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

Engaged Almost writes:

I’ve been dating the same guy for eight years now. We went to college together, and we’ve been living together for awhile now along with his sister.... [edited for brevity -SBS] He’s proposed twice - once a few years ago when we were both drunk in a bar, and I said yes. Then I sobered up and said no. The second time was a few weeks ago, and he’s still waiting for my answer. I love him, but how do I know if he is The One?

Let me ask you this: have you ever seen a romance hero propose earnestly more than three times? I’m thinking on this one, and no, I can’t say as I have. Not unless the proposer has learned a lesson or two in how to approach a woman.

Think Darcy: he had to propose twice because his first proposal was the mother of all backhanded compliments, worse than when your frenemy says, “Oh, I love that shirt. It makes you look so thin!” The Earl of Banallt in Carolyn Jewel’s Scandal also proposes twice, first out of lust and self-interest, the second out of genuine intentions. Many a romance features a reformed hero who realizes how he ought to treat the object of his affections.

But that works both ways. Playing games with a man, playing hard to get - all bullshit maneuvers designed to humiliate and ultimately treat a man as if he isn’t your equal. And if women all over Romancelandia and in Reality are going to stamp their slippered feet and demand love matches and partnerships of emotional equality, they can start by treating men with equanimity and respect. You want that respect, you have to deal it out first. I’ve not yet encountered a hero who allows himself to be repeatedly debased and mistreated by a woman who professes to love him. It’s not heroic, nor the act of an admirable heroine.

So teasing a guy by not giving an answer ultimately demeans you both. And men are not dumb. The popular stereotypes of single men all revolve around oblivion and debauchery, but even if it takes a man awhile to figure a woman out, men are not clueless, and they won’t stick around when they’ve been told they aren’t wanted. Really, any man with a sense of self-confidence who is worth a woman’s time is not going to hang about and humiliate himself over and over.

I’d say a man asking three times a lady crosses the line from dedication to stalkerish desperation, and any woman who negotiates a situation for that result is looking for someone who she can control, not someone who can be her partner in crime and nefarious sexxoring.

But at root, the number of proposals isn’t the issue here: if you have some hesitations about marrying this guy, then cut him loose. A hesitant maybe is a no. Keeping him around as a maybe, as someone who you’ll commit to if nobody better comes along, demeans you both. Shit or get off the pot. He and you deserve better from a marriage than the words, “I love him but....”

LadyRhian:
The only sauce
I dare give father
Since he began
to dom in leather
Burma Sauce

Jennie:
About those Bhrothers, oh so fine…
Steamy sex scenes – make them all mine!
Wherever their Bhlack Dhaggers go
Thoughtful Bhrothers in the khnow bring
Bhurma Shauce!

Sphinx:
His lady shied
From backdoor blisses
But who’s to blame
If his aim misses?
Burma Sauce

WryHag:
See him wink?
You get the point.
Sauce it up
And hear him oink!
Burma Sauce

Amy Lane:
If there’s burning
In your anus
A drop of sauce
Will ease the pain-us
Burma Sauce

Thanks to all of you who played along! If there were ever any doubt about the ability of the Bitchery to come up with an inordinate number of jokes about anal sex in doggerel form, well, those fears have been put to rest.

Smart, thinks Sarah. Very smart. But hmm. Book giving, as we discussed here when I brought up books that provide comfort and respite from difficult times, can be very challenging if one doesn’t know the taste of the gift recipient. As Jennifer Crusie once said to me during an interview for The Book (which isn’t due out until April 2009 so alas, I can’t plug our book as The Perfect Gift unless you’re buying for Mother’s Day. Or, “Your Mother” Day) there are some readers who absolutely cannot suspend disbelief for some circumstances in a romance. Some readers will not stand for paranormal activity, and others can’t handle historical romance for other reasons, but the point is apt: it can be tough to pick the right book, let alone the right romance for someone if you don’t know them well. You have to know what plots they are willing to suspend disbelief for, and which they are not. I don’t know that much about many of the people on my gift list, really, and their grasp and rejection of various realities and fictional worlds is certainly not part of my getting-to-know-you questioning.

I have bought books with varying levels of success for people in my world, including Hubby who is a rather picky reader, and my father who only likes books that weigh about 5 lbs. and are about the intricate minutiae of dead people, preferably Civil War generals. But if I were to apply Random House’s “Books = gifts” campaign to the romance genre, what books would I pick? Are there guaranteed romances that make great gifts for people, from those you know intimately to those you work with? Hell, can you buy a romance for people you work with or is that sexual harassment given the likelihood of nookification within the cover?

Plus there’s the added danger of the attitude toward romance. Even the fans of another much-maligned genre whip out their battering rod of condescension when examining romance within the sci-fi genre, so giving another person a romance novel as a gift might backfire in a multitude of ways - most of which will reveal more about the recipient than the gifter, if you ask me. (Note to io9: people whose genre is dismissed as a house built of Spock ears shouldn’t throw stones. Just sayin’.)

I can think of specific people whom I would happily mail a romance as a gift, among them my sister, who reads romance, and several of my friends, who read it as well.

But while I’ve been sitting here pondering which romance novels I’d give as gifts to people who may not read romance, I’ve come back again and again to the same thought. I’d be more likely to give bookstore gift certificates than actual books, allowing the recipient a true blissful experience, more potent than one of those massages with the hot flat rocks: the gift of guilt-free book shopping, book selecting, and book owning.