Notes
📚💬 “One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
🔖📚 Read Notes on Romance Novels as “Camp”.
Andrea, author of the Shelf Love newsletter, does an amazing job of arguing for romance novels as Camp.
Finished reading: The Day of the Duchess by Sarah MacLean 📚
This one made me cry. I just really love a second chance.
Finished reading: A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean 📚
Finished reading: The Rogue Not Taken by Sarah MacLean 📚
That thing where you’ve just spent a couple days immersed in something over which you have no control, so you very carefully align all the Nintendo games on the shelf.
Want to read: The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives by Adam Smyth 📚
📚🔖 Read The Literary Power of Hobbits: How JRR Tolkien Shaped Modern Fantasy by Verlyn Flieger (Literary Hub)
Dr. Flieger says:
- Tolkien created modern fantasy via fae-ery, the creations of secondary worlds.
- The inclusion of hobbits in Middle Earth grounds Tolkien ’s fantasy.
🔖 Read Ten Years Out of Academia by Anne Helen Petersen.
I’m 3 years out from my doctoral defense and 6 months out from holding an academic job. I told an internet friend:
Right now it feels like librarian is the identity that was always really mine and academic was borrowed.
Finished reading: The Price of Pleasure by Kresley Cole 📚
This one made me smile at the end.
🎉 It’s Juneteenth! The National Museum of African-American History and Culture interviewed the museum’s curators about Juneteenth and shared what they had to say in three posts:
🤎🖤
Finished reading: The Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole 📚
I do love a sailor heroine.
Hey Internet in general and Micro.blog specifically! I was on vacation and away from much of the Internet from 6/8 - 6/15. Is there anything I missed that you think I should know about?
Finished reading: If You Desire by Kresley Cole 📚
Somehow forgot to post this when I finished it. It was my favorite of the MacCarrick Brothers trilogy.
Finished reading: If You Deceive by Kresley Cole 📚
Finished reading: If You Dare by Kresley Cole 📚
Want to read: Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success by Christine M. Larson 📚
Finished reading: The Devil of Downtown by Joanna Shupe 📚
Another excellent Gilded Age historical romance.
🔖📺 Read The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice.
For 20 years, I couldn’t say what I watched the former president do on the set of the show that changed everything. Now I can.
Woof. I don’t think stories like this will move the needle for Trump supporters, because I don’t really think anything will move the needle for Trump supporters.
But I kind of hope they turn some non-voters into voters.
Finished reading: Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun 📚
This made me bawl. I love a childhood best friends to enemies to lovers story, and this one is about English teachers and their mentor English teacher and love through decades.
Oh the irony of being unable to go to the pharmacy to pick up your (my) migraine meds because you (I) have a migraine. (Please do not recommend migraine treatments at this time, thank you.)
Today:
- woke up way too early
- read about Romance Writers of America filing for bankruptcy and the absurd way they’re trying to blame it on Courtney Milan 🔖📚
- had my first mammogram (later than I ought) (they used cute stickers to mark my sebaceous cysts)
- caught up on Season 3 of Bridgerton 📺
🎮 Played Assemble with Care.
I’m really feeling wholesome games lately, especially those with a warm pastel color palette and soothing music. In this game, you fix people’s stuff and inspire them to fix their relationships.
On sale on Steam for $3.19 through June 11, iOS & Android for $3.99.
Finished reading: The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe 📚
I loved it. A delightful heroine, a debutante with dreams of owning a women-only casino. The bitter casino owner she’s chosen to mentor her. Excellent stuff.