Archive for: November, 2009

The Racy Romance Reviews Questionaire Extraordinaire’s Triumphant Return

Nov 19 2009 Published by under RRR Questionnaire Extraordinaire

With Azteclady, a longtime romance reader and resident of Romanceland, blogger/reviewer at Karen Knows Best, and thoughtful, funny commenter on this and many other blogs.

1. How long have you been reading romance novels? What got you started?

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I’ve been reading romance novels for about three fourths of my life (if you want numbers, some 33 years) and it all started one day when I found an old Vanidades magazine laying about at my grandmother’s house. Already an avid reader, I suddenly found myself sitting there without anything to read—the horror!—and when I saw this ratty tattered magazine, I grabbed like one would a lifeline. It so happens that in it I found the first part of a short romance novel by Caridad Bravo Adams—sadly, I never got to read the end, but I was very intrigued by what little I did read. Shortly after I found a copy of E.M. Hull’s The Sheik… and I’ve never stopped reading romance since.

2. What are your favorite subgenres?
How come this question is harder than it seems? I want to say that romantic suspense is my top favorite, but I think it’s more a question of which are my least favorites (inspirational romance and stuff that is closer to what is commonly called “chick lit” than to romance).

3. You blogged once that when it comes to reviews, you are a strict grader, and you can “think of one or two romance novels that deserve a 10″. Spill it. Which ones?

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My all-time favorite romance is LaVyrle Spencer’s Morning Glory—and that is definitely a 10. Silver Lining, by Maggie Osborne, is probably my second favorite, and also a 10 (despite having an issue with the last five or so pages…) The third and fourth ones I remember off the top of my head would be Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon.

4. How long have you been a citizen of Romanceland? What were some of your first visited sites?
Did I mention that these are harder than they seem? Or perhaps it’s just that I’m old, but it boils down to, I can’t quite remember how long it’s been. I know I started reading the now-defunct Suzanne Brockmann Message Board eons ago (I want to say that it was November 2001, but it could have been 2002). From there I followed some regulars to Elizabeth Lowell’s now-defunct forums and eventually visited AAR once or twice. Then one fateful day I stumbled upon the oh so young! Smart Bitches, which lead me to Karen Scott’s old blog, to Wendy the Super Librarian’s blog, to Kristie(J)’s Ramblings on Romance and a number of other places.

5. How have things changed in Romanceland in that time?
Things have changed as much as they remain the same, really. There seem to be many more blogs devoted to romance reviewing these days than there were way back when, but it could easily be that it only seems that way to me because I used to be shy about venturing into the unknown. :-D

It does seem to me, though, that for the most part things are cyclical. Some people I’ve come to love are saying goodbye for good *shedding tear for Barbara*, or taking sabbaticals *waving at Amy*, and others who were absent when I got here are coming back *waving at Maili* And people are… well, people. You have your chatterboxes, your extroverts, your introverts, your busybodies, your warm-fuzzy “can’t we all just get along?” people, your straight shooters, your philosophers (and not just you icon_razz by the way)

6. How long have you been blogging with Karen Scott, and how did that come about?
Ooooooooooooohhh! Well, it all started a day in February last year. I had written a review of Ann Aguirre’s Grimspace and posted it to what used to be the Lost Forum at ezSucks (now MyMedia-Forums). Karen liked it and asked me if I would like to blog with her. After I hyper-ventilated a little, I rushed to accept and… well, here we are.

7. How do you like blogging with Karen? She seems so… wishy washy. I can never tell what her opinions really are on anything.

Oh I know! It’s sad at times just how mild she is. One feels the need to prod her to speak her mind, you know?

*cough*

It’s great, actually. We don’t agree on a lot of stuff—I’ll say that we do agree about half the time if that much—so that makes discussions on posts lively :-D Occasionally I’ll ask for Karen’s opinion before posting on something, but the fact is that I’ve never felt that I’m required to submit stuff to her prior for approval to posting. I don’t believe I’m a timid flower, but of the two I’m definitely the wimpy one :-D

8. The KKB blog is like the Rainbow Coalition of Romanceland. Do you think this influences the way you blog at all? And why do you guys hate white people?
Well, we only hate those who hate us first—we are courteous like that icon_razz

You know, it’s funny but I hadn’t thought about the RCofR aspect until I read the question, but I do see what you mean. I don’t think the audience/readership affects how I blog—at least not consciously, though I can’t say whether there’s a subtle influence at play there or not—except that I do try to be very clear as to what I mean or don’t mean.

