Bear and Forbear

Book Review: Acheron - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2009-01-07T20:40:00.006-06:00

Acheron is the 22nd installment in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series of romances. It tells the story of Acheron Parthenopaeus, the leader of the Dark-Hunters, and how he came to be who and what he is. Since this was such a highly-anticipated book, I don't want to spoil anything about it, so I'm not going to give away any real details and just stick to my opinions about the book.

Though it is much longer than any of the other novels in this series, the length of the book didn't really bother me. What I had a problem with was that more than half of the book focused on Ash's backstory, leaving less than half for the actual romance. The backstory was important and I wanted to finally find out exactly what all had happened to the poor guy in the past, but after a few hundred pages I got the point and was ready to move on to his love story. As a result, I don't think that there was enough time to develop the whys and wherefores of the romance itself.

The heroine was a character that I had really liked from a previous novel in the series and I was tickled to see that that's who he ended up with - BUT she wasn't as charming and likeable in this book as she had been previously. She's ok; I just didn't buy why he felt so drawn to her when I couldn't see the supposed chemistry. I guess it kind of bugs me when an author tells you something about a character and expects you to take that as fact without actually demonstrating it to you. Like, the hero finds the heroine spunky and entertaining when all you've seen so far is that she got mad at him and threw a hammer at him. Later on, after their relationship is already established, she does become a very likeable character and she really is good for him and does all the right things... I guess I just wanted a little more effort made on the heroine's part to win Ash's affections.

I had expected this to be a five star book, but I can only give it 4 stars.

Book Review: Dream Chaser - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2009-01-07T19:55:00.006-06:00

Synopsis: Dream Chaser is #21 in the Dark-Hunters series of romances by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Xypher is a twice-damned Dream-Hunter with a checkered past (aren't they all?). In exchange for recently helping the good guys save the world (see Devil May Cry), the lord of the underworld has agreed to allow Xypher to spend one month in the mortal realm as a human. If, at the end of that month he has committed a good deed then he will be free from the underworld to live out the rest of his days on earth as a free man. A normal person wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth and would seize the opportunity to be a better person and save themselves from eternal damnation. But no, Xypher is a bitter and reckless sort who prefers to spend his time seeking revenge against those who wronged him all those eons ago. Meanwhile, across town, medical examiner Simone Dubois is investigating a grisly murder involving a corpse that actually got up and walked out of the examining room. The cops and the county coroner are stumped, but Simone has a special gift that might help to shed light on the case: she sees dead people. Having witnessed the murder of her mother and younger brother as a child, she has been able to see and speak with ghosts ever since. When she runs into some really nasty soul-sucking Daimons in a dark alley, Xypher arrives on the scene just in the nick of time. He fends off the Daimons, but not before they have time to slap a really nasty curse on our hero and heroine. Unable to move more than 20 feet away from one another, the two must work together to fight off the bad guys and (of course) save the world.

I really liked this book. After meeting Xypher in Devil May Cry, I was looking forward to seeing more of him. He's mean, badass, and snappish - but basically a sweet guy underneath (like any good romance hero). He even does some really kind things for the heroine without intending for her to even find out it was him. Simone is a good Kenyon heroine: she's super-smart, courageous, and has just the right amount of vulnerability to make her likeable. You can tell she really treasures the people she loves. Even though the romance develops pretty rapidly, I think it works in this one. And her ghost sidekick is a pretty adorable character. Story-wise, you get lots more info on the different races of demons that are cropping up left and right in the series lately - and we meet some new characters who will probably become major players in upcoming books.

This one is a 4 star book for me.

Book Review: Upon the Midnight Clear - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2009-01-06T10:14:00.005-06:00

Synopsis: The novella Upon the Midnight Clear is part 20 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter saga of romances. Our hero is a human for a change this time. Aidan O'Conner is an extremely jaded world-famous movie star who has been betrayed by everyone he ever loved, even his family. Fed up with being stabbed in the back by his friends and family, he retires to the snowy backwoods of Tennessee to live out the rest of his days in isolation where no one can hurt him. His evil brother Donnie, however, can't let it go. He hates his famous little brother so much that he summons an ancient god (Dolor) to kill Aidan. Leta is a Dream-Hunter who has spent most of her life fighting Dolor. She seeks out his next victim, Aidan, to try to save him from the evil god. She has her work cut out for her, though, because Aidan isn't interested in seeing, talking to, or being saved by anyone - much less a strange woman who shows up at his door in the middle of a snowstorm claiming to be a dream goddess out to protect him from the mythological god of pain.

I liked the hero and heroine in this book all right, but felt that their romance developed much too abruptly. It is not quite a full-length novel, so there is a limitation on time, but I still felt that the two characters decided they loved one another and were willing to sacrifice everything for one another WAY too quickly after meeting for the first time. Aidan is a pretty vulnerable guy who has erected a lot of barriers to protect himself from being hurt again. Leta works pretty hard to show him that he can trust her, but she's still somewhat underdeveloped as a character. The story was interesting though and you learn a bit more about the different players in the Dream-Hunter world.

*Note: This book contains a short story (more of a series of short vignettes) at the end entitled "Holiday Gatherings" where you get to see little snippets of all the different characters from the previous books in the series and how they were celebrating the holidays. Interestingly, this was my favorite part of this entire book.

I rated this one 3 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.

Book Review: Devil May Cry - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2009-01-01T15:14:00.004-06:00

Synopsis: Devil May Cry is the 19th story in the Dark-Hunters series of romances by Sherrilyn Kenyon. In this novel, we meet Sin, an ex-god from the Sumerian pantheon who works as a special kind of Dark-Hunter. He spends his time hunting and killing a particularly nasty kind of demons called the gallu, who not only can kill humans by the boatload, but also convert them into vicious zombie-like creatures. Unfortunately, Sin's unorthodox methods and lifestyle have made him something of a pariah among his Dark-Hunter brethren. And of course, like any good Kenyon hero, he is also out for revenge against the one who did him wrong way back when. This time it's the Greek goddess Artemis; she's the one who betrayed him thousands of years ago and stole his godhood from him. The heroine Katra, on the other hand, is a familiar face from previous stories (most significantly, Kiss of the Night and The Dream-Hunter). One of Artemis' loyal handmaidens, Kat has been sent by the goddess to the human realm to take Sin out for his supposed transgressions. Of course, Artemis also wants him dead before he has a chance to have his revenge on her. And it doesn't help matters that when Sin first meets Kat, he takes one look at her and mistakes her for Artemis.

What an informative book! Up until now, who and what Katra actually is have been something of a mystery. Is she Greek? Is she Atlantean? Is she a goddess or just a mere servant to the gods? Devil May Cry answers all of these questions and then some. Up until this point in the series, I sort of expected Kat to be Acheron's eventual love interest; however, this book explains her relationship to Acheron and the other gods while introducing lots of new characters and a whole new pantheon of gods and beasties.

I really liked Kat when she appeared earlier in the series. She's tough, courageous, and loyal to her friends. And she's a good person - she refuses to pass judgment on Sin until she sees proof of his alleged crimes with her own eyes. And even then, she is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. For his part, Sin could care less what Kat thinks of him. He's only got two things on his mind: revenge against Artemis and stopping the gallu demons from unleashing hell on earth. Of course, Kat manages to distract him with her sense of humor and honesty; he can't help but fall in love with her. She really is another great Sherrilyn Kenyon heroine, with just the right mix of strength and vulnerability to make her loveable without being abrasive. Sin sort of came across to me as a sort of generic tortured hero, but he's still a likeable guy and you want Kat to get her man in the end.

My Favorite Scene: The one when Kat and Ash meet for the first time in Artemis' temple (I don't want to spoiler, so I won't say anymore...)

This was a solid 4 star book.

Book Review: "Phantom Lover" - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2008-12-28T12:40:00.004-06:00

"Phantom Lover" is a short story appearing in the anthology, Midnight Pleasures. It is #5 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series of romances.

Synopsis: Average American office worker Erin McDaniels has been haunted by some really awful nightmares lately. It's gotten so she can't get much rest at all. Then one day, she falls asleep from sheer exhaustion at her desk at work only to fall into yet another nightmare. This time, however, smokin' hot dream-god V'Aidan rescues her from the dream monsters and takes her to a happier place in her dreams. As their relationship develops, Erin finds herself wanting to spend more and more time with her gentle and caring dream-god. Unfortunately, the wicked Skoti are out to destroy them and take V'Aidan away from Erin forever.

Incapable of feeling any emotion, Skoti spend their time feeding off of human emotions while they dream. The most vivid emotions are usually produced by nightmares, so the Skoti tend to focus on the worst of people's dreams. This is the first time in the series that we get to see much of the world of the Dream-Hunters. Up to this point, we have only seen a couple of Dream-Hunters here and there but we haven't learned much about them except that some of them exist to protect the dreamer from their nightmares and the Skoti who feed off of them.

I loved the romance in this story. While limited to the shorter format of a short story, you still get a lot of good romantic development, tension, and drama. V'Aidan and Erin really do care for one another and they deserve to be happy. I actually cried a little while reading this one, which is REALLY rare for me with a short story.

I give this story 5 stars!

Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series - correct reading order

2008-12-28T10:44:00.017-06:00

Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters Series:

1. Fantasy Lover (Julian of Macedon & Grace Alexander)
2. "Dragonswan" (Sebastian Kattalakis & Channon MacRae) - short story in Tapestry
3. Night Pleasures (Kyrian of Thrace & Amanda Devereaux
4. Night Embrace (Talon & Sunshine Runningwolf)
5. "Phantom Lover" (V'Aidan & Erin McDaniels) - short story in Midnight Pleasures
6. Dance With the Devil (Zarek & Astrid)
7. Kiss of the Night (Wulf Tryggvasen & Cassandra Peters)
8. Night Play (Vane Kattalakis & Bride McTierney)
9. "Winter Born" (Dante Pontis & Pandora) - short story in Stroke of Midnight
10. Seize the Night (Valerius Magnus & Tabitha Devereaux)
11. Sins of the Night (Alexion & Dangereuse St. Richard)
12. "Second Chances" (?) - short story in The Dark-Hunter Companion
13. Unleash the Night (Wren Tigarian & Maggie Goudeau)
14. Dark Side of the Moon (Ravyn Kontis & Susan Michaels)
15. "A Hard Day's Night-Searcher" (Rafael Santiago & Celena) - short story in My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding
16. "Until Death We Do Part" (Velkan Danesti & Retta) - short story in Love at First Bite
17. "Fear the Darkness" - short story e-book
18. The Dream-Hunter (Arikos & Megeara Kafieri)
19. Devil May Cry (Sin & Katra)
20. Upon the Midnight Clear (Aidan O'Conner & Leta)
21. Dream Chaser (Xypher & Simone Dubois)
22. Acheron (Acheron Parthenopaeus & Soteria Kafieri *aka: Tory)
23. One Silent Night (Strykerius & Zephyra)
24. "Shadow of the Moon" (Fury Kattalakis & Angelia) - short story in Dead After Dark

Re-reading is fun!

2008-12-28T10:34:00.003-06:00

I'm currently doing a massive re-reading of Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. I just finished up re-reading all the books that I've already read and have finally gotten into the newer ones I haven't read yet.

Still, I'm having trouble keeping all these Dark-Hunter books straight in my head, so I'm posting a full listing of all the books and short stories in the series (in proper reading order, of course) - with links to my reviews of each. I'm going to have to re-number them in the original posts probably since I was missing a few at the time (yes I am that obsessive). I'll also be editing the list to make additions as needed. *sigh* Kind of annoying to rehash all of this, but since this is all just for my own personal benefit anyway, who cares!?

Book Review: The Dream-Hunter by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2008-12-28T10:29:00.005-06:00

Synopsis: The Dream-Hunter is #18 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. This book takes us back in time from when the rest of the series takes place - about 10 years into the past - to the shores of Greece. Dr. Megeara Kafieri is trying desperately to fulfill her life's ambition: to find the ancient continent of Atlantis. She's pretty sure she's found the exact location, only she can't seem to get permission from the powers that be to dig beneath the ocean floor. What she doesn't know is that the gods don't want anyone poking around the ruins of Atlantis for fear of what might be unleashed - and they'll do whatever it takes to stop Geary from fulfilling her mission. The book's hero, Arikos, is a Skotos (a cursed and unfeeling dream god who can only experience emotions when siphoning them off of human dreamers). Arik has been hooking up with Geary in her dreams for the past several months, feeding off her extra-special super-vivid emotions. Apparently, Geary is all work and no play in the real world but a total demon in the sack (when she's dreaming anyway). Only it's not enough for Arik to experience her in the dream world; he craves more of her and her intense emotions. So he makes a bargain with the god of the underworld, Hades: he can walk the earth as a mortal man for two weeks and experience all of the feelings a human can experience. The price: when his two weeks is up, Arik must deliver unto Hades Geary's soul.

Well, needless to say, it doesn't ever bode well for a relationship when one of the parties goes into it with the intention of eventually murdering the other person. You can see the set-up for the end-of-the-book drama right from the start. Also, their relationship starts out based on sex (well, dream sex anyway) and I never felt like there was all that much real romantic tension between them. I honestly think the author could've taken the romantic elements out of the book completely and just focused on the plot because I found that far more interesting. However, what saves this book is the continued development of the overall storyline of the series. It explains just a little bit more about the imprisoned Atlantean goddess Apollymi. Also, the world and mythology of the Dream-Hunters is fleshed out a little more and lots of new characters are introduced, several of whom I hope get their own stories one day. My favorite new characters were probably Geary's sweet and brainy teenage cousin Tory and Arik's jaded demigod brother Solin. We also see some characters we've seen in other books, but in this novel we get to see some of their past. And what a treat to get snippets of Acheron, Kyrian, and Nick ten years earlier than when we meet them in Night Pleasures!

My favorite part: Tory feeding Arik his first moon pie.

I gave this one only 2 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.

i has a pug

2008-07-23T18:02:00.004-05:00

I gotta get this. It makes me laugh every single time I look at it.

The home library - romance and sci-fi

2008-07-05T20:49:00.003-05:00

Oh no Robert Asprin died :(

2008-06-26T18:32:00.004-05:00

So we just found out at our house that fantasy writer Robert Asprin died last month. This was really sucky news... My bff and I read a bunch of his Myth books in our teen years and pretty much formed a Dungeons & Dragons campaign founded on his light-hearted fantastical humor. And the guy was young - only 61! But he left behind a legacy of great writing: the Myth books, the Phule books, and of course Thieves World.

Sad times...

New flavor of Promised Land milk!

2008-06-11T16:14:00.004-05:00

Mooberry Blueberry!! It's very good. And it's purple!

I love Promised Land milk. It's so yummy. And it comes in these lovely little old-fashioned glass milk jugs. Perfect for the chugging.

Also, you can vote for the next seasonal flavor of milk on their website. They'll even send you coupons if you ask for them.

The Cure in Austin

2008-06-10T13:55:00.003-05:00

So I was not as enterprising as some folks and didn't smuggle in my camera, but I think the memory of being about TWENTY FEET AWAY FROM ROBERT SMITH will forever be burned in my brain. We were pretty damn close. They played for nearly 3 hours and sounded GREAT. This is the third time I've seen them and it was by far the best show yet! A helpful person posted the set list here. As you can see, they played a LOT of old stuff, which was really cool. And it was just the 4 piece band: two guitars, bass, and drums - no keyboard. So good...

