It’s been a while since I did a links post, so here goes.

♦ An absolute must for all J.R. Ward fans, Decadence at BookThingo has updated her Black Dagger Brotherhood cheat sheets.

♦ I loved Angela at Save Black Romance’s recent post on Dorothy Koomson, Race, and Culture.

♦ Harlequin are looking for readers to suggest titles to include in their ebook backlist program. In other words, if you have fond memories of a Harlequin/Silhouette book you read years ago, email them and they might re-release digitally. (Thanks to Keishon for the link!)

♦ Keishon has a great post on Digital Romance Backlists or Books You Probably Don’t Know About. Thanks to this post, I purchased a couple of Alexis Harrington’s books from Smashwords. Luckily for me, she currently has special offer coupon codes to entitle customers too $1 off each of her books through May 14.

♦ Last but not least: author Pamela Clare announced on her blog that she’s been contracted to write the third book in her MacKinnon’s Rangers series. The series is set during the French and Indian War. Yay! I’m now keeping my fingers crossed for Lord William Wentworth’s book.

I try to do a semi-regular links post on Saturdays but I’ve had so little time to blog hop over the past few days that I have nothing to recommend. Instead, I’ll leave you with a link to the weirdest website I’ve come across lately. It’s devoted to photos of Tom Selleck in various poses with waterfalls and sandwiches. It’s so ridiculously random that it’s actually pretty funny. Thanks to Christian for the link!

Enjoy your weekend!

The title of this post might be slightly misleading as I’m merely stating what regular visitors to my blog have probably already noticed. When I started Monkey Bear Reviews almost a year ago, I didn’t have a rigid view of what I would blog about, but I figured it would mainly concern books, with a particular emphasis on romance novels. I wanted a forum in which I could discuss romance books with my reader’s hat on, leaving any discussion of my writing progress (or lack thereof) for RWA lists. With the exception of posts related to the publishing industry, the vast majority of what I’ve written here has concentrated on romance novels, either in the form of reviews, or as op-eds devoted to aspects of the romance reading experience.

Fast forward ten months and I feel the need for a change. I’ve mentioned several times that I tried very hard to have this blog reflect me as a reader, not as a writer. I’ve come to the realisation that it doesn’t matter. I don’t think my visitors care whether or not I publish the odd post about writing. As it happens, I rarely feel inclined to write about writing because, well, I’d rather write! Upon occasion, though, a topic occurs to me which relates to my writing and then I don’t blog about it as I think it won’t interest my visitors. I also hesitated to post about board games as I was sure no one would want to read it, and it turned out to be my most popular post in January.

I suspect my recent blogging ennui was due at least in part to boredom. I was getting sick of writing about the same old stuff. Potential ideas for posts occurred to me, but none of them were related to romance novels, so I didn’t write them. From now on, I’m going to blog about whatever strikes my fancy, be it board games, news articles, writing, blog design, or non-romance novels. As I still read a lot of romance, the majority of my book reviews are likely to be of that genre.

I hope the topics I choose to blog about will interest people, but, to be frank, the most important thing is that they interest me. If I’m to keep up my enthusiasm for blogging, I need to roll with my moods and blog about whatever I feel like discussing.

All About Romance’s Rachel Potter has an interesting take on our perception of women’s sexuality in “Modern” Romance. While I’m all for women having the freedom to do what they want, and not be judged for it, I find myself in reluctant agreement with much of what Rachel says. Looking at my own circle of female friends, not one of us found a long-term relationship through flings or one-night stands. If you’re the exception, good for you, but I think the old double-standard is still alive and kicking. Men don’t respect women who are “easy” and don’t tend to stick around if women sleep with them too soon. Is this fair? Absolutely not. Realistic? Unfortunately, in my observation, it is.

Another post with a similar topic is Karen Scott’s What Would You Look For in Your Perfect Man? Karen links to a blog where someone has written up their 120 essential qualities for their ideal man. Yep, you read that right: 120. Holy fuck! I’m not advocating “settling” for someone you’re only indifferent to, or like well enough but don’t love. I do, however, think all dating advice books should be burned, or at the very least re-labelled as fantasy. Women who are waiting for the perfect man need to take a long hard look at themselves. Are they perfect? Could they write a list of their own 120 sterling qualities? If so, kudos to them, but I didn’t make it past 5.

Limecello at The Good, The Bad and The Unread has an amusing post called I’m Popular, Dammit! about the quest for popularity in Blogland.

Enjoy your weekend!

Both Katiebabs’ recent post on the Blogging “In Crowd“ and Karen Scott’s response raised the topic of blog etiquette and commenting.

