Oddness

And now I can tell LJ is becoming mainstream because Princeton people I know are starting to join. Once again, a collision of my fannish and real life. Very, very odd.

I'm starting to feel rather self-conscious...

This post has been brought to you by the lack of lights in the new apartment, which means I cannot sit in bed and read Tower at Stony Wood. I fear my latest resolution to savor McKillip novels like a box of chocolates has met the fate many boxes of chocolates do -- I am trying to cram in as much as possible as soon as possible. But hey, McKillip is not aversely affecting my waistline!

Samuel, Barbara - The Black Angel

Pretty good! I haven't been reading romances for a few weeks and now I am craving more books. Except none of the local libraries have Barbara Samuel/Ruth Wind. Argh!

It was one of the kinds of romances in which I found myself actually liking the characters as actual people I would enjoy knowing, as opposed to the more standard liking the character but never actually wanting to meet them in real life (Wesley from Angel, say). One of the problems with that was that I spent about half the book wondering if the author was going to end up writing an entire series on the heroine's family (two sexy older brothers, one interesting sister, two other sisters that weren't developed as much).

I particularly liked the way Samuel didn't ignore the double standard re: sexual promiscuity for the heroine and the hero in romances or in society at the time... The heroine, Adriana, was the center of a scandal a few years back for having a lover, who was later killed by her brother in a duel (insult to her honor, etc.). It actually reminded me a bit of Almost a Gentleman in that regard, and in the fact that the hero finally gets called on being insulted/jealous/whatnot when he learns of the "sordidness" of the heroine's past when he is a rake beyond all reckoning. Or not even a rake. And I liked how the hero was Irish in a not necessarily overly romanticized way -- it probably was romanticized (I know nothing about that area), but not as drastically as many Irish (and Scots) heroes are.

And I also liked how it began as one of those seduce the heroine who fears her sexuality plot and quickly discarded that halfway through when it became quite obvious that Adriana and Tynan actually liked each other, as opposed to being in serious lust with each other.

I did have a quibble with the ending though. ( spoilers )

Hrm, just checked on Amazon, and it seems as though there is a book on Adriana's sister, which is possibly of the good. I liked her sister very much (intellectual type who represses her feelings, haha, I so have a type).