Now that a couple days have passed since the end of RWA (and I’ve gotten a couple full nights of sleep), it’s time to start unpacking the experience. But only the experience—my suitcase can just stay over on that loveseat for a couple more days. After all, clothes, you’re just going to go into the laundry anyway. Why waste precious steps on transporting you to the laundry hamper, when you could just go straight into the machine? Which is where you will go any day now. 

So here, in no particular order (because let’s be real now—a particular order is several days out at least) are my thoughts.

Welcome back to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, we are looking at the ten authors who I own the most books by.

I'm not sure what the list represents; while it has some of my favorite authors, it certainly doesn't represent all of my favorite authors. It doesn't even represent all of my favorite series. Mostly, it seems to be a list of the longest series I've read.  

As some of you know, Diana and I spent the last week at the Romance Writers of America National Conference. We met some amazing women and can't wait to share everything we learned. Here are some of our favorite quotes:

Title: Rogue With A Brogue
Author: Suzanne Enoch
Publication Info: St. Martin’s Press, July 29, 2014
ISBN: 1250041619
Genre: Romance, Historical

Overall Grade: A-

The Flavor: Georgette Heyer meets Diana Gabaldon

The Short Version: Sweet, romantic, and filled with spark and snap, Rogue With a Brogue is a very pleasant way to spend a summer afternoon.

And another week bites the dust…

This week at Common Novel Rachel reviewed Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King, we talked about our favorite movies and television shows, I started checking off sub-sub-genres on the Seattle Public Library’s Romance Genre Checklist, and we designed the perfect X-Men Date Night. Next week is going to be a little different around here—Rachel and I are both heading to the Romance Writers of American conference in San Antonio, so blog content is going to be a little unpredictable.

Link Time!

It was a big week for Marvel news! The company released images of a new, female Thor, and, predictably, a lot of people on twitter had Thoughts. Personally, I think she looks great—although apparently any armor that was actually shaped to her breasts like that would cause serious issues. 

Remember those book lists that schools send children home with at the end of the school year? There’s something about a summer reading list that still calls to me—so when Dear Author brought the Seattle Public Library’s Romance Genre Checklist to my attention, I was intrigued.

The list separates the genre into Contemporary, Historical, Paranormal, Inspirational, Romantic Suspense, Young Adult, New Adult, and “Other;” and then breaks the categories down even more. What, I wondered, are the characteristics of the Contemporary (Tattooed) sub-sub-genre? What about Romantic Suspense (Steampunk)? And finally, finally a chance to dig into Inspirational Romance (Amish). 

Alright, Seattle Public Library. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

So here’s how it’s going to work: every week, Common Novel will be running a new post on a romance sub-genre. In that post, I’ll be finding and discussing books that check off each sub-sub-genre on the list, all the way from Contemporary (Straight) to Other (Time Travel). And since I’ve been trying to get into Paranormal Romance for a while, I’m starting there.