Tuesday Thingers & New Book excitement

Before I get to Tuesday Thingers, I wanted to tell everybody how ridiculously excited I am that Elizabeth Boyle's Confessions of a Little Black Dress came out today, and I can actually download it from Sony so my being out of the country doesn't have to make me cry! Huzzah for technology and Tally Langley - our latest heroine in the Bachelor Chronicles. Interested? Have yourself an excerpt!

Wendi from Wendi's Book Corner asks: What is your least-favorite book(s)? Is your least-favorite book listed in your LT library? If it is listed, do you have anything special in the tags or comments section? How have others rated your least-favorite book?

My least favorite book(s) are quite numerous, but I think the best choice here is probably Lara by Bertrice Small. This was the first in a fantasy romance series (I love fantasy, I love romance, this book? I did not love). I rated it one star - rather generous, I think, and posted an attempt at a review here. If you can't bear to read even that, I will condense my basic problem down for you: 540 pages of MAN-ROOTS. Man-roots? Really?

As for other people - 75 people have it, and the average rating is 3.1 stars... So somebody must like this sort of thing...

March Roundup

Update!: I know I have barely been around this month, and I wanted to apologize for disappearing without any sort of warning. This has been a busy month full of travel, visitors, and schoolwork. That said, I did come up with a new idea for a feature! Keep your eyes peeled next Monday for what I hope becomes an interesting series of posts.

Books Finished: 11

Favorite March Book:

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness

There's been a lot of well-deserved praise about this young adult dystopia running around the blog-o-sphere, and I'd just like to take a minute to add to it. The Knife of Never Letting Go is a fast-paced engrossing read full of adventure and secrets. I loved the premise (a town of only men who can all hear each others' thoughts all the time - but hiding a dangerous secret), the voice, and I thought the reveal was really well done. A great book that had me just tearing through it only to reach the cliff-hanger ending. GAH! Luckily for us all, the second book in the trilogy: The Ask and the Answer should be available this September...

Author Encounters:

Rhonda Stapleton commented on the Waiting on Wednesday post for her new book Stupid Cupid coming out in December of this year (MUCH too long to wait). But it's available for pre-order, and if cute romantic comedies are your thing, I think this series will be a winner. Thanks for stopping by, Rhonda!

Books Read:

1. To Deceive a Duke - Amanda McCabe
2. His Lady Mistress - Elizabeth Rolls
3. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
4. The Aviary Gate - Katie Hickman
5. The ABC's of Kissing Boys - Tina Ferraro
6. The Transformation of Miss Ashworth - Anne Ashley
7. Vivaldi's Virgins - Barbara Quick
8. Drama Club: Fall Musical - Peter Lerangis
9. Break Neck - Erica Spindler
10. Notorious Lord, Compromised Miss - Annie Burrows
11. The Buccaneers - Iain Lawrence

Still promising more reviews soon! This time I hope to live up to it...

Waiting on Wednesday

Stupid Cupid (book 1)—coming December 22, 2009!

Felicity Walker believes in true love. That’s why she applies for a gig at the matchmaking company Cupid’s Hollow. But when Felicity gets the job, she learns that she isn’t just a matchmaker…she’s a cupid! (There’s more than one of them, you know.)
Armed with a hot pink, tricked-out PDA infused with the latest in cupid magic (love arrows shot through email), Felicity works to meet her quota of successful matches. But when she bends the rules of cupidity by matching her best friend Maya with three different boys at once, disaster strikes. Felicity needs to come up with a plan to set it all right, pronto, before she gets fired…and before Maya ends up with her heart split in three.

Why I'm Waiting: Do you really have to ask me that? Teen romantic comedy, falling in love magic gone horribly, horribly awry. It sounds hilarious. Plus, I wrote a story like that for Valentine's Day back in high school, not the exact plot line, but the general hijinks. I'm looking forward to reading someone else's version!

Tuesday Thingers - Early Reviewers

Question from Wendi: Were you aware of the Early Reviewer Program? Have you received any books from the program? If you have, how have you liked the book(s)? Any other thoughts on the LTER program?

I've been a member of the Early Reviewer program for quite a while now, and I've received several books from the program (5 read and reviewed, 3 pending):

Winter Haven by Athol Dickson - a Gothic Christian thriller. I gave it 3 stars. This really wasn't my cup of tea. I didn't realize it was Christian fiction when I requested it, so I was apprehensive. Ultimately though, the heroine did a lot more to turn me off the book than the Christian elements. I found her really irritating.

The Arthurian Omen by G.G. Vandagriff - an Arthurian-themed thriller. I was really excited about this one when I first saw it. It didn't really live up to my expectations. I gave it 3 stars because it was quite a page-turner. But there wasn't nearly enough Arthur, and I thought the heroine was Too Stupid To Live.

The Fire by Katherine Neville - another 3 stars. I'm sensing a trend. I wasn't as enamored of The Eight as everyone else seemed to be, so this wasn't as big of a disappointment to me as it was to some. That said, the heroine seemed to be floundering for 3/4 of the book...which meant I floundered along with her.

