[8 books from left to right: The Love Audit, August Lane, Heated Rivalry, The Long Game, India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent, Remember That Day, Son of the Morning, The Bodyguard Affair]  Read   August Lane by Regina Black  contemporary romance  Grand Central Publishing, 2025  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice...  August Lane has legitimate cause for hating Luke Randall. Maybe if she'd never loved him she could forget him, but he's coming back to their home town and she has a plan that includes making him an offer he can't refuse without exposing himself to public ruin. Will it destroy or renew them? Their struggles, failures, and victories lead them back to each other in this achingly lush, layered narrative.  The Love Audit by Lucy Eden   contemporary romance  Forever, 2025  Succession collides with a Hallmark Channel movie in this spicy tale of regrets and redemption. Jasmine and Derek are force...

As a GenX-er, remembering the 1989 image of one Chinese man standing in the path of a line of military tanks to protest the violent authoritarian response against peaceful protestors feels like it happened forever ago and also like just the other day.  [front cover of a trade paperback copy of Looking for Tank Man, A Novel by Ha Jin with a "NEW" sticker in the upper right corner; split image of 2 different faces of Chinese people]  Looking for Tank Man by Ha Jin  contemporary (circa 2008) fiction  Other Press, 2025  Pei Lulu's scholarly pursuits lead her into risky situations at the intersection of academic, sociopolitical, and cultural maneuvering. The conclusion of the novel launches her into the next fraught phase of her life and prompts readers to consider what they'd do (or not) in similar circumstances.  From the end of chapter 40:  He even said that his department might be the right place for me because they had just started a project on dictato...

On this 40th anniversary of observing a U.S. federal holiday honoring the life and legacies of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this blog post riffs on perceptions, expectations, and inheritances across generations and cultures.  There are so many elements to enjoy and appreciate about the characters, storylines, themes, and visual cues and queues that make Heated Rivalry compelling media. For me, Shane and his nuclear family dynamics in isolation and in the context of a racialized worldview resonate as familiar.  An expectation of excellence projected onto and infused into a beloved only child* born to parents who endured hardship and overcame challenges in order to succeed as individuals and as a couple, these parents set high standards and expect their offspring to meet and exceed them. It's a common stereotype about Asian people. It's been my personal experience that Black people in and from African nations and in the United States aspire and strive toward greatness as th...

Rewatching Heated Rivalry and reading upbeat romances have distracted me from and helped me take time to process 2 recent losses of people who have loved and encouraged and supported me throughout my life. They lived long, mostly healthy, rich, meaningful lives that contributed so much to others. I'm working hard to let my gratitude outweigh my grief.   These books offered intrigues and added joy.  [bookstack of 7 books, from top to bottom: All the Men I've Loved Again, Second Chance Romance, Much Ado About Hating You, All Superheroes Need Photo Ops, Crash Test, Undead and Unwed, The Baby Dragon Bakery]  All the Men I've Loved Again by Christine Pride asks What if? when young lovers who were separated by challenging circumstances cross paths again later in life.  Crash Test by Amy James offers fans of Heated Rivalry a racing world homage that hits similar emotional notes and nods within a more condensed timeline and different narrative structure.  Much Ado About...

Generous, thoughtful people who love me gave me lovely books for Christmas! One to help me feed my body, another to strengthen my spirit, and a third one that supports maintaining hair health and appearance. [3 books arranged face up: Taste of Home Made from Scratch Home Cooking Made Easy, Beautiful Braids Boutique Workbook Learning to Braid Natural Hair Techniques, Black Firsts 4,000 Ground-Breaking and Pioneering Historical Events 3rd Edition]  Taste of Home, Made from Scratch Home Cooking Made Easy  Beautiful photos of the final results with each step-by-step recipe, some with multiple photos to show recipe progression.  Beautiful Braids Boutique Workbook, Learning to Braid Natural Hair Techniques by Nicole Taylor  This book offers definitions of terms, tools, supplies, and techniques in addition to detailed text instructions and results photos for braiding beginners. A test, skills drills, and lined pages for note taking at the end encourage practice for further ...

There are so many reasons why Heated Rivalry is entrancing millions of people. Showing the explicit pursuit of connection and love as a worthy and rewarding endeavor is one of them, especially in contrast to the real world environment of divide and conquer.   [a rectangular fabric table runner with a painterly pattern of cottages and trees; it's folded in half and draped over the left side of a black travel case]  As a genre, Romance rules in every way except one. It's the most profitable and popular genre in publishing. Dedicated bookstores, streaming channels, annual conventions, workshops, fan sites, hash tags, and podcasts; sold-out author/book tours, events with casts of adaptations and original screenplays--all of them attract and sustain and grow attention, engagement, and cha-ching. (Theatrical releases of rom-coms have dwindled over the years and the few that get released have launched with a high failure rate, but let's save that discussion for another time along ...