Book Review: The Charmer - by Celeste Bradley

2008-06-01T14:21:00.008-05:00

The Charmer is the 5th installment in Celeste Bradley's Liar's Club series of regency spy romances (it is technically the 4th novel in the series, but I included the short story "Wedding Knight" in my reckoning). This novel tells the story of Collis Tremayne and Rose Lacey.

Synopsis: We first met Collis way back in The Pretender, while he was convalescing in the hospital. Since then, he has been in training to be a full-fledged member of the Liar's Club ring of English spies. Rose was a trembling little housemaid (see The Impostor) who has decided to be a victim no more. She, too, is now in training to become the first female Liar. Both are determined to succeed and a strong rivalry has formed between them. When one of their heated sparring matches leaves the Liars' training room in shambles, they are given the ultimate penance: they must work together as partners on a test mission. As they bicker their way through the pretend mission, they stumble onto a real plot against the crown and are forced to work together to solve it.

This is one of my favorite books in the Liar's Club/Royal Four series. Collis is so charming and funny. And while Rose is a strong and determined woman, she still has a believable vulnerability that leaves you cheering for her and Collis to make it as a couple. And there are lots of obstacles in their way: their pride, the fact that they are both spies who need clear heads and unfettered hearts to be effective, and the vast gulf between their stations (he is heir to a title, she is a former servant).

The plot itself in this book is really engaging with fast-paced action. I like the overall story arc that the author uses in this series. It develops a little with each book, even carrying on into the Royal Four series of novels. It was also kind of neat to see a real historical figure (the Prince Regent) playing such a prominent role in the story. Bradley makes him an entertaining character and I enjoyed his interaction with the main characters.

My Favorite Part had to be when the Prince decides to go along with Collis on his break-in of Wadsworth's house. It was hilarious picturing His Paunchy Highness clad all in black (to look cool) sneaking through windows and then on the run from the bad guys.

This was a 5 star book!

Book Review: "Wedding Knight" - by Celeste Bradley

2008-06-01T13:17:00.011-05:00

"Wedding Knight" is a short story appearing in the anthology, My Scandalous Bride. It is the 4th tale in Celeste Bradley's "Liar's Club" series of regency romances. It tells the story of Kitty Trapp, whom we have met in the first couple of Liar's Club books - most notably in The Impostor - and one Alfred Theodious Knight (aka "Knight").

Synopsis: Knight is in the market for a wife, preferably one who is respectable, obedient, and will not embarrass him in any way. He settles for Bitty Trapp, the spoiled and rather brainless twin sister of our heroine, Kitty. Unfortunately, Bitty doesn't want to marry Knight, so *****SPOILER ALERT***** she convinces her identical twin to pose as Knight's bride to give her "time to adjust" to the idea of being married to him. Loyal Kitty goes through with the charade, only to find that her sister has skipped town during the ceremony and is nowhere to be found. Now Kitty must pose as Knight's wife until her sister can be found. She doesn't like the idea of deceiving the man so unfairly. Add to that the fact that Knight is pretty bossy and controlling, always telling his new bride what she can and cannot do or say or wear... To while away the time until her sister turns up, Kitty decides to set Knight straight on a few things in order to make him a more bearable husband for her sister. Of course, if Knight finds out the truth, it will mean the scandal of the century - which is the last thing he wants.

I really enjoyed this story. I'm usually not too crazy about short stories all that much because either they are too short for the romance to develop believably OR you get really into the story/characters and then it's all over too quickly. This story was the latter. I already liked Kitty's character a lot from when we'd seen her in previous books. She is plucky and has a knack for making lemonade when life hands her lemons. And she gets lots of lemons. Knight is kind of a lemon, but she works pretty hard to bring out his nice qualities from beneath his grumpy exterior. And, to his credit, he's not completely awful. He recognizes his wife's good qualities: her cleverness, her wit, her sense of humor, her fierce bravery. No one else has ever noticed, much less admired, these qualities in her. I thought it was kind of funny how the very things he admires in her are the things that he professes to dislike as qualities in a wife.

I gave this one 5 stars in my catalog

Disintegration is the best album EVER!!!

2008-05-31T13:47:00.004-05:00

Going to see The Cure in Austin next Sunday!!! SOOOOOOOO jazzed! They're playing Dallas on the 6th, but American Airlines Center is just too damn big. So me and my buddy bleebers are heading down to Austin to see the show at Austin Music Hall, which is a smaller venue.

Book Review: The Spy - by Celeste Bradley

2008-05-31T12:00:00.005-05:00

The Spy is the 3rd novel in Celeste Bradley's Liar's Club series of regency spy romances. This is the story of James Cunnington, whom we met in The Pretender (he's Agatha's brother), and Phillipa Atwater, the daughter of a former Liar's Club cryptologist.

Synopsis: Phillipa, penniless and destitute, is looking for her father who has been abducted by French spies. The only clue she has is a note in her father's notebook about a man named James Cunnington. In order to investigate Cunnington, she poses as a young man and takes a position as tutor to James' adopted son. The spies in the Liars Club believe that her father has changed sides and is now working for the French. James, meanwhile, is trying to settle a personal vendetta against a woman who betrayed him (see The Pretender). He feels responsible for the secrets he allegedly divulged while under the spell of his former lover. To top it off, he's been taken off the Atwater case due to an injury, so he secretly pursues the investigation on his own. Little does he know, of course, that Atwater's daughter is living under his own roof.

I liked James' character when we first met him in The Pretender. He was kind of funny (in a sardonic sort of way). You could really sense his regret for the secrets he feared he had spilled, and also for the way that he had neglected his sister for all those years. By the time we see him in The Spy, his regret, self-loathing, and general mistrustfulness (is that a word?) have made him a remote and unaffectionate man. Afraid to attach himself to another woman, he has taken in a reformed young pickpocket and named him as his heir so that he won't have to marry to produce an heir of his own. And not only does he not want to have anything to do with women, he also withholds affection and attention from his young "son." Starved for attention, the boy naturally turns to Phillipa, who begins to fulfill a motherly role in the child's life.

James, too, begins to feel a closeness to the young tutor. He feels comfortable around "Phillip" and opens up to him, revealing his feelings of guilt and betrayal. Poor Phillipa longs to comfort him, but has to maintain her disguise. The longer she is with him, the more she comes to realize that James is not a villain and the more she comes to love him. I kind of felt sorry for her. I mean, here she is this poor girl with no family, no money, a lost father, the French and English both are trying to hunt her down and kill her for what she might know, and the man she's in love with is emotionally wasted and thinks she's a boy.

I liked this book for the most part. However, I felt like the "woman posing as a man" thing went on a little too long. I don't generally have a problem with that particular plot device so long as it doesn't go on forever. Because if you wait too long before the other party discovers the truth, then there is not enough time left in the story for that person to believably fall in love with the other person. I think that happened with this book. I also would have liked a bit more excitement on James' end over his perceived betrayal by Phillipa. He gets mad, but he gets over it pretty quickly. Where's the misery? the rage? the oh-no-I've-been-betrayed-again-by-someone-I-love torment? I must confess that I like a little melodramatic anguish in my romance.

So in the end, I gave it 3 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.

Jam-Making 2008: Canning

2008-05-25T15:56:00.007-05:00

Once the jam is done cooking, you are ready to start filling your jars (aka: canning). Turn off the heat under your jam. Using a biggish spoon, skim off the foamy stuff from the top of your jam and just dump it into a cup or bowl.

Using your tongs, pull a jar out of your hot water pot and set the jar upright on the kitchen towel you laid out earlier. Set your funnel into the mouth of the jar. Then take your ladle and scoop up some jam and pour it into the jar until the jar is full. Do not fill the jar to the brim. Instead, you want your jam to come 1/4 inch from the top (this is called "headspace"). Then poke your little plastic knife thing down into the jar and all around the sides a few times to release any air bubbles that may be hiding down in there. Now you're ready to fill the next jar. Repeat the above process until you run out of jam and all the jars are full.

Using a damp cloth, carefully wipe the rim and threading of each jar to get any jam residue off. Next, fish a lid out of the hot water pot and place it, sticky side down, on top of the first jar. Screw a band on over the lid until it fits snugly (not too tight). Repeat this process for the rest of the jars.

Now just leave your jam alone for a few hours. You will hear little satisfying popping sounds coming from the lids as the jam cools. I let mine cool overnight before moving it around. Then you can label the lids with the contents and date.

Jam-Making 2008: Ok here we go!

2008-05-25T15:42:00.004-05:00

Once you're all set up, fill up your big pot with water and stick all your jars in there on the rack. You want them upright and the water level in the pot needs to cover them by at least an inch or more. Try to keep the jars from touching one another or the sides of the pot. Find a burner that it will fit on (mine is so big, I can only fit it on the front of my stove). Then turn on the burner to get the water started boiling. This is going to take a long time, so you will want to wait a few minutes before starting to cook your fruit.

While the water is getting going, you'll be cooking your jam. The goal here is to get your fruit to boiling. Turn on the burner to a medium heat setting. The nice thing about Dutch ovens is, you don't need to use high heat to get things to boil in them. In fact, you want to keep your heat as low as possible while still maintaining a boil in the fruit. Once you get the fruit boiling, stir it every few minutes and make sure that the heat is not too high. If your heat is too high, the jam will scorch a little on the bottom and you will get these icky scorched floaties in your jam.

The jam needs to boil for about 25-30 minutes. You're looking for it to reduce down and get a little thicker. The peaches took a little longer to cook than the strawberries did; I think this was because the peaches have more juice in them. You'll get this foamy stuff on the top of the jam as it boils; that's normal. Just keep stirring it and checking on the heat periodically.

Meanwhile, your water will finally start boiling at some point. It needs to boil for at least 15 minutes. Then turn the heat down to a low setting. You want the water to stay hot (180 degrees). Now take the jar lids and drop them down into the hot water. Just let all that sit until your jam is finished cooking.

Jam-Making 2008: Setting up all that crap you just bought

2008-05-25T12:25:00.002-05:00

Once your fruit is ready for action, it's time to set up all your canning gear.

Jam-making is a kind of process, so you will want to lay out your stuff accordingly. The basic process for all of this is going to be:

1. Boil the jars for 15 min. to sterilize
2. Boil the jam for about 25-30 min.
3. Pour jam into hot jars; seal with lids

You will need to put either a wire rack or some folded kitchen towels into the bottom of your giant boiling pot. Mine came with a nice wire rack, so that is what I used. Regardless of which one you use, the main thing is that you want to keep your jars at least an inch or so off the bottom of the pan and you don't want them to touch the sides of the pot. This keeps the jars at an even temperature throughout the process and it also keeps the glass from coming into contact with the metal of the pot and shattering them. (I shattered a couple of jars this way when I first attempted to can all those years ago. It turned me off of the canning process. Fortunately, I am older and wiser now!)

So anyway, wash all those jars, lids, and bands in hot, soapy water and then rinse. Set the bands and lids aside. Next, put the Dutch oven on the stove top and pour your fruit mixture into it. You will not use the lid. Go ahead and lay out some kitchen towels flat by wherever you're planning on dishing out your jam when it's ready. The towels will keep all that hot jam you're going to be accidentally dripping everywhere from getting on your nice countertops. I laid mine out right next to the stove by the Dutch oven. This made it easier to get the hot jars onto the towels and then fill them from the Dutch oven. Now put your jar bands, funnel, and plastic knife next to the towels. Everything is right there and within easy reach.

Jam-Making 2008: Getting started

2008-05-25T12:22:00.003-05:00

The first thing to do is prepare the fruit. If you are doing berries, all you really have to do is wash them and then cut off the stems (if any) and maybe slice them a bit. With peaches, you have to take the skin off and pit them. So what you do is, you boil some water and put some of your peaches in a few at a time. Boil them for about 45-60 seconds and then take them out and put them in a big bowl of ice water. (This is called "blanching.") After a minute or so, you take them out of the ice water and the skins are easy to slip off. Once the skins are removed, you just cut them up, taking out the pit.

Now. I won't lie to you. This is a very messy business. My peaches were very ripe and got a bit, uh… pulpy. It made it kind of time-consuming to get all the pits out. However, since peach jam is like manna from heaven, it is well worth the effort. And I now have a new appreciation for my Gran, who puts up like 60 jars of peach jam every summer but only lets me have one little half-pint jar when I come to visit.

Once you get the fruit prepared, get out your potato masher and mush it all up. When it's nicely mushed, you can go ahead and dump in the sugar and lemon juice. Mix it all up and it's ready to go.

Jam-Making 2008: The recipe

2008-05-25T12:16:00.004-05:00

I was really intimidated about canning at first. It seems like there are all these steps and everything and it looks Way Too Complicated. But really, it is pretty easy.

This is a super-basic recipe for jam (I got it from my Betty Crocker Cookbook):

4 pints (8 cups) fresh, ripe fruit
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
5 cups sugar

Yes, the fruit must be fresh. And yes, the fruit must be ripe. You don't want to use under-ripe fruit for this. It's tempting, particularly when you see just how much sugar you're dumping in there. Hell, just about anything tastes pretty good when you mix it with 5 cups of sugar. However, the jam will give you a lot more of your fruit's flavor if you use only the ripest fruit. Also, it is very difficult to mash up under-ripe fruit. It makes for hard, crisp bits in your jam and who wants to spread crunchy jam on their biscuits?

Of course, this means that you'll need to select fruit that is in season. I'm making this jam in the summertime, so I'm using summer fruits like berries and peaches. I'm looking forward to making jam out of pears in the fall. (Can you make apple jam, I wonder?)

For these posts, I've used peaches (because peach jam is the best thing EVER!!!). They are just starting to come into season here in Texas, and a lot of them are still kind of hard and tart. However, we found some good, sweet ones at the farmers market, so I bought a big box.

This recipe yields about 3 pints of jam when done with strawberries and 4 pints when done with peaches. I'm thinking that this is because peaches have more juice in them maybe… At any rate, use this as a guide for what size and how many jars you want to buy. I used half-pint jars for most of the batch (for giving away to family and friends) and then used pint jars for the rest (for hording for my greedy self).

Jam-Making Gear

2008-05-25T12:05:00.007-05:00

The first thing I learned about all this is that you need a lot of crap to make jam. The nice thing is, you just have to invest in it the one time - and really, it's not all that expensive. Most of this stuff will probably last forever.

Here is a basic list of the equipment:

Dutch oven (at least 3.5 qt size)
Big metal pot for boiling (mine is 16 qt)
Some large bowls for preparing & mixing fruit
Wooden spoon
Potato masher
Tongs for taking jars out of hot water
Funnel
Large ladle
Plastic (or other non-metal) knife type thing
A bunch of measuring cups
Canning jars with lids and bands
A whole mess of kitchen towels

I didn't have hardly any of this stuff around my kitchen (except for a few of the utensils), so I had to go shopping. And in case you don't know what a Dutch oven is (I didn't either), it is basically just a big cast-iron pot with an iron lid. I got one with an enamel coating for easier cleanup. I wish I'd bought a bigger size, though. The one I got is only 3.5 quarts and I worried a couple of times that my jam might boil over (luckily, it didn't). And the big metal pot is for boiling your jars in. You don't want to use one of your nice non-stick coated pots for this. All the repeated water boiling is just going to mess up your good pots. I got a cheapo one with an enamel coating and it works just fine. You want to get one that has a broad, flat bottom. Mine also came with a wire rack inside, which is very handy.

