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The “hot men” segment of the romance bloggerverse

Mar 9

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 33 Comments

Just a few random observations. But here is one thing I am NOT saying. And I am going to bold it and set it out so there is no confusion:

I am NOT criticizing romance readers for whom fantasy is a part — even a large part — of their engagement with the romance genre.

I think almost everyone who reads romance recognizes at least some fantasy element is operating for them at least some of the time. It may be as simple as “I don’t have to think for the moment about the stresses/challenges in my life as a mom/engineer/wife/doctor/CEO/caretaker/NASCAR driver/backyard chicken tamer” or “I don’t have to worry these characters will end up miserable or dead”.

But there are two kinds of fantasy engagement with romance, especially romance novel heroes, or real men who are supposed to represent them, that are fairly prevalent on line that I wanted to point out in this post.

1. Treating the characters as “real” in some sense outside the text

My first romance novel experience as an adult was J.R. Ward’s Lover Revealed. It was published in March 2007, which coincided with my spring break. I wanted to read some pulp fiction, something I had not had time to do for years, so I grabbed it off the drugstore shelf while on vacation in Florida. I was immediately hooked, and went to the author’s forums to check them out. I noticed right away the tendency of the “Cellies” to treat the characters as real. They gushed over the heroes, fantasized about them, used erotic pictures of men supposed to represent the BDB for their signatures, and generally interacted with the novels in a way that felt very alien to me.

Here are a couple of the ground rules at the J.R. Ward message boards, which give a sense of the tendencies to which some Cellies are prone:

10. Brother/Angel Ownership- There is NO Brother or Angel ownership. It will not be tolerated. The board is here for everyone to enjoy spending time with each other, J.R. Ward, and the Brotherhood. Let’s remember the Brothers’ books are written for everyone’s enjoyment.

11. Role-playing- There is to be NO role-playing here on the boards. It’s a form of copyright infringement and will not be tolerated.

Recently, another paranormal romance author, Karen Marie Moning, had to issue an Official Facebook Statement, and create official Facebook characters, because unofficial Facebook characters were harassing each other.

For those of you who wrote to tell me that my “unofficial” characters were being unkind to each other in ways that disturbed you, and that these unofficial Facebook pages—rather than making you interested in the books, were making you actively dislike the series and my characters—you now have a safe place to visit.

Lots of romance websites devote some or all of their time to this kind of fantasy. For example, DIK Ladies Rule is premised on the idea that bloggers can fantasize about bringing romance novel heroes to a desert island. Their tagline is “the island where women can go to escape their every day lives … where their favorite books are waiting … and the heroes are naked.”

And lots of other blogs fantasize in this way, too, such as Reviews by Jessewave, Leontine’s Book Realm, Smexy Books (with a page on “Smexy’s boyfriends”, with romance novel heroes). There’s even a Build Your Own Book Boyfriend meme. [I don't mean to single anyone out. I just randomly picked these, as examples. There are many more I could have chosen.]

2. Fantasizing about the cover models, about real men who might resemble the characters in the text, or about handsome men (especially actors) in general, as part of the romance reader discourse. For example, Penelope’s Romance Reviews, which has a “Beard of the Day”, and “Most Romantic Beard” posts, The Naughty Bits, Lust in Time, etc.

A lot of bloggers in romance will just do a post of good looking men in their underwear. When you think about it, what does that really have to do with romance novel reading? It seems connected to the way romance works as one kind of fantasy. If it were just about visualizing the text, then there would also be pictures of women, and ancestral estates, but there usually aren’t.

I tend to gravitate to bloggers who are more like me — fewer images in general, less emphasis on fantasy, more emphasis on romance as fiction.

This is not an invidious distinction. A lot of bloggers engage in multiple ways on their blogs with the genre: they’ll have the hot men, and then they’ll do a post on whitewashing of book covers, or the marginalization of GLBTQ romance, or they’ll write careful reviews. I think of Katiebabs as someone who “blogs across the board” like this. And any of the blogs mentioned above (so, for example, I get a lot of Apple news from Teddypig’s blog, and good reviews from Smexy Books, etc.). And while I would guess the “hot men” blogger may tend to focus on steamier books — “romantica” and the like — that’s not necessarily the case.

