC provided by publisher

This was my second Cole book, but the first contemporary romance of hers I've read. As with the first book of hers I read, An Extraordinary Union, I was immediately smitten.

This is technically the third book in her Reluctant Royals series so I was a tiiiiiiny bit lost at the start when the characters from the earlier books were crowding for reader reunion time. But enough backstory is provided that I wasn't lost when it came to Nya and Johan, and their super cute, super sexy romance won me over immediately.

I loved this modern take on the romancing royalty trope -- I haven't read any modern royal romances, actually so I didn't know what to expect -- and now C…
Read more

Helen Hoang's The Bride Test

Image
What was he thinking about so intently? What was his story? Why didn't he smile for real?

This was my first Helen Hoang novel and you all: I. Am. Hooked. The Bride Test is such a delightfully cute, sweet, romantic read -- absolutely perfect for kicking off the summer reading season.

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
Berkley, 2019
Digital ARC from the publisher
Read Harder challenge

Hoang has been on my radar since her debut of  The Kiss Quotient: I'd been given a copy right at release and my book club ended up reading it (although I missed club that month and didn't get to read it!). My plan was to read it for this year's Read Harder challenge task 13 (a book by or about someone that identifies as neurodiverse) but I was granted an ARC of The Bride Test and the rest is history.

I honestly didn't know how Hoang would make this novel work. The hero, Khai, believes himself to be utterly incapable of feeling love toward anyone and has resigned himself to life without compa…
Read more

Sally Thorne's 99 Percent Mine

Image
You guys. You guys! Sally Thorne's The Hating Game was a favorite of 2017. I've already reread three, four times? I love it enough to say that I was wicked impatient for Thorne's next offering and to my utter dismay, it really, really didn't land with me.

99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne
William Morrow Paperbacks, 2019
Copy via the library

Everything about this one just disappointed, from the characters to the plot. Our heroine's obstacle to her HEA? Her own twin brother (who we're actually supposed to like, I think).

Let me go back. Characters: super flat. Premise: kind of not there, and also, dreary. Sexual tension: really, nonexistent. I mean, we're told our hero and heroine are super into each other but since the characters are just these flimsy frames, whether they figure it out or not just didn't have emotional resonance for me.

And the whole Alpha Male thing with our hero -- who is otherwise a lovely human but turns into A Savage Animal for our he…
Read more