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

Inspired by snarkhunter’s comment in our last cover snark, and clamored for by many, including me despite my own exceptionally poor OMG Bad Photoshop skillz (they are not uber uber l33t by a longshot), behold: a contest to kick off our new site design. I give you: LOL COVER SNARK!

The rules: add your LOLCoverSnark to the comments, and we’ll judge in the comment thread itself for the best of the group. You can your vote if you don’t like to comment (Hi Lurkers! Hayadoin?). Comments will close in 24 48 hours (G’day Australia!) and winners will get books and a Romance Novel magnetic poetry set for their very own.

And now, our samples, let us show you them. 

This may sound odd, but...I was looking for new fodder for cover snark, and after looking for several minutes at appalling computer-generated images, I found myself longing for simpler days--days when a woman didn’t have hair, she had tresses, and they flowed, oh how they flowed. Days when a man proclaimed his masculinity by daring to tuck his unbuttoned shirt into his belt. Days when a woman knew her place: kneeling at a man’s feet, gazing up in supplication, the froth of her skirts throwing themselves with gentle futility against his rock-hard thews.

Only one thing could assuage my hunger.

Clinch covers. Up on the chopping block this week: Avon Romance.

That’s right, kittens. Grab your panniers and set your hairspray to “Stun.”

Ahoy, mateys! The embarrassment of riches plundered from a Google search for “erotic romance” is not nearly exhausted yet, oh no! Brace yourselves, ye crew of the good ship Holy Shit What The Fuck, and man the eyewash stations.

Gemma has compiled the ultimate list of reappearances of cover art from Harlequin and Mills & Boon. I would seriously love to get a look at their art book, because some of the covers that would seem dated at first glance can be reused some years later with little problem.

Gemma says,

One of my favourite sets is:
* Marshall, Paula - Hester Waring’s Marriage
* Rowell, Patricia Frances - A Scandalous Situation
* Ames, Laurel - Besieged

The hero has a freekin’ eyepatch on the cover of Besieged (as per the plot) which is not present on the other covers. Was the eyepatch in the original artwork and removed for the other books, or vice versa?!

I’m partial to the title of Pianka, Phyllis Taylor’s book The Tart Shoppe, The #3 book in the Harlequin Regency line. But my favorite cover from Gemma’s astonishing collection? This one.

Two words: “Thundercats. Ho.”

From the “Someone Alert a Grant-Bestowing Organization STAT” department, we have Mary Behr’s art in progress that mixes CraigsList missed connection posts with vintage Harlequin covers:

In the form of stickers, these mash-ups are then reintroduced to the public by placement in a subway car, not incidentally the site of many of these “missed connections.

I love the Missed Connections section of CraigsList, to be honest. Some of them are beyond creepy, but every so often there’s reassurance that in a sea of people who don’t seem to notice they are surrounded by thousands of other people, sometimes, someone is watching, sees you, and wonders. In a non-creepy way.