It’s also not an invidious distinction because there are bloggers like me who maybe don’t do much of it, but at least sometimes read those “hot men” posts or enjoy the images.

My personal tendency is to focus on my own preferred type of engagement. And my other tendency is to downplay the fantasy aspect, because it can feed pernicious stereotypes of the romance reader. But then, what doesn’t feed those stereotypes? As a professor who reads romance, I am a walking stereotype of a repressed bluestocking, right? Still, I think it would be interesting to think more about these types of overt fantasy engagements, because they are so obviously an important component of the way many women engage with romance. (And romance is not alone in this: speculative fiction is perhaps (?) the closest cousin to romance with regard to its fantasy function. Maybe this is connected to paranormal romance being the subgenre that jumped out when I was thinking about fantasy.)

I have read somewhere the notion that posting pictures of men in their undies (er, they probably don’t call them that, do they?) smacks of exploiting men. Certainly whole books have been written about the oppressive effects of the Adonis Complex, etc. I would have to think more about that.

On the other hand, from a feminist perspective, just as we sometimes talk about sexy romances and erotica as positive reclamation of women’s sexuality, maybe bloggers who are having fun with “hot men” — and they are having fun, a concept with which I am not especially familiar — are doing that too.

Then there’s just the personal comfort factor. The impetus for this post was actually finding images this week of full frontal male nudity in my Google reader, with no warning. I felt such bloggers had crossed a line, and deleted them from my reader.

It’s a testament to the diversity and flexibility and richness of the genre that any given text can serve many kinds of readers and many kinds of engagement.

Interview With A Croatian Feminist, Anarchist, Speculative Fiction Writer, and Avid Genre Fiction Reader

Mar 7

Posted by Jessica in Academia, Blogs and blogging, Feminist contentions, Genre musings | 6 Comments

Milena Benini, a regular reader of this blog, won my last contest. When I realized I had to send her prize to Croatia, I let out a blood curdling scream and hid my wallet,  took the opportunity to ask her a few questions. It turns out Milena is, in her words, an

anarchist, blogger, cat-feeder, cook, dog-minder, editor, feminist, fire-horse, human being, illustrator, journalist, mum, mum, reader, Sagittarius, theoretician, translator, web-mistress, wife, woman.

I couldn’t fit all that on the address label, so Milena kindly agreed to answer a few questions for RRR. She’s also a writer of speculative fiction and has written a paper on the online romance community for her workplace, the Centre For Women’s Studies (more on both below).

1. Say a little about your blog and what you do there.

Well, my tag-line includes women, genre and politics. I have a whole group of posts about women I like and/or admire, particularly early sufragettes, but also some contemporary stars — anyone whose life and work I happen to appreciate. I usually try to post about them on their birthdays, with the idea that, some day, I’ll have a whole “feminist calendar”.

I also write about genres; my primary focus is SF (interpreted as Speculative Fiction, not just sci-fi), but I also talk about mysteries and romances. Oh, and I published a novel at the blog, because I wanted to see how that would be accepted in Croatia. It’s a fantasy novel with a strong romantic element, although I wouldn’t call it exactly a romance. :)

I sometimes also talk about politics, although that’s mostly related to open-source issues and stuff like that, as well as women’s issues, and sometimes anarchism.

1b. Can you say more about your position on open source?

Writing this on a computer running Ubuntu and having given away a novel under a CC license, I think I can safely say that I am very much in favour of open source. FOSS has a pretty strong community in Croatia, although, as is the case everywhere, I think, a lot of people tend to keep away from it out of habit, or fear of the unknown. There is also the fact that people are often suspicious about things they get for free, because we’re very much conditioned to think that worth can only be measured in money. But there is also a growing number of people who can see the value of things like open source or creative commons. Mostly thanks to Cory Doctorow, probably. :)

2. Is there any way for those who do not read Croatian to read it? I tried Google translator but … unless you are in fact a drunk monkey at the keyboard, I cannot believe it does your words justice.

