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Mar. 5th, 2015 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Picture of the snow falling in Rufus King Park today. This is the park that I walk around during my lunch break. Although not today. The picture was taken by my co-worker, who is made of hardier stuff - he hails from Moscow, Russia - so this is nothing.
The snow was pretty. Soft. A blanket of white on the earth. Making me grateful for many things:
* An apartment with laundry in the basement (I did laundry tonight - would have been impossible a year ago.)
* Super who cleaned walkway - no ice. (also an impossibility a year ago)
* lovely train ride, included a beautiful view of the city encased in snowfall. Plus lots of time to read. Across from me sat a Hasidic Jewish Couple, with their one month old baby, who lay sleeping across the woman's lap...covered in white, a stark contrast to her smart black outfit and his black cloak and rain gear covering his black hat.
* It silences the city....everything is quiet.
* didn't have to go anywhere tonight - so perfect day and night for snow
2. The much maligned Romance Genre, gets a bad rap due to the media's focus on crappy best-sellers. To be fair, best-sellers tend to be crappy in all genres. Seriously, James Patterson is not the best of the mystery genre, and well, I'm on the fence about Stephen King.
Anyhow, after having read over 600 romance novels in the last few years, I feel I can provide a halfway decent list of good ones:
* Courtney Milan's Duchess War series", also Trade Me sort of flips the New Adult Billionaire fantasy on its ear.
* Ellen Kushner (and yes, I consider both her books romances - that's the focus): Privilege of the Sword, and Swordspoint (these are homosexual romances, the first is male, the second female.)
* Meredith Duran's Duke of Shadows, A Lady's Lesson in Scandal, and Written on Your Skin
* Madeline Hunter's Stealing Heaven - a medieval romance between an English Knight and a Welsh Princess
* Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm - an Amish nurse and a Duke who has a debilitating stroke.
* Sherry Thomas' The Hidden Blade and My Beautiful Enemy - this is a romance between an British spy, and a half Chinese/half British assassin/agent for the Chinese government. The story starts with the Hidden Blade, when they are children, and ends with My Beautiful Enemy - it is very much a female coming of age, heroine's journey story. The other two books to try by Sherry Thomas are Not Quite a Husband about a female surgeon working in India, and her estranged husband who goes to India to bring her home for her father's funeral, and Beguiling the Beauty - about an paleontologist and a scientist.
* Connie Brockaway's All Through the Night - about a female jewel thief - who funds a war veterans fund, and the English Captain who is hunting her.
* Jennifer Ashley's The Madness of Lord Ian McKenzie - a romance between a lady's companion/nurse and a man suffering from ausperger's syndrome.
* Judith Ivory's The Proposition - a gender flip on the My Fair Lady trope.
* Liane Moriarity's What Alice Forgot - a contemporary novel about a woman who forgets her life.
* Lisa Kleypas's Rainshadow Road - about a recently divorced stained glass designer and man who has adopted his dead sibling's son...and is rebuilding his family home. It's a wounded male/wounded female trope but without the spanking, bondage, rape, and sexual violence. Also tells you a lot about how to make stained glass.
* John Green's Young Adult novel The Fault in Our Stars
I'm admittedly not much of a fan of contemporary. I won't list the romance novels to avoid. Or my guilty pleasure novels - - we all have our guilty pleasures, after all.
The books, tv shows, movies that we adore but know we'd be judged harshly for, because ahem they are often offensive to the politically correct police and culture critics. (Examples of guilty pleasures can include everything from daytime soaps to torture porn horror flicks, and ahem reality tv shows.) That's the definition of a guilty pleasure. I've learned to not judge people's cultural tastes...because I found myself on the opposite side of the argument. Live long enough, and you will find yourself eventually on the opposite side of every argument you've ever had. It's eye-opening in a way, and a great gift - something else I'm grateful for.
3. Been drinking too much hot coco at work. It's not the sugar, it's the coco. I've discovered this fabulous unsweetened organic fair trade coco - just add boiling water and a little half-and-half milk - and it's amazing. Only problem is I can't just have one cup a day, I have three. And it's wiring me. I'm sensitive to caffeine and addicted to it.
As a result, I find myself falling into old patterns that I'm trying to break. Like writing too many lj posts. Being edgy and aggravated. Note to self, get off the coco.
Chocolate is evil.
