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

(Side note: This sounds good in theory, but unless the girl keeps her head completely still AND takes care not to mess up the lip-prints of the girl(s) who blazed the trail before her, I don’t see how this would work.)

Gin invites various classmates, all of whom serve as stupendously wooden archetypes. Here’s a quick run-down of several of them:

Sandy: Good-two-shoes girl who’s best friends with Gin because… actually, I have NO IDEA why she’s friends with Gin. Sandy has no idea either. Neither does Gin. This is one of the book’s many mysteries.

Jade: Skinny, hot, popular, smart, into championing causes such as getting rid of the dress code. In short: a tiresome paragon.

Ash and Rose: GOD. These two are so annoying. Every time they came on the scene, I was overcome by an urge to smack ‘em in the face with a two-by-four. They’re the perfect couple and obviously meant to be the book’s moral center. They’ve been dating for over a year, but they haven’t done more than kiss and they don’t plan to do more for a while yet. They’re supposed to be different and cute and inspire admiration for a) their moral and physical purity, and b) their fearlessness about Being Different and Defying Norms and all that, but really, all they inspire in me is heaving nausea.

Hunter: Handsome, amoral asshole with a peener that burrrrrrns, oh how it burrrrrrrns, but oh boy, he sure loves getting head.

Perry: Closeted gay boy who’s allegedly snarky and smart, but more often than not comes across as petulant, delusional and mumbly. I’m not kidding. Dude mumbles all the time in this book, even when Hunter’s dick isn’t in his mouth.

Skye and Rod: The archetypal Teenage Couple Who Has Sex Before They’re Ready. Teenage Premarital Sex: Don’t Do It! Only marginally less annoying than Ash and Rose.

All these characters have about the liveliness and realism of marionettes being worked by a puppeteer on quaaludes. Their motivations are opaque at best and downright puzzling at worst. Gin, for instance: why is she so sexually precocious? What little we see of her family life seems stable, and we’re never provided with any believable reasoning for why she’s so promiscuous.

Also, all those people screaming about how obscene this book is, how it appeals mostly to the prurient interest? Hate to destroy these people’s lurid suck-n-fuck fantasies involving hot, hard-bodied teenage boys getting blowjobs from barely pubescent girls (oh, you KNOW some of that outrage was fueled by a lethal combination of displaced horniness and the accompanying guilt over that horniness), but Tod Goldberg said it best: “The book is about as titillating as a bowel movement.” Well, assuming you’re not the type to be titillated by bowel movements, that is—there does seem to be a terrifyingly large number of these people in certain newsgroups.

At any rate, rest assured there are no explicit sex scenes. There are exactly two scenes involving oral sex in the whole book. The first one takes place off the page: We basically enter the scene as Hunter is zipping up. The other involves Skye and Rod, and…. OK, there’s no way I can do justice to Ruditis’ deathless prose, so here’s a quote:

Her breathing intensified. She grabbed a clump of the comforter in her hand, squeezing tightly. She was feeling all the things she had read about in the trashy romance novels her mom kept hidden under the bed they were on. Skye’s bosom heaved. Her loins burned with desire. Waves of pleasure washed over her body ready to crash on the shore.

The sad thing is, while that scene deliberately attempts to skewer romance novel sex scenes, the rest of the book is written every bit as clumsily. To give you an idea of how clunky it is: Think of an episode of Saved By The Bell. No, not back when it was even remotely amusing and featured Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Tiffani-Amber Thiesen and god knows what other hyphenated teenybopper hottie. I’m talking the recent seasons in which Screech is, like, 42 years old and STILL a creepily underdeveloped buffoon amidst a host of bland Hollywood hardbodies trying their best to look like teenagers.

OK, so can you picture one of those episodes in your head? Good. Because seriously? This book bears an eerie resemblance to one of those episodes. The writing is so goddamn stilted that should all the global warming alarmists prove to be right and Earth is flooded in a sea of melted icecaps in the next few years, the prose in this book will remain high and dry.

And while the book isn’t titillating per se, you can tell that Ruditis tries to be all nudge-nudge wink-wink with the occasional double-entendre, and most of these attempts just don’t work. For instance, check out the opening paragraph:

Gin took the slender shaft of the tube in her palm. She gave a gentle tug along the base and watched as the lipstick extended to its full length.

