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

Can you believe I forgot to upload covers? Bad Sarah, bad! In all that onomatopoeic wonderment, I forget the other images that make me cringe - our ever ready supply of snark worthy covers.

Bitchery reader Mary sent us this fine cover:

Sarah:  Sunshine… on my buttcheeks… makes me look gay!
Hiding… that I’m so gay… makes me cry!
Sunshine...on the water...reflects my manhood!
Do it...with this woman? You must be high.

Candy: The cover itself isn’t particularly awful, but placing the words “Losing control is the ultimate rush” RIGHT BY THIS GUY’S SPHINCTER… Look, one word comes to mind, and that word is “Tubgirl.” (Google that image with the Safesearch filters off. I dare you.) But once again, props to Harlequin for being on the bleeding edge of romance. I honestly never expected them to be an advocate for brown shower love stories. I just pity the unsuspecting swimmers who dip into those waters right after he and his light o’ love are done, uh, losing control.

Librarian and Bitchery member Erin sent us this stunning example:

Sarah: This guy right here, he is thinking fondly of Mr. Coming Undone up there, and by “fondly” I mean, he completely wants to undone that dude’s pants and find out if the front is as fine as the view of the back end.

But alas, he is also jealous, because unlike Mr. Undone, this man has not mastered the faux enthusiasm for the potential sexx0ring of those pesky breasted breeder-types.

Candy: Here at Smart Bitches who Love Trashy Books, we bring you only the latest and most cutting-edge of love story trends. The next hot thing? Callous indifference romances. If you love brutal, passionate alpha heroes, wait till you meet this new breed of Millennium Man! We like to call him Homo Obliviens, or the Omega Hero (not to be confused with the Omega Man). If you thought scenes in which the hard-edged hero breaks down, confesses his love and admits the power the heroine wields over him were hot, wait till you read the scenes in which the Omega Hero is finally moved to acknowledge the heroine’s presence with a puzzled tilt of his head and a listless “Oh, you’re still here? Uh, cool. Wait, what’s your name again?” It will have you in tears, I tell you. IN TEARS.

And as always, LadyRhian delivers a world of hurt. Seriously. The hurt, it is worldwide. Also pants.

Sarah: Ah, yes, The Katie Holmes Story: A Not-So-Safe-Haven. About three quarters into the story, the Tom Cruise figure will stop fondling her hair to verify its strength and resilience. He’ll just yank it out of her head to weave birthing nests for the little aliens that will burst out of her eyesockets to breed upon the earth.

Candy: Yoicks. Aidan Quinn, why has thou fallen so low?

SpinsterWitch brought up Memoirs of a Geisha as an example of a male writing a female protagonist, and in doing so jogged my memory. I remember when these books were first released, reviewers and other folks made a big deal out of Memoirs of a Geisha and She’s Come Undone because they’re male-written accounts of a female protagonists - first-person female protagonist even. And while that shouldn’t be a big deal, it kind of is.

As a omg holy crap I’m seriously needing to change my pants fabulous book I’m reading currently pointed out, women are trained to read male protagonists as representative of man-/humankind, and can read across gender barriers. Men, however, are not taught as easily to relate to a female protagonist.

I asked Hubby, the nearest male with a complete vocabulary and speaking ability, whether he had ever read a book, for school or for pleasure, that featured a female protagonist. He had to think about it, and said, “No.” I asked if that was a reason he’d been reluctant to try to read one of my 6,783,642,231 romances, despite my assurances that I wouldn’t give him crap to read, and he said, “Maybe.” When I explained the source of my question, he thought it was terribly interesting and totally agreed - he had no experience reading a story from a female perspective, regardless of the gender of the writer.

Freebird’s contribution to the conversation was, “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! FIVE!” in case you were curious. There is no gender in math, apparently.

So aside from the gender of the protagonist, the gender of the writer becomes important or at least remarkable when a male writer writes a female protagonist with depth and skill. Given the number of female writers writing male protagonists, particularly in romance, should crossing the gender barrier in either direction be such an almighty big deal? Of course not. But it is.

So what’s your best example of excellence in a male-written romance or romantic storyline?

