Recommended Reading List: April 2014
As I write this, it’s been 24 hours since I read this story, and I’m still blown away by it.
Continue ReadingTag: The New Yorker
Recommended Reading List: March, 2014
While I was reading the Ruth Wind/Barbara Samuel book listed below, I was also reading a recent issue of RT Book Reviews. I noticed something that surprised me. Almost all of the novels in their historical romance section were set in the Regency era. A goodly 80%, and most of the rest were set in […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: Generational Divide
When I was taking classes in the craft of fiction, everyone—from established professional writers to English professors—recommended that a writer never ever say that a character looked like a famous actor. No “he resembled a young Orson Welles” or “she dressed like Claudette Colbert.” Not only was it lazy writing—the Gurus said—but, more importantly, there […]
Continue ReadingRecommended Reading List: December, 2013
I read a lot in December, too much of it forgettable. I read a Christmas novel by one of my favorite romance authors, a reissue that I had missed, and was pretty disturbed by the behavior of the male protagonist. I read two other novels that just didn’t thrill me, and a lot of short […]
Continue ReadingRecommended Reading List: September, 2013
I got an amazing amount of fantastic reading done in September—and I didn’t feel like I had read enough. Yet I look at this list, and realize I somehow squeezed a lot of reading in. Wow. My tastes were pretty eclectic in September. Romance, mystery, nonfiction—it’s all here. These are my top picks from a […]
Continue ReadingRecommended Reading List: July, 2013
Considering how busy I was in July, I’m surprised at how much reading I managed to get done. It’s that chair, I’m sure of it. 🙂 I also read a lot of books not on this list, some truly awful books from some of my favorite writers. I realized that I loved one writer because […]
Continue ReadingRecommended Reading List: May, 2013
Read a fun middle-grade novel this month, and realized that while I had loved, loved, loved the first book in the series, the second disappointed—not because it was worse than the first. It might have been better. It disappointed because half the fun of the first (from an adult perspective) was the riff the novel […]
Continue ReadingRecommended Reading List: April, 2013
Again, I did a lot of Fiction River reading this month, and you will see the results over the next year. The first volume of Fiction River, Unnatural Worlds, appeared on April 23, and please consider the stories in there as part of this recommended reading list. I’m not going to tell you my favorite […]
Continue ReadingRecommended Reading List: March, 2013
Again, I did a lot of Fiction River reading this month, which took up some of my fiction reading. So you’ll see my recommendations in the upcoming issues. It’s so fun to be editing again—and it’s fun to be doing it part time. I got stuck in two novels in the middle of the month. […]
Continue ReadingRecommended Reading List: January, 2013
I read a lot in January. I just didn’t find a lot to recommend. I read one very long YA novel that started well. Midway through, I realized the book had slowed. By the end, I had decided I didn’t much like the plot, but the characters kept me reading. It’s the first of three. […]
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