Admittedly, it’s been YEARS since I’ve worn lipstick, but as far as I know, you twist the base to get the lipstick to extend. I’ve never encountered a lipstick that required you to tug on the base; if nothing else, it makes no sense. Tugging the base would logically mean the tip would retreat, unless the lipstick manufacturer created an unduly complicated and completely counterintuitive mechanism that would extend the lipstick when you pulled. Either Ruditis has no idea how lipstick works, or he knows and decided to describe it inaccurately in an effort to preserve this truly pointless (and execrable) lipstick-as-penis imagery.

The book does get the core messages through, and they’re good messages for teens—or anyone, for that matter: oral sex carries real risks and consequences, and having sex before you’re ready isn’t that great an idea. Too bad the message is delivered by such a boring, clumsy messenger. Several other YA books have dealt with teenage sex and relationships with much more depth, grace and readability; the memorable ones for me were Deenie and Forever by Judy Blume, but I’m sure these are pretty dated by today’s standards.

In short, the book and the subject matter had lots of potential, but ended up with all the depth, believablity and complexity of an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers—that is, if the Pink Ranger got all humpy with the Green Ranger and decided to give him a hummer between costume changes, then infected the rest of the team with gonorrhea.

(Actually, there’s probably pornographic MMPR fanfic involving just such scenarios. And what’s worse, I’d much prefer to read this fanfic than watch an actual episode of MMPR. Oh, the humanity.)

Are you guys going to write a book? Like, SMART BITCHES GUIDE TO ROMANCE NOVELS, vol. 1? I’d totally pimp that. Or fiction. LOVE’S BODICE LOST, by Smart Bitch Sarah and Smart Bitch Candy…

Love’s Bodice Lost?! That might set the record for number of uses of the word “turgid.” Seriously, we could write a book. It’s not like each of us is short on things to say. But who is going to publish anything that chock-full of shit, fuck, cunt, cock, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits?  And twat! Don’t forget twat!

What other genres do you like to read most? (Um, we know ‘bout the vet/animal lovin’. Teehee.)

Right now: pregnancy and baby books. But that’s a recent development. I’m a big fan of historical fiction, like The Red Tent, and my all-time fave, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. In fact, I’m all about Moore. Cracks my ass up.

Boxers, briefs, or commando? And on your men? (just kidding)

I’d love to go commando but that ain’t happening for me right now. I’m all about big, soft and comfy. Once my ass stops expanding, I’ll let you know. As for the Hubby, he’s a boxer-briefs man, and woo damn are those things sexy. Nothing makes the booty go da-na-da like a pair of boxer briefs.

What’s your favorite romantic movie? Romantic comedy? Nonromantic movie?

Romantic movie: Sleepless in Seattle, even though Meg Ryan is a royal twat to Bill Pullman, who seems to spend his movie career having cute women act like twats to him. But the scenes where Tom Hanks is talking about his wife, and what made her special, and his interaction with his kid – oh, gets me every time.

Favorite romantic comedy: Bull Durham. Gosh I love this movie. Susan Sarandon is about the sexiest thing ever, even in that weird black and white plaid skirt, and pre-long-ass-movies Costner is dang sexy, too. But I never really got why Tim Robbins was such a catch (har) until much later in life.

Favorite non-romantic movie: Twister. That movie is completely mistake-riddled and I love it every time.  It’s also my guilty pleasure moment.

If you were a chick lit heroine, what alcoholic beverage would you abuse?

I love wine, but if I were a chick lit heroine? I’d either love cosmos because I do in fact love them, or, if I were written by an author trying to be original, a whiskey sour.

Oh, and do you have a favorite subgenre of romance? If so, what is it/are they?

I am a huge sucker for forbidden/trying-to-resist-the-luuuuurve romances. And I’ll take that forbidden/trying-to-resist romance in any setting except those that border of pedophelia. SEP, are your ears burning?

