Halcyon Thursdays - the World Book Day edition

So I have compiled a list of some of my favourite books - from many different aspects of the romance spectrum - for perusal on World Book Day.  Choices are mine, the words from the blurbs... Enjoy!

Historical Romance

 

Julia Quinn, Eloisa James and Connie Brockway - The Lady Most Willing:  A Novel in Three Parts

Laird Taran Ferguson is more than fed up of his nephew's refusal to wed and secure his birthright.  His reaction?  To hijack a ball and kidnap no less than four likely brides - a rather forthright young lady, an heiress with a slight reputation problem, a rich English beauty, and a maiden without name or fortune. But which one is ready to fall in love with the Scottish lord? And what will happen to the others?

  

Erotica (Hardcore BDSM)

 Tiffany Reisz – The Siren (First in the Original Sinners Series)

 Notorious Nora Sutherlin is famous for her delicious works of erotica, each one more popular with readers than the last. But her latest manuscript is different—more serious, more personal—and she's sure it'll be her breakout book…if it ever sees the light of day.

Zachary Easton holds Nora's fate in his well-manicured hands. The demanding British editor agrees to handle the book on one condition: he wants complete control. Nora must rewrite the entire novel to his exacting standards—in six weeks—or it's no deal.

Her grueling writing sessions with Zach are draining…and shockingly arousing. And a dangerous former lover has her wondering which is more torturous—staying away from him…or returning to his bed?

She thought she knew everything about being pushed to your limits. But in a world where passion is pain, nothing is ever that simple.

Erotica (Emotive)

Megan Hart – Switch

don't think don't question just do  

The anonymous note wasn't for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in the habit of reading other people's mail, but it was just a piece of paper with a few lines scrawled on it, clearly meant for the apartment upstairs. It looked so innocent, but decidedly - deliciously - it was not.

Before replacing the note - and the ones that followed - in its rightful slot, I devoured its contents: suggestions, instructions, commands. Each was more daring, more intricate and more arousing than the last...and I followed them all to the letter. 

Before the notes, if a man had told me what to do, I'd have told him where to go. But submission is an art, and there's something oddly freeing about doing someone's bidding...especially when it feels so very, very good. But I find that the more I surrender, the more powerful I feel-so it's time to switch up roles.  

We play by my rules now.

 

Online Serial

Leanna Renee Hieber – The Double Life of Incorporate Things

(http://exploitsofachicklitaficionado.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/sex-for-sexs-sake.html)

 The shadows deepen on the gaslit streets of New York City in the year 1880. Curses and spirits, demons and rituals, blood and faith, love and danger; such is the stuff of Magic Most Foul. Find your voice... or else.  The final book in theMagic Most Foul series is being posted on Hieber's blog in a weekly serialization.

Teen Romance

Anna Godbersen – The Luxe (First in The Luxe Series)

(One of my favourite series)

Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn.
Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions.
White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups.
This is Manhattan, 1899.

Beautiful sisters Elizabeth and Diana Holland rule Manhattan's social scene. Or so it appears. When the girls discover their status among New York City's elite is far from secure, suddenly everyone—from the backstabbing socialite Penelope Hayes, to the debonair bachelor Henry Schoonmaker, to the spiteful maid Lina Broud—threatens Elizabeth's and Diana's golden future.

With the fate of the Hollands resting on her shoulders, Elizabeth must choose between family duty and true love. But when her carriage overturns near the East River, the girl whose glittering life lit up the city's gossip pages is swallowed by the rough current. As all of New York grieves, some begin to wonder whether life at the top proved too much for this ethereal beauty, or if, perhaps, someone wanted to see Manhattan's most celebrated daughter disappear...

In a world of luxury and deception, where appearance matters above everything and breaking the social code means running the risk of being ostracized forever, five teenagers lead dangerously scandalous lives. This thrilling trip to the age of innocence is anything but innocent.

Quintessentially British Romance

Eva Rice – The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

(One of my favourite books)

Penelope longs to be grown-up and to fall in love; but various rather inconvenient things keep getting in her way. Like her mother, a stunning but petulant beauty widowed at a tragically early age, her younger brother Inigo, currently incapable of concentrating on anything that isn't Elvis Presley, a vast but crumbling ancestral home, a severe shortage of cash, and her best friend Charlotte's sardonic cousin Harry...