Then again, that is not a new thing; way back when, when I first started commenting online (SBMB, the early SBTB, etc.) I would really struggle to be as unambiguous as possible, because while it can be entertaining to watch the train wrecks happen, I don’t relish being embroiled in a misunderstanding that could have been avoided by a bit more careful wording.

Perhaps it comes from the fact that English is not my first language, perhaps it’s just my personality :-D

9. Do you read Spanish language romances? Are they different from English language roms?
*laughing ruefully* Well, see… other than those old Caridad Bravo Adams romances (set always in Spain, by the way) the early romances I read were all Spanish translations of English novels. Harlequin has been publishing categories in Latin America for ages—Deseo, Bianca, Julia and more I’ve forgotten. And the thing was, many of those translations annoyed the hell out of me for different reasons (including the occasional presence of a Latin hero who didn’t resemble any Latin American person I’ve ever met, male or female, or descriptions of places I’ve been to that didn’t resemble anything so much as a stereotypical postcard).

That was almost enough to put me off romance, because there didn’t seem to be any romances written originally in Spanish that I could find. Heaps and loads and piles of other fiction—excellent fiction too—but not romance. Then one fateful day some (holy cow, that long?) seventeen years ago, while living in Caracas, I discovered a few Avon romances in an English-only bookstore. Heaven, sheer and unadulterated. I haven’t looked back.

But to answer your question (at last!) those old Spanish by Caridad Bravo Adams romances were… well, innocent and extremely conservative. They were contemporaries but they resembled nothing as much as they did Barbara Cartland’s regencies. Sweet, syrupy and easy to leave behind.

10. What the hell is ETSY and why are people always Twittering about it?
:-D Etsy is fun, handmade, vintage and HUGE. You want it, you can find it there. You make it? You can sell it there!

(But I don’t know why people twitter about it, or anything else: Twitter scares me, I really don’t need another time-suck.)

11. Why did you open an ETSY store? Are you trying to make us broke? Do you intend to laugh all the way to the bank, or only halfway there?
a)    ‘Cause I have stuff I’d like to sell.
b)    Not really, and I’d be sorry if it happened to anyone. I like you guys!
c)    I wouldn’t laugh at all—it’s in bad taste and such a cliché! (now, cackling…)

12. Why do you pose like Mussolini? Are you secretly a fascist?

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Oh my God, that literally made me burst out laughing and scared the dog away!

The truth?

I feel ridiculous posing for pictures under the best of circumstances, but while “modeling” something I’ve made? Ohmygawdkillmeknowplz! *cough*

So I started playing around, being all diva like… and those were the pictures that came out better. Go figure!

13. Why are you named after the classic “big box” magic trick? Are you an illusion? When I interview you, am I talking to myself?
*snort* Well, see, I’m not named after the trick simply because I didn’t even know there was such a thing until a couple of years AFTER I’d chosen my handle.

Here’s the actual story: I’m Mexican, with a lot of European blood (mostly French and Catalán). My native Mexican blood is, family lore has it, from the Mixtecas in the sierra of the Pacific state of Oaxaca. I considered calling myself mixteclady, but I didn’t feel like explaining my nickname every time I posted something—since pretty much no one outside of Mexico would recognize it—so I went for the more widely known Aztecs.

However, I very much like the idea of being an illusion… but if I’m an illusion I cannot meet you, can I?

13b. Ms. Lady, do you have a middle name?
Nope, I don’t—and I’m in fact the only of my siblings (youngest of 5, mind) who doesn’t. I would love to say it’s ‘cause I’m special, but in all honesty I think that by the time I was born they had ran out of family members to name me after.

14. Have you ever thought about starting your own blog? Why or why not? If not, why exactly do you think you are too good for blogging while the rest of us slave away?
•    I’ve thought about it, yes, for a few seconds at a time here and there :grin:
•    Why? So that I can spew whatever I want on whatever topic I want.
•    Why not? ‘cause I already do that at Karen’s and elsewhere icon_razz
•    You mean I’m not?????

14b. Where else do you review/blog?
I cross-post my reviews to the library section at MyMedia-Forum and to a scrolling board that sprang from the old SBMB, as well as helping Mad with scheduling and formatting at RR@H Novel Thoughts. And this is exactly the second time I’ve done a ‘guest blog’ kinda thing (first at Will Work for Noodles). Dear Author also hosted my review of Morning Glory and The Good, The Bad and the Unread have a couple of my first reviews.

15. Other than the awesomeness that is RRR, what blogs have you been enjoying especially much lately?
Wendy’s always. Orannia’s Walkabout (love her). Tumperkin always makes me think—I hope she doesn’t go away :cry: Christine’s Romantic Life, Kmont’s Lurv à la Mode, Kristie’s Ramblings and many more, including a long list of authors.

