(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Sunday #BookChat [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-02 I apologize up front for possibly stepping on the toes of the Readers and Book Lovers group, with this story. I am not on the schedule (which you can find in each scheduled book published to their group). That being said… I have been addicted to books since around the fifth grade when I ran into a book called A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine l’Engle (which you can read more about here, at her URL https://www.madeleinelengle.com/books/middle-grade-young-adult/a-wrinkle-in-time). I read out the entire science fiction section of my Elementary and Junior High (what they call Middle School these days) library. Seriously, every book in the genre. Then I went on to devour what was available in the Fort Vancouver Regional Library’s main branch in Vancouver, WA during my early adult (and churchmouse poor) years. Because all it cost me was the gas to get to the library. For most people, the cost of a book once or (gasp!) maybe twice a year is nothing. But I’ve been a very fast reader (about 1,000 wmp when I’m really going at it) for most of my life, and I can say with certitude that I’ve read well in excess of 10,000 books in my lifetime. At one point, when my kids were very young, I read up to 3 entire books in a single day for about a decade. That’s as many as 3 x 365 = 1095 x 10 (yrs) = 10,950 But that was only a decade and I’ve been reading daily since at least 1967, because that is the year my youngest sister was born and we taught her to read before she turned three years old. Yeah, my entire nuclear family in the 1960s were all voracious readers from the earliest of our days. So another 40 plus years of reading. It’s anyone’s guess what my actual total is, but I’ve still got a few thousand books on the shelves of my living room (all but 100 of which will be going to the local public library system mentioned earlier and a local VA Hospital and a local women’s & children’s shelter), and I’ve been selling them off since the 2010s to Powell Books which is HQ’d in Portland, Oregon which is just across the Columbia River from me, about a 40 minute car drive away. Those books enriched my life over the years, because any book worth reading is worth reading again — and some books are worth re-reading many times. Some of my favorite books over the years which have been read and re-read will be the focus of this series, as long as it lasts. I’ll cover a different genre and at least two books in that genre in each edition. Genre — Romance First, let me say that anyone who denigrates Romance books is denigrating the entire publishing industry. Because as few people know, the sale of Romance books is what has propped up the entire book publishing industry since forever. https://www.npr.org/2014/02/09/273148888/romance-novels-sweep-readers-off-their-feet-with-predictability Romance novels are a $1.4 billion industry and is by far the biggest sector of the publishing industry My two most favored books in this genre are: A Knight in Shining Armour by Jude Deveraux The book description from Jude’s own URL https://judedeveraux.com/books/the-montgomery-taggert-family/knight-shining-armor/ Abandoned by a cruel fate, lovely Dougless Montgomery lies weeping upon a cold tombstone in an English church. Suddenly, the most extraordinary man appears. It is Nicholas Stafford, Earl of Thornwyck…and according to his tombstone he died in 1564. Drawn to his side by a bond so sudden and compelling it overshadows reason, Dougless knows that Nicholas is nothing less than a miracle: a man who does not seek to change her, who finds her perfect, fascinating, just as she is. What Dougless never imagined was how strong the chains are that tie them to the past…or the grand adventure that lay before them. Hailed worldwide as one of the most romantic novels of all time, A Knight in Shining Armor is “a glorious love story that spans centuries, worlds, and souls. It is the epitome of every woman’s fantasy” (Chicago Daily Herald). I’ve read this book at least 10 times. It reflects my love of time travel books (scifi/fantasy) and women characters who learn and grow as they move through the pages of the story in which they live. In the mix though is the fact that I had been reading Jude Deveraux’s Montgomery/Taggart books for years before AKiSA was published. Like the very first in that inteconnected universe of books, The Black Lyon, first published in 1980. If you decide to give it a read, I must urge you to just power down through the early part, where there is a lot of what many reviewers refer to as “weakness” on the part of Dougless Montgomery, and some truly Bad Choice moments which one might think a reasonable person might avoid. But without that early fluff, some of the growth of her character wouldn’t appear as truly extraordinary as it was, in the end. Props for: Ignoring, for the most part, how Time Travel happens, and just rolls with that; without any deep thinking on the part of the characters, so you don’t have to, either. Excerpt from the book (the part about the blue eyed gentleman) — Nicholas, for context, is the Earl of Thornwycke and the love interest of the protagonist, Dougless Montgomery. At least for most of the book. When I was a boy, about