| Romantic books: The course of honor | | Posted Monday, February 06, 2006 10:51:47 AM by Rose Martins | Romantic novels have built the dreams of many a teenager and young woman. Stories of pure romance have left the women of our world with a somewhat dreamlike and idealistic idea of what a relationship should be.  These rose coloured romantic images have blinded some, frustrated others but given us the will and courage to keep on dreaming.
With the ideas and standards created by these romantic novels, it's a wonder how anybody ever really finds "true love". The course of honor is a romantic suspense novel written by Lindsey Davis.
The book is set in the Roman empire, and tells the story of a slave by the name of Caenis, and the soldier and aspiring senator, Vespasian. According to the status quo of the times, people from different social standings are forbidden to marry.
There is no way that a senator will be allowed to marry a slave. The characters of this romantic suspense novel are based on real people and real life events, and the book takes us through the events that occur in their lives.
The book also educates us about the history of the time, and has been very well researched, sharing accurate facts with us, describing the details in full and brings the characters alive.
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| | | Guide book shows you the way to romance | | Posted Thursday, November 23, 2006 12:47:40 PM by Blog57 Team | | Looking for romance but can't afford to fly to a tropical island or tour Paris? Romance can be found right here in Wisconsin, with the help of "Great Wisconsin Romantic Weekends," (Trails Books, 2004). Author Christine Des Garennes outlines 21 three-day itineraries spanning the seasons. She highlights adults-only resorts, hard-to-find hideaways, carriage rides and hot air balloons and restaurants without kid's menus. Des Garennes also wrote "Great Little Museums of the Midwest" and currently works as a reporter for a newspaper in Illinois. "Great Wisconsin Romantic Weekends" is currently available at the Phillips Public Library and can be purchased for $18.95 at a variety of bookstores and at Internet booksellers. The Northwoods gets its due as a romantic getaway in chapter 17 - "Falling in Love in Hayward...Hook, Line and Sinker." While Hayward is the featured stop, Des Garennes points out romantic stops throughout the area, including Price County's Timm's Hill.... | |
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| | | Week of 11/12/06 | | Posted Monday, November 13, 2006 6:47:45 PM by Blog57 Team | | 1. "Dear John" by Nicholas Sparks: Restless infantryman John Tyree and idealistic coed Savannah Curtis strike up an improbable romance. But can it survive the cruel winds of change? 2. "For One More Day" by Mitch Albom: A touching novel by the author of "Tuesdays with Morrie" that asks the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a loved one?3. "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King: The widow of an award-winning novelist confronts the realization that their relationship continues long beyond his demise.4. "The Collectors" by David Baldacci: As a sexy con artist plans a high-stakes casino heist, the Camel Club reconvenes to hunt down a renegade CIA assassin.5. "Act of Treason" by Vince Flynn: CIA operative Mitch Rapp jumps into action after a bomber attacks a presidential candidate's motorcade.... | |
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| | | Keillor goes into business | | Posted Saturday, November 04, 2006 6:50:52 AM by Blog57 Team | | You won't find "The Da Vinci Code," Harlequin romance novels or the "Dummies" series of how-to books in Garrison Keillor's new bookstore in St. Paul, Minn., and if you find the latest John Grisham novel, it could be on the "Quality Trash" table. The man behind "A Prairie Home Companion" wasn't around when Common Good Books opened this week in a basement nook in St. Paul's Cathedral Hill neighborhood, but his literary tastes were on display. There's a special focus on local and regional authors and Keillor's favorite poetry. The works of another Keillor favorite, F. Scott Fitzgerald, fill an entire shelf. "We're not trying to be all things to all people," said store manager Sue Zumberge. "It's not because we look down on those; it's just because you can find them elsewhere." Keillor, 64, has said he wanted to run an independent bookstore because he likes to "walk into them and sit and read in them." .... | |
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| | | My Chemical Romance | | Posted Wednesday, October 25, 2006 6:49:30 PM by Blog57 Team | | Reality. Dead on. Gerard Way trained all his life to be a rock star. Like Iggy Pop, the 29-year-old New Jersey native grew up weird in working-class America, a bundle of energy, stigmatized by the bullies in his neighborhood. Like Jim Morrison, he found death fascinating, and he cultivated his morbid streak in the manner of metal gods from Ozzy to Danzig, gobbling up graphic novels and horror flicks. Like John Lennon, he liked to draw and went to art school. He also explored acting, developing a style both chameleon and camp — David Bowie, check. .... | |