16. On a scale of 9.9 to 10, how excited are you to meet me at RWA’10?
On a scale of one to ten, I’m around 15 excited to meet you in Nashville :-D

Awww, back atcha, and thanks, Azteclady!

13 responses so far

Going Rouge: Makeup and the Heroine (and Hero)

Nov 18 2009 Published by under Uncategorized

Come see what I have to say about this over at Romancing the Blog.

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Monday Morning Stepback

Nov 16 2009 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

Links of Interest
Holly at Book Binge posted about Facebook Fan Pages, especially for authors, and why they can annoy her.

Noting the “make or break” nature of that first book, Dear Author is compiling an awesome list of debut books.

Witchy Chicks has an interesting post which reveals the ways in which an editor takes the readers’ viewpoint, by suggesting changes based on her perceptions of what readers “can handle” or would like to read.

Magdalen, a new-to-me voice in Romland, has a guest post on the difference between angsty and emotionally satisfying romances at Monkey Bear Reviews.

Because some people still need reminding, BookEndsLLC has a post on authors and their blogs with a simple list of “do’s”.

I liked the post at TGTBTU on snippiness in Romland, and the way the author connects it up with stresses in the publishing industry. Along similar lines, Ana of The Book Smugglers posted about repetition in historical romance. Check out their Weekly Stash for a link to Ana’s initial post and a couple of related posts, including one from The Story Siren about ARCs and the expectations publishers have of bloggers who receive them.

Judaism and Identity

You may have heard that prestigious Jews’ Free School in London denied a pupil admittance because it determines Jewishness by matrilineal decent and this child’s mom had converted. The conversion itself was not the problem, but rather, that she had converted with a Reform (liberal) rabbi, so the conversion didn’t “count” from the perspective of the Orthodox school.

The parents sued and eventually won.  The British courts said the school’s practice of determining who is a Jew by the mother’s ethnic status is discriminatory and unlawful.

From the  NY Times article ( see also reaction from the Huffington Post)

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism

This question hits very close to home. I am a convert to Judaism, also in the Reform tradition. I know that my conversion, and my kids’ status as Jews, is not recognized by Orthodox Jews. My kids do not have the right of return to Israel, although my Conservative Jewish husband, with Jewish roots on both sides going back as far as a genealogist can tell, would, even if he became an evangelical Christian.

As a convert, I constantly experience the reality that Jewishness is an ethnicity. I do not have the same set of shared traditions, the same connection to Jewish history, as ethnic Jews. When I meet new people, I wonder sometimes whether or when to “reveal” the fact that I am a convert — am I ‘passing” if I don’t? My first name is of Hebrew origin, and my looks — brownish black hair and grayish olive skin — wouldn’t signal it the way a first name like “Christine” or “Faith” and blond hair would.

My conversion was a long process: a 26 week group class followed by another 6 months of solo learning with a rabbi. At the end, I went before a Rabbinical court (bet din), immersed myself in the mikvah, and was called to the bimah where I recited a Torah portion (not all at once, thankfully). There was nothing hasty or superficial about it. My Jewish in-laws were thrilled with my conversion, but bemused by my knowledge of Jewish law and religious ritual. My mother-in-law is as Jewish as it gets (my husband was the first person in his family on either side to marry a nonJew), yet she never set foot in the synagogue unless it was for a High Holy Day or a wedding. But she makes a mean brisket and awesome latkes.

The debate ensuing in London is a painful reminder of the divisions within the Jewish community but also of the richness of the meaning of the word “Jewish”. I oppose the decision of the Jews’ Free School, and I oppose in principle the idea that one group of Jews can tell another group they “don’t count.” I hope the events in England help invigorate and move forward the ongoing discussion of “who is a Jew”.

But what does this have to do with romance? Well… nothing much, although Hanukkah is coming up, and last year I read a pretty good Hanukkah romance. Hanukkah is a minor holiday, so I am not too surprised, although folks have yet to explore the erotic possibilities of the awe and atonement that is Yom Kippur, as well. Does anyone know if there are any recently pubbed Hanukkah roms or new ones on the horizon?

3. Thanks to Jmc_Books , I already got some helpful replies to my question about Hanukkah themed romance. And I have already read one of them, a short called Eight Nights by Keira Andrews (Loose-I.D., 2008, $3.99). It is part of their Festival of Lights collection, from which I also purchased Bad Brad, for another $3.99.

There’s a lot I could say about these stories, starting with the hefty $3.99 price tag for 1000 Kindle “locations”. To compare, Demon Forged by Meljean Brook was 7761 locations for $6.39, and Beyond Daring by Kathleen O’Reilly, a Harlequin Blaze, was $3.40 for 3268 locations.