Oh, yes, Google translator is an endless source of humour, but very little correct translation. Unfortunately, I don’t think that there’s a simple way to resolve this.

3. How long have you been reading romance novels? What are your favorites?

Just about all my life. There is a very famous Croatian author, Marija Juric Zagorka, who wrote about a dozen historical romances — and they’re real monster-novels, one of six and one of twelve tomes! — and that’s where I started. Then I went on to the classics such as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. When I started reading in English, I also passed through a — I suppose I should blush now — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss period. In my defense, I was very young at the time. :) . Then there was Georgette Heyer, of course!

I love Loretta Chase, Patricia Gaffney, Jennifer Crusie for the humour, and I also enjoy Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series, especially the first trilogy; Robin McKinley is also among my favourites… oh, there are too many to mention them all. I’ll also read anything with vampires in it — I even read Twilight! Research purposes and all that (I’m writing a book about parallels between vampire and spy fiction) — but, unfortunately, there aren’t that many really good vampire romances.

4. Do you read in English? Translations?

I read mostly in English, especially since translations of romances are few and far between in Croatia, not to mention usually more expensive (smaller print runs make for expensive books!). Furthermore, nowadays, I read a lot on my mobile phone, and there are almost no e-books in Croatian.

As for Croatian romances, I’m afraid the answer is — not any more. Apart from Zagorka, whom I have already mentioned (she was–and still is — probably the best-loved Croatian female author of all times, a very interesting woman who managed to also be a proto-feminist and one of the first female journalists in this part of Europe, and when she got poor in her old age her fans got together to feed and clothe her — a fascinating story, really), there was one woman who was pretty famous as a romance author some thirty years ago, but she stopped writing about a decade ago.

Oh, and there is one woman who writes under an English pseudonym and, allegedly, has a dayjob as a waitress. But we’re a small country (only 4.5 million people) and books are not a good way to make a living. In addition, romances are still mostly despised — even when there are actual romances translated, they’re never marketed as such. SEP is marketed as general fiction in Croatia, and Nora Roberts is invariably shelved in the mystery section.

5. What are some attitudes towards romance novels you’ve encountered?

Well, I have to stress that mine is not a typical situation: I am very much a part of the SF community — which is a lot stronger in Croatia than the romance community — and I don’t have any problems there, because we’re all outsiders together, in a way. And people in the SF community — at least here in Croatia — are not afraid of romance novels; in fact, there are several people who also read them, and when I post about romance novels, people generally react favourably.

Also, at the Centre for Women’s Studies, my interest in any genre was always welcomed, but they are all great women anyway.

6. Can you say a little more about the speculative fiction community in Croatia?

I think it’s more or less the same everywhere: SF-fans are viewed as those strange people who walk around with false pointy ears and recite poetry in Klingon. Even if you don’t speak a word of Klingon, you get marked as such once you publicly proclaim your interest in SF…

In Croatia, the SF community is something of an exception in its attitude towards women: for example, our national SF-award, SFera, has the largest percentage of female award-winners of all Croatian literary awards. I understand that this is something of an anomaly, caused probably by the fact that our fandom was started by grownups and not teenagers, so the more mature outlook rubbed off on the following generations.

7. What is the difference between “SFF” and “speculative fiction”?

Well, “speculative fiction” is the broader term. People first began using it when the borderlines between genres started getting blurred — particularly in the seventies, with New Wave — and it’s getting more and more used today because it’s often impossible to tell if something is science fiction or fantasy. When you look at people like China Mieville, for example, it’s impossible to define him as “science fiction” or “fantasy” or “horror”: there are elements of all three in his work. And “speculative fiction” is a nice umbrella-term for all the genres that, at heart, start from the question “what if”. A lot of people who are interested in one thing are also interested in another, whether as readers, writers, or both. So it makes a lot more sense to use one name for the whole thing.

