Into the Glom

My first glom was Jude Deveraux. I was 14 and went through like 20 of her books. 2nd was Judith McNaught. More recently Sherrilyn Kenyon, JR Ward, Kresley Cole, Julia Quinn, Sabrina Jeffries and Lisa Kleypas and much much more! Whoa, I forgot about Nora Roberts/JD Robb.

I glommed the childhood classics (Nancy Drew, The Bobsey Twins, Cherry Ames, The Hardy Boys) but I certainly didn’t know I was glomming. But my romance glomming started with Linda Howard with her early series novels, and then I hit the jackpot with quite a few older Mary Balogh regencies. I still treasure them and reread them every so often.

I have fond memories of glomming in my early days of reading romance. I glommed Catherine Coulter, Julie Garwood, Karen Robards, Katherine Kingsley, Penelope Williamson just to name a few. I would go to the library and take out 10 or more books and settle into a nice glom. Those were the days where I would read a book a day. Not time for that nowadays, but those times set me on a track of knowing what kinds of romance I really enjoyed. I don’t glom much anymore because I keep up with most of my favorite authors.

I have glommed Rex Stout too. I love Nero Wolfe as well. In addition, I have glommed JD Robb, Mary Stewart’s gothics, Georgette Heyer, Mary Jo Putney, Suzanne Brockmann, and Judith McNaught (Paradise is still to me one of the best romances ever written).

I took a 10 year break from reading while working and having 3 kids, but about 5 years ago I started again and haven’t looked back. Some of the most memorable gloms I did then were Mary Balogh, Lisa Kleypas, Barbara Metzger, Carla Kelly, Liz Carlyle and Diana Gabaldon.

Thank goodness for libraries!

Some recent gloms were Paulina Simmons, Phillipa Gregory and the Bourne books by Ludlow and Van Lustbader (what a name!). This summer I’m going to delve into James Michener in between the new romance releases. I can’t wait!!!!

O.K., totally going to date myself here. When I was in Junior High, (1975) I found
some Anne Emery books, the first was Dinny Gordon: Freshman. It was written in 1950, maybe 1949 but then I proceeded to go on a hard target search for the remaining books in the series. They were from a different time, amazingly innocent…I had already been reading seriously for a few years but this was my first glom.

It’s a lot easier to glom now, with the internet. You can track down almost anything.
I recently did a Lynn Viehl glom with the Darkyn series. Loved it. Now I’m reading her other series beginning with Stardoc, written as S L Viehl.

One glom that didn’t work out all the way was the Diana Gabaldon series. I read the first three books and just could not go any further. I would love to pick up Drums Of Autumn one day, but it has been a long time since I finished Voyager and I’m afraid I would have to do a reread to refresh my brain.

My first glom started when I was about 8 and I drove my parents crazy trying to get my hands on Nancy Drew books… and as a teenager I haunted the libraries trying to get my hands on everything from Sue Grafton & Dick Francis.

Recently I have glommed JR Ward, Kresley Cole, Marjorie Liu and loved them!

I’m a serial glommer. My first ever glom was Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooter series. Sam and Alyssa’s book had just come out, so there were several titles to catch up on. Recent gloms have included Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Russ and Clare series, and Mary Stewart’s Gothic romances.

I love discovering a great new-to-me author with an impressive back list.

Marilyn Pappano years ago. I read what I later learned was her first novel. When I went looking for others I found that she had been writing Harlequin books for years and so I tracked down every one, and there were many. I still have her Southern Knights series. I also continued to read her novels as they came out. Loved her.

I’ve glomed many authors. When I found this website it opened up a whole new world of romance glom. :0 Currently I’m on the Lynn Viehl Darkyn series. My most memorable would be the JD Robb, I think she was about on book 8 or 9 when I first read Naked in Death and I quickly caught up.

There’s nothing like a good glom. I love that feeling of anticipation and enthusiasm for an author and just for reading in general. The first author I was in love with was Mary Balogh, back in the 90s when I collected and read everything she wrote. Now she’s hit or miss for me but she’ll always be my first love. Other memorable gloms were of Julia Quinn, J.K. Rowling and just in the last two years I discovered Caroline Linden (still love her!), Kate Noble, Sarah Mayberry, Kresley Cole, Larissa Ione and J.R. Ward.

I’ve recently been reading paranormal series, Cole, Ione and Ward, and I’m now all caught up. I’m in between gloms, so to speak, and I feel directionless. I love the way a glom can elevate reading to an obsession.

