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

The Bitchery is ever an altruistic lot. Bitchery reader Marta Acosta sent me an email saying:

I buy lots of books, too many to keep or even give to my friends.  I tend to donate them to the Goodwill because I figure someone will be happy to get a fairly new book at a good price.  But I’d like to donate them (and my ARCs and regular copies of my books) to good organizations, like soldiers, military hospitals, women’s shelters, etc.

Perhaps you could do a call out to people asking if they have any suggestions and contact information about people collecting for these causes.

This is a good idea - thanks!

So: a general request -

Do you like to donate books? What’s your favorite place to donate? With the innate cheapness that is the USPS media mail shipping costs, we can pretty much send our books anywhere in the US for not a hurtful amount of money. So - please, give us the details: your library? Charity of choice? Home for the elderly? Book drive for soldiers serving overseas? Feel free to comment or email us offline if you rather, and we’ll post your suggestion for you.

And please, if you put your home address and tell us you want books? I shall smack you around with a 501(c)3 certificate.

An acquaintance of mine, Noah Brand, came up with the best idea for a paranormal romantic comedy. EVER.

Srsly. Go read it.

We’ve talked about ARCs for sale on eBay, and the proper things to do with an ARC- used book store donation, charity donation, elderly home donation. Now I have a question, and I’m honestly asking. I’m not trying to be a smart ass. So feel free to tell me, “Oh you are so so misguided, you Smart Bitch, you.”

I have a good number of ARCs ranging in publishing date from December 2006 through April 2007, and while I am reading them and making notes for review, I can’t possibly keep them all. I’d need to build an addition on the house. For the record, books sent to me by an author specifically are not part of what I’m proposing.

My synagogue hosts an annual charity auction of donated goods to raise money for synagogue activities. The charity auction is hosted online (not at eBay but at a similar site that hosts nothing but charity auctions) and is available through April, with a big event on May 5 where the goods from the online auction are delivered, and there’s also a live auction and party to celebrate that oh-so-Jewish holiday, Cinco de Mayo. As a Spanish-speaking Jew, I’m all about this party.

My question is as follows: is it inappropriate for me to take the ARCs of books that, by the time of the auction, will already have been published, put them in a basket with a beach towel, some sunscreen, and a water bottle, and auction it off as a “Summer Beach Reading Basket?” Or would that be too close to “selling the ARC,” despite the proceeds going to a 501(c)3 not-for-profit?

I’m curious what you think - and what other altruistic ways we could redirect ARC copies for maximum benefit. 

Yup. That’s right: More In Death covers. Because they’re just too good for us not to.

Sarah: Attn. Mr. Art Person: The sword as phallic symbol should probably directed toward her love grotto, not cutting her off at the femur. Might nick an artery.

Candy: Really, she doesn’t need the sword to take off those cheap thigh-highs. Those Renn Fayre types can be so melodramatic sometimes. Tsk.

Conspiracy in Death

Sarah: Really, I know that some doctors have a God complex, but are a snake-halo, rays of light, AND a crown of thorns really necessary?

Candy: If God is a surgeon, how much does it cost to take out malpractice insurance? Because when you think about it, the number of people killed by an act of God is truly mind-boggling. In fact, here’s a new twist on an old conundrum: Can God create a malpractice insurance premium so large, not even He can afford it?

Sarah: Eve! Consuming raw heart is NOT a cold remedy substitute for the diluted heart & liver of the Barnaby duck. For that matter, it does not help with baldness, either.

Candy: Wow. Eve is suddenly black and possessed of a horribly misshapen bald head. Did the doctor yank her out with a pair of forceps? Or did she undergo radical plastic surgery because she took the term “heart-shaped face” wayyyy too much to heart after reading one too many romance novels?

Bitchery reader meardaba sent us the following link, stating “a friend of mine told me about this TV show called Wetten, Dass… (I Bet You That...) where contestants bet the show that they can do something ridiculous under certain criteria. She told me about this one contestant who bet that he could figure out the title of a song just by watching two men twitch their pectoral muscles to music.

And he does it.”

The Power of Mantitty, it speaks all languages.

It’s nearly midnight here on the East Coast of Smart Bitch Land - so I get to be the first, after Lord Mantitte, to wish Candy a happy, happy birthday!

And let us verily say in haiku style the wonderousness that is SB Candy:

Smart Bitch Candy Day?
Hark! A ManTitte Salute!
She’s Made of Awesome.

Luscious pectorals,
Undone shirts tucked in wide belts?
Behold the power.

Happy Birthday Smart Bitch Candy!

I asked the DVR to record Angel’s Fall because I was so curious how Nora Roberts’ books would transform to movies. Considering that one of the strengths I enjoy in her books is the development of a character, flaws and all, over 300+ pages, I was very curious as to whether the characters would be as faceted in 120 minutes or less.

The short answer: of course not. But, that answer is entirely dependent on the actor. Heather Locklear does a marvelous job. Her costar didn’t come close to her abilities, and as a result the part that disappointed me the most was the romance - the mystery was interesting, but, like the imbalance in costar ability, the romance wasn’t nearly as compelling as the whodunit.

Below are my thoughts as I typed them out during the film. It’s not as coherent as if I’d written the whole thing in retrospect, but it’s after 10pm and I have the cough from hell and want my bed. 

