Bring on the Blonds!
There is one matter of taste in which I appear to differ from most romance readers: I have a great fondness for blond heroes. Love’em. But I seem to be part of minority, because the majority…
Fiction by Fictional Characters
Recently I came across the Castle books, thrillers ostensibly written by author Richard Castle, who is the hero of TV series Castle but in reality penned by a ghostwriter. I read that several chapters of the…
Passing the Torch
During a visit my twelve-year-old niece paid to my place last weekend, I took her to the guest room, where I keep my children’s and YA literature, and chose some books with her to borrow over…
Has the Ebook Reader Changed my Reading Habits?
When I bought my first eBook reader, an Opus, in December, I felt both like a pioneer – eBook readers are not at all common in Germany yet, and I’d only seen one in the flesh…
Characters | Movies | Rike AAR
The Face of a Hero
During my book club’s latest meeting, a friend who’d seen the play version of a novel most of us had read, showed around some leaflets of the production and asked whether the two actors who played…
Embarrassment
At the moment I’m reading The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie, but I stopped, because I was so embarrassed at a main character’s actions. Do you know this phenomenon? You read a novel about a character…
Plotlines That Could Take a Break
On the whole, I don’t mind seeing variations of the same old plot in what I read. Well, I do read plenty of genre literature after all! The finesse and/or psychological depth in which a well-known…
The Lover Scorned
Recently, I reread Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March. It’s a book I’ve read with great pleasure before; this time I was particularly struck by the way the relationship between the poet Catullus and society lady…
Storing All Those Books
Recently, I sorted some of my bookshelves. Truth to be told, I mostly did it in order to procrastinate doing some other work, but when I had finished, I was really pleased: The books looked so…
Genre Fiction and Book Club Etiquette
A friend recently started a book club, and I was delighted to join. Sure, what I like best to read are romances and mysteries, but to include one book per month that was outside my usual…