Confession: I’ve never read Lisa Kleypas’ Dreaming of You. Oh, I know it’s fabulous. I know everyone loves it. Chances are I’ll love it, because I nearly always enjoy her books, and this seems to be everyone’s favorite. I have it, and periodically I’ll hold it and think, “Maybe I’ll read this next.” But I can’t quite bring myself to do it.
Why, you may ask? I know it sounds a little silly, but I like just knowing it’s out there waiting for me. I enjoy the idea of Dreaming of You. It feels like money in the bank, ready if I need it sometime, waiting for when I might be ready. I suppose there’s a chance I won’t love it; I am after all, the woman who traded the much loved Lord of Scoundrels back in to the used bookstore sometime in the nineties (speaking of which, I’ll probably reread that sometime to see if I still have the same impression. Can hundreds of Top 100 voters really be wrong?). But at this point, it will stay in my nightstand, waiting for the ideal moment – whenever that might be.
Although I was kind of a goody-two-shoes teenager (and by “kind of” I mean very) I promise there are rules I break. I drive five miles above the speed limit a lot of the time. I swear. Sometimes I even pay the Verizon bill a couple of days late (living on the edge, that’s me). But I am a book finisher.
Every year when you fill out AAR’s annual poll, we ask you for your biggest tearjerker. For me, some years it’s a no brainer, and sometimes I really have to think about it. On the whole, I’m not a frequent weeper. I’m not like Cameron Diaz in The Holiday (if you haven’t seen it, she can’t cry…until the end), but I don’t really cry at Hallmark commercials either (do they even still have those? I have DVR.)
One message I kept hearing during this summer’s RWA conference was that publishers were finally ready to look at books that are different. Not every publisher was saying it, mind you, but I heard it a lot more than I had the year before – when the message seemed to be: “Take a look at what we are already publishing…and write something just like that.” But at the same time, I had an author tell me that her slightly different historicals (I mean really, they were still set in England) weren’t selling as well as she – or her publisher – had hoped. Consequently, she will probably have to switch back to Regency or Victorian set historicals. Which really made me think that those of us who are informed, internet-savvy readers need to vote with our pocket books.
As I was updating AAR Saturday, Scarlett came downstairs and said, “I have a sad.” (Kids today aren’t sad anymore, I guess. they have sad). It turns out she’d just discovered what I already knew: Borders was officially through. The closest one to our home was already gone anyway, a casualty of the April carnage (and apparent last ditch attempt to save the company). But all of us still occasionally shopped at one in Park Meadows, a mall about thirty minutes away. Both stores that we frequented always seemed to be full of people – and not just people drinking coffee; there was always a line to buy books too. On a global level, there clearly were not enough of them.
Confession: We scheduled our family vacation around the release of Harry Potter. We were originally going to leave later and come back later, placing us in the wilds of Montana on July 15. “We can’t do that,” my husband said. “None of the theaters in Bozeman are going to be good enough. We’ll have to be back here.” So we were back in Denver in plenty of time for the midnight showing, sitting in reserved seats in our favorite theater, It was, after all, a special occasion. All of us are fans of the books and movies. All my children have read all the books. They are all – to one degree or another – readers.
I’m willing to go a few rounds with anyone who criticizes romance novels. Usually they haven’t read any, and have no basis for their criticism that they’re all the same, or they’re female porn, or – well, whatever. But sometimes I have to admit that certain titles invite a snicker or two. When someone asks you what you’re reading, do you really want to answer “Guarding the Notorious Lady?” That particular title is easy to pick on because a) I just read it b) It wasn’t very good and c) as another reader pointed out, the lady in question was not at all notorious. I told Scarlett (my daughter and fellow reviewer) that the title was probably from the Random Romance Title Generator. “Is there such a thing?,” she asked. “If not, there should be.”