Eight Nights, in which the more experienced partner reassures the virgin that he’s “clean” immediately after saying he’s not into relationships and has had lots of meaningless sex, got me thinking about expectations of protection in erotic (or any explicit) romance. The partners in this story do use condoms. But what if they had not used them? One objection might be that this kind of story, in which “true loves means blind yet well placed trust” represents a dangerous reality to which we should not give credence, even in fantasy. But, says the other voice, it’s fantasy: little about this perfect sexual relationship and these two perfect bodies is based in reality. Why accept all the other fantasy elements, and pause at “no condoms”?

For the first time, I saw this as similar to the issue of “accurately portraying BDSM”, “rape in romance” and any other similarly controversial issue. That is, when people object to the lack of birth control in romance, are they staying within the text and making an aesthetic objection, along the lines, of “this doesn’t fit these characters in this situation” or are they making a moral claim outside the text, as in “this scene shores up myths or practices that real people believe or do, which are very harmful, and therefore you shouldn’t write it.”

I enjoyed the well-written Eight Nights, by the way, even if it was a very predictable, with a schematic plot designed mainly to provide opportunities to scale the ladder of sexual awakening (has anyone invented a board game? Shoots and Ladders?). It is what it is — an erotic m/m short.

Not sure what I will do with the blog this week. It is a busy one for me.

HAPPY WEEK!

17 responses so far

Random Thoughts About the Hound of the Baskervilles

Nov 15 2009 Published by under NEAR Reviews

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I recently read this Arthur Conan Doyle classic, first published in 1901, for a book club I am in. In case you don’t know, Sir Charles Baskerville dies under mysterious circumstances at Baskerville Hall, located in Devon, along the moors of Dartmoor. Charles’s friend and neighbor, Sr. Mortimer, contacts Holmes for help. Mortimer explains that there is a curse on the family involving an ancestor, Hugo, who chased and locked up a young woman. The girl escaped, running across the moor, and Hugo called on evil spirits to help him capture her. Both the ancestor and the girl were found dead, their throats ripped out by a giant hound standing over their bodies.

Henry Baskerville, heir to the Baskerville estate, arrives form Canada to claim his inheritance, and is warned away by a strange letter. Holmes and Watson are on the case. Watson travels with Henry as a kind of bodyguard/sleuth to the Baskerville Estate, while Holmes remains in London. They meet the Barrymores, a couple who have long looked after the house, and the Stapletons, Jack and Beryl, a brother-sister neighbor family. There’s a deranged killer on the loose upon the moors, which is of course, a red herring.

One of the tensions in the book is between Holmes’s scientific approach and the mythic tale of the demonic hound. Holmes refuses to accept that that a scientific worldview cannot capture and explain the events, but the people of Dartmoor are more inclined to believe in supernatural phenomena. Holmes, of course, ends up right.

I didn’t hate reading the book, and I appreciated the storytelling gift Doyle possessed. We also watched the 1988 film starring Jeremy Brett, which was excellent (it is one of 24 film versions of the novel). I was struck by some similarities and differences to the romance reading I have been doing. The following comments are about this book, not about mystery as a genre.

A similarity is the use of folk tales to frame the plot, something I have seen in a lot of romance. Also, of course, you can feel the genre constraints — you are secure in knowing that the mystery will be solved and justice will prevail. This last point raises a question I had: what does a book have to have to be called a “mystery”? Does justice have to prevail? Does the reader have to be able to solve the mystery (no reader could have figured out who the culprit is in this book — Holmes gathered information off stage). Does the culprit have to be unmasked and the main questions answered about motive and method, etc.?

The differences from romance struck me even more. For one thing, this is a very male-centric book. Not only do you have a central relationship between two men who have no women in their lives, Holmes and Watson (there is a ton of slash fiction, I discovered, about these two, much of it BDSM, with Watson the subordinate to Holmes’ controlled domination. It fits really well with their personalities in the book.). But all of the other women in the book are victims or tools of the men they are with. Women’s sexuality is a prop for the generation of crimes, an item of of exchange between men dueling for masculine supremacy, but never explored in its own right. Women in this book are used, killed, beaten, betrayed, and deceived. And yet we are never told their stories in the detail we are told the men’s –  what motivated them? What did they hope for? The moor — which is unpredictable, dangerous, easy to get lost in  — it actually sucked the culprit to his doom — symbolizes femininity, women’s sexuality, women’s fertility, and the danger they pose to men.

I realized in addition to the HEA, there is something I can count on when I read romances:  they take the experiences of women seriously. Extract the perspective of female characters from romance, and you no longer have a book. Or at least not a book I would want to read.

