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

There’s an interesting interview with Sandra Bullock, queen of romantic comedies, on CNN today. Among the questions asked is a request for an explanation: why is she refusing to do more romantic comedies, and why do female buddy movies like ‘Miss Congeniality 2’ instead?

I like the challenge of that a lot more than the comedy being revolved around landing the dude....

No one ever shows women watching out for one and other. We’re either scratching each other’s eyes out or stealing each other’s husbands or there’s a lead woman and there’s a best friend who usually is a better written role and has two scenes.

After Candy and I went off on the whole “sassy sidekick best friend” icon in romantic fiction, it’s interesting to see an actress pick up on the lack of strong roles for women in romance-focused movies, while the best friend is often better developed and more interesting as a character, but shafted in the screentime department. This imbalance makes me think of actresses like Janeane Garofalo or Joan Cusack, who often end up as the romance heroine’s sidekick but rarely the heroine herself.

The idea of women as their own enemies is interesting to consider when one looks at the annoying and ill-written sidekick, or the absent but fabulous best friend found in movies, contrasted with the recent surge in chick-lit and contemporary novels with groups of women as best friends. Jennifer Crusie for one has a good number of supportive groups of women friends in her novels - and as a reader I’ve liked just about all the heroine’s friends. Wonder if Hollywood will take a cue from current contemporary romance stories in novel form for future scripts. 

Sarah and I were e-mailing each other about purple prose, and Beatrice Small’s name came up. And we started talking about codpieces. I mean, of course. When talking about Beatrice Small, sooner or later the conversation will involve discussions on cones, orbs or codpieces. Hopefully the first two will be quivering as well.

Anyway, I was extremely curious about why the codpiece was called, well, a codpiece. It had never occured to me before that the first bit of the word is a freakin’ fish. What, did codpieces smell especially piscatorial, what? So off I trundled to Merriam-Webster On-Line to look it up.

And I promptly start having a monster case of the giggles. Check it:


Main Entry: cod·piece
Pronunciation: ‘käd-"pEs
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English codpese, from cod bag, scrotum (from Old English codd) + pese piece


DUDE. Codpiece = scrote-holder. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

And if you go to a restaurant and order cod en croute, you’re actually ordering an Encrusted ‘Sack. *laughs so hard she starts wheezing*

God. I don’t know why I think it’s so funny, but I do. Somewhere inside me, there’s a 13-year-old boy who thinks fart jokes are really, really funny. And I’m not talking about deep inside, either. I’m talking just-barely-lurking-under-the-surface.

Anyway, most of you writer types and history afficionados probably already know this. But I didn’t, so obviously I have to share my unholy glee with all of you. And oh dear, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look cod in the eye again.

And yes, of course I’m talking about the fish.

Jorie made a comment to the “On Romance Novel Heroes and Heroines” entry that made me think. Specifically, this bit of her comment: “But I also think I find something very cathartic about a fucked up hero or heroine (just one per book is enough) who comes through to a happily ever after.”

She really nailed that one on the head. But I’ll take it even one step further: I actually actively ENJOY reading, in gruesome detail, why a hero or heroine is tortured, AND I also enjoy reading about a hero (or very rarely, a heroine) who puts the other protagonist through hell--with one very important condition: that by the end of the book, he realizes that he’s been a complete asshole, he’s very, very sorry for what he’s done, he makes amends with the heroine (read: GROVELS HIS ASS OFF) and he’s able to heal and move on from the assholery. OK, I just realized that’s more than one condition. But they’re all really sub-sets of the one big Supercondition that I like to call “Appropriate Realization of and Remorse For One’s Own Jerkfacedness.” Anyway, this emotional wringer/rollercoaster is a big part of why I love books like Seize The Fire, To Have and To Hold, Lily and The Windflower so much.

