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

One of the sites I check daily, right after my Gmail and Woot, is MacZot.com, which has daily deals on Mac apps. Todays deal: 47% off Librarian Pro, which tracks your book inventory. This software is available for Mac and PC, according to the listing today.

Neat, and I love the shushing icon, but do I need this? Do I need any book inventory software?

Honestly, with the number of books coming in and out of my house, it might be a good idea, but I still like the tactile experience of browsing my own shelf of to-be-reads and picking out my next read. Do I need “serenity” to return to my bookshelf?

It might not be a bad thing, honestly, but as soon as I can bend over (and see my own feet, omg) I will be attacking the organization of my office in my own style, and I’m not sure a piece of software, even for someone as digitally eager as I am, would be of any use. Neither am I interested in Shelfari, beyond asking them to stop emailing me already.

What about you? Do you digitally index your personal library? How do you organize your books? Maybe this is a bandwagon I need to waddle after before it gets too far away.

We’ve had a few varying discussions about who reads - from who reads romance to who reads more fiction to who reads more in general and is reading going the way of the Dodo bird?

Add to the list of “The world is coming to an end and reading decline is the shifty canary!” articles: NPR’s report on why women read more than men. The article starts off talking about gender, moves into neurons, then ends with the now-habitual “reading habits are declining and we’re all going to die!” angsty handwringing.

The idea that women read more fiction: that’s fascinating. I’m not sure if it’s as easy as the article makes it seem to chalk the difference up to empathy and psychosexual differences, but it’s definitely true in the scientific sample of my household that I read more fiction than Hubby. Of course, I read more than Hubby. I have a commute on public transportation; he drives and listens to “yelly sports men” aka ESPN radio. I read romance all the damn time; he reads a mixture of biography, history, and some adventure fiction. Is my colloquial experience then proof of a gender divide? Meh. Who knows. I don’t now if it’s possible to ever accurately survey a population’s reading habits, because what you read - sorry, what you admit to reading - is such a marker of intelligence and class that an honest survey is practically impossible to create.

However, I am so weary of the “young people don’t read and we’re all going to DIE!” angsty handwringing. I don’t think reading is dying out, no matter what this, that or the other survey may say. Surely I can easily be labeled as Polly Anna optimistic about this issue, but I just don’t buy it. I think, if anything, the continued hybridization of genres will create renovated definitions of reading. Just look at the hybrids now: romance, videogames, and manga are merging into an entire line of fiction, and movies, books, and television shows are being made from and into graphic novels. I think the blurring lines between visual and written, digital and printed word will probably continue to blur, and existing definitions will have to be amended to make room for not only what people read but how they read.

Either way, I’m going to sit with a book. It’s readin’ time.

I literally spit beverages out of my mouth when Nathalie Grey sent me the most awesome link ever.

Are you ready? Are you sitting down?

Mrs. Giggles has opened her own ePub!

Get ready, all you eBook junkies out there: Trixy Lion Publishing has opened its loving, familial arms to anyone looking for a publishing home. [UPDATED to add: Mrs. Giggles’ awesome publishing house at Geocities keeps exceeding its bandwidth - but that only means its super popular, right? Check out the mirror and make sure to get your submissions ready!]

I personally will never say anything cranky or mean about Trixy Lion, as it says in their “Marketing PLnas:” we will also protect u from mean ppl out there on blogs and message boards. if u let us know who is badmouthing u, we will gather ur friends and com eto ur rescue.

How can you not love an ePub whose written public communications read like LOLCats on a meth bender? I’m sold!

So Myers, in the ages-old crusty article I linked to a few days ago, picked the nits off various passages from literary fiction, but didn’t cite the best examples of any genre fiction to support his argument that it’s just as good. Whine!

Now, I’m not near any of my books at the moment, but, I can recall a few passages that are marvelous from genre fic. I’ll have to transcribe when I’m nearer to my bookshelf and a keyboard.

But- what about you?

What’s your favorite excerpt from any recent genre fiction (and not just romance)? Please share, as a sample of “damn fine genre writing!”

From the school of “slap one hand to raise the other,” we have a thought provoking article from The Atlantic, emailed to me by Bitchery reader Deb, on the nature of “literary fiction.”

I was nodding and giving a chorus of, “Uh huh, sing it, yup, I’m so with you,” as the author lined up the sad differences between what is considered genre fiction and literary fiction:

Today any accessible, fast-moving story written in unaffected prose is deemed to be “genre fiction"—at best an excellent “read” or a “page turner,” but never literature with a capital L. An author with a track record of blockbusters may find the publication of a new work treated like a pop-culture event, but most “genre” novels are lucky to get an inch in the back pages of The New York Times Book Review.

Everything written in self-conscious, writerly prose, on the other hand, is now considered to be “literary fiction"—not necessarily good literary fiction, mind you, but always worthier of respectful attention than even the best-written thriller or romance....

The dualism of literary versus genre has all but routed the old trinity of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow, which was always invoked tongue-in-cheek anyway. Writers who would once have been called middlebrow are now assigned, depending solely on their degree of verbal affectation, to either the literary or the genre camp. David Guterson is thus granted Serious Writer status for having buried a murder mystery under sonorous tautologies (Snow Falling on Cedars, 1994), while Stephen King, whose Bag of Bones (1998) is a more intellectual but less pretentious novel, is still considered to be just a very talented genre storyteller.

But when he starts flailing away at Proulx, Guterson, and others, I felt a little bad for them. Proulx, for example, gets a mighty spanking, and while I know what he’s talking about, and for the reasons he outlines I don’t enjoy her writing, damn, he done beat that horse for a good two hours. Then he moves on to McCarthy.

Nothing makes me snicker like seeing people prick holes in the self-inflated, self-important opinion some people have of the quality of their reading material, especially when Myers writes of Guterson and other writers, “it more important to sound literary than to make sense.” But then, few things make me twitch more than folks who take themselves too seriously, and certainly this is an examination of what is held in serious, lauded regard.