I also got this handy little canning toolkit for about $6 at the Wal-Mart. I debated whether I really needed it or not, and I am so glad I got it. All of the tools were really helpful and I would strongly recommend getting this set.

Makin' jam!!!

2008-05-24T18:00:00.005-05:00

I loves me some jam!

I decided that this summer I would learn to make jam and possibly even do some pickling. All the tasty summer fruits are finally starting to come into season, so I decided to get started this week. Now, I did some canning one time about 15 years ago and it turned out awful. And I have never made jam before. So this week's jam-making has all been a fun learning experience.

First I made strawberry jam since that is what was fresh and available at my local store. It turned out pretty good, although I am not particularly fond of strawberry anything. I like my strawberries all by themselves most of the time. However, I have a deep and abiding love of peach jam and decided to make that next. I took my daughter to the Dallas Farmers Market downtown and we picked out some mighty fine peaches.

Time to get started!!

Book Review: The Impostor - by Celeste Bradley

2008-05-20T14:25:00.006-05:00

The Impostor is the 2nd novel in the Liar's Club series of regency romances by Celeste Bradley. We met both Dalton and Clara in the first book in this series, The Pretender. I was very interested in Dalton and was pleased that his story was next.

Synopsis: Dalton Montmorency has a secret identity: he is the new leader of a group of spies known as the Liar's Club. His mission: to ferret out the mysterious cartoonist, Sir Thorogood, before his cartoons can cause any more political havoc. In an effort to flush the man out, Dalton puts on his tackiest waistcoat and his highest heels and enters society claiming to be the cartoonist himself. The widow Clara Simpson also has a secret identity: she is the real Sir Thorogood. And she's mightily annoyed at the dandified impostor. Pretending to be an uncouth simpering bimbo, she sets out to unmask him and prove him for a fraud.

This book is chock full of secret identities. Both hero and heroine assume many different identities as they make their way through the puzzling plot to find the truth. I think the author sets these multiple roles up as a way to allow the characters to display their many facets. Dalton is one of my favorite kinds of hero: very driven and completely emotionally closed off. But when he is posing as a common thief, he can open up a little and let himself express his feelings. Clara also experiences a kind of freedom when posing as a ballsy housemaid. She is free to explore the daring, passionate woman inside. It is when they are in these roles that they allow themselves to explore their feelings for one another. And when their myriad identities are at last revealed, each of them must reconcile these different facets with themselves and with the person they fell in love with.

Favorite Part: It's not so much a particular scene, but I loved how Clara kept drawing and doodling Dalton over and over, sort of as a compulsion.

I gave this book 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.

Book Review: The Pretender - by Celeste Bradley

2008-05-20T10:22:00.007-05:00

The Pretender is the 1st book in Celeste Bradley's series of regency-era romances centered around a group of spies known as the Liar's Club.

Synopsis: Agatha Cunnington has come to London determined to find her missing brother, James. Though James has grown distant over the past several years, he is all the family she has left and the sheltered country miss is willing to risk whatever it takes to find him. Agatha's got problems, though. She has a conniving neighbor back home who wants to marry her off to his slimy son at the first opportunity. On top of that, a young unmarried lady cannot simply go gallivanting around the capital alone. So Agatha concocts a fake identity for herself: one Mrs. Mortimer Applequist. To make her disguise complete, she enlists her handsome new chimney sweep to pose as Mr. Applequist himself. Simon Raines, spymaster and chimney sweep extraordinaire, cannot believe his good fortune. As the leader of the Liar's Club, a secret ring of spies working for the Crown, he too is searching for James Cunnington. He believes that James is responsible for the recent deaths of several Liars and the leaking of critical information to the enemy. Believing that Agatha is James' mistress, he tries insinuate himself into her confidence while posing as her "husband."

This author came highly recommended to me and I was delighted with this first book. The plot is exciting and I got caught up in the drama involving the secondary characters. Bradley does a good job with character development. Often in romance, one or both of the main characters are really just character archetypes with little depth and simple motives. Bradley's heroes and heroines are complex, with many different emotional motivations based on their unique experiences and needs. Both are wary of telling the truth, but for very different reasons. Agatha is protecting her beloved brother while Simon is duty-bound to keep his mission secret. Then, when it all comes out in the open, Simon struggles with balancing his love for Agatha with his need to protect her from the dangers of being involved with a spy. For her part, Agatha is a very determined woman who selflessly loves her man. I think that's a really admirable quality. When he tries to push her away, instead of taking what she can from him and then letting him go, she focuses all of her energy on loving him and helping him to face his demons.

Favorite Parts: When Agatha "kills off" Mortimer. It's priceless. Also, the scene where "Repulsive Reggie" shows up and Simon nearly annihilates him.

I gave this book 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.

Celeste Bradley novels - reading order

2008-05-20T09:31:00.004-05:00

For the past few weeks, I've been reading Celeste Bradley's "Liar's Club" and "Royal Four" series of regency-era romantic spy novels. These books contain a continuing storyline with a definite chronological order. The order of each series is listed on the author's web site but, over the course of reading them, I'm finding that the second series actually begins in the midst of the first. There is also a short story thrown into the mix. So. I'm putting down the proper reading order of the books here so I can better keep track.

1. The Pretender (Liar's Club #1)
2. The Impostor (Liar's Club #2)
3. The Spy (Liar's Club #3)
4. "Wedding Knight" in My Scandalous Bride (short story)
5. The Charmer (Liar's Club #4)
6. To Wed a Scandalous Spy (Royal Four #1)
7. The Rogue (Liar's Club #5)
8. Surrender to a Wicked Spy (Royal Four #2)
9. One Night With a Spy (Royal Four #3)
10. Seducing the Spy (Royal Four #4)

I suspect there may be another Liar's Club book forthcoming because of certain plot elements that have not yet been resolved. However, these things may all be resolved in the remaining Royal Four books - I don't know yet. I'm also planning to review all of the books in this series (they really are all excellent); I just have to overcome my laziness and do it.

Book Review: Slightly Dangerous - by Mary Balogh

2008-03-04T11:36:00.002-06:00

Synopsis: Slightly Dangerous is the 6th and final novel in the Bedwyn family series of regency romances by Mary Balogh. This is Wulfric's long-awaited and much-anticipated story. The impoverished widow of a jealous man, Christine Derrick lives in a tiny cottage with her mother and spinster sister. When she is invited to a wealthy friend's house party, she intends to spend most of her time quietly observing the other more fashionable guests from the sidelines. However, her cheerful and fun-loving nature has a tendency to land her into all kinds of awkward situations. Stodgy, top-lofty Lord Wulfric, the Duke of Bewcastle, first meets the pretty and vivacious Christine when she accidentally drips lemonade in his eye from an overhead balcony. What happens after that is a series of comical mishaps wherein Wulfric is forced by gentlemanly honor and common decency to aid her. Christine finds the stuffy duke amusing and can't resist teasing him on occasion. Of course, she has some unpleasant secrets from her past, including some questionable business having to do with her husband's death. In fact, her late husband's family spurn her at every opportunity and disparage her character to anyone who will listen. Everything in Wulf's nature tells him that he should stay away from the wild miss, but instead he feels drawn to her. Finally, he decides to act on his attraction to her by asking her to become his mistress. Needless to say, Christine is unimpressed with the offer and sparks fly.

This is one of the best novels of this series. After seeing Wulf in the preceeding books, it was very satisfying to see him in his own story. He is a wonderfully interesting character. He hides his inner dreams and feelings behind a VERY heavy veneer of aloof pride and his ever-present quizzing glass. And yet, when he is with Christine, he cannot help himself: his uncomfortable feelings bubble to the surface. She has an effervescent vitality that he cannot resist. And in true Wulfric fashion, he decides he must have her, only he could not possibly condescend to marrying her. Christine, on the other hand, wants him too, but sticks to her guns. She is not going to satisfy her heart at the cost of her self-respect. In the course of the story, though, she manages to bring stoic Wulfric out of his shell (at least a little) and helps him to realize that it is alright to let others into his heart and that he can realize his own dreams if he would only allow himself to do so.

My favorite parts: When Christine grabs his quizzing glass and throws it up in a tree and he has to go and get it. Then when they are at the ball and he looks at her from across the room and raises his quizzing glass to his eye to examine her, she whips out her own glass and lifts it to her eye to stare back at him. Wulf laughs and is transformed by such a never-before seen display of humor.

I gave this one 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog!

Book Review: Slightly Sinful by Mary Balogh

2008-01-13T09:25:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Slightly Sinful is the fifth novel in Mary Balogh's Bedwyn family series of regency romances. This is Alleyne's story. He's the youngest Bedwyn brother and he's just embarked on a career with the British embassy in Brussels. On a mission to deliver a letter from Wellington at the front lines of the battle of Waterloo, Alleyne is shot. He falls from his horse and lay unconscious and dying, stripped naked by pilferers, in the woods outside Brussels. It is there that orphaned lady's maid Rachel York finds him.

Rachel has her own set of problems: She, along with a group of kindly prostitutes she has been trying to help, has been swindled by a man posing as a charitable man of the cloth. The villain has cheated them of all of their savings and fled to England; the women want their money back (and some revenge) - but first they have to get hold of enough money to get them back to England. Since she has been denied access to her inheritance by her uncle, a man she has not seen since childhood, Rachel has no money or family of her own. The women decide (along with half the city's population) to loot bodies in the aftermath of the battle in order to gather enough money for passage to England. However, Rachel finds that she doesn't have the stomach (or conscience) for the job. When she comes across Alleyne's unconscious body in the woods, she brings him back to the brothel and nurses him back to health.

When Alleyne regains consciousness, he finds that he's died and gone to heaven: he's being nursed by four whores and one beautiful angel (our Rachel). The only trouble is, he can't remember who he is. A warm friendship forms between the ladies and their handsome patient, and they all end up concocting a scheme wherein Rachel and Alleyne pose as a married couple in order to deceive Rachel's uncle into giving them her inheritance. But pretending to be married is more difficult than they first realize: their feelings for one another grow and they find themselves longing to make the marriage a real one, only Alleyne still has no idea of who he really is or whether he is already married to someone else.

The action in this book overlaps that of Morgan's story in Slightly Tempted. All the time Morgan thinks he is dead, he is really just a few blocks away, convalescing in a house of ill repute. I really enjoyed this book. I liked Alleyne's character from the previous books - he was the handsome, fun-loving, jokesy Bedwyn. I have always thought the amnesia plot device is pretty cheesy and very soap opera-esque. However, I was able to take it in stride in this book - probably because Mary Balogh is such a good writer. I actually got caught up in it. It was hard to see Alleyne so unhappy in this book, struggling to figure out who he was and how to deal with his feelings for Rachel when he was really not at liberty to make a commitment to her.

I liked Rachel also. Probably what I liked most about her was the changes she went through learning to let go of her feelings of hurt and bitterness toward her uncle. She comes to love him in spite of herself. The secondary characters of this novel were pretty entertaining, although I thought the concept of four "hookers with a heart of gold" a bit of a stretch. Everything worked out a little too neatly with one of them being a master cook, one a master gardener, two of them passing off as gentle ladies, etc. However, romance novels are a kind of fantasy and it is still satisfying to see everything tied up in a neat little package at the end.

Another interesting thing about this book is that Alleyne pretty much falls in love with Rachel at first sight. I don't always buy into that kind of thing, but in this book I think it worked pretty well. At first, he falls in love with her as a sort of savior/angel and then they develop a true friendship over the weeks of his recovery. He finally comes to love her more fully as they spend time together as a "married couple."

My favorite parts of this book, though, were the scenes at the end when Alleyne regains his memory and returns home to Lindsey Hall. The romance in the story was nice, but I felt that the entire novel was really moving toward the final point of Alleyne's reunion with the Bedwyns. There was an overall feeling of anticipation throughout the entire novel, growing more intense toward the end, when he is finally reunited with his family. And, yet again, the best bit was when Wulfric sees him again for the first time and hugs him.

I gave this book 4 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.

Jane Austen series to air on Masterpiece Theater

2008-01-07T10:02:00.001-06:00

In the coming weeks, PBS will be airing Masterpiece: The Complete Jane Austen. They will show film adaptations of ALL SIX of Jane Austen's novels (*drool) on a weekly basis beginning on Sunday, January 13th. According to my local PBS station's schedule, the first one to air will be Persuasion and the second one will be Northanger Abbey. I have never seen a film version of Northanger Abbey before, so I'm particularly excited about that one.

Book Review: Slightly Tempted - by Mary Balogh

2008-01-04T14:03:00.000-06:00

Synopsis: Slightly Tempted is the fourth novel in the Bedwyn family series of regency romances by Mary Balogh. This novel tells the story of the youngest Bedwyn sibling, Morgan. Only 18 years old, she is already a bit jaded to the frivolities of ton life. When she is offered the chance to accompany a friend's family to Brussels on the eve of the renewal of war with France, she cannot pass it up. She is truly interested and concerned in the business of the brewing war. Meanwhile, the handsome Gervase Ashford (the newly minted Earl of Rosthorn) is mouldering away in Brussels. Having been exiled for 9 years from England by his father for crimes he didn't commit, Gervase is thrilled to run into Morgan, the very sister of the man he blames for much of his troubles. He plans to seek revenge upon Wulfric Bedwyn by seducing his sister and generating a scandal. He has only begun to succeed at his plans, flirting shamelessly with her on numerous occasions, etc., when the battle of Waterloo erupts.

While most young aristocratic women are content to stay at home safely behind closed doors, Morgan boldly ventures out to the city gates to help others treat and care for the wounded soldiers pouring into the city - all despite her own fears for her brother, Alleyne, who has been commissioned by the embassy to take an important missive to the front lines of battle. It is at the city gates where Gervase finds her tending the wounded and offers to go look for her brother. When Alleyne cannot be found, Gervase tries to comfort and aid Morgan, offering her friendship and support. The two become true friends over the next several days as Morgan continues to tend the wounded while holding out hope of her brother's return. Finally, news arrives that confirms that Alleyne must surely have died at the battle, and Morgan turns to her dear friend for comfort in a night of passion. She will not marry him though, so he compromises by escorting her back to England to break the news to her family. They find that their scandalous behavior in Brussels has been reported in London, and Gervase has unwittingly had his revenge against his enemy Wulfric after all. Only by then, he doesn't want revenge, he only wants Morgan. And when she learns the truth about his motives on first meeting her in Belgium, she does not believe that she can trust him again. In her anger, she vows to go through a mock-betrothal only to make him fall in love with her and then cruelly abandon him.

Like so many good books, it is really hard to do this story justice. I absolutely loved this book. I loved the two main characters, I loved the setting, and I loved the struggles the characters went through.