 Fantasy

Kim Harrison – Dead Witch Walking (First in The Hollows Series)

(One of my favourite series)

The underground population of witches, vampires, werewolves—creatures of dreams and nightmares—has lived beside humans for centuries, hiding their powers. But after a genetically engineered virus wipes out a large part of humanity, many of the "Inderlanders" reveal themselves, changing everything.

Rachel Morgan, witch and bounty hunter with the Inderland Runner Services, is one of the best at apprehending supernatural lawbreakers throughout Cincinnati, but when it comes to following the rules, she falls desperately short. Determined to buck the system, she quits and takes off on the run with an I.S. contract on her head and is reluctantly forced to team up with Ivy, Inderland's best runner . . . and a living vampire. But this witch is way out of her league, and to clear her name, Rachel must evade shape-changing assassins, outwit a powerful businessman/crime lord, and survive a vicious underground fight-to-the-death . . . not to mention her own roommate.

Old School Romance

Mary Stewart – This Rough Magic

(One of my favourite books)

When Lucy's sister Phyllida suggests that she join her for a quiet holiday on the island of Corfu, Lucy is overjoyed. Her work as an actress has temporarily come to a halt. But the peaceful idyll does not last long. A series of incidents, seemingly unconnected - but all surrounded in mystery - throws Lucy's life into a dangerous spin, as fear, danger and death - as well as romance - supplant the former tranquillity.

Crime

Camilla Chafer - Armed and Fabulous

All Lexi wants to do is get through the day at her boring temp job with Green Hand Insurance. That’s until she discovers the vice president, Martin Dean, in a pool of blood and herself at the center of an investigation into insurance fraud.

Millions of dollars are missing, the chief suspect is dead and her mysterious, sexy, new boss is not what he seems.

Recruited by the joint task force working on the case, all Lexi has to do is work out who killed Dean and where the missing millions are. That’s easier said than done when her sister insists upon the baby shower to end all baby showers, her wise-ass cop family just wants to keep her safe, someone keeps leaving her creepy gifts, and all the clues point to a seedy sex club on the wrong side of town.

As the bodies start to pile up, Lexi is on a race against time to find the killer and the money, before she’s the next one in the murderer’s sights.

Lost Loves Romance

Mhairi McFarlane – You Had Me At Hello

‘Think of the great duos of history. We're just like them.’
‘You mean like Kylie and Jason? Torvill and Dean? Sonny and Cher?’
‘I think you’ve missed the point, Rachel.’

Rachel and Ben. Ben and Rachel. It was them against the world. Until it all fell apart. It’s been a decade since they last spoke, but when Rachel bumps into Ben one rainy day, the years melt away.

They’d been partners in crime and the best of friends. But life has moved on: Ben is married. Rachel is not. Yet in that split second, Rachel feels the old friendship return. And along with it, the broken heart she’s never been able to mend.

 

Current Favourite Book

Neil Gaiman – American Gods

After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the time until his release ticks away, he can feel a storm brewing. Two days before he gets out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, in adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow travels home, only to encounter the bizarre Mr Wednesday claiming to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America. Together they embark on a very strange journey across the States, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small American town. But the storm is about to break... Disturbing, gripping and profoundly strange, Gaiman's epic novel sees him on the road to the heart of America.

Sex for Sex's Sake

We live in a society that doesn't automatically equate sex with love.  Sometimes it's about scratching that 'itch' or just letting loose and having fun.  So what does that mean for sex and romantic novels?

With the rise of erotica, other romances (even when not explicit at all) often seem to be automatically typecast as 'one-handed reads' and erotica itself seems to be branded as just about sex, with no mention of the subtleties of their characters or plots.  (I am aware that this may be - in part - down to 50 Shades, but seriously, there's such variety in erotica!  You wouldn't forgo all action films, just because you didn't enjoy Fast and Furious 5 and in the same way, try different types of erotica.  I'd suggest Tiffany Reisz or Megan Hart.)

Ideally in chick lit, romance and sex (or physical attraction) should be intertwined - or at least end up that way.  All consuming passion is important, but can become exhausting to read after a while.  I like to see different styles of physical intimacy in the books I read and reading a novel where there's just sex for sex's sake is intangibly unsatisfying.  In reality, the best sex is when you feel comfortable with who you are - completely yourself - without any kind of embarrassment or self-consciousness, and art should imitate life.

