by SB Sarah • Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 06:55 AM
There have been a few reviews published this week on The Jewel of Medina. USA Today was hardly complimentary, and the New York Times was so sniffy I’m suspecting nasal spray was involved.
But I’m handing out penalties to the Times and to writer Lorraine Adams, because there are some serious flags on the play in her review.
Illegal Procedure, 10 yard penalty for the following quote:
Spellberg’s characterization of “The Jewel of Medina” as soft porn doesn’t hold up, since the language describing A’isha and Muhammad’s conjugal relations is always euphemistic and most often juvenile. The novel is, in fact, an example of that subspecies of genre fiction, “historical romance.” Yet even judged by that standard, Jones’s prose is lamentable.
Subspecies?! Judged by that standard? Oh, holy shit. I’ve got some standards right here, and you’re not meeting them.
Unsportsmanlike conduct, 15 yard penalty, loss of down, for uncalled-for ruminations as to whether Jones’ book is “art” and worthy of defense of free-speech advocates:
Should free-speech advocates champion “The Jewel of Medina”? In the American context, the answer is unclear. The Constitution protects pornography and neo-Nazi T-shirts, but great writers don’t generally applaud them. If Jones’s work doesn’t reach those repugnant extremes, neither does it qualify as art. It is telling that PEN, the international association of writers that works to advance literature and defend free expression, has remained silent on the subject of this novel. Their stance seems just about right.
It’s not art, and it’s not repugnant, either, so it’s not worthy of defense as free speech? Are you fucking KIDDING me?! Free speech is worth getting up off the couch for only when it’s truly vile or truly marvelous?
Here’s some free speech for you: Shut the fuck up.
[Thanks to Stacey and Barb Ferrer for the links.]
by SB Sarah • Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 12:02 AM
I love silliness. Specifically, the Uncycopedia’s definition of a romance novel. My top faves:
A good cover must be able to instantly quell the buyer’s instinctive urge to ponder “Do I really need to read another one of these books?”
Wow. I’m amazingly susceptible because I acquire new romance more often than I acquire food.
It at once probes the dewy moistness of plot, while it throbs with purpose, knowing no bounds in which its authors will stop to please and sate their gentle reader....
Martin shed all of his declensions. But she could not help it but to stare as this splendid vulgar Latin shed his cases. The nominative, accusative, and ablative cases were tossed upon the floor with an insouciance. With egality, fraternity, and liberty, Martin discarded the last of his genetive and dative cases.
SNORT.
But, alas, I could have done without R’shaun and Q’tana. I can think of some much less awful captions.
And since I love silliness, in honor of Carleen Brice’s National Buy A Book By A Black Author And Give It To Somebody Not Black Month I’m going to make that cover over and undo some of the not-at-all-latent racism inherent in the caption.
So how about…
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 09:33 AM
Want some hilarious holiday reading? Start here and enjoy The Italian Gourmet Baby Food Baron’s Ironically Pregnant Virgin Mistress.
A new author will be adding on each day for the next eight. Bring it on, ladies!
[Thanks to Carrie Lofty for the link.]
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 07:23 AM
In one small article on the AP newswire, and one giant rumble in the world of publishing, Borders is going to order books from HarperStudio with the agreement that they will not be returned. Under the decades-old arrangement, similar to consignment shopping, bookstores order titles with little risk. If those titles don’t sell, they send them back to the publisher for full credit AND without paying shipping charges. The publisher takes the books back, then often returns them to the bookstores at a discount for bargain shoppers.
[Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in my synopsis of the WTF that is the relationship between bookstores and publishers.]
HarperStudio, if your memory is like mine (muddy and often confused), is the imprint at HarperCollins that aims to reduce author advances and follow a profit sharing model instead. The Wall Street Journal quotes HarperStudio chief:
“Returns have never made sense in our business, and with the recent economic downturn, publishers and booksellers are more open than before to experimenting with models that might decrease waste and increase profit,” said Robert Miller, president and publisher of HarperStudio. When he started the imprint earlier this year, Mr. Miller said he intended to shake up traditional book-publishing economics.
So, on one hand: safe bets on sales from established or known money makers for profit-sharing model. On the other hand: isn’t it about time that a different sales model was approached in the book business aside from the severely flawed “consignment” model?
