The Anti-Romance

The other day, I found this book on my bookshelf.



I have no idea where I got this book. There is a hazy recollection that my brother passed it to me, though why he should have it when he's happily married I do not know. I guess because he's the curious type, like me.

As proof that I will in fact read anything, I read parts of it. It touts itself as a guide to picking up girls. To wit:

The Tic Tac routine: Put two Tic Tacs in your hand. Eat one very slowly. Then feed the second one to her. If she accepts it, say, "There's something I forgot to tell you. I'm an Indian giver. I want my Tic Tac back." Then kiss her.

There are opening lines ("Hey, it looks like the party's over here") and come-on lines ("Allow all of the [positive feelings] flowing from that spot to fill with warmth and intensity... with each breath you take...") that propose a guy can make out with any girl he meets in a bar "within fifteen minutes, even if she's with her boyfriend."

Okay. If I am out with The Guy, there are only four circumstances in which I will make out with you:

1. If you are Clive Owen.
2. If you are George Clooney.
3. If you are Brad Pitt.
4. If you are Paul Newman, circa 1965.

That is all.

The book does not help itself with charming bits like this:

HER: I want to be a police officer.
ME: (Thinking: You'd be the worst police officer on the planet. You'll never be a police officer.) Why don't you pursue your dream?
HER: Blah blah blah, drivel drivel drivel, jabber jabber jabber.

So the advice is bad and the attitude is lame. What to do with this thing? I don't want to inflict it on my library or the already unfortunate folk who shop at Goodwill. Surely someone might want it?

I listed it for sale on Amazon, and it sold in less than 24 hours. To a guy, of course.

It's win-win. He can start practicing, and I made enough money to go buy a romance novel.

I hope he tries the Tic Tac thing. It's totally rad!

Fooled You

I love it when publishers fool readers into reading genre fiction.




Mwahahaha. You might think you just read a mainstream literary book, because of the classic art on the cover and the lovely sentences inside. Little do you know, you've just read a romance. Deny it if you like, and keep insisting that you don't read "that trash". Meanwhile you just did.




Mwahahaha. Did you know this is a werewolf novel? And it's actually horror, paranormal, and romance (three genres!) in one? Pretend to the folks on the subway that you're reading something artsy. Don't let on that you can't put it down.




Mwahahaha. We put this on the front shelves at Chapters and reviewed it in some big newspapers, just to fool you. It's really a murder mystery in which the protagonist solves the puzzle and tracks down the murderer - the same basic plot as all the books on the "mystery" shelves. We're just pretending you're buying a "literary" book when you pick this up.




Mwahahaha. Bet you didn't know this is "chick lit", did you? It has a chick in it, and it is written using language, so that makes it lit. You had no idea. You thought it was about, like, life and stuff, not one of those books. We even put a pair of shoes on the cover!

Keep it up, publishers. The more people who "only read literary stuff" who pick these up, the better. Just look innocent and pretend they're not reading genre. I promise I won't say anything..

Good Stuff

I've been on a lucky streak in my reading lately. Here goes:




Duke of Shadows is all over the internet lately, so I had to read it. I had a hard time, as all through the book my Reader Voice said, "Yay! A terrific historical!" and my Writer Voice said, "Oh my God, we are SO doomed." (Writer Voice tends to be melodramatic and self-centred, as are most artists.) I still managed to shut Writer Voice up long enough to enjoy this book, with one small niggle. Another review somewhere mentioned that this book could easily have been 100 pages longer, and I agree. There were minor characters who disappeared without a trace and what was up with the hero's mistress not minding getting dumped? I like to think that there were some great scenes that filled out my questions but the publisher made Duran cut them. Other than that - crap, Duran is talented. Even Writer Voice agrees.




I'm not researching this topic in particular, but I found The Slave Ship - A Human History face-out at the library and picked it up. It took me a month and a half to read, and not because it was in any way long or boring. It depicts its subject matter so well that I could only handle it in small doses.

I'm not going to upset anyone by relating the nightmarish content here, except to say that Rediker's thorough and unstinting use of primary sources is completely shocking. There are letters from businessmen to shipbuilders explaining the exact economics of how a "Guineaman" (slave ship) should be built, captain's logs describing the installation of rope netting across all the decks to prevent mass slave suicides, and first-person descriptions of how the hellish lower decks heaved steam as the ship passed through cool weather. All of this is placed in a wider political and economic landscape that is horribly chilling for being true. History isn't all lemon ices at Almack's, folks.




I'd heard of Elizabeth Chadwick's historicals before, but this is the first time I tried one. The Love Knot was pretty darn good, if not the best historical I've ever read. For some reason I love to read big, ripping Medievals, though I have no desire whatsoever to write them, and Chadwick's Medieval age is anything but wallpaper. She achieves that great balance between description that anchors the action in time - food, dress, herbs, castle life, the role of women and midwives - and action that rarely slows. There were a couple of leisurely bits but it never stopped being enjoyable. This would be a great vacation read, actually.




Last but not least, I spent this past weekend with Lisa Kleypas and Sugar Daddy. I've enjoyed Kleypas' historicals - there was the Derek Craven one that everyone liked so much, and I liked Devil in Winter - but I was blown away by her contemporary voice. It's so good. I loved the unashamed rags-to-riches aspect of the story, the Dynasty-like oil-tycoon soapy bits, the terrific development of the heroine, the actual non-obnoxious use of a child character, the over-the-top rich and sexy men. Harlequin Presents wishes it could be this good. This was the great, entertaining, nonstop fun that our genre does best.

I still have another stack waiting for me - it's going to be a banner summer.

Later,
Abby

Found in the Bookstore

In flipping through the books in the writing section, I found the following quote in the opening pages of one book:

"As a beginning writer, likely one of the first things you did was read Aristotle's Poetics."

Really? It was?

Actually, one of the first things I did was read Mary Balogh's A Summer to Remember and Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels. Um, I guess he won't be writing about those. I guess I didn't learn much from Balogh's brilliant use of deep emotions or Chase's uncanny creation of great characters. No, actually I was reading Aristotle. Funny, I don't remember that.

I still bought a stack of books today, though. Just not that one.