The Weekly Links, Opinion and Personal Updates post

Links of Interest

In general, I am not a great fan of DIK (Desert Island Keepers), but I liked the post from Renee about taking reading breaks.

Carolyn Jean of the Thrillionth Page has an interview with Steve Savage on Urban Fantasy Heroines’ Debt to Star Trek.

Super Wendy is making a list of librarians in romance novels. Not to be outdone, I am making my own list: of philosopher heroes and/or heroines in romance novels. It is currently an empty set, but give me time.

Harlequin has launched Try Harlequin.com. In this publisher’s typical ingenious fashion, they are encouraging readers to try new lines by giving away free books.

M/m author Ann Somerville is finding herself arguing that free and self-published doesn’t mean inferior at her blog.

It’s funny about free books. I download free Kindle books regularly, but rarely read them. Why is that? I spent some time noodling around, and it looks like there are two theories about “free” as a marketing strategy (I don’t think Ann’s choice was strategic, but I think a lot of the free books are). Theory 1 says you are shaping consumer behavior. First you offer a good for free, then you offer a discount, and finally, when the consumer is good and hooked (or convinced of its value) you offer it for full price.

The opposing theory says that if you offer a good for free, you may not be marketing to your best clients. Such “buyers” may not value the good. They have no intention of ever paying money for it. In the book realm, the corollary might be “they will stick this in the bottom of their TBR and never get to it.” A lower percentage who own the free book might actually read it, compared to those who paid and are thus more highly motivated.

On the other hand, if way more people own it, as a result of it being free, then the total number of readers who try this author or this book might be higher.

Which do you think prevails in romance?

From Galley Cat, a discussion of whether writers should pay for reviews in Publishers’ Weekly, Kirkus, and ForeWord. I’ve been thinking a lot about this particular argument:

This GalleyCat Reviews editor called Sutherland to confirm her comments, and she added these thoughts: “In the literary world, free (poverty) seems to have been the only criteria for integrity. Yet, people happily pay doctors and lawyers for a diagnosis–plenty of conflict there to enourage [sic] clients to come back for more. What critics of our pay for service miss is what they accept about lawyers and doctors – namely that reputation means a lot to a professional–and the path to your door will grow weeds fast when you prove to be a sellout.” (Via Self Publishing Review)

I am not sure whether I oppose the practice of paying for reviews. But my gut reaction is that this is a total fail as an argument, in part because the payment for services is how the economy of medicine works, whereas ad and subscription revenue is what keeps PW etc. afloat (although I do not deny her claim that there is a dangerous incentive in medicine to treat more when it earns more). Second, the relationship of physician to patient bears little resemblance to the relationship between book reviewer or book review publication and author, and the comparison suggests an attitude towards writers that is problematic.

From the Awl, Drink or Die. One study shows that “proficient” drinkers live longer than teetotalers, maybe because they are more social. I don’t know exactly what it takes to be a proficient drinker, but feel sure I make the cut.

In the world of poetry, there is a kerfuffle over the New England Review‘s and Ploughshares‘ decision to charge a nominal fee for e-submissions. Steve Fellner critiques the practice. An editor of the NER (and my former classmate) C. Dale Young, responds.

Beth Fish Reads is starting up an Audiobook Jukebox, a clearinghouse for audiobook reviews.

As promised, Sunita posted a terrific article on the Harlequin Mills and Boon line over at Dear Author. And with 75 comments, many including suggestions for great titles, it’s a terrific resource.

Did you see the news about Obama getting an early copy of the new Franzen to read on his summer break? If you have ever wondered what presidents read in their first summer in office, here’s some interesting info.

Kerfuffles that could have been:

Mrs. Giggles seemed to be doing her best last week to start up controversy, first with a post on Ravenous Romance, then with a post asking for secrets on Carina Press. Few takers.

Erstwhile blogger Candy Tan showed up to write a terrific post on Scott Pilgrim.I parsed the comments for clues as to her past whereabouts and future plans, and here is what I can say for sure: Candy took up the accordion, became the leader of a new musical movement to fuse the polka with glam rock*, fell off the stage wearing platform heels at a show in a cantina in Mexico and woke up in a beach front mansion in San Diego, as the special (platonic) guest of a certain dot.com millionaire whose reading tastes ran from Deepak Chopra to Tony Robbins. It took several months of deprogramming to get her to stop deconstructing phrases like, “If you can’t, you must, and if you must, you can” and “It’s not knowing what to do, it’s doing what you know.” Beyond that, I really can’