book review: "smooth talking stranger," by lisa kleypas

it was her historical romances that drew me into lisa kleypas. she's an amazing author, and her hathaway series remains one of my favorite (i still get shivers thinking of the wonder that is "married by morning." i have yet to finish the series because i can't bear to say good bye to the beloved hathaway family.)

i had seen this book on quite a few favorite lists and had it in my amazon wish list when i finished a few others. historicals will always be my first love, but i'm oh-so-slowly treading water into contemporary romances.

maybe it's that i love history, maybe it's that i like imagining a different time and place, but i've never been drawn to contemporary. then this book happened and doomed me because not only is jill shalvis amazing (seriously, i can totally picture sharing a bottle of wine with her and having a blast), but she gets people. she gets how they talk, how they respond to situations, how messed up they can be. and lisa gets that too.

"smooth talking stranger" centers around ella, a 20-something texan finally getting her life together after what can only be described as a truly fucked-up childhood and years of therapy. then her sister, tara, who has obviously not invested time into therapy, dumps her baby on their mother - then tara checks herself into a heath clinic. ella gets pulled in and goes after the baby's father, jack travis, only one of the most powerful and richest men in houston.

the question in romance novels is NEVER who falls in love with who. it's always how - and maybe why not. the best novels often have incredibly (to borrow a word from SB's Candy) schlocky premises and details - hello, illegitimate baby meets hippie girl meets big town manwhore! - but it's all in the execution. ella is an incredibly believable, smart, caring character who wears glasses and worries about things like how much water a luxury shower is wasting. the schlock is taken for granted in this genre. some write crappy schlock. some write good schlock. and then there's lisa.

kindle my heart

yep, i already ordered one.

i was going to post this long review of the kindle, since i went back and forth over whether to get one for so long. then amazon went and surprised everyone (ok, well, just me) by coming out with a third-generation kindle well before the expected fall 2010 announcement.

kindle 3, as it's unofficially been dubbed by the techie media, has double the battery life (at least one month without wireless on), double the storage (4g) and turns pages 20% faster than kindle 2. since i ordered my kindle within the 30-day time frame for returns, i quickly shipped it back and ordered a new kindle. sadly, amazon isn't shipping kindle 3 until the end of august - and apparently a wait list has already formed because of so many orders.

sigh. i miss my kindle already. hopefully kindle 3 will be worth it - and from what i've read of the scant reviews, this will be the case.

i'll post a full review after i've had it for a few weeks, with comparisons to kindle 2. in the meantime i'm revisiting my "real" books and adding new titles to my wish list on amazon. one can never have too many books to read.

oh, and if you don't know where the title of this post came from, you've probably never seen the classic 1995 version of "a little princess." one of the most beautiful movies ever made, featuring one of the most beautiful soundtracks - including the theme song. listen to it here.

wishful wednesday: the kindle

apparently the boy was going to get me one of these last year, but it didn't pan out. heartbreak! i never thought i'd actually say i want one, but i am an avid, voracious reader, destroying books like a hyena rips apart a dead zebra - though perhaps without the blood. i am not one who can savor a book, much like i cannot savor a dessert - i must eat it all now, in one bite preferably. i'm usually tired most mornings because i stayed up too late reading the night before. and the idea of having nearly every book at my fingertips, 60 seconds away from reading, in one device i can carry with me...it's more than tempting. i think i'm going to take the bait.

and this from the girl who enjoys the smell of books. seriously, i'll lean into my book and smell the pages. i love that first crack of a brand new book that has never been opened and will even buy the book buried in the shelf just so i can be the first one to open it. all that love, and i still think i want a kindle - if only because i'm running out of room for all my romance novels.

book diverson: "shelter me"

i have to write one of these when i read a really good book, especially one that's not a romance, since that's so rare for me - plus i won't be reading new romances for a while, since i can't stomach the judgmental librarians at the cbus library (only, only reason i miss indy - computer checkout at the library!). plus when your grandmother hands you a book and says, "read this," you should.

