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

Hey, all this talk about massive schlongs has made me think about a related issue: When did oral sex become de rigueur for romance novels? Because it wasn’t always this way. I remember reading many, many books in the Good Old Days in which the heroine was lucky to have her nipple lapped at before Lord Massivecockershire rammed it home. I remember reading Special Gifts by Anne Stuart when I was 14 years old and nearly passing out because it had this incredibly graphic oral sex scene in it. I went for a while without encountering any until I picked up a Lisa Kleypas novel. Nowadays, when I pick up a romance novel, I expect to read some oral lovin’ if there’s any sex in it at all--to the extent that I feel as if something’s lacking when the heroine doesn’t get any head.

Anyone want to weigh in on this? Is my memory about little to no oral sex in old romances wrong? Was I so young that I missed the act entirely because I didn’t understand what was being described? Was oral sex the old anal sex, as in “naughty things the author is not allowed to write about because we think the public will be grossed out by its ickiness”?

So Connie Brockway is migrating from historical romances to contemporaries. Am I the only reader who has enjoyed her work in the past (I have three of her books on my keeper shelf) who’s not at all upset about this?

Here’s the thing: while I have enjoyed many of Brockway’s books, and she was an author on my autobuy list for about 5 years, I have always thought her voice was very, very modern. It didn’t bug me at all until the Bridal series was released. I read them both, and the characters and tone struck me as so modern and not-British (the characters seemed like Americans in period drag) that I gave up on Brockway entirely. This is by no means her fault, because I don’t think she has changed; I have. I have her McClairen’s Isle books still TBR, and every time I keep passing them over for something else when the time comes for me to pick something new to read.

Now that she’s writing contemporaries, though, I think I’ll have to check out her new releases again.

Monica Jackson takes on some of the covers for the top 100 romance novels at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. I laughed until I coughed. Sarah and I may be out of a job if she ever decides to turn cover snarking into a regular feature on her site.

(OK, not out of a job. Out of a hobby. A hobby that’s generated an amazing number of visitors.)

Dude with much time on his hands reads a bunch of romance novels and analyzes the contents of the sex scenes within; presents results in hilarious fashion. He even breaks down the frequency of words used to describe breasts, penises and other body parts. Check it out.

MR. PINK: Let me tell ya what “Like a Virgin“‘s about. It’s about some cooze who’s a regular fuck machine. I mean all the time, morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.

MR. BLUE: How many dicks was that?

MR. WHITE: A lot.

MR. PINK: Then one day she meets a John Holmes motherfucker, and it’s like, whoa baby. This mother fucker’s like Charles Bronson in “The Great Escape.” He’s diggin tunnels. Now she’s gettin this serious dick action, she’s feelin something she ain’t felt since forever. Pain. (...) It hurts. It hurts her. It shouldn’t hurt. Her pussy should be Bubble-Yum by now. But when this cat fucks her, it hurts. It hurts like the first time. The pain is reminding a fuck machine what is was like to be a virgin. Hence, “Like a Virgin.”

- Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs

Among the many physical perfections conferred upon romance novel heroes, one that’s rarely discussed is dick size. And let’s face it: Most romance novel heroes are huge. I guess the impression is magnified when the heroines (especially in historicals) are often virgins, but even if the heroine has had some experience, the hero almost always turns out to have a much bigger schlong than the ex-husband or boyfriend. And sometimes the size becomes downright ludicrous, like Sinclair in MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead series, whose dick is apparently as big around as the bottom of a beerglass. Linda Howard has also written about heroes with massive members. Their dicks are so huge, that even in the relatively rare instances when the heroine isn’t a virgin, the colossal cock still causes the heroine pain. (This may not be true of all her books--I’ve read only ten or so Linda Howard novels and I haven’t picked up any new ones in about five years.) Even geek heroes like Simon of The Real Deal has a wang of monstrous proportions--it’s so big that it’s a source of concern for him, in fact, another aspect of the book that had me rolling my eyes and busily marking the book down yet another point.