Schaden-Foer

Today's Post has an article on the current trend of Foer-bashing. For those who don't follow, "lit-tra-chure" (and as you can tell, I don't; I only use it for comedic entertainment), Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the 2002 "snob sensation" (their word's, not mine), "Everything is Illuminated." His current work is "Extremely Loud & Incredible Close." The Times did a major hatchet-job on the book, although I believe most reviews have been fairly complimentary. However, this leads me to speculate on what causes some authors to be targets of bashing campaigns vs. authors who escape bash-free…. Actually, I have no idea. I suppose bashing could be considered a measure of your success -- the more successful you are, the more thrashings you get from others. Sigh. I never get bashed. Leave me alone for my Charlie Brown moment.

Moment passed.

I finished Memory Day by Vince Flynn last night. It's the story of a terrorist plot to detonate a nuclear bomb within the US on Memorial Day. The plotting was tight, the characters were fairly well drawn, although most of his characters were fairly black and white, which really irks me, because nobody is ALL good or all bad. The book did raise some interesting questions on the use of torture. In what circumstances? What's acceptable, etc. Very thought-provoking. If you like political thrillers, it's worth a read.

Seguing from torture to pleasure, an article I read recently said that if you're feeling stressed out, you should make a list of things that give you pleasure and you should make time to do those things once a day. For me, reading is a pleasure, although I tell myself I never have time. However, I've been reading an hour a night and I really enjoy it. I would suggest that all of you who are feeling pulled in a million directions make your own list and make sure you make time to enjoy something.

Today's romancingtheblog column is about the current reign of the series in romance. Not talking harlequin here, talking Julia Quinn's Bridgerton's, Kenyon's DarkHunter, Karen Marie Moning's Highlanders, and the last goes on, and on, and on, and on. I love series I do, I've done some, I still do some, and I quit some. Current series I love:
1. Suzanne Brockmann Troubleshooters series.
2. James Patterson, Alex Cross
3. Janet Evanovich, Stephanie Plum
4. Nora's current garden trilogy

And that's pretty much it. It's a short list, because I could never have enough time to read all the series that I would like to. I quit Laurell K. Hamilton because I lost interest. She got to be all sex, sex, sex, oh, a monster, sex, sex, sex, and I liked the first few books that were monster, monster, monster, oh, sex, sex, monster, monster. Let me say, if I want sex, I'll pick romance, not horror, you know? However, she hits the NYT list with marvelous frequency, so obviously hot monster sex is very in.

So, questions for today:
1. What's your favorite series? Series that you don't do anymore?
2. Which seven Jeopardy categories best describe you?
3. What things would you like to do every day for fun?