If the magic book goddess were to gift you with 3 of your favorite books while stuck in, a) wall to wall traffic b) on the subway between stops-naturally you have a booklight & extra batteries- or c) while waiting for the Titanic to sink, what 3 books would the book goddess give you?

Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, Bitten by Kelley Armstrong, and The Duke and I by Julia Quinn. I could take those books to a day at the beach and have a great time, even though I’ve read them each, like, six times.

Pepsi or Coke?

If my only options are soda, Coke. But if I’m drinking diet, Diet Pepsi. And if I have a choice, water or milk (2%, ice cold, please).

If you could only ever read one other blog, which one would you read?

Mine!

What kind of bribe would it take for you to proclaim that Cassie Edwards Rules The World?

Seriously? Just one bribe? A guarantee of my own television network filled with all my favorite shows, even the ones that got cancelled due to the fact that I and exactly four other people liked them and the rest of the tv-watching world likes crap I hate (for the record: Cupid, SportsNight, and The American Embassy all fit that list).

Plus, I’d have to have a lifetime supply of Oreos, milk, cereal, and chocolate chip cookies, and a metabolism that would power corporate generators so I never had to get up off the sofa and try to lose the weight.

In addition, a stack of marvelously perfect romance novels, the kind that have not one single flaw and invite me back to read again and again.

AND I’d need a staggering amount of money.

What is the single most embarrassing book that you could admit to loving (and really do love?)

Knight in Shining Armor. Jude Deveraux. I know, I know. But gosh I love that book. It’s not quite a HEA, and it’s not quite historically accurate to the detail, but I’m a sucker for Douglass and Nick.

What’s your favorite cheese?
(cheese and romance cliché)

Favorite cheese: boursin, and soft goat cheeses.

Favorite cheesy romantic cliché: bodyguard/guardian romances.

Are you two aspiring authors? [I’m testing the popularised ‘reviewer is a secret writer wannabe’ theory]

I don’t think I read books without wondering how I could improve on them, and I do write, though mostly non-fiction. But have I written a romance? No. My prose writing muscles are far stronger than my fiction writing muscles and I never really have the patience or the attention span for a long-term plot. However, if someone wanted to publish my five-year-old online journal? I’m happy to call myself a published author then!

Will you ever reveal the URL of your old web sites? Or shall I?

It is so not hard to find mine, I think.

Hardback, trade or mass paperback?

Either. But I won’t buy hardbacks at full price. Really. So few pieces of writing are worth my $25.00. Sorry, all you publishing folks out there.

Of which authors are you fangirls?

Julia Quinn, for her early works, especially. Janet Evanovich. Teresa Medieros. Jennifer Crusie. Emma Holly. And I’m a recovering Nora Roberts junkie. We have an organization. We’re the NRA.

Why do you swear so much?

Why the fuck not?

What’s your favorite freeway?

Connecticut Merritt Parkway & California Highway 1. Note: freeways only exist on the west coast, really. Around here, in the northeast, a good many roads are toll. And the Garden State Parkway is so not a scenic masterpiece anyway. It should be free.

If you had to be any one TSTL heroine, which one would you be, and why?

Meriel from Uncommon Vows by Mary Jo Putney. I wanted to smack her silly, but for a few hundred pages with Adrian? I’d have a hard time resisting him. And I wouldn’t go running out a window to fall into the enemy’s clutches, either. I’d stay right there with him. No window diving, no dashing off in a huff. Just me and Adrian, wine and a fire.

If you could beat any TSTL heroine to a bloody pile of fawning, swooning whimper, who would it be, and can I help?

Candy’s going to shit a brick sideways, but I want five minutes with Crusie’s Maddie from Tell Me Lies. Gosh, she annoyed the ever living shit out of me.

What’s your favorite cereal?

I love the uneconomic cereals that take up far too much room in the box, like Honeycombs, and Cracklin’ Oat Bran, but my heart belongs to Honey Nut Cheerios.

Who’s the smarter bitch?

Probably Candy. Pregnancy and age is making me doumbbe. I’ve got serious hormone brain.

If you were to be stranded on a itty-bitty-island and could only bring one thing, who or what would you take with you?

Hubby.

Who does your make-up?

