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

Thanks to BB for this link to a discussion on PW regarding an aggregate of the top 100 lists of Best Books in English. The article itself is perfectly apt - that books mark different stages in your life and their quality in your opinion may rest on the context in which you read them.

But commenter Christine wins 2 points in the Online Scavenger Hunt for Commenting Idiocy by saying:

I read science fiction voraciously from fifth grade through college. Somehow, after the first couple of Dune books, I just stopped and haven’t gone back. During college, I felt forced to read the bleak and depressing because it was good for me and seem to have sworn off ‘literature’ ever since. Over the last (uh - hem )years, I have gone from reading romances to reading mysteries. Romances were just silly beyond words and now mysteries are getting that way, too. Where next? Back to the classics. Back to Dickens, back to Twain. Taking refuge in what I’ve read before, knowing I will see it in a different light.

I hereby propose a new rule for our general behavior on the internet: “There cannot be a discussion of literature, particularly the ranking thereof, without a swat at the plebeian dreck that is romance.”

Poor Christine. Hope she finds something good to read. 

In today’s Wall Street Journal, there is a letter to the editor from Denise Spellberg which refutes the idea that her protests and phone calls to Random House effectively squashed The Jewel of Medina. According to the letter,, Spellberg writes:

As a historian invited to “comment” on the book by its Random House editor at the author’s express request, I objected strenuously to the claim that “The Jewel of Medina” was “extensively researched,” as stated on the book jacket. As an expert on Aisha’s life, I felt it was my professional responsibility to counter this novel’s fallacious representation of a very real woman’s life. The author and the press brought me into a process, and I used my scholarly expertise to assess the novel. It was in that same professional capacity that I felt it my duty to warn the press of the novel’s potential to provoke anger among some Muslims.

There is a long history of anti-Islamic polemic that uses sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith. This novel follows in that oft-trodden path, one first pioneered in medieval Christian writings. The novel provides no new reading of Aisha’s life, but actually expands upon provocative themes regarding Muhammad’s wives first found in an earlier novel by Salman Rushdie, “The Satanic Verses,” which I teach. I do not espouse censorship of any kind, but I do value my right to critique those who abuse the past without regard for its richness or resonance in the present.

The combination of sex and violence sells novels. When combined with falsification of the Islamic past, it exploits Americans who know nothing about Aisha or her seventh-century world and counts on stirring up controversy to increase sales. If Ms. Nomani and readers of the Journal wish to allow literature to “move civilization forward,” then they should read a novel that gets history right.

It is a shame that no one will be able to read this particular novel, and perhaps then others afterward, in their own quest to learn more about Islam and Aisha’s role within the history of that faith. I’m more than happy to have Spellberg not recommending my reading list, however.

The Langum Literary Trust, which awards two $1000 prizes each year for works of historical fiction, has blacklisted Random House due to the publisher’s decision not to release the Jewel of Medina.

The Langum Trust said that Random House’s decision not to print Jones’s novel represented “a threat to all literature”. “We cannot pretend that this type of cowardice will disappear without serious remonstrance,” it said in a statement. “We do this reluctantly, since our most recent prize in American historical fiction went to a Random House title. Nevertheless, this issue must be confronted.”

Last year’s recipient was a Random House book: Kurt Andersen’s Heyday.

Meanwhile, I have an ARC copy of The Jewel of Medina thanks to a marvelous Bitchery reader, and I’ll be reading it over the weekend, time permitting.

Thanks to Rebecca for the link.

News alert: A judge has ruled in favor of J.K. Rowling in her suit against the Harry Potter Lexicon and RDR Books.

In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert P. Patterson said:

“While the lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the lexicon’s purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled...”

He added that he ruled in Rowling’s favor because the “Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling’s creative work for its purposes as a reference guide.”

Thanks to Kalen Hughes for the link. 

I have never been shy of stating how much I loathe the term “chick lit.” Hate it. I like some of the books that term describes - and like Jane I have a massive fangirl crush on Meg Cabot. It’s preposterous, this crush. I have a serious thing… well, no, it’s probably graduated to a thaaaang for Rob Wilkins, the hero of her 1-800-Where-R-U series. Seriously one of the best heroes I’ve read in awhile. Even if the final book in the series was entirely “happily ever after and boy oh boy do we mean it” to the point where one or both of the protagonists might as well have farted My Little Ponies, I still love that character. I should stop talking about it now before I get any more creepy about it.