Thanks to Bitchery reader Lizzie, who forwarded me the following link to a BBC contest: guess the male romance author based on a short excerpt of writing. Yes, one of the six examples is “a rare outing from a male romance author.”

Snort. Because most male authors writing a scene between a male and female protagonist pair who experience sexual and emotional attraction aren’t writing any element of “romance.” That’s a sex scene. Or a unbelievably odd and woodenly dialogued encounter between Dirk Pitt and some chick.

I totally guessed it was extract six, but alas, I was wrong.

Attention Writers on Macs:

Along with Woot, another site I check daily is the MacZot, which is a daily deal on Mac OSX software.

Since I am a Mac person, I am always giddy to learn more about what cool-moe-dee software is out there for my laptop, even though it is seriously, SERIOUSLY time for an upgrade, like damn.

Today’s special, which is 45% off the retail price, is a text editor for creative writers called “Ulysses,” which attempts to take writing projects contained in many separate documents and enable the writer to view all the pieces in one convenient clickable project window. Formatting and whatall are part of the deal as well.

From the site:

Typically a creative work, such as a book, a play or screenplay is not written in a single document. A book that ends up being 200+ pages results from fractions, starting points, discarded ideas and many more—all neatly distributed along a total of about 800 pages, most likely with over 100 different documents, combined with notes, Post-Its, scribblings on the margins of numerous daily papers, beer covers, napkins and the back sides of photos.

What this looks like on your computer is (in the worst case) several hundred documents from a bunch of different applications that were put into different folders on your hard disk. The organization of these pieces requires the writer to be extremely disciplined (or hire someone who is)—a mind job that could better be spent on writing itself....

Ulysses combines single documents or texts into so called projects. Imagine a project as a folder with your work, which contains all relevant text parts, chapters, ideas, notes, etc.

Ulysses only sports one single window, divided into project and document part. The project part features a so called Document Browser, a Document Preview and a Filter. The document part offers an Editor, a Note Pad, a Control Panel and tabs to switch between the currently open documents.

Now, the ZOT price is still $60, which is a good hunk of change, but, should any of you writerly folks out there be in the market for such a deal, 45% off ain’t bad at all. I’m trying to figure out if I want to make the plunge myself. 

It all started with an e-mail conversation between Sarah and me, like most of these things often do.

Sarah: If romance novels were comic books, what would the onomatopoeia be of the big O, particularly from the male?

Spifff? Hoerk? Wfffff?

Candy: This is terrifying because I am actually speaking from experience, but: I think one of the most common is “splrt” and variations thereof.

Other suggestions:

“SPOOOOGE!”

“FLLLPHT”

Sarah: Definitely splrt. And seriously, spoooooge makes me laugh so hard.

Wasn’t Ren from Ren & Stimpy’s last name Hoerk? No, that was Hoek. Hoek could also work, though, now that I think about it.

Also:

“Bluuuuuuuuurgh”
“PAFFFT”

Candy: Paffft hahahahahahahaha paffft. Oh Jesus. That one’s reserved for when it hits somebody’s eye, I think.

Others:

“Sprrfft”
“Blork”
“GLUMMMO!”
“SPRRRROT!”
“Flizzzzz”

You know, I bet we could actually conduct Internet research on this. Because seriously, SO MUCH bad porno comickry available on-line.

Sarah:Plunk plunk fizz fizz?

I think this is a question we ought to put to the bitchery. In the form of *drumroll please* a Photoshop contest. A very not safe for work contest! Hah ahahahahah!

Candy: Oh Jesus. Yes.

I’m picturing little word balloons coming out of the characters’ mouths and little spiky sound balloons emerging from their crotches. Like “Unnnnffff!” out of their mouths, and then a tasteful little “BLLLRRRRT” emerging from the lower regions.

Never have I felt such a strong urge to Google for Thundercats erotic fanart. I want to make Lion-O’s fiddly bits say “Cocorico!”

Wow, that particular combination of keywords should net us some interesting hits, eh?

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Right, that was the set-up. So here are the Rules of the Contest, beeetches.

1. Grab some suggestive artwork--romance novel covers, comic panels, draw your own, whatever--and Photoshop some balloons with your favorite onomatopoeic representation of The Critical Moment on there.

2. You can use the words we came up with, or you can create your own. See our samples with below. And e-mail them to and .