8. Can you name a couple of your favorites in mystery and speculative fiction?

In mystery, I am a great admirer of the grandes dames — Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh — and from the newer authors, I have to single out Martha Grimes, who is doing weird and fantastic and wonderful things while staying strictly within her genre. And SF is my first love, so the list is very long… Terry Pratchett, Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Le Guin and Michael Moorcock for the classics; Charlie Stross, Ken MacLeod and Cory Doctorow for the new voices; Steven Brust as an all together great guy; ditto for Neil Gaiman. And Robin Mckinley and Melissa Michaels, who also do strange and wonderful things. I think I better stop now…

9. Is there a Croatian romance community?

Not really, I’m afraid. There are two or three blogs that cover romance as one of their interests, but only one blog that I know of that focuses exclusively on romance. And in the “real life” sense, there’s nothing.

10. What did you say in the article you wrote?

Well, it’s basically an overview of the development of the romance community on the Internet, and it includes a (very) short history of the genre itself. The article will be published a special edition of the Centre’s magazine “Treca” (The Third, in female form — Croatian is much more gender-specific than English). There was a whole semester devoted to popular culture intersecting with feminist issues, and my article is part of that.

I tried to show that the Internet has given an opportunity to smart, educated women who like romance to get together and discuss their genre in a way which was difficult before the Internet. And I also tried to outline the way in which the genre has started looking at itself, after long being the object of fascination and disgust for outsiders. I find this somewhat similar to what happened in SF — at one point, SF fans got fed up with outsiders telling them what their genre was like, and started developing their own theory, combining it with the “official” academic approaches and reaching new and exciting things. And now we see a similar process at work in the romance community, which has to deal with the added problem of romance being, to a very large extent, a “female” genre, which is often the reason why it gets so much criticism, regardless of whether the bias is shown openly or not.

The thing is, although genre lit in general has not been overlooked in Croatian academic circles, romance is usually almost completely left out in such analyses, or is dealt with in a very offhandish manner. That’s why I was trying to give people a place to start, especially young women. I mentioned your analysis of ethics in Patricia Gaffney as an example of how romance can be approached not as a phenomenon, but rather as literature.

11. What is the Centre for Women’s Studies?

Well, it’s so far the only such place in Croatia, because our academic community is not really too keen on feminism, at least not in the upper echelons, where decisions are made. The Centre organises all kinds of educational programmes, publishes books, holds workshops, etc. One of the things I do is maintain their web-site, and there are at least some pages in English, so you can take a look if you want.

12. How about a blurb for your book?

Yes, I published a novel at the blog, because I wanted to see how that would be accepted in Croatia. It’s a fantasy novel with a strong romantic element, although I wouldn’t call it exactly  romance. :)

Kalaide, priestess of the Moon, is trying to hold her home together in the midst of war when a strange prisoner is brought: Enaor, an Elder, who lost his family, his city, and almost his sanity in the war for which he blames Kalaide’s gods — and his own brother. With the unnatural winter gripping the land, the two must form an unexpected alliance in order to survive… and maybe, just maybe, save the world as well.

Hvala, Milena! Thank you!

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10 Peeves and 10 Pleasures and 10 Things I’ve learned About Blogging

Feb 27

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing | 10 Comments

Just some randomness while I await the change to my new website. Thanks again for hanging in.

Peeves

1. Losing my Audiobook place on my iPod. Takes ages to find it again. This is the worst … my absolute number 1 peeve.

2. Juice box company repackaging a 10 pack as an 8 pack for a higher price. Then adding back the two juice boxes and slapping a sticker on the package that says “20% more free!!!”. (also looking at you cereal makers!)

3. The moment when I realize I forgot a lesson I have already learned.

4. Seeing one of my kids in a too-small or stained item of clothing I meant to discard or donate, but instead washed and dried, again.