Is Paris the most romantic city in the world?

I'm currently reading Eloisa James's Paris in Love, a memoir of the year that that she and her family spent in Paris, and it's got me thinking about my own experiences with the city of love.  Well...  Experience.  Singular.  And unromantic.  (Though that's not to say Cath, that I'd have wanted to spend it any other way.  :P)

Having never been, last year my best friend from uni and I booked a hotel and popped across the channel for four days of museums, art galleries and much much food.

McDonald's has its own bakery!

It was EXHAUSTING!

I don't think I've ever walked so much in my life!  That's not say that it wasn't wonderful.  We hit all the major landmarks (Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysees) and four major art galleries (the Louvre, Centre Pompidou, Musee d'Orsee and Musee d'Orangerie).  We meandered down winding streets and even rode a double-decker train.  (So cool!)

Yes, I took arty photos of Paris - it's practically expected!

As experiences go, it was incredible.  So many places that we'd heard and read about - all in front of us.

For me, however, my favourite part of the holiday was when we visited Shakespeare & Co - a little bookshop just a few minutes walk from Notre Dame on the Left Bank.When I was 15, my English teacher had described it to me in a vivid way that completely captured my imagination.  Renowned for being a hangout for Hemingway, Joyce et al in the 1920s, it now opens its doors to young writers and lets them sleep there for free, in return for working in the shop during the day.

The shop itself

It's been on my bucket-list for nearly 10 years and actually getting to go there ended up being a rather emotional experience - something that I'm a little embarrassed about - but incredible nonetheless.

So it's quite possible that Paris is the most romantic city in the world - films like Midnight in Paris and Before Sunset certainly seem to claim so - but I don't think it really matters.  I'll get to see it with a partner or a lover one day, but for now all I need is good company and the sun in the sky.  That'll do me.

Why not write a 'proper' book?

I have been working on my novel - solidly working that is - for the last couple of weeks, and most people's reaction to it is the same:

Wow!  That's so cool!  What kind of book are you writing?

And  then, invariably:

Oh, that sounds...interesting.  But you're so intelligent!  Why don't you write a proper book?

And there my patience ends.

It's not that I don't get what they're saying.  I've a BA in English Literature and a Masters in Shakespeare - I love highbrow pretentious literature.  I just don't enjoy writing it.

Prose writing for me is escapism, pure and simple.  If I want to be deeply profound or pretend to be clever, I write poetry.  But prose, prose is fun!  It gives me the opportunity to focus solely on words and phrases and get them as luscious and mellowly precise as they can be.  I like making people smile and laugh more than anything else, and so each chapter gets sent out in a flurry of emails, letting my friends sigh over alpha heroes in exotic settings.

And besides, who says they're not proper books?!  In a romance novel character development has to be detailed, characters have to be loveable but flawed, and sex must drive the action forward without becoming a standard plot point.  Mills & Boon publish around 100 new titles in e-book format every month.

So yeah.  To those who ask me why I don't write a 'proper' novel - I am.

Love from Beyond the Grave - A Love Letter to my Grandparents

As children, there are some people is whose eyes you can do nothing wrong - invariably, our grandparents.  I have been lucky enough to know three of mine - Nanna and Nonno (my mum's parents) and Gran (my dad's mum).

Nanna died back in 2009, about a month after my undergraduate graduation.  It was her birthday on Friday and my mum and Nonno, as usually, went to mass and then to the cemetery.  Today, the Sunday that traditionally was kept for wine, obscene amounts of food and many birthday wishes, was a more sedate affair.  But I sat with Nonno for about an hour before the meal, and we had a chance to really sit and talk.

My grandfather is 86.  He's had a pretty difficult life: born into a large but poor Italian family, he won a university scholarship that he had to give up when war broke out, and became part of the partisan resistance.  After the war he left Italy, travelling Europe to make money to send home, at one point getting trapped in a mine for nearly eight hours in Belguim, until he settled in England.  More recently, he had open heart surgery and a pacemaker fitted.  He is diabetic, nearly blind, and still has the wickedest sense of humour.

And he loved - loves - my Nanna.

