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

Submitted by Katie Dickson

Jean Auel’s first novel in the series, Clan of the Cave Bear, was recommended to me by my uncle when I was just starting high school. He gave it to me with a warning. “Um,” he said, “I started to read the rest of the books, but they got kind of romance-novel-ish.” He was clearly embarrassed. “The sequels are kind of smutty.”

Telling a young lady that the book she is about to read is not only good but contains plenty of sex is like handing a young man a Playboy. I immediately checked out each Earth’s Children novel from my local library.

Earth’s Children should be divided into two categories: Cave Bear and everything else. Cave Bear is a marvelous experiment, richly detailed and researched and endlessly fascinating. The main character, blonde Homo sapien Ayla, is adopted by a pack of Neanderthals (called Flat-Heads by humans) and must learn to survive first among the group and then on her own. Talk about female empowerment! Ayla follows the classic romance novel heroine pattern: she’s buxom, blonde, had a tough childhood, is great with animals, a natural healer, and is in possession of a Magical Vajayjay. She also has a pet lion.

Unfortunately for the plot (great for Ayla, bad for readers), in book two (Valley of Horses) she discovers cunnilingus in the form of Jondalar, a Brad Pitt wannabe with a huge schlong. Jondalar lives to hunt, eat out, and stick his penis into things. From then on, the Earth’s Children series reads like a summation of past events sprinkled with technical sexual how-tos. It’s not too much of a stretch to say Valley of Horses was the first erotica I ever read.

Props go to Auel for the way the build-up is handled. Readers get parallel points of view, with every other chapter from either Ayla’s or Jondalar’s perspective. As cookie-cutter as both the characters seem to be, there is a little depth to be found in these pages, as Jondalar roams across the known world in search of a wife. In the process, he goes down on lots and lots of women, and Ayla tames animals and learns to be self-sufficient. She also basically invents modern hunting. Not too shabby!

Auel is guilty of breaking the Golden Rule of sex scenes: use them to move the story forward or develop the characters, or don’t use them at all. A few of the sex scenes are helpful, necessary, even, in understanding her characters; most are simply fluff. “Smut,” as my uncle said. But what fantastic smut!

I must have read Valley of Horses a dozen times. Even now, the book falls open precisely to the chapters full of the purplest prose. Taken as a whole, Valley of Horses—and its subsequent sequels—is a fairly boring read, tedious and full of irritating adjectives. But if you read it for the good stuff, you won’t be disappointed. And at the age of fourteen or so, I couldn’t get enough.

Submitted by Aileen

I found this book when I was working as a bookseller and a customer requested it. I immediately bought a copy for myself and for any future children in my life.

Mommy Laid an Egg is a picture book designed to explain sex to children. When the parents in the book decide to tell their kids where babies come from, they spout off many of the myths we tell children. The kids in the book find these stories hysterical, and sit their parents down for a conversation about how things really work. The book stays honest and fairly simple, and explains sex within what I consider an appropriate range for younger kids (obviously, many people do not agree.) The illustrations are wonderfully whimsical, especially as Cole draws the kids drawing diagrams for their parents. The page that sticks with me most is the one that has something to do with multiple positions Mommy and Daddy can use when making a baby.

While the book doesn’t use the correct anatomical language, it is a simple explanation of how babies are made that is appropriate for the 4 to 8 year-old set. It fills a niche in the market. Should I have children, this book will be a must in their library.

Submitted by Stephanie Gayle

I read Ordinary People as part of my “I’m only reading novels from the 1970s” research kick. This book, thank god, did not represent a literary low in that decade. I found myself so embroiled in the family’s drama that I’d find myself muttering, “This mother is a monster!” and look up for confirmation. That’s something in short supply when you’re reading in your room alone. Ahem. 

The book is about the Jarret family (mother: Beth, father: Cal, son: Conrad) and their struggle to survive the aftermath of Conrad’s recent suicide attempt. We learn surprisingly late in the book that there was another brother, Buck, who died in a boating accident. Conrad was also in the accident and has survivor’s guilt. It’s interesting how little space is devoted to the accident or the dead brother.  We get it all as flashback and aftereffects.  I thought the author relied too much on the reader too supply the back story. But had she shoved it down my throat, I’d also complain. Picky, picky!

The mother and father enjoy a social prominence and easy lifestyle that would be easy to make two-dimensional, but the author, by and large, avoids this.  Cal is obsessed with his wife and she comes across a bit as a showpiece until we see her in action. Man, has this lady got issues.  She discourages any talk of her son’s suicide attempt and resents the attention her husband lavishes on him. The husband drinks quite a bit and is constantly checking on Conrad, anxious to keep his son intact.  The affection balance in the house is seriously off kilter.  Conrad spends a lot of time thinking: about his time in the hospital, about his friends, about pressure from his swim coach.  His thoughts seemed to me quite real.  Throughout the book he begins healing with the help of his psychiatrist Dr. Berger (who is a master shrink in the manner of Good Will Hunting’s head doctor).

