What do these things have in common?
* The Science of Kissing
* The Argument For and Against Romance Bond Mates
Way back in early 2008, Time Magazine’s cover story explored the science of romance. I saved the article as I knew I could one day write about it in a column at AAR. When I read Lora Leigh’s Dawn’s Awakening a few months later, the opportunity jumped out.
For the uninitiated, the book is part of her long-running Breeds series. The Breeds were created in inhumane laboratories by The Council, a large group of greedy men working with unscrupulous scientists to create the ultimate warrior through experiments combining the DNA of humans and animals such as a lions, cougars, wolves, and coyotes. The purpose of many of the experiments was to insure the procreation of the Breeds. In this, The Council failed. It was only after the Breeds began to escape and to couple up with life mates that they discovered a limited fertility, one which they keep secret to protect themselves against recapture by those on The Council who were not imprisoned by the government.
At the end of Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) is shocked that Eliza (Audrey Hepburn) is such an ungrateful guttersnipe as to leave him after all he’s done for her. He wonders “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” before looking for her at his mother’s house. The delightful Cathleen Nesbitt as Mrs. Higgins gives him a set-down, to which he responds, “Do you mean to say that I’m to put on my Sunday manners for this thing that I created out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden?” He doesn’t like her answer in the affirmative, but the visit unnerves him enough that on his way home he performs “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” which is by turns loving and defiant. Not long thereafter, as he listens to an audio recording of himself, Colonel Pickering, and Eliza, she returns to him, resplendent in a pink confection. He asks in a hopeful, wondering tone, “Eliza?” True to himself in the end, though he’s clearly relieved and happy, he delivers the film’s last line: “Where the devil are my slippers?”
When I worked at the bookstore, I once helped set up a “thought-provoking read” table, and to my surprise, a book by erotic romance author 
A close friend of mine lives in Vermont. I met her at a castle in the Berkshires while she and her family lived in New York. Many months after we became friends, the two of us discovered we have similar taste in books. Sometimes when I pass along what I consider a great discovery, she’s already discovered the author. Mostly, though, my friend is excited to discover my new discoveries. And since we are both Kindle fanatics, when I learned earlier this month that five of 
Earlier this month the writer Lev Grossman wrote a piece for Time entitled 
Rhyannon Byrd
When I talked to Megan about my 
OMG!
Imagine being forcibly turned into a werewolf. Worse, imagine being treated by your pack as the lowest of the low.
Last week, I found a recent copy of Cosmopolitan in the den; such is life when daughters come home from college for the summer. The largest headline screamed 75 Sex Moves Men Crave; naturally, that was the article I first turned to after picking up the magazine.
The video clip below comes towards the end of Auntie Mame, which features my most favorite cinematic Interfering Relative of all time. After spending a horrible weekend at her nephew Patrick’s prospective in-laws, Mame invites Patrick’s betrothed and the young woman’s parents to a cocktail party at her Manhattan apartment. The entire event runs like clockwork as far as auntie is concerned. By evening’s end she’s shown her beloved nephew precisely what his locked-jaw fiancé and her parents are made of: a whole lot of prejudiced pretension signifying nothing. Not only that, she’s managed to introduce Patrick to her new secretary Pegeen, a woman who takes Mame’s madcap, progressive lifestyle in stride. By the end of the movie, of course, Patrick and Pegeen have married and had a son, whom Mame plans to take under her wing as she did with Patrick.
The writers I most like to read exhibit strong storytelling abilities, develop their characters and relationships in an engrossing manner, and weave it all together through well-crafted writing. That’s a tall order, quite frankly, and I’ve often said I would rather read an interesting story that isn’t particularly well written to one that features exquisite writing yet reads as deadly dull. Today’s argument isn’t going to compare and contrast story telling and the craft of writing, though. Instead I want to talk about storytelling and character.
Kristina Douglas
The just-released Black Magic Woman is the 11th book in 
