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Posts tagged: Lisa Kleypas
Chris shares her favorite books of 2012.
It’s the end of the year; I work in retail; I have the flu. All of which means that for the past couple weeks I’ve been re-reading rather than reading. Mostly Eva Ibbotson, whose warmth reminds me not only that I love reading, but why. Which makes this a good time for a retrospective list. Below are my top 10 reads for 2012. They’re not ranked in any order, just listed alphabetically by author. If anyone has any to add, please feel free to do so. I can always use more suggestions for what to try next.
Chris writes on the appeal of success:
[I]t isn’t not just the ‘good vs evil’ paradigm that keeps people reading Fantasy, it’s the heroic. Not simply in terms of divine power or nobility of action, but in acheiving something against difficult odds.
In other words, success.
That set off a lightbulb. As humans, we spend much more of our time seeking progress than attaining it. Which is not a bad thing: it means we’re not static. We strive. And success is what we strive for. So right now I’m feeling my way around the idea that success is why the Romance genre remains so overwhelmingly powerful. Why the Fantasy genre is still expanding. Heck, it’s why sports are so popular. Think about it. Professional sports have a fixed time period, an immediate and potentially difficult objective, and a winner. Success!
Image: Nike, from a bronze vessel found in Tarano, Italy and photographed by carolemadge1
Editor Chris suggests some romance titles for this spooky season:
But it was a little harder than I thought to put together a reading list. I wanted to concentrate on books that are Romances first (ie: not Urban Fantasies) that are nonetheless well-flavoured with woo-woo.
Woo-woo, I found; spooky was tough. Going through books I was reminded that Romances contain a lot of scary things. Like being stuck in a job that traps and stifles you. Or sinking into debt. Learning how to grow past the scars of abuse. Losing your partner, or parents, or children. Even facing the giant chasm of loneliness to reach out emotionally for the first time. These are all damn frightening things; they just happen to ordinary people every day. But Halloween isn’t about the everyday: it’s about the extraordinary possibilities when the boundaries between the worldly and the uncanny blur.
(image: “The Three Witches” by Daniel Gardner)
Romance Editor Chris takes a look at students in Romance:
As I said this time last year, I like back to school season. I love the energy of it. I miss the sense of anticipation, of knowing I had lots of new things to look forward to. At least, usually I do. Perhaps I’m just feeling particularly curmudgeonly this season, or maybe summer was just too busy. But for some reason, looking ahead past Labour Day this year all I can see is a long dull grind. Bah.
So in an effort to caffeinate my mental state, I’m going to write about students in Romance. In other words: the heroine and hero meet because one needs to learn something from the other (yes, last year I wrote about teachers. But education is like a highway: it goes in both directions). Hopefully exposure to so many stories about the desire to learn will rub off on me. Inspiration is catching, you know.
image via Hey, Girl, I Like The Library, Too.
Chris investigates romance blended with danger:
These are the stories that drop the hero and heroine into physical jeopardy in addition to exposing them to all the emotional risks of falling in love. When done well, they share the same sense of breathless excitement of a good movie thriller. When poorly written, they’re overwrought, melodramatic, and annoying.
image via Joanna Bourne’s blog.