Why banned?  Because it deals with the topic of teenage suicide. WTF? Oh, these folks must subscribe to the “if kids can’t read about a subject than they can’t imagine it or reenact it” school of thought.  If that were true I’d gladly give up reading accounts of atrocities like genocide, rape, and worldwide food shortages. But that isn’t how it works and if I remember anything about my teenage years (besides the tragic spiral perm) it’s that teenagers think and talk about suicide, rather a lot.  Giving them a book that portrays the subject with some sensitivity and insight isn’t the world’s worst idea. (Again, that would be my spiral perm).

Submitted by Jessica

There are a handful of truly beautiful books from my young adulthood, and THE GOATS by Brock Cole is one of them. I was very surprised to find this YA novel on the banned books list. I can still read this book today and feel all of the pleasure and loveliness of a wonderful book, having lost nothing in the 13 years since I first read it. It is still as sweet and solemn and kindhearted and hopeful as it was when I first opened the book and discovered a writer and a pair of protagonists who spoke so strongly to me.

The loveliness of this little novel lies in the spare, fluid writing and in the two main characters, Laura Golden and Howie Mitchell, whose friendship in the book is perfect. Laura and Howie are both miserable inmates at a summer camp while their parents have better things to do, leaving them to suffer the cruel tricks of the other campers. Laura is considered “a real dog” by the boys in the camp, and Howie is considered a wimpy geeky nerd. They both sit at the bottom of the preteen hierarchy, and they both know it.

When the two of them are stranded naked on a small island in the camp lake as a practical joke by the other campers, Laura and Howie decide that they won’t stay to be humiliated when the other kids come back to bring them home. Instead, they escape from the island, steal clothes from some sunbathers on a beach, and decide to disappear completely.

The friendship that grows and blooms between these two very likable and sympathetic characters is just wonderful. They’re basically strangers to one another when they’re put on the island, and as they escape and go off on an adventure together, their friendship slowly and steadily forms and unfolds into something rare. These two social outcasts are so dedicated to one another, so kind to one another, helping each other survive the horrors of pre-adolescence with dignity and understanding. Laura’s mother is a frazzled divorcee; Howie’s parents are extremely busy archaeologists who don’t know what to do with him. They’re both only children, lonely and forgotten—until they meet each other.

Really, it’s a platonic romance novel. Laura and Howie are soulmates. I wish more adult novels could portray the beautiful friendship in this unprepossessing Young Adult novel. I think so many people long for connection, for understanding and true friendship, the constant kind. It’s always a delight to find a book which portrays just this sort of connection and friendship, and the joy of finding someone who makes you believe that you’ll be okay, that you’re not alone. It is so invaluable.

Really, THE GOATS is such a wonderful story. I’m shocked that it’s on the banned books list. This book was so strong and special to me as a kid. I’m sorry to think someone else might miss out on it, because an adult somewhere thought parts of it were naughty or wrong. How sad. 

Reviewed by Erastes

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beautious mankind is!
O brave new world
That has such people in’t!”

Miranda.  The Tempest Act V, Scene I:

I first read this book at least 35 years ago and at the time it was very much “science fiction” but Huxley was well ahead of his time; He took the hints of his own world (this was written in 1932) such as recreational drugs, sexual freedoms and mass manufacturing and did what good spec-fic writers do - pushed them into the future and imagined what the consequences of them would be.

Huxley’s Brave New World is a faux-Utopia (The World State) where the populace is controlled. They are grown in vitro, raised in specialist nurseries and they are both “natured and nurtured” to fit into their place in society and the work they do. Humans are graded from Alpha to Epsilon, and everyone’s happy to be the grade they are, due to successful brain washing.

I’m so glad I’m a Beta.....Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able …”

Happiness is given out in the form of Soma, a recreational drug. Sex is freely available. No-one marries, no-one gives birth.

But there IS an outside to this world, reservations where people live “natural” lives, giving birth and living off the land and are treated like a tourist attraction. While on a date there, Mustapha Mond, (who is an Alpha, but seems to be imperfect - doesn’t really fit in) - discovers Linda - an “insider” who was left outside 20 years ago and now she has a son.  In a King Kong manner the boy, John “Savage” is brought into the perfect world that he’s heard so much about from his mother.  As you can imagine this does not go well, as he’s as about as well equipped for living in such a world as Kong was for living in captivity.  John’s reactions to the World State are gradually more and more violent as he attempts to get the people there what shallow empty lives they lead.

An amazing book, terrifying and, in these days of recreational drugs, mass manufacturing, and dependence on large cities, it still remains a great and unsettling mirror of society.  It makes you truly wonder what Miranda would have made of the real world, once she had stepped off Prospero’s Island.  Huxley obviously didn’t think she would last long.