My new Kindle Touch (what I’m reading ON now)

May 12 2012       5 responses so far

In March 2009, I took the e-reader plunge and bought a Kindle. It was the white keyboard with the bubble keys. I still have it and it still works great. A friend “borrowed” it about 6 months ago and I haven’t seen it since, but it’s ok, since in December 2010, I purchased a newer model, a graphite Kindle keyboard, for my son for Hanukkah. That’s the one I’ve been using, since he tends to use it only when he’s forgotten his book at school and begs me to download an e-version so he can get his homework done on time (most recently? Lord of the Flies, which is surprisingly very expensive!). It has a leather cover with an integrated light, and that one works great too. This spring, he’s been bringing it to school, and I do hope he uses it more. He says he reads faster on the Kindle, and that has been my experience as well.

I asked for, and received, a Kindle touch wifi 3g for my birthday a couple of weeks ago.

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Review: Snowbound with a Stranger, by Rebecca Rogers Maher

May 11 2012       2 responses so far

Like a lot of romance readers, sometimes I seek particular tropes, and this one, an advance digital copy of which I received from Carina Press via Net Galley, features one of my favorites: the heroine and hero stuck together for days with no outside disturbances. Pure relationship development! It’s like eating a cupcake without the cake, which for some people is too much, but for me is pure enjoyment.

Although you might not think so, given modern technology, it’s a lot easier to find the “stuck together” trope (I’m sure there is a much catchier real name for it) in contemporaries than in any other subgenre of romance.  In historicals, there’s too much accountability to other people, so the closest you usually get is the road romance. Being stuck doesn’t work for PNR or romantic suspense either, because it’s not exactly actiony.

I’d like to take a minute and point out the great cover for this one. The cover is what actually first caught my eye:

It’s not 100% accurate as far as the way these two are physically described in the text, but yippee for something unique and visually arresting, suggestive without being erotic, featuring fairly average looking people, and an image that fits the plot. Well done!

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Review: These Days are Ours, by Michelle Haimoff

May 10 2012       10 responses so far

I received this debut novel (Grand Central, Feb 2012, 304 pages) from the author, and while it took me a few weeks to open it up, once I did, I couldn’t put it down.  These Days Are Ours is a snapshot of a few months in the life of Hailey, a recent college grad trying to find work and love in New York City six months after 9/11. the setting is captured perfectly, not just in terms of 9/11, although I thought that was weaved expertly into the story, but by references to the clothing, music, bars, cocktails, and other cultural references of the day. Hailey is extremely privileged — her mother is the publisher of Details and her step-father a “highest-up” at Conde Nast — but she doesn’t want to use her family’s connections to find work. But with a group of friends to go clubbing and shopping with, and a cushy landing pad in her family’s Fifth Avenue penthouse, Hailey’s job search is a bit desultory. In the meantime, Hailey has an extreme crush on Brenner, a recent Princeton grad with a prestigious fellowship and a future as a human rights lawyer. She and Brenner hooked up once, and Hailey would like to renew their acquaintance. Then she meets Adrian, a transplanted Pennsylvanian and recent Brown graduate who is solidly middle class but perhaps a better match for Hailey in the ways that matter.

These Days are Ours is not easy to categorize.  It’s written by a woman, with a woman protagonist, all of the reviews I’ve read are by women, and it has a Reading Group Guide at the end, which suggests “women’s fiction.” There’s the urban haute bourgeoisie* setting, the embarrassing flounces, the youth of the protagonist and her friends, a few scenes at Barneys, and several mentions of high end brand names, which suggests “chick lit.” And finally there’s a strong romance plot — Hailey and her two suitors are much more memorable than any of the assorted friends she hangs out with — and a HFN (“Happy For Now” in romance genre lingo). It’s listed by the publisher as “fiction” and that’s probably the way I’d categorize it, too. Given the controversy around the new HBO show Girls, I should make explicit what is probably obvious by now: there are no people of color in this book. (*ten points if you get the reference)
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Twitter hiatus, productivity tools, what I’m reading

Apr 30 2012       18 responses so far

1. I decided to take a break from Twitter, so I deactivated my account. I believe I’ve got a month to reactivate it, but I don’t mind starting over if need be. I love Twitter, but it’s too much of a time suck right now. How do I know this for sure? Well, I signed up for Rescue Time, a free program that tracks what you are doing on the web. Suffice to say I did not like the results over the past few weeks. The thing about Twitter is that it always feels like a really short break. But adding up those many short breaks a day is a terrifying thing.

