In Which There is Hiatus

It's big-time season-finales week, which means one thing for a lot of people who make television shows: hiatus.

The next two weeks are insane for me.  Like, two-weddings-on-two-continents-within-six-days insane.  I plan to do a lot of reading.  But I do not plan on having the mental capacity to write about it coherently.

Also, I just started a new diet (ugh, I can't believe I just wrote that) and I need some time to get going before I completely re-vamp Menu Mayhem.

THUSLY, I hiat.  Or something like that.  When I come back there will be the new Monday Menu Mayhem I spoke of, at least three new book reviews (Providing I don't get hugely distracted by the Virgin Atlantic onboard entertainment... Hello, all of the movies I've been dying to see...), and I will be coherent once more.  Maybe.

Have a glorious two weeks, friends, and enjoy the May/June transition.

In Which Monday Menu Mayhem is Disappointed

Another weekend, another Nigella recipe.

A word about this: we've now been dissecting Nigella Kitchen since the beginning of the year.  I don't know how you all feel about it, but I have been generally pleased with the experience.  That said, it's coming up on June, and I'm running out of recipes that I want to make out of this book, in addition to the fact that I now have the Gwyneth Paltrow Bible, and Boy Scout regularly cooks from Barefoot Contessa's Back to Basics.  The next few weeks are pretty insane in the membrane, but I think that come June 1, we'll extend our Mayhem into other venues.  Oh, Nigella's still on the... menu.  We're just expanding the choices.

In the meantime, Sunday night meant the trial of My [Her] Mother's Prized Chicken.  Photographic evidence:

Yes, there is chicken under there.  As is a serving of white rice.

This recipe was actually a huge disappointment to be.  When something is called Your Mother's Prized anything, you know it's got to be something special.  At least, that's my interpretation of that title.  What this boiled down to (har) was a poached chicken soup.

You brown a whole chicken, add vermouth, carrots, leeks, and celery, over it with herbs and cold water and simmer for 2 hours.

That's it.

So yeah, I should have known it would have been awfully boring (In fact, I did... I added a huge glug of white wine with the cold water), but somehow I expected it all to magically pull together.  The healthy dose of mustard prescribed for serving in the recipe along with salt and pepper saved us from bland-hell, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that if I wanted chicken soup, my own made-up recipe was better.  And as far as fancy, long-cook Sunday dinners go, there are a lot better ones out there.

As Boy Scout said, there was nothing wrong with this dish, but there was certainly nothing spectacular about it, either.

In Which We Introduce Monday Menu Mayhem

Greetings, salutations, and the Happiest of New Years!

If you're anything like me, you've spent the last two weeks celebrating, recovering, sleeping, celebrating, and recovering again.  And also, admiring some pretty badass Christmas presents.

But you probably didn't spend two weeks trying to come up with an awesome new regular blog feature that would a) be awesome and b) add to the awesomeness of this blog.  Or I don't know, maybe you did.  Recommendations may be left in the Comments section.

Firstly and foremostly, we have a new look (hooray...?) and you'll notice handy dandy labels at the bottom of all of the posts.  Want to see all of our reviews?  Want to read posts from back in the day when we didn't know what we were doing?  Want to verify that we continue to not know our ass from our elbow?  Look no further.

NOW THEN.  When I'm not reading or writing or running around like a lunatic, I like to cook.  I like to cook a lot.  I got a new KitchenAid, a new All-Clad frying pan, and a new Star Wars apron for Christmas (AHHHHH!) in addition to the joint, couple-y purchase of a Dutch oven with a certain Boy Scout.

Needless to say, there is a lot of cooking in my future.

What I also got though, was the newest Nigella Lawson tome, Nigella Kitchen: Recipes From the Heart of the Home.  I love this book.  I love the obscene way she writes (I mean, really... she writes cooking like Kresley Cole writes sex), I love that she totally contradicts herself (recipe calls for boneless chops, recipe introduction says she herself uses bone-in all the time...), and I love that the recipes are fabulously do-able, without excessively weird ingredients or overly fussy health stipulations.