What does this say about me as a reader? I mean, schadenfreude much? Damn. Not to say those are the only kinds of romance novel I like to read. I enjoy other types of romances as well; right now I’m reading and really liking MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead and Unwed, which has nothing like that going on at all. But looking through my list of keepers, I realize that a disproportionate number involve the hero putting the heroine through shitloads and shitloads of turmoil, which she manages to weather with her sanity and sweetness intact. I mean, seriously, some of the crap the hero pulls on the heroine, if done to me in real life, would’ve resulted in me punching the hero square in the balls. ("YOU LIED ABOUT WHAT?!?” *WHAKOW! BAM! SPLAT!* *hero falls to the floor crying for the fate of his unborn children*)

This is probably why I’m not exactly romance novel heroine material, eh?  That, and my love of dead baby jokes.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on this? Anyone else there share my sick, sick love of tormented protagonists who do quite a bit of their own tormenting, only to recant with all appropriate remorse at the end? If you do, why do you love ‘em so much? Catharsis explains only part of why I like these types of books as much as I do.

Authors who deserve an unending supply of expensive chocolate and awesome oral sex from the beautiful hardbody of their choice:

• Laura Kinsale: I love her.  Every single book of Kinsale’s except The Dream Hunter have received As from me. And it’s not as if The Dream Hunter is a bad book; I’d give it a B. If I had to marry a book instead of a person, I think The Shadow and The Star might be it, though it’d have to fight a duel with Laura London’s The Windflower to win my hand. And even then I’d occasionally run off and have a hot love affair with Midsummer Moon. OK, I’ll stop before I sound like a really creepy lesbian book stalker. (Hey, wasn’t that a villain in one of Linda Howard’s books?)
• Loretta Chase: Another author with a near-perfect streak (the one book I didn’t like, The Last Hellion, I actually dislike quite a bit). I reviewed Viscount Vagabond for AAR a few years back and gave it a B+, but I re-read it recently and it’s been elevated to A-. Her witty dialogue and the way her heroes are completely flummoxed by their love for their heroines are nothing short of adorable. And I mean that as in “worthy of adoration,” not “reminds me of those completely terrifying Hummel figurines of little kids playing the pan flute to some random barnyard animals.” And come to think of it, Lord of Scoundrels and The Lion’s Daughter will have to fight for my hand in marriage, too.
• Jennifer Crusie: I will buy her books as soon as they come out. In hardcover. Because she’s worth the $24.95, almost every time. The only books I was disappointed with were Welcome to Temptation and Faking It. I don’t know what it is about those Dempseys, but they just don’t quite do it for me.
• Sharon and Tom Curtis, a.k.a. Laura London, a.k.a. Robin James: The Windflower. The Golden Touch. Lightning That Lingers. Sunshine and Shadow. GODDAMN I love these books even though I can practically smell the polyester pantsuits and feel the feathered bangs against my brow in the contemporaries. But The Windflower? I had the most heinous case of stomach flu when I was 18 and ended up staying at the hospital for three days, and re-reading that book, especially the parts involving Cat and Raven--if I ever delve into fanfic writing, I’d write love stories for those two boys--pulled me through some of the most godawful experiences. (I kept throwing up the fever reducers, and for whatever retarded reason they couldn’t administer the stuff parenterally, so they had to use Another Orifice Entirely to get the meds in me, if you know what I mean.)
• Patricia Gaffney: Why hast thou forsaken romance novel-dom, Pat? Your women’s fiction books are good, but I re-read To Love and To Cherish, Sweet Everlasting and Wild At Heart constantly and mourn our loss. Wild at Heart in particular fulfilled all my girlish fantasies about a grown-up Mowgli. And dude, you totally created the sexiest, sweetest pastor ever in Christy Morrell. But please don’t write any more funnies. Crooked Hearts and Outlaw in Paradise were mediocre at best. And really, all your books, even the really dark ones like To Have and To Hold were funny--laugh-out-loud funny, in fact--in certain spots; you seem to do witty dialogues and humorous vignettes much better than a whole bookful of funny.
• Shana Abe: I think she’s one of the most underrated authors out there. Her writing is lyrical without being soggy, and she consistently creates love stories between adversaries that work for me--I normally hate those books because they’re all “I love you! I hate you! Let’s have crazy monkey sex! OK, back to loving you! No, hating you!” Abe doesn’t fall into this trap, and makes the conflict believable.
• Barbara Samuel a.k.a. Ruth Wind: For Lucien’s Fall and Bed of Spices alone she deserves the chocolate and the oral sex. Her writing style is something other romance novel authors should study: so beautiful and poetic, yet clean and unflinching. For a while there I thought she’d gone the way of the Gaffney, but it seems like she’s writing romance novels again, so yay!