13 responses so far

Big Box Book Blogs: Do You Read Them?

Nov 12 2009 Published by under Blogs and blogging

Barnes&Noble and Borders both have book blogs dedicated to the romance genre. B&N’s launched in July 2009, and Borders’ launched a month later. I can understand why B&N and Borders established their own blogs.  If you can create a community right at your store, meaning that folks like me visit your store even when we aren’t planning to shop, that’s great for business. It also creates positive feelings towards the store, probably good for customer loyalty. It’s why brick and mortar Borders host French language clubs and seniors’ reading groups and open mike nights.

Barnes&Noble’s romance blog is called “HEart to Heart”, and Michelle Buonfiglio and Melanie Murray write for it. I know Buonfiglio only from the dustup over her comments about bloggers at last spring’s Princeton romance conference. She has her own blog called Romance B(u)y The Book. Murray, an author, is also a blogger for RBTB and a moderator for the romance forums at Barnes and Noble. Heart to Heart (or H2H) is a daily blog with descriptions of romance novels. You have to be registered and logged in to comment, which is a major annoyance. Neither H2H nor the forums appear to be especially active except when there is a free book involved.

Borders.com’s romance section, Borders True Romance has a blog, as you all know, run by Borders romance buyer Sue Grimshaw, with bloggers Jane of Dear Author and Sarah Wendell. Sarah and Jane do a Sunday post, often a mix of video and text, guest readers post on Fridays, and Sue Grimshaw does a regular “Must Reads” video post. On the other days, authors contribute posts, and there are also high quality video interviews with bestselling authors like Linda Howard, Nora Roberts, Jill Shalvis, Carly Phillips, J.R. Ward and others on the site. You do not need to be registered to comment. There are no forums as yet at Borders True Romance (or I couldn’t find them if they exist).

Both sites offer giveaways and exclusives of various kinds.

One thing I find kind of odd is that you wouldn’t know these blogs were there unless you were specifically seeking them out.  Unlike at a brick and mortar store, I don’t go to the Amazon or Borders or B&N homepage and “browse”.  My online shopping starts out much more directed and targeted. I might type in “Linda Howard Ice” and then things happen from there.

H2H is not hard to find, but you have to be looking for it. And who would be looking for it? I didn’t know it existed until I read a Tweet today that led me to RBTB, which led me to B&N. You go to the B&N website. “Book clubs” is a tab at the top. Not too difficult. (As an aside, another B&N book club is “Unbound”, which is about ebooks, although you wouldn’t know that from its name. Carina Press Executive Editor Angela James wrote for that one.)

But at Borders.com, for example, I have to know in advance to click on “Borders Media” to find the Borders True Romance blog. Why would someone shopping for a romance novel hit a button called “Borders Media”? I think it’s just odd that as a semi-regular online customer of both outlets, nothing in my regular shopping experience would bring me to their blogs.

I compare this unfavorably to Amazon.com, which generates links to often quite active (not to say hysterical) discussions that relate to the books you are shopping for right on the same page. (As another aside, why doesn’t Amazon have a blog? Is that in the works?)

Between the two, Borders has the edge in terms of quality and comprehensiveness. If number of comments is any measure, neither seem as active yet as the blogs run by Buonfiglio, Litte, or Wendell.

Perhaps these blogs are a way to get at that large percentage of romance readers who are online but are not denizens of Romanceland?

What do you think? Are you enjoying this new kind of blog in Romanceland? Is “new” even appropriate in that sentence?

Are they a daily “must visit”, just another feed in your Google reader you click when interested in post titles, or not really on your radar?

37 responses so far

My Ethics and Fiction Class (and how romance reading has changed it)

Nov 11 2009 Published by under Academia

Ok, kids. Which one of these things is not like the other?

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Stephen K. George, Editor, Ethics, Literature, & Theory: An Introductory Reader
Leo Tolstoy , The Death of Ivan Ilych
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
Patricia Gaffney, To Have and To Hold (this is an out of print paperback. You will need to buy it online, using a site like Addall.com. I will also place three copies on library reserve).
*All other readings are available on e-reserve

If you chose the genre fiction … you’re right!

I have been teaching some version of ethics and literature for about 10 years, every 2-3 years. The course basically interrogates the relationship between fiction and ethics, both everyday ethics and ethical theory.  I start with a simplistic idea that fiction contains moral lessons which are imparted to passive hearers.  Then we mine fiction for more complex ethical lessons. By about the time we are reading Sartre, we are starting to wonder why someone chooses to express an ethical idea in fiction rather than prose, and vice versa.  We question our assumptions about what it is to “do ethics”, or what “ethical theory proper” looks like. We start to question to rigid boundary between the poets and the philosophers with Nietzsche, and by the time we hit Borges we have lost it totally (I used to teach Plato’s Pharmacy by Derrida but didn’t have time this semester.).

