Books
Finished reading: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 📚
I’m late to this party but happy to finally be here. As sweet and hot as the romance here is, it’s the portrayal of fibromyalgia that makes my heart sing.
Finished reading: For Never & Always by Helena Greer 📚
I love it so much. Finished it in under 48 hours. Helena Greer has given us a lovely place in Carrigan’s Christmasland and a host of delightful people to populate it. I keep seeing different bits of myself in each of her characters and it makes me happy. Highly recommend.
Me: I started this book last night and read only one chapter before bed. Now I’m on page 214.
W: Sounds like my wife.
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Finished reading: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow 📚
Lovely and sweet. Made me cry when the main character’s mom really shows up for her. Also kinda makes me want to travel to DC.
📚🗨️ “I want to live my life being irrationally hopeful. Loving people and fish and cities with my whole heart.” Jake Maia Arlow, How to Excavate a Heart
Finished reading: Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun 📚
This one was so lovely it made me cry. I can’t even sum up. Go read the description if it sounds good to you, try it out. Highly recommend.
How I talk about books online 📚
In today’s issue of Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders writes about how to fix GoodReads to avoid people review-bombing books to lower their ratings.
I haven’t used GoodReads in a long time but Anders brings up a point that has me wanting to share how I write about books online. Anders shares an anecdote about losing a bunch of star ratings on songs in iTunes and then switching to a simple love/don’t love system, then says:
And I feel like with books, it’s pretty similar. Did you like this book or not? Would you recommend it to your friends? Would you look out for more books by this author in future? The important questions are all yes or no.
And this is how I tend to share books when I’m writing about them quickly.
If I loved a book, I’ll end my short post with “Highly recommend.” If I like it, I’ll just share that I finished it and maybe a brief description. If I don’t like it, I probably didn’t finish it, and I probably won’t post about it at all.
When I write a full review, I share a summary, what I loved, what I wanted more of, what I need to warn you about, and who should read the book. I only write this kind of review about books I would recommend.
Since 2007 I’ve had a policy of only publishing positive reviews on my website and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Finished reading: You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky 📚
Oh my goodness I love it. Matthew Prince starts out as a spoiled party boy but Janovsky slowly pulled the onion layers back until I loved him. And his love interest Hector is wonderful. Highly recommend.
📚 Listening to Patrick Stewart read A Christmas Carol and it’s just feels like having Jean-Luc Picard read it to you. 😍
Finished reading: In the Event of Love by Courtney Kae 📚
A lovely place-based friends-to-lovers second chance. As often happens, the third act breakup made me want to yell at the main character but the book had me happy-teary by the end.
Finished reading: Eight Kisses by Mindy Klasky 📚
Eight Hanukkah romance stories. I read one each night. My favorites are the one with the Frisky Bean coffee shop and the one with empty nesters reconnecting.
📚🗨️
When people who don’t have fibromyalgia ask me how it feels, I tell them to imagine the last time they had a bad flu, then to picture going shopping, cooking, or exercising while feeling like that.
- Ginevra Liptan, The FibroManual
🔖📚 Read How To Get Started Reading Romance Novels by Stephanie Fallon (The Good Trade).
This is an excellent guide. Also? If you have unkind things to say about romance as a genre, please say them somewhere else. They’re not welcome in my replies.
📚 Today’s library haul. Catching up on Holigays22 and some other holiday reads, plus a YA biography of my hero Sarah Bernhardt - quand même!
Finished reading: Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur 📚
The first holiday rom-com of a month where I hope to read many. Elle is an astrologer who dreams of a big love. Darcy is an actuary who’s terrified of having one. This book’s heat level is sensual, a couple explicit scenes. A lovely book but I wish the third act break-up had been resolved more quickly so I could’ve had more joyous reunion time.
Finished reading: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 📚
A bunch of excellent and chilling stories. Horror and make it literary. Uncertainty that is maddening but then that’s kind of the point.
Want to read: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson 📚
Want to read: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚
Want to read: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek 📚
Want to read: Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel by Loren Rhoads 📚
Want to read: Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom 📚
Want to read: The Victorian Book of the Dead by Chris Woodyard 📚
Want to read: A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death by Chris Woodyard 📚