As I have mentioned once or twice times, I like Diana Palmer. I admit it, I love her like a fat kid loves cake (tm karens).
I have a copy of Lawless all set to hand deliver to KristieJ and shall find a ‘good’ palmer to give to Jane and Wendy too *g*. If Wendy comes to play with us in Dallas that is… hmmm or maybe a good Lori Foster for Wendy.
I have collected so many Harlequin Presents in such a short time I am almost proud of myself. Those old Loveswepts – lurve them. Big hair, 80, asshole alpha boss office romance Desires… check.
Pretty much I think we should just color me a Harlequin Whore and leave it at that.
So there are my dirty lil secret, yeah I know it isn’t really a secret.
I can’t think of anything shocking to say about my reading tastes you wouldn’t already know. What about you? Do you have anything shocking to tell?
Come on… what book do you have hiding?
Are you a secret inspy fan? Do you really love Lora Leigh just don’t wanna say? Do you… ::GASP:: have ever Betty Neels book?
Do you hit a switch in your living room and have the james-bond-secret-door open to your Ellora’s Cave Collection?
Do you read VC Andrews(tm), [the man hiding behind a famous name to sell books, not the woman who has been dead for 100 years now]?
Do you read Danielle Steel? Come on, you can tell us, we are all friends here.
We are about to hit a library sale or three. Not sure how many we will do but there are THREE going on today in good ol San Antonio.
What will I be looking for to add to my book collection which has prolly hit 2000 by now:
I still need:
Desire and Deception (Heartfire Romance)
and in general I will be looking for…
Catherine Coulter – I have taken to rebuying her old romances. I hated her viking series when I first started reading romance or at least thought I should. After the one where the rapist becomes the hero in the next book, I took all the CC books I had to the ubs. Now I found some of them I can really enjoy and I am having fun revising book and reading the older stuff I didn’t allow myself to even try.
Catherine Anderson – I don’t know if her sap can get any sweeter. But some of those books are knock your socks off grand. And the new ones are really worth a look.
Sandra Brown – I have 19 of her old romances and for some reason want them all. Hey I have even read 2 or 3. Loved Led Astray… BUT I refuse to pay for them. The fact that they are reissued and reissued and at one point sold in HARDCOVER after her Mainstream suspense took off makes my head hurt. So I look for them at every library sale.
And the one thing that just might shock you good people…
Traditional Regency Novels – Mainly I look for the hard to find ones. Well if I know they are. Some of them I really do want to read. And others well… I want them because I can’t have them. Dude I never said I make sense.
So what would you look for? What do you think I should look for? What do you WANT? No matter if it is hard to find, something you think would be cool to read but wouldn’t pay for or because you are already over your book budget before the month is a week into it.
I love Lora Leigh’s books. I have some Catherine Coulter but I can’ remember reading a viking series by her. I will have to check that out. My dream list would be ellora’s cave books, aphrodisia books, and samhain books. The closest bookstore is 2 hours away. I have no ubs here either. When I buy their books, I have to order online. When we was visiting relatives in Ohio pretty regularly, I would go to the flea market to buy books. They had a good deal. You got 18 books for $12. I tried to find all the books from my fave authors.
Sybil, I’m just going to take a moment and brag about having *ALL* of Kleypas’s old books.
My sister loves Catherine Anderson. I think she’s only missing two of her older books now. I’ve never read her.
And I will admit to reading all of Coulter’s historicals when I was younger. Haven’t read her in an age, but I had them all on my shelf.
I’ll come out to play in Dallas, but only if it’s OK with Kristie and Jane.
I love Thea Devine, and I have a hard time admitting that to people. Her writing style is *ahem* interesting. But when she gets it right (I like her “family secret” plots myself), her books are trashy fun like a 1980s prime time soap.
Yup, I have all the old Catherine Anderson, Lisa Kleypas, Catherine Coulter and Nicole Jordan books. Every so often I get the urge to read them again. I think Nicole Jordan plans to re-release her old ones. Lisa Kleypas says she won’t — Where Passion Leads and Forever My Love — if you have read one, you got to read the other!
Oh man, you just made made me spill some hot chocolate on my keyboard! Nothing too bad luckily, since I can still type obviously. But I couldn’t help myself when I came across the Betty Neels bit.
