That Time of Year Again

I hope everyone has a great New Year's Eve watching the ball drop, drinking champagne, or whatever your traditions are. I always go to my best friends house where we watch the best of the Buffy/Spike episodes and drink Martinellis.

Since people have been sharing their resolutions lot lately I thought I'd throw my hat in, so here they are:

1) Start posting regularly. I've always been a sporadic poster, whether it comes to Blogger, Livejournal, or even Facebook. I'd really like to work on sticking to things. Unfortunately this will probably be the first to go since I have a full semester coming up.

2) Participate in the DIK Reading Challenge. I joined up because hopefully this will help me with resolution number one. It's my first reading challenge, and I have always wanted to try one out.

3)Lose weight. I feel like this is on 90% of people's lists and has almost become the obligatory resolution. However, I've lost 20 pounds in the past year, am in Weight Watchers, and see no reason why I can't keep it up. :)

4) Try out new genres. I read (and love) historical and contemporary romance, but want to branch out and try more paranormal and urban fantasy. So far I've only tried JR Ward's BDB, but since I like those books I'm sure there is a whole lot more out there that I'm missing.

5) Learn basic HTML. As you can see, my blog screams "under construction". I'm good with technology in general, but when it comes to HTML I'm left there scratching my head. As a student, I don't have the cash to hire someone to design a blog for me, but I see no reason I can't learn some elements and tidy it up a bit.

I'm sure more will come to me before midnight, but these are my five major resolutions I hope to keep. Good luck with yours and have a great time tonight!

The Loss of a Treasure

Anyone who lives in Delaware or the DC metro area has (hopefully) heard of Lambda Rising. To sum up: for 35 years Lambda Rising has been Washington's premier LGBT bookstore, with one of the largest collections of fiction, erotica, memoirs, nonfiction/history, and tons of other odds and ends. They have some of the most wonderful and knowledgeable staff and has created a real sense of community.

That being said, I was upset to learn that both Lambda Rising stores are closing. Lambda Rising has always held a special place in my heart. It was where I bought Sweet Lips by Mel Smith and first discovered homo erotica five years ago. Since then I've developed a soft spot for the genre, though the bulk of my reading is still mainstream romance. I felt slightly better when I found out that it is closing because the owner is retiring, not because they are going out of business. Still, it won't be there anymore.

The second thought that crossed my mind: OMG yay a sale!

It was so awesome to walk in there and find all books 40% off! Despite having a $20 cash limit, I was able to walk away with some goodies.



It took me quite a bit of time to settle on one piece of erotic I wanted to buy. I ended up sitting in the middle of one of the aisles with my friend, flipping through a stack of books trying to pick one. I narrowed it down to three and with my friend's advice picked this one. The plot sounded fairly interesting, I liked that it's a historical, but mostly did you see that cover! Best. Erection. Ever.

Speaking of erections, this book was irresistible as well. I've been flipping through it and never realized until now just how much thought goes into a blow job. There is also this awesome chapter for guys about etiquette and considerations for your partner. Fellatio has never been so equal! The other reason I just had to get this is because my friend bought The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. Maybe we'll switch when we're done reading our own.

I had the funniest cashier when checking out. The ridiculous cover of The Price of Temptation lead to some witty banter about the absurdity of many Harlequin covers and Nathan Kamp's abs. His exact comment was "I don't like a guy to be too ripped. I don't want to get rug burn just from going down on him". FTW!

Merry X-mas Everyone!

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season! For me it has been a quieter Christmas than usual. Family, friends and I agreed to cut back this year, so gifts were really only sent to the little kids. Almost all the gifts I gave were baked goods. Everyone loved the kits I put together, though my waistband is really starting to feel it.

While I loved everything I got this year (despite the recession I had a fairly good haul) I was thankful to see that someone did think to send be a Borders gift card! There was a 25% off sale today at Borders.com, and that $25 card was gone by noon.

Here's what will be arriving in the mail soon:


A classic. It's one of those books I didn't want to read until I owned a copy of it. Now that I had some spare cash I decided it was time to go and get myself a copy.










I own both Bound By Your Touch and Written on Your Skin, but couldn't find The Duke of Shadows the last two times I went to the book store. The buzz around Meridith Duran's books doesn't seem to end, but I can be really obsessive sometimes and didn't want to read the other two until I'd read the first, even if they're not a series.








I have a signed copy of Knight of Pleasure that I got at the RWA convention this past summer. I wasn't blown away, but I did enjoy it a lot. Stephan is the hero of this one, and his character was my favorite part of Knight of Pleasure so I still want to give this one a try.










I have a soft-spot for M/M romance. I didn't use to read it that much but it's grown on me. I think I find that many of them have more of an emotional thrill than hetero romances. False Colors got rave reviews on Dear Author and sounded irresistible from their reviews, so I figured it was time to by myself a copy.






Best holiday wishes to everyone!

Where do books come from?

I am (almost) finish with the semester. It is wonderful to have exam week out of the way. To say the least I've had no time to read romance over the past month, but that hasn't deterred me from expanding my TBR pile. Between the public library and various thrift stores my collection has continued to grow. I think a part of me got through exams because of the fact that I had the huge pile of books waiting by my bedside. I could see them, and I was dying to read them. My desire to read romances always increases with stress. But I knew I couldn't touch them until I had gotten through the semester.

Now that everything is coming to an end I can finally resume where I left off. I'm planning to do a review of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. I finished the whole series just before things heated up. I'm probably going to do a combined review of all the books rather than each one individually. I can't say how excited I am for Lover Mine to come out next spring. John Matthew had long been one of my favorite characters. I'm taking ASL next semester, something I've been interested in for years. JR Ward has written both a blind and a mute hero, and for that I think she deserves major points for combining disabilities to romance in a respectful and kick-ass way.

Currently a lot of my TBR pile is coming from the public library. Until recently I never used the public library for reading romance novels. I try to support the economy and as often as I can I buy new. But with the recession I've been finding my means for obtaining romance novels has changed to almost exclusively to thrift and borrowing. This Christmas I'm trying to buy family new books as more of an effort to support the publishing industry, and I'm hoping to get some gift cards so I can get myself new books as well. Has anyone else found there method of getting romance novels has changed? Is anyone else making it a priority this holiday season to try to by new books for themselves or loved ones?