3. Only one entry per person.

4. Feel free to be as high-res as you want with your original masterpiece, but keep our poor little inboxes in mind when you send the files to us. JPEGs, PNGs and GIFs, please.

5. Send us your entries by midnight of May 1. We’ll post the entries on May 3 for voting by the general Bitchery; the entry with the most votes wins. Voting ends on May 9 and we’ll announce the winner on May 11.

6. The prize? A $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com, and a Special Edition Smart Bitch aristocratic title consisting of, well, an onomatopoeic splooge sound.

And now, behold the expertly (snrk!) Photoshopped samples from Sarah and me! (Warning: not particularly work-safe below the fold. Ye’ve been warned.)

One of my biggest pet peeves are publications that demand an additional online subscription when you’ve already subscribed to the paper version of the magazine or paper. And since some of the publications have proprietary content that isn’t reproduced anywhere else, it’s harder to link to and discuss the details of an article. Grrr. Make me do more work, why don’t you!? Humph. Fine.

In this week’s Crain’s New York Business, there’s an article about publishers releasing books straight to paperback and skipping the hardcover issue in an attempt to “target young, cost-conscious buyers.” The article by Matthew Flamm profiles a few books that likely would have followed the hardback-to-paperback sequence, except that rival publishing houses have had success issuing books straight to paperback:

Though it doesn’t work for every title, and the economics of paperbacks hurt agents and authors, publishers and booksellers see the lower-price format as one way to reach new readers.... First novels, translated fiction, and literary nonfiction have suffered most in a media landscape packed with choices. With a standard hardcover price of $25.00, these books barely stand a chance.

Reader Nifty sent along this request:

Would you consider doing a little blurb on the Bitchery’s favorite erotica titles.  And by “erotica” I don’t necessarily mean a really hot romance by XYZ author, but books that are practically porn, but written for women.  You know the ones I mean.  I’d love to add some titles to my porno box so I’m looking for recommendations.  I’ve got no inhibitions when it comes to content.

I gotta say, I’ve read a lot more bad erotica than good thus far. The ones that aren’t outright awful have been...numbingly repetitive, like The Sexual Life of Catherine M., for instance. That said, Emma Holly’s earlier works like Personal Assets, Cooking Up a Storm and Ménage have worked quite well for me, though I’m not sure whether they qualify as erotica or erotic romance. I’ve also heard fantastic things about Hanne Blank, though I haven’t had a chance to read anything by her yet. I’m definitely interested in seeing what titles you bitches come up with, because YAY SMUT. Especially well-written smut. In other words: No images of salmon-like penises battering at the gates of the womb, please.

Stephanie was the winner for our last Personal Ad contest, and you know what this means, bitches: Another inductee into the Aristocratic Bitchery.

Kneel, Stephanie, and ensure that your nursing bra is properly adjusted, for we Smart Bitches dub thee:

A graduate student at Rutgers University contacted Candy and I about using our site as a subject for her ethnographic study of our Bitchery style of communication. How cool is that? See below for the details.

My name is Miriam Greenfeld and I am a doctoral student at Rutgers University. I am currentlystudying patterns of participation at the Smart Bitches site for a course on ethnography of communication. There will likely be other papers written based on the same data. Right now my focus is on the discussions based on either the contests leading to titles or cover snark.

I am looking for people who visit the Smart Bitches site who are willing to be interviewed about their participation. This allows me to better understand the patterns of communication on the site and also to verify that I am interpreting what I see correctly. It does not matter if you are a romance reader, writer, editor, hang out here because you think it’s fun, etc. If you read and/or comment on the site, then I am interested in what you have to say. The interview would take place via IM and should take approximately an hour. If you are interested, please email me at mirigree (at) rci.rutgers.edu for further information.

In my email conversation with Miriam, my end of which often contains a subtext of, ‘You want to study the Bitchery?! NO WAY!’ she explained that she wants to interview folks “in order to get a better sense of how people view themselves as part of the Bitchery and how they express that through their participation. It’s one thing to look at the posts and discussion, but it helps to know how the people actually writing the posts view things.... My primary purpose is to look at how people in an online romance community contribute through the way they write posts and interact with each other. In other words, what makes the Smart Bitches site its own, unique place and how posters relate to it.”