This is the way I like to cook.

So Boy Scout looks through the book (Since we're at a commitment level where it's what... one-fourth his anyway?  Still mostly mine, but living in his house so... yeah.  "Ours.") and decides that he loves it too.  And that "we" need to make all of the recipes, Julie & Julia style.

And for those wondering, by "we" he means: "mostly you."  Meaning me.

And I think this is not a bad idea.

SO.  Every Monday morning, we shall have a report on the Menu Mayhem that ensued over the weekend or the previous week.  I'll review the recipe, the ease, the deliciousness, and the mayhem.  Because yes.  When I cook, there is mayhem.

What better way to kick off the experiment than on a cold January Sunday, with a recipe that uses both the new frying pan and the new Dutch oven?  I can think of nothing more appropriate.  So into the oven went the Pork and Apple Hotpot, a glorious amalgamation of apples, onions, bacon (which to me always indicates a winning recipe), pork chops, and apple roux-thingy that came out three hours later as the perfect Sunday meal (with leftovers!)

This first time I tried hard to stick to the recipe (not a strong suit of mine unless baking), but next time we have definite additions in mind.  Like mustard in the roux.  And a little cognac "for flavor."  And definitely more sear-age on the pork chops.  Definitely.

OK then.  New feature... featured.  Boy Scout, perhaps you'd like to comment on the leftovers...?

In Which I Take the Rest of the Year Off.

Dear Friends,
As I'm sure is the case with all of you, things have been out of control for me in the past few weeks, and it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon.

I sat down to write a Thoroughly Obsessed post last Thursday and it was... bad. Because I've got nothing.

So, I've decided take the rest of the year off. I'm going to come back relaxed and refreshed (and having read at least two books) the first week in January. I'm even planning another weekly staple column to go along with Thoroughly Obsessed. Aren't you excited?

As consolation I leave you with the following oh-holy-hell-badass videos. Their awesomeness cannot be overstated.

May you have a Merry Christmas, Festivus, whatever. And may 2011 bring you nothing but good health and happiness.

See you next year!

In Which I Win at NaNoWriMo.

I'm coming back tomorrow with a review of Eloisa James' A Kiss at Midnight, but in the meantime I just had to share the news of how awesome I am.

Special thanks to all who listened to me whine, to Scout for asking me every single day (!!) if I had written yet, and to the long plane rides that taught me that I can indeed write 5,000 words at a clip.

In Which We Inaugurate Thoroughly Obsessed Thursday

So in light of a complete lack of contribution on your end, and a total blockage of brilliance of mine, I hereby dub The Weekly Regular Column to be Thoroughly Obsessed Thursday.

That is, until one of us has a better idea.

I'm totally obsessed with romance novels. Obviously. But I am more than a love-loving fool... I love plenty of other things too. And while this blog is ostensibly to talk about romance novels (or whatever the hell I am pretending to read this week), I have just officially hijacked it for Other Things as well.

I might be obsessed with a book or a character or a movie or a show or a site. It'll depend on my mood. So basically this is going to be a regular contribution of... what I talk about every week anyway. It's just happening on Thursday because that's my favorite day of the week, harkening back to the good old days of Must-See TV and Friends on NBC.

Speaking of, this week I am thoroughly obsessed with Community, that little-seen sparkly gem hiding at the beginning of the NBC Thursday lineup. It's not-so-much Must-See TV anymore, both because we're now in a different century and because reminding everyone of their previous Thursday night heyday is not the right move given NBC's current anemic ratings.

SO ANYWAY. Community. Last year I watched the pilot and the first few eps from Utah, but like so many things in the final months of 2009, it was lost to the chaos of Press Accreditation applications.