I’ve been trying out some other productivity tools. Freedom is a good (free) program, for Mac users, that turns off the web for a set amount of time. It’s great when I need to write a draft of an ethics consult or a syllabus (For PC users, Self-control does the same thing).

When I’m writing a paper or presentation, though, I need the internet. So, I downloaded Anti-Social, another Mac program, by the same people who brought us Freedom. Anti-Social, which costs $15, blocks a predetermined set of known time wasters (the usual suspects, including Twitter and Facebook), and then any other sites you enter in, for a set amount of time. The nice thing about Anti-Social (as opposed to browser specific programs like Leechblock, which only works when you are in Firefox) is that you can’t get around it by opening another browser.

I do have Leechblock, and one nice thing about it is that you can set it to give you a certain amount of time on a specific site. You see the timer counting down in the right hand corner of the browser bar. After that, you can’t get into the site until the next day. Or… you just open Safari. (You can see why I needed Anti-Social)

This article from The 99 percent lists a few other productivity tools.

Anyway, I did not expect my break from Twitter to alarm so many people (who then emailed me). I’m sorry I didn’t tweet about it first!

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My Three Cents on The Story Siren Plagiarism Case

Apr 29 2012       27 responses so far

As most readers of this blog are by now aware, a top YA blogger was caught plagiarizing, and the fallout has been significant. (Just Google “plagiarism” and “The Story Siren”).

I’d like to make three points about it, from my own point of view as a philosophy professor who specializes in feminist ethics, and as someone who does a good amount of clinical ethics work outside the academy:

(a) The important of the apology: I’ve seen some bloggers asking what the point is of an apology. Of course, no apology has the power to reverse time and undo the moral wrong that has been committed. But I don’t view ethics as a ledger you keep clean. Ethics is a way of being in community. The Story Siren’s plagiarism created rifts in the community. In particular, it damaged the trust on which the book blogging community is based. A good apology can help begin the process of moral repair. What we got from The Story Siren, beginning from the moment she asked her victims to keep quiet, continuing when she deleted her own plagiarism post, and then again when she reworded her own (already inadequate) second apology post, was the kind of apology that seeks to repair personal damage and restore personal social status, much like the celebrity and politician apologies we see on TV every week.

A restorative apology is not focused on the self, but on re-building community. Since The Story Siren appears to be moving on, business as usual, I doubt one is forthcoming. I’m sorry that she has opted not to take this opportunity for educating and strengthening the book blogging community.  I won’t bore you with my idea of the elements such an apology would contain, but I will make a prediction based on my many years as an ethics consultant working with health care providers who have made medical errors: without a meaningful attempt to take responsibility and restore trust, The Story Siren will never fully recover. With them, she may become more admired and influential than ever.

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15 Surprising Things About Pretty in Pink

Apr 24 2012       14 responses so far

I watched John Hughes’ 1986 film Pretty in Pink on TV last night, and I just so happened to be reading You Couldn’t Ignore Me if You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation by Susannah Gora (Crown, 2010) at the same time. Credit to Gora, especially Chapter Six,  ”SITTING PRETTY: Ringwald and Hughes Reteam for Pretty in Pink, a Rose-Tinted Look at Teenage Love” for most of the list below.

1. The poster. The Breakfast Club (1985) was released just a year prior to Pretty in Pink (1986), and its poster featured the characters staring unsmilingly at the camera (Annie Leibowitz’s camera, to be precise). According to Gora, this was a departure from teen film posters which tended to emphasize the funny or silly, even when they contained serious elements (see, for example, the poster for Fast Times at Ridgemont High).