I just love it when the characters are as dynamic as these two. They both change over the course of the story. Morgan discovers some of the real world from which those around her have tried to shelter her all her life. She is awakened to many harsh, bitter realities. At the same time, she discovers a deep feeling of friendship with Gervase, something she has never had before. I also think Gervase is a great hero. He, too is jaded - but for different reasons. He has been terribly wronged in his past, and cannot see beyond his need for revenge. With gentle guidance from Morgan, Gervase learns to forgive and let go of his desire for revenge. And through teaching Gervase about forgiveness, Morgan herself learns to forgive.

Of course, the scenes with the other Bedwyns were great also. I got really caught up in Morgan's desperate hope for Alleyne to be found, even though I knew that he wouldn't. And then watching the family mourn the loss of their brother was really heartbreaking. Especially Wulfric. You get a few more glimpses of Wulf's backstory in this book - as well as a glimpse of his hidden vulnerability as he grieves for his brother. I am looking forward to reading his story in Slightly Dangerous.

Favorite parts: When Gervase keeps riding out of Brussels to look for Morgan's brother. She is the sister of his age-old enemy, and yet he devotes himself to doing whatever he can to serve her. It reminded me of Darcy's devotion to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice when he searches London for the evil Wickham and then fixes everything - all so that Elizabeth won't be hurt. It's a mark of how much Gervase really cared for Morgan.

I also really liked the part where Morgan shows Gervase the painting by the river and he understands that the painting is about how the trees and the water and everything else in the world are all connected. He asks if he can keep the painting and says: "I will hang it in my bedchamber so that I may see it every day. After you have broken my heart and left me, I will remember that we are always and ever connected." (I had to get out my tissues.)

This one was definitely a 5 star book for me.

Book Review: Slightly Scandalous - by Mary Balogh

2008-01-03T14:34:00.000-06:00

Synopsis: Slightly Scandalous is the third book in the Bedwyn family series of regency romances by Mary Balogh. This is the story of Freyja, the eldest of the two Bedwyn sisters. It opens with headstrong, independent, and haughty (read: reckless, bitchy, and autocratic) Freyja pretty much fleeing to Bath to lick her wounds after having the guy she was in love with three years ago (a.k.a. Kit Butler - see A Summer to Remember) get married to somebody else and then additionally watching two of her older brothers get happily married one after the other while she remains unmarried and alone. Now her old flame's wife is about to give birth to their first child and it's just all too much for Freyja to take, so she heads off to the resort town of Bath to escape the hubbub back home. While there, she meets dashing former spy turned Marquess of Hallmere, Joshua Moore. She hates him on sight (which is pretty much how she reacts to most people) and even confronts him at a crowded gathering, accusing him of a transgression which he then publicly proves he did not in fact commit. Instead of eating humble pie, though, our heroine can't back down and they spend a few days sparring with one another. Poor Joshua has his own problems, with a kindly grandmother who would like nothing better than to see him wed, an evil aunt who tries to manipulate him into marrying her daughter, and an accusation of murder flying around. To deflect some of the matrimonial tension, he and Freyja decide to form a sort of mock betrothal and then they head off to Joshua's country estate to fend off the murder accusations.

I did not really like this book. I didn't absolutely hate it or anything, I just didn't like it. I think the main reason, really, is that I didn't like Freyja. At all. I have had a hard time liking her since we first met her in A Summer to Remember. I did try to like her. Truly I did. I even told myself when I started this book that I should not apply any kind of double-standard on this character - that I would not dislike traits in a female character that I would find acceptable and understandable in a male character. However, I think that if the roles had been reversed and Joshua behaved as Freyja does, I would have disliked him as well. Freyja is just so abrasive and mean.

The other thing that really bugged me was the way she ran around punching people in the face. I mean, I was ok with the first punch, when she thought she was defending another woman from an attacker. However, after that it just bothered me. I would not have accepted that kind of behavior in a male character. It is difficult to see why Joshua puts up with her at all, much less falls in love with her. And I really did like his character - he is charming, kind, caring, etc. It is hard not to admire these Balogh heroes who love their grandma's so much.

Otherwise, I thought the storyline was pretty entertaining, with the scheming aunt and the way Joshua comes to realize how much he loves the people and place where he grew up. I also enjoyed the further interaction with the rest of the Bedwyn family. I really like the other Bedwyns, especially Aidan and Wulfric. It's neat to see how the characters from the previous books are doing and what's happening in their lives even after their main romance story has been told.

This was only a 2 star book for me.

Book Review: Slightly Wicked - by Mary Balogh

2008-01-03T10:45:00.000-06:00

Synopsis: Slightly Wicked is the second novel in Mary Balogh's Bedwyn family series of regency romances. It stars Rannulf Bedwyn, the 3rd Bedwyn brother. It starts out with Rannulf on his way to visit his grandmother who, having made him her heir, has found what she thinks may be a suitable bride for him. On the way there, he comes across an overturned post coach stranded by the side of the road. One of the passengers, exceptionally beautiful redhead Judith Law, accepts his offer of a ride into the next town to seek aid. Intent on a guiltless dalliance, he gives her a false name, not letting on that he is really the brother of the powerful Duke of Bewcastle. He assumes she is a stage actress, one willing to share her bed with the right gentleman, and she does not disabuse him of this belief. In reality, Judith is a parson's daughter who has been farmed out as a poor relation to live with her well-to-do aunt in the country. She has led a fairly uneventful, sheltered life and the chance to pose as a ballsy, flirtatious actress for an hour or so is too good to pass up. She flirts with Rannulf all the way into the next town and they spend a couple of nights of passion together, he believing her an accomplished actress and lover, she thinking him a charming, rakish gentleman. Neither suspects the other's true identity. Of course, they must go their separate ways and Judith slips away in the morning, leaving him only a brief note of farewell.

Both of them think the adventure is over for good, but neither can forget those two nights together. Of course, come to find out that the girl Rannulf's grandmother has in mind for him is none other than Judith's empty-headed cousin, the daughter of the aunt that she has been sent to live out the rest of her dreary days with. They are both shocked to meet again and discover one another's true identity (like we didn't see this coming), but now they must face the reality of their situations: Judith is a poor relation and treated like a nobody while Rannulf has promised his grandmother that he will seriously pay court to the young girl she has chosen for him. Meanwhile, the crabby old aunt, afraid that Judith's natural beauty will detract from her own daughter's attractions, forces Judith to dress unflatteringly and behave as no more than a servant. All the same, Rannulf can't keep his eyes off her and eventually determines to make her his.

And most of that happens in the first 100 pages or so. There's also a dastardly villain in the form of a lecherous cousin, a ne'er do well spendthrift brother, and the theft of some family jewels (for which Judith is blamed).

This book kind of dragged a bit for me. I think maybe it was because it is the first book by Balogh that I did not thoroughly enjoy every step of the way. Judith is an interesting character, with her natural acting talent and her family situation (although I did find her a bit of a victim), but I thought Rannulf was a little lackluster for a hero. He's a nice guy, but he doesn't have a lot of individuality - just your average, garden variety regency romance rake/gentleman. And the bad guy is really bad, almost too bad to be believable. But I did enjoy the bits with the other Bedwyns, particularly the parts with Wulfric but not so much the parts with Freyja. I just don't like her character. She's bitchy and snobby. I didn't like her in A Summer to Remember, either. Her story is the subject of the next novel in this series, Slightly Scandalous.

Best part: Probably when, after Judith is accused of the jewel theft and then runs off to London, Rannulf rides after her and takes her to his family to protect her. He never once believes that she is guilty and he does fight for her - far more than she fights for herself.

I give this one 3 stars.

Book Review: Slightly Married - by Mary Balogh

2007-12-26T15:01:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Slightly Married is the first novel in the Bedwyn family series by Mary Balogh. Set in regency England, this book tells the story of Aidan Bedwyn, brother to the Duke of Bewcastle and member of the mighty Bedwyn family. Aidan is the second son, the one destined for military service. He did his duty and has spent most of his life fighting in the peninsula, rising in rank over the years to Colonel. At the open of the novel, one Percy Morris, having once saved Aidan's life in battle, lay dying on the battlefield. His final request is that Aidan find his sister and protect her "no matter what." Aidan, a man of his word, takes a two month leave and journeys to England to bring the sad news of the young man's death to his sister. Eve Morris is devastated to learn of her brother's death. Just as devastating is the realization that Eve and her entire household (including her two young adopted children) will all be turned out of their house in a few days' time due to a quirk in her father's will. Aidan, ever bound by his promise, decides to marry the woman in order to save her from her fate. Both of them assume it will be a simple marriage of convenience, neither of them expecting to see the other again after the wedding. Of course, they don't count on the fact that they are falling in love.

This was an enjoyable novel. I really liked Aidan. He was so stoic. He thinks that love is a bunch of nonsense and that duty and honor are all. Eve is a sensitive, loving, bleeding-heart who cannot bear to allow others to suffer injustice. This might be an almost annoying trait in a heroine, but Balogh paints her as a warm, living, breathing woman and I found myself liking her immensely. She is not weak, nor is she tragic. She is practical and determined to do what is right. I suppose this is one reason why she and Aidan fit together so well. They are both so honorable.

I loved how Aidan kept trying to leave her and kept not doing it. At first, after he does his duty by telling her about her brother's death and offering to help her, he figures he's done his bit and prepares to leave. But circumstances conspire to keep him around a few extra days until he realizes that, in all honor, he must stay and help her. Then, after they are married and he has no more obligation to stay with her, he keeps finding reasons to stick around a little longer. He eventually allows himself to love Eve, her children, and her home.

I really like how the Bedwyns have these big noses and sort of harsh features - they are not traditionally good-looking, and yet they have a certain appeal. They are not perfect. I also liked how Aidan just didn't give a damn about the fact that Eve Morris was essentially a "nobody." She worries about it a good bit, but this is not the essential obstacle to their romance for Aidan. For him, the real hurdle is accepting that it really is ok to have feelings beyond those of duty.

My favorite parts: When Eve wears black to her court presentation (it was so satisfying to see her throwing it in all their faces!) and then when Aidan smiles for the first time.

I can't wait to read about the other Bedwyns now. Especially Wulfric. He's so stodgy and wound up. His story is the final one in the series, so it will be a while yet.

I gave this book 4 stars.

Book Review: A Summer To Remember - by Mary Balogh

2007-12-26T14:24:00.000-06:00

Synopsis: A Summer To Remember is the second (and primary prequel) to Mary Balogh's Bedwyn family series. It is in this book that we first meet several of the Bedwyns. Lauren Edgeworth, the jilted bride from One Night for Love, has pretty much soured on the whole marriage thing after being left at the altar a year ago. Having lived her entire life feeling bound to be stolid and dutiful to her family, she has never allowed herself to have any adventure, any passion. Now she has some vague plans of spending a few weeks with her aunt Elizabeth in London for the season and then hightailing it off to Bath to set up house and settle in for a long, boring spinsterhood. Kit Butler, the new Viscount Ravensburg, is being manipulated by his family into a betrothal to a woman he does not wish to wed. There's a good deal of bad blood between him and his family, and he's decided to thwart them by finding a bride on his own and presenting her to them all at his grandmother's birthday party back home in a few weeks. He sets his sights on the beautiful Lauren and begins a thorough wooing. However, he comes to respect her as a person and finds that he cannot in good conscience continue to court her. Just as he tries to set her free from his attentions, she stays his hand and strikes a bargain with him: She will pose as his betrothed so that he can foil his father's plans if Kit will agree to give her a little adventure.

Needless to say, there's a great deal of potential for "adventure" in any romance novel. Kit doesn't disappoint. He is sexy, charming, masculine, and truly honorable. He has a wonderful sense of humor and uses it to help bring Lauren out of her shell. Through her adventures with Kit, she discovers that she has the freedom to be whomever she wants to be - that it is ok to be herself. Then, after finding that freedom, she goes on to discover just who that person is. She also falls in love with her hero as he, in turn, falls in love with her. She guides him gently into facing his past. With her help, he learns to let go of the painful responsibility and self-recrimination that he has carried with him for years. At last, he is able to accept the love of his family.

I absolutely loved this book. I enjoyed One Night for Love and admired the character depth and storytelling ability of the author in that book. However, I think A Summer To Remember is a truly wonderful love story. Balogh's writing is superb. The characters are very real and you really do understand why they feel the way they do - about themselves, their lives, and each other.

This one is definitely worth 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog!

Book Review: One Night for Love - by Mary Balogh

2007-12-26T13:54:00.000-06:00

Synopsis: I consider One Night for Love to be the first of two prequels to Mary Balogh's Bedwyn family series of regency romances. Neville Wyatt, Earl of Kilbourne, is literally moments from marrying his lifelong friend and adopted cousin, Lauren Edgeworth, WHEN the woman he married and left for dead two years before comes rushing down the aisle to stop the wedding. Our heroine, Lily Doyle, is a mess, having traveled across the peninsula, over the channel, and through the English countryside to make her way back to her beloved husband. Poor Lauren, the jilted bride, and the rest of Neville's family are shocked and appalled to learn of his marriage to a virtual nobody on a battlefield in Portugal. What follows is a long and heart-rending story of how the two long-lost lovers truly find one another and are able to allow themselves to love each other again.

It is very difficult to describe this book. It is the first Balogh novel I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, thorough is a good word to describe Balogh's writing. She weaves myriad characters into the story as well as providing a rich setting for the action of the story. And yet, you don't ever feel as though you've been mired in too much flowery language or bored with a detailed account of every leaf and twig the characters pass along the way.

The central plot involving the hero and heroine is very, very simple. Their marriage and subsequent joining were an affirmation of life in the midst of the war and death surrounding them. I found the back-story of their time in Portugal very moving. They are torn apart by death, only to be reunited again unexpectedly. Their feelings for one another didn't change, but Lily must still struggle with finding her place in an English society that judges harshly those with no blue blood and formal education. She has to leave Neville, the one thing she loves the most, in order to grow into the woman who can truly be his wife. If that makes sense. Like I said, it is a very difficult book to describe.

Interestingly, one of my favorite things about this novel was the cast of secondary characters. I especially liked Elizabeth, Neville's 36 year old spinster aunt. She made a wonderful champion for Lily among the vicious members of the ton. I also enjoyed the little romance between her and the Duke. I also really liked Gwendoline and Lauren, who didn't want to like Lily, but were strong enough to admit that she really was a good person. They come to like and accept her over time.

I gave this book 4 stars.

Mary Balogh novels - reading order

2007-11-04T13:23:00.000-06:00

Since I'm using this blog to track my reading habits, among other things, I've found it useful to provide reading lists of authors. I'm still plowing through Jo Beverley's Company of Rogues series, but I plan to start reading some Mary Balogh at some point. This is a recommended reading list for Balogh's major book series that I plan to read, from what I can piece together from her website. She's written a LOT of books, but I think I'm going to start with these.

