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. 

Amazon.com recently introduced “Text Stats” for many of the books they sell; these stats purportedly record the readability and complexity of a book. Laura Kinsale found out, somewhat to her consternation, that Shadowheart scored as both very easy and less complex compared to other books. Being an enterprising woman, she looked up the stats for another one of her books.

For My Lady’s Heart, with its notorious Middle English dialogue, which you either love because you’re a nerd or hate because it interferes with your readability? It scores just about the same. Now, that’s just mind-boggling.

After being alerted to this, I did some digging around to see how other books compare.

Pride and Prejudice scores as somewhat harder to read and somewhat more complex than the two Kinsale medievals. OK, that’s a fair cop.

Let’s try a more modern novel, then--a nice, big meaty one. Like, say, The Corrections. Turns out it scores as a bit easier than P&P, but still harder than a Kinsale.

At that point, inspiration hit: let’s try some books that are quite notoriously difficult to read. The ones that cause college students to gnash their teeth and grip their heads in agony. So I looked up the stats for your favorite wet fart connoisseur and mine, James Joyce. Specifically, Ulysses. According to the magic numbers, it’s easier to read than both The Corrections and Pride & Prejudice--which brings up the question: IN WHICH FREAKING UNIVERSE would that be true?

(Answer: probably in the same universe where all those non-Muslim sheikhs kidnap shy British secretaries for nefarious erotic purposes.)

But the kicker--the one book whose stats made me laugh and laugh--was no other than The Sound and the Fury. It’s apparently MUCH easier to read than Shadowheart and For My Lady’s Heart. In fact, it scores as being so easy, I’m surprised kindergarten teachers aren’t substituting Dick and Jane with The Sound and the Fury.

I’m thinking they might need to work a little bit more on the algorithms that determine ease of reading and complexity.

Here at the Smart Bitchery, I’m suffering a wee bit of guilt. I’m a pretty fast reader, and faster now that I have a bus ride each morning and evening to use for my reading time. But alas, my free time? It has taken a huge nosedive, caused by major cuteness. Wanna see the cuteness?

Check it:

Yeah, that was totally an excuse to put a picture of Freebird up for much ooh-ing and aah-ing.

But since the birth of this here Bitchery, we’ve been sent many a review copy of many a book, some from publishers and some from the stash of free copies belonging to the fine authors themselves.

And I want to make clear that Candy and I, we are not the kind of assmonkey buttmunches who get all giddy over free books and then never deliver on the review part. We both think that the books we review are worthy of a dedicated critique, and it’s not like we want to dash off eBay-feedback reviews (e.g. Marrying the Tycoon’s Monkey Daughter’s Secret Baby was an A+++ BOOK - great! I laughed! I cried! I’m gonna read it again and again until I can recite it from memory at the next Carnival Cruise line passenger talent show!) You worked hard on writing the book, we work hard on reading it and giving it a thorough evaluation.

So! If you sent me a book and you’re wondering, “What the hell, woman?” feel free to email me. I’m going to update the sidebar to “Books to be Reviewed Really Freaking Soon” because updating “What I’m Reading Now” could turn into an every-other-day event since I am back on the bus now.

But, the reviews? The reading? It continues. 

In a recent Luna release (to be reviewed on this here weblog, yessirree!) I encountered a heroine who had multiple partners in various ways, some of them through actual coitus and some through physically pleasurable exchanges of magic. But either way: one lady, and quite a few dudes.

And yet there was a romance in each of the relationships, with a primary romance as a centerpiece to the story - and it worked for me, as the reader, once I accepted the “monogamy rule” had been broken in a well-written manner.

I also had an interesting conversation with a Bitchery member about the romance novel expectation that once the hero meets and realizes his attraction to the heroine, neither party gets to boink anyone else. I’ve seen that standard undone most obviously in romantic erotica/romantica, and often in fantasy/futuristic and some paranormals as well.

I wondered in the email exchange if perhaps fantasy and erotica are going to be the branches of the genre that break the highest number of rules and expectations of romance fiction, and not just expectations of monogamy. From the exploration of multiple partners to the strong heroine who has more important things to deal with besides winning herself that handsome hunk of man titty, are readers more willing to explore new scenarios for romance, even if those scenes break rules to which we are accustomed?.More importantly, am I wrong that fantasy and erotica are the rule-breakers of late? What other standards of romance do you see being busted down?

I don’t know if y’all heard a pigsqueal emanating from SE Portland at about 5:10 p.m. today, but that’s about the time I got my mitts on an autographed ARC of Don’t Look Down.

Also in the package? An autographed copy of the re-release of Anyone But You.

Is it terribly dirty and/or wrong and/or creepy for me to want to dance around and rub these books all over myself?

Ahem. ‘Scuse me. I have, uh, dishes to do. Yes. Indeed. Dishes.