See, I knew that signing up for this blog would cause me a headache. How are you supposed to choose the top ten romances that rock your world? How? How? (At the back of my mind I have the Baha Men singing along, except it’s “How do you choose now? How, how, how, how?” Great. Hence the headache.)
Anyway, I figured the only way I can keep sane is a) recognize that I won’t hit them all, and b) acknowledge that if I am actually stuck on a desert island with only ten romance novels, I’d go crazy anyway, no matter what I chose. (Unless I chose, like, the Koran, Paradise Lost, and Journey to the West. Then maybe I’d not go all loopy.)
I decided that what I’d probably crave the most is variety, a little bit of every genre to suit every mood. It actually turned out to be relatively easy once I’d decided on this, looked at my Top 100 list, scanned my shelves, and sliced through the different categories. I’m happy with my choices – they’re all different in setting, subgenre, writing style, and character. I’ve also read each of them at least twice – I’m a serial re-reader, so I know when something works for me, when it doesn’t, and (most of important of all) when it stands up to the test of time. (more…)
As a kid, I always loved the idea of a fantasy story. I liked the imagination of a world with elves and faeries where magic was possible. One would think that with this kind of an interest there would have been more than enough to keep me reading. There was the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Chronicles of Narnia. Those stories with their mythical beasts and a battle between good and evil should have been right up my alley. But no matter how hard I tried, I never enjoyed them. I could never get past the first book in each series. For a while, I figured the books were just too mature for me. I assumed that it was me who was in the wrong and that in a few years I would change, and the books would work. These books had an honored place on my bookshelves for many years just waiting for the time to be right, but all that they did was gather dust.
While we no longer run Pandora’s Box as a monthly feature, every now and again, two of us will read a book and come to such different conclusions that we just have to talk about it and share it with you. That’s exactly what happened when Leigh Davis and Wendy Clyde read 
