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

Seems the tv and movie writers who are part of the Writer’s Guild of America is preparing to strike against the industry over contract issues such as ‘compensation for new media (translation: Internet downloads)’ possibly as soon as November 1.

Which is a right royal smackdown to the industry, as it comes before tv seasons are fully written. Now, this obviously isn’t about romance novels, but just imagine the crap that culd find its way to the tv set if a writer’s strike goes into effect.

I love people who have way too much time in their hands. Some intrepid folks decided to transcribe a Dutch children’s song into English phonetics, and the result is...well, you have to check it out for yourself.

Video and sung words are completely work-safe. The subtitles? Not so much with the work safeness.

Bitchery reader Elyssa wrote me to say she has two books she can’t find:

I actually have two books that I’ve been looking for and my usual great memory has been failing with these two.  I know I haven’t dreamt these up, at least I don’t think I did.  I read---or should I say stole---this book from my mom’s nightstand, and I’ve been looking for it everywhere.  I’m sure it won’t live up to my memory since part of the allure was reading the book illicitly.

Book One:

I remember that this book takes place in England, and I’m pretty sure it’s Regency era.  The heroine is 17 and is blond but an orphan (so sad).  She went to school with a bunch of other girls and made friends with another fellow orphan who’s a brunette.  Somehow, the blond heroine has a guardian (the hero, who’s also blond) and there are two meddling aunts who want the couple to get together.  But, alas, the hero is sort of engaged.  And there’s one scene in the novel where this cunty ex-mistress of the hero who comes onto the heroine.  There’s also a secondary romance with the brunette friend and the hero’s friend who, of course, is a a Rake.  Oh, and the hero of the story is in his 30s (I want to say 36) and wants to marry the heroine off for some reason but can’t when he starts desiring her.

Book Two:

I also think this book takes place in England although it could start in America, too.  For the most part, the setting is on a boat and then somewhere else (possibly a desert).  The rich heroine is chasing after her fiance who’s off searching for a treasure or researching (not sure which).  The fiance keeps giving her the run-around to marry her, and heroine’s getting fed up and decides to find out what’s up.  Heroine goes to the boat-yards, smacks into the handsome hero who’s shirtless.  She hires him and gets on board.  Of course, her room is right next to the hero’s, who’s the captain of the boat.  They travel, fight sexual attraction, although there’s one scene on the boat where hero goes down on her in his cabin and she begs him to take her.  He doesn’t.  They land where they’re supposed to and find the fiance who’s been whoring and not doing what he’s supposed to.  I think the heroine has a map to where the treasure is and leads everyone to it - the hero decides to leave, thinking the heroine is better off with jerk fiance.  But heroine comes to her senses and everything ends HEA.  (For some reason, I thought the hero and heroine were named Jack and Sophie and the book had a yellow cover - but I haven’t found any books that fit this description, so I highly doubt it).

Both books would have been published during 1990s (somewhere in that decade), possibly early 2000. 

If there’s any chance that you know what these books are, it would be greatly appreciated! 

Handsome shirtless heroes? Orphans with lusty-eyed guardians? Man, there’s hardly any books like that- bring it on! 

Thanks to Lucinda, we have a rather chilling look at airport security in the US: U.S. Airport Screeners Are Watching What You Read. Wonder what kind of profile markings you gain by toting a romance novel on board?

Bitchery reader Stephanie came out of lurkdom to send me a link to the man-tittiest fabric I have ever seen. Scroll down and pick your fave: Construction man-titty? Cowboy man-titty? Or Firefighter man-titty in beefcake-calendar pose? I have two things to say: one, what is the man-titty-less Pink Panther doing on this page? And two: never before in my life have I had this much of an urge to learn to quilt.

E. d’Trix sent me a link to a whole new LOL-subgenre: LOLBatman. I totally snorted soda up my nose at Batsecks.

Submitted by Smart Bitch Sarah

I read every Judy Blume book, including the ones where the lead characters had problems that made no sense to me (Then Again Maybe I Won’t for example) or where I had outgrown the (Superfudge). Deenie was one I reread frequently.

The reason the book is so often challenged is due to the scenes in which Deenie talks about massaging a “special spot,” and when her life gets stressful, she ends up rubbing that spot every night so she can get to sleep. Add to that a scene with a gym teacher giving very straight facts about periods, jilling off, and other touchy stuff and you have a book that gets a lot of knickers in a twist. And it’s a shame because the realism and thoughtfulness of Deenie is a potentially comforting read for many young women.

Deenie is not just about masturbation and menstruation, however, and sadly that’s lost in the protests. Deenie, whose mother wants to engineer a modeling career for her whether she likes it or not, is diagnosed with scoliosis and has to wear a Milwaukee brace to treat her spine. Deenie’s mother also lays the pressure on Deenie’s sister Helen, who, while not as stunning and beautiful as Deenie, is wicked smart, and of course should be a doctor or a lawyer.

Deenie is not a story about stoking your own fires at an early age. It’s a story about a girl whose defining characteristic, her beauty and physical perfection, is compromised by scoliosis and by having to wear a back brace, and who therefore has to figure out who she is and who she wants to be.

The masturbation scenes are a fraction of the story, and serve a logical purpose: to develop Deenie’s growing awareness of her own body, both in a sexual sense and a medical sense. She’s not in control of how her spine grows, but she is in control of her own self-pleasure and satisfaction. The scenes aren’t gratuitous in the least, and if the reader didn’t really know what masturbation was in the first place, it wouldn’t necessarily be obvious from the descriptions, either. I know whereof I speak: I read this book at an age when masturbation was unknown to me and I had no idea what Deenie was doing with that washcloth. I thought it was some sort of back rub.

The idea that this book is challenged so frequently makes me profoundly sad, because I never thought of it as “the masturbation book.” I thought of it as “the scoliosis book,” and it was certainly the only one I read that dealt with the subject. Isolating a book from a readership of women who already feel isolated because of a scene that comprises a tiny, tiny part of the entire narrative strikes me as unbelievably short-sighted, because I’d bet every last dollar I can tuck in a stripper’s g-string that those who protest are regular wankers themselves.