80 % Done and Having Mixed Feelings...
I, for the most part love Shannon McKenna's books but it seems lately they are getting a tad silly and her heroes are becoming even more neurotic than usual. Am I crazy?
Jane's Reviews and Thoughts
I'm just a girl who loves to read and likes to swear - a lot.
So if you have a fucking problem with this, don't follow me.
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Things that BBAs Say That Warm My Cold Little Heart...
"Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of keyboards and some will learn to leave reviews."
- Sarah Luddington
This silly-assed quote can be found here and a screenshot can be found here. As ridiculous as it seems, I have to believe that she did indeed vomit this dumbass quote. And as hard as it is to believe that an author would spew such wtfery that could hurt the money-making potential of her books, apparently this author has no problem doing that at all.
I'll admit I'm a little bummed cuz I wanted to try her books, but with her whining ad nauseam about the pooah, pooah widdle aw-tors being picked on, I just can't bring myself to try even the free one I downloaded which will now be dumped. I can't help but think that Sarah is full of shit as she is claiming that she has received scads of homophobic hate email vilifying her for writing gay erotica. Um, really? Forgive me if I just don't quite buy this, cuz Sarah, have you seen the volume of homoerotica being sold on Amazon and other ebook stores lately? Did you just really, with a straight face, tell all of us poor, dumb readers and reviewers that your feelings were so hurt because a few people took issue with your subject matter, that you risked the anger of potential readers by insulting us and in effect, screwing yourself out countless word of mouth recommendations? Uh huh, I thought so.
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What I say every time STGRB says something hateful about me.
4
Dear STGRB...
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Can't We All Agree to Just Agree*
Ian: Sparrow, you are beautiful. Fucking gorgeous!!
Sparrow: No, Ian, you're beautiful.
Ian: No, no, no! Little Bird you are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life!! I'm going to start calling you Little Bird because in all my infinite, poetic wisdom, I actually figured out that's what a sparrow is, right? And with Sparrow being your name and all, it sounds perfect!! Not that the name 'Sparrow' sounds a tad contrived or silly. And you know, I do write songs which sell millions of copies so really, it's all very poetic and a little emo and when all the little fangirls hear it, they will squee and buy more mp3's.
Sparrow: Oh no, Ian! You are the most handsome, most talented, bestest boyfriend, EVAH!!! It doesn't even matter that when you blow into town, you do nothing but sweet talk me and get me all hot and bothered for a few hours then leave and never call or email or text for 2 or 3 months. I carry the memory of your perfection in my heart, always!
Ian: Sparrow, your smile just lights up the whole fucking world!! I know I'm not the only one who thinks that. Shit, I know everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, who meets you falls in love with you within 30 seconds of seeing you. Come to think of it, only men who see you fall for you. You don't seem to make friends with a lot of women but at least your besty from California likes you. Well, and your mom, though she kinda has to. For some reason, though, my cousin's wife, Laila, doesn't. Hmmmm...I wonder why...
Sparrow: Ian! Ian! (snaps her fingers in his face) Hello!?!? Eyes on me! You know I can't say curse words because I'm a preacher's daughter, but if I could, I would tell you that your hair just fuckin' rocks!!! Oh! Did I just say a curse word? Gosh, I hope God doesn't strike me down! Naaaw...he won't because I am one of his perfect creations and so beautiful that it would just be a crying shame if that happened.
Ian: Sparrow, have I ever told you that your fashion sense is the bomb! You are the cat's meow, the bee's knees, the ULTIMATE fashionista now that you've moved to NYC and get to shop with your daddy's congregation's donations and wear those ultra skin-tight, brightly colored, cut-up-to-your-perfect-ass dresses and ski bunny suits!!! Boy if those people could see you now, they would be in fucking awe of your beauty! And I'm pretty sure they think it was money well spent to send you out of state to go to a university in NEW YORK CITY!! Because...well...you're perfect which anyone can see.
Sparrow: Oh, Ian. You are the most perfect, most beautiful, most well-modulated voiced boyfriend I've ever had!!! Did I tell you your hair is perfect? I did? Well, just let me tell you again! And again! And again! You're hair is sooooo perfect, I want to eat it!!