I’m so enthused about the idea, to be honest, because one of the things I love most about this site is that we can disagree vehemently with one another but we never truly denigrate into name calling catfights, and usually can arrive at a point to agree to disagree. Surely there are major points of contention, but the people who read and post here are part of an ongoing discussion that I love to read every day - even if I wasn’t co-running the site I’d be here daily. So to have a graduate student want to study what makes our community so unique (and it is) makes me giddy like you have no idea.

I’ll be chatting with Miriam sometime next week (I hope), and if you’re interested in participating in her study, feel free to contact her directly.

I cannot believe I am hunting the internet for Andy Rooney’s segment on 60 Minutes tonight - or that I tuned into 60 Minutes for that matter. I enjoyed it but I also get the feeling I should take my teeth out and put them in a glass to soak now. I remember my grandparents watching that show, back when there wasn’t such a thing as network news channels.

a- ha! I found it! - it’s the third down on the right, in the current menu display, titled Books or Video in the Future?

Rooney’s segment, which I will link to if I can find it, was all about his 1000th commentary, and how the network has them all on tape. He then wondered if tape would ever really, truly replace books, and went on to talk about a few of his favorite books, the ones he would never part with, because they are his most-useful references. There was a leather-bound four-volume set of Darwin, a few guides to writing, and a book by Walter Lippman titled A Return to Morals.

Rooney’s favorite books are mostly of the reference variety, and it got me thinking: what books do I hold on to, either because I refer to them frequently, or because they have sentimental meaning to me?

Hubby answered the question by saying, if the waters were rising in the basement again and all our books were down there, he’d grab his copies of the Baseball Prospectus dating back from 1991 to the present. They’re more of a historical reference for him, based on his years as a rotisserie baseball player, because he can look back at the names of the players in the National League and remember what was going on in his life when those players were on active rosters.

For me, if all the books I own were in the basement and another nor’easter rolled in (the last one got all my second-tier cookbooks, the ones I don’t refer to constantly but liked having around - damn storm) to flood the basement, well, I’d hope that I’d learn not to keep my books down there anymore. But since I’m not too swift on the uptake, I’d have to grab my copy of the complete unabridged works of Shakespeare, which I had to buy in college and weighs about six thousand pounds AND I had to carry it to class every day (up a hill, both ways, in the snow in South Carolina). But the notes in the margins are worth the book itself, and gosh do I love that book. Reading it helped me write one of my favorite, and (if you ask me) best papers for that class, which touched on herbal abortions, madness and sex.

After I chuck the sixteen pound Shakespeare up the stairs, I’d grab my wedding album, with the proof book if possible, and the baby name book I found in my parent’s house, which I think they used to name me. We also found Freebird’s names in there, one of the few books that has both.

Fiction? Sadly, I don’t have any must-keep editions of fiction, though I get a giddy thrill from the books I have that were thoughtfully signed by the authors. The books I have to grab possess that reference to my past with such sentimental meaning that they can’t be replaced by Alibris or Half.com.

And funny enough, as Rooney says in his segment, I wouldn’t grab a single videotape as a irreplaceable reference.

Thanks to Dr. Frantz, Associate Professor of Coolness at Fayetteville State University, for the following link:

Stephen King weighs in on the idea that fiction ought to have been an indicator that Cho was planning a massacre. 

Cayrle wrote: Maybe the Bitchery should compile our own “official” list of the greatest love stories of all time.  I can guarantee my list wouldn’t include as many books with less than happy endings.

Darn right. So - bring it. Leave your suggestions in the comments or, if you’re a happy lurker, email or your suggestions, and we’ll use Excel or something better to compile our own list. I’m not going to differentiate between romance novels in the modern conception (e.g. bodice rippers of the 1970’s and 80’s on through current offerings) and romantic stories from the Penguin Classics issue, because I think current romance can go toe-to-toe with “the classics.”

And if you disagree, please say so. Bring it on! Most Romantic Story Evah!

The New York Public Library, publisher of a seriously addictive desk reference has released their list of the Greatest Love Stories of All Time. (Hat tip and curtsey to Hubby for the link).