My approach to ethics in fiction is heavily influenced by the ethical criticism movement, associated with Martha Nussbaum, Wayne Booth and others. But it wasn’t until I started reading and blogging about romance that I even noticed that when they talk about the importance of fiction to ethics they are always talking about Proust or James or Woolf. So I added the last section of the course — which basically asks the question whether literature is superior to genre fiction, per se, and whether it is better in particular for doing the kinds of things Booth, Nussbaum and their ilk believe it can do, specifically, ask “what is the good life for human beings?”. It also allows me to introduce questions about the ways in which gender is associated with popular culture in general and genre fiction (not just romance) in particular, and the ways in which gender influences our distinctions between high and low art.

I had hoped to write many more blog posts on these topics as they relate to romance, and to the debates in Romanceland. That has not happened (yet). But I do plan to blog my “lecture” on the Gaffney, which I plan to use to ask whether genre fiction can do the things ethical critics think literature can do, and to ask whether this is an example of a kind of book that Posner talks about, a book which has literary, but lacks ethical value, and may not only lack ethical value, but may contribute to a significant problem in our culture, sexual violence against women (although Posner would never in a million years say a romance had literary values, either!).

Here’s the syllabus in case you’re interested:

ORDER OF READINGS:

Aesop’s Fables (browse) http://aesopfables.com/aesopsel.html
Three Billy Goats Gruff (first version only) http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html
The Little Red Hen http://www.bres.boothbay.k12.me.us/wq/nnash/WebQuest/little_red_hen.htm
The Rainbow Fish http://www.eurotales.eril.net/fish2uk.htm
Darcia Narvaez, “Does Reading Moral Stories Build Character?”*

Marianne Jennings, “The Absence of Stories: Filling the Void in Ethics” (George)
Nina Rosenstand, “Stories and Morals” (George)
Ursula Leguin, “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas”*

Cunningham, “Reading For Life” (George)
Tobias Wolff, “The Chain”, “The Night In Question”*
Sartre, “The Wall” *

Nussbaum, “The ‘Ancient Quarrel’: Literature and Moral Philosophy” (George)
Plato, Republic (360 B.C.E.) (selections) PDF
Leo Tolstoy, “What is Art?” (1896)
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Why Write?” from What is Literature? (1947)*
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”*
Sartre, “No Exit”

Oscar Wilde, Preface, The Picture of Dorian Gray, preface*
John Gardner, “Premises on Art and Morality” (George)
Yoko Ogawa, “Pregnancy Diary”*

Abraham B. Yehoshua, “The Moral Connections of Literary Texts” (George)
Wayne Booth, “Why Ethical Criticism Can Never Be Simple” (George)

Richard A. Posner, “Against Ethical Criticism”
Borowski, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”*

Wayne C. Booth, “Who Is Responsible In Ethical Criticism?” (George)
Joyce Carol Oates, “Art and Ethics?” (George)

Claudia Mills, “Appropriating Others’ Stories: Some Questions about the Ethics of Writing Fiction”*

Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (selections)*
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Richard Rorty, “Philosophy As a Kind of Writing”*
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard”, “Lottery in Babylon”, “Borges and I”*

HERE’S THE SECTION THAT’S TOTALLY NEW. I BLAME YOU ALL IF IT FLOPS:

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“Is High Art Superior?”, Ch. 2 of What Good are the Arts? By John Carey*
“Reading Romance Fiction”, Ch. 4 of Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture, by Joanne Hollows*
Patricia Gaffney, To Have and To Hold
Jack Harrell, “What Violence in Literature Must Teach Us” (George)
Orson Scott Card, “The Problem of Evil in Fiction” (George)
Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”*

So far it’s a great class, with wonderful students. It’s mostly men, so it will be interesting to see how the Gaffney plays. I welcome any comments on this post, but I should warn you that I won’t get into the Gaffney or the question of rape in romance, because not only have I blogged about both already, but I plan to do posts on Gaffeny in a couple of weeks.

12 responses so far

Monday Morning Stepback: Reviews of Unavailable Books — Do They Bug You?

Nov 09 2009 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

1. Links of Interest:

First, a public service announcement: please note that Wendy the Super Librarian has a new address, http://wendythesuperlibrarian.blogspot.com/. Fix your links!

The contest is over, but the post is still super fun. Check out the evolution of Harlequin Historical covers at The Season Blog.

