Alaskan Adventure: the Cover Vote

You long-term readers of the blog will note that I have a group of friends from college who occasionally go on "Super Special" adventures. This is where we meet up for an event that involves travel and hijinks. For those of you former Baby-Sitters Club fans, we totally stole the "Super Special" idea from them.

For a history on my college friends (and why we're called the GISP) you can visit this previous post. (Bonus! The post shows me in my wedding dress, because my nuptials were Super Special #1.) In the post, I also promised to share pictures from Super Special #2: Alaskan Adventure. Fool that I am, I promised to share those pictures in a timely fashion.

Clearly, that hasn't happened... nor is it going to this moment.

Rather, I need your vote. I have two potential Super Special covers (because yes, we like to pretend that our vacations are books). I also have one gratuitously posed picture. Yes! You can click on them to make them bigger.

Which do you think would make an excellent Super Special cover? And while we're on the subject of covers... anyone have a cover you love, or a cover you love to hate? All the better if it's a BSC book!

#1: Gratuitous Posing

#2 Copper River
#3 Rafting Near Glaciers

Going Way Back

A few days ago I returned to Seattle after visiting my past. I took Big Boy and Miss Bossy Boots to Cincinnati's Kings Island Amusement Park where I worked in the summer of 1990. I hadn't been there in twenty years, and the day transported me like a vintage Michael J. Fox movie. Miss Boots took this picture of me posed in front of the mirrored windows of the "fancy" park restaurant where I once waitressed. In the picture I'm trying to explain to a four-year old how long ago "twenty" is.

Many books or authors evoke a general time for me, the eighties or college or my California years, but some make me think of a specific point in my life. West with the Night by Beryl Markham resonated for me in 1993 after I jumped from the East to West Coast.

A recent plea for help identifying a book by a few plot elements at the Smart Bitches website led to a long thread about various way-old romances and someone mentioned Jennifer Blake. BOOM I was back in the mid-eighties in Ohio in my light grey bedroom with geometric black and red accents (red rubberized picture frames, I kid you not), reading Royal Seduction. Does anyone else remember Rolfe, Prince of Ruthenia, and Angeline? Perhaps you recall the feather scene? Or the back cover text, "Angeline, awakened to sensuality, was not entirely unwilling to be his captive!" Well, yearn no more - it's being reissued by Sourcebooks on August 3. Now I can shed twenty years for $7.99 instead of the price of a plane ticket to Ohio. (Mr. Richland, if you are reading this, you have an idea for a birthday present.)

Anything outrageous - songs, music, a food, a Wa-dog with cheese - that takes you back in time?

I [Heart] The Olympics

I misplaced the Valentine I vaguely remember buying at the grocery store for my husband and haven't bothered to look for it. My husband gave me a card at breakfast Monday. Our romantic dinner February 14th consisted of potstickers and onion cakes shared with our children off styrofoam plates. Lunch was hot dogs and Klondike bars. That added up to the absolutely best Valentine's Day ever. Ever ever ever.

This week isn't about hearts, flowers, or chocolate in the Richland household. It's about - and I need to yell this at the top of my lungs - the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics! We spent Valentine's Day in Vancouver sitting on a metal bench watching USA vs. China women's hockey. True love, Olympic-fan style.

I believe winter sports and romance go hand in hand. Did you see the kiss between Canada's Alex Bilodeau and his girlfriend when he won Canada's first goal medal of the games? Or the amazing skating of husband and wife Chinese pair Shen and Zhao? She supposedly laid down the law, "no wedding, no Olympics." And while we're okay skipping cards and flowers here, I admit Mr. Richland's romance prospects would not be improved if he rhapsodized over my "quadzilla thighs" like cross-country skier Sara Renner does over her alpine skier husband.

For those few still missing the connection between the fleece and goretex-clad crowd and romance, I present my final evidence: Rob Fagan, Canadian Olympic snowboarder, age 33. He competes today (Feb 15) so watch and cheer. You can see several of his teammates here. Well worth a cheer.

Over the years we've taken our children ice-skating, skiing, tubing, sledding and curling. Watching Big Boy make a slow wedge turn on skis, watching my husband skate backwards in a crouch while pulling Miss Bossy Boots, watching both kids play street hockey with full-size sticks twice their height, watching them act out curling matches with Playmobil toys, this all fills me with love. And that's so much more Valentine's Day than some dorky grocery store greeting card I can't find anyway.

Does anyone else love the Winter Olympics like I do? Or have any Olympic-themed romances they can share? Post a comment and then go cheer for Lindsey Jacobellis in Women's Snowboard Cross on Tuesday, Feb. 16. She's looking for a second chance, like so many romance characters. Here's to her happy ending!

The Armchair Traveller

Thanks to Marg at Reading Adventures, I found this cool map feature that let's you plot all the countries you've "visited"-- in real life or through the pages of a book. I like seeing where my reading has taken me (and where I need to read more), as I take off on another real-life trip. Looks like South America could be next up for me--in life and literature! Why don't you do your own?



create your own visited country map

London is for Lovers!

As July slips away into August (and takes with it my hopes for a productive summer), I'm doing the only sensible thing-- getting out of this NYC heat and heading to the UK with my beloved.

My first visit back to England in a decade (after spending a year living in the Midlands) is doing triple duty. I'll be presenting a paper on one of my research interests at an academic conference. I'll be celebrating two years of marriage with a nice vacation. And I'll be jotting down notes on Regency architecture and style and London street layouts for my novel-writing.

Of course, a London trip calls for some London-centric reading. I've got David Copperfield and Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies on hand to provide some nineteenth- and twentieth-century London flavor. But what about the twenty-first? Any of our readers up for a possibly impossible task?

Which London-set romance novel should I bring with me on this decidedly lit-geeky trip? The novel should be set primarily or exclusively in London. And ideally the city would feature prominently as an essential element of the book--a few references to Almacks here and Covent Garden there won't cut it. (This, clearly, negates most of Julia Quinn's Bridgerton books from the running. Sadly, my own London-set Then Comes Marriage doesn't fit the bill either).

Expect some lovely London shots after I get back.