Just when you thought we’d forgotten that we have a semi-regular contest on Fridays, here comes another one! ‘Cause we like to keep you on your toes. And also, Candy has a mind like a steel sieve and completely forgot it was her turn last week to come with one. Ha. Anyway, the usual rules apply:

First person to correctly guess Heroine’s Name + Title of Book + Author will be the recipient of a Smart Bitch Title, Guaranteed Made of 100% Awesome. And unlike all the other pansy-ass title-makers out there, we ensure ours are made from 100% Child Sweatshop Labor. Because hey, 6-year-olds need to work, too, and who are we to deny the forces of the free market?

This one’s an easy one, too.

---

Divorced white female, going through a bit of a mid-life crisis, seeks perky dog and nothing else. I’m certainly not looking for a dog that’s about as perky as the Hindenburg after it crashed. And I’m definitely, definitely not looking for a romantic entanglement with an ER doctor living on the floor below me. You know--the really, really hot one. The one who loves old movies and Mystery Science Theater 3000. The one who’s 10 years younger than me. Yeah, that one. I really don’t need to be involved with him. Not even remotely.

One of the funniest, smartest bitches around died yesterday of breast cancer. Farewell, Molly. You’ll be missed.

In memoriam, I leave all of you here with her hilarious take on Texas dildo laws. I hope I don’t need to warn you that this video clip is not even remotely work-safe, but just in case, here it is: This video clip is not even remotely work-safe.

I tried very hard to get through this book, but when I reached page 100 and still wanted to throttle the heroine, her mother, her roommates, and everyone else, I had to put it down. Between the frustrating and unreliable heroine and the wooden ancillary characters, I’d had enough.

The heroine, Monette Victor, has just been released from prison after new evidence of bribery and extortion in her prosecution revealed that she had been framed for the murder for which she was convicted. She’d maintained all along that she was innocent and set up, but because of her less-than-stellar lifestyle as a mistress and wayward parent, she was convicted with little effort, particularly after the district attorney pressured other witnesses to falsely implicate her. She wrote a book in jail and became famous because she spilled all the dirt on the district attorney who framed her, because by that time, he was the state Attorney General. The resulting scandal caused him to resign - and Monette to go free.

It was relatively easy to find all the backstory details that set up the present novel, because they’re all on page 6 in a big fat info dump. How convenient.

In my old review for Response, I mentioned that retrograde amnesia plots are the tertiary syphilis of romance novels, and I realized that this comparison was more apt than I thought. Retrograde amnesia plots, especially those involving trauma so severe that the heroine can’t remember anything previous to the accident, including her own name, are painful, undignified, a signal that there’s little that can be done to make the book better (though occasionally drastic measures can save it from painful, miserable death), and it can drive readers crazy. Then I started thinking, well, hell, a lot of the plot lines and genre conventions of romance novels can be similarly compared to STDs.

So, without further ado, we proudly present to you: If Romance Novel Conventions Were Veneral Diseases. How many STDs does YOUR book feature?

Secret babies: Secondary syphilis. It’s terribly unsexy, difficult to recover from, and common sense and a little bit of prevention could’ve headed it off at the pass.

Virgin widows and horny, take-charge women in contemporaries who are still virgins: Herpes Type 2 (HSV-2). One of the most common STDs in Romancelandia. Not curable, but not usually fatal; mostly, it’s unsightly and annoying. Despite its prevalence, is still avoidable if one takes basic precautions.

Feisty heroines who set your teeth on edge and the asshole heroes who (allegedly) lurrrrve them: Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Again, one of the most common STDs in Romancelandia. They can be easily overlooked--that is, until they make the plot break out all over with warts. Can sometimes be cancerous to the whole book if it is infected with a particularly malevolent strain of hero and/or heroine.

Heroes with massive Mommy issues: Gonorrhea. Like gonorrhea, this plot device is eminently treatable, and many, many romance authors, flush with the giddiness of writing their first books, contract this plot device in a bout of frenzied, wanton writing. Can cause quite a bit of discomfort, but that’s youthful indiscretion for you. However, if left unchecked and in combination with other unsound hero behaviors (for example, being a complete cockhead to the heroine for no apparent reason other than the fact that she has ovaries and so did mommy dearest), it can make it easier to contract more fatal diseases, like the Big Misunderstanding.

Flavors of the Month (e.g., sheikhs in the 80s, Navy SEALs in the late 90s and early 00s, brooding vampires and werewolves now): Chlamydia. Like chlamydia, it’s the silent epidemic. You go for months, sometimes years, happily reading these books, feeling nary a twinge. Then suddenly, you look up at your bookshelf, and you realize you haven’t read a book in months that wasn’t part of some plaguey Regency Brotherhood with homoerotic overtones, or you couldn’t remember the last time you cracked open a romance novel in which both protagonists were a) fully alive, and b) fully human. AND IT BURRRRRRNS, OH IT BURRRRRRNS. Worst of all, you were unknowingly infecting your friends with it, too. “Hey, check out this awesome series involving werewolf brothers” you told them, innocently handing off some paperback DOOM. You could weep at your carelessness, but what’s done is done. All you can do is move on, warier and grateful that it didn’t get so bad that you contracted the equivalent of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease: the dreaded Fangirlitis.