A wonderful October post on author Eva Ibbotson, an author I must read, from Just Janga.

I loved this response from author Courtney Milan to the absence of women authors on PW’s list of best books of the year. And the comments are even better.

Laura Vivanco is talking about Heyer v. Austen: Historical and Contemporary Fiction, over at Teach Me Tonight. And for anyone who wants a recap of how the Georgette Heyer conference went (at which Laura presented) this past weekend, check out this link.

Kristie is claiming that books like Love Story and Gone with the Wind are not really romances at AccessRomance.

Robin is trying to define “alpha hero”, who remains “frustratingly elusive” to her, over at Romancing the Blog.

2. Reviews of Unavailable Books: Are They Less Valuable?

What did we do now?

What did we do now?

A couple of folks (not naming names because I can’t recall exactly who it was) tweeted the other day that they don’t like reviews of out of print (OOP) books, because they can’t go out and get them. Some others feel the same way about advance reviews of books that won’t be available for weeks or months: by the time they’re actually published, you’ve forgotten that great review. This is especially tough for Kindle readers like me, who don’t have a pre-order option.

I blogged about an OOP book just yesterday. I still think the purposes of (a) keeping a personal record of what I read, and (b) perhaps engaging in some discussion, make it worth it.

What do you think?

3. Forgetting my good fortune, once again

I met last week with a philosopher visiting from Georgia. That is, the Georgia in Eastern Europe. She’s in the US on a grant to learn about US higher education. She’s especially interested in bioethics. I asked her if she had any English language bioethics texts for her students. She said there is only one book she can acquire. “We’re at war” she said, shaking her head. “Everything … it’s so difficult.” I glanced at my shelves full of free exam copies of bioethics textbooks — each one would be about $90 new to students — and felt embarrassed. I said I would mail them to her. She shook her head: “They will not get to me. You will need to go through the US Embassy.”

I actually spent some time in Tbilisi, twenty years ago, when I was an undergraduate studying Soviet political systems. Even then, there was violence in the streets against Soviet rule, mothers protesting the loss of their sons to the war in Afghanistan, economic hardship. I can’t imagine living in chaos for decades, as she has.

Thinking that she would want the best, not the mediocrity I offer, I suggested to her that she contact bigger, better universities, like Penn or SUNY Albany, who have fleets of trained bioethicists at the ready. She shook her head vigorously, saying, “I am here with you now. I want your help.” It was such a direct, human appeal. I was totally taken aback. It hit me that she doesn’t have the luxury of shopping for the best, or waiting until next time. She’ll be back in Georgia in a few days, not sure if she has a job or even a building from one day to the next. It has been a sobering experience, and a forceful reminder of how lucky I am to be an academic in the US, despite all the problems we now face.

4. Book Discussion

Black-Silk

I’ve chosen Judith Ivory’s Black Silk for the next book discussion, Sunday, December 6. Note how autocratic the process of choosing the book and time is. I actually have a weird thing where I think it is kind of narcissistic to ask readers for help with my own blog, so I don’t do it often. Anyway, it’s a very interesting book. One of the most important characters is dead, and the hero sleeps with another woman for most of it. How can this be a romance? It’s just been reissued — isn’t that a gorgeous new cover? — and is also available in non pirated digital versions. Join us!

5. Coming up this week.

jeremy-brett

Damned if I know. I have a million post ideas and about 5 minutes of free time in any given day. I was actually thinking of writing a post on not having time to write posts.

I am reading The Hound of the Baskervilles for a new “culture club” (we are actually calling it “Kultur Club”. What can I say? We are pompous academics.) which my spouse started up, so I’ll review that one, and the Jeremy Brett film version as well.

Happy Week!

31 responses so far

New biotechnology and old fashioned conflict: Her Sister’s Baby by Janice Kay Johnson

Nov 08 2009 Published by under Reviews

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Her Sister’s Baby is a 1995 Harlequin SuperRomance by Janice Kay Johnson. It is about Colleen, a recently divorced mom of two, who has just moved to a small town in eastern Washington, and Michael, a newly widowed banker. Colleen, a warm, loving woman, is dealing with the divorce, which was amicable enough, but has been very hard on her children, ages 8 and 11, and she is struggling financially with her new quilting shop. Michael is a classic old school contemporary hero: tall, dark, handsome, inscrutable, aloof, awkward, and hurting inside, not only by his wife’s recent death, but by childhood neglect that has turned him into a man afraid of emotions and human connection.

Sounds like your typical contemporary conflict so far, doesn’t it?

Except … Michael’s dead wife? The one who dies in chapter 2? Is Colleen’s sister, Sheila.