Recommended reading order:

1. One Night for Love
2. A Summer to Remember
3. Slightly Married
4. Slightly Wicked
5. Slightly Scandalous
6. Slightly Tempted
7. Slightly Sinful
8. Slightly Dangerous
9. Simply Unforgettable
10. Simply Love
11. Simply Magic
12. Simply Perfect

Book Review: Forbidden - by Jo Beverley

2007-10-20T13:28:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: Forbidden is the 4th book in Jo Beverley's Company of Rogues series of regency romances. This installment of the series features Rogues' member Francis Haile, Lord Middlethorpe, who is currently courting one Anne Peckworth, a perfectly respectable Duke's daughter (whom I believe gets her own story in Hazard). Serena Riverton is the widow of sexual deviant, "Randy" Riverton, whom she was forced to marry at the tender age of 15. The story opens with Serena driven to flight from her characteristically evil brothers, who wish to marry her off to the highest bidder. She decides to become a mistress rather than a wife, and heads to London to seek her fortune there. On the way, she gets lost and picked up by young Middlethorpe (ever the gentleman) who is on his way to sort out some rather pesky business involving his mother and an alleged extortionist. Serena sets her sights on making Francis her first protector, and attempts to secure him by literally raping him in the night while weathering a particularly nasty storm in a farmhouse. Francis, a VIRGIN, is at once appalled by and drawn to the woman as a result. Unable to reconcile his feelings for the girl, he drops her off at his aunt Arabella's house in the country and tries to put the beautiful siren out of his mind. While living with Arabella, Serena discovers that she is pregnant, Francis is summoned, and they marry. He doesn't trust her; she doesn't think she is capable of physical tenderness. They both fear that their tenuous marriage will not be able to survive the scandal of its beginnings and of Serena's past.

I am finding, as I read more books in this series, that Beverley likes a very convoluted plot. The above synopsis doesn't really do it justice - it really is much too complicated to summarize. I truly enjoyed this story, though. I really liked Francis' character from the previous Rogues books - he is sensitive, kind, and very gentle. Of the Rogues we've met so far, he's probably the one I would have fallen in love with, were I the heroine of a novel. Serena is a bit whiny at the beginning of the novel, but she kind of grows on you. And by the end of the book, she learns to give as good as she's gotten. I ended up cheering for her during the climactic scene at the inn.

One thing that was noticeably different about this novel from the other books so far, is that the author gives you a lot more insight into what the hero is thinking and feeling. In her earlier books, there are virtually no scenes told from the man's perspective, so you never know what his take on the situation is. Occasionally, you might get little tidbits from conversations he has with other characters, but you never get to see inside his head. In this book, we get a better understanding of how Francis views his wife, what he feels when he discovers the true horrors of her past, and his conflicting feelings of suspicion and desire for her.

On the whole, this series has been fairly enjoyable to read. What I love most about reading series is that you get to see what is happening with a couple from a previous book and you get to anticipate reading the other characters' stories. We're getting to know each of the Rogues a little better with each novel. It makes for a more satisfying reading experience, I think.

Favorite Scene: At the inn when Serena gets fed up with everyone, particularly Francis, and whacks him upside the head with the portfolio. Then she stomps home and throws a big fit in her room. It was funny, but also you see her finally come into her own and realize that she controls her life and won't be controlled by others anymore. Also liked the love scene that follows.

What I didn't like: That Francis never tells her that he loves her. Not once. In the entire book. But I guess it's ok, since you figure he will realize that he loves her in time.

LibraryThing rating: 4 stars

Jo Beverley's Company of Rogues series

2007-10-19T19:41:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to whittle down my TBR pile (my "to be read" pile), so I've decided to plow through Jo Beverley's Company of Rogues romance series over the next few months. I've been working on a comprehensive listing of the titles in this series. I may have to edit this list, but here's what I have been able to glean from the author's website and from the romance readers on Library Thing. (edited to clean up the list and add a short story)

The Company of Rogues Series:

1. An Arranged Marriage
2. An Unwilling Bride
3. Christmas Angel
4. Forbidden
5. Dangerous Joy
6. The Demon's Mistress (short story, linked to the Rogues)
7. The Dragon's Bride
8. The Devil's Heiress (linked to the Rogues)
9. Hazard (linked to the Rogues)
10. St. Raven (linked to the Rogues)
11. Skylark
12. The Rogue's Return
13. To Rescue a Rogue
14. Lady Beware (linked to the Rogues)

My very own lite brite!

2007-10-01T12:11:00.000-05:00

My brother had a Lite Brite, but I didn't get to play with it much. So I was pretty excited to find out about this one:

LITE BRITE

All the fun, without having all those millions of pegs stuck to your leg when you finish playing with it.

thanks to: (of all places) Tom Mighell's Internet Legal Research Weekly

Free catalogs

2007-08-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

I love catalogs. They are like free fashion and home decorating magazines without all those pesky "articles." Even if I can't buy the stuff, I still like looking through the pages for ideas about ways I can decorate, styles to wear, fun gadgets, etc. So with this in mind, I am working on creating a listing of cool designers and retailers who offer free catalogs upon request. I mean, yeah sure, you can just browse their websites, but you don't have to be on a computer to flip through a catalog! I'm still trying to figure out the best way to get this kind of thing published to the blog, so it may be a while coming.

Bug Me Not: the online registration avoider thingy

2007-08-04T13:44:00.000-05:00

Web sites that require you to "register" before you can view them are just annoying. They are only doing it for two reasons: 1) they think their content is so all-fired important; AND 2) they want to get your personal info so they can spam you. Why do it? Why register? Why should we have to create stupid dummy email accounts just so we can view some article that somebody sent us the link to.

So, use Bug Me Not to bypass the registration process. It generates a handy user name and password for you so you don't have to cough up your info. Of course, there are a few sites who have managed to work around Bug Me Not (the snooty old Wall Street Journal for one) but, by and large, it is a handy thing to use.

thanks to: puddle for nagging me about blogging this

I love this shirt

2007-07-20T19:10:00.000-05:00

It appeals to the librarian/gamer geek inside me.

found via: the great tcritic
get it at: JINX Clothing Company

Harry Potter geeks rule

2007-07-20T18:34:00.000-05:00

I'm super-jazzed about going to the midnight sale for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tonight. Can't wait to read it.

favorite word #6: plover

2007-06-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

They're always eating plover eggs in trashy romance. Why is that? It must have been a popular dish in regency England...

Book Review: The Scarlet Pimpernel - by Baroness Orczy

2007-05-30T16:16:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: The Scarlet Pimpernel is the first novel in a series of books focused around a group of men known as the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. This is the tale of the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, a mysterious Englishman of mysterious identity who, together with his network of daring comrades, cunningly sneaks French nobles bound for the guillotine out of France during the French Revolution.

... Actually, this is NOT the tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel. This novel really tells the tale of Lady Marguerite Blakeney, a beautiful, witty, stylish French actress who marries the oh-so-very English Sir Percy Blakeney. Their marriage begins passionately enough, but by the time our story begins, the Blakeneys have become estranged and bitter toward one another. Through a misunderstanding, they each believe the other no longer holds any love for them. Percy is a notorious fop with a shallow personality and a reputation for downright stupidity. Marguerite is a beatiful trendsetter and the life of the party. Both display thinly-veiled contempt for one another whenever they are together. Over the course of the novel, Marguerite becomes embroiled in a plot involving high intrigue with the French government and the Scarlet Pimpernel himself.

SPOILER ALERT: An agent of the new French government, the villain Chauvelin, has traveled to England in an effort to ferret out the identity of the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel. He blackmails Marguerite into helping him. Once Chauvelin discovers the man's identity, he hightails it back to France to try to catch the man red-handed in the act of helping more emigrees to escape. About the same time all this goes down, Marguerite and Percy begin to patch things up in their marriage. Before they can fully reconcile, Percy is called away from home on urgent business. Then everything goes to hell in a handbasket when Chauvelin, who (with the unwilling aid of Marguerite) has finally discovered the Pimpernel's true identity, hightails it back to France to try to catch the man red-handed. Marguerite soon realizes that the Scarlet Pimpernel is none other than her very own husband, Percy, and that his witless foppishness has been nothing but an act meant to hide his secret identity! Guilt-stricken at what she has done, she pursues her husband to France to try to save him from Chauvelin's clutches.

It's a relatively short novel, but oh, what a story! There's a little of something for everyone in this book: gut-wrenching drama, exciting action, and touching romance. The story is told primarily from the point of view of Marguerite Blakeney, so the reader discovers the true nature of Chauvelin's plot and the mystery of the Pimpernel just as she does. You are taken through the range of emotions she goes through every time the plot takes another twist.

This novel is a part of a series about the League of men who work for the Scarlet Pimpernel. It's easy to see the widespread influence that this novel had on modern romance novels. Many of these center around a focal "adventure" plot, where the hero of the novel is a part of a group of men who work together in some common cause. Each member of the group usually gets his own story/romance. I'm looking forward to reading more of the books in this series.

They seek him here, they seek him there...

2007-05-25T20:22:00.000-05:00

I've decided to try reading the entire Scarlet Pimpernel series of novels by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. I think I first read The Scarlet Pimpernel my freshman year in college Lo, these many years ago. I totally fell in love with it. (I also fell in love with Sir Percy Blakeney, and well, who wouldn't?)

Apparently, I was somehow until very recently unaware of the fact that Orczy wrote over a dozen novels featuring the various members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. She wrote them in no particular order, taking place at different times in the characters' lives. My husband ran into this when reading the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. To help with story flow, he read the books in the chronological order of the story rather than in the order in which they were written. I am thinking of doing the same with the Pimpernel series; however, I'm still starting off with a re-read of The Scarlet Pimpernel first.

*** Edited to add: I found what I think may be a better resource for a recommended reading order if you want to read them in the chronological order of the story, so here's the revised listing:

The Laughing Cavalier (1913) *prequel
The First Sir Percy (1920) *prequel
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)
Sir Percy Leads the Band (1936)
The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1919) *short stories
I Will Repay (1906)
The Elusive Pimpernel (1908)
Eldorado (1913)
Mam'zelle Guillotine (1940)
Lord Tony's Wife (1917)
The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1933)
Sir Percy Hits Back (1927)
Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1929) *short stories
The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1922)
A Child of the Revolution (1932)
Pimpernel and Rosemary (1924)

I was also delighted to discover that Project Gutenberg has several of these available for download as free ebooks (great for reading on the sly at work!)

BookMooch: for all your book-moochin needs

2007-05-22T11:24:00.000-05:00

Love the lovely BookMooch.

I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and really like it. The basic process is: You put up books you own that you're willing to give away to other people. Other people put up books they're willing to give away to other people. When somebody puts up a book you want, you mooch it from them and they mail it to you. When somebody mooches a book from you, you mail it to them. All anybody pays is the cost of postage.

It all works on a point system. You get a point for every 10 books you add to your "Inventory" of books you're willing to give away. You also get a point for every book you mail out to someone. When you mooch a book from someone else, a point is deducted from your account.

The best part is, BookMooch does all the legwork for you. You can create a "Wishlist" of books you really want. As soon as someone adds one of your wishlisted books to their Inventory, BookMooch automatically sends them an email requesting that they send the book to you. You can even import books into your Inventory from other places like LibraryThing. And of course, the entire BookMooch inventory is searchable.

I tend to keep all the books I read, but I did have about a dozen or so lying around that I didn't want to keep for one reason or another. I've already sent out 4 books and had several sent to me and more on the way. I think it's a great way to get those books you're having trouble tracking down anywhere else, or don't want to pay high dollar for.

Early Ink - the inside scoop in upcoming book releases

2007-05-21T10:49:00.000-05:00

Early Ink is a brand new site devoted to letting people know about new and upcoming books to be released. From their About page:

It is an "...online gateway for readers to find out about new and upcoming books from multiple publishers in all genres. At the same time, Early Ink is a place for authors and publishers to advertise, promote and offer previews of their upcoming titles."

You can download book excerpts/previews and also leave comments for a book. There's also a section they call "Media Buzz" that keeps you updated on a particular book's coverage by the media. Sounds like it might be handy if you want to know if the author's going to be on NPR talking about the book, etc.

What I like: 1. That it covers multiple publishers and 2. That you can get an RSS feed for updates on books from a particular genre. So if you read, say, a lot of trashy romance (ahem...) then you can get a feed of just the new romance stuff. It'll be interesting to watch this site and see whether it takes off.

Thanks to: kristinm in our LibraryThing romance readers' group!

The Hollywood Librarian movie

2007-05-17T08:53:00.000-05:00

The library community is all in a froth over the upcoming release of The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film, a documentary film about librarians and what they really do. According to the site, it is "the first full-length documentary film to focus on the work and lives of librarians." It will chronicle the profession through commentary and clips of American movies that have portrayed librarians, as well as showing interviews with several real-live librarians in the trenches. Exciting stuff.

The trailer has been making the rounds among the various librarian listservs and blogs lately and, as a 30-something librarian, I feel compelled to point out that the clip doesn't seem to show a whole lot of folks in my age-bracket. I personally know a lot of other young librarians in their 20's and 30's, so I truly hope that the film makes an effort to show the broad range of ages and backgrounds of people drawn to this profession.

The Hollywood Librarian is set to premiere this summer at the American Library Association annual conference held in Washington, DC. (wish I was going...)

Book Review: An Arranged Marriage - by Jo Beverley

2007-05-16T15:22:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: An Arranged Marriage is the first novel in Jo Beverley's "Company of Rogues" regency romance series. This story takes place in England during the period between Napoleon's abdication and the Hundred Days. The plot has some kind of convoluted beginnings but then becomes pretty straightforward about halfway through. In brief: The heroine, Eleanor, is drugged and raped by the earl of Stainbridge, one Christopher Delaney (who was also drugged at the time) - all as a part of a plot by Eleanor's good for nothing brother to win the favor of this really mean old lord named Deveril, who inexplicably wants Eleanor for himself. Meanwhile, Christopher's roguish twin brother, Nicholas Delaney, has been asked to serve his country by wooing his former mistress, Madame Bellaire, who is under suspicion of plotting to bring Napoleon back to power. A guilty Christopher, who really isn't the rapist sort, pretty much forces his brother into marrying poor Eleanor in order to do right by the girl. Now poor Nicholas, who really is quite a nice guy, has to try to juggle his new, skittish bride and his evil, traitorous mistress - all somehow without looking like a total jerk. (Don't try to work it out; I've tried and it's all way too complicated).

I didn't like this book all that much. I think part of the problem is the confusing style. There were several times when I had to re-read passages over and over to figure out what the heck was going on. It's one of Beverley's earlier works and I think part of it can be chalked up to a new writer testing her wings.

I didn't feel that there was quite enough interaction between the hero and the heroine for my taste. Due to the clandestine nature of his "mission," Nicholas is forced to maintain a cool distance between himself and his wife. This aspect of the story reminded me a LOT of The Scarlet Pimpernel. The details are different, but the basics seem similar: He loves his wife, but has to pretend indifference/stay away from her because of his secret life of espionage. That alone is probably what kept me reading. But whereas in Pimpernel, this served to really make you feel deeply for the plight of the hero and heroine, in An Arranged Marriage it becomes tiresome and frustrating for the reader. I kept wanting to yell at the characters, "Just talk to each other, for pete's sake!"

In spite of it all, I found myself liking the secondary characters in the novel immensely, particularly Francis and Lucien. So much so, in fact, that I still want to read the next book in the series. I'm hoping I'll find that in subsequent books the author will have found her stride. You can tell she's got lots of talent, and I'm not one to give up on an author just based on one less-than-stellar experience.

