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

TV:

X Files: I will mention this first because redwyne was kind enough to send me an X-Files desk wallpaper that about knocked my socks off. I love this show, and I love that my TiVo has six million episodes saved up, though Hubby is getting pissed that there’s not room for Quantum Leap. But I have to clarify: aliens? Conspiracy? Black oil? Do I care? Meh. I watch the episodes according to the relationship episode guide and check out the subtle ways in which Mulder and Scully interact with each other. I even have this theory that they were all kinds of hookin’ up after the first season or so, and we just never saw it on camera. But when it comes to nuanced portrayals of attraction, particularly attraction unfulfilled, the writers of the early seasons had it cold.

NCIS: Are you watching this show? I love this show. And again, crime? Murder investigation? Drama? Meh - not so much. But the weird mentor/mentee affection between Abby and Gibbs? And the sparring between Kate and Anthony? Oh, baby, baby, how was I supposed to know? Kate and Anthony particularly are great to watch for that attractive romantic spark because they walk that fine line - but never cross over into “I hate you,” “ NO, I hate YOU” bickering. They work together, he gives her shit, she gives him shit, but when the poop hits the oscillating air circulating device, they have each other’s backs, no question.

CSI: Crime? Guts? Gore? Meh. Grissom & Sara? Whoa. Seriously, I never even noticed until one episode hit me over the head with it, and I was all, “Huh? Seriously?” I googled “Grissom and Sara CSI” and holy hell did I miss that boat when it sailed. There were already comprehensive websites tracing the clues to their possible relationship. And it’s nowhere near as fun now that Sara keeps bringing it up. Sheesh.

Buffy: Buffy. Angel. Spike. Mrowr.

SportsNight: This show lasted one season, but mercifully it came out on DVD last year. It’s an Aaron Sorkin show, and if you’re familiar with the first two seasons of the West Wing, you know the rapid dialogue and verbal content of the show moves the plot and the character development - same with SportsNight. If you’ve never seen it, imagine a behind-the-scenes portrayal of a SportsCenter-esque show with cast romances. Marvelous - dialogue driven romance. Just the way I like it.

Cupid: Six years ago, there was the fantastic show that I liked. As a result of my saying out loud how much I liked it, it was cancelled. Cupid starred Jeremy Piven as Cupid, the God of Love, cast out of the heavens for his cynicism and only allowed to return once he’s matched 100 couples in true love. Marshall plays Claire Allen, the psychologist into whose care Cupid, or Trevor Hale as he calls himself, is released by the courts. And as luck would have it, Allen runs a lonely hearts group of people trying to learn to make romantic connections with other people. Each episode featured a short-term storyline of two people being brought together by Hale, and the series, as long as it lasted anyway, dealt with the attraction between Hale and Allen. Oh holy moly did I love this show. I wish it was out on DVD. Maybe I should stop doing all this blogging and just write letters to CBS all day.

Movies:

The Butchers’ Wife: Does anyone remember this? Demi Moore starred as some wackass chick from a rural island who interprets signs from above that a butcher who washes up on the shore of her island is her dream man, and marries him and follows him home to New York. And of course, they aren’t entirely meant to be, but once she’s in Manhattan, she meets the man who is her other half, and hilarity ensues. I don’t know why I love this movie, as it’s not spectacularly good, but I do.

Bull Durham: is this movie about sports, about sex or about love? I’d argue that it’s a romance, though it takes it’s sweet time getting there, and the lead characters are all over other people aside from each other. But the sparks between Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon - boo yah.

Sleepless in Seattle : OK, I know it’s hokey. But gosh I love this movie, specifically for the moment when Meg Ryan gets off the plane in Seattle, about to track Tom Hanks down, and he’s there in the airport dropping someone off, and sees her and looks like lightning hit him smack on the schnoz. Bam. Love it.

When Harry Met Sally: It’s not that I have a thing for Meg Ryan. She more than annoys me. But this movie also charms me to no end, particularly because each character is so completely blind and oblivious to how they really feel, but still manage to have a fantastic friendship in spite of it. And there’s also that scene with the wagon wheel.

It didn’t help that the very first romance novel I cared to try was Desire’s Blossom by Cassie Edwards. Ugh, blech, shudder, etc. Even at the tender age of 10 I knew it was easily one of the worst books I’d ever read.

But this didn’t stop me from going through my sister’s extensive collection of romance novels. I was a bookworm, my book-buying budget was limited, and during Christmas vacation I’d run out of reading material right quick, and I could re-read Roald Dahl, the Three Investigators, the Chronicles of Narnia and Hercule Poirot mysteries only so many times before I went barking mad for something new.

(Aside: in Malaysia, the Christmas break is the longest since it signifies the end of the school year--see, our school years coincide with the calendar year, which is why the American system confused the hell out of me when I first moved here.)

Anyway, this desperation for new reading material meant I kept mining my sister’s romance novels for books to read. Read some Laurie McBain novels, HATED them but finished them anyway because I was so desperate. Ditto Barbara Cartland. Read several other historicals by authors whose names I’ve forgotten, and didn’t like them either. Read more than my fair share of old Mills and Boon novels by Penny Jordan, Charlotte Lamb, Carole Mortimer and the like, most of which I detested as well, though a few were tolerable.

These books did not help my impression of romance novels; I hated the prose style, I hated how stupid the heroines were, and most of all, I hated how badly the heroes treated the heroines. I’d oftentimes skip through the book, trying to look for the sexy parts, but alas these were few and far between. For about six years I thought of romance novels as the bottom of the barrell, since the the ones I’d read easily represented some of the most consistently bad writing I’d encountered in my short life.