5. Loud talkers at the gym. Especially when they are on their cell phones.

6. Walking to class sans tissues, and having to sniffle my way through most of it.

7. Promo codes. I have never been offered one of these in my life. Dammit.

8. No hook (for my coat or bag) on a public bathroom stall door.

9. My cats crying to go outside at 6:00am and then taking their sweet time while I stand with the door ajar in our usual 5 degree temps.

10.  Glasses, period. Example:  accidentally washing my face or falling asleep with them on; sliding down my face; getting raindrops on them as I walk to class; losing them,  you name it. Hate wearing glasses.

Pleasures


1. My youngest, an 8 year old boy who sometimes feels too big to hold mommy’s hand, absently grabbing my hand on a walk

2. The moment when I realize a book I am reading is going to be awesome.

3. When someone clicks the “Add to Any” button to subscribe to this blog.

4. Seeing my dogs, standing on their hind legs, wagging their tails, looking out the window at doggie daycare when I pick them up.

5. Finding out one of my students has gotten into the grad school of their choice (this week: two pre med students got early admission to Tufts!)

6. The sound — and sight, when I am lucky — of a black capped chickadee.

7. Watching something absolutely trashy on TV as I fold laundry in the relative quiet and solitude of my bedroom on a weekend afternoon while all hell is breaking loose downstairs

8. Realizing I’ve accumulated enough quarters to buy myself a Vitamin Water from a vending machine on campus

9. Trolling the charity used book bin at my supermarket and actually finding a treasure

10. Seeing my husband in his assistant soccer coach uniform. I thought I married a bookish Jew. Where did this hot jock come from?

Blogging:

1. The way to grow your blog is to post good content

2. Occasional drama is unavoidable: better to visit it than to host it

3. Twitter, while enjoyable, doesn’t really help me with blogging. I’ve nuked my Twitter account 3 times, and each time have seen my stats and comments go up during the period I was Twitter free, probably because I had more time for better and more frequent posts.

4. Your blog readers are not necessarily your friends. They just read your blog. They may not even like you, impossible as that seems. ;)

5. Don’t be afraid to ask experienced bloggers for help, on anything from handling code to an out of control discussion thread.

6. Trolls must be ignored. No matter how skilled you think you are, you can’t reason with them, because they are not arguing with you in good faith. Ignoring works wonders, though.

7. Be natural. Don’t strategize when it comes to frequency of posts or content or comments. Do what feels natural, or blogging will just become another chore. You can’t predict what people will like or what you will find gratifying anyway, so save yourself the wasted energy.

8. Taking back anything you say on the internet, including on your own blog, is like trying to get the pee out of a pool. Think twice before hitting send.

9. There is always room for another blog, another voice, another point of view. Be confident in your own voice and welcoming  of others’ voices.

10. Blogging is an incredibly rewarding activity.

New website: rough weather ahead (ReadReactReview.com)

Feb 25

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 13 Comments

This is just to let you know that I have a new domain name — http://readreactreview.com — and a new host. In the next couple of days, everything should be moved over.

Please bear with me as I make this change.

I’m working on a tagline. It will probably have the word “romance” in it. I don’t plan to make a big shift in content, so if you enjoy reading Racy Romance Reviews, you’ll probably enjoy reading ReadReactReview.com. But as I mentioned in Monday’s post, I am now blogging under my real life identity, so there may be less erotic romance reviewing and fewer references to weeping cocks.

Or maybe not.

Thank you!

I’m Interviewed at All Romance eBooks: 28 Days of Heart

Feb 4

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 2 Comments

Click on the banner below (and scroll down the page) to find out my three favorites authors, books, blogs, and my favorite book of 2009.

More about the campaign:

Beginning February 1, 2010, ARe, the digital bookseller that owns All Romance (www.allromance.com) and OmniLit (www.omnilit.com), will release one new novella per day for twenty-eight consecutive days. All proceeds from the sale of these shorts, which will be offered exclusively on AllRomance.com and OmniLit.com as individual eBooks, will be donated to the American Heart Association.