As a blogger, I try to respond to all the comments on my blog. If someone takes the time to write a response to one of my posts, I think it’s nice to acknowledge that, and they usually have some interesting points to add to the discussion. However, this is MY way of doing things on MY blog, and I don’t have the same expectations of bloggers whose blogs I visit. For starters, it’s the exception rather than the rule when a post I write generates more than a few comments. It’s fairly easy for me to respond to each individual, but sometimes it can take me a couple of days to get round to it if I’m busy with real life stuff. I definitely don’t expect a blogger who regularly gets 50+ comments on her posts to respond to each and every one of them.

I’ve also read criticism of bloggers who rarely comment on anyone else’s blog. I’m of two minds on this one. On the one hand, I don’t feel drawn to bloggers who never seem to interact with other bloggers online, either on blogs or on Twitter. They obviously aren’t interested in me and I don’t see why I should be interested in them. On the other hand, just as there is no one “right” way to blog, it’s up to each person to decide for themselves how to behave online. Some prefer splendid isolation; others are an active part of the community.

One reason I’m hesitant to be overly critical of bloggers who don’t comment often is that not everyone has a desk job. I remember one of my friends getting pissy with me a few of years ago when it often took me a couple of days to respond to her emails. What she didn’t seem to grasp was that I didn’t have access to a computer during the day when I was teaching full-time. I was frequently out of the house from 6 am until 9 or 10 pm, and the last thing I felt like doing when I got home was writing emails. I realise many people have busy jobs, but those whose work involves using a computer can potentially go online during their lunch or coffee breaks. And with so many companies increasing control over what websites their employees can access, even that’s not always possible.

Now that I’m home with my children, I rarely have a chance to blog hop or comment while they’re awake. I can more easily write the odd tweet as they’re short and don’t require much concentration. Depending on how much I have on, I go through phases of not commenting on blogs, and phases when I comment a lot. While I don’t get a chance to comment on all the posts which interest me, I definitely don’t comment on a post if the topic doesn’t interest me, or I feel I have nothing fresh to add to the discussion.

Some Questions for You:

• How do you feel about commenting? Do you think a blogger should try to respond to as many comments on her blog as possible, or are you not pushed?
• What about bloggers who rarely comment at other people’s blogs? Do you have a problem with this? If so, why?

It’s been a while since I did a links post, mainly because my time to blog hop has been curtailed of late. I managed to catch up on some of my favourite blogs this week – thank you, MIL – and an interesting week it was! Here are some posts I particularly liked:

• On the off-chance that anyone missed it, Karen Scott was threatened with legal action by Kirk Biglione, one of the four founders of the short-lived digital publisher, Quartet Press (see comment 21).
• Katiebabs has a thought-provoking post called Don’t Play in my Sandbox because You’re Not Part of the “In-Crowd”.
• I loved Jessica’s post on Feminist Critique of Romance: Ur Doin It Wrong.
• Magdalen wrote about The Reader-Author Barrier at Promantica.
• Keira Soleore has a timely (for me) post on Life’s Interfering with Life.
• Last but not least, in Urban/e Vampires, Heidenkind wonders if increased urbanisation has fuelled the current popularity of stories featuring vampires.

For those of you who celebrate Valentine’s Day, have a good one. For those of you who share my dislike of V-Day, do what the hubster and I are planning to do and gorge on nice chocolate!

Reading various tweets and posts over the past few months has made me reflect on what visitors to book review blogs want to/should know about the blogger. What makes a blog visitor trust the reviewer’s integrity? Are there factors which visitors feel are important for a blogger to disclose regarding their hobbies, professional interests, and relationships with authors/editors/publishers/agents?

I’ve compiled a list of factors which visitors might feel are important for a book review blogger to disclose, plus my thoughts on each.

Receiving ARCs or other free books from authors/publishers: I know that bloggers in the US are now legally required to disclose the receipt of ARCs, but I’d like to broaden the discussion of this issue to bloggers worldwide. Personally, I like to know if a blogger receives ARCs. Unless they only seem to award high grades to the books they review, it doesn’t affect my perception of their honesty, but I think it’s important to mention it. I’ve been around the blogs long enough to assume that the vast majority of reviewers receive ARCs, but I didn’t realise this at the beginning.

Friendships with authors/editors/publishers/agents: This, for me, is where it gets tricky. I’ve exchanged tweets with authors, plus the odd email. Does that make me their friend, or affect my ability to grade their books honestly? Not as far as I’m concerned. When reviewers are genuinely friends with an author, I don’t think they should review their books. At the very least, they should mention this fact in their review. The same applies to critique partners.