What I missed was a steadily growing and improving (perfecting?) ensemble comedy that is one of the finest I've seen since Liz Lemon and her gang first took to the small screen in 2006. The most interesting (and best) part of Community for me is that it is genuinely an ensemble effort. Sure, The Soup's Joel McHale is handsome and theoretically "the leading man," but Danny Pudi's Abed, Donald Glover's Troy, and Chevy Chase's Pierce are in no way his second bananas. Quite the contrary, I'm a little convinced that Abed himself is the true main character of the show.

And of course we must not forget the women, who are genuinely portrayed as... realistic women. They're flawed and can be bitchy, but there's no "slut," or "good girl." Well, Mad Men's Alison Brie plays Annie as an innocent who has to whisper the word "penis," but the girl evolves along with the rest to become a fully rounded and multi-dimensional character.

An aside: In watching the eps with commentary (and they ALL have commentary) there are a couple of comparisons here and there to Gilligan's Island, referenced by the creator and the writers. And ohholyhell is Community the 21st century Gilligan's Island. Jeff's the Captain. Abed's Gilligan. Troy's the Professor. Annie's Mary Ann, Britta's Ginger, and Shirley and Pierce are (albiet not at all married and/or romantic AT ALL) are Lovey and Thurston Howell. Watch it and you'll see. I'm not wrong.

Have I mentioned it's funny? No? Because it's hilarious. If you're going to skip the season marathon (which I don't recommend... not because you can't miss anything, but because you really won't want to) and pick selected episode's before diving in to the still-stellar second season, I recommend check out the Pilot, "Introduction to Statistics", "Debate 109", "Romantic Expressionism", "Physical Education", "Contemporary American Poultry", "Modern Warfare", and "Pascal's Triangle Revisited". All excellent, all worth a look, and all well-placed to give you a general overview of all of this awesomeness.

Well, there you go. The first Thoroughly Obsessed Thursday. Don't tell me you're not excited.

In Which I Offer Explanation, and Then Try to Make the Best of It.

So.

Some of you may know that I have been making a concerted effort to write regularly in this blog. You might also know that of late, my efforts have been focused on re-reading the Harry Potter series and then talking nonsensically about it.

Now, in case you don't know (and since only about four of you read this, and you ALL already know), I have been very ill of late. Like, almost three weeks out-of-work, unable to stand up for more than two minutes at a time ill. Blood work suggests some hell mixture of Mono, Lyme Disease and Fifth's Disease, which was then closely followed by a run-in with Thrush.

Have you ever watched Meet Me in St. Louis? It's among my fave movies. And in it, the little girl Tootie talks about how her doll has "four fatal diseases." My diseases are nowhere near fatal, but rather are somewhere in the "moderately debilitating" arena. However, I have been known to announce to Boy Scout over the past few weeks that I have four fatal diseases, and he has to be nice to me. Not that he was being mean. He was very, very nice to me during my run-in with the Plague.

THE GOOD THING ABOUT HAVING FOUR FATAL DISEASES: Well, when one can physically do nothing more than lie in bed, one tends to get things done that need to get done. Within 48 hours I had finished the Harry Potter series, and then went on to watch True Blood (season two), Parenthood (season one), Flight of the Concords (season one), Supernatural (season one and half of season two), and other various assorted episodes of Shows That I Needed to Catch Up On.

THE BAD THING ABOUT HAVING FOUR FATAL DISEASES: Concentration levels become nonexistent. On no less than three separate occasions I tried to write about finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I even went back and re-re-read the last 250 pages, hoping it would re-energize me) and came up with a rather incoherent set of paragraphs about the ecstatic climax to one of the great all-time fantasy series. Yeah, I went there. And if you have a problem, you can go read elsewhere.

As much as it pains me to finish reading without reaching any grand and far-reaching analysis, at this point (three weeks later), it seems a little... done. I simply finished it so long ago that I can't muster more than passing enthusiasm to delve back into the last dark and twisty caper of one Harry Potter.