In conjunction with our 28 Days of Heart Campaign to raise funds for, and awareness of, heart disease, All Romance is also taking the opportunity to shine a spotlight on some of the wonderful romance blogs that help make the eromance reading community thrive. Every day in February, our newsletter will be profiling some fantastic romance blogs that we know you’ll love as much as we do. Click on the banner for more blogger info!

Who wants to bet I am the only blogger of the 28 who manages to work in the phrase “overlapping systems of oppression”?

It’s fun reading — interviews with bloggers Sarah Wendell, the Fiction Vixen, Katiebabs, AnimeJune, Kati of Katidom, Mandi of Smexi Books, and others are also up.

Tags:

I’m good! Good enough to be cranky anyway…

Feb 3

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 16 Comments

A few concerned readers emailed to ask how I’m doing, and the answer is “just fine, thank you”. I had a little freakout Saturday, which I generously allowed the entire online community to share, but, realizing there isn’t much I can do at the moment except to look on the bright side, I have decided to take positive steps to restoring my good cheer.

The first was to turn on my Kindle wireless and watch Jill Shalvis’ Slow Heat and Wendy the Super Librarian’s Blogger Bundle of Jill St. John titles magically appear. (And also a third book I swear I don’t remember buying, called How To Write a Lot, for academics. Erm. Moving right along…).

And the second step to taking my mind off my worries is, naturally, surfing the web for inconsequential things to get annoyed about.

I blogged a while back about how best to immediately ratchet up my status from romance fan to irretrievably obsessed fangirl meet some fellow readers and authors in person this year, and that post and ensuing dicusssion included mention of the Romantic Times Book Lovers Convention, the Lori Forster Reader Get Together, the RWA Annual Conference, and a new one, RomCon™. (Every single mention of RomCon on the RomCon website has a “TM” after it. I’m too lazy to replicate that, but be aware someone has claimed rights.)

The gist I got at the time, was that RWA is really not for readers or bloggers, but we can have fun there anyway, that RT is pretty geared towards the cavemen/party/sexy games side of romance fandom, and that RomCon would be a new kind of conference, explicitly for readers (unlike RWA) yet a more comfortable place for those, like me, who want to meet their favorite authors and get together with other bloggers without having to play musical chairs on the laps of well oiled cover models.

Looking at RomCon program recently, I noticed the event seems … a lot like like RT after all. It offers a lot of games and scavenger hunts, such as  “Midnight Sexcapades: a naughty late night romp”.  Many other events promise to help attendees fulflll their “obsessions” with various kinds of heroes, such as “Be Still My Heart: Does your favorite hero’s heart beat?”, or “Anti-Heroes You Hate to Love: Do you love the Dark, Desirable and Deadly heroes?”, or “Build a Hero” where attendees work in teams to …. well, you get the idea. Probably the most bizarre event is the “Weapons Gallery”, so we can “see what the heroes we love to read about take into battle!”

Other events that seem a bit more serious nevertheless have sexy titles. For example “Strip the Heroine” is actually an event with Jo Beverley about how historical heroines dressed. Don’t worry that you will actually see nakedness, though. We are told this event will be “oh-so-delicately handled by leading historical authors who know exactly what women wore . . . or didn’t!”. “Speed Date an Author” is just a chance to meet new authors, not, alas, a way to hook up. And “Shock the Queen” focuses on etiquette in Victorian England.

Now, what kind of icon do you suppose fits this fun, sexcapadey event?

This one?

On the plus side, it’s great that the organizers did not defer to traditional norms of beauty, and kudos for choosing an image of a woman with political power. But I have to wonder who decided that a queen who is either very stoned, very confused, very nearsighted, very annoyed, or all of the above (perhaps because she’s having a very bad hair day — she seems to have overdone the gel on her left side) was an inviting choice?

There are a lot of events that sound really interesting, including some of those I’ve mentioned. And as a romance reader, I know all too well not to take marketing as a 100% accurate picture of content (covers and titles, anyone?). Finally, it’s the attendees that will set the tone, something no one can predict in advance.

