before I read the middle
So Elaine Castillo is a literary fiction writer (who, I believe, has written a bunch of fanfiction in her life; I can just sense it; I know she has), and this installment of Anatomy of a Sex Scene draws on her second novel, Moderation. I’m going out on a leetle bit of a limb here: This sex scene isn’t a scene where the two characters have sex. TWIST, I’m full of surprises. Rather, it’s a scene…
Hello, yes, I know, I know you were wanting to hear about my favorite books for the entire year, and perhaps I will provide that in 2026. However, I have noticed to my sorrow that books publishing in the third quarter of any year are woefully overlooked in Best-of lists. As a structural matter there is not much we can do about this. Time is still finite, despite my best efforts, and the number of…
Heated Rivalry, AKA the gay hockey show, has been getting a lot of buzz for its explicit(-ish) sex scenes, and a lot of that buzz has been coming from viewers and critics whose experience with the romance genre is such that they are charmed by the novelty of the two protagonists calling each other by their surnames. This is to me immensely sweet, like a video of a baby having their first taste of…
Children The precipitating incident of Wearing the Lion is that Heracles, possessed by a fury that Hera has sent, kills his three sons. The specter of family annihilation is raised, only to be immediately batted aside. “This wasn’t you,” Heracles’s wife assures him. The entire engine of the plot is finding out who is responsible, because for sure we know it wasn’t Heracles. It’s kind of the fury,…
When I started reading romance novels, about twelve years ago, I asked for recommendations and only read the romance novels that people told me were the best ones out there. This was great as a reading project — some of those early authors remain some of my faves today! — but gave me a skewed sense of the proportion of novels in the genre I should expect to truly excel. Now that I am more…
As I post this, the first few episodes of the new series of Leverage: Redemption have dropped. Happy days! I cannot wait to watch them. This will get me through to the release of Andor next week, and then I’ll just be watching Leverage: Redemption and Andor episodes until Murderbot comes out. By far the most important news in this round-up is that the Murderbot TV show is going to have a…
Okay, I am trying to do this more, because there’s a lot of good stuff to read on the internet, and I want to share it with y’all. Here are some things I’ve read and enjoyed this week. Also, there are a lot of protests around the country tomorrow — if you have the time and the bandwidth, check and see if there’s one near you! Apparently my beloved, very insane Doctor Odyssey is on the bubble for…
I’ve been thinking lately about the role of book reviews and book reviewers, and happily for me, some smart people have been saying smart things on this topic. Charlie Jane Anders wrote a blog post entitled “What Are Book Critics For?”, considering the tension between critic as flaw-finder and critic as cheerleader. My pal Renay considered the incentives, and more often the disincentives, to…
Here are some things I have been reading; perhaps you, too, will enjoy them! Colonial Williamsburg has become a space for truly complex, careful conversations about American history. In America, the arts depend on charitable giving; that’s not ideal. “The Death of the Fuck”: on puritanism and sex scenes in books. I found this article fascinating — it’s about how the modern world assumes we want…
A couple of years ago, I decided to go all in on DVD acquisition, because I found it within myself that I did not trust the streaming ecosystem. This was a great decision, especially because it was right about the time that FYE stopped selling DVDs and they were getting rid of all their used shit for like, pennies. I got three seasons of Babylon 5 for five dollars. Total! Not each! Imagine what a…