Ian: Please marry me, Little Bird, and make me the happiest, cheating, stalking, dirt-sucking, scumbag, douchebag, dickwad, piece of shit in the whole entire universe!!
Sparrow (squeeing): Oh Ian!! Yes! Yes! Yes! I will marry you!!! Omigod!! Wait! What if we have a baby and the baby is prettier than us?
Ian and Sparrow (saying together): Naaaw...it'll never happen!!
*Relocated from GR
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What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
-Salman Rushdie
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My First Blog Post
In honor of joining BookLikes, I thought this would be appropriate as a first ever blog post.
Thus, I give you, the email I received from GR telling me about the review they are removing and my response (emphasis mine):
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:03:14 -0700
From: support@goodreads.com
Subject: Re:Content to be deleted
Hello Jane,
We are contacting you in regard to the following review:
[Removed]
In the past, if a review was predominantly about author behavior and not the book, we would remove it from the community book page. Due to some recent changes to our moderation policy, reviews of this nature will now be deleted entirely from the site.
We will give you 2 calendar days to decide what to do, whether that means backing up the information through our export feature for your personal records or editing the content to comply with our guidelines. If the review continues to violate our guidelines, it will be deleted per our policy after 2 days.
We would also ask that you refrain from posting content like this going forward. If you continue to act in a way that is contrary to the spirit and intent of Goodreads, your account will come under review.
For more information about these changes, please see the Feedback Group announcement.
Best regards,
The Goodreads Team
My response:
Dear Goodreads Support,
Absolutely no problem and thanks for contacting me!
Actually, I've exported this review as well as all my other reviews AND my entire list of books from Goodreads and imported into BookLikes anyway. Also, I will not be reviewing another book at GR but will instead post a link to each review on my new BL account. I will however, continue to rate books as I am allowed to under your new and improved ToS. These ratings will never be higher than 1 star and will be given to books I deem deserving.
And BTW, thanks for posting your initial policy change announcement ONLY into the Feedback Group instead of site wide and via email where all members could see it. I also thank you on behalf of the members whose reviews and shelves you deleted without notice. I'm sure they really appreciated that!
Anyway, thanks again for letting me know.
Bye for now! :O)
Jane
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ETA 8/29/13: Looks like Not-So-Super-Mod had all seven (yes, I said seven) of her profiles deleted as well as her alias. I'm happy to see that the process apparently works. Now if only Ammy would follow suit and boot all the filthy socks there.Now Mystery & Crime Thrillers group, show your good faith and unblock the over 200 GR members Not-So-Super-Mod preemptively blocked several days ago. It's the right thing to do.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For anyone who is a member of a certain mystery book group, your mods are lying to you. One Not-So-Super-Mod is on a major power trip deleting members right and left because they "might" be a part of the BBA group. She has arbitrarily kicked out longtime members of that group with, I suspect, no explanation whatsoever. Instead of researching/investigating both sides of the Lauren Pippa (Howard) fiasco, Miss Jump-to-Conclusions and her minions have taken Ms. Pippa's/Howard's and her minions word that she was attacked and threatened. I'm not going to try to explain the whole thing to you here because other people have done it so much better.If you care to read a well-constructed timeline of events, go here: http://darkwriter67.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/reality-on-goodreads-your-mileage-may-vary/and here: http://darkwriter67.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/addendum-reality-on-goodreads/This is a good post on it too: http://rosepetals1984.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/soapbox-saturday-the-author-who-cried-bully-and-few-heard-the-truth/You won't catch cooties if you read these but you may in fact, read the truth. Cuz sure as anything, Judge/Jury/Executioner Mod is not giving it to you.And yes, I have shelved Lauren's book on my snarky shelves because it is my right to do so just as it's your right to shelve books as you see fit on your profile. See how that works?
