Thursday, July 14, 2005

Keeper shelf review

So today was a R & R day after yesterday. We watched the Tour de France all morning (HOORAY! a Frenchman won on BastilleDay). I showered & then left 'to go to the drugstore'..& returned three hours later. I am renewed! BTW- the outlet works fine, but the dishwasher is still clogged. Ah well, I enjoy dishwashing if the truth be told.

I finally recieved my copy of RT Bookclub. In light of my recurrent problems with burnout I've decided not to buy any more Regencies until Christmastime. Instead I'll focus on other time periods & historical fiction while pretending to work on reducing Mt. TBR.

What romance subgenres make up your Keeper Shelves? Reviewing mine I find they are overwhelmingly:

1.Paranormals (vampire & fairies & ghosts)
2.Medievals
3.Historical suspense
4.Love & Laughter historicals
5.Mythology or fairytale makeovers
6.Regencies
7.Time travels

I've a strong preference for deeply flawed or 'dark' heroes. Certain alphas, but not the more extreme types. No very defined traits for heroines.Perhaps intelligence, resourcefulness and understandable, realistic emotions. The only contemporaries are the paranormals & fairytale/mythology & time-travels. I still have the early Elizabeth Lowell & Julie Garwood contemporaries. I've enjoyed most love & laughter treatments within the listed subgenres but I demand emotional depth too & that is often hard to find in L&L. I've limited keeper space & I really want emotional grabbers.I weed out my keepers too, but less often than I weed Mt. TBR.

What about you? What are the most prevalent subgenres on your keeper shelves? What do you most want in heroes/heroines? What must you absolutley have in a keeper? How often do you weed your keeper shelves?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Amanda, I found my way here through Maili's site. In all honesty my keepers are quite a hodgepodge and I stopped culling them quite recently when I started looking for books I thought I had but, no.

I am horrible for keeping a book because of one scene. If it makes me weak in the knees or gets me teary eyed (very hard to do) then I will keep the book. It's not that it is my favorite book just, there is a scene in it I may want to visit. Since I have a horrible memory for titles and authors I think it is funny that a scene can catch my interest and not let go. Hmm, maybe I should start rating my keepers.

Then, there are books that I am sure I will want to re-read again -lucky for me because there are not too many new books coming out over the next six months that I 'just have to buy'.

I have culled my TBR pile but it is still huge, manageable but huge.

CindyS

Bob & Muffintop said...

Welcome CindyS~ I did that once.Threw away several keepers which I later had to hunt down & repurchase as I had a serious case of declutterer's remorse! Stop in again soon!