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

So many of you have forwarded me the Questionable Content cartoon for today entitled, ‘I love you, Sandra Hill.’ Have a look.

Perhaps your blood pressure will rise a bit at the “just a shitty romance novel.” And again at “Girl-porn.”

But look closer - she who casts the stone of “Girl-porn?” In the next frame she’s grabbing that paperback and then reading it. And even as the girl who calls her novel “shitty hilarious girl porn” sneers at it, she’s totally into it. I’d like to know where she falls on the Dear Author Apologia Scale.

Haj wrote, “I must know if there is, indeed, a romance novel about a time-travelling Viking who becomes a Navy SEAL.” I don’t know if he becomes a SEAL, but there is no time travel viking like a Sandra Hill time travel viking, hence Ms. Hill’s name on the cover.

As near as I can tell, this book is Viking Unchained.

So a slap on the wrist for Questionable Content for the girl porn/shitty romance double-punch. And yes, time traveling viking Navy SEALS is totally mock worthy. But as a merry fan of The Very Virile Viking, I say to Questionable Content:

Once upon a time, there was a book. Well, sort of. There was a book in a movie. Sex & The City was the movie in question and the book that wasn’t a book was used as a prop by Carrie, when she read aloud from Love Letters of Great Men.

Seems moviegoers went hunting for the book in bookstores, but there was no such thing. Not because great men didn’t write love letters, but because the book wasn’t real. But it is now. From Napoleon to Darwin to Beethoven, the passionate missives of some fascinating historical figures are now available for your musing and perusing. My favorite love letter, though, “I love you… I love you like guitars,” from John Lennon to his then-wife Cynthia, isn’t in there. But this letter from the collection is pretty damn fine:

Livy Darling,

Six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world… Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed. So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!

Always Yours

S.L.C.”

S.L.C. - aka Mark Twain, to his wife, Olivia Langdon, on her thirtieth birthday

And hello, dear readers, I have five copies to give away! Would you like one? Sure you would - I think this book is adorable. Even if Carrie hadn’t used it in a film, I’d be curious about it. So, if you’d like a collection of manly heartfelt love letters of your own, leave a comment with your favorite love letter or romantic moment from your life, and I’ll select five winners to receive a copy. Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the books. And to Mark Twain for totally warming the cockles of my heart. Or vice versa.

Here’s a unique Bitchery request: old editions of Nora Roberts novels - for academic study!

An writes:

I’m a graduate student pursuing a PhD on romance, genre and authorship based on Nora Roberts’ oeuvre. For my research I need old editions of Nora’s novels and I have some difficulty getting my hands on old romance novels. I analyze both the text and the paratext - cover, blurbs, etc. - of romance novels, which means that each new edition of a book is important to my analysis, even if no changes to the text have been made.

For example, Nora’s first novel, Irish Thoroughbred, was published in 1981 as Silhouette Romance # 81, reissued in the Language of Love series (# 1) and reissued again in 2000 in a Silhouette mass market compilation volume. I’m looking for all three editions of this book – and many others - but while one can rather easily buy the 2000 edition, it’s far more difficult to get the 1981 or language of love editions.

So, my question is: how should I go about gaining access to old editions of romance novels? I live in Belgium, which makes onling buying of large quantities of novels quite expensive because of shipping costs. As a graduate students my funds are limited.

I asked for more info about her project, because, whoa, dude. Here’s the scoop, if you’re curious and nebby, like I am:

Adventures in bad Photoshopping make for great covers and they make for even better contests. The winner of the “Caption That Cover: Turkey Edition” contest is, without a giblet of a doubt, TeddyPig for Butterballin’.

Honorable Gobble mentions go to: Judy for “Turfucken for dinner again??” and Becky for referencing the joke that will NEVER get old, “Stuffing the turkey, saving its life!”

Thanks to all who posted a caption, and to whoever designed that cover for perfectly balancing the creepy and the hilarious in one image. Happy Thanksgiving, folks! 

Thanks to Rebecca, here’s a thoughtful article from The Guardian about the value of reading bad books. Self-absorbed books, pretentious books, poorly crafted books - they all combine to help you appreciate the miracle of a great book when you encounter it, according to Stuart Evers.

There are only a finite amount of books you can read in one lifetime, so spending time with one that you know within 50 pages is going to stink like two-day-old roadkill in the sun seems counter-intuitive. It makes far more sense to put it down and pick up something else from the ever-increasing to-read pile. Yet I feel somehow incapable of doing so.

This isn’t because I’m one of those readers who have to finish anything they start, rather that I think that bad books can be almost as instructive as good books. They show you what fiction looks like when it’s malfunctioning, when all its wiring is hanging out.

What I really like about the article, especially as someone who is always asking herself what worked, what didn’t, and why why why, is that the comments take issue with the books that Evers lauded as near perfect experiences of fiction reading. Love that. One woman’s perfect is another woman’s puerile. Same with romance. I’m always so curious about reviews that laud books I couldn’t stand, or vice versa.