Not enough conflict yet? How about this:

Colleen is carrying Michael baby, thanks to her agreement to act as full surrogate for her infertile sister. She wants to keep it, but Michael wants to hold her to her oral agreement to hand the baby over once it’s born.

This is the second book by Johnson I have read, and although she has written about 40 books, I feel confident in stating that I have found a pattern: her books are depressing. Ok, not depressing exactly, but so true to real life in its messiness, that they are not escape reads at all. The depiction of the hardship of divorce on Colleen’s children, including the fact that their father is not working very hard to stay in their lives, was very well done, which is to say, painful to read.

I can read paranormals or romantic suspense in which there is enough mayhem and carnage to reduce the world’s population by a third without batting an eye. But give me an 11 year old girl who can’t make a single friend in her new school, or an 8 year old boy who can’t get his father to return his phone calls, and I am a puddle of tears.

And little relief is given by the courtship of Michael and Colleen, who are not only wary, mistrustful, and outright hostile towards each other, but wracked with guilt over their growing attraction, having both loved Sheila very much. OTOH, this makes for some terrific sexual tension.

It made me wonder, though … does this cross over into women’s fiction? Do we need not just an HEA but some romance to call it a romance?

In order to make room for the growing relationship between Colleen and Michael, his marriage to Sheila must be cleared away in some fashion. This is very delicate for any writer. While other authors, like Susan Elizabeth Phillips in Dream a Little Dream, keep the dead wife perfect but have the hero love his new woman “in a different way”, and others demonize the dead spouse, Johnson has walked a more complicated road. Michael reassesses his marriage, and discovers truths about himself and his late wife that are hard to face.

They must also grasp one horn of a dilemma: if Michael and Colleen were never attracted to each other in the past, then is their current attraction merely a reaction to Sheila’s sudden death? Can they trust it? On the other hand, if they were attracted to each other in the past, aren’t they awful people? Were they just subconsciously waiting for Sheila to go away? What would Sheila have wanted for them? is it Sheila’s voice they hear in their heads, or their own selfish desires rationalizing what they are doing?

I think there are many readers who wouldn’t care for this book, particularly readers who like their heroes and heroines to be morally perfect. I know there are many readers who would never accept this relationship between a sister and her brother-in-law, I found it really fascinating.

The pregnancy was a way to both bring Michael and Colleen together, as well as create conflict. Washington state surrogacy laws do recognize surrogacy contracts (many states do not), as long as payment is not made. Since they are both genetic relations to the child, I am guessing that had they not worked it out by falling in love, custody would have been granted to Colleen (who is both gestational and genetic surrogate) with visitation to Michael. On the other hand, Washington is very big on the written contract in surrogacy arrangement, and they had only a verbal one.

I think viewing surrogacy arrangements as akin to other kinds of contractual arrangement neglects important human, emotional aspects of conceiving and carrying a child. It’s just not like housesitting or selling a used car. The product of the arrangement is a human being, whose interests are paramount in my view. On the other hand, parties to the contract need protection, and women who agree to serve as gestational surrogates should be compensated fairly (it’s amazing how, when women donate eggs or act as surrogates, everyone says we can’t commercialize the arrangement. Women are only allowed to do things for free.).

I thought Colleen’s character arc was surprising and interesting. I really liked the way the pregnancy was handled. Colleen became very attached to her fetus, and had to question whether she would have ever been able to give the baby up to her sister. She wondered if the promise to give the baby to Michael was still in force now that Sheila was dead. Was she a bad person to change her mind, or a bad mother not to? Through her relationship with Michael, she came to reassess her first marriage and her part in its failure.

I haven’t given you much of a sense of the writing, and it’s because Johnson’s writing doesn’t stand out for me as much as the complex moral psychology she explores. But it is good writing, I think. Here’s an example of the characterization of Colleen’s attorney as she meets him at court:

Of course, he looked completely relaxed.; his hair was damp, as though he’d come straight from the health club. She could picture him playing a hard game of racquetball, maybe lying afterward in the sauna, dressing, leisurely, taking his time to get to the courthouse. Half of her fiercely resented his casual attitude; the rest of her was comforted that he apparently regarded this as routine.

One drawback to the book was that the conflict was so intense that the romance was not allowed to grow as much as I would have liked. Their sexual attraction was very believable, but there were very few scenes when Michael and Colleen just enjoyed each other’s company. They were never at peace together, until the very end.

Overall, though, I really liked it. My first Johnson was a free Kindle download, and this one was fifty cents at a charity book table. For twenty-five cents a book, I’ve gotten about 8 hours of enjoyment from this writer. I’d say that’s a more than fair bargain.

12 responses so far

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