eleven, I think, my parents, my older brother and I came to England for a year to live. My father had a job here. My mother used to drag my brother and me to antique stores, and I'm afraid that I wasn't very gracious about going. That is, until one Saturday afternoon when I saw the portrait. I wanted that portrait. I can't explain it. It wasn't that I just wanted it; I had to have it." He smiled. "I'm afraid I wasn't exactly sweet -tempered about voicing my wants. The portrait was quite expensive and my mother refused to listen to my demands, but I've never taken no for an answer. The next Saturday I took the tube, went back to the antique shop, and offered everything I had as a down payment on the portrait. My parents thought I was crazy and said an Elizabethan miniature was no possession for a child, but when they saw me, week after week, giving all my allowance toward the purchase of that miniature, they began to help me. Then, just before we left England, when I'd begun to fell that I was never going to get enough money together to buy it, my father drove me to the antique shop and presented the portrait to me." From his inside coat pocket, he withdrew a little leather case and handed it to her. Slowly, Dougless opened the box. There, on black velvet, was the portrait Nicholas had had painted of her. You get a whole book about the Earl and only a few pages about this blue eyed fellow, but I guarantee that for at least some of you, the image of a gentleman with blue eyes will haunt you every time you board an airplane. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon http://www.dianagabaldon.com https://dianagabaldon.com/wordpress/books/outlander-series/ Book description by the author from her URL: In 1946, after WW II, a young Englishwoman named Claire Beauchamp Randall goes to the Scottish Highlands with her husband, Frank. She’s an ex-combat nurse, he’s been in the army as well, they’ve been separated for the last six years, and this is a second honeymoon; they’re getting re-acquainted with each other, thinking of starting a family. But one day Claire goes out walking by herself, and comes across a circle of standing stones—such circles are in fact common all over northern Britain. She walks through a cleft stone in the circle….and disappears. Back into 1743, where the first person she meets is a gentleman in an 18th-century army officer’s uniform. This gentleman, Jack Randall, looks just like her husband Frank—and proves to be Frank’s six-times-great-grandfather. Unfortunately, he also proves to be a sadistic bisexual pervert, and while trying to escape from him, Claire falls into the hands of a gang of Highland Scots, who are also trying to get away from Black Jack Randall—though for other reasons. In order to avoid being handed over to Captain Randall, Claire is obliged to marry one of the young clansmen. So she finds herself trying to escape from Castle Leoch and her Scottish captors, trying to get back to her husband Frank, trying to avoid being recaptured by Captain Randall—and falling in love with Jamie Fraser, the young man she’s been forced to marry. The story rolls on from there… I’m sure there are some of you who have already heard about this first book in the Outlander series, because of the Starz (and now available on Netflix) filmed version of the books. The shows are much in tune with the written version, with the author as a co-producer and an advisor to the show producer, Ronald D Moore (of Star Trek fame, or infamy, depending upon what you have heard about him). Moore said he decided to produce the film version because he picked up Outlander in an airport gift shop on the way to an international flight. It was going to be long, and he wanted something long to read. Outlander is 850 print pages long. The Simon & Schuster bio on Gabaldon: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Diana-Gabaldon/2120500195 Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling Outlander novels, described by Salon magazine as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting ‘Scrooge McDuck’ comics.” Dr. Gabaldon holds three degrees in science: Zoology, Marine Biology, and a PhD in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology, (plus an honorary degree as Doctor of Humane Letters) I’ve been reading these Outlander books for decades now, the first book Outlander came out in 1991 and I’m sure I bought a hardback copy of it that year at CostCo. One read of the saga of Jaime and Claire and I was hooked, just like a trout with miniature marshmallows and sweet corn. Like the readers of the George R R Martin Game of Thrones series, it can be a long wait between new entries in the series. But the books are big and full of details about all kinds of things you’d never think about otherwise, like how to grow your own penicillin. The characters both main and secondary aren’t just names on pages, they grow into real people as you read more about them. You have to either be addicted to books and stories and read quickly or just have a lot of reading time if you want to dive into the 17th century and Scotland, England, France and the burgeoning United States of America. But if you do, it will be time well spent. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/2/2161602/-Sunday-BookChat Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/