He loves her so much that he visits her grave every single week.  He loves her so much that he watches every single soap on television - all the ones he used to complain about nearly every day when she was alive - because they remind him of her.  He loves her so much, that he sings her favourite song to her picture every morning when he gets up and every night when he goes to sleep.

And I can hardly blame him.  She was incredible.  Full of life, vibrant, sassy and took no nonsense from anyone - even Nonno.  Especially Nonno!  She was loyal beyond belief and when I moved out properly for the first time this year, I was moved to tears when I opened my box.  (She created a box when each of her grandchildren were born, filled with cutlery, crockery, linen - everything anyone could possibly need for their first place).  It was so unbelievably thoughtful of her, reminding me of how she had insisted, as she got closer to the end, that we remembered our boxes.  That they would remind us of her later.

My dad's mum is an incredibly strong woman too.  Unwaveringly supportive to all of us, whenever we need it, she's generous unto a fault.  She'd give the shirt off her back for her children and grandchildren if we asked for it, and in return we adore her!  She's the best person to go shopping with (Gran manages to practically whistle up bargains out of thin air) and loves nothing better than to debate politics.  I think she thinks I'm practically a bolshevik for reading The Guardian.  She brought up her three kids so wonderfully well, and without much help from anyone.  And I get my love of books from her.  When I was tiny, she'd sing Irish nursery rhymes to me until I fell asleep.  I've always been blessed with the best female role models.

I know that I'm so very lucky to have such wonderful grandparents, to have been enveloped by such love.  I can only hope that they know that.

CLA

How does one hit 24 without having seen 'Titanic'?

I have never seen Titanic.  Or at least I hadn't before Cath sat me down earier this evening and we watched it.

It was a bizarre experience.  I hadn't watched it when it came out - mainly due to only being 9 at the time, and my mum heartily disapproving of letting little kids watch the car scene.  Understandably.  But I don't know how it is I never saw it as I got older.  At some sleepover, or a movie marathon at university.  I even bought it on dvd, but just couldn't face watching it alone.

The last time I watched a weepy film alone, it was The Noebook, and my poor cousin walked in to find me utterly distraught, crying into a cushion.  He thought someone had died.

It's also weird watching a film where you know what happens - even though you've never been there before.  I knew about the car scene, the ending, even the portrait, but there were little things that were new to me.  Just like SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO - LIKE ME UP TO YESTERDAY - HAVE NEVR SEEN IT Jack's death.  For some reason, I was convinced that it was when the boat was tipping over.  Dying of cold, his hands in hers, telling her to live was utterly soul-destroying.

I cry a lot in sad films.  I'm renowned for it.  But this may even have surpassed the great crying incident of '05 when I watched Pearl Harbour for the first time.  (And yes, I know that it's not a very good film.  I also don't give a damn because it's so damn sad.)  I'd say at least a solid half an hour of crying.  Cath can probably say for certain.

Of course, I loved it.  Heartbreaking tragedy on such a personal and such an epic scale.  Even if the song is overplayed.

CLA

Scarlett Saturdays: Chapter 1

I first read Gone with the Wind when I was thirteen years old.  My grandmother had given me a 1937 edition of the novel - a beautifully bound copy that I still have - and it took me a mere nine days to finish all 1037 pages, complete with tears of devastation.

Probably the first classic romance novel to make me react like that, I've decided to devote Saturdays to Scarlett Saturdays.  A week by week, chapter by chapter, review of the great novel.

And why is it great?  It is dated - there are moments that are undeniably uncomfortable - and its main character is startlingly unlikeable at times, but despite all that, it is gripping.

Take the opening words, for example.

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful.

Scarlett O'Hara, feisty, stubborn and utterly beguiling, is not your typical southern belle.  She's not quiet and she's certainly not retiring.  We shouldn't like her, and yet Mitchell helps us to understand her, and in understanding her, we come to love her.

The first chapter merely sets up the action.  It introduces the intricacies of the coming war, the hint of conflict in the Tarleton twins' announcement that Ashley Wilkes will marry Melanie Hamilton, and Tara.

Tara.  In some ways the whole novel is a love letter to the landscapes of the deep south.  Land is all that matters to this gentry, and Tara is the best kind of land:  lush and majestic:

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills.  Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues.  The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches.

The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf.  For here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations.  The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms.

You can practically breathe in Georgia.  The perfect setting for the perfect epic love story.

CLA