Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

You! Yes, YOU! You need to read this hilarious piece Beth wrote about romance novels and nookie. Like NOW. Because it will make you laugh until you plotz.

And now for an Unnecessary Personal Revelation: romance novels never elevated any expectations I might’ve had about how good orgasms were going to be because uh, well, I was having orgasms years and years before I picked up a romance novel. Let’s just say I was very curious, very young about my body. What I DID expect, though, based on what I learned in romance novels, was copious amounts of blood and massive, tearing pain when I lost my virginity. Which, of course, didn’t happen at all. It wasn’t fireworks, and the earth didn’t move, but neither did I need to be rushed into the ER for 25 stitches and a blood transfusion like what I was half-expecting. So hey, at least my surprise was pleasant!

Addendum: Oh, and I was so excited I forgot to note that the entry was created in honor of Smart Bitches Day, a day so decreed by Beth. Holy shit. Sarah and I get our very own day. ROCK!

And he’s updated his reader submissions page! Go check it out now--some of them are as good as the ones Longmire came up with himself.

One of the readers had this stunning insight into romance novels:

As a female, I think the vast majority of romance novels are total garbage that are as formulaic as their covers.  They are ridiculously anachronistic - in fact they wouldn’t exist if not for anachronisms.  It always amazes me when I find out that anybody I consider half-way intelligent considers bodice ripper romances to be well written.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong in reading overwrought pseudo-historical lite porn - just admit that that’s all it is.

Anyone else think the lady doth protest too much?

Dropped by the Confessions of a Would-Be Writer and saw this link to an absolutely hilarious page filled with PhotoShopped romance novel covers.

I have the day off today. I’m wondering how much time I have to waste before I need to get cracking on stuff like laundry, lunch and cat litterboxes. Because Lord knows I have books on my shelves begging for the same treatment.

Kath Rothwell was running a review contest, and she had a link to Bad Press: The Worst Critical Reviews Ever! on her blog. Which started me thinking about one of my favorite non-fiction pieces of all time, Mark Twain’s “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences.” It’s exactly what the title sounds like: Twain uses his considerable wit and talent to rip James Fenimore Cooper a new one. Actually, several new ones. Even if you enjoy Cooper’s novels (like I do), chances are you’ll laugh until you wheeze. A few years ago I read it aloud to The Very Tall Husband (back then just The Very Tall Boyfriend) while we were on a long roadtrip, and he laughed so hard he almost ran the car off the road. A quick Google revealed that the essay is available in full on-line, so for those of you have haven’t read it yet through Kate’s blog entry, here it is again. If you’re reading this at work, try not to have a seizure while giggling, especially when you come to the part about the Cooper Indians.

Here is a preview bit of snarkage, which isn’t quite as funny as the bit with the Indians, but comes pretty close:

Cooper’s gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn’t step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn’t satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can’t do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

Mark Twain: One smart asshole. We bow down to thy altar, O Great Clemens.

I mentioned the Manolo in my babbling below, and this is the first thing I saw when I checked his site out after submitting my entry:

http://manoloshoes.blogspot.com/2005/03/cover-of-bad-romance-novel.html

Eerie. And also: terrifying. The thought of both Kirstie Alley and Fabio on a romance novel cover is painful enough to make a hardened man cry. And isn’t that picture one of the signs of the impending apocalypse in the Book of Revelations? Something about “beware the thighs of thunder bedecked in chartreuse satin for it hideth not only the marks of the stretch but also the mark of the beast”?