Gentlemen, please

Julia Quinn is awesome.

I’m not sure how she does it but I have fallen more and more in love with each successive hero she has written in her Bridgerton series. I loved Simon in the Duke And I. The came Anthony in The Viscount Who Loved me and although I wanted to hit him over the head and tell him to stop being so silly I still swooned. Then came Benedict in An Offer From A Gentleman. WOWZA! That’s all I’m saying. But I thought there’s no way she can better Colin in Romancing Mr Bridgerton. He was funny and sweet and witty but had a great temper as well (which only showcased his passion.) And he loved his heroine to distraction.

So when I started To Sir Phillip With Love, my expectations weren’t that high. I thought no-one could beat Colin. But Phillip has come along and fairly booted him right out the picture. He quiet and brooding but with a great smile. Gets tongue-tied and flustered and just wants to love his kids the best way he can. He has another fantastic temper. (I like controlled rage in a hero!) He works with his hands and gets all dirty and I’m only halfway through the book. There is no way Julia Quinn can better this man. No way!

I’m so glad I put the rest of her back-cat on my Ban On Spending reading List.

Round -Up

So I have been silent for most of the weekend and into the week.

I don’t have Olympic Fever.

I think I may be the only person on the planet NOT watching the Olympics. When I tell someone this they look at me as if I’m some kind of traitor to crown and country. I get the distinct feeling they would spit on me if they could. What’s the big? I mean, I watched the men’s swimming and diving. Oh, and the men’s gymnastics (bendy!) after that, it pretty blah for me…. heh-ho!

So I finally got Jen to read Long Hard Ride! I count it as a grand victory, even if I did have to bribe her with a reading of Pleasure Unbound in kind. I also count this as a victory for me as Larissa Ione’s Pleasure Unbound was A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

After I got past the hero’s name (Eidolon) and a couple of shaky initial chapters it rocked along. Great characters, some really clever and intuitive world-building. I loved all the disparate threads that wove around around each other like a big messy ball of twine until at the end it all came together like a giant cat’s cradle. (Oh yes, I have been visited by the metaphor fairy tonight.) I’m hooked and will definitely been buying the next installment as soon as! Another fan-girl is created. SQUEE for Wraith. (He’s my fav…)

In other realms, my unrelenting pimping of my favourite cowboys has hooked some more fans. Over at Rip My Bodice they are eating up the McKay clan! Who wouldn’t? Right?

Also I found this really great new website called Reading Romance Books (through Sarai, who else? *g*). It has a really nice, clean, easy to navigate website and a great new forum. I prefer getting in at the ground floor in forums because it’s easier to get to know people than in a well-established forum with lots of people who are tight. Anyho, everyone is really nice and I have joined the Book Club there. Mainly because I have never participated in a Book Club before and I’m curious. September’s book is Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Which for some weird reason has been renamed Cross-stitch in the UK.

There are a couple of internet campaigns I am going to join up with as well. One is Blogger Appriecation Week. The other is The Ban On Spending Challenge. You’ll see stuff go up in the side bar as I get things ready.

I have really fallen deep into the dreaded historical genre and have been soundly seduced by Julia Quinn and her Bridgerton series. I love, love , love it.

But most surprising this week has been my new found fan-girl for all things CHERUB. I’m going to be doing a series review soon as I must gush appropriately about these books. And shock! Horror! They aren’t romance. Check back later in the week, once I have sweated a coherent, yet rambling pimpage of this great series.

Heh.

A married man was having an affair with his secretary.

One day they went to her place and made love all afternoon.

Exhausted, they fell asleep and woke up at 8 PM.

The man hurriedly dressed and told his lover to take his shoes outside and rub them in the grass and dirt.

He put on his shoes and drove home.

‘Where have you been?’ his wife demanded.

‘I can’t lie to you,’ he replied, ‘I’m having an affair with my secretary. We had sex all afternoon.’

She looked down at his shoes and said:

‘You lying bastard! You’ve been playing golf!’

Help!

I’m looking at the top of my TBR pile. I have too many choices. Not a bad thing, I hear you say, but it is. I can’t decide what to read next! Arghhhhh!

I need some help.

Should I start….

1. Loyalty In Death by J.D. Robb - This is the next Eve and Roarke adventure for me. I am slowly wading through the back-catalogue of a bazillion books in this series. It’s taking ages though. Thankfully these books can be read as stand-alones and don’t really rely on any kind of reading continuity. But I am nothing if not ocd about reading a series in order.

2. The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn - I blame Sarai for starting me on historicals. Like I haven’t got enough to read without adding a whole new sub-genre to the melting pot. I read The Duke And I and friggin’ loved it. I was crying and everything. It wasn’t pretty. This is the second of the Bridgerton Series by Julia Quinn. It’s Anthony’s story.

3. The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason - This combines two of my fav genres in Romance. First it’s a paranormal, second it’s a historical (my new favourite kid on the block.) It’s basically Buffy in ‘Olden Times’. Genius. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a historical paranormal before this? And there’s a triangle/quadrangle in there too. Ahh, food for the soul a good love triangle is.

4. Catch Of The Day - By Kristan Higgins. Kristan won the Rita this year with ‘Just One Of The Guys.’ This is an earlier book which had me at the mention of ‘love’ and’ priest’ in the same blurb. I’m in. I love divesting a man of his dog collar!

5. Sins Of The Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon. I read the first five or six of the Dark-hunter series in quick succession but by this book I kinda lost the will to live. For me a series seems to have a natural run of around six or seven books, after that I struggle big-time. But with Acheron coming out it whet my appetite again so I picked it up after a six or seven month hiatus and got completely lost straight away. I think to enjoy this I may have to go back and read the last few preceeding this, but the thought of re-reading something right now when I have to much to read just does not appeal. Is it worth it?

