Older Salon article from 2000, but still an interesting list of Five Great Trashy Reads.

I've been going through old category romance novels and donating them to Goodwill. Sadly, rereading them is reminding me why I'm willing to give them away. The prologue of the book is four pages, and there are four characters speaking. The following dialogue tags are used:

breathed, declared softly, suggested, commented, declared, grimaced, countered, explained, noted, added, scoffed, conceded easily, quipped, asserted, observed, admitted, retorted, corrected, responded dryly, questioned, replied airily, drawled, gasped, informed, suggested, volunteered, asked, concurred, reproved, prompted.

In addition to a few uses of "said."

Who else here is reading the Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine? I finished the latest book, Bitter Blood, last night, and ZOMG.

(Additional ZOMG thanks to Rachel Caine and her agent nattering at me on Twitter today!)

I have not read those, I read a few of the Weather Warden books and wasn't really enthused.

I take it the Morginville Vampire series is really good?

It is! The series is the closest thing I've found to a Buffy fix in books for a long time. Very snappy, good characters, and plays with the "oooh, brooding bad boy" vampire attraction trope while pointing out that being involved with vampires is never a good plan. Plus, one of the side-characters is a more-than-slightly-crazycakes charming vampire alchemist who wears fanged bunny slippers. He's my favorite, obviously, because I am predictable.

I got Justine Larbalestier's vampire book from the library on my Kindle today. Anyone else read it yet?

I'll have to see if I can get the first on through inter library loan.

It's got your approval so that's a huge plus.

Adding it to my Nashville Public Library ebook cart right now. Thanks, Jilli!

Summary of what I've read recently in case anybody wants to talk about any of them (also, I should probably update my Goodreads account...)

An Abundance of Katherines and Will Grayson, Will Grayson, both by John Green. Amazing.

Shadow of Night, after finally reading A Discovery of Witches all the way through on the third try.

Currently working on Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. Good! I like that I like and dislike parts of every single character (well, except one, but we see her through the eyes of the man in love with her, so that makes sense).

I'm reading Friday by Heinlein. I last read it when it came out, when I was 13. I remember really liking it; now it's on the margins of getting the "thrown across the room" tag.

What's kind of interesting, when I force myself to look past the writing style, word choice, gender issues, etc., is how many of what I think of as the basic SF tropes are in this one book.

Multinational corporations as more powerful nations? check. A restructured United States? Check. Post-oil/post environmental crises? Check. Overpopulation? Check. Designer organisms? Check. Professional sex training? Check.

The Internet exists in this story, in a pretty reasonable facsimile of what it was pre-WWW. Maybe that's why the Internet was so non-surprising to me. He even gets at Big Data analysis and online education options.

I'm still waiting for professional sex coaches though.

In fairness to Heinlein wasn't he suffering mini-strokes at the time he wrote this?