9/12/10 I've made enough changes to this in the past month that I thought I'd change the date so it would pop back up to the top.
5/17/10 This post is just getting started. I hope it will be edited often because that would mean lots of new favorites. (note that these are "favorite," not "best" or "most well-written," which would be somewhat different).Favorite Authors: (I'm not numbering this one, just typing the ones that come to mind)
My most reliables: Jennifer Crusie, Loretta Chase, Elizabeth Hoyt/Julia Harper, Georgette Heyer, Lani Diane Rich and Lisa Kleypas' older stuff (her new stuff has been disappointing). Then there's the one-time authors-- I've read and enjoyed one or two books by someone, then read half a dozen other ones by the same author only to be disappointed. But I keep trying-- those include Connie Brockaway, Laura Kinsale, Julia Quinn, Mary Balogh and the occasional Nora Roberts (I think I'm running about a 1:6 ratio of NRs that I liked vs. disliked). Loved Stephanie Plum and Eve Dallas (which would account for nearly all of the Nora Roberts I've enjoyed), but had to give up on both series after the first four or five-- why do series always die? it must be hard to keep them going.
Favorite Romance Novels
- (insert Crusie and Chase lists from below)
- The Spymaster's Lady (Bourne)
- The Devil in Winter (Kleypas)
- Summer to Remember (Balogh)
- As You Desire (Brockaway)
- Archangel (Shinn)
- Seduce a Sinner (Hoyt)
- Serpent Prince (Hoyt)
- Sex Straight Up (O'Reilly)
- Irresistible (Balogh)(which was the first romance I really loved when I started reading them a couple of years ago, so it's here for sentimental reasons even though there are some odd things about it)
Favorite Jennifer Crusie Novels:
(this was really hard. If I typed out this list ten days in a row, it would turn out differently every time.)(except Agnes and the Hitman would always be first.)
- Agnes and the Hitman (w/ Mayer)
- Welcome to Temptation
- Fast Women
- Faking It
- Crazy for You
- Charlie All-Night
- Anyone But You
- Bet Me
- Getting Rid of Bradley
- Don't Look Down (w/ Mayer) or Manhunting. or Wild Ride. or The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes. Oh, wait. I should stop.
Favorite Loretta Chase Novels:
- Mr. Impossible
- Lord Perfect
- Lord of Scoundrels
- Your Scandalous Ways
- Miss Wonderful
Favorite Heroes:
- Phin Tucker, Welcome to Temptation (Crusie)
- Harry Braxton, As You Desire (Brockaway)
- Malone, Catch of the Day (Higgins)(couldn't stand the heroine, though)
- Rupert Carsington, Mr. Impossible (Chase)
- Cal Morrisey, Bet Me (Crusie)
- Creed Rivera, Crazy Wild
- Simon Iddesleigh, Serpent Prince (Hoyt)
- Crash, The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes (Crusie/Stuart/Dreyer)
Favorite Heroines:
(I realized as I tried to come up with these that there aren't nearly as many heroines I like as there are heroes, which I suppose says something significant, but I'm not sure what) Min Dobbs would be first on this list if it weren't for the way she acts out of character in service of the plot (my opinion, I know plenty of others disagree).
- Mare Fortune, The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes
- Daphne Pembroke, Mr. Impossible (Chase)
- Jess Whitby, My Lord and Spymaster (Bourne) (but not the hero, who was irritatingly paternalistic)
- Melisande Fleming, Seduce a Sinner (Hoyt)
Guilty Pleasures:
This list is for the handful of books that either aren't very well written or are terribly formulaic or are so over-the-top that they're a little embarrassing. But I still find myself re-reading them. Sometimes more often than the ones that are "better."
- Crazy Hot, Crazy Cool and Crazy Wild (Janzen)(but none of the others in this series)
- Chesapeake Bay Saga (Nora Roberts)
- Jade Island (Lowell)(I'm not a big Lowell fan but I did like this one, even though it has the worst line of dialogue ever, see below)
- MacKenzie's Pleasure (Linda Howard)(but not any of the other MacKenzie books)(I did finally read another Howard book that I liked, Cry No More, although it has one scene in the middle that I just have to ignore)
- Charming the Prince (Teresa Medeiros)
I just thought of doing these last two lists last night, so they are "in progress."
Best Sidekicks/Secondary Characters
- the ensemble cast of Bet Me (Crusie)
- Eden and Lavinia, Irresistible (Balogh)
- Max and Darla, Crazy for You (Crusie)
- Riley and Suze, Fast Women (Crusie)
- Bertie and Tamsin, The Last Hellion (Chase)
- Any of the secondary romances in Susan Elizabeth Phillips' novels, which I almost always like better than the main romances
Gaffes/Worst Lines/Grammatical or Other Errors: (some of these are great books, they just have off moments)
- Worst Line of Dialog ever: Jade Island (Lowell): "Stick your tongue in my mouth before I say something stupid." (I think it's too late).
- Runner-up: "I'd give my left nut to be inside you right now" (Linda Howard, Cry No More).
- Say No to Joe (Lori Foster) "Joe Winston might be a bonified jerk..." (I think she probably meant bona fide) (and how did the editor or copy editor not catch that??)(the more you think about this one, the funnier it gets. maybe it was on purpose after all.)
- In Beyond Seduction, Kathleen O'Reilly refers to "trust" as a four-letter word (p. 185).
