You know what I'd like? Some really good historicals. A whole batch of them. My reading lately has been pathetic. Mostly that I haven't had time, with the family schedule getting tossed in a Cuisinart. It's not a slump, really. I've been stealing passages from Valerie Sherwood's Bold Breathless Love, a favorite reread, and man oh man. I can see Wey Gat, the grand plantation on the Hudson River, where her heroine, Imogen fights circumstances she herself had a hand in creating. It's like jumping into the 1650s reading this for the umpteenth time, and knowing --while the character doesn't-- what's happening to the boy she thought she was in love with and the privateer who would hold her if he could...must lock self in bathroom with the faboo handouts from Susan Meier's talk on Saturday and analyze.
I'm almost at the point where Imogene makes her escape from Wey Gat (high on my list of fictional places I wanna to go to now) --though not quite in the way she thought-- and man, how I love the way this one act has consequences and repercussions in the three books that follow it. I really miss the big thick bug-squasher historical romances where one couple's story could take two books. Then there might be a story for one or two of the kids. ::take moment for contact high from pile of Jennifer Roberson's Sword Dancer series -- six books, one couple; yeah, I know, sold as fantasy, not romance, but it's a love story, darmitall! I do have a couple of her historical romances around here somewhere::
I did pick up a Harlequin Historical anthology at Sunday's library sale (I'm still mad at Harlequin for taking historicals out of retail distribution, but then again I don't have their sales figures or marketing experience) -- April Moon. Regency era, I know, but Miranda Jarrett (loved her colonials, want more of those) and Merline Lovelace (super nice person, and gets to write in all sorts of historical settings) and this Susan King person will be new to me, but she's in good company. Though one of the stories has a heroine named Sophie, a name that flat out doesn't work for me; conjures the image of a particular Cavalier King Charles Spaniel at a particular moment. Also sounds like "soapy," which makes me think of what soap tastes like (yes, that's how I know; I was five, I think) so will probably call heroine something else as I read. Am I the only one who does that?
2 comments:
I too want some really good historicals! I hear that LLG's upcoming one is really good, and Madeline Hunter has a new one coming out(Regency though :/ ). I went to a book sale and there were alot of series titles there that I automatically skipped over. Picked up one HH and scrounged around for what I could find. Unfortunately, I arrived on the last day with half an hour to spare and this woman beside me had five bags full of romance!! Arg!! >.)
Feh, aren't those types at every sale? I once ran into a mother-daughter team that stripped the romance section bare of historicals, save one Cassie Edwards, which they handed to me with "you can have this" after I asked if they were taking all the historicals. Urrrgh. The killer was when they built a fort around the section where they were currently looking with boxes full of books they had already selected. To be fair, they did say this was their one time they could buy books all year. I really hope they found some all-time keepers.
Sigh on the MH Regency. I have all her books in TBR (though I've read the first Regency; wanted to read the Regencies before the medievals in case she doesn't go back to medievals) Ah well, at least I'll always have Sherwood. And McBain. Vintage Small. I'm in an old-school phase.
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