I do. Badly. It’s gone by 11am, so check me in the am or miss your chance to see me with eyeliner. After 1pm it’s all gone and I have to remember to reapply lipstick.

What’s the worst movie you’ve seen?

Underworld, with Kate Beckinsale, is the worst movie of recent note. We call it “Underwear.” Also, City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage. God damn that thing blew monkey cock.

Worst book read?

I’m taking the liberty of listing three. Sometimes, often, in fact, I read romance and romantic suspense because I don’t want to have to worry about much, like whether there will be a happily ever after, or the wherefore and how behind the hero and heroine’s issues. Sometimes, I just want brain candy, so at those times, I put up with a lot of crap. But vacations have been marred by the horrid writing and terrible plot decisions I found in the following books. They were too bad to let pass without a remark along the lines of, “This book sucks!” And of course, I kept reading:

Honey Moon by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Dream Man by Linda Howard, and The Maze by Catherine Coulter.

What’s your favorite TV show? Worst TV show?

Favorite TV Show: SportsNight, Cupid and Beavis and Butthead.

Worst TV Show:,i> Sports Reporters on ESPN. A bunch of out of shape desk jockeys yelling at each other about sports games that have already happened. Absolutely fucks up my Sunday morning – it’s a nightmare.

Okay, if your favorite author came up to you and said “Candy/Sarah, I want to write a romance novel customized to your specifications (plot, hero type, heroine type)” what would you select to go in that novel?

Plot:

Forbidden or trying-to-resist romance

Hero type:

Smart, slightly dorky, biiiig brain, biiiig dong, and trying desperately to avoid his feelings for the heroine, and being unable to resist her.

Heroine:

Smart, clever, funny, and not totally hung up on whether he likes her or he likes her likes her. But he has to earn her trust and is unable to stop the compulsion to do so.

Beef or chicken?

Chicken, if I must. I’m mostly meatless for the time being.

What are you like in real life?  Do you talk as openly with real people?  Would you be as funny if I met you in person?

If I got to know you, yes, I’m wicked funny. I’m pretty low key and I have a snarky, sometimes mean, and very dry sense of humor, but I’m reluctant to bust out with it from the get-go because some people don’t get me. However, I’m just as open and entertianing in real life.

American version: skeet or ho?
English version: minger or todger dodger?
Scottish version: cowping or madbit?

Warning: all have different meanings.

Wait, are you asking my preference, or which I’d like to have in the house?

Skeet smells after awhile, but a ho brings nasty nasty into the house. But the ho can bring in some cash so I’ll put her in the basement.

I’d have a better time hanging out with the todger dodger than the minger.

And as for that last one, I’d rather not have the floozy madbit in the house with the ho. Just asking for trouble.

Which would you prefer to wrestle in, Jell-O or pudding?

Jello. It would stay in relatively solid pieces, making cleanup easier. Pudding I’d be combing out of my nether hairs for weeks to come. Huh huh. “Come.”

And really, I know you all just want picture of my cats - and me.

This is Ohta, known as Spawn.

This is Fukui-san, Spawn’s brother. They were named after the commentators on the show Iron Chef

This is Oliver, known as Diggus, or Doo. He’s the master of the house (cats).

This is Grace, Oliver’s sister. She’s the true master of the house, and, aside from me, the only other girl. She would like you to tell her she’s beautiful, even though she already knows it.

This is what happens when you put the bacon tray in the sink.

This is Logan! Our fantastic pooch - I totally forgot to put his picture in here. Sorry Loboo!

This is Hubby and me - on my birthday. Hubby’s cooking and I’m standing around looking useful.

And this is me - I was actually reading when this picture was taken.

I’d heard how racy and sex-obsessed the genre is, but it seems to me the race is entered and exited at exactly the same points each time. Chick-lit heroines talk about sex, and occasionally they have it, yet it’s never because they want it, never because they have to have it or they’ll die, even though it’s wrong and there will be hell to pay. Nor is there no hell at all to pay — the kind of sex you just wanted and took, then zipped up or fell unconscious. Nor is it married sex: predictable, satisfying and scheduled. No, chick-lit sex is some sort of subtext for societal temperature-taking. Brr!

