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

I really do need to stay away from the AAR boards. I tell myself this, but I click on the linkies anyway. Oh dear. This one is Jorie’s fault.

One reader blames romance novels for the death of normal relationships.

I think romance novels are death to normal, real relationships. You start thinking all that action, adventure and passion is the norm in the real world. You start to look for a man with romance novel hero traits. As a woman who started reading romance in her teens I didn’t realize I was doing this until my early twenties. If the guy wasn’t exciting and romance novel like I didn’t want him.

OK, I’ll admit that this post wouldn’t have bugged me as much if the poster hadn’t made such a sweeping statement. Death to normal, real relationships? Not for me. Much as I love to read romance novels, I wouldn’t want to live one. Too much turmoil and heartbreak for my taste. But reading it and living through it vicariously? Hell yeah.

Hey, I wouldn’t want to live a mystery, SF, fantasy or, hell, even a lit fic novel, either.

If romance novels are fucking with your head, then by all means say as much. “I am unable to read romance novels without allowing them to fuck with my head. I will cease reading them because the fuckery is spilling into my life and the decisions I make.” That’s a perfectly acceptable sentiment. Saying that it’s the romance novel’s fault, though, instead of your own inability to separate fiction from expectations of reality? Pah. And trying to generalize this further and make it seem as if they’re responsible for a greater social phenomenon? Double pah.

And another musing came courtesy of Elizabeth Mahon, who spotted the following tidbit on Hollywood-Elsewhere:

Why do the women reading paperback books in subways and airport lounges always seem to be reading mass-market fiction? Why don’t I ever see one, just one, reading a book by, say, William Faulkner or Gore Vidal?

OK, anyone smell the fragrant sexist bullshit wafting off this observation? I rode public transport for years and years, and I saw precious few people, male, female or pre-or-post-op transsexual reading Faulkner or Vidal or other such lofty authors on the bus or MAX. Most of the men weren’t reading, period, and if they were, they were every bit as guilty of indulging in mass market paperbacks as women. The exceptions would be people reading newspapers (men seemed a bit more likely to do this than women) and college students doing some last-minute swotting on the bus, something female students seemed to do as frequently as male students.

At any rate, if this asshole had ridden public transport in Portland and seen me reading, he would’ve seen me reading everything from Lolita to Moby Dick to Le Petit Nicolas to The Shadow and the Star. I even read The Sound and The Fury on the bus. Does that make me all special and shit? Should I take a photo and e-mail it to this jerkwad?

The reply he wrote to Elizabeth when she e-mailed him about it was even more distasteful:

I don’t like mass-market popular fiction, as a rule. It’s basically junk-food stuff. There is a world out there...an amazing wonderful world of knowledge and exotic places and fresh atttitude and beliefs and sensuality and illumination...all of which is barely paid attention to by mass-market fiction writers. Don’t try and justify lazy, degraded literary appetites. So you read this crap yourself, right? That’s what your letter was about? You feeling vaguely guilty about putting junk-food fiction into your brain and your soul, and wanting to rationalize the anti-intellectual, impulse-minded, short-attention-span tendences of women of your generation? Something along these lines?

Woo damn. You know, when I see those godawful monstrous SUVs, H2s and pickup trucks all blinged out and growling along in the urban wilderness of Portland, sometimes I think “Holy shit, penis enhancer much?” This is the first time I’ve thought the same thing about somebody’s opinion about literature.

“LOOK AT ME! MY TASTE IN LITERATURE IS AWESOME! THE THICKER THE SPINE, THE MORE OBTUSE THE PROSE, THE BIGGER MY COCK! KNEEL BEFORE ME, BITCHES!”

Via Booksquare comes this delicious tidbit from Grumpy Old Bookman about the (British) Romance Novelists’ Association just beating the everloving snot out of the other team (composed of staff members of Wisden, a cricket almanac) during a general knowledge quiz show.

Romance novelists are smart people. Whodathunk? Next thing you know, people will start thinking that romance novel readers don’t need to move their lips to sound out the hard words when they read.

One of the quiz show participants on the RNA team, Stephen Bowden, has a very, very amusing blog.

I am a writer of historical fiction, as yet unpublished but that will change. I am currently working on a Romantic Regency Romp, James Bond meets Georgette Heyer, complete with fireworks and at least one elephant. If I had a good title for it I would tell you, but for the time being the file name is just “Regency”.

At least one elephant? Baby, I’m THERE. Crossing fingers and hoping this guy will get a juicy contract.

Oh my. I’m not normally into Cafepress loot, but this T-shirt is well-nigh impossible to resist:

If you can’t read the text, it says: “just because I like to be spanked & called bitch, doesn’t mean I’m a bad feminist.”

Smooches to Katie for finding this and IM-ing me about it.

Sybil issued the challenge: find at least five links to keep our beloved Maili occupied. Here are some of my favorites that aren’t linked on the sidebar. They’re pretty famous, though, so this probably old hat to a lot of youse.

Amber Forever: Dude masquerades as a 14-year-old girl, lures men into talking dirty with him on-line, posts hilarious results.

The Sneeze: Funny-ass shit by some guy named Steve. The best regular feature by far is Steve, Don’t Eat It! Warning: you WILL laugh until you cry. Read at work at your own risk because it will be SO TOTALLY OBVIOUS that you’re fucking off and surfing the Internet, because entering bills of materials into the database doesn’t usually make you laugh until snot runs out your nose, bitch.

Get Your War On: I fell in love as soon as I read this line in the first strip: ”Operation: Enduring Our Freedom to Bomb the Living Fuck Out of You is in the motherfucking house!!!” Plus any comic strip that features Voltron has my undying love. Check out the rest of this guy’s comics, they’re pretty funny too.

Oolong: Japanese photographer puts random crap on top of preternaturally calm rabbit’s head, adorable Internet craze results. The original pancake bunny. RIP, sweet fluffy one.

Cockeyed: Funny pranks and geeky shit. I especially love the “How Much Is Inside?” feature.

Visual Poetry: The site description says it best: “VisualPoetry translates any text into a series of images by looking up the words on Google image search and projecting the most relevant results as a slide show.” Try Nirvana lyrics for maximum hilarity, especially “I feel stupid and contagious.”

Mr. T vs. Pokemon: Remember that “Mr. T vs. [insert random item/celebrity/animated character]” craze a few years ago? My housemate, Stu, pit Mr. T against Pikachu--and that Pika-fool is about to get tossed!

Vectorpark: Beautiful, surreal interactive Flash work.

zefrank: He’s most famous for the incredibly funny “How To Dance Properly” video clips, but he has lots of other hilarious stuff on the site too, as well as some very, very cool interactive Flash toys and games.

Did everyone else go see the AAR Cover Contest results and I was the only one who forgot to look and see the winners?

I love that (a) I was quoted and (b) the oral sex in the car won worst cover. Dang that cover is… well, I don’t know what it is.