The book review blogger also writes: Once more, this factor is not straight forward, and I’m referring exclusively to those writers who are not yet published. If a review blogger has at least one completed manuscript and is actively seeking publication, but fails to mention this on her blog, I can see that this might affect visitors’ perception of her ability to review fairly. On the other hand, if the blogger has the vague notion of writing a book some day and occasionally writes a page or two, I don’t think this is relevant. And what of all the people who fall somewhere in between? Some only write during NaNoWriMo; others write regularly but don’t feel comfortable discussing their work publicly; yet others write in fits and spurts, sometimes leaving years between manuscripts.

For the record, I do write, and I have mentioned this on the blog before. I didn’t put it in my bio when I set up the blog because it never occurred to me to do so. At any rate, I was going through a writing slump at the time. I would put myself in the “in between” category of writer reviewers: I’m not at the stage of actively seeking publication, but I’ve been writing regularly and now have a critique partner. In other words, I take it seriously, but I’m not yet at the point of submitting to agents/editors.

The reviewer is a published author: I take published author book recommendations with a pinch of salt if they are of books from the same genre or subgenre in which the author writes. The cynic in me always checks to see if they share the same agent or publisher. On the other hand, I don’t see a problem in an author reviewing books from other genres. Authors, after all, are also readers.

Reviewer is  employed by an author/publisher/agent: I definitely think that the reviewer should be forthcoming with this information. As a blog visitor, I’m likely to be interested in what they have to say due to their inside knowledge of the publishing industry. If, however, they chose to conceal this from their visitors, and it somehow came out at a later stage, it would definitely have a negative impact on my perception of their honesty and integrity.

Self-proclaimed expertise on a subject: If a blogger presents themselves as an expert on a particular subject, I like them to mention their credentials. While I find the anonymous agent/editor blogs amusing, I don’t take them seriously as I have no idea whether or not they are the real deal.

Ads on blogs: I ignore ads on blogs. I understand why some bloggers choose to run them in order to cover postage costs, etc., if they run a lot of contests, or post books to other reviewers. However, I don’t care for them. (Thanks to Janet W for the reminder!)

Some Questions to Ponder:

• What factors do you think a book blogger should disclose in order to circumvent potential accusations of conflicts of interest?
• Does it alter your opinion of a reviewer when you know that they also write? (Yes, I review and I write, but I welcome honest opinions, so feel free to disagree with me.)
• Can you think of other factors which would alter your perception of a reviewer if you knew of them?

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about aspects of the online romance community that I don’t like. Rather than re-hash the same old gripes yet again, I’d like to channel Pollyanna and focus on a few things I do like.

Book recommendations: Thank you so much to everyone on Twitter and the comment thread of my recent Borders post who recommended Mary Stewart. I starting reading Nine Coaches Waiting last night and I’m in heaven. It sucked me in from the very first sentence and is shaping up to be the sort of book I know I won’t want to end. I think I can say with confidence that my reading slump is over.

Interesting Discussions: I appreciate the thought-provoking posts and comments at the various blogs I frequent. Much attention is given to the bloggers themselves, but I firmly believe the people who comment on posts are just as important in making a blog a place worth visiting. Some of those who regularly comment are themselves bloggers; others are not. All have something worthwhile to contribute to discussions.

Information: I get most of my information on upcoming releases, authors, and publishing news from book blogs and sites such as All About Romance.

Posts Which Make Me Laugh (For All The Right Reasons): Bloggers such as Mrs Giggles and Karen Knows Best have a special ability to make me spew coffee over my keyboard. Kudos also go to Katiebabs for regularly making me laugh with her excellent series of WTFuckery posts.

What do you particularly like about the online romance community?

Here are a few recent additions to my blog roll.

Nadia Lee – Nadia writes paranormal romances and also has a great blog.

Keira Soleore – Keira writes medieval and Regency romances. Her blog features an interesting mix of informative pieces on history, posts on writing, and other intelligent musings.

Courtney Milan – Courtney is a debut historical author and (former?) lawyer. She often blogs about the business side of writing and the publishing industry.

Teach Me Tonight – This blog is an oldie but a goodie. The contributors to this blog are all academics who research romance novels.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

I’m guest blogging at Borders True Romance today. I’m talking about one of my favourite childhood books, The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye. This is also the first truly romantic book I ever read and it instilled in me a lifelong love of the romance genre.

If you have a chance, please pop over and read my post.