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

Two A+ ratings and a reference to Forbidden Attraction. I think Candy is trying to seduce me.

And I was just thinking I’d do Kinsale reviews on the next SBD, but it feels kinda awkward-ish - so I’ll leave it to you. Then I’ll correct you when you don’t worship the right things. Because that’s the kinda bitch that I am.

Butt seriously - stop with the seducing, you minx.

Hey, Candy, can I borrow your copy of Anyone But You? I want to read it, give it an F, and see if I can hear you holler from Portland. Seriously, can I borrow?

Ok, apparently I’ve turned the controls over to Candy because somewhere in the last couple of months I’ve begun thinking of her word as law.  The weird part is I’m totally ok with that.  I’d say more, but I need to go buy the Jennifer Crusie titles I’ve missed.  Candy has spoken.

Aside from giving Faking It an A thankyouverymuch, I’m nodding all the way down the line.  Except for having still not found a copy of Anyone But You, but that’s my personal issue.  I’m learning to set boundries.  Really.

---L.

I am torn. You gave one of my favorite romance novels ever an A+ (Anyone But You), but you actually gave Sizzle a B.

Sizzle is one of the worse pieces of drek I’ve ever read. B? Come on here. It’s not even D material.

It makes me boggle to think that people actually like that book. The hero practically rapes the heroine!

There was an almost rape in Sizzle? Really? Holy crap. That totally zoomed by me. I know there was that part in the office in which there was some, errrr, under-the-desk lovin’ and the heroine was kinda half-heartedly swatting the dude away, but… Hmmm. Almost rape? Damn. Like I said, I didn’t buy into the HEA, but I found it really amusing and I kept the novella, because I know I’ll want to re-read it some time down the road. But hey, we all have our lapses in judgement--look at Sarah, giving Tell Me Lies a D *snicker*.

“Two A+ ratings and a reference to Forbidden Attraction. I think Candy is trying to seduce me.”

If you like romantic comedy novels that aren’t too fluffy, Crusie is just about as seductive as it comes.

“Hey, Candy, can I borrow your copy of Anyone But You?”

Since I have only one copy and it’s pretty damn near mint condition, you know that I’ll be shipping it in a titanium container and you’d have to wear latex gloves while reading it, right?

“Ok, apparently I’ve turned the controls over to Candy because somewhere in the last couple of months I’ve begun thinking of her word as law.”

AT LAST, somebody is getting it. Thank you, Wendy.

- Candy “Just call me Hammurabi” Smartybitchypants

Erm...methinks I need to read the Crusie books on my shelf since I have NEVER read her.  okay, I tried to read Fast Women and couldn’t get into it.  I’ll try again.  I have Bet Me to try next.

I had no idea that the original ending of _Manhunting_ was different. I have the reprint; what was changed, can you say?

Heh. Well, I heart WTT and FI, but then again, Phin is my top “Crusie Guy I’d Do” (books and pool! yes!) and I like the Dempseys, so perhaps I’m biased. Bet Me would be my #3- I really like how she does the fairy tale aspect, plus they don’t want kids.

Great reviews, with some books listed I need to hunt down.  I started with the bigger, newer Crusies, but the ones I like best are the earlier, shorter books like Getting Rid of Bradley, Anyone but You, Strange Bedpersons, and Charlie All Night.  Don’t know why that is, but maybe it’s because I laugh out loud more in the midst of those earlier books and because Crusie seems to do a lot with her characters and her plots in a limited number of pages.  Maybe it’s because I just finished it, but I especially like Zack from Getting Rid of Bradley; I love how he takes over Lucy’s house without seeming like a Neanderthal alpha jerk, as well as his desperation in trying to convince Lucy to marry him and make him father to her “need a man in their life” dogs.

The thing about Jenny is, the full length novels are all very ambitious—but they don’t read that way. They are deceptively accessible.

Every one of the novels has a complex theme that is carefully developed. Crazy for You might make you laugh the first time you read it, but I’m thinking anybody who reads it —slowly—a second time won’t be laughing. It’s about an abused woman waking up to the reality of her life, and fixing things. that’s a big topic.

Both the Dempsey novels (which I adore, A+++, so there, neener neener) are about women who have that awful I’m-hall-monitor-to-the-universe thing going on. Both of them are so busy taking care of everybody else in their dysfunctional families that they never notice their own needs going unfulfilled. It takes some pretty serious and life changing events to get them to wake up. In Sophie’s case, a car accident and a porn movie; in Tilda’s case, there’s a chance somebody close to her is going to end up in jail.

These are women I know. To some degree, they have been me, or I have been them, or whatever. I love these books because Jenny is so good at writing real women with real issues and putting them into the middle of fantastic stories.

My two cents.

“The thing about Jenny is, the full length novels are all very ambitious—but they don’t read that way. They are deceptively accessible.”

Yes! Thank you for articulating what I couldn’t. I’d argue she does that for some of her category romances too, especially Strange Bedpersons, which, every time I re-read it, just blows me away with all the commentary that she sneaks in. I think it’s worth reading just for the Cinder Tess and the Cinder Tess re-write. Crusie is, as I said before, one tricky, magnificent bitch.

Plus I just like how she breaks certain rules in her books. That childless couple thing still makes me roll around in glee, and I have yet to encounter another romance novel author who writes about heroes and heroines who KNOW they don’t want kids.

And I’ll try to forgive you for disagreeing about the Dempsey novels ;-).

Love,

Hammurabi

Ah Sara, you articulated that beautifully.  Crusie is deceptively accessible.  She’s an intelligent writer, who turns right where others turn left, and layers her stories with meaning and subtext.

Candy--I love the no kids thing too! Bet Me was interesting because not only does the heroine have self image problems that can not be cured by washing her hair and taking off her glasses, but the hero has a learning disability!  Before I read Beat Me, I haven’t realized that I bought into “the hero must be the smartest man EVER” crap.

“Every one of the novels has a complex theme that is carefully developed. Crazy for You might make you laugh the first time you read it, but I’m thinking anybody who reads it —slowly—a second time won’t be laughing. It’s about an abused woman waking up to the reality of her life, and fixing things. that’s a big topic.”

I agree, Sara, but they still don’t always work for me, as well.  In Bet Me, for example, I loved the way Crusie took on the weight issue, but I felt like everyone was making such a “big” deal about a size 12 woman—as if she was obese at that size.  I found myself arguing with the book (and feeling Crusie was playing her hand a little heavily with Min’s mom, who seemed a mite stereotypical to me), which dimmed my perfect enjoyment of it. Some of her heroes also have cold, controlling mothers, and when they start thinking about the heroine as “soft” and “round” it links up with the cold mother thing in a strange way for me. 

Welcome to Temptation is probably my favorite of her longer novels (of the ones I’ve read), and I still have Faking It in my TBR pile (I adored the dynamic Davy and am really looking forward to this one!).  I loved the agile way Crusie handled the irony of Sophie making pornography and being sexually unfulfilled herself.  Dilly kept Phin from seeming the stereotypical prodigal son to me, and I liked that.  There was a nice balance of dark and light in the novel, too, and I appreciated the way Crusie played with the photography/light/background/foreground stuff.

Tell Me Lies and Crazy for You both feature heroines I really admired, although the heroes in both books were flatter, IMO, than the heroines, and I struggled with that. I realize that you can’t have two characters who are too much in flux, and that the heroes sometimes represent stability or groundedness (as in Strange Bedpersons), but what can I say, I wished there was more to the heroes in both of those books (especially because psycho Bill in CFY was such a larger than life figure).  While I thought Crusie was very clever in drawing Bill as an obscene caricature of the “perfect boyfriend,” Nick seemed a little diffuse to me.

One thing I always love about Crusie is the relationships among women, especially sisters.  And ultimately, to me her books are all about the heroines, which I appreciate, since I think there’s often too much focus on the hero in Romance.  I like that she creates women in their 30s who have real issues and who aren’t perfectly pert and impeccably coiffed (I loved how Lucy left to get her hair done in GROB, since it’s something soooo many women would have done, especially with Zack’s penchant for melodrama).  And I love her inclusion of animals (although I had a hard time reading the scenes where Bill tortures Quinn’s dog in CFY).  I also like the fact that her heroines aren’t these women who are desperately trying to become the 1st female president or toughen up or lose their feminine curves.  And I don’t dislike her longer books; it’s just that sometimes I feel her shorter books are tighter, I guess (and I don’t think they’re exactly unambitious, either).

“I’d argue she does that for some of her category romances too, especially Strange Bedpersons, which, every time I re-read it, just blows me away with all the commentary that she sneaks in. I think it’s worth reading just for the Cinder Tess and the Cinder Tess re-write.”

And for the way she doesn’t idealize Tess’ liberalism or demonize (is it Nick again??) the hero’s career ambitions.  The fact that Tess becomes Welch’s editor is an interesting way to negotiate all the political shape-shifting in the book, IMO.

First:

Hammurabi? Hammurabi? I’ve been disagreeing with a Babylonian God?

I avert my eyes and beg forgiveness.

Second: Robin, I think it’s true that Jenny does have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to writing mothers. If anybody is going to get short shrift, the character of His or Her mother will. Although Tilda’s mother is the exception, and a fantastic exception at that—I really, really adored the twist about her, and the way tremendous amounts of anger kept coming out in the oddest places. Jagged teeth in the applique dogs in her quilts, etc.

Wendy—Bet Me also has the two main characters not wanting kids. Also, that novel has a fantastic epiloque where all the loose ends are tied up in amusing ways.

And to the Smart Bitches:

look what you did. You’ve got serious discussions about characterization and theme in romance novels going on here.
Smart smart smart.

ooops. Wendy, sorry. You were talking about Bet Me, weren’t you.

If this comes across as self promotion, I do apologize, but I thought I’d point y’all to my review of Bet Me.

http://www.tiedtothetracks.com/storytelling/archives/000522.htm

“Although Tilda’s mother is the exception, and a fantastic exception at that—I really, really adored the twist about her, and the way tremendous amounts of anger kept coming out in the oddest places. Jagged teeth in the applique dogs in her quilts, etc.”

Good, because I want that book to be great!  I actually think it would serve Crusie’s fresh approach to “the woman thing” to enrich her portrayal of mothers.  One of the things I like about her books is that the heroines don’t have to be college professors to be damn smart and they don’t have to be flag waving activists to be strong women (aka feminists).  Crusie’s blurring the categories and the boundaries in interesting ways, which is why the sterotypes that do sneak in then stand out to me.

I’m sorry, this is bugging me: are you SURE she says Min is a size twelve? Because that’s a pet peeve of mine, and I am sure I would have noticed.

Someplace or another I found stats on the fashion industry that said that some 70 percent of all women’s clothing sold in the US was size 14 or above.

“I’m sorry, this is bugging me: are you SURE she says Min is a size twelve? Because that’s a pet peeve of mine, and I am sure I would have noticed.

Someplace or another I found stats on the fashion industry that said that some 70 percent of all women’s clothing sold in the US was size 14 or above.”

I have to go back to the book and find the passasges I remember.  I know that the corset that didn’t fit her was a bridal size 8 (which is more like a small 6, as all of us who’ve had to get into those rigs know), and I thought somewhere it said that the new corset was two sizes bigger.  It may have been on AAR that people were asserting the #12, but I remember tracking it pretty closely when I read the book because the way Min and her mom treated her weight seemed soooo out of proportion to where she really was (and she’s of “medium height,” so she’s not short) that I was trying to figure it out.  I kept feeling that Crusie was trying to emphasize how Min *saw* herself as “fat,” especially with Nanette’s “help,” but that Crusie also wanted to normalize Min as just Min—as someone who was meant to be “made with butter,” as Cal puts it.  In other words, I think we’re supposed to acknwoledge the weight obsession but ultimately see past it ourselves.  But there are so many references to Min’s weight and her conflicts with food throughout the book it started to take on a life of its own, above and beyond the life Min and Nanette were giving it—at least to me.  And I’m not a skinny little thing, so it’s not that I can’t relate. Anyway, I’ll try to track down the specific passages today.

Okay, here’s a question. If she’s a size 12, how come she wouldn’t fit in Cal’s shirt? As I recall it wouldn’t fasten across her boobs. A size 12 isn’t that big, so just how freakin’ skinny is Cal? I got the impression he was fit and athletic, not scrawny and sunken-chested. I was picturing her more like a 16 or an 18.

I’ve actually bought more than one copy of a Crusie book, and started giving away Welcome To Temptation as presents and almost cried when my mum accidentally threw out Bet Me.

I swear, when you are feeling down, there is nothing better than a Crusie book. Even if some of them do start to be a little formulaic, the great ones are truly truly awesome.

It’s been pretty much my dream to buy the rights to Welcome and make it into a film. One day....

I know I am contributing to a long-defunct discussion, but just had to add that Bet Me has pretty much been my comfort reading for the past 3 months (I totally agree with the poster above: there’s nothing which can cheer you up quite like a Crusie novel) and Min’s size is never mentioned, anywhere, in the novel.

... Um… I mean her exact clothes size. Just realised that didn’t come out quite right.