Why subscribe?
Hi readers! So nice to have you here!
Get recommendations on some great books through these daily book posts, and soon I’ll be ramping up other ways I communicate with readers and this community.
(You will start receiving updates right here in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they are published.)
I also run a popular, enthusiastic “book club” on Facebook, The Romance of Reading (join here), where we invite a couple authors a week to interact with the members.
This is the schedule for September 2022:
In the near-future I’ll be expanding the way I talk and post about books. I can’t wait to discuss great reads with you, and have you take part in conversations about some of your favorite books and authors.
A little about me.
I was a professional reviewer with Kirkus for nearly 8 years, and I did their “romance” blog (which was really a romance and other fiction, mostly written by women blog) for many of those. I wrote about 600 reviews for them before we parted ways in 2020, and a number of interviews with some favorite authors.
I’ve also written for NPR (you can find those here); Barnes & Noble (the nook blog, which, alas, no longer exists); and I even had a piece in The New York Times Book Review (here).
It’s a been a crazy few years since that piece came out, and I’ve had to deal with a lot of difficult experiences—including the unexpected global calamity of COVID, and nearly losing my husband in early 2022.
Through it all, I’ve leaned in to the beauty, eloquence and hopefulness of great reads (and listens, since I do tons of audiobooks), and I’ve found them in both tried-and-true favorite authors and new discoveries.
Sending thanks to so many great authors who have made these difficult times bearable, who have kept me entertained, whisked me away to different places and times, and also made me contemplate my world and how we got here.
I include a variety of different books, including romance. Not a fan? No worries, most of the books here aren’t romances. Many of them have romantic elements, but not all. However, I hope you’ll reconsider how you feel about romance novels, especially if you’re a woman. In my opinion and the opinion of many others, romance novels are very pro-women and have always been a boon to the publishing industry.
(I wrote about this for NPR.)
In the end it doesn’t really matter, because there are plenty of books here for you to read. It’s a broad, eclectic list of titles. Nearly all of them are written by women, because as much as I consider myself an advocate for romance, I’m absolutely an advocate for women who write great stories. And women write the best stories.
So find a new book or two in these posts.
I know what a good story looks like (and sounds like). I want to share some with you!
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