6. Dark Roots And Cowboy Boots by Luann McLane. It’s a gun, cotton candy read. Nothing to serious or soul searching. I loved all this authors other books but I feel kinda all puffed out when it comes to contemporary romances at the moment. The only thing saving it from going further down the reading list is the cowboy factor. Yep, I love me a cowboy.

7. The Mammoth Boook Of Vampire Romance. This is an anthology packed to the brim with well known authors. There are vingettes from Lillith Saintcrow, Shiloh Walker, Colleen Gleason, Amanda Ashley, Kimberley Raye, Jenna Black, Karen Chance and Susan Sizemore. The reason I bought it is for the short story by Keri Arthur. It’s a Riley Jensen story from the POV of Quinn. Rawr. I had to have it. I have already read the Keri Arthur story, how about the rest?

8. Jacob by Jacqueline Frank - I have been promising my friend I would read this forever! And JF seemed really cool on DIK.

9. The Hell You Say by Josh Lanyon. I want to read this so bad but at the same time I can’t because I know this is where it all falls apart for Adrien and Jake. I don’t want a sad ending. I want a happy ending.

10. Anything Nora Roberts. I have been on a Nora jag recently. Just finished the Chesapeake Bay quartet and loved it.

Help. Tell me what to read or give me more recommendations!! I’m serious. Note the use of double exclamations!! *g*

All I Want For Christmas…

So Sarai put up a list of books she would like for Christmas and I was going to do the same but then I realized that there isn’t much out there I don’t have that I already wanted…does that make sense? I know I have an impulse control problem but I really didn’t think it was this bad. Most of the books, I want but haven’t got yet are not published yet. It’s why I don’t have ‘em.

Let’s try this:

1. Leaping Hearts - Jessica Bird

2. Hostage To Pleasure - Nalini SIngh (Sep)

3. Demon Bound - Meljean Brook (Nov)

4. First Blood Anthology - Sizemore, Brook, McCarthy

5. BDB Compendium - J.R. Ward (Oct)

6. Wanderlust - Ann Aguirre (Sep)

7. Bitten To Death - Jennifer Rardin

8. Wild Road - Marjorie M Lui

9. Iron Hunt - Marjorie M Lui

10. Death Of A Pirate King - Josh Lanyon (Sep)

11. Every Last Drop - Charlie Huston (Sep)

12. An original ‘Whitney, My Love’ - Judith McNaught, not a revised version.

There are other titles that I’m waiting on that have no name or release date yet. As far as I can tell, I’m pretty much ahead of the game. There are a few titles that I am missing from e-book format but that I have read so it’s not vitally important I have those.

Stuff like

1. The Darkest Night/Kiss/Pleasure - Gena Showalter

2. Dangerous Games - Keri Arthur

3. Mine To Posess - Nalini Singh

4. It Had To Be You - SEP

5. In Death series

6. Dark-Hunter Series

7. Magic Burns/Bites - Illona Andrews

So what is everyone else waiting on being published or dying to buy?

In other unrelated news, we finally set-up our ‘Paranormal Romance’ section at work. It kicks all kinds of ass. I love it. *grin*

RWA or bust

So the mighty RWA conference is over for another year and my insane jealously over not being there and getting loads of free signed books has faded. But only slightly.

But it led me to wondering. As much as I would love to attend a RWA conference it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, so is there a UK equivalent?

Yes?

Non?

Probably not. Just my luck.

Maybe if I start saving now I could afford to go to the 2030 one.

Breaking records.

So today was Breaking Dawn release day in the UK.

I’ll admit I was being a little ‘bahhh humbug’ about the whole thing as I haven’t finished the series and didn’t particularly like it. We were told we had to have a ‘Breaking Dawn’ party with games and shit and I was like ‘ Man, it’s teenage girls, they are so not going to be into that.’

I was proven wrong. We had a line of people at the door this morning looking like something out of ‘Sean Of The Dead’ all jostling and pushing to get in and get their copy.

We completely sold out today. All 108 copies. Every. Last. One. I’m really surprised. I hadn’t thought the fever had travelled this well to the UK. It was better than the Last Harry Potter for us. Go figure.

And we had loads of people turn up to the party.

Pure Dead Brilliant.

Yawn

I’m bored.

What’s in a name?

I have had some peeps ask me how I got the name to the blog here.

It’s simple really, nothing big. It’s the title of my favourite song by a musican called Thomas Dybdahl.

He’s not pretty but damn, can the man croon. I blogged about him over at Last FM. It was pretty hot. I think I alluded to sex and chocolate, so you know just how far gone I am on this man’s voice. You know when they give that description of the hero’s voice and it lowers an octave and is all deep and sexy and shit? This is the voice that pops into my head.

All you a-ha fans and Norway junkies out there know who he is. For everyone else you can find out all about him here. There is a link to the song entitled ‘Damn Heart’ here. See what all the fuss is about.

How did everyone else come by the name of their blog?

Wool vs Nekkid

I am laughing my ass off right now.

I uploaded a whole heap of man candy pictures to flickr for use over the coming weeks. Twenty minutes ago.

Already they are all in double digit viewings and most of them have comments.

Should I feel bad for the pictures I actually took? All my fantastic a-ha concert photos and pictures of Berlin and Aalesund and Trondhiem. Book covers and most exciting of all, pictures of finished knitting projects. Surely the thought of seeing a finished tam in Noro Iro wool is much hotter than a nekkid man draped over a table with his unmentionables just out of sight?

No?

Must just be me then…. *g*