The snow was pretty. Soft. A blanket of white on the earth. Making me grateful for many things:
* An apartment with laundry in the basement (I did laundry tonight - would have been impossible a year ago.)
* Super who cleaned walkway - no ice. (also an impossibility a year ago)
* lovely train ride, included a beautiful view of the city encased in snowfall. Plus lots of time to read. Across from me sat a Hasidic Jewish Couple, with their one month old baby, who lay sleeping across the woman's lap...covered in white, a stark contrast to her smart black outfit and his black cloak and rain gear covering his black hat.
* It silences the city....everything is quiet.
* didn't have to go anywhere tonight - so perfect day and night for snow
2. The much maligned Romance Genre, gets a bad rap due to the media's focus on crappy best-sellers. To be fair, best-sellers tend to be crappy in all genres. Seriously, James Patterson is not the best of the mystery genre, and well, I'm on the fence about Stephen King.
Anyhow, after having read over 600 romance novels in the last few years, I feel I can provide a halfway decent list of good ones:
* Courtney Milan's Duchess War series", also Trade Me sort of flips the New Adult Billionaire fantasy on its ear.
* Ellen Kushner (and yes, I consider both her books romances - that's the focus): Privilege of the Sword, and Swordspoint (these are homosexual romances, the first is male, the second female.)
* Meredith Duran's Duke of Shadows, A Lady's Lesson in Scandal, and Written on Your Skin
* Madeline Hunter's Stealing Heaven - a medieval romance between an English Knight and a Welsh Princess
* Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm - an Amish nurse and a Duke who has a debilitating stroke.
* Sherry Thomas' The Hidden Blade and My Beautiful Enemy - this is a romance between an British spy, and a half Chinese/half British assassin/agent for the Chinese government. The story starts with the Hidden Blade, when they are children, and ends with My Beautiful Enemy - it is very much a female coming of age, heroine's journey story. The other two books to try by Sherry Thomas are Not Quite a Husband about a female surgeon working in India, and her estranged husband who goes to India to bring her home for her father's funeral, and Beguiling the Beauty - about an paleontologist and a scientist.
* Connie Brockaway's All Through the Night - about a female jewel thief - who funds a war veterans fund, and the English Captain who is hunting her.
* Jennifer Ashley's The Madness of Lord Ian McKenzie - a romance between a lady's companion/nurse and a man suffering from ausperger's syndrome.
* Judith Ivory's The Proposition - a gender flip on the My Fair Lady trope.
* Liane Moriarity's What Alice Forgot - a contemporary novel about a woman who forgets her life.
* Lisa Kleypas's Rainshadow Road - about a recently divorced stained glass designer and man who has adopted his dead sibling's son...and is rebuilding his family home. It's a wounded male/wounded female trope but without the spanking, bondage, rape, and sexual violence. Also tells you a lot about how to make stained glass.
* John Green's Young Adult novel The Fault in Our Stars
I'm admittedly not much of a fan of contemporary. I won't list the romance novels to avoid. Or my guilty pleasure novels - - we all have our guilty pleasures, after all.
The books, tv shows, movies that we adore but know we'd be judged harshly for, because ahem they are often offensive to the politically correct police and culture critics. (Examples of guilty pleasures can include everything from daytime soaps to torture porn horror flicks, and ahem reality tv shows.) That's the definition of a guilty pleasure. I've learned to not judge people's cultural tastes...because I found myself on the opposite side of the argument. Live long enough, and you will find yourself eventually on the opposite side of every argument you've ever had. It's eye-opening in a way, and a great gift - something else I'm grateful for.
3. Been drinking too much hot coco at work. It's not the sugar, it's the coco. I've discovered this fabulous unsweetened organic fair trade coco - just add boiling water and a little half-and-half milk - and it's amazing. Only problem is I can't just have one cup a day, I have three. And it's wiring me. I'm sensitive to caffeine and addicted to it.
As a result, I find myself falling into old patterns that I'm trying to break. Like writing too many lj posts. Being edgy and aggravated. Note to self, get off the coco.
Chocolate is evil.
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no subject
Date: 2015-03-06 08:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-06 12:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-06 11:50 pm (UTC)Its amazing. And about $7.99 for a bag, but it lasts a long time. You only need a teaspoon in a cup.
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Date: 2015-03-06 11:51 pm (UTC)