Authors Who Are Really Good, But Also Really Uneven:

• Lisa Kleypas: OK, her books starting from Give Me Tonight and running through Prince of Dreams were pretty much pure gold. Only With Your Love in particular boggled my mind. An evil twin boinks (and eventually wins over) his dead good twin’s widow? Holy shit! That’s hot! And Dreaming of You completely broke the mainstream mold of historicals by having a hero who’s obviously lower-class and has absolutely no taste or refinement. At the risk of sounding like Nicole Richie again: That’s hot! And then Somewhere I’ll Find You was published. Snooooooooze. Because You’re Mine? Double snoooooooooooze. After that her books have run through a crap-great-crap-great cycle. Worth Any Price? Crap. Where Dreams Begin? Solid gold, even if in some ways it’s kind of a rehash of Dreaming of You. The last several books she’s written (Lady Sophia’s Lover, Suddenly You, Again the Magic) have been nothing to shout about; in fact, I think they’re poorly-written in a number of ways, yet I enjoyed them anyway and they’re on my keeper shelves. No other author has this effect on me.
• Judith McNaught: Judith turned me to The Dark Side. If not for her, I would’ve happily avoided the romance novel section of the bookstore like the plague lest its bodice-ripping cooties rub off on me. Then I picked up Something Wonderful when I was 16, and ended up staying up all night to read it instead of studying for midterms. I began to glom everything she’d ever written, but discovered that in all, she wrote only four books I loved. Everything since then has been, well, drekkish. Whitney My Love was so bad, it made me angry. And you won’t like me when I’m angry. *turns green, grows biceps and starts tossing bookshelves around* GRAAAAAAAR.
• Teresa Medeiros: Once an Angel and Thief of Hearts were so very, very good--they were funny, sexy and touching without being cloying. Everything else I’ve read by her has been a bit on the cloying side (could she have used the words “beguiled” and “beguiling” more often?), but for years I bought her books automatically in the hopes she’d repeat what she achieved with those two books. No dice, though Nobody’s Darling came pretty close.
• Anne Stuart: Anyone else read Shadow Dance? Anyone else find Valerian’s cross-dressing and his surreptitious courtship of the young, beautiful, impressionable Sophie, ummmmmm, very stimulating? Because I did. Damn. And the category romances she’s written for Harlequin very rarely disappoint. Her single titles aren’t quite as reliably good (the historicals she wrote for Zebra have been nothing to shout about), but I keep buying them when I see ‘em anyway.
• Jo Beverley: The first book I read by her was My Lady Notorious, and I loved it loved it loved it. I loved that Cyn was slim and pretty (at that point in time I’d overdosed on tall, hulking muscular heroes, and to tell you the truth, give me slim and pretty any day over bulky and rugged). I loved that he looked through Chastity’s disguise right away. I loved the Georgian setting, which was a nice break from all the Regencies. But nothing Beverley has written since then can even come close to this book, not even the other Malloren novels.
• Karen Ranney: Ranney has a very distinct writing style that, when it works, it WORKS. It drags you in and doesn’t let you go until 4 a.m. and you realize you have to be up in about 3 hours to get ready for work. When it doesn’t work, it slows everything down and sends you right to sleepyland when it’s not making you tense with frustration because you want the story to MOVE ON, ALREADY. Upon a Wicked Time and My Beloved are two love stories that had the former effect on me; everything else has ranged from unreadable (Above All Others) to passably good (the Highland Lords series).