But I confess, I was a little surprised at how much of the event focuses on the fantasy aspect of romance, the desire of readers to have a hero for themselves, to live as heroines did, and the sexy side of things (or rather the “naughty” side. For all the innuendo in the advertising, there is no panel on sexuality of any kind as far as I can see). I’m guessing this is no different than sci fi cons with their costumes and parades (although I doubt Dragon Con promo materials promise that its attendees will be “giddy teenagers” when they pose for pictures with authors). And I know many will really enjoy the games and scavenger hunts — after all, why spend the money and attend a conference if it isn’t going to be fun? But, after looking at the program, it honestly doesn’t sound like my kind of thing. It may only be in cyberspace that I feel like an average romance reader after all.

Top 10 Lies of the Romance Blogger

Jan 29

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 25 Comments

This is just a goofy autobiographical meditation. I’m sure it has no applicability to any of you.

lie-main_Full

10. “I’m just going to stop at the bookstore to pick up that book I ordered. That’s it.”

Online version: “I’ll just click over to Amazon/Borders/Sony to browse, maybe add a few books to my wish list. Not buying anything.”

9. One day I will read every book in my TBR pile.

8. I never blog when I am supposed to be (a) parenting, (b) working, or (c) sleeping. See, like someone else’s chocolate cake, which has no calories (even when you’ve eaten half of it), blogging minutes, because they are virtual, don’t actually take up any time.

7. “This book didn’t work so well for me. Other readers might really enjoy it” (Translation: “This absolutely sucked donkey balls, but if you have shit taste, you might love it.”)

6. I feel nothing but sisterly affection and joy when a newbie blogger comes on the scene and generates more buzz and traffic than me.

5. That book was just too sexy for me. [Alternate: I skip the sex scenes.]

4. I no longer care – at all – about: (pick one) JR Ward/Laurell K. Hamilton/Linda Howard

3. Getting books from the library helps reduce my spending on new books.

2. I don’t notice blog traffic, especially not my own.

And the Number One Lie of the Romance blogger…

1. I am on a self-imposed book buying ban.

Version B: This purchase doesn’t count against my self-imposed book buying ban, because I pre-ordered the book weeks ago.
Version C: My self-imposed book buying ban doesn’t include novellas or shorts.
Version D: Oh, I meant that my self-imposed book buying ban will begin on the first of the month. Which month? Er….

*this post is dedicated to Pearl, who tweeted #1 and thus inspired this post.

In My Feed Reader: The 164 Blogs To Which I Subscribe

Dec 27

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 18 Comments

No, I don’t read every post, and yes, I hit “mark all as read” on a regular basis. Doubting others will be interested, but this is just to give me a saved snapshot of what I was reading online at the end of 2009.

Suggestions always welcome…

AAR After Hours

http://www.likesbooks.com/aarafterhours/?feed=rss2

AccessRomance

All A-Blog http://www.accessromance.com/blog/feed/

AccessRomance – Readers Gab

http://accessromance.com/gab/feed/

Alison Kent’s Blah Blog

http://www.alisonkent.com/blog/feed

All About Romance’s News & Commentary Blog

http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?feed=rss2

All I want and more…

http://alliwantandmore.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Alpha Heroes

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AlphaHeroes

Angieville

http://angieville.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Ann Somerville’s Journal

http://annsomerville.logophilos.net/?feed=rss2

Ann Somerville’s Journal

Anna’s Book Blog

http://annavivian.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Ariachne’s broken woof: Sarah Annes Brown’s weblog

http://www.adjb.net/sab/rss.php

avidbookreader

http://avidbookreader.com/feed/

BABBLING ABOUT BOOKS, AND MORE!

http://kbgbabbles.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Bev’s Books

http://feeds.feedburner.com/BevsBooks

Bitten by Books

http://bittenbybooks.com/?feed=rss2

Book Binge

http://thebookbinge.com/feeds/posts/default

Book Bound

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