Had to Mull This Over for a Few Days
Finished Reading: August 2013
Times Read: 5 since 1992
Shelves: angst-to-infinity-and-beyond, ebooks, hero-i'd-do, historical, keeper, plus-sized h, ptsd, tear-jerker
I really do not know what to say about this book. This is probably the fifth time I've read StF but for whatever reason, it just really got to me this time. Maybe it's because we've been through so many more conflicts since this was written or maybe I've become more educated about PTSD. Whatever the reason, this book stuck in my brain for many days after I finished it.
Tons of fighting, fucking, and dirty talk. Sometimes this is just what I need. No thinking required.I was never very sure of why Bennett disliked Chloe so much but to be honest, I don't think we were supposed to care. He had a wonderful family and childhood from what I could tell. Same with Chloe though it was mentioned that she was in Chicago in the first place to live with her mother for the last few months of her mom's life. Her dad lived in South Dakota (I think) and when Chloe visited him at one point in the book, she mentioned that they reminisced about her mother soooooo I don't know or don't remember why her mother was not in SD or why her dad was not in Chicago and frankly didn't really care in the long run.Suffice it to say,that eventually they come to an understanding though I don't know if I necessarily believed in their HEA as there was really very little 'talking', with words anyway, throughout the book. Throw in a 'big misunderstanding', some moping, some groveling and the requisite 'big gesture' and you've got a harmless if mediocre book which I didn't regret spending a few hours on.I am almost done with [b:Beautiful Stranger|16117506|Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard, #2)|Christina Lauren|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1359073239s/16117506.jpg|21935683] and did preorder [b:Beautiful Player|17831614|Beautiful Player (Beautiful Bastard, #3)|Christina Lauren|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1375285002s/17831614.jpg|24948167] from Amazon Kindle. This is the one I'm actually looking forward to the most cuz I'm a sucker for a Pygmalion trope. ;o)
Suspenseful and steamy with a side of paranormal and a 70 year old murder mystery. JH is mainly known for her erotic romances (which are awesome BTW) so I was anxious to read this book which has been on my Kindle for a while. It was crafted just as well as always and had some genuinely creepy moments.Livie and Bern work in the same office building and after eyeballing each other for a couple of weeks, finally meet. They realize right away that there is something deeper going on, like maybe they've know each other forever. As it turns out, they kind of have known each other, many times in fact. Throw in an unbalanced sister prone to histrionics and violence and you've got a story. As star said in her review, JH didn't drag out the drama of the romance too much which was good. I think either this could have been made into a novel in order to deal more with the additional reincarnation aspect or take out the crazy sister altogether in order to concentrate more on the mystery.JH is always going to be a go-to author for me because I love her characters. There are no zillionaire playboys looking for (very) young, submissive TSTL chicks. She always populates her books with mature protagonists and secondary characters with real jobs and you know, as a real person myself, I like that! ;o)One teensy tiny thing I would change? Updating some of the tech speak: crazy sister talked about that "GPS thing", Livie printed off directions instead of pulling up maps. No biggie but that kind of stuff tends to take me out of the story a little bit.
Steal My Heart
Thought I'd found a new author but quickly figured out that she can't be bothered with doing the most basic research on what has to be one of the most easily researched occupations in the freaking world. I read the Kindle sample today and have a few observations:1. Heroine is a mysophobic (fears germs) nurse who cannot stand to be near anything stained or dirty and/or potentially germy including most people apparently. Normally I would venture to say this conceivably puts her out of the runnning to work in the nursing field. Well, I would be wrong! She is a nurse in the OR which for her, is awesome, because it is sterile and quiet cuz the patients are asleep so that's ok. Apparently she is not required to talk, let alone stand next to or interact with patients? Wow! A nurse's pay and not have to talk to patients or clean up their vomit, shit, or other excretions? Sign me up!! One other thing in the OR? Blood. Lots and lots of blood. And organs. And body parts. And blood.2. Heroine refuses to ride in a car of co-worker because of a stain on upholstery yet hops on the subway for her ride home mentally griping that she will need to use an extra bottle (bottle!) of bleach in her laundry. Really?3. Uses the word "hobo" to describe a homeless person. Author needs to learn how to use a dictionary which are actually on the internet now.4. Actually freezes and mentally wishes she were anywhere but in the presence of someone who is potentially injured and dying when faced with having to do CPR and is forced to touch "hobo" only because crowd in subway gets agitated with her when she does nothing.5. Apparently has trained in CPR once in eight years and has not used these skills once since then. Huh. Periodic recertification in basic lifesaving is required in order to continue working in a hospital.6. Gets turned on when performing mouth to mouth even though minutes before she was cringing because he had a dirty, icky beard that looked like a "hibernating animal". *sigh* Those pheromones will get you everytime.6b. Apparently she gets over her phobia fairly quickly in order to swap spit and other fluids with hero. You go girl!7. Sundry instances of grammar mistakes, weird and wrong word usage.7b. Uses words like "scoundrel" and "vexing". What? Are we in a Regency romance novel?Seeing how this is just in the first six pages I will definitely not be reading.
One of My Most Favorite HistoricalsI've just finished rereading this book and guess what? I love it even more than I did the first time I read it. This is one of those books where all the elements just come together to make a near perfect read.[b:The Lady's Tutor|916794|The Lady's Tutor|Robin Schone|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1266672883s/916794.jpg|1807284] is set in Victorian England when women were expected not to express anything so crass as emotion, good or bad, especially if you were the daughter of the prime minister and the wife of a high-ranking government official. Elizabeth Petre is married to a man chosen for her when she was seventeen. In the intervening sixteen years, she has born two children and stood by her man, all in the name of politics.Elizabeth hears a rumor that her husband has a mistress and she decides to do something about getting her man back in her bed. She blackmails Ramiel, Lord Safyre, who is a man-whore deluxe, into teaching her how to seduce her husband. As they begin their lessons they come to realize that they both have skewed impressions of the other and as the days go on, they begin to fall in love.As she begins to realize that there really is nothing wrong with her or her feelings, she begins to rebel in small ways which causes shit to hit the fan with her husband and parents. Her husband has zero interest in being in her bed for any reason and tells her so in an extraordinarily cruel manner. Eventually an attempt is made on her life and she goes to Ramiel who then demonstrates that she indeed is deserving of tenderness and that her sexual desires are natural and can and should be expressed.Both protagonists were extremely likable. Ramiel has turned out to be one of my favorite tortured heroes. Being caught between two worlds ever since he was born, he'd never had a real place in either one. His relationship with his mother, who had done her best to raise him on her own, was very loving and mutually respectful. His treatment of Elizabeth was so tender, sexy, and respectful that you couldn't help but root for him. His underground Turkish bath didn't hurt either. Elizabeth may have seemed prickly in the beginning, but it was quickly evident that she had a marshmallow center, especially when dealing with her sons. Her sense of fairness was awesome and it was interesting to see her try to deal with that sense of fairness in the face of society's dictates. Because even though the times demanded the utmost respectability and virtue in ALL women, it paradoxically ignored certain facts of the lower classes such as occurrences of rape, prostitution, disease, poverty, and poor working conditions.This book is classified as erotica but it really doesn't read that way to me. The H/h don't even kiss until page 220 and there is no sex until around page 240. BUT...the sexual tension is built like crazy up until then. I highly recommend this book and author.
Normally I would say there would be no way to redeem a couple who hooked up only days after the big break up, of hero and heroine's besty who happened to be hero's fiancee but yeah, Sarah Mayberry manages it. Both H/h are so likable and tortured and sexy that I had no problem believing in the romance. It also was a tremendous help that fiancee had run off to Australia and snagged her very own hero (told in previous book [b:Hot Island Nights|8177542|Hot Island Nights|Sarah Mayberry|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348388066s/8177542.jpg|13024069].
Cute! Cute! Cute!Loved both of the main characters as well as secondary characters who were not allowed to overpower the story at all. Loved that Alan was a man-whore but as soon as he met Sophie again pretty much immediately gave up his other "chicks" and single-mindedly pursued only her.All in all, a sweet, sexy love story with some typos which didn't distract too much.
Currently reading
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Robin Buss