My LibraryThing rating: 2 stars

Cool Toy: Animal Hospital - from Parents

2007-05-04T15:09:00.000-05:00

The Animal Hospital toy, from the folks at Parents magazine, has a little something for every toddler.

It's like a combination doctor playset and vet clinic. It comes with cute little plush pets that they can put inside and then "unlock" the door to let the little guy out using a set of keys that actually work! There's also an assortment of veterinary instruments that they can use to "treat" the animal. The best part: comes with its own storage! All the pieces can be closed up inside for portability (and easy cleanup). A great toy for the budding little veterinarian in your household. My kids would love this!

found via: parent hacks
foto from: amazon

favorite word #5: wrought

2007-05-03T21:18:00.000-05:00

not as in wrought iron fence, but as in the destruction wrought upon our fair city

Kickass movie: Hot Fuzz

2007-04-29T20:08:00.000-05:00

Hot Fuzz

We went to see it for my birthday and it was great! Laughed. Our. Asses. Off. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were both excellent. And Timothy Dalton was ohso smarmy. We'll definitely be buying this one when it comes out on DVD.

foto from: imdb

Book Review: Minx - by Julia Quinn

2007-04-29T19:39:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: Minx is the third novel in a regency romance trilogy by Julia Quinn. In this book, Dunford finally gets his story. The somewhat rakish and rather dissipated friend of the characters we met in the first two books finds that he has inherited a title as well as an estate in distant Cornwall. What he doesn't realize until he arrives to look over his new property, is that he has also been named guardian of the tomboyish hoyden Henrietta (aka: Henry). Henry has lived virtually her whole life on the Cornish estate, managing it herself for years under the less-than-watchful eyes of her uncle. When the old man dies and a stranger from London inherits the estate, Henry is terrified that she will be turned out of the only home she has ever known. She sets out to frighten off the new owner (our Dunford) so that he will want to remain as far away from Cornwall as possible. Dunford, on the other hand, sees through her ruse and finds himself drawn to Henry in spite of himself.

The plot in this book is again a rather typical romance novel plot. It centers around two people who are unexpectedly thrown together and experience a number of misunderstandings, but ultimately find love. But again, it is the characters who make this book so enjoyable.

Dunford is a great character. We've seen him in the first two books being his charming self. If he is one thing, it is honorable. He demonstrates a steadfast loyalty to his friends in both Splendid and in Dancing at Midnight. He also doesn't just make snap judgements about people and dismiss them. He really tries to understand Henry and what motivates her feelings and actions. He struggles to reconcile his responsibilities to her as her guardian with his feelings for her as a woman.

Henry also has many facets to her character. She is tomboyish, to be sure, but Quinn doesn't let that trait completely rule her character. She doesn't wear dresses because they are impractical for her lifestyle; however, that doesn't prevent her from enjoying her femininity when given the opportunity to explore it. And she's really quite funny sometimes as she makes her way through the complicated rules of London high society.

LibraryThing rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Dancing at Midnight - by Julia Quinn

2007-04-29T19:15:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: Dancing at Midnight is the second novel in a regency romance trilogy by Julia Quinn. It tells the story of the lovely, yet bookish, Belle Blydon (whom we met previously in Splendid) and the dark and brooding John Blackwood. Blackwood is a veteran of the Napoleonic wars who earned, as a result of his service, both the title of Baron and a terrible leg injury that left him with a permanent limp. Belle meets John while visiting her cousin, Emma, who is married to the Duke of Ashbourne. Ashbourne's land borders John's and Belle encounters the hero while relaxing in a meadow on his property. The two don't exactly hit it off right away; John is grouchy and sardonic, offending Belle's tender sensibilities. Unused to the idea of being disliked by anyone, Belle sets out to make the man like her. She succeeds.

What is great about Julia Quinn is that she can take a relatively average, bare-bones story and make it into a good read using great character development and snappy dialogue. Belle is a sweet girl, with a good deal of determination in her. John is tortured not only by the horrors he experienced during the war, but also by the memory of a tragedy for which he blames himself. Belle helps John to triumph over his self-inflicted guilt and come to terms with it. There are a couple of truly great scenes in this novel, one incredibly funny and the other incredibly exciting. The supporting characters are also charming: We see Emma and Alex from Splendid, of course, as well as Dunford (who returns for his own story in Minx) and the hilarious aunt Persephone.

I gave this book 4 stars in my LibraryThing catalog

favorite word #4: cherries

2007-04-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

Blackle - the energy saving search engine

2007-04-25T09:55:00.000-05:00

Blackle is like Google, but the screen's all black instead of white. That's pretty much it, really. Why should we care? Because it takes less energy to display a black screen on your monitor than it does to display a white screen. Hey, it's all about saving the planet, baby.

From their About page: "In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages. We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy."

I ran a test search on Blackle using the term "praying mantis" and the results were not identical to those retrieved by Google, but pretty darn close. The top 4 or 5 hits were really the same, just in a different order; after that, it varied only a little. On the whole, though, looks like an eco-friendly option for those casual searches. An added benefit: If you use your computer in the dark a lot (say, at night with the lights off), it spares you from the horrid, eye-raping brightness of a white homepage...

thanks to: LibrarianInBlack

Happy mantis

2007-04-25T09:20:00.000-05:00

This foto nearly made me spew my dr. pepper this morning when I saw it. The little guy looks so darn triumphant.

found via boingboing

foto credit: Lawraa

Bearaphim ipod covers

2007-04-24T12:24:00.000-05:00

Why, oh, WHY do I not have an ipod yet??? Check out these supercool bear-themed ipod covers from Boomwave. Their paws even hold your earbud cords for you. My favorite is the sleek black Ursa Miner.

Thanks to popgadget for this one!

Dilbert's performance review generator

2007-04-24T11:57:00.000-05:00

For the middle-manager in all of us, Dilbert provides this handy performance review generator. It's great, if for no other reason than for coming up with those proactive, progressive-sounding, flowery (yet innocuous) terms that we find it necessary to use when describing ourselves for the ol' annual review.

Book Review: Splendid - by Julia Quinn

2007-04-23T20:45:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: Splendid is the first in a trilogy of regency romances by Julia Quinn. The heroine, Emma, is an American gal visiting her aunt's family in London for the Season. Bored with stuffy society rules, Emma longs to free herself from the confines of her role as a proper young lady and decides to dress up as a maid and take a brief shopping trip to the local market (a la the movie Aladdin). There, she meets Alex, the handsome Duke of Ashbourne when she unexpectedly saves the life of his young nephew. Alex is taken with the pretty maid and finds himself fixating on her, only to discover her true identity later that night. What follows is a nice little courtship, where the couple form a sort of friendship and then eventually admit their deeper feelings for one another.

This book was a nice little love story. It is one of Quinn's earlier novels, and you can kind of tell. The language is a bit flowery like you see in romances written the 1970's and 80's; and the story itself is also not quite as enthralling as her later works. However, I liked the main characters quite a lot - especially Emma, her cousin Belle, and their friend Lord Dunston. Emma is a fun character who's game for anything. She doesn't back down from a challenge and is a loyal friend. One thing that kind of bothered me, though, is that Emma's cousin Ned (and as a result, Emma herself) does some rather questionable things. I'm not sure that the interpretation of what was honorable for gentlemen that is offered in the novel is particularly accurate. Ned does some gambling and loses an obscene amount of money to a man and then decides not to honor his bet (based on the grounds that the other guy was cheating) and then he and Emma actually plot to steal the promissory note away from the guy. Sure, the guy was cheating, but I'm not sure that the solution the characters arrive at is the best one either.

On the whole, though, it was ok. I liked the secondary characters well enough that I still want to read their stories. Besides, I loved the author's Bridgertons series, so I think the next couple of books have the potential to be really good.

I gave this one 3 stars in LibraryThing

Favorite word #3: swashbuckling

2007-04-21T19:25:00.001-05:00

YARRRRR!!

Favorite word #2: nautical

2007-04-19T14:57:00.001-05:00

Favorite word #1: barnacle

2007-04-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

I just love nautical words. Huh. I like the word nautical also... hmmm...

Favorite words

2007-04-19T14:46:00.000-05:00

Since nobody reads this anyway, I thought I'd use it to keep track of my favorite words. I'll be listing them as I think of them.

Oh, and I guess I should add that, yes, I know I AM SUCH A GEEK.

Book Review: The Wedding - by Julie Garwood

2007-04-19T11:50:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: The Wedding is the second novel in a 2-part series of medieval romances by Julie Garwood. Connor MacAlister, Highland laird of the MacAlister clan, has vowed revenge for his father's death at the hands of rival clan MacNare. When he learns of Laird MacNare's plans to marry an English bride, Connor steals the girl away before they can wed and marries her himself. His new bride, Brenna, is none too pleased to be marrying him, but decides to give the marriage a fair chance. Poor Brenna faces a lot of challenges in making the marriage work, including an EXTREMELY bossy husband, mean and lecherous in-laws, and her own confusing emotions.

This is the sequel to The Bride, which was a GREAT book. This novel, however, was not nearly as enchanting as its predecessor. The story kind of winds along, nothing spectacular, but then the last 50 pages or so are pretty intense. The ending was very satisfying and I did get quite caught up in it. I guess my real hangup was Connor's character. He is so very stubborn and callous. He is constantly saying and doing things that are so unbelievably inconsiderate and sometimes downright cruel to Brenna, that it's difficult to like him very much. Of course, part of his character is that he has vowed never to fall in love, because his father's dying words were that a broken heart is the worst thing ever (way to go, dad). He does eventually come to accept his love for his wife, but lordy it takes a lot to get him there.

Brenna's really pretty nice, though. She's pretty funny at times and has some endearing quirks, but she's not as spirited or engaging as Jaimie was in The Bride. I found myself liking the secondary characters (Connor's two best friends) almost more than the main characters. Quinlan and Crispin are funny and often insightful in the way they show loyalty to Brenna while teasing Connor about his feelings for her. I was also pleased to see Alec and Jaimie from The Bride make extended appearances in this story.

My LibraryThing rating: 3 stars

Book Review: The Bride - by Julie Garwood

2007-04-18T14:10:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: The Bride is the first in a two-part series of medieval romances by Julie Garwood. Jamie (aka: the Bride), a young Englishwoman, is forced into an arranged marriage to Highland laird Alec Kincaid. Alec has little use for a wife, but is honor-bound by his king to marry the girl. He's a stubborn lord used to giving orders and not getting any lip; she's an independent woman used to managing a household and thinking for herself. They spend 3/4 of the book arguing (and making up afterward), until the end when the real conflict surfaces.

When I write it out like that, it doesn't sound like much of a book, but honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The interaction between Jaimie and Alec is engaging and I found myself hanging on their every conversation and waiting to see what they would do next. Garwood's style is easy to follow and the dialogue is downright hilarious at times. I didn't really care all that much about the "plot" of the story, and I don't think the author does either. The romance and the interaction between the hero and heroine are what drives this story.

I mostly read historical regency romance, but I've read a number of medieval romances as well. I'm not such a big fan of medieval romances, though. It seems like so many medieval romances have a lot of scenes where the hero dominates the heroine in most every aspect of their relationship. Even if the heroine is depicted as "spirited" and strong-willed, it seems like she's always having to "learn a lesson" in respecting the hero's dominance. Sometimes, there are even a few quasi-rape scenes in these novels, which TOTALLY puts me off. I know that it was totally a male-dominated society back then, but I still like my romances with a little more give and take on BOTH sides - and a respect for each other's bodies.

The Bride didn't fall into that pitfall though. Alec doesn't ever try to dominate Jaimie physically (although he does occasionally want to throttle her for her outrageous behavior). Both the hero and the heroine spend a good deal of time overcoming their difficulties in communicating and their assumptions about what the other is feeling/thinking. I hope that the second book in this series, The Wedding, will be just as good.

My LibraryThing rating: 4 stars

Dallas Public Central Library celebrates 25th Anniversary

2007-04-18T09:08:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to the Dallas Public Library's J. Erik Jonsson central library!!! The big ol' downtown library turns 25 this year and they've got lots of cool events planned to celebrate the occasion. Of particular note are the Lone Star Comics gaming tables, which will be open on Friday April 20th from 10pm till dawn AND the children's storytime/puppet show events. What a great way to get the community involved in the library!

Goodbye, Blue Monday

2007-04-17T20:31:00.000-05:00

(I'm late in posting about this, I fear, but I've been out of town, etc.)

The great Kurt Vonnegut has passed.

Book Review: Blow Me Down - by Katie MacAlister

2007-04-16T11:07:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: Blow Me Down is the first novel I have read by Katie MacAlister. It's about a single mama (hooray for mamas in romance!) whose teenage daughter, in an effort to get her wound-up mother to have a little fun for once, cons her into beta testing a new virtual reality computer game set in a world of pirates. Amy (that's the mama) actually finds herself enjoying the game, especially when she's matching wits and crossing swords with rival pirate (and game designer) Black Corbin. However, things take a bit of a nasty turn when she discovers that she and Corbin have been trapped inside the game by one of Corbin's former business partners bent on destroying him.

I don't usually read much contemporary romance, but this one had two things I just couldn't resist: pirates and computer gaming. Alone, those 2 things are great, but together... well, it just doesn't get much better than that. I liked the book as a whole pretty well. Corbin is a charming hero, and it was touching to see the way the author handled the physical attraction between the two main characters. Corbin is not the typical muscle-laden bronzed sungod/warrior type you see in so many romances. And MacAlister goes out of her way to explain that her heroine really prefers him just as he is in real life, not as he assumes she would like him to be.

The heroine had me pretty cracked up the entire time, although I could have probably done with a little less humor in the love scenes (I like them steamy, not so silly). Their interaction is crisp and entertaining throughout. At one point, the hero and heroine end up on opposite sides of the conflict, and I liked that Amy stayed true to her word and herself, not letting her personal relationship with Corbin sway her from her own code of honor. I also liked that he respected her for that.

Now I have to go rummage out my copy of Sid Meier's Pirates! and load it up.....

This one came in at 4 stars in my LibraryThing catalog

Book Review: Something Sinful - by Suzanne Enoch

2007-04-08T17:22:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: Something Sinful is the 3rd book in the Griffin family series by Suzanne Enoch. This is the story of Charlemagne (Shay) Griffin and Sarala Carlisle, a young Englishwoman who was raised in India and then suddenly moved to England when her father unexpectedly assumes a title. Shay is first attracted by her exotic beauty, but underestimates her intelligence when she manages to outwit him in a deal for some rare Chinese silks. They play games for a few days, flirting and bargaining over the silks, until Shay discovers that the silks were not what they seemed and now someone wants him dead.

It's hard to talk too much about this one without giving any important plot twists away, but I really enjoyed it. We were watching a lot of the Firefly tv show when I read this, so I kept picturing the actress who plays Inara in my head as Sarala. I liked seeing the characters from the first 2 books in this series reappear in this story. I can't wait to read Sebastian Griffin's story in the upcoming Sins of a Duke, but it's not due out till June, I believe...