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 01:31 AM
Clap your hands, everybody… everybody clap your hands! We’re Lambda Lambda Lambda, and Omega Mu! And we’ve come here on stage tonight, to do this show for you....
Ladies and gentlemen, the hottest Math professor reviewing romance: DocTurtle is back! This time, with Georgette Heyer’s An Infamous Army, chapters 1-3.
Part 1: Chapters 1 through 3
Well, folks, it’s time I moved onto the second book on my SBTB-assigned reading list, Georgette Heyer’s classic historical romance novel An infamous army, described by the cover as “a novel of love, war, Wellington, and Waterloo.”
Waterloo...I’m finally facing my Waterloo…
To the contrary, I don’t feel bested or beaten, and I’m heading into this new assignment with alacrity: it should be more up my alley than the contemporary category romance y’all inflicted on me before. It did take finding a good half hour of uninterrupted reading time to get into the first chapter of this next novel, but since I gained a bit of traction, the going’s been smooth so far.
As I did for my last read, I’ll do my best to keep up with the liveblogging, offering folks on both Smart Bitches and Judge a Book chapter-by-chapter accounts that include my favorite phrases and my insights on the characters’ actions and motives. Without any more flim-flam or foofaraw, then, let’s head into
Chapter 1. In which every soul in Brussels is enumerated, one by one
It is Brussels, early in 1815. The Congress at Vienna has just, unshockingly, declared Napoleon an outlaw. Half of the British peers living in Belgium have assembled in the Earl of Worth’s drawing room to make confusing cross-talk on the political and military goings-on.
Sorting out who’s saying what in this Tolstoyesque opening chapter made it hard to find a foothold. What can be surmised from the start is
1. The Duke of Wellington is pretty much God,
2. Ms. Heyer’s professed fears of being compared to Thackeray (whose Vanity fair also centers in part on Napoleon’s final campaign) are unfounded; their writing styles are entirely dissimilar, and
3. Ms. Heyer loved her some exclamation points. You’d swear these people are a hundred feet apart from one another for all the yelling they’re doing.
Aside from the first page’s careful description of a buxom Belgian babe strutting down the sidewalk and Lady Worth’s marriage-minded connivance at the chapter’s close, you wouldn’t at all suspect this is a “romance” novel.
Chapter 2. Heyer swipes Austen
If the first chapter read like the first of War and peace, the second reads more like Pride and prejudice. There’s even mention of a Darcy (Philip, no relation, presumably). This chapter exists mostly to introduce two no-doubt-soon-to-be-rival love interests, Lucy Devenish and Barbara “Bab” Childe.
In this chapter Lady Judith Worth leads her young charge Lucy Devenish to a party at Lady Charlotte Greville’s, where a startling and gasp-making entrance is made by the widow Lady Barbara Childe (who, if one must compare Heyer to Thackeray, one might consider the Becky Sharp to Lucy’s Amelia Sedley). Got that?
Said Lady Barbara appears sporting (quel horreur!) gold-painted toenails. Lady Sarah Lennox, Lady Worth’s bosom companion remarks, “she learned that trick in Paris, of course.”
Ah, those decadent French people.
Chapter 3. Enter the Duke
Another day, another ball.
As if we’d not yet had our fill of British peerage, we’re now introduced to Colonel Charles Audley, Judith Worth’s brother, who serves on the Duke of Wellington’s personal staff. He’s just flown in from Vienna, and boy are his epauletted arms tired.
“I got in last night, too late to knock you up,” he tells his sister. Hee hee! Truly this is one of my favorite divergences between British and American slang.
A few pages later and we find ourselves at the Hotel de Ville, site of a tremendous ball at which will appear the King and Queen of Netherlands, their sons (including William, the Prince of Orange and for the time being the commander of the British Forces in the Low Countries), and most importantly of all, the Duke of Wellington, a man whose appearance may as well be as shoddy as Lieutenant Columbo’s, for all the pains Heyer takes to place his garb in the shadow of the other officers’. The Duke shows his amiability by shaking a few hands and slapping a few backs...were there babies to be kissed, he’d have seen to that as well.
The romantic plot creeps forward and inch or two when Audley, to Judith Worth’s chagrin, looks beyond young Lucy and is struck upside the head (and in other parts, too, no doubt) by Bab’s scandalously-low-cut beauty.
The plot thickens! No sex yet, though. Unless you’re a foot fetishist with a thing for Bab’s gold-plated toes.
