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

You know how there’s always a mind-bogglingly popular, yet not as quality, version of just about everything? Hubby and I call it the “White Zinfandel” effect. Thomas Kinkade? The white zinfandel of art.

Andrea Bocelli? The white zinfandel of opera.

This is nothing against white zin itself, as there are some that are quite good, but it has a major rep as a plebian wine, and I almost busted an internal organ at the absurdity of watching a dude go through the wine sniff-and-taste ritual with a bottle Sutter Home White Zinfandel on a cruise one time.

Yeah, I sound like a snob. But I do have a point. And it’s not that I like wine a lot, even though I really do.

Nicholas Sparks the white zinfandel of fiction, has been nominated for the Romantic Novel of the Year award, which comes with much relative prestige, of course, and, holy crap, £10,000.

Fellow nominees include Brits Veronica Henry and Audrew Howard, Irish writer Kate Kerrigan, and Aussie Asheigh Bingham. I’ve not heard of these people - anyone in the UK Bitchery care to enlighten me?

Sparks was nominated for True Believer, which, judging from the Amazon reviews, was a disappointment to those readers who enjoy romance. One reviewer likened it to Danielle Steele, who also might be called another white zin of romance. Another called it a “watery” disappointment.

I gotta tell you, this just burns my toast more than a little. I’m not sure if Sparks gets the attention for writing treacly spooge because he’s a male writing “romantic novels” or if he’s somehow been singled out as the author of “socially and commercially acceptable and award-worthy romance” for some other reason (perhaps an alignment with Satan?) but whatever it is, it bugs the crap out of me when there are so many other authors who write clever, insightful, and emotionally provocative romance but don’t get nominated for £10,000 awards.

Who would you nominate instead? Maybe we need to create the Smart Bitch White Zinfandel Award for mediocrity in romance, so when we take the award nominations away from people like Sparks we can give them something nice to hold onto in return. 

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