Anyway, one of the things I like about Cabot is that she’s unapologetic about being termed “chick lit.” In a recent PR email I received, Cabot was quoted as saying, “…I love chick-lit because it’s like real-life...she got hurt, but she bounced back, just like we do out here on Planet Earth.”

I can’t say that every novel classified under that really awful term has been akin to real life, unless it was real life on planet fantasy land, but Cabot’s got a point: there’s an element of realism in focusing on the heroine’s dark moment and how she ends up happy in the end.

Contrast that statement with this one, sent to me by alert reader Miriam, from the introduction to the 2006 anthology, This is Not Chick Lit:

“Chick lit’s formula numbs our senses. Literature, by contrast, grants us access to countless cultures, places, and inner lives...Chick lit shuts down our consciousness. Literature expands our imaginations.”

Numbs our senses? Shuts down our consciousness? DUDE. I had NO IDEA chick lit has such power. Wonder what that intro writer would say about romance in general? Can it leap tall buildings in a single bound, or generate worldwide orgasms? Because, awesome!

What’s this? You need an excuse to bank your head in that nice head-shaped divot on your desk? We here at SB HQ are happy to assist, as is Zumie, who sent me these excerpts from her creative writing textbook, The College Handbook of Creative Writing by Robert DeMaria.

Excerpt the first, from page 16:

“Male-female relationships have become very complex since the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s. Nowhere has the loss of tradition and structure in society caused more confusion than in the relationships between men and women. Romeo and Juliet may have had their problems, but they knew exactly where they stood and what was expected of them. Today’s proliferation of paperback romances may be an escapist reaction to the confusion, or even a simplistic way of dealing with the varieties of interpersonal problems. There are also, of course, many worthwhile literary works on the subject, most of them by women who have been writing with greater freedom in an atmosphere of liberation—writers such as Alice Walker and Cynthia Ozick.

David Foster Wallace didn’t write romances, and this article I’m about to link to doesn’t talk about romance novels, so in context it has little to do with the general subject of this here hot pink wunderblog, except for one little thing: Wallace’s commencement address as reprinted in the Wall Street Journal talks about choosing to think, choosing to engage one’s mind outside the petty, petulant self-absorbed auto-pilot, and finding ways to care about other people:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day....

It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars—compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff’s necessarily true: The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship…

Since this here hot pink wunderblog is about romance, and the literature that examines it over and over, and the plots that are filled deliberately with stories of two people learning to care about one another, the act of reading a romance can often remind me that the world isn’t circling on an axis around me and my problems, and that if I had to choose a worship, as Wallace discusses in that speech, I’d like to think I’d choose to worship happiness and romance novels are part of that choice. Thanks, Mr. Wallace, for the reminder. I’m off to find me another romance. 

Oh, the email inbox, it overfloweth with various things that are worth your inspection. Whee!

A graphic novel about women daring to dress as men and infiltrating male-only groups—based on legend, poems, letters and true stories?! Holy comic of awesome, Batgirl! (Thanks to Linsey Schmidt for the link.)

If you were wondering if your recent erotic romance might be considered for the Nobel in literature, and you’re an American writer, you’re shit out of luck. Why?

The new design for the Romance Writer’s Report, official publication of the RWA, is pretty freaking sweet. I’ve taken to calling the issues by the stock image used on the cover (which is usually overlaid with text from a female writer of romance literature, like Austen, or, in the case of this month’s issue, Bronte) so the following commentary is from the Fishnets Issue.

There’s two articles of note that I wanted to give a hearty ‘WOO HOO!’ about. First, Carrie Lofty penned a rather lovely article entitled “The Trials and Triumphs of Unusual Historicals,” and aside form the general rocking-ness of the article itself, many of the individuals she cites as sources for her examination of alternative settings for historical romance are .... bloggers. WORD TO YOU LOFTY LIKE WHOA. Jayne from Dear Author, KristieJ from Ramblings on Romance, and Azteclady, who blogs over at Karen Knows Best are all cited, with URLs, alongside authors like Gaelen Foley, Jade Lee, and Sandra Schwab, which makes me so giddy I squealed while reading. Way to go, ladies, and well done Lofty, using readers with big voices to discuss a topic we frequently debate: the future and potential of romances that aren’t set in the Regency - something that readers often mention they want more of, myself included.