- I'm trying to remember the name of the one where the hero gets "commentated" at the end. I think she must have meant "commended" or received a commendation or something, but that one cracked me up. I think it might have been a Linda Howard (Dream Man? which was completely blech, so don't read it to find out. really. Had one of my pet peeves (angst ridden psychic heroine) and an awful ending.)
- In Spymaster's Lady, the hero and heroine have been travelling on foot for four days and are dusty and exhausted. Hero is wearing a fisherman's sweater that has been referred to a number of times. They arrive at their destination, and after about fifteen minutes, are ushered into a bathroom to clean up. The heroine is still wearing her travel clothes, but suddenly the hero is wearing a jacket, cravat, and a shirt with studs at the cuffs. Go figure.
- In Blue Eyed Devil (Kleypas), early on the heroine messes up when she enters the combination into a keypad lock to the hero's apartment (of which she is the super), then explains that you have to wait a few minutes for it to reset before you can try again, allowing them to have a steamy encounter. A hundred pages later, the hero mis-enters the combination again, but is able to immediately do it over and open the door.
- In The Fortune Quilt (Rich) p. 223: "He puts his hands on my shoulders, his fingers cradling my face..." Maybe I should start another category for "anatomically impossible moments." Like in A Game of Chance when the hero is, um, inside her, and then starts at the soles of her feet and then kisses all the way up her leg. Ouch.
There's something else I've been thinking about, and I'm not sure what to call it. The book whose plot just works. You read so many where the tension in the plot would be solved if they just sat down and talked. Or the heroine is all in a snit about something, and that provides the tension in the plot, but the snit doesn't make any sense. For example: In Devil's Bride, the heroine proves that she is strong and independent by insisting that she be involved in a murder investigation. But since there's no credible reason she should be involved, instead of sounding strong, she just sounds nosy and gossipy. There's some great scenes in that one, but in the end, it lost me because I could never get over the fact that she's doing all this emotional blackmail on the hero so she can stay involved in a murder investigation which is just flat out none of her business. Or in one of the divorced and desperate books by Christie Craig (can't remember which one, I think it's the second one), the heroine tries to prove how strong and independent she is by insisting that she be involved in taking down a truly dangerous criminal with her boyfriend who is a cop. She ends up just sounding like an idiot. An untrained civilian in a situation like that would likely end up getting herself or someone else killed.
So what do you call it when the amount of angst exhibited by the characters is perfectly balanced by the plot complications and their resolution? Whatever that quality is, it's hard to come by, and I love it. They aren't necessarily my top favorites, but I just feel so grateful when I finish reading a book like that. For example, Faking It. It's not my all-time favorite Crusie, but it just works. And then there are some books that have it that I otherwise wouldn't particularly care for-- like Then Came You (Kleypas), which has a truly awful heroine, but then you find out gradually as the plot unfolds exactly why she acts like such a nutcase-- and for once, the provocation really equals the angst. I don't have an official list for this at the moment, but I may come up with one eventually.
3 comments:
Agnes is my fave too, but then we part ways! Fast Women seemed like poorly done women's fiction... and I had to speed read the last third of Faking It cause all the talking just seemed endless... and Welcome to Temptation I hated! I thought it was the first Crusie I read--a girlfriend recommended it. I think I read Bet Me next, and then all was well again. (I later realized I'd read a Crusie years before, but didn't know it--the hush puppy book! It was the ONLY funny book put out by Harlequin's Love and Laughter line.)
Oh well, the thing with Crusie is she shifts subgenres a lot, so I would especially expect people to like different books.
I enjoyed that Loretta Chase about Egypt. And some other one, with the railroad. But then I tried English Witch and just couldn't read it. Too too Orientalist.
--> Oh, here's my pet peeve -- titles that are chosen being they're cute and make a series (those fricking Chase titles!) but they're almost meaningless. I can never remember which ones I've read after. As opposed to Crusie titles, which MAKE SENSE. "Oh ya, Bet Me was about that betting... Faking It about the fake paintings... Temptation about the town Temptation..." lol
Well anyway... enjoyed reading these lists! :-) I luuurv talking about books with people!!
oh, that really is interesting. I did think that Fast Women had a bit too much about the third woman, can't remember her name-- but she was boring. But what fascinated me was that she shows all these AWFUL marriages, but still manages to come up with a relatively believable ending-with-a-marriage-proposal. In a way, it was a like an encyclopedia of marriage. Plus, there were parts of it that cracked me up.
Sometime you have to tell me what you didn't like about Welcome to Temptation. I just re-read it about a week ago, and I still love it. There are things about it that I don't like, but Crusie is just so much more intelligent than most romance novel authors, I'm willing to forgive much. I didn't like the first one of hers I read either (What the Lady Wants, I think it's called), so maybe you just have to get used to her style? maybe nobody likes the first one they read.
English Witch? There's a Loretta Chase that I MISSED??? off to find it. Although if you didn't like it, I might not either.
I think English Witch was an old Regency novel, a friend told me about it--a two in one. It might be available second hand like on abebooks.com .
Hard to remember about Temptation. The only thing I remember is when reading her description of one Marianne Faithful song, it felt amateur--like something I would have written in a book when I was younger, I guess! Or maybe had. I felt like: It's a book, you can't force a soundtrack on us. Come to think of it, I felt like she was doing it again in Faking It.
But that's a pretty minor problem, lol.
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