My LibraryThing rating: 4 stars!

Book Review: An Invitation to Sin - by Suzanne Enoch

2007-04-05T16:29:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: An Invitation to Sin is the 2nd book in Suzanne Enoch's Griffin family series. Zachary Griffin, the youngest of the Griffin brothers, has spent his entire life flitting from one "career" to another. He can't ever seem to find an occupation that really suits him for more than a few weeks. His kind nature and sense of humor make his friends and family fond of him, but no one takes him very seriously. When he decides to join the army in an attempt to give his life some direction, his oldest brother, the Duke of Melbourne, sends him into the heart of rural England on the pretense of escorting his elderly aunt to Bath. The Duke hopes young Zach will do a little soul-searching and finally decide to take life seriously for a change. Our hero ends up trapped in the household of a gentleman farmer and his 7 unmarried daughters, friends of his aunt's. Caroline Witfeld, the eldest of the girls, is a dedicated painter whose one ambition is to be accepted into an art academy. After many rejections, she is given one last chance at a school in Vienna. In order to be accepted, she must paint a portrait of a nobleman and submit it for approval. When the handsome Lord Zachary Griffin shows up on her doorstep, Caroline thinks she's found the perfect subject for her portrait.

I enjoyed this story almost as much as Sin and Sensibility. It's very easy to identify with Zach's character. A lot of people are not fortunate enough to be born knowing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Many of us have to work very hard to discover a passion for a particular pursuit (and some people never find it). Caroline, on the other hand, has always known what her dream is and has devoted her life to realizing it. Yet, she doesn't realize that her art alone is not going to give her everything her heart desires. Again, Enoch presents us with characters who are far from perfect, who have real problems, and shows us how they discover themselves through one another. It makes for great romance. You really see why her heroes and heroines belong together.

LibraryThing rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Sin and Sensibility - by Suzanne Enoch

2007-04-05T15:48:00.000-05:00

Synopsis: Sin and Sensibility is the first novel in a series by Suzanne Enoch about the Griffin family. Set in Regency England (the war is still on), this story is about Eleanor Griffin, a young woman who wants to have a taste of adventure before she settles into the mold of being a society wife. With 3 overbearing, overprotective older brothers (one of whom is a rather despotic Duke), she has her work cut out for her. In a bid for some independence, she makes a bargain with them: She gets the freedom to do and say what she pleases, so long as she doesn't cause a scandal of any kind. Her brothers agree, but (unbeknownst to Eleanor) secretly ask their good friend (and handsome ladykiller), Valentine Corbett, to keep an eye on her and see that she doesn't get into any real trouble.

This was a great book. I REALLY didn't like the first book I read by this author (Flirting With Danger), but I'm very glad I gave her another try. I was really impressed with Enoch's ability to create complex characters and so thoroughly describe the changes that they go through as they find each other. He's an *extremely* hardened rake and she's desperate for a bit of independence. The author is careful to demonstrate that Eleanor is not merely just looking to rebel against her brothers. Her quest for adventure is more about finding something special to have just for herself - the idea of doing something because it pleases her without regard for whether it is proper or virtuous or whatever - and NOT about whether it will piss off her family. Valentine's entrenched cynicism is also very believably turned on its ear by Eleanor's open and genuine nature. He finds that he really can care for someone - and that there are people really worth caring for. I will definitely be reading this entire series!

This one got 5 stars in my LibraryThing.

Vote for your favorite Star Wars stamp

2007-03-29T19:11:00.000-06:00

It's official: The US Postal Service is releasing Star Wars postage stamps on May 25th. (Well, I know what to get SOMEBODY for his birthday this year!) You can vote for your preference online. (It was a tough call for me, choosing between Boba Fett and Yoda, but I picked Yoda in the end.) Interesting side note: According to the USPS web site, this is only the 2nd time in its 256 year history that the USPS is allowing the public to vote on a stamp. If memory serves, the first time was when they had us choose between skinny/hot Elvis and old/fat Elvis. This time seems like more of a win-win situation though...

Parody motivator generator

2007-03-29T18:35:00.000-06:00

The makers of Demotivators, parodies of those obnoxious, saccharine motivational posters you see in offices all the time, have created a do-it-yourself parody motivator generator. That's mine there (butterbean volunteered his photo for the cause). You just upload your photo and pick your demotivational phrase and some colors and you've got your very own demotivator.

Thanks to the Generator Blog for this one.

Coming Soon: Hot Fuzz

2007-03-27T15:50:00.000-06:00

I can't wait to see Hot Fuzz. It's brought to us from the folks who gave us the great zombie flick Shaun of the Dead (one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time EVER). Simon Pegg stars as one of London's finest, a supercop who takes down the bad guys with a real John Woo flair. He gets somehow transferred from the big city to serve in a tiny little podunk town out in the sticks where nothing much happens and gets paired off with a somewhat incompetent partner. And then these murders start happening in the town and hijinks ensue. Looks pretty funny. Opens in the US on April 20th, but sadly, only in limited release. Which means I'm going to have to truck my ass clear down into Dallas to see it at some cheesy movie grill type place.

Book Review: Flirting with Danger - by Suzanne Enoch

2007-03-25T20:24:00.000-06:00

Synopsis: Flirting with Danger is the first book in a series of contemporary romances by Suzanne Enoch. The heroine, Sam, is a master thief who gets hired to steal an ancient Trojan tablet from an uber-rich antique collecting business tycoon (our hero). In the middle of the job, however, she gets double-crossed and the two of them have to work together to catch the real bad guys.

This was the first book by this author that I've ever read. And I don't usually read contemporary romance. However, my participation in a romance readers' group on LibraryThing has broadened my horizons so I picked this one up at Half Price Books not too long ago. The book jacket was kind of funny so I thought I'd try it out. Unfortunately, though, I did not enjoy it as much as I'd hoped.

I found the plot to be pretty interesting - there's danger and a mystery to it, which I like. And I liked the hero a lot - he's rich, British, and sexy (how can you go wrong with that?). But the heroine really got on my nerves. She is obviously supposed to be a strong character - highly intelligent, independent, can take care of herself - which I think are great qualities. But she's kind of, I don't know ... surly. She doesn't seem to have much in the way of vulnerability or approachability at all. It's hard for me to see why the hero likes her (except for the hefty dose of lust between them). And I kept thinking, if she storms out of the room in an attempt to run away from the hero and the situation just one more time, I'm going to scream. And the hero, of course, goes running right after her every time to talk her into staying. I repeatedly found myself wanting to shout at him, "Let her go!!! And good riddance!"

I kept hoping we'd eventually get to see a softer side to her, but it never really happened. And the characters' attitudes toward sex (and the dialog during the love scenes) was a bit cavalier and unromantic I thought. The plot was engaging enough to get me to finish it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to read the other two books in this series. I'm not giving up on this author, though. I'm still a good enough sport to try out her highly-recommended historical novels.

I only gave this one 2 stars in my LibraryThing catalog

Hanging Cabinets - Part 5: Finishing Up

2007-03-25T20:05:00.000-06:00

We had one kind of "odd duck" cabinet that didn't have the same measurements as the others, so we decided to hang that one on another wall. We also hung this one a little lower down on the wall so as to allow for more room on top of the cabinet for storage. We did the same song and dance with the 2x4 and then hung it up. After the cabinets are mounted, you take the 2x4 down since you don't need it anymore.

All in all, this project was really not too tough. It took some time (we spent about 3/4 of a day on it, with various breaks for visiting with neighbors, lunch, beers, etc. Once we learned the trick with the 2x4, we found that this is easily a two-person job. (Although we couldn't have done it half so well without the help of our neighbors.) After we got it going, my husband did most of it by himself, with me helping to hand him screws, brace the cabinet against the wall periodically, etc. The end result was great: we got more storage and a clean garage. And it really looks pretty nice in there now!

Hanging Cabinets - Part 4: uh, Hanging the Cabinets

2007-03-25T19:54:00.000-06:00

Once we got the 2x4 up, we set the first cabinet on top. Bracing the cabinet against the wall, we drilled the first screw through the top part of the cabinet and into the stud. We put 3 screws into the top and then 3 into the bottom. Then we went on to the next cabinet and did the same thing.

The smaller cabinets we ended up stacking. They were all 15" high, so we just stacked 2 together and were able to fit 4 on the same wall next to the others. Our neighbor had to leave after we got the first two cabinets up, and the ones we put up all by ourselves didn't go on perfectly (the ones on top seemed to tilt a little somehow and weren't quite flush against the adjacent cabinets) but we decided we're just not all that picky. But if you're the "if you're not going to do a job right, then don't do it at all" type, then you'd probably want to take them down and re-do it. We, fortunately, don't have those kinds of standards.

Hanging Cabinets - Part 3: Measuring & Bracing

2007-03-25T19:30:00.000-06:00

Our neighbor, having hung cabinets himself many times before, recommended we mount a 2x4 on the wall to use as a brace for the cabinets. The 2x4 will then bear most of the weight of the cabinet, making it easier to then drill the screws in.

First, you have to measure and mark where you want the bottom of the cabinets to go. We wanted to leave a 1' space between the top of each cabinet and the ceiling. This would allow us space to store additional items above the cabinets. Each cabinet was 30" high, so we measured 42" down from the ceiling and marked the wall. We measured and marked at short intervals along the wall so that we could then line up the 2x4 appropriately. *Important Note: Always measure down from the ceiling and NOT up from the floor. The foundation is floated by human hands and subject to imperfections in height (i.e. - it's not level, or true). The ceiling on the other hand, is designed to be pretty even, so it should be true.

Next we placed the 2x4 along the wall, aligning it with the marks we'd made and then propped the level on top to make sure it was level all the way across. Then we used some really long screws (5 or 6 inches long I think) and mounted the 2x4 to the wall. We used 3 screws and put each into a stud. *Another Important Note: ALWAYS make sure you're screwing into the stud and NOT just into sheetrock. Sheetrock can't really bear any kind of load at all.

Hanging Cabinets - Part 2: Setting Up

2007-03-25T19:14:00.000-06:00

First off, we went to the hardware store and got 2.25" screws. It's important that they be long enough to go through the back of the cabinets and well into the stud in the wall. Then we came home and moved most of the stuff out away from the wall. Two of the cabinets were three shelves high and the other 5 were single shelf with 2 doors. They're pretty nice cabinets so they were really heavy. Too heavy for me to really hold up against the wall, actually. We quickly realized that we were going to need another pair of hands. So we called up our next door neighbor Michael, who, incidentally, works for a home builder in the area and knows a bit about home improvement.

DIY Saturday project: hanging cabinets - Part 1

2007-03-25T18:53:00.000-06:00

My folks are re-doing a bunch of stuff on their house and asked us awhile back if we wanted some cabinets that they were taking down. I said, "Heck yeah!" because (and this is important) whenever anyone offers you free storage units of any kind, your automatic response should always be "Heck yeah!" And we really needed some storage. We decided to hang most of them in the garage. (We are putting two of them in our bathrooms, but that's another project).

We keep our cars in our garage rather than parking them in the driveway. It keeps them cleaner, safer, and hail damage-free in Texas summers. As a result, we don't have a lot of space in the garage for all the tools, lawn equipment, Big Wheels, etc. Mounting cabinets on the wall to hold all this stuff seemed like a perfect solution. So last weekend, Mama n Daddy came up bearing cabinets and yesterday, we installed them. We sent the kids to stay at their Granny's for the day and set to work.

The following posts go over what we did and what we learned.

How to tie a tie

2007-03-23T11:31:00.000-06:00

Today's TipNut points to a great illustrated tutorial on how to tie a tie. Instructions cover how to tie a Windsor Knot, a Half-Windsor Knot, a Four-in-Hand Knot, and even a Bow-Tie.

I was on the debate team in high school and, in the course of events, learned to tie a tie to help out all the geeky debater guys get their act together before a debate. However, that was like 15 years ago and, like most of what I learned in high school, I've totally forgotten how to do it. And as a woman, (unless you're Annie Lennox) you won't exactly have a lot of opportunities to practice the art of tying a tie. However, I believe that this is probably one of those important life skills that everyone should know. After all, you never know when you might need to help out a man in distress at a wedding or some such.

I (heart) zeds

2007-03-21T10:05:00.000-06:00

Like my friend puddle, I love zombies. Who doesn't love anything that feeds on the brains of the living? So I got really excited when I stumbled across this book this morning:

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - by Max Brooks

It's written as a series of personal accounts by various people from different walks of life who lived through a zombie world takeover. Cool. And I also hear there's a movie adaptation in the works... Which means I will have to read the book since I have this terrible compulsion to read the book before seeing the movie for anything. And as if that weren't enough, Mr. Brooks, a zombie-book-writin fool, is also the author of The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. Sounds like I've found the beginning of my summer reading list...

Dirtiest desk contest

2007-03-19T14:55:00.000-06:00

The guys at Dethroner are having a contest to see who has the dirtiest desk as a part of their spring cleaning theme this week. Mine's fairly tidy, but I wonder if I could enter a photo of oldlady's desk... it would take the prize, hands down.

My new favorite game: Kingdom of Loathing

2007-03-18T09:49:00.000-06:00

Being a parent has made me realize a great number of things, one of which being that I must accept the fact that until my kids go to college, I am going to be about 2 years behind everyone else in just about everything entertainment-wise. We get to go to the movies about twice a year, so we got Netflix. We don't have DVR so we just wait the requisite year or two and rent the entire series of a show on Netflix. (Although I firmly believe that renting via Netflix is really the BEST way to watch tv anyway. Instant gratification for episodes and no commercials.)

Video games are no exception. So it was with great delight that I finally discovered Kingdom of Loathing this week, which the rest of the world has apparently been playing for ages. "Oh, everyone's heard of that," my friends all said. Well, I hadn't until Karen, bff and computer gamer extraordinaire, told me about it this week.

It's an online massive multiplayer game set in the mythical Kingdom of Loathing. I forget the premise but it's really not all that important. It's fun. It's low-tech. It's cute. It's free. AND it sparks fond memories of every role-playing game I ever played as a young gamer geek.

I am playing a Pastamancer, a pasta spoon-wielding stickman who wears a hat made out of a giant ravioli and uses his knowledge of noodlecraft to fight the bad guys. As I said, it's great fun. And while you are limited to a finite number of "adventure points" (actions) per day, you get so many I haven't really run out yet. And you don't spend them for every click you make, like in some games (Urban Dead for one), so it leaves you free to run around and explore as much as you want. What it lacks though is a good help feature. The one in the game is ok, but it doesn't have any real index or other organizational structure. UD had a nice game wiki which really explained a lot of the features. However, you do start KOL with a good tutorial, going on a few safe quests to get experience under your belt.

Good times.

Another Colt 45, Billy Dee?

2007-03-16T11:08:00.000-06:00

Apparently, Star Wars veteran and dreamy 70's sex object Billy Dee Williams will be starring in an upcoming episode of Lost. (I don't have a legitimate source for this, but hey, 10 million Lost spoiler sites can't be wrong.) I gave up on that show a few weeks back (too many Others, too little time). But I have to say, if Billy Dee's going to be on it, I might have to tune in. ROWRRRRR!!!

The episode, entitled Expose, is supposed to air on March 28th.

