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

Rainbow Party arrived in the mail yesterday, so OF COURSE I had to abandon the book I was reading and latch onto this bit of teenybopper smut, just to see what all the big fuss is about. And you know what?

Dude. Seriously? The people who are all squawking because of the premise should be HAPPY about this book because the girl who’s organizing the rainbow party is portrayed as a total slutty bitchrag and you just know she’s going to Come To No Good, and the good guys are just nauseatingly sweet about their purity. I mean, this is pretty obviously a cautionary tale. If anything, my objection is that the characters are not nearly nuanced enough and the morality just a bit too strident for my tastes. Am I asking too much from a YA novel? I don’t think so. Judy Blume, for one, did a marvellous job creating nuanced, complex characters who tackled difficult subjects in her YA novels.

I’m only about 75 pages in, though, and I have about 170 more to go. Hopefully more subtlety will be injected into the book soon, though I’m not really holding my breath. Will get a review up as soon as I finish it.

And quite possibly it’s better than Sarah’s birthday as well. Not for Sarah, of course, because she’s not quite the rabid Laura Kinsale fangirl I am. But courtesy of Beth, Slayer of Foley and Guardian of Thunderpussy, I just found out that Laura Kinsale has finished her latest manuscript.

And Beth? She gets to read it. Apparently she’s one of Kinsale’s beta readers. I am so green with envy right now, I can’t even tell you. I passed “avocado” about 15 minutes ago and am headed with alarming rapidity towards “deep forest green.”

Goddammit. How does one get hooked up with such a sweet gig? I wonder if Satan is interested in what few scraps of soul I have left....

Hear ye, hear ye: Today’s Smart Bitch Sarah’s birthday, yayyyy!

Everyone: leave the most creative birthday greeting you can in the comments. Profanity welcome.

I’ll start, and hell, since I’ve offended the conservative Christians already, I’m-a gonna go for pissing off any and all PC police in the audience too:

Happy birthday, Sarah, you magnificent bitch. May the cake be plentiful and delicious, may the birthday presents kick ass, and may the birthday sex be so good that you wake up all your new neighbors and scare the wildlife for miles around. (Yeah, that’s right, show Angelina and Brad how it’s really done.) I’m so glad I found you back in 2002 when I was Googling for cat food recipes and found your blog entry about Fukui’s and Ohta’s foul kibble-fueled shits. You’re one of my favorite Hebes.

Love,

Uppity Godless Chink

For those of you who don’t know yet: HelenKay and Wendy Duren have teamed up for the ultimate in eeeeeville: Another honest romance novel review site. BWAHAHAHAHA. Anyway, go check out Paperback Reader. I know I’m doing a happy little pee-dance while waiting for them to complete their first review.

Teri Brown, editor of the Portland/Vancouver edition of Northwest Woman Magazine invited me to a Book Lover’s High Tea this afternoon, which was supposed to celebrate the launch of their book club. The first book they picked? The Frog Prince by Jane Porter, a chick lit novel. I wondered rather nervously if Jane Porter had read my rant on chick lit; Sarah and I discussed whether I should’ve invested in a bulletproof vest.

But no, everyone was completely civilized and super-duper nice, and nobody I talked to other than Teri had heard of Smart Bitches, which was fun because I got to pimp the Smart Bitches and attempt to describe the Smart Bitch aristocratic titles that we give out as prizes. Have I ever mentioned that I love using the term “o-face”? ‘Cause really, I do.

And wheee, all the swag I got: free chocolates! Free books! Plus I won a gift card to Starbucks, which is beyond ironic because I don’t like coffee, but I do like their scones. Mmmmm, scones. Mmmmm, FREE scones. Anyway, I thought I’d pimp the magazine a little bit in appreciation of the fun time I had, and express amazement that someone would invite a potty-mouthed barbarian like me to a high tea. I behaved myself, though. Like I said, if I’m alone and in a strange situation, I’m generally quiet and polite so I can suss things out before sticking my foot in my mouth.