I almost never glom on “”new-to-me”” authors; I usually collect their books more slowly. I tend to glom on certain series, rather than all books by a certain author, and it depends on what mood I’m in. And it’s almost always my old friends that I’ve had for years and years and always return to. Several of Nora Roberts’ series, The Dragonriders of Pern, The RiddleMaster series, the Derynia seres, Patricia Veryan’s series. If I’m in the mood for a specific author, just about anything from Heyer, Crusie, or Austen. I know there’s a lot more, but I can’t think of them all. Right now, though, I am making my way through the Lymond series by Dorothy (?) Dunnett, based on all the recommendations I’ve read here.

Probably the first real glom I did was the In Death series. But the fastest and most furious one (and the one that hurt my eyes the most, but I just couldn’t stop) was Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Rev. Clare Fergusson. I whipped through those like a maniac.

I have glommed more authors than I care to think about (let alone type out here), but in recent years I’m getting better about thinking that maybe life will still be livable (even, perhaps, enjoyable?) if I don’t manage to read every last OOP book in an author’s backlist. (Someone recommended a trilogy from Mary Balogh’s Signet Regency days — purchased used on Amazon? $65 for the three books. I’ll wait for them to get reprinted or available digitally.)

I even married a glommer with very highbrow literary tastes: he’s got two sets of Dickens and Evelyn Waugh (reading copies and collector’s editions) for example.

But recently, only one author was capable of making me buy every single book, reading them one after another, and when I’d finished the most recent, I literally picked up number one and started over again. That was Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Miller Kill mysteries. It was actually painful to stop reading them and get on to something else, and as #7 in the series is not going to be available for a while, I have studiously resisted the urge to read them all for a third time. Why torture myself, hunh?

Putney’s Fallen Angels series is great, and The Shattered Rainbow is one of my very favorite books. And I frequent the USB close to my house looking for Carla Kelly books (I’ve snagged Beau Crusoe and Miss Chartley’s Guided Tour, but I’m still waiting for the golden moment when Reforming Lord Ragsdale shows up).

And of course KristieJ has to mention an author I’m totally unfamiliar with (shaking fist). Now I have to go in search of Patricia Veryan!

For me right now it’s Joanna Bourne, Loretta Chase, and Meredith Duran.

But I started with Nora Roberts, then Linda Howard and Lisa Kleypas.

My first glom was Georgette Heyer. More recently, since going on line 12 years ago and discovering so many authors who had appeared since I left the US in 1979 (and about whom I knew nothing), I’ve glommed Mary Balogh, Jo Beverly, Mary Jo Putney and Judith Duncan. I also glommed Carla Kelly and Barbara Metzger and Judith A Lansdowne.

Wanda Sue: ROTFL!!! Is that not THE WORST cover on the paperback version of Love’s Duet?? I loved the inside, but if that were my first Veryan, I never would have tried her, may never have gotten back into romance, not discovered the life changer that is the ‘net.
And the WWII book is Poor Splendid Wings – and yes I have a copy of that one too! And perhaps they have started the whispering – it starts off quiet – little scenes you remember and forget what happens next. But the curiosty starts getting the better of you. and then they whisper louder – and louder still – until one is unable to resist the lure of the reread.

My biggest glom was Laurell K Hamilton about four years ago. I read the books at a furious pace. Which made it totally clear exactly when Ms. Hamilton jumped the shark. There was just no mistaking it for anything else. Obsidian Butterfly was far and away the best of the bunch.

I’ve glommed a few others, as well, including Brockmann. I think Gone Too Far was the first book I read in real time with everybody else.

Some day I’m going to get around to the J.D. Robb books.

Yep. I’m a glommer. First it was Madeline Hunter, starting with the medievals, then there was no stopping me.

If I find a book that really hits strongly, I’m ordering that author’s backlist like crazy, hunting down titles in UBS’s, etc. I have almost everything Jo Beverley has written, and worked my way backward through Liz Carlyle to finally get to the wonderful My False Heart. Recently I wallowed in Anne Gracie’s Perfect quartet. My problem now is that I have a pile of Kinsales calling to me while the summer’s new releases keep falling into my eager hands.

Like KristieJ, my very first glom — before I even knew my obsession had a name — was in the 1980’s: yes, Patricia Veryan. The book that flipped me into glomitude was “”Love’s Duet.”” The libraries had a good supply of Veryan hardbacks, but I had to OWN them. So it was the UBS for me, as there was no internet then. At the time, I was a Navy wife, living in Jacksonville, FL (where I had visited every UBS so often that the owner of one of them offered me a job — which I accepted!), and then we were transferred to Norfolk, VA. Eventually, I came to own every Veryan book — except the WWII one, the name which I can’t recall. Now, all these years later and long divorced from that husband, the box containing my Veryan collection is in my mom’s attack. Maybe it’s time to drop in on my Mom, and visit Lucian St. Clare and Camille Damon again…