I just so happens I’ve recently acquired almost all of her books (I’d never heard of her but I’m a major collector of Vintage Harlequin/mill and boons, I’m such a sucker for those old-fashioned books, that’s a major weakness of mine). I started to read one and then I couldn’t stop, it was like watching a train going madly down the mountain to its doom. I’ve *never* seen an author who writes books with the same hero like that. In 90% of cases he’s from Holland, rich, very tall with blue eyes, drives Bentley or Mercedes or Jaguar (but mostly a Bentley though). Sometimes (very rarely) he’s English, but of course he’s still 6’5. But always, always, he’s a doctor in his late 30s. The heroines now…well I have to admit that they do change, fortunately. They can be pretty or not, with green eyes or blue eyes or brown eyes. They can be small but mostly they’re tall and statuesque. Shy or outspoken. Wimps or with a backbone.
And, dare I say it? I *did* enjoy reading some of these books. But then what else can you expect from a compulsive Vintage Harlequin reader eh? I can’t stand the modern Harlequins though, it took all the fun from the reading experience when we started to have the hero’s point of view included every page or so. It’s much more enjoyable when you watch the poor heroine struggling in the dark, having no clue whatsoever what the tall, dark, handsome, and higly overbearing hero wants with her.
I’m still building up my Charlotte Lamb collection too.
And i have to get my hands on thos early Kleypas books. I’d never even heard of them before reading your post, imagine that. The Savage sounds interesting too and I’ve never tried Nicole Jordan before either so I might try to track it down.
While I don’t collect them I’m a rabid Catherine Anderson fan. She’s so not afraid of the injured (like really injured, as in disabled physically) H/h’s. I LOVE that. I’m not disabled (unless you count being slightly insane – but aren’t we all), but I love the fact no one in her books is perfect. I don’t even care that they verge on Inspi, cause no ones afraid of sex either. I don’t know – they just feel real, like it could be a snippet of someones life.
Other than that you don’t want to see the huge banana boxes of 80’s/90’s harelquins/silhouettes in the garage – ebay, gotta love it!
I guess I can admit I used to like Connie Mason’s and Nan Ryan’s old books.. 🙂 (And can still be entertained by them from time to time.)
Estelle — Betty Neels here, too. Mine was out of necessity, since my grandma collected them, and I stole all my Harlequins from my G-ma, and when it got down to Essie Summers or Betty Neels, it’d be Betty. And, yep, EVERY SINGLE HERO WAS THE SAME.
I can’t not buy an Emma Darcy book, even though I cringe every now and then, and the last one I picked up had a total WTF? ending.
Also, I LOVE covers like the Kleypas one above. *shame*
Oh, and Carole Mortimer, too.
Sybil forgot to put Glitter Baby on her list above of books she’s looking for.
I have to admit to becoming an “erotica” junkie!!!!!!!! Give me the August men from Lora Leigh…love Monica Burns and Shayla Black. Ohhh…I just discovered Lacey Alexander.
What books that I’m looking for:
The Rebel and the Redcoat by Karyn Monk.
“If Wendy comes to play with us in Dallas…”
C’mon Wendy, make it a quorum and then we can get four accounts of RWA. Should be interesting. Who’s going to wear the vid cam?
Wendy – I already told Sybil I would loooovvvvveeee for you to come – so you gotta, you gotta come play with us.
And since Karen W confessed – I’ll be woman enough to too. I also used to read Connie Mason. I also tried a couple of *gasps in horror heard across the land* Cassie Edwards. But I must quickly add, I couldn’t finish either of them.
And the number one book I’m looking for – To Have and To Hold by Patricia Gaffney. I had it but somehow it went missing. Oh – and another number one book – Dance by Judy Cuevas.
I thought Wendy’s coming was a done deal. We’ve got a side of a bed saved for her and everything. Woot.
Well sh*t – y’all convinced me! Sybil – I’ll be e-mailing you.
Since I came clean about my predilection for the occasionally BDSM erotic romance, I have no more hidden guilty pleasures.
I’m looking for some Pamela Morsi’s and Theresa Weir romances. Ditto To Have and to Hold.
As for the folks who like old HPs, I have a box full of ’em at home that my cousin gave me as a teenager. If anyone’s interested, I’ll list them at my blog, and I’ll mail them to interested parties. At this point I’m looking to get rid of them. I’ll check specifically for some of the authors already mentioned.
Okay…Betrayed by Love by Diana Palmer (Western Lovers/Ranch Rogues) (Why it has two series flashes, I do NOT know). It’s from…1987 and seems to be SR #373, I think.
Bought it from the library bin for a quarter just now—do you have it?
LOL
yep I have it :). YAY you gonna try it out.