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| | | A loner rediscovers his heart | | Posted Monday, October 16, 2006 10:47:24 AM by Blog57 Team | | A Stolen Season. Steve Hamilton. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press. $22.95. 290 pp. Each of Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight novels takes his reluctant detective to new levels. Certainly these are terrific private detective stories, but Hamilton also makes these novels about a loner trying to rebuild his life and come to terms with who he is and how he fits in the world. A Stolen Season explores what happens when that loner allows someone into his life and, for the first time in years, rediscovers his heart. Alex's life in upper Michigan has been as predictable as the chilly landscape. But his growing relationship with Natalie Reynaud, a Canadian cop with her own dark past, makes him imagine a different kind of future. He doesn't even mind that the summer -- something everyone looks forward to in the Upper Peninsula -- is being crowded out by an early winter.... | |
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| | | Desire Surges For Romance Novels | | Posted Saturday, October 07, 2006 6:49:25 AM by Blog57 Team | | Kati Dancy is a smart, successful conference planner in her early 30s. She is college educated, has a dog and a cat, and lives in a posh Washington, D.C., suburb. She also has a not-so-secret addiction: Dancy is an avid reader of romance fiction. "Romance novels are an absolute feel-good," Dancy said. "I'm a romantic at heart. It's a guaranteed happy ending." .... | |
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| | | Japanese women look to younger men for romance | | Posted Thursday, September 28, 2006 2:47:41 AM by Blog57 Team | | Tokyo - When 34-year-old Sayuri Shimizu broke the news to her parents that she planned to wed a man six years younger than herself, they weren't upset. They were just happy she was finally getting married. An increasing number of Japanese women are delaying or skipping marriage altogether. But for those who still want romance, younger men are a trendy option. The growing financial independence of Japanese women makes relationships with younger men a more feasible option these days in a land where wives traditionally relied on husbands for economic sustenance. "Marriage used to be for a livelihood," said Kaori Haishi (40), who has written books on the topic and whose own husband, Yasushi, is 34. Marriages with the bride older than the groom accounted for almost one-third of all weddings in 2002, up from just under 18% in 1987, according to a survey by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.... | |
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| | | Johnson's local book tour is launched | | Posted Monday, September 25, 2006 12:47:28 PM by Blog57 Team | | WILMINGTON - Number 85 of the Cincinnati Bengals, Chad Johnson, kicked off his local book tour on Sept. 5 with an appearance at Joseph Beth Booksellers at the Rookwood Pavilion in Cincinnati. Along with Johnson, Cincinnati sportswriter and author of the book, Paul Daugherty, signed copies of Johnson's biography "Chad: I Can't Be Stopped" for over 700 waiting fans. Some standing in line as long as three hours, anxious book buyers filed through racks of romance novels and Harry Potter books for the chance to meet the man who calls himself a 7-11, because he's always open. Three lucky young ladies even got the chance to have dinner with Johnson - they brought him McDonalds when the football star announced that he was craving a Big Mac. While it may not have been exactly a dream dinner, it was enough to make these teenage girls giggle, and it even earned them an autographed jersey.... | |
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| | | What the fic? | | Posted Monday, September 18, 2006 10:51:40 AM by Blog57 Team | | If you don't know what "fan fiction" is, allow us to introduce you to the genre with a quick summary of a story, based extremely loosely on the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation: An impossibly beautiful, brave, talented young woman who just happens to be named after the story's author insinuates herself into the life of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard. They stage a footrace. The heroine twists her ankle. And then she commits ritual suicide using a fingernail scrap and an eyelash. We didn't say fan fiction is uniformly pretty -- or logical. Simply put, fan fiction is writing in which the author spins off a new storyline based on established characters. Although it has roots that go back decades, it is largely a phenomenon spawned by the Internet and "fanzines," magazines aimed at fans of a specific cultural phenomenon, such as the original Star Trek.... | |
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| | | Author's grisly novels thrill women | | Posted Sunday, September 03, 2006 4:48:13 AM by Blog57 Team | | CAMDEN, Maine -- What is ``women's fiction"? Warm and wonderful stories about love, soap operas about dysfunctional families, uplifting tales of redemption and the indomitable human spirit? Those are the stereotypes, to be sure, and true to an extent. The vast annual outpouring of romance novels from Harlequin Enterprises is openly marketed as women's fiction. But in 10 thrillers over the past decade, Tess Gerritsen of Maine has found an audience of women with a different taste. ``I had a third-grade teacher say to me at a reading, `I want more serial killers and twisted sex,' " said Gerritsen, also a physician, in an interview on her porch overlooking Penobscot Bay. ``When I hear from readers, the ones who say, `You go over the edge,' are usually men." There's little sex in Gerritsen's books, but there's plenty of blood, murder, torture, dismemberment, and evil unleashed.... | |
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