1.  Rants

On NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, they have a quiz where they give you a few bizarre news items and the contestant has to figure out which is the real one and which are fakes. In a similar vein, here are three rants. A rant is by definition an emotional attack.  Only one is my real opinion.

a. The phrase “I want to have babies with this book” is making the rounds in Romland. Ok, people. We already have pronatalism in romance, with the happily child free heroine an endangered species compared to her thoughtlessly world-overpopulating sisters (see any epilogue in a historical romance near you). But now we have pronatalism in romance reviewing as well? We can’t merely force our heroines to have babies to be fulfilled, but now we bloggers have to have them? With books? Give me a break!

b. Overuse of the word “obsidian”, especially related to the hero’s eyes. Unlike blue eyes, which can be azure, sky, or midnight, black apparently has only one synonym — obsidian. The last book I read mentioned it no fewer than fifteen times! Even heroes who do not have black eyes suddenly get all obisidan on our asses when they get lusty. In the old days, eyes would get “dark” to signify lust. Now they get “obsidian”. I’m sorry people, but amber eyes — at least on a human — do not turn obsidian on command from the penis.  Authors, how about “inky”? Or “ebony”? Or “coal black”? Anything but obsidian. Please!

PS. Also, I think it is my feminist duty to mention that obsidian is used in a very sexist manner. Why can’t heroines have a little of that obsidian, huh?

c. I am back on Twitter, and have returned to using Google reader. And, while things are under control at the moment, I can’t help but notice that I am being constantly bombarded with contests and giveaways.  The retweeting practice on Twitter means that for every 1 contest, there are about 20 tweets. I don’t even post on those threads anymore, despite some of them having good content (like author interviews or good reviews) because I am so sick of having to add “but don’t enter me in the contest”. And in addition to all the original tweets and posts about the contest, there are always the last minute ones — “contest almost over!” “tweet now to win this book!”, “only one more day to enter!”. Is there sometimes too much of a good thing? Yes!

2. Links of interest

links

I asked Kristen, of Fantasy Cafe, what she thought about the gender sci fi wars recently breaking out in the blogopshere (you know, the “women are ruining sci fi” post). Her partner, John, kindly wrote a post . Check it out!

Barbara of Happily Forever After has a beautiful new blog look, and a great post on cover art.

Ahoy mateys! Sarah Tanner is doing a series on piracy dilemmas. What I really like about it, is that instead of demonizing pirates and “just saying no”, she is presenting some pretty sympathetic cases.

Question: What great blogs have you been reading lately?  Suggestions?

3. Convention update

Rom Con. More info about the Romance Convention in July in Denver. Authors who will be in attendance include Nalini Singh, Elizabeth Hoyt, Susan Mallery, Brenda Novak, Anna Campbell, Jeaniene Frost, Jo Beverley.

Also, there are going to be several panels on how to blog and how to write book reviews, including “Getting Your Reviews Noticed by Publisher and Authors”. I wonder who the RomCon folks will ask to serve on those panels.

I must say, it is getting more interesting all the time.

4. Romance on audio

audio-learning

Things are really changing. It used to be you could get anything you wanted by Nora Roberts, Amanda Quick and Cassie Edwards. And that was pretty much it. Now, every week, new titles, and new authors are being added. Anne Stuart’s Ice series is now available, as well as Stephanie Laurens’ Cynster series. New items from Mary Balogh, Mary Jo Putney, Jo Goodman, Sherry Thomas, Elizabeth Hoyt and others. And Harlequin has its own audio bookstore with all of its lines well represented.

If you have not tried it, now is a great time. They are not cheap, but more and more libraries are offering audio downloads.

5. Adventures in parent teacher conferences

parent-teacher

Child 1′s Teacher:

M. has been doing very well, with things like word recognition and reading. We do need to work on his writing.

Us: His writing?

Teacher: Yes, he has trouble coming up with topics. Appropriate topics.

Us: Appropriate topics?

Teacher: Yes. He tends to want to write about things that I feel the class is not interested in.

Us: Such as?

Teacher: Well. (she takes out a folder, showing us a paper with a big circle in the middle and smaller circles branching off of it, like the planets orbiting the sun). I ask them to put a central topic in the middle bubble, and then related ideas in the satellite bubbles.

Us: Yes, and…?

She shows us a paper with M.’s barely legible chicken scratch.  We actually encourage bad handwriting in the hopes that he will become a physician and support us in our twilight years. I keep mum on that point.

Here is what it says:

“TOE FUNGIS” is written in the central bubble, with “warm”, “brown”, “jerm”, and “no eeting”,  in the surrounding bubbles. With illustrations.

I make a mental note to go home, hug M. and tell him I want to hear all about toe fungus.

Child 2 conference:

All of the kids have their “autobiographical posters” up on the wall in the classroom. In the middle square, the kids are supposed to put their “best memory”. Our child described our trip to Europe two years ago. It started out great — the castles, the museums, the culture.

But the last line was the killer: “In Iceland, my mommy told us she was going to take us for a special dinner on our last night. But we ran out of krona and had to eat hotdogs from a stand.”

6. Coming Up This week. Maybe.

Probably, I will spend most of it arguing with Robin and Tasha about whether books are art or commerce. But, if I have any time left over, I am working on reviews of the latest Meljean Brook, on a review of Start Me Up by Victoria Dahl, on a post called Post Dramatic Stress Syndrome, about the bad aftereffects of reading bad romance novels, and my long delayed review of Black Silk.

Happy week!

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