Authors Whom I Like, but Don’t Love:

• Mary Jo Putney
• Judith Ivory
• Shelly Thacker
• Mary Balogh

An Author I Like, but Really Know I Shouldn’t:

• Dara Joy. Good god, what a guilty pleasure. Her plots often make no sense or have holes so large, so gaping that they make Paris Hilton’s… never mind. Her sex scenes border on purple. And really, could she create any more really, really annoying heroines? Yet I can’t help myself. I love her books. They’re fun, and sexy, and a great way to help me forget whatever bullshit is going on in my life.

Candy busted out with a brilliant quick examination of authors that the rest of the world thinks are just the damn greatest ever, but leave her kinda lukewarm. (Is there a more boring, perfectly-wrought word than “lukewarm?” It makes me feel bad for boys named “Luke,” but what a great word!) I don’t entirely agree with her choices, so let me make a list of my own.

Authors whom Candy thinks are “meh” but whom I think are “Maaaaaaaahvelous:”

• Nora Roberts: oh it is so cliche to love La Nora, but damn, she writes some wonderful male characters. I think that’s my favorite thing about her novels - that and the heroines always have neat-o occupations and hobbies.
• Suzanne Brockmann: again, cliche. And again, it’s all about the men. She writes some excellent heroes, and I am a sucker for a realistic man in a contemporary.
• Susan Elizabeth Phillips: again, serve me up a piping hot cliche on the favorite author buffet, but with a few missteps aside (Honey Moon among them - shudder) she has some roller coaster novels that I love. First Lady in particular is one of my very favorites.

Authors who I love:

• Julia Quinn: though her plots have been getting steadily darker over the past few novels, her early Bridgerton books are among my favorites. Light, funny, and dang can she write some wonderful dialogue. Makes me wish for a crapload of brothers and sisters. And her stories have made me cry on more than one occasion. 
• Teresa Medeiros: She likes to reexamine fairy tales for the structure of her novels, but her books are wonderful stories. And I’ve met her - she’s a very, very nice person, so I am happy to buy her books and give her the royalties
• Jennifer Crusie: Candy turned me on to how good she is, and damn. Candy was so right. Crusie is very, very good.
• Eloisa James: I love to hate this woman for a myriad of selfish petty reasons, but one of them is that I am damnably jealous that she is so smart, talented, and so very clever with her books. Duchess in Love is a wonderful, wonderful book.
• Lisa Kleypas: Another heavy hitter in the cliched “authors I like” list, but Kleypas also writes a wonderful story, with characters that are unique, interesting, and likeable. And when you think about the absolute mountain of romances that have been published, coming up with new and clever characters is quite an accomplishment.

Authors who I cannot understand how they get published:

• Linda Howard: I know people like her books but I have read only one that was passable. The others I wanted to toss into the ocean.
• Stella Cameron: I once read a book of hers that I bought from a street vendor for $2. It was so bad I wanted to toss it under a subway rail. At one point, this roughened cop of a hero is rushing to the bedside of a sleeping heroine who is being tormented by a nightmare, and as she’s tossing and wailing, he puts his hand over his eyes and thinks to himself, “Why is there so much sorrow and heartbreak in the world?” You should have seen my face. I think I might have said OUT LOUD on the subway, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

Authors who have broken my heart by becoming caricatures of their former selves:

• Jude Deveraux: Jude, Jude, why hast thou forsaken me? I LOVED Knight in Shining Armor. In fact, I was cleaning my office up tonight in anticipation of moving in the coming months, and I found I own TWO copies of that book. The ending, the middle, the beginning - oh it’s wonderful. But Angel for Emily? What the hell was that? Her early books are glorious. Her recent efforts are leave-on-the-shelf-and-walk-away-now.
• Catherine Coulter: she was the first romance author I ever read. I loved Midsummer Magic, and the “Night” trilogy, but then the Sherbrooke series was a little flat. Then she started writing contemporary thrillers, and Lord have mercy, they were as likely as some of the Linda Howards I read in January to end up in the wrong end of the ocean. I remember clearly buying a copy of The Maze, starting it on the beach, and fifty pages in turning to Hubby and wailing, “This books is AWFUL!” I was heartbroken that an author I had counted on for a saucy, classic romance and turned tepid on me. Oh, the sadness.