The first romance novel I liked (but didn’t love) was Special Gifts by Anne Stuart. My dad’s secretary bought me several category romances for my birthday, most of which were incredibly bad, but Special Gifts gave me pause. The writing wasn’t too bad, the heroine didn’t annoy me (though even back then I snorted at the idea of a 29-year-old virgin), the hero was kind of yummy, the suspense side-plot didn’t insult me, and dude, the people engaged in ORAL SEX. Whoo! I re-read this book several times, and each time it actually got a bit better. And I’m not just talking about the bit featuring the oral sex.

When I was 16 years old, Judith McNaught showed me the light. Judith and Something Wonderful. (I’m very, very glad I didn’t pick up Whitney, My Love first.) Judith showed me that asshole heroes are palatable to me as long as they grovel at the end, and that sex in historical romances wasn’t always rape. I haven’t looked back since; in quick succession I found Lisa Kleypas, Patricia Gaffney, Laura Kinsale, Loretta Chase, Mary Jo Putney, Barbara Samuel, Teresa Medeiros, Jo Beverley and Sharon and Tom Curtis, among others. McNaught got me started, but these other authors were what moved me well and truly into the Dark Side. Other authors I tried in this same time period (Linda Howard, Johanna Lindsey, Iris Johansen, Linda Howard, and Linda Howard--OK, there were a few others but I can’t remember their names) reinforced my old opinion that romance novels embodied some craptastically awful writing, but since I was finding more authors I enjoyed reading than not, my opinion of romance novels was completely changed.

Which brings me to these questions Angie asked on her blog:

“Here’s my question for readers: Are there any authors that you think every romance reader should have at least tried to read? Any authors that instill such a sense of nostalgia in you, that you can’t imagine anyone having NOT read them?”

I don’t think there’s an author that every reader should have tried at least once. Personally, I love Laura Kinsale, but I certainly don’t think everyone needs to have read at least one of her books, though I certainly have her name right on top of my list of highly-recommended romance authors. I do think people should check out new authors regularly, unless she specializes in a sub-genre that you KNOW you won’t be able to enjoy. (I’m staying well clear of Danielle Steele, and I don’t care how much of an uninformed snob that makes me.) There aren’t any authors who instill nostalgia in me that I’d actually recommend, because in my opinion, these nostalgic authors almost without exception produced bad, bad, bad, BAD books. But there are authors who are so ubiquitous, so incredibly famous that I have a hard time believing somebody who’s been reading romances for more than a couple of years haven’t tried them yet. Nora Roberts is one, and Linda Howard is another. Hell, I don’t even like Linda Howard novels and I ended up reading about ten of them. Desperation for new reading material is an ugly, ugly thing.

Not that I have that problem now, heh.

Me me me!

As Kassia pointed out, it’s not just the stereotypes, or the obnoxious racist portrayals on the cover. Can’t you just hear the prop department in the artist’s studio? “We have an American Indian hero! Need feathers, stat! And fringe! Lots of it!”

It’s the idea that I know the real ending. I know the hero and heroine might have found love and harmony and made wild monkey love in the fields under a sunset of blazing colors at the end of the book. But that doesn’t mean I can suspend reality to the point where I can forget that their kids were ‘half breeds’ and were made miserable in school - if they were allowed to go at all, and that they themselves were certainly ostracized: he was a suspect in every local crime and she was considered no better than a whore. And in the end his people suffered mightily at the hand of hers.

To be bluntly honest, this is about as sexy to me as a romance between a Nazi prison guard at Bergen-Belsen and a Jewish concentration camp prisoner.

But alien-on-humans?! Now that’s kinda spicy; tell me more!

So like Kassia, I have to wonder why I can buy the fantasy of aliens wanting to hop the boom-boom express with humans, but not the idea of making the humpy-horse with some sheik or an American Indian? Does the latter have more “Forbidden Nasty” titillation? Is it more of a turn on to be reading about love with a socially-forbidden party? Instead of Nazi/Jew romance, would it be more like Orthodox Jew/Observant Catholic romance? Because hell hath no fury like a Orthodox Jewish boy’s momma when she realizes he’s a-dancin’ the horizontal hora with that nice O’Reilly girl down the block. That’s some social taboo right there- is that hot? For me? Meh. Not really. Too much social drama working against the couple tends to put a damper on the sparkly attraction for me.

Now, to journey down a wild tangent here for a minute, I’m curious about the idea of taboo in general as pertains to romance. Sex, in this country, is a certain taboo. Just having it is subject to shameful reactions to blushes to outright ostracization. In the US, sex is bad, violence is tolerated, and Sarah is driven bonkers by the inverted values.

Romance, often, features sex without the benefit of marriage, or just enough sex before marriage that the act itself isn’t so much of a shocking surprise to the virgin party. So is “sex with a forbidden person” romance even more of a spicy taboo on top of the sexual taboos that already exist in this country? And what of romance in other countries, where I understand it sells quite well? Is the taboo zing there for them? Or do they read for other reasons?

To ruminate on Kassia’s original question, I think I’m more scintillated by alien/human nookie because it is a “forbidden,” or at least it’s funky, but it also doesn’t ask me to forget any brutal history for sake of shiny, happy fantasy nookie. I mean, I’m willing to suspend my reality for a host of things, including “gay swishbuckling pirates” (TM Candy), but forget oppression and mass genocide? Hardly. Pass the alien.