And so, painfully, I offer a couple of bullet points on the issue:
* The return to Godric's Hollow is simply haunting to me. It's odd that it never occurs to Harry to return until the end of book six/beginning of book seven. Again, he probably isn't mature enough before that to realize that it's the missing piece of the puzzle, but seeing the graves of Lily and James (and noting that the Harry Potter books were actually published *after* the end of the series on the real-life timeline... curious) kills me. Every damn time.
* Severus Snape is the hero of the Harry Potter novels. I mean, Harry is the hero of the Harry Potter novels, but I think an argument could be made that Snape is even more crucial and courageous than even Albus Dumbledore. And Harry's final recognition of that also kills me. Every damn time.
* Once again, Rowling astounds with the revelation and expansion of a few well-placed details (Dumbledore v. Grindelwald as noted in the first book, the identity of the Hog's Head barman, the location of the Black locket, the mysterious female Hogwarts ghost, etc.) proves her genius and superiority to... others.

* The death of Dobby the House Elf makes me cry more than the death of Albus Dumbledore. Fact. I might even start crying about it right now.

* The Epilogue (which my brother insists on disparaging at every possible opportunity) to me is perfect, though I would have liked to know what happened to every single surviving person in the series. Fingers crossed for the sort-of promised encyclopedia containing the names of every child born to the Weasley family after the Battle of Hogwarts.

OK. Again, apologies for... being ill. I also managed to read the new(est) Tessa Dare, and to re-read Honor's Splendour, one of my Julie Garwood forever-keepers. Maybe I'll write about those tomorrow. If you're nice.

In Which I Take a Little Break From the Romance

Hello, friends.

So things don't seem to be getting any quieter or easier or simpler. Which is all fine (no complaints!), however it is not conducive to an environment in which I read a lot of books and then write about them. But whatever, I'm trying.

And with that I have a somewhat startling announcement to make: I'm skipping the romance novels for the moment. I started the much-awaited Tessa Dare sequel, and it's good. Really good so far, even. But then I made the mistake of watching the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows trailer. Not really a mistake, because the movie looks shockingly good (I have not been entirely impressed by them so far), and inspired me to do something I like to do every-so-often, and that is to sit down and read Harry from the beginning. I recommend it, it's pretty awesome.

Perhaps part of the reason I need a bit of a detox is because I indulged in some of my romance crack, and now I need some time alone to think about what a mistake it was, and what I should be doing with my life.

It started at Smart Bitches (doesn't it always?) and it started with this article about book crack. Come on, you know you have it. The stuff that's so bad you just have to read it. It provides a kind of morbid comfort in the fact it always remains the same: bad.

I have a couple of book cracks. At this point anything by J.R. Ward largely qualifies, and as we know, I have a shameful yen for Sandra Brown's back catalog of genre-romances. My my real, true downfall is Diana Palmer.

I've talked before about how formuliac her books are. But now I'd like to put more emphasis on how ridiculous her characters are. Ready? OK: The heroine (I completely forget her name) is a widow, convinced she contributed to her alcoholic asshole husband's death because she didn't like having sex with him. No, I'm not joking.

Then there's the whole "I've been in love with my best friend's older brother since I was 14, but he just thinks we're friends" thing. See, normally you would prescribe a glass of wine and an honest conversation for such problems, but the heroine doesn't drink. And while acknowledging that the first drink for anyone is affecting, I don't think a comforting half a glass of Scotch leads to seriously impaired judgement and a world-class hangover.

This is all to say nothing of the sexorrating which involves (wait for it...) a half-virgin widow. This, my friends, is much better than a virgin widow. A virgin widow at least never had sex with her husband (for whatever reason that she's too traumatized to tell even the omniscient narrator). A half-virgin widow, on the other hand, seems to exist for the sole purpose of giving the misogynist hero something to gloat over quite aside from giving the poor thing her first orgasm.

What is a half-virgin widow, you ask? I have no frakking idea. All I know is that the poor bastard husband must have been hung like a Ken doll. Literally.

Now, is it any wonder I need to take a break and read some quality writing? No. I didn't think so.

Why Have You Not Been Writing, You Lazy POS?

Or at least, that's what I assume you have been thinking.

However, I'm willing to concede that might just be what I have been thinking in my head.

The last week has been insane on multiple levels (including yet another "sleep-in-three-separate-places-over-three-separate-nights" incident, though fortunately this time all three nights in question included Boy Scout), and to be honest, my reading time has not been what it should be.

If this was my other blog (you know, the one I am seriously considering abandoning), I would write all about my new passion for The Big Bang Theory. But alas, this blog is about books. And my aimless rambling.

SO ANYWAY, I have nothing new to report. Well, that's a lie. I am currently reading Never Love a Lawman by Jo Goodman (a book from the Massachusetts book pile that HAD to migrate. There was no way I was waiting until June to keep reading this book), another one of those highly recommended books from my friends at Dear Author and boy oh boy, they weren't kidding when they named it one of the best books of 2009. Twice.

It's a really rare occurence for me to not want to finish a book simply because I am enjoying it so much. In fact, the last time that happened to me in recent memory is with any and all of the Harry Potter books. You know the feeling, don't you? That as much as you want to know what happens with the plot and to the characters, there's the fact that when you finish the book it's, well, finished. And you don't get to read it anymore.

I am not even remotely suggesting that this book will be any less good in a second sitting (in fact, I'm already looking forward to that in a year or so), but at the moment I am really enjoying my personal discovery of this book and this author.

So yes, the book kicks ass and no, I won't be writing about it anytime soon. You're not rushing me through it.

In the meantime, I am giving up on the "Top Ten Romance Heroines" as a post with a list. Instead I am going to write individual posts about the heroines, because I think they deserve that much of our time.

Also, it's my blog, and I get to do whatever I want.

Up first: Jade from Guardian Angel by Julie Garwood. Post to follow.

I Finally Finished The Book.

First of all, I think we can all agree that I need to become a better headline-writer. My "other" (soon to be abandoned?) blog begins all of its headlines with "A Statement," and I didn't want to carry that here (they are different, after all). However, I might be persuaded to shamelessly copy Patricia C. Wrede and begin everything here with "In Which..." Will have to think on it.

Moving swiftly onward, I finally, finally finished Instant Gratification last night, much to the delight of my mother who has been waiting for me to be done for about four days now.

This is the second book in a trilogy by Jill Shalvis. If you'll recall, I wrote a review of the first book, Instant Attraction, recently.

Instant Gratification is the story of the middle Wilder brother, Stone, and the local Doc's doctor daughter, Emma. Emma has recently been transplanted from New York to run her father's practice in the aftermath of his rather severe heart attack. Since they have been estranged for the majority of her life, Emma is reluctant to return, and still further reluctant to be living in the smallest town ever as opposed to her beloved metropolis.

Let me start off by saying that I did not like this book as much as I liked Instant Attraction. Where I cared about the characters in Instant Attraction, I had no such devotion to Stone and Emma. I did feel bad for Emma, although that mostly has to do with the fact that everyone ever was telling her she was a bad person and too uptight to exist.

The message that was hammered home time and time again was the fact that Emma was cold, aloof, and emotionally detached from the people and things going on around her. I had a problem with this mostly because the reasons that this might be are more-or-less glazed over, with only brief mentions about the relationship between her mother and her stepfather, and the estrangement from her father which is Not What It Seems.

My issues with the mother situation are up first. Emma's mother died six months before the story took place. She raised Emma, did the best she could, worked 60 hour weeks to make ends meet, etc. etc. etc. Saint, right? WRONG. This is apparently a woman who kept her ex-husband from seeing his daughter, from communicating with her, and then went to him to obtain money to pay for her daughter's college education, essentially taking all of his savings and retirement money. And then took credit for coming up with the money herself.

OK, so the woman Emma keeps hearing in her head (in a non-crazy way, of course), is actually someone Emma has the right to be very, very angry with. Like, check-yourself-into-therapy-and-sort-out-your-life anger. Is Emma ever angry? No.

So she shows up to help in this small town and is greeted with bad attitudes and ingratitude almost from the beginning. Apparently "newcomers" aren't welcome, and female doctors even less so. And Stone et al have the absolute gall to wonder why she wouldn't want to stay in town?

We won't even get into the manipulation of Stone and her father with regard to communication and "convincing her to stay."

If I were Emma, I would have run away as fast as possible and shacked up permanently with Spence, her friend with benefits who flies in to provide sexxoration for the fabulously bitchy Serena.

None of these complaints are going to keep me from finishing the trilogy, and I'm hoping for a little more development between TJ and Harley. Instant Gratification had fine characters and a fine plot, I'm just not sure they actually went together-- the story of the girl dealing with her family secrets did not mesh well with the girl waking up and smelling the roses about What's Important in Life. Not to mention an emotional detachment from all of the major emotional issues in the story. It just didn't work.

At least, it didn't work for me. Let me know if it worked for you.

Apparently I Can't Prioritize My Books.

On a blessedly stuff-to-do-less Sunday, I actually sat down and read a book. Yes, that's right. A whole BOOK.

Unfortunately it was the Shiloh Walker book that I ordered from Amazon following the Kindle-story incident. To clarify: the misfortune doesn't stem from the fact that it was a Shiloh Walker book, but more from the fact that I picked it over books that have been on the TBR shelf for far longer than that one. Case in point: Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole, a book I am really, very excited about, but which I can't seem to pick up and read.

About this Shiloh Walker book, Broken. I stumbled onto an excerpt Idon'tknowwhere and decided to order it, once again making the mistake of ordering a sequel before the prequel. In this instance it didn't matter that much-- the hero, Quinn, is brother to the previous book's hero, and they both stand pretty independently, minus a few references to previous happenings that have nothing to do with the current story.

Quinn's a bounty hunter with a Secret Dark Past (really, I don't think he ever even tells our heroine about the things that happened to him), who runs into Sarah, his new housemate (also of the Secret Dark Past) and promptly falls into lust fueled love. Lots of inappropriate public sexual encounters ensue, blah blah blah, encumbered only by the fact that Sarah Is Hiding Something.

As with the previous story I had read, there are liberties taken with huge chunks of time that don't serve the story well at all-- to have them wake up one morning after the passing of one week in their relationship does very little for me in terms of plot development or the development of the characters. Suddenly there are holes to be filled in with regard to their routine and how they're doing as a couple-- to say nothing of the fact that despite the passage of time, they don't seem to know each other any better than when they started.

The ending worked for me as much as it didn't work for me (follow that?). The twist made it interesting and everything pulled together nicely (I do like a good, working red herring), but then there was a tidy little bow on everything. Followed closely by a severe and annoying lack of communication by Quinn and Sarah. And the last minute, heavy handed introduction of new characters, which really is a pet peeve of mine.

None of this stopped me from ordering the prequel to the sequel, nor will it stop me from considering Shiloh Walker books in the future. I highly doubt any of them will end up on the Keeper Shelf, but I'd be willing to read them anyway. This will be especially true if the author can stop being such a contradiction-- a modern writer with modern styles who really is stuck in old skool cliches. And not hiding it well.

On a maintenance front, Shotgun's alias has officially been changed to Boy Scout. It just fits better, no matter how much he wants to pout about it.

It Turns Out All I Needed Was a Quiet Evening. Or Two.

Well, Friday night (known in some circles as "date night") has become one of the only nights a week that I actually sit at home. Unless I'm driving. Or going to high school productions of AIDA.

Last night was supposed to be the first Friday 3D date night for me and Shotgun (which will be my boyfriend's new alias on this site. It's one of Michael Vaughn's aliases, duh... It was between this and Boy Scout, which didn't go over so well). At any rate, a stomach bug and general malaise kept us once again relegated to Skype dating, which was just fine for me and the completion of The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag.

I adore Flavia de Luce. Adore her with a capital A. Any girl who remolds her sister's lipstick to contain poison ivy (don't worry, it was well deserved), who rides around the countryside on a bicycle named Gladys, and who considers it her personal mission to solve local murders-- if only so she can know about them before the appear in The News of the World-- is my kind of girl. Somehow a middle aged Canadian (that would be award winning writer Alan Bradley) has managed to create and capture perfectly a ten-year-old English schoolgirl. And while Flavia's precociousness is sometimes over the top, she is nothing if not perfectly portrayed.

Having read the critically acclaimed debut of Flavia and the universe surrounding her ancestral home, Buckshaw, last year, I was very excited to hear that the sequel had finally arrived (a consultation with the author's website confirms that there are at least four books planned for the series). Between her truely hideous sisters, her absent minded stamp-collecting father, and the eccentric array of characters that surround her at every turn, I knew that the story would be nothing if not enjoyable.

I believe I wrote about this before with Sweetness, but if you'll indulge me a bit, I want to talk about why it is difficult for me to finish these books once I start them. I like them, and they're mysteries, for goddsakes. There should be a sense of urgency to, at the very least, find out whodunnit.

Hangman's Bag, though, like Sweetness, held no such urgency for me. In fact, I finished the book last night, and I still am not entirely sure I know or care what the central mystery was. Something about a boy found hanging in the woods five years ago, and a dead puppeteer who probably ultimately deserved to die. Or at least, have something really horrible happen to him.

The point of these books, for me, is not to be riveted on a plotline. It is to imagine riding with Flavia through the sunny country lanes, to have tea in the decaying rooms at Buckshaw, to envision what truely horrid concoction Mrs. Mullet has prepared for dinner, and the amount of eye-rolling poor Inspector Hewitt must be doing when he finds himself beset upon, at every turn, by a feisty pre-adolescent (by the way, the introduction of his wife, Antigone, is one of the highlights of the book for me-- I can't wait to see how Flavia worms her way into their garden for tea in the future).

So yes, once again, the character is the thing-- and I have absolutely no problem with that. In fact, I have to wonder if that's not becoming my number one requirement for liking a book. Who cares about the plot? As long as the characters are interesting and dynamic, I'm not sure I do.

How This Is Going to Go Down: A Post

So, to be clear, there are actually TWO people writing this blog, although one of them has chosen to be MIA until sometime next week. In the meantime, here's how this SHOULD work on a week-to-week basis.

Wendy Pan and I will each post a review of a book, either that we have just finished, or that we finished a decade ago and want to write about, or that we are currently reading and are extremely in love/annoyed with.**

Then once a week we will have a "discussion" in which we pass a given topic back and forth like a beach ball. Only it probably will not go on that long, since neither of us is very coordinated.

So I'm going to hold up my end of the deal and write another review for this week, and then hopefully we'll start writing right along next week. Or in July. But we'll see.




**A minor disclaimer: If we are that in love with the book, we might not want to put it down long enough to write about. Sorry.

The Grading System. How it Works, What it Means

Here's how this is going to work.
At the end of each review, we are going to grade each book based in five areas.

1. Plot- Feasibility within the book's own mythology, whether it made sense, etc.
2. Characters- No idiots/helpless heroines welcome.
3. Sex- It better be worth it.
4. Style- Appropriate to what the author was aiming for... or what we think the author was aiming for.
5. Ease of Consumption- How much fun was this to read? Or wasn't it?

BONUS POINTS: Only our favorite authors can get bonus points. They are our faves, and we will follow them to the ends of the earth... but they can also lose extra points for copping out and not living up to their full potential.

Each of the above is worth 1 point. The best a book can do is 5 plus Bonus Points. Worst is -1. Yes, -1... you can lose points for being that bad.