March blues and the enchanted April

2007-03-14T11:36:00.000-06:00

The month of March is really sucking. It's gray, rainy, depressing. I always get a little blue around February and March every year. I'm suddenly ready for warm sunshine, sandals, and just being outdoors.

So I picked up The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim this week to bring in a much-needed breath of fresh air. I read it about 10 years ago and just loved it. Last time I read it, I literally felt refreshed when I finished it.

It was written in the 1920's and set in that same time period. The author has a very light-hearted and often wry writing style. Like the movie, it's a very peaceful, fun, and soothing read. Also, it's nice to picture all that Italian sunshine, sea, and flowers. And I think it even qualifies as a kind of romance novel. Two of the main characters find romance once again within their own marriages - which is nice to see (especially for those of us who are married and have been for some time).

Of course, when I finish reading it, I'll probably be desperate to watch the movie, which isn't out on DVD yet :(

"but these go to 11..." Nigel's t-shirt from Spinal Tap

2007-03-13T09:23:00.000-06:00

Now you, too, can wear Nigel Tufnel's cool t-shirt from the movie This is Spinal Tap. Order it from Found Item Clothing. Gotta have it.

found via t-critic

Track all your packages with PackTrack

2007-03-12T19:22:00.000-06:00

I've been using PackTrack for a while now. It gives you one-stop package tracking for pretty much every carrier under the sun. Just plug in your tracking number and select the shipper. The best part about it is that it remembers your tracking number for you and keeps it in a handy list for quick checking. So if you're obsessive like me and check the status of your shipment over and over like five times a day (c'mon you know you do it too) you don't have to rummage up your confirmation email from the vendor.

Book Review: Dark Side of the Moon - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T21:10:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Dark Side of the Moon is #14 in the Dark-Hunters series by Sherrilyn Kenyon. We get a new setting this time, Seattle, where a Dark-Hunter named Ravyn hooks up with a human reporter. Ravyn is no ordinary Dark-Hunter, though. He is actually a Were-Hunter who became a Dark-Hunter about 500 years ago when his family turned on him. Susan is a washed-up journalist trying to scrape up the shreds of her tattered career after being publicly discredited and ruined by a set-up in her past. Now she's working for a tabloid rag just to make ends meet. She picks up Ravyn, who is stuck in cat-form, from her local vet's office and hyjinks ensue. Come to find out, Ravyn and the other Seattle-area D-H's are being hunted down and killed by a group of really badass Daimons led by Strykerius (whom we have met in previous novels). In their bid for world domination, the Daimons are trying to get a foothold in the human world by first wiping taking over the city of Seattle.

This book picks up some of the plot that got left hanging at the end of Seize the Night. It is worth reading this novel just for the stuff at the end that relates to the overall story arc. However, the romance between the two main characters is a bit lacking. I didn't like Susan very much. She is very sarcastic, which is ok and even pretty entertaining at times, but she doesn't seem to be all that lovable. She comes across as a bit abrasive and she's really not very tender with the hero at all. Ravyn's a pretty swell guy, but seems almost an archetype of the typical Dark-Hunter, with the exception of being able to change into a cat at will. By this point in the series, the romances are taking a definite backseat to the plot of the series as a whole. And that's really fine with me - I'm so enthralled in the storyline of the series that I don't really mind.

I rated this one at 2 stars in LibraryThing

Book Review: Unleash the Night - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T20:47:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Unleash the Night is #13 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. It is the story of Wren, another Were-Hunter (he's a tiger/leopard mix) who lives by the skin of his teeth at Sanctuary, the Were-Hunter owned bar in New Orleans that is featured in previous novels. He falls for Marguerite (aka: Maggie), a human, who happens to be a rich senator's daughter and the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, the bears who own Sanctuary are none too keen on him staying there, particularly after he has some run-ins with local law enforcement and starts dating a human. He is being hunted by his own kind, though, so losing the safety of Sanctuary means he is fair game for those out to kill him.

On the whole, I liked this novel. It was kind of odd, though. The first half of the book was awesome. We get a lot of scenes with dreamy, blond-haired, dred-locked Wren sending smoldering looks at Maggie from across the room. He is shy and sweet (I'm a total sucker for the shy, quite type). She is clean-cut and good-hearted and pretty much falls in love with him right from the get-go. But then the second half of the book gets kind of bogged down in the plot of the money-grubbing relatives who are out to get him. A nice bonus, though, was getting to see some familiar characters: Julian, Vane, Fury, and Dante.

This one got 4 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.

Book Review: Sins of the Night - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T20:16:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Sins of the Night is #11 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. This is the story of Alexion (aka: Ias) and Danger. Danger is a Dark-Huntress who works in Mississippi. Things are pretty slow there, Daimon-hunting wise, until Alexion shows up. He has been sent by Acheron, the head of the Dark-Hunters, to act as judge, jury, and executioner of some rogue Dark-Hunters in the area who are plotting to join the ranks of the Daimons and try to destroy Ash. He's not your average demi-god, either. Alexion is a breed apart. He lives with Ash in his home on Katoteros (it's like an Atlantean netherworld) and can only take physical form on earth for brief periods of time when he is sent out to bring naughty Dark-Hunters to justice. Danger doesn't want to rat out her friends, but Alexion manages to convince her that he is on the right side of this war. And, of course, they fall in love in the process. But their love is doomed from the beginning since he must return home within a few short days, never to return.

I liked this story pretty well. There is a great scene at the beginning where we get to see what Ash's homelife is like, which makes the whole book worthwhile reading. We also learn more about Simi, Ash's demon companion. I liked the interplay between the hero and heroine. They have nice repartee and the romance is truly bittersweet as they hurtle helplessly toward their tragic separation.

My LibraryThing rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Seize the Night - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T19:35:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Seize the Night is #10 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. Valerius is an ancient Roman who comes from a REALLY bad family. He's another hero who nobody much likes. He's closely related to the guy who tortured and killed Kyrian 2,000 years ago (Kyrian is the hero in Night Pleasures). There's also no love lost between him and Zarek (the hero of Dance With the Devil), whose past is also interlaced with his. And it really doesn't help that Valerius has a kind of a holier-than-thou attitude that gets on EVERYBODY'S nerves. So, of course, he's paired up with Tabitha, the fun-loving vampire-hunting goth-chick human twin sister of Amanda from Night Pleasures. They are thrown together one night when he happens upon Tabitha kicking some Daimon ass in an alley and she gets carried away and stabs him in the chest. Fortunately, he's immortal and doesn't die, but she does end up letting him hole up at her place for a bit while he recovers. He finds her in-your-face earthiness and lifestyle (read: she owns a sex shop, has a transvestite roommate, and fights soul-sucking Daimons by night) to be offensive to his higher sensibilities. But in the end, he comes to love her anyway - and also learns to lighten up a bit.

SO MUCH happens in this novel. By the time you get to the last 80 pages or so, you will not be able to put it down. Things happen in this book that dramatically impact the rest of the series as a whole. AND you get a great romance to boot! This is one of my favorites in the series. Tabitha is such a marvelous character. In the hands of a lesser author, she could easily come across as abrasive, obnoxious, and wholly unfeminine. But Kenyon does an outstanding job of making her tough, funny, and just vulnerable enough that you can't help but love her. And that is exactly why the romance is so believable in this book. Valerius is kind of a stuffed-shirt, but he has such a sad past and you really do want him to have a chance at happiness. And you also see how, deep down, he really does want to be loved by someone - and has love to give in return. The author really does know how to take a character who's such a jerk with loads of flaws and turn him around to make the reader root for him anyway. I love that kind of redemption.

This one got 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog

Book Review: Night Play - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T17:33:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Night Play is #8 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. This one is about Vane, a Were-Hunter wolf. Were-Hunters are a human/animal race that can change form into a particular kind of animal. They can also travel through time and have other magical powers. The heroine, Bride, is a plus-sized gal (with all of the accompanying food/image hangups) who owns a women's fashion boutique in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Vane first sees Bride during a brief scene in Night Embrace, but the two don't really meet until this book. He is inexplicably drawn to her one night when he sees her through her shop window. They have a brief encounter, which neither of them expects to lead anywhere... until they discover afterward that they are destined for each other. But there's som bad blood between Vane and his family that threatens them both. We also visit Sanctuary in this book, a bar that serves as the focal point for the plot in future novels, including Unleash the Night.

This book and Seize the Night are probably tied at #2 in my favorites of this series. I LOVE the heroine in this book. She's funny, adorable, and tough! I like how Kenyon isn't afraid to create a heroine with real image issues. Bride's not plus-sized in a curvy, size 12 kind of way. She's described as a "solid size 18." And Vane really loves her just as she is - without trying to change her and make her into something she "should" be. It's refreshing to see this in a literary genre where so many of the heroines are modeled after Barbie dolls.

This one got 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog

Book Review: Kiss of the Night - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T14:05:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Kiss of the Night is #7 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. It is the story of Wulf, a Dark-Hunter who is cursed by the gods so that nobody he meets ever remembers him after about five minutes (with the only exception being members of his own family and other Dark-Hunters). Cassandra, the heroine, is half-human/half-Apollite. She has been hunted all her life because, apparently, she is the last direct descendent of somebody or other important and if she dies, then the whole Apollite curse will either be lifted OR the world will come to an end. (I forget all the particulars.) The premise in this book was stretched a bit thin, I have to say. However, you really do have to feel sorry for the Apollites. Cassandra, like the other Apollites, is cursed by the god Apollo to die on her 27th birthday. And she meets Wulf just a few months shy of her birthday and they eventually fall in love. Unlike the first few books, this one is set in St. Paul, Minnesota. We get to meet some more Were-Hunters in this book, including Dante, a were-panther who gets his own short story in the anthology Stroke of Midnight.

Overall, this was probably my least favorite of the Dark-Hunters books. I just wasn't crazy about Cassandra. The whole book she is kind of a Debbie Downer. Also, the romance isn't that great. My favorite character in the book was Chris, Wulf's last remaining living relative. He's pretty funny. However, there is a LOT of important character and storyline development in this one, so it is a necessary read to understand what is going on in the rest of the series.

The best part about this book is that you get to spend a good deal of time getting to know all about the Apollites, which are pretty important to the overall story arc of the series. See, the Daimons whom the Dark-Hunters are sworn to destroy, are really just Apollites who don't want to die on their 27th birthday. In order to cheat their fate, they take the life (and soul) of human beings to stay alive. Kenyon does raise an interesting morality question in this story. You find yourself wondering, what would I do if I were fated to die like that? Would the taking of someone else's soul be justified? What about taking the souls of just the really BAD people, like Charles Manson, or George W. Bush?

I gave this one 3 stars in my LibraryThing catalog

Book Review: Dance with the Devil - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T12:59:00.002-06:00

Synopsis: Dance With the Devil is #6 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. Zarek is kind of an anti-hero. He is a rogue Dark-Hunter who has been woefully misjudged for a crime he can't remember committing. He has been exiled for several hundred years to Alaska to live alone in a tiny hovel on the tundra. All the other Dark-Hunters, squires, and pretty much everybody else he runs into hate his guts. So he doesn't waste his time trying to endear himself to others. Astrid, our heroine, is a demigoddess who has been sent down from Olympus to judge Zarek to decide whether he is truly guilty and should be sentenced to die. Daughter to the goddess of justice, Thetis, and sister to the Fates, Astrid is literally blind when she meets Zarek. Of course, during their time together trapped in a little cabin in the arctic, she comes to discover that he is not the monster everyone thinks he is.

I can't really do this book justice. It is probably my favorite of all the Dark-Hunter novels. Zarek's story is absolutely gut-wrenching. I misted up and got all sniffly several times while reading this one. He suffered so much in life and then suffered even more as a Dark-Hunter. His character is really pretty complex. True, he's a real jerk to just about everyone around him, including Astrid. But it's not just that he's bitter and resentful of how he's been treated. He really believes that he does not deserve to be treated any better. He just doesn't care about himself or anything else anymore. Enter Astrid, who helps him see that he is worth something after all. And I like that even though Zarek is redeemed, he still maintains a good bit of his in your face attitude. It's nice to see an author who is not afraid to make a hero out of a guy who is a real asshole.

LibraryThing rating: 5 stars (but I'd give it 6 if I could!)

Book Review: Night Embrace - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-11T12:28:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Night Embrace is the #4 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. Also set in New Orleans, this book tells the story of Talon, an ancient Celt turned Dark-Hunter whom we met in Night Pleasures. Our hero meets Sunshine, a kooky artist-type one night when she is attacked by a bunch of soul-sucking Daimons. In the midst of the fight, he gets plowed by a runaway Mardi Gras float and Sunshine takes him back to her place to recover. Their one-night stand turns into something more as a couple of ancient gods with an ax to grind show up to come after Talon and his new girlfriend. We also get to meet some other Dark-Hunters in this one, including Zarek, who gets his own story in Dance With the Devil.

I didn't like Night Embrace quite as much as I liked Night Pleasures, but you get a lot of good character development with Zarek and Ash. You also get introduced to Wulf, another Dark-Hunter whose story is told in Kiss of the Night. And the action sequences in this one are supercool. The romance just wasn't as heart-rending as the other books in the series, but the plot is so interesting and the interplay between the Dark-Hunters and Ash and the Squires makes this novel an important part of the series as a whole.

I gave this one 4 stars in my LibraryThing

Book Review: Night Pleasures - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

2007-03-09T11:58:00.001-06:00

Synopsis: Night Pleasures is the 3rd installment in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. Kyrian of Thrace (who was mentioned but not really seen in the prequel Fantasy Lover) is a Dark-Hunter, an ancient Greek who sold his soul to the goddess Artemis in exchange for immortality and a shot at vengeance against those who wronged him in life. As a part of the bargain, he has to spend the rest of eternity hunting down and killing these vampire-like bad guys called Daimons, who run around by night sucking the souls out of humans. Of course he's also really ripped, badass, and can't go out in daylight. The story opens with him being captured and handcuffed to a human woman named Amanda (our heroine, of course), an accountant with a marked distaste for anything outside of the realm of ordinary life. Unfortunately, she's stuck with Kyrian until they can get the cuffs off and there's this REALLY bad daimon named Desiderius out to kill them both. This one, like Fantasy Lover, also has a New Orleans setting and I was happy to see Julian and Grace both make appearances in this story.

Since I'm pretty new to the whole "paranormal romance" genre, I approached this book with some trepidation. However, I decided to try it because I liked Fantasy Lover so well. Sherrilyn Kenyon really knows how to draw a reader into a story and accept what you're reading. We are introduced to the world and mythology of the Dark-Hunters through Amanda's eyes. Since she's human like us (well, not exactly like us, but close), we get to experience her range of emotions as she comes to terms with the un-reality of her situation as well as her acceptance of the strange and supernatural stuff that's going on around her. Of course, it helps her that she has a crackpot family who's into the occult, but she's a total skeptic about the whole thing. The love scenes are pretty intense, but not overdone so they don't hinder the story like happens in some other romance novels. I think the romance itself is excellent and the way that Amanda helps Kyrian overcome his weaknesses makes them both stronger characters. Night Pleasures is by far one of my favorites in this series.

I gave this one 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog!