Hmm.

Yeah, I'm not gonna engage in any discussion about my hate for Gabaldon's latest book or my uttern scorn of Foley or about readers vs. writers or what constitutes a fair review or blah blah blah. Mostly because the whole topic just makes me tired. But I have realized something about myself in the realm of reading and talking about books that I think is pretty far from the generally accepted guidelines out there. Ready for it?

I think talking about books in any capacity should be personal. There's that whole "talk about the writing, not the writer" school of wisdom, and I realize I don't subscribe to it.

Look, when I read a book, I am allowing someone to speak to me. In many cases, I am PAYING them to speak to me. I am letting them into my head to show me the world they're creating. The writer, generally, has put huge hunks of him/herself into it. We are both putting aside one of our most precious commodities - time - to communicate with one another and connect on the primal level known as storytelling. How on EARTH can that relationship be anything other than personal?

That's why I really am constantly (and I mean constantly) miffed when anyone calls my book-talk a "review". It's not that I can't review, it's just that a review has very little use to me as a form of expression. I have, many times, written up clear and concise criticisms of writing - and then I give that to the writer. Not to a fellow reader. A measured, thought-out detailing of the good/bad things in a written piece is several miles away from telling you about the book I just read.

I bitch. I gush. I kvetch and cajole and castigate and plead and praise. I talk; I don't review. Reviewing requires a disconnect that I cannot feel toward anything to which I voluntarily (and downright eagerly) gave more than 10 minutes of my time and attention. I think readers have every right to be as shit-mouthed as they want to be. I think writers have every right to accuse said readers of shit-mouthery (though I do think it's way better to stay mum about it, most always). I think that it's perfectly okay to say "you are an absolutely worthless writer", but that it's better than okay if you say "you are an absolutely worthless writer because you have failed to prove your worth in the following ways."

I know damn well that it would hurt unbelievably if someone whose good opinion I craved said such a thing to me, and that I'd likely drink myself into an oblivion that I might not crawl out of for several years. Heck, I think many people have said it about this here blog. (Not that blog-hate hurts me at all, since this is just talking and not anything I particularly want anyone to really like.) But I also know that the reason for the strong comment and the resultant strong reaction are the same: emotional and intellectual investment on the part of both the reader and the writer.

I get angry when a writer ruins something I loved to distraction (Gabaldon). I get angry when a genre features worse-than-mediocre writing as a matter of course, and when said writing gets praised by all and sundry (Foley). I am sick of clichés and I'm sick of the mentality that "oh it's only genre, so don't judge it by strict standards of literary quality" and, in short, I'm sick of hacks making assloads of money whilst not giving a damn about the craft. I want writing I can love, and when it makes me nauseous instead? Of COURSE I take it personally. Reading books has changed my life from the moment I learned the alphabet. Those words on the page have shaped my life - my thinking, my character, my beliefs, some of the very deepest parts of me - and defined me in ways that cannot in any way be defined as impersonal.

Writing and reading are very personal. Period.

Just let me note here, that though I can be really mean (seriously, and the blog is only the sharp tip of that verbal switchblade), I do have lines. I consider it appalling when anyone pulls a writer's personal life into anything. And by that, I mean I could never say "No wonder she made her heroine fat, have you seen how much weight she's put on?" or "They got divorced because his wife cheated on him, so maybe that's why his latest book is about a guy who can't get bring a woman to orgasm." And also note that I do often speak to writing friends in exactly the same blunt way (if I think they can handle it, that is). I've said things to Snookie like "holy crap, if you switch POV one more time in this scene, I swear I will throw up on the pages just so I don't have to read it anymore." I've returned works-in-progress to writers with: "Sorry, I tried - but around about paragraph 5 my eyes glazed over and I just can't do it." Saying "This sucks, let me tell you why I hate it" is, to me, an every day, face-to-face occurence.

But also note - I only say this to people and about things that I (a) care about, or (b) don't consider hopeless. Squandered potential pisses me off. My anger and my scorn comes from the utter conviction that whatever I'm reading could be so, so, SO much better - if only the effort were made. If only we'd stop settling. If only we were all a little less afraid of being honest. If only we could all laugh at ourselves a little more (reviewers and writers and readers, all of us) and try to speak to each other instead of turning commentary into some kind of strange hybrid of spectator sport meets performance art, except in those cases where it's forcibly detached and without heart. If only we'd be a little more personal about it.

So, ya know. There's that. I'll just go eat some cheetos now.

Celebrate Smart Bitches Day!

With…

Kate!
and
Doug!
and
Bookseller Chica!
and
Rosina!
and
jmc!
and
me! With my marvelously belated -- well, not review. Just my blathering about this walk down memory lane known as Jude Deveraux's Velvet series. And I know I bash this book a lot, but listen, and believe me: I love these books so much and have been having the BEST time and am just eating them up, okay? It's one of those So Bad It's Good kind of things. Except better than good - it's brilliant. Genius. Unparalleled, okay? I LOVE it.

Ready? Here we go!


Velvet Misogyny, rrrowr!

Honestly? I have such a perfect balance of adoration/contempt for these books that I have no clue even where to start. So I'm just gonna try to hit all the points I wanna make, and we'll see what happens, I guess.

Background: The series is set in like 1500-04 England, and is about the Montgomery family. There are four brothers who get married in conveniently sequential order, each to Outspoken Women Ahead Of Their Time (a.k.a. termagants) who vary in hair color. Really, that's the whole set up: buncha brothers with wives of different haircolors. It's an irresistibly simplistic gimmick, and I for one salute la Deveraux. Genius. I read these more than 20 years ago, and I still remembered that much, after all these years. Mission accomplished. Brava.

The brothers each have defining characteristics, too, which always happens in romance novels. In real life, brothers have startling likenesses of personalities (whether they like it or not), but in romance novels, it's all about branding. Everyone needs a neat lil tag so we don't get confused or, saints preserve us, have any depths of character to explore. So the breakdown goes like so:

Gavin = proud, responsible
Stephen = smart, stubborn
Raine = heee-yuge muscles, but an ole softie
Miles = mysterious ladykiller

Then for the ladies, we have:
Judith = red-headed and strong willed
Bronwyn = black-haired and strong willed
Alyx = parti-colored strands and strong willed
Elizabeth = blonde and strong willed

We can only assume that cool-headed, reasonable brunettes were thin on ground in medieval England. Tsk tsk.

So, though I'm way more than halfway through the third book (and honest, y'all have NO IDEA how hard it is to come up for air, I'm that engrossed in these damn things), let's just stick to the first one for tonight.

So.

Velvet Promise is the first in the series, and is all about Judith - the most Mary Sue of Mary Sue heroines you may ever have the pleasure of reading - and the eldest Montgomery brother, Gavin. He's in love with another woman, who turns out to be utterly batshit insane, and makes such a fantastic villainess in the Alexis Carrington Colby Et Cetera Et Cetera tradition that I kept humming the theme to Dynasty at odd moments. But Alexis - I mean Alice, her name's Alice - won't marry him because she's hatched a scheme to marry a much richer guy. Still, she loves Gavin in her twisted way and figures they'll just be lovers and he'll remain all worshipful.

Which he does. Remain all worshipful, I mean. Except he also marries Judith. It's an arranged thing and he didn't even see her until the wedding day. Then when he DID see her, he dissolved in a pool of his own drool because, of course she's the Most Beautiful And Tempting Woman Ever, and in one of the few scenes that I remembered over these last 20 or so years, he broke protocol (gasp!) and upon first sight of her, swept her down from her horse as she rode in the procession to the church. Swoon.

Or more precisely: swoon when I was thirteen, snort-laugh when I'm thirty-three.

What with one thing and another, Gavin and Judith each have approx. 6 hissy fits on their wedding day, because of course they fell in love at first sight (though of course they don't know that) and so every time Judith looks at any remotely male being, Gavin accuses her of being a whore. And of course Alice The Villain is there and scheming, so Judith is all self-hatey because waah waah Alice is so fashionable and fragile and I'm so strong and red-headed waah waah my hideous curvaceous self and her so lithe and boobless waah waah he will never care for me! (choked sob, sound of running feet in the garden as we zoom in on Alice's smug little smile, fade to commercial)

So naturally, Gavin rapes Judith on their wedding night. No duh. Like you didn't see that coming? Puh-leez. The funny thing about it is that the hero-rapes-heroine thing was apparently so relevant at the time this was written (pub date: 1982) that it's barely even a blip. It's like yadda yadda yadda and he rapes her, ho hum. Seriously. Ot's like mentioning they had a syllabub at dinner, nice and casual. He feels guilty for about a nanosecond, but a few hours later, she's writhing under his hot touch like the dirty whore she is, and all is well in the Land Of Romance. And, for you fellow romance-reading veterans who are used to the various nookie devices employed in the genre, it should be noted here that there is no cunnilingus. Not that night or ever. I'm just sayin.

We have indeed come a long way, baby.

And let's go ahead and talk about what, aside from my sick fascination and the epic soap-opera quality of the storylines, and in spite of the fact that so far the first is the most boring of the series, kept me reading this: Eau de Burning Bra. It's this really interesting artifact of the times - both the very early 80s and my own early adolescence. I'm sure a huge part of the appeal for me back then was the theme that runs through all of these books. That theme, roughly, is that women are smart and capable and have to fight to be recognized as more than pretty little empty heads that are there to be fucked and not listened to. Judith has a brain in her head - a fact that is illustrated ad nauseum, to the point of absurdity. The other characters never fail to express shock and awe that she is a thinking being. And they express it over and over and over again. It's sickeningly smug, and not a little shrill.

It's escapist fiction, of course, and that's what makes it most fascinating to me now - that women felt so ignored, neglected, taken for granted, underestimated, etc etc alla that stuff, that here in (very exclusively female) genre fiction they were constantly reassuring themselves they were worth something. Because that's seriously how it reads - like the lady doth protest o'ermuch, ya know? It's 300-plus pages of Judith proving herself the equal of a man.

Which is especially hilarious when you consider that the man in question is a complete moron. I know he's supposed to come off as strong and domineering and blah blah alpha male blah. But he just comes off as stunningly stoooooopid. He leaps to conclusions about her whorishness constantly, refusing to listen to her and refusing the most obvious shit right in front of his eyes. Here's a sample of Gavin's intelligence: Hmm, let's see - the (other, male) villain captured me and chained me to wall. He then brought my wife in the room, ripped off her clothes, and planned to rape her in front of me. But she managed to grab a sword and kill him, then free me from my chains. BUT since she got NAKED in front of him, she clearly lusted after him, and she cheated on me, and is a deceitful bitch, and I hate her. Oh that Gavin - what a hero!

Dumbass. And he does that kinda shit like fifty times throughout the book. The stuff that they argue over is so blatantly emotionally untrue that I just boggled that anyone could get away with writing this crap. Oh, and of course Gavin The Gallant still loves Alice The Evil Villainess right up until the last pages, which is always one of my fave things about romances: heroes are always, always, ALWAYS loving their horrible bitch ex-girlfriends. It's this persistent flaw in these heroes we're supposed to fall in love with and supposed to think are so superior: they not only fail to recognize conniving bitches, they actually moon over them. And they live in a haze of jealousy. They're a buncha dumb lummoxes, and this is supposed to be my escapism? Calling them alpha is an insult to the intelligence of dogs. GAH.

Okay, this is getting awfully long and I haven't even touched on the historical inaccuracies. Which are numerous and highly amusing. My favorite is how Judith is So Very Smart and she wasn't trained to be a docile ornament for a man. Instead, she was intended for the church and trained to be an abbess. So that means she can run the household brilliantly, and everyone is constantly shocked and awed at her competence. Because, ya know - that whole running a manor gig? Was SO UNHEARD OF, for medieval women. A-yup. And then they go to court, where King Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth call them Gavin and Judith - no formality here or anywhere in this book, no siree, first names all the way! - and talk about our fair couple all the time, worrying that something seems to be troubling the lovebirds and Love Is The Most Important Thing In A Marriage, after all.

In 1501. Among nobility. And the king gives a shit. Yeah.

How appropriate that I began calling him King Friday in my head. As in the land of Make-Believe. As in Henrietta Pussycat and Lady Aberline and all our other magical, mythical friends.

But hey - screw that historical accuracy business! We have condescending prose to discuss, for heavensakes. It's actually funny in a comedic way - I swear it reads like it was actually written for kids. And I'm not being all extra-sarcastic or anything, I mean I haven't encountered such simplistic (and not in a positive sense) writing since Dick and Jane. It has a story-time feel to it. I suppose it can't be helped, what with such cardboard cut-outs for characters and the cartoonish backdrop to it all. Actually, let's not discuss the simplistic prose - let's just give an example from the POV of the villainess who apparently ruminates about her own phychology - shockingly self-aware for the criminally insane:

She did not let people see inside her; she hid her hurt well. As a child, she'd been a beautiful daughter born among a gaggle of ugly, sickly sisters. Her mother gave all her love to the others, feeling Alice had enough attention from her nurses and the castle visitors. Scorned by her mother, Alice turned to her father for love. But the only thing Nicolas Valence cared for came from a bottle. So Alice learned to take what was not given to her. She manipulated her father

Oh gads, I think that's enough. You get the idea. The book is fulla that stuff. I really understand why these books appealed to me as a kid, what with that kind of tone to the prose, the Girl Power! message, the not-so detailed nookie, the endless parade of clothes, and the drama drama DRAMA!!

Because really, as an adult? That's what has me sucked in. The book - and the whole series - reads like some fab early 80's epic miniseries. There's betrayal and suicides and forced marriages and she's such a hellion and he's got that strong jaw and bloody family feuds and kidnappings and seductions and the pageantry! The clothes! The four-poster beds hung with expensive silks! Hell, there's even acid being thrown in a woman's face, for godsakes. It just doesn't get any better than this, man.

Until the second book, anyway. Set in Scotland. And the girl with the knees as her erogenous zone. Heheheeeeee.

Celebrate le jour des Smart Bitches!

With
arp (yes! she lives!!)
and
BSC (lover of bloodsuckers!)
and
jmc (suffering from Austenitis!)
and
web (first name "World Wide" and totally famous for being the whole internet!)
and
Kate (who has definitely written the creepiest damn SBD ever. Eww!)


Um.

Uh. Brain not werk good much tonight, sorry. Do I even have a topic? Huh.

Yeah okay, so I finished Vanity Fair this morning - love love LOVE that book, oh that Becky Sharp is delish - and then I happily flung Velvet Promise into my bag, to make it my lunchtime reading.

Ode To Old School

Now, my previous attempts to revisit the beloved romance reads of my adolescence have led to major disappointment and, it must be owned, disgust. When I found a copy of Eagle's Ridge a few years ago, I gleefully dug in - only to be bored silly within the first chapter. So then, remembering that the plot of Touch Me With Fire consisted solely of fight, nookie, fight, nookie, nookie, nookie, fight, King forces her to become mistress, nookie, fight, nookie, marriage, nookie, I approached that other well-remembered tome with greater hopes of entertainment. Sadly - and shockingly, considering the plot - it just didn't have any spark and I gave up around page 40.

Because of this, I have tried to temper my enthusiasm for the Velvet books. Don't expect to like them, I tell myself. Sure, I re-read Devereaux's Knight In Shining Armor a few years ago and still loved it - so there's one bit of her work that stood the test of time (even though a generous lashing of my enjoyment was a direct result of the cheese factor). But still. After the latest Gabaldon debacle, I ne cannought bare mine fragile heart to the bodkin of disappointment. O jagged rocks upon which my hopes are so often willfully dashed! Let us not meet again so soon!

Not that I'm being dramatic or anything. Just sayin'.

However, I have the ever-faithful Snookie to point out that, "Cmon, even if it's bad, it'll be good. It's old school. You can always count on old school. When the author is a doyenne, or however you say it, it'll be a good ride."

And I must admit the truth in this statement. I mean just LOOK at it:


GAH. I loved showing the books to Dawn this weekend and watching her face express awe and delight as she turned them over in her hands. It's this deep, shared nostalgia, but more than that - it's a kind of writing that you just don't get anywhere else. And I couldn't wait to dive in.

So I only got to like Chapter Three so far, but let me tell ya: not disappointing. At all. (Yet.)

First - and just TRY to top this cheese factor - the first chapter is told from the POV of the female who is clearly our villainess. How do we know this? Because she is applying make-up (gasp! no fresh, innocent, artless and 100% perfectly natural beauty?!! CONNIVING DEVILSPAWN!) and she appreciates her own looks (omg! she's not indifferent to her face or her body! VAIN JEZEBEL!) while looking in a mirror and (sniggersnigger) objectively describing herself.

Then she goes off and has unmarried sex, which hello? Clearly the baddie. Non-virgin = villainous hussy. Oh and she's being what I think of as practical but what is in the World Of Romance considered heartless, cruel, and unwomanly: it being about the only method of positive change open to a woman in the 16th century, she reveals she's been planning the most advantageous match for herself, in the hopes of rising (financially and socially) above the dungheap in which she's been raised. Frankly, I'm glad Devereaux had the girl arrange the murder of an informant-cum-liability, or else I feared I'd be rooting for her the whole time. Then again, that informant was slimy and grody, so I'm not all that judgmental about it.

So far there's been an AWESOME dramatic scene - drama! dramadramaDRAMA! - between the hero and his lover. Oops, not the point. Lookit me ramble. What's really struck me was the detailed descriptions of everyone's clothing. Everyone's. Every tiny scrap of clothing. Described in huge blocks of text, and then reinforced with constant repetition throughout. It's not enough to spend a couple of paragraphs telling us about her gown, her belt, her cloak, and even her underwear (chemise so thin it's like gauze, of course) - oh no. We get to hear about that brocade on the cloak, the gold brooches that hold it in place, her slippers dyed gold, blah de blah de blah blah. There is a sartorial comment of some sort in just about every single paragraph.

When I myself set out to write, I swore I'd never do that. Because I remembered how much time was spent describing the clothes and food in the romances I read back in my teenage years - and how interminable it was. As a result, I now have an aversion to physical description that is rather extreme and also pretty frustrating for some of my kind-enough-to-read-it readers.

And yet here I am, reading it in this here Velvet Promise book, and I don't mind it. In fact, I'm loving it. Because it's supposed to be there. It's just part of it. It's so bad. And I love every last damn word of it.

I can about guarantee I'll have this book AND Highland Velvet (maybe even more) done by the time the next SBD rolls around. I'll try to make my review about more than just what everyone was wearing. And we'll see if I like the villainess more than the s0-called heroine.

Portrait of a Friendship

Dawn's bra is hanging nonchalantly in my bathroom, which gave the place a nice cozy feel as I staggered in and puked in the sink.

Afterwards, I cried: "WOOOO! God, I feel MUCH better. YEAH!! Halleluia. Except I unfortunately puked in the sink. Which has that drainage problem."

Dawn replied: "Want me to bring you a spoon or something, to help prop open the drain?"

And she did, while I kept her far from the stench. We spent the next little bit - me brushing my teeth repeatedly and Dawn plumping up the pillows and crawling into bed - discussing how arugula (which was on my pizza at dinner) and stomach bile are really a deadly combo. So you're saying an arugula salad with bile dressing would maybe be a tad much? she mused. I answered that yes, but one never knows when a cup of bile garnished with a sprig of arugula might just strike the right balance.

Ah, vomit-talk. The backbone of any lasting relationship.

An Email From Tom
whose message I got on my machine like a week ago and I swear I keep meaning to call you, but I think my subconscious is as cheap as my conscious-conscious, because somehow I keep forgetting.

(And I added some minor punctuation to make it funnier. We will discuss later if you agree with my edits.)

From: Tom
To: Beth

Subject: You reveal yourself

Hey Beth,

I just read your entry about the "feat of dexterity">brains on the Boff-O-Meter, and I think you are mistaken.

You see, I can do some amazingly dexterous things in a lab working with cell culture. I'm talking: holding multiple tubes in one hand, and opening said tubes with same hand, while pipetting solutions up with the other, and administering them to the cells. All the while, not touching the tips to surfaces (think the game operation) and fast enough to maintain a sterile system.

Now would you consider that sexy? If you say yes, you are a liar.

My take on your story is that the fireman fitted the BIG TRUCK into a small opening, rapidly and with confidence. It seems fairly apparent to me that to Beth, SIZE MATTERS.

Love you,
Tom

PS: To clarify, I'm saying you like huge ones.

PPS: And by "ones", I mean "penises".

PPPS: And by "like", I mean "want them often".

*

In answer, I can only say: Hey, man - "feat of dexterity"? Was a euphimism. Duh.

And stop making me uncontrollably snort-laugh about penises while I'm in the public liberry, for fucksakes.