A Small Online Rant

If I'd written this to a newspaper and it had printed it, my AAR blog piece, A Slow Books Addendum, would be called an opinion piece.  When I worked as an editor at the Houston Chronicle and edited the op-ed page, I thought of the people who wrote in as the crazies.  They wrote impassioned pieces about sewers and transportation and what I considered everyday minutia.  Now, as Pogo would say, I are one of them.

But I truly am incensed that a person or group of people can decide what's good and right for the rest of us to read.  It was bad enough when the Literary Canon was compiled by old white guys, but even worse when feminists got involved and decided to be as didactic as their male counterparts.

Where's the new day, new millennium when children are allowed to read what speaks to them?  When we aren't told what's "good" for us and what's "bad" but are allowed to figure that out for ourselves?  So what if I don't pick something you think I should love?  We're both reading.  And thinking.  And that's really the point, isn't it?

3 Reviews Submitted to Booklist

My reviews of A Place Called Home (poignant), Riptide (action-packed), and The Great Betrayal (quirky), all releasing in September and October, were emailed to my Booklist editor last night.

Now I'm reviewing Mr. Darcy's Bite for Booklist and To Have the Doctor's Baby for AAR.  The premise for Mr. Darcy is that the Pride and Prejudice hero was turned into a werewolf at age fourteen and this little hiccup in the world of literature explains some of Mr. D's odd behavior in the Austen novel.  Very interesting, and surprisingly, not badly written.  The doctor in the second book has commitment issues, and his former wife asks for a parting gift -- a baby.  This one hearkens back to the old days of Harlequin books.  And I'd thought we'd moved on from there!