Gladiatrix by Russell Whitfield - 2 1/2 stars here. I'm becoming more picky? I didn't like the heroine, and while I was fine with the amount of gladiator gore, I felt that the rape scenes were too much. Clearly it was not the intention of the author, but some of the rape fantasies seemed almost lovingly described - that's not quite what I wanted to say...but it's the phrase that keeps leaping to mind. Did anyone else feel this way?

Finally! The Knock-it-out-of-the-Park: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. Absolutely 5 stars. Gorgeous and tender, a beautiful love story, a look at culture clash, a historical novel. Everything I want out of a story. One of my new favorites.

I've gotten lucky in the past few months as well, so I'm waiting for: Sonnets by Warwick Collins, Breakneck by Erica Spindler, and Darling Jim by Christian Moerk!

Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw

The image on the left is one of Jean-Léon Gérôme's interpretations of the Pygmalion myth. In that story (for those of you who don't know), the talented sculptor Pygmalion carves a statue of a woman out of ivory. She is so beautiful and so life-like that he falls in love with his own statue and prays to Aphrodite for her help. She relents and brings the statue to life (as seen here).

The story of Pygmalion has always been one of my favorites, and I quite like the musical My Fair Lady - which is based on Shaw's play. So I decided now was as good a time as any to read Shaw's (loose) interpretation of the myth.

The play opens with Henry Higgins, a professor of linguistics, at Covent Garden sheltering with a crowd from the pouring rain. He amuses himself by taking down people's accents and telling them where they're from - much to their irritation and the fascination of Colonel Pickering. At one point as he leaves, Higgins tells Pickering that if he had a month or so, he could turn flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a duchess. But no one could be more surprised when she decides to take him up on his offer.

The later musical, My Fair Lady, is actually remarkably faithful to its source (aside from all the singing, of course), except for one crucial thing. The ending. In Shaw's play, Eliza is very much aware that Higgins takes her for granted and shows her no real kindness. And thank goodness, in this version when Higgins tells her to run errands for him, she tells him to do them himself. The author even appends an essay to the end of the play explaining the many ways that it is impossible for Eliza and Higgins to have any sort of romantic happy ending. All I have to say to that is Thank Goodness.

My favorite part of the musical has always been Freddy. Particularly Freddy's "On the Street Where You Live". Higgins' "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" really just doesn't cut it in comparison. Besides, Eliza always seemed to have so much more gumption than to knuckle under to Higgins self-centered self-assurance. And I'm quite glad to have to author of Pygmalion in my corner on this one!

The play itself is a quick read, especially since most of the scenes are familiar from My Fair Lady. My favorites are the ones involving Higgins' mother - the only one who sees both the drama and the outcome in advance. She takes Eliza under her wing and does her best to set her son straight. Besides it is at Mrs. Higgins' tea that we see Eliza's disastrous (though perfectly pronounced) first venture into society. Both funny and hinting at deeper truths - the play is well worth a read. And don't leave out the essay at the end!

Talk Me Down - Victoria Dahl

**** - I'm not usually a fan of contemporaries, though I'm not really sure why. This book really won me over, though. It had its issues, but every time I came back to it, I had a huge grin on my face.

Molly Jennings has a naughty little secret that she keeps even from her family. She works as a successful erotica writer under a pseudonym to keep her career private. But now that some trouble with her ex is forcing her to move back to her snow-bound small hometown of Tumble Creek, she just may get a chance to experiment with her favorite inspiration - police chief Ben Lawson. But a scandal he suffered through in his teens means that Ben hates anything that smacks of secrecy, and he knows Molly's got one that she's not telling. But he just can't seem to keep away.

There's a lot to like in this novel. Molly is a lot of fun - spunky and determined to get what she wants (Ben). She's unafraid and unashamed of sex, and she's not ashamed of her career, either. The secret is kept for other reasons. There are bits of this that are downright hilarious (like accidentally setting the siren off in his truck), fun scenes when Molly is out with her girl pals and absolutely set on tantalizing the police chief out of his wits.

Dahl also captures the charm of an old relationship reawakening as something new - all of the pent-up sexual tension that Ben didn't allow himself to feel and Molly's fantasies. But also tender scenes like when Ben refuses to take nude photos of Molly, but leaves beautiful shots of her ear and the curve of her neck next to her on the bed when she wakes up. Their relationship is, of course, made more difficult by the town's gleeful gossip and Ben's fear of public attention. And all of that works.

What definitely doesn't work as well is the stalker subplot. Although I could sympathize with Molly's fears that Ben would fall for her ex's charm just like everyone else did, stalking crimes are dangerous. And while Molly showed good sense in calling the cops when she did see someone, it was incredibly stupid not to tell someone (particularly her law enforcement boyfriend) about her ex harassing her. She never fell over the line into TSTL for me, but I was definitely exasperated that she kept THAT a secret.

I had the whodunnit angle figured out quite early on, and I thought the stalking subplot went on too long - which weakened the eventual get-together and dealing with each other's secrets. That said, the climactic scene definitely had me jumpy. A quick read, and once things got going, I tore right through it. Certainly one I would recommend.

Click here to read an excerpt!

Liked it? Read the others in the Tumble Creek series:

Book 1: Talk Me Down

Book 2: Start Me Up

Book 3: Lead Me On

Interested in other opinions?

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Katiebabs at BlogHer

Buddy review at Breezing Through Books

Book Binge

The Good, The Bad, The Unread

Romance Rookie