"shelter me" is a debut novel, and it is biting with wit and humor and laughter, which is slightly strange because it's a story about a terribly sad event - a woman whose husband died in a freak accident, leaving her a single mother to two young children. the book follows her first year without her husband, a year of lots of downs and lots of ups, and even some surprises - like when a contractor shows up a few months after her husband's death to build the porch her husband had planned for her.

juliette fay has created a lovely story that is written in the spirit of billie letts or lorna landvik, both writers that i love. they have a very conversational tone about them, less lyrical and deceptively descriptive. i can easily hear janie, the heroine of the book (because she really is a heroine if there ever was one) saying the things she says, just as i can taste the indian pudding one of the characters brings to thanksgiving dinner. i loved the cover of the book with the quilt sheltering the two people, because that's what the book felt like to me, an achingly sad, yet hopeful place that i escaped to for two lovely hours. my grandmother was right. read this.

book diversion: "Sold"

every now and then i want to write about a book that really touched me, and this book's effect on me was profound. "Sold" by Patricia McCormick is written for a reader starting at the pre-teen level, but can be enjoyed by any person. it centers around lakshmi, a 13-year-old girl living in a very poor village in nepal with her mother, stepfather and baby brother. she dreams of making enough money to repair her family's tin roof - and perhaps stem her stepfather's gambling problem. then he tells her she's going into work as a maid in the city, and she leaves with a woman for a job that is filled with promise for her family. instead, she has been sold into the sex trade and ends up in india. lakshmi tells her story in a poetry/prose form that is not only very fitting, but also makes for a quick read - i think i finished in this book in under two hours. but it was so, so well written. i could smell the men who paid for lakshmi - and was heartbroken for her when she overhears one of them and realizes they paid as much for her as she would have paid back home for a coke. at the end of the story, i learned over 12,000 nepali girls are sold into the sex trade every year. the author traveled to nepal and india to interview people who had rescued these girls, as well as the girls themselves, and her hard work shows over each page as she brings you there, exposing one of the cruelest places in the world. please read this book.

my obsession with romance novels...this may be a multipart post

so first i should explain that i have always been a reader, but have stayed away from the chick lit in my usual uppity-nosey fashion, telling myself that i have to be enlightened or invigorated or at least feel smart when i read a book. it was long novels or thick nonfiction books about the Romanovs that lined my bookshelves and piled up along my bed. i spent a fortune at borders and barnes & noble in college, which also became my favorite study haunt.

then several big things happened to me. first of all, i finished my masters, effectively ending my official education for the rest of my life. if i thought collegiate and academic reading was bad in undergrad, grad school was a hundred times worse. i needed a break. i didn't want to have to concentrate or even think when i read a book.

with the finishing of my masters came moving away from bloomington (big thing #2), the town i called home for the past five years. but i couldn't move back to what i now considered my childhood home because big thing #3 happened: my mom's house flooded, to the point where it would be unliveable for the next five months. so i not only moved back in with my mom and brother, but joined my grandma, grandpa and uncle. all of us, a big happy family, under one fucking roof.

i needed distraction from cleaning out muck and smelly river water and childhood memories literally gone down the drain. i was shamefully at walmart with my brother buying fans when i spied their pathetic book section - and saw the book pictured above. a duke, i thought. i love learning about royalty. why not give it a go? it was only $6 (another fantastic perk about romance novels). i threw it in the cart and took it home, only to devour it in a matter of hours.

from that moment, i was hooked. julia quinn became my favorite author, and i preceded to go to waldenbooks (the disgustingly mediocre lone bookstore in columbus that stocked romance novels) and literally bought them out of her books. after checking her websites for recommendations, i moved on to gaelen foley, who i also treasure - though she is a little more into the specifics sex-wise and a little bit less believable romance-wise than julia. i couldn't get enough of romance novels. i finally had to renew my library card for the first time in 8 years and check out the books. i know those pissy librarians were totally judging me as i came in week after week, only to rent books with titles like "her only desire" and "one night of sin." oh, but it was totally, totally worth it, because the books have opened me up to a whole new literary world.

Romance novels account for billions of dollars and millions of copies in the book world and appear in 90 languages. the genres range from contemporary to historic (my favorite) to science fiction to fantasy - and there are even genres within genres (in historic, there's pirates, vikings, native americans - don't laugh!). for any topic that interests you, i guarantee there's a romance novel out there.

and they are surprisingly well-written. i say this because i have read some really, really good ones - and some disgustingly bad ones. the covers are usually embarrassing, but don't let that fool you - both good and bad books get mostly bad covers. my absolute favorite website and the place i go to for my daily laugh - as well as recommendations for other books - is Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Sarah and Candy are geniuses and take the books very seriously, as they believe it undermines the romance novel industry to treat them any other way. For a good laugh, please go to the Cover Snark section of their website, where they have so much fun with seriously awful covers.

finally, i'll share with you the book known on SBTB as "romance novel crack", the book that turns even the most cynical reader into if not a fan, at least a person who respects the genre: Lord of Scoundrels, by Loretta Chase. if you read only one romance novel in your whole life, let it be this one. just grab a glass of wine and enjoy. i promise you'll thank me later.