The article is as shallow and insipid as anything else from the news that attempts to discuss love and romance, including pithy statements that people might turn to reading again with this list, and that the romance novels in the list might help the reader gain wisdom “and have a better date next week or a breakthrough in a relationship that you’re in.”

Wait, maybe your head hasn’t started a slow boil yet. Let me give the next quote from Carrie Sloan, editor of Tango magazine, which published the top ten list with the NYPL:

“Instead of trying to glean wisdom from Britney’s (Spears) latest meltdown, it’s looking back to philosophers and authors who have thought this through, and whose stories have stood the test of time.”

I was supposed to glean wisdom from Britney Spears? And I’m supposed to learn the secrets of romance from romances that detail some substantial dysfunctional relationships?

Get a load of the list and the commentary therein, published in Tango magazine‘s guide to relationships:

1. Wuthering Heights

2. Anna Karenina

3. Romeo and Juliet

4. Casablanca

5. Midsummer Night’s Dream

6. Doctor Zhivago

7. Sense and Sensibility

8. Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame

9. Dangerous Liaisons

10. Pride and Prejudice

My conclusions: in this list, romantic is heartwrenching, often whiny, angst, and happy endings are few and far between. I’m not saying that these aren’t good stories - I have a deep love of Sense & Sensibility and Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example - but are these the most romantic stories evah in the histowwy of the woooooold?

Depends on how one defines romance, apparently. 

Candy and I are both sick at heart over the shootings at Virginia Tech, and want to be clear that the following dialogue in no way represents a defense of the actions taken by the person who committed these crimes. Our focus is not on defending this individual in any way, but to examine the examination, so to speak, of writing: can fiction in and of itself be used as an accurate barometer of whether someone is terribly, terribly disturbed, before any action is taken?

As I was compiling this entry, NBC News released information that the murderer sent a manifesto and video documentation explaining his actions. This is not the writing we’re talking about in the following entry; we’re discussing the examination of the fiction written in class by Cho Seung-Hui as discussed in this CNN article.

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Sarah: Here’s the thought I’m trying to figure out, and hence I’m asking your reaction:

In the news today regarding the shooter at Virginia Tech, who pretty much personified from all accounts a sociopathic disregard for humanity, there’s been a lot of discussion of how violent, dark, and disturbing his writing was. His English professor removed him from class and taught him one-on-one, but my understanding was that he was taking inappropriate pictures of people using his cell phone from under his desk and that his behavior was upsetting the professor and other students.

But the newspaper and CNN repeatedly mention that his creative writing was violent and disturbing. Excerpts have been posted online for our collective appraisal.

That fixation rubs me the wrong way - like any and all violent writing is now suspect, and the fact that this disturbed person’s writing revolved around violent themes was some kind of large foretelling sign that he was going to snap and murder 32 people in three hours’ time. 

I know there’s a desperate search for some answer as to why someone would do something so horrible and depraved, but I don’t think that there is an answer. Clearly a LOT of little episodes in 20/20 hindsight add up to a really fucked up person and potentially a few times where one might have intervened, from stalking behavior and illicit photography to disturbing online postings. But is it really the simplest and most verifiable answer to say, “Oh, well, he wrote about killing people and therefore we all should have known that he was a disturbed individual on the brink of massacre.”

It’s way too early to figure out what could have or should have happened. But read below - the grasping at any and every shred of oddity and the focus on the writing is really bugging the shit out of me. I’m not trying to defend this individual - if he were still alive I’d line up to do him serious harm - but the attention paid to every line written by this person strikes me as quick and grasping. 

Check out below the excerpts from an article from CNN - and if you think I’m talking out my ass, please say so.

Thanks to P.C. Cast and Lucinda Betts for both sending me a link to this bit of visual hilarity.

Behold, a clip from The Big Idea featuring ab-tastic cover model Anthony Catanzaro, who appears on the cover of Sexy Beast III. According to Catanzaro, it’s getting great reviews because of the abs. The book comes out… drumroll please… in August 2007.

Yes. Because all I look at in a pre-release is the abdominal action on the cover.

No offense meant to Kate Douglas, Lacy Danes and Morgan Hawke, of course.

The rest of the segment is ample evidence not to judge anything by its cover, notably the cerebral depth of a cover model.