Hey, everyone, let’s play a game! Let’s play… Spot the False Generalization! Chick lit is filled with nothing but girls who have sex even though they don’t want it? Well, hell, and here I thought Old Skool romances were bad when it came to rape.

And also: married sex is scheduled? Shiiiit. Nobody ever told ME.

[Chick lit is] not literature; nor is it pornography, which is unoriginal but at least it’s hard and wet, not safe lunchroom gossip lust.

Ooooh, another fun game! Let’s play… Spot the False Dichotomy!

Bitch, please. A book has to be either literary OR pornographic? The mind boggles at what this person would think about the vast majority of books printed, sold and read, which tend to be neither literary nor pornographic NOR chick-lit (which is worse than porn, according to this person’s assessment, and hey, she wrote for Hustler and Playboy, so I guess she’d know).

No literary movement before this one has ever made me angry. People’s taste is none of my business. But this shit is being marketed to young girls, who are already getting weak enough ideas from other media about what being a girl means — why should the few who read be plowed under, too?

OH NOS THINK OF OUR CHILDREN!!!!111 PH3AR TEH CH1CK L1T!!!!

Anyway, that bapping sound you hear? That’s me hitting my head on the desk. WHY do people so consistently underestimate the reasoning abilities of teenagers--especially teenagers who read a lot? I mean, these teens tend to be smarter than average and a bit more introspective than average, right?

Train that impressionable girl right, give her a rock-steady foundation in critical thinking, and I can just about guarantee you that she won’t be too easily swayed into thinking that she needs [insert stupid cultural message about what being a woman means] to be happy or a good human being.

I’d like to take all these books, pile them up and throw gasoline and a lit match onto them. And let my daughter, and all the other girls, see if they can walk into the fire barefoot. Maybe they can’t do it, and maybe they’ll cry and get hurt and go to the hospital. But some of them will succeed. Either way, they deserve to see what they are made of, before they lay down their fierceness and accept what the rest of the world tells them they are, and more debilitatingly, what they are not.

Right. Does this sound like a bunch of self-serving, pseudo-literary horseshit about how Girls Are Precious And Need A Trial By Fire? Or is it just me? Because she starts out like she has a point, then she goes straight into a truly godawful metaphorical conceit and I kinda lost her there. But then, I read romance novels, so I can’t be all that bright.

These are the books I want a young girl to find, all on her own — not clustered together on Barnes & Noble’s Young Girl section, shoved down her throat by a manager shitting out what was shoved down his throat by an army of publicists who know where their bread is buttered: Me by Brenda Ueland; Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller; and Dune Life by the National Audubon Society.

Newsflash: Young girls who like to read will, in general: a) read widely; b) find a lot of different things that they’ll enjoy; and c) enjoy them despite what you think is Good For Them.

And I have to tell you, in all my years of bookstore browsing, I have yet to experience a manager shoving a book down my throat--or any other orifice, for that matter. Bookstore managers are too busy, well, managing, and frankly, I’m lucky if I can catch the attention of a lowly clerk to help me rummage through the C shelves of the romance section to see if Mr. Impossible had been released yet.

Here’s a thought: raise your girls to be strong. Raise your girls to defy expectations. Raise your girls to think independently. And if she likes to read chick lit, it’s not the end of the fucking world.

People who impart fiction with this magical, all-encompassing ability to Educate and Edify--and in fact, expect fiction to do as much--annoy me. Not that allowing fiction to impart Social Messages of Significance is a bad thing (ref. The Jungle, 1984, Animal Farm), or an unworthy endeavor, but shouldn’t the primary instruction come from the home, the family? If your teenager is so weak-minded that she instantly buys into everything she reads, you need to sit her ass down and explain the difference between real life and fiction again, ‘cause I don’t think that first lesson stuck.

Fiction that has a pointed social message: OK, I can dig it, and mostly if the message it tries to provide jives closely with my personal worldview. But I don’t care if most my fiction doesn’t contain Big, Meaningful Messages. I mostly want my fiction to entertain me, and to not insult my intelligence while it’s doing so. Because at the end of the day, it’s not really a fictional novel’s job to teach me life lessons. It’s my job.