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The latest issue of The Broadsheet is up! And it includes an interview with Ellen Datlow!

In other news, I am going to see Tamora Pierce tonight at the Burlingame Books Inc.! Yay! Which means I will finally succumb to the temptation to get The Will of the Empress in hardcover and probably get not enough sleep tonight.

After that, though, there needs to be a budget freeze so that I can start saving up for my NY trip for Thanksgiving, since I anticipate spending a lot on Broadway shows (hopefully Avenue Q), food (duh), clothes (Sales! Sales galore! shopping with my sister!), and books, books, and more books (The Strand! Oh how I have longed to visit you!).

I also feel much, much better now that I spent all of yesterday vegging on the couch, knitting and watching VMars with fannishly instead of doing something "useful" like folding laundry. I figure destressing much more important than unwrinkly clothes anyway. I may even start being silly and scheduling in a bum day every week, in which I sit around, bum, watch TV and play on LJ.

More blather to come, as am trying to catch up on book blogging, weekend reports, and LJ in general. Ah, LJ, how nice it is to have time for you again!

Chase, Loretta - Miss Wonderful

I honestly have no idea how Loretta Chase keeps doing this, but every time I keep thinking I can't enjoy her books as much as I do... I do.

Alistair Carsington has a pretty bad reputation when it comes to women, but he's not a rake. Rather, he falls in love very quickly, very deeply, and very unwisely. As such, his father, Lord Hargate, has had to expend a great deal of money to buy Alistair out of the messes that result. So, he's got an ultimatum -- Alistair has got to either find himself a suitable occupation or marry an heiress in six months or else his father will cut Alistair's brothers' funds.

Alistair's also a war hero of sorts (of course), and ends up traipsing to the country to help his friend build a canal. Enter Mirabel Oldbridge, who is, of course, very against said canal.

Unless you're reading Laura Kinsale, romance plots are generally not too exciting.

Anyhow, Chase always manages to juggle awful romance conventions in one hand while gently poking fun at them and overturning them in another. Alistair is a war hero with war hero angst, but he compensates by being extremely obsessed by his clothes (as opposed to just obsessed with his clothes. I suspect Alistair will always be well-dressed). His father obviously thinks he's a bit of a pain, which leads not to alpha bastard behavior to spurn his father, but rather, an attempt to get himself an honest occupation through his own skills instead of through his war hero status. And he really doesn't want to marry an heiress because he doesn't want to be a financial drag on his wife, so nix the arranged marriage plotline.

The real key is that Alistair is just awfully nice and sweet and puppy-like, and I fell for him in about two seconds flat while he was going over his list of Stupid Exploits with Women (most of them involve him falling in love and subsequently trying desperately to please someone, getting into a riot, getting in jail, buying said woman too much jewelry, trying to marry below his class, etc.). I love that he isn't a rake. I love that he isn't an alpha bastard.

And! Mirabel is 31! Not only is Mirabel 31, Alistair is 29! And she has been engaged, and Chase feels no need to bash the previous love of Mirabel's life! (Alistair does, but I feel that is more understandable)

I really liked what Chase was doing with standard romance gender roles. While Alistair does have the history with women, the typical emotional roles of the hero and heroine seem to be reversed in this book. Alistair is pretty much a goner when he first catches sight of Mirabel and mostly just gives in to his emotions. Mirabel is a little more hesitant with the emotional connection, though she's the main instigator for sex.

I also like that Mirabel is the one who befuddles Alistair with sex and lust and the like, as opposed to the usual heroine-loses-all-brains-around-sexy-hero thing.

And! Did I mention the age difference yet?

I feel I am not doing the book justice, because even as it is playing with tropes left and right (delightful in and of itself), it's enormously fun to read as well. Chase handles the canal animosity very well (aka Alistair and Mirabel remain adults and actually try to come up with good solutions instead of being stubborn brats), and the book is incredibly light-hearted and funny and sexy and romantic.

And in case you are not convinced, there is this lovely, silly moment in the book just after Mirabel and Alistair first meet, in which Alistair flees Mirabel's house in the pouring rain because he doesn't have a change of clothes and he can't stay for dinner in the same set of clothes, the horror! Mirabel runs out to stop him, hears his clothes explanation, gives him a look, and then, instead of trying to dissuade him, calmly turns back and lets him go with a shrug.

Chase, Loretta - general rec

Ok, I am an idiot. I was re-reading all my entries on Loretta Chase (somewhere here), and apparently I keep being surprised by the fact that the heroines are practical and down-to-earth and the heroes are much more prone to falling in love.

But still! Love!

So consider this a general pimp for Loretta Chase. She writes historicals right now, but her older books are Regencies (some have been reprinted together). The only one I've been told to avoid is The Sandalwood Princess, for the horrible Orientalism.

Currently I've been enjoying her historicals much more than her Regencies, although I really want to reread The Devil's Delilah right now.

I think Lord of Scoundrels is her best book so far, in terms of psychological depth and playing around with tropes, but I've enjoyed nearly everything of hers I've read. She's very funny, and best of all, she writes about people who genuinely seem to like and respect each other, which seems to be all too rare in the romance world.

Hornbacher, Marya - Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Marya Hornbacher has had an eating disorder for most of her life. I think she wrote this memoir when she was 21 or something like that, and her earliest memories of bulimia reach back to her pre-teens, which is frightening.

She writes about her experiences with both anorexia and bulimia with lovely prose and switches often between first-person and second-person; there's an immediacy about this book that is both gripping and horrifying.

I am guessing that pretty much everyone who has read this LJ knows that my roommate fannishly has bulimia and that I adore food, though I think anyone would be shocked by this book. I went through it quickly, often with my hand over my mouth because it was so difficult reading about someone hurting herself so very badly.

There's one point in the book where Hornbacher is accepted into a prestigious art school, and there, she starts running 25 miles a day and weighs around .. I can't remember, but some horrifically small number, and I was sitting there, thinking, "Oh my God, how could someone do this to herself?" Except, it's not even halfway through the book, and things get much worse.

Hornbacher writes without pity and with brutal honesty about herself, her family dynamics and her subsequent attitudes toward food and her body, and culture as well. She frequently slipped into somewhat manic states, especially later on, when she was only eating about 100 calories a day.

It's a terrifying book about one woman's battle with her body and very, very highly recommended.