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

Check out the name of Nora Roberts’ hero in her re-released 1998 book Spellbound:

Calin Farrell.

Ha!

I wonder if any editors for the re-released edition considered changing the name?

Or, was the goal for us to read it and picture the eyebrows?

Microsoft has a big catalog of romance e-books up on their site, all in the Microsoft eBook format (.lit). (NOTE: site is getting a LOT of traffic and is slooooow).

Some folks are alleging that the linked files can be had for free, though you do have to get the Microsoft reader to actually read the files themselves. Others attest that there is a fee for each ebook, and links to various locations to purchase the ebook itself. Amazon listed A Knight in Shining Armor at $6.99 for the .lit version. 

I have not had any luck scoring myself a free ebook copy of any of the listed titles. I shall have to keep trying. Mwaahahaha.

That said, I confess myself still largely ignorant of the ebook world.  Anyone know if the featured authors, like Nora Roberts, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Jude Devereaux, and Elizabeth Lowell gave their OK? Do they even have to have to give their permission to have their books encoded in a vendor-specific ebook format? And what do you ebookies think of the .lit file format itself? A complete flash in the pan, or the beginning of the MS-standard for ebooks in the future?

Yes, that’s right: We’re going to put up YET ANOTHER sidebar item. This one’s going to be a collection of our greatest hits. Someone who’s new to the site can browse some of our best bitchery and get a feel for the site, while those of you who’ve been around for a while can re-visit old favorites and snicker away.

A lot of our bitchery is made extraordinary only because of the comments--my ramble about rape in romance is largely an incoherent mess, for example, but the people who contributed comments made it a lively and informative discussion. I’m also thinking of instituting a “best tangent” category because some of our best and funniest posts veered sharply off-topic, like that time we started ripping on the Thundercats and He-Man in a Covers Gone Wild entry.

So, what would you classify as some of our best articles/reviews/discussions? Here are some of the more memorable ones for us:

15 Things That Only Happen in Romances

Talking About the R Word

You Like Me! You Really, Really Like Me!

Defining Romances: No Ickiness, Please

Romance: It’s Only For Monogamous Hetero Couples!

You Read Like A Girl

Erotica = Literature, Romance = Formula. GOT THAT? (this is one of my favorites mostly because of E.D’Trix’s absolutely horrifying excerpt of a salmon-y sex scene she had to edit)

On A Wicked Dawn

The RWA will never link to this site...

Carpathian Madness (aka all Carpathian novels by Christine Feehan)

You’re shittin’ me. Please tell me you’re shittin’ me (a.k.a. The Big RITA Trainwreck)

The Contemporary Romance Drinking Game

Paranormal Romance Chit-Chat, now with Bonus Paranormal Drinking Game!

Man Titty Contest / Vote for your favorite haiku/ oh, literate tit!

Masturbation and fanfic and WOO DAMN loads of TMI in this entry so be warned (this makes the grade because of the spam haiku)

Post your suggestions in our comments, and we’ll trim this down so it’s a manageable 10- or 15-item list.

Fabulous reader Dr. Frantz, herself a professor of English and romance fan, brought this fabulous event series to my attention:

Conversations about Romance, an ongoing seminar at the Smithsonian.

Suzanne Brockman, Diana Gabaldon, Mary Jo Putney, Carly Phillips and Jennifer Crusie are each booked for a seminar to discuss their writing, and the host, Dr. Pamela Regis, interviews them with a book signing following each session. If the next session wasn’t 9 days after my due date, I’d be in the car driving to DC, no question.

What gets me is the description on the page itself:

Romance novels were created to celebrate women’s control over their own destiny, with the promise of enduring happiness at story’s end. The popular genre’s established pedigree includes such venerable writers as Jane Austen.

The form allows for tremendous latitude in expanding on the basic theme of the heroine and her man.... However, they all share an abiding sense of the heroine as the winning centerpiece.

“The heroine as the winning centerpiece?” “Celebrate a woman’s control over her destiny?” I am so on board with that.

Dr. Frantz also mentioned in her email to me, and on her LiveJournal that the session she attended with Suz Brockmann was fantastic.

I went to Suz Brockmann’s interview this week (drove all the way up from NC!), and it was just fabulous—although it was Suz, and she’s such a great person, it’s difficult to imagine it going any other way.  And while the whole evening was immeasurably improved by the dinner afterward with 20 fans, Suz, and her husband, I still think the interview itself was wonderful and worth attending.

What was truly great about it was that you’re in the Smithsonian, for heaven’s sake.  Surrounded by signs advertising classes about Opera and Native American Culture and Far Eastern China dildoes painted with flowers (not really), and all these “high culture” things, and then there’s conversations about romance novels in the same space, given the same attention and respect.

I thanked the woman in charge and she shrugged it off, but I thought it was important to recognize her for having the balls to put on a program like this.

I concur - it is so important to consider the development of the romance novel alongside all the high-academe topics such as the development of women’s rights in the 20th century. We certainly touched on this idea during the monster conversation about rape in romance.

But romance novels in the Smithsonian? I’ll have a grin on my grill the rest of the day - that is fantastic! 

A friend of mine reported that she went shopping and bought a Nora Roberts paperback - for $10. Some big splash on the cover said, “Specifically designed for comfortable reading.”

Alas, she reports, it doesn’t come with chocolate.

But what is this comfortable reading thing with the extra cost conveniently built into the purchase price? According to the explanation in the book, the new size is known as “Premium Format:”

The premium format is specially designed for comfortable reading, featuring REMARKABLE improvements on the interior design of the traditional mass market paperback. The book itself is larger, for easier handling. The type is also larger. The paper is brighter and there is more white space between the lines of text, creating a more pleasurable reading experience.

A more pleasurable reading experience. And yet, it doesn’t come with chocolate? Shame, I tell you.

After some cursory Googling, I found an August 2005 article from USAToday (aka McNews) which explains that sales of the mass-market paperbacks, aka the smaller ones, are down, and the folks quoted in the article attribute the decline to various sources, including the Oprah picks which are packaged in trade-paperbacks or hardcover.

So I have to wonder: does size matter? Does a larger trade-sized publication, by occupying territory between mass market and hardback, imply better quality of reading? Do we need a size of book between mass market and trade to make for more “comfortable reading?” Or do publishers need better sales to make themselves more “comfortable?”