Valentine's Eve OHP: IT'S SO ROMANTIC I'M GONNA DIE

Dropping by from Evernight's Valentine Snippets Blog Hop? Please see this post and leave a comment for a chance to win your choice of book from Evernight Publishing. 

Happy Valentine's Day Eve! (Valentine's haters, tomorrow's blog post is for you. Another book contest is coming tomorrow, too.) I just did the blog post of kisses back in January, so I'm trying a different approach today: romance novel covers.

This was the last one I read:



...and if you liked The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks, you're probably going to like Far From Perfect.  (If you only saw the movie - and I wouldn't blame you for wanting to look at Zach Efron for two hours - you have no idea what you're missing because the book is awesome.)

I haven't read these. (If you want to see what I've read, check out my Books Worth Reading board.) Taken together, they set a very Valentine's Day-appropriate mood, don't you think? Beautiful models, beautiful dresses (I love books, but 50% of the fun of romance novel covers is the fashion, honestly), two lovers enraptured in each other's arms: what's not to love?!






I would probably read this one. I love the paranormals. (Okay, I'd probably read any of them. I'm such a sucker for romance. I still can't watch the Letters To Juliet trailer without bursting into tears when Lorenzo's horse comes riding around the corner.)



Guys, if you ever hope to be on the cover of a Regency romance, you must not own any shirts. Apparently it was not cold in the past and men, historically, did not wear shirts.



I'm sensing a "wedding" theme here.



No collection of romance novels is complete without at least one kilt. This is another one that I've actually read; this series is both paranormal and Highland.



What's your favorite romance novel?

That Which Maketh Me Happy (NSFW)

First, that Barack Obama was re-elected president of the United States. I don't care for Willard Mitt Romney. Not because he's a Mormon - I don't care what religion (or lack thereof) someone is. I just don't think he's ever been to the U.S. - he doesn't seem to know anyone here.

Second, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. Besides Small World, the other bookstore I went to in L.A. was Piccolo's, the one at the Promenade at Howard Hughes Center, an outdoor mall in Culver City. All the books are used, were donated and cost $1, with proceeds benefiting a literacy project. Surprisingly, I had a hard time choosing a book there, perhaps because they were only loosely organized. I remembered discussing Anne with Jenny Shaw over at Well Shut the Front Door, and I got it to read on the plane.

I didn't read it on the plane. I watched The Real Housewives of Atlanta on those little TVs Virgin America puts on the backs of everybody's seats. In my defense, I don't have cable at home, so it's not like I regularly veg out to Bravo.

But I'm reading it now. I don't plan to read the whole series, though. It's much more than a trilogy; there are at least 8, from what I could tell when I was searching for this cover. It's a good book, though. It teaches children that if you accidentally get one of your friends drunk by mistaking wine for a nonalcoholic beverage, you can make it up to her parents by saving their youngest daughter's life.

http://www.athousandbookswithquotes.com/2012/02/208-anne-of-green-gables.html

Another book-related thing that made me happy was listening to Dr. Oliver Sacks talk about his book Hallucinations on yesterday's Leonard Lopate Show. I don't think Leonard Lopate asks the most astute questions, but it's nonetheless an interesting, fairly brief (about 25 minute) interview. Listen here.

I was also excited when I returned The Lucky One to Netflix and got back The Raven (starring John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe), the red envelope was decorated with Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 imagery.

The other thing that makes me happy is Crystal Marie's blog A Word or Three, which I just discovered yesterday (while attempted to watch the now-deleted Twilight-related videos on this blog, The Latter Days. Of the posts I've read so far, two of my favorites are:

I'm Liberal Because Jesus Said So
Women on Women Crime (How Twitter Made Me a Feminist)

Oh, and then there's this: a version of "Bad Romance" in homage to the 20th-century U.S. women's suffrage movement. New legislation, baby!

Now, the NSFW part:

A few days ago, I discovered that people on Tumblr had vintage nude photos of Burt Lancaster. This made me incredibly happy.

http://goldenhandcuff.tumblr.com/

http://las3nochesdeeva.tumblr.com/ 

http://movingmen.tumblr.com/

Red, White and Blue Monday ~ Memorial Day Pin-Ups

Happy Memorial Day! We celebrate it happily, because it's a federal holiday and some people get the day off from work, but actually, we're remembering the ones who died in defense of the country. It's a solemn occasion.

We have no war dead in my family. As I may have blogged once or several times before, my grandfather, at the age of 17, was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. He was wounded, and then, with the small amount of medical training he had as a pharmacist's assistant, he helped attend the wounded. After World War II, he stayed in the Navy, and also served in the Korean War. He passed away in 1994, in between my junior and senior years of high school - which is to say, when I was at the age he was when he survived Pearl Harbor.

Now let's go a little retro. I kinda already used this idea for Veteran's Day 2011, but that was before I had the aid of Pinterest.



Boys can be pin-ups, too. Oh god, the abs.

I'm loving these fishnets. (It's really too bad that the "pin-it" button covers up the young lady's face. Sorry about that.)

The fourth one, Jo-Ann, makes me laugh, because no woman sits like that, except while doing yoga.

Forgive a chick for being in crazy Catholic schoolgirl lust, but here Jim Caviezel is wearing Navy camo. I'm not entirely sure why - he did some Navy SEAL training or something.



...and of course he also played my fictional Memorial Day army boyfriend, Private Bob Witt from James Jones' novel. All I really want is to be the nurse who stitches up the gash on Witt's cheek when he gets drunk and cuts his face on a rock. Maybe while he's sleeping off his drunk, the hospital unit needs the bed for a more severe case, and I have to wake him up and send him back to his unit. Outside the door, I examine his face one more time, checking my stitches. I tell him not to shave for a few days and ask him if he's in any pain. He answers with a rather lewd suggestion, something like, "My face don't hurt, but I got this other ache you could take care of..."

Sidebar: In the movie, when Witt tells First Lieutenant Welsh, "I'm twice the man you are," I think he means to tell Welsh that he refuses to be humiliated by Welsh's punishment of busting him down to the disciplinary unit. However, I am imagining an alternative interpretation of this statement; see also In Which the Term "13-Inch" Is Thrown About Shamelessly.

I tell him I'm not that kind of girl, but eventually, after we've seen each other around a few times and know each other a little better, his rough-hewn Kentucky charm starts to wear me down. If I'm in a HEA type of mood, maybe we're even reunited when we get back to the U.S. (In the movie, Witt sacrifices himself, but at the end of the book version, Witt is alive.) Maybe, even though my character is from the Bronx or Boston or some such, she moves to Kentucky to be with him and they live on a farm and have babies.

As a literary exercise, it would be interesting to revisit a Jones novel from a female character's perspective. I think the only female character in The Thin Red Line is Bell's wife, Marty, and she's back in the States. All we know of her comes from Bell's memory and her Dear John letter.

But if I had to choose a back-up fictional army boyfriend, it would definitely be Logan Thibault.