2. The Ringwald-Hughes reteaming, sort of. Ringwald had already starred in Sixteen Candles (1984) and The Breakfast Club, both written and directed by John Hughes. As he had done with those films, Hughes wrote the part of Andie Walsh for Ringwald. But he left directing duties to first time director Howard Deutch, who was until then best known for cutting film trailers. The studio, Paramount, wanted a bigger name for the female lead, someone like Jennifer Beals, who was famous for her role as the welder-exotic dancer in Flashdance (1983). Luckily, Beals turned them down.  Can you imagine an actor best known for this shower scene as Andie?

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9 Great Things About Ruthie Knox’s Ride With Me

Apr 21 2012       25 responses so far

At the suggestion of a tweet from author Jill Sorenson, I picked up this contemporary romance the other day (Feb. 2012, Random House/Loveswept). I thought it was great. (Edited to add: also cheap at $2.99) Here are ten reasons why:

1. I know that guy: the hero, Tom, is so well-characterized I feel like I could walk by him any minute. Not so much his exciting history or his great looks — that’s the stuff escapist novels are made of — but the little things he did that seemed so real. Like going on a cross country biking trek wearing cargo shorts and an old Nirvana t-shirt, buying beer and chipped ice instead of water at a rest stop, taking his hands off the handlebars to stretch, swinging out into the traffic lane so he can look back and see the heroine, refusing to use a GPS, being open to detours and fun little hole-in-the-wall pit-stops.

2. Unique setting: the hero and heroine are cycling from Oregon to Virginia on the TransAmerica Trail. Have you ever read a romance novel that took place almost entirely on two wheels?

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Interview with Kenda of Lurv a la Mode and Full Fork Ahead

Apr 20 2012       8 responses so far

Kenda is one of the first book people I met online. I discovered romance by picking up a copy of the fourth book in J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and went online to talk about it, at Amazon.com and the official BDB forums, and the rest, as they say, is history. Over the years, I’ve relied on her book savvy to find great reads, been amazed by her ability to navigate choppy blog waters, and occasionally benefited from her amazing graphic design skills.

Kenda started Lurv a la Mode in January 2008. Lurv is a book blog focused on romance, especially paranormal romance, with some young adult, fantasy, and sci fi as well. Apparently, work, motherhood, and running one blog were not challenging enough, so in June 2010, Kenda, with her sister, started a food blog, Full Fork Ahead. Full Fork Ahead is a beautiful blog that manages to make complicated, delicious recipes seem doable for the average cook.

I have two blogs, but I can never seem to get the other one going. I was curious about what managing two blogs was like for Kenda, so I emailed her a list of questions. It’s taken me several weeks to actually get this post up, so I have to thank her for her patience.

1. You have run a successful book blog focused on PNR/SFF for the last few years. How has your book blog, and/or your attitude towards that blog, changed over time?

First of all – thanks for thinking my blog is successful! That’s a pretty subjective topic these days (what with the inclusion of publishing/their PR/ARCs in the mix; status-mongering follower counts, etc.) and I tend to want to measure my success with it lately in terms of how happy it’s making me, since it’s my personal space online. And that ties directly with my recent attitude towards it lately, which has, honestly, been one of neglect. I’ve tried to step back since the beginning of 2012 to decide what’s most important to me when it comes to book blogging. I used to work a lot more advanced reading copies and author promo into my posts (usually instigated solely by me, not contact from a publisher rep; the ARCs I do occasionally get unsolicited), but I’ve eased off that – a lot – because of my awareness of the publishing industry in general, and more importantly maybe, what they expect of bloggers, has added way too much stress to blogging for me.

I’m trying to get back to what makes blogging fun for me. No more catering to publishing whims, or, rather, worrying about them. And no more paying attention to talk such as “book reviews don’t matter” and “bloggers don’t make a difference” or other such noise. I’m not online to make things easier for publishers anyway and I’m not here so that the negativity surrounding blogging can have a field day while it picks at bloggers. I let that negativity in, I let it get to me. No more.

2. In your opinion, how has the book blogging landscape changed within your niche over the past few years? Or has it?

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