Sewing on Saturday night with Sylvain Reynard

I'm sewing again. I'm currently tracing out Jalie 2796 (the multisport skirt). it looks like a fun pattern! I'm hoping that sewing these garments will help inspire a more active fitness routine.

I've gotten in to the habit of listening to audiobooks while sewing or doing things around my apartment. By total random choice, I borrowed the book Gabriel's Inferno by Sylvain Reynard from the library. Apparently it's part of a series. Has anyone in Blogland heard of these books before? Is this fiction in the genre of 50 shades of Gray or post-Twilight? I haven't read the Gray or Twilight series.

I selected it from the list of newly acquired audiobooks. I'm enjoying the story--I would describe it as a throwback to Harlequin Presents novels (circa 1980's), complete with the ultra mysterious, but wealthy Alpha male, the meek heroine (frequently compared to a rabbit), a charming beta male, and bitchy other woman, mixed with some accurate observations about classics (it takes place in a Humanities graduate studies department in exotic Toronto. I've been to Toronto and I love that city). I've been listening Dante's Inferno while driving to work and I keep cracking up and laughing because the dynamics are highly similar to a Harlequin (AKA Mills & Boon) romance--I read so many of these novels in junior high school, so I find it highly amusing to hear the narrator talk about chewed lips, expensive cars, a scowling heros who interrogates the heroine frequently about her meal habits and "whose expression hardens" the heroine disagrees with him. I am taking care to drive slowly and carefully so I don't get in to an accident. And with all the chewed lips, I'm using a lot of lip balm.

I see that BBC 2 is starting a new competion series called Great Sew Off. I see several familiar names from the internet sewing world. I hope that the series migrates to US television somehow. I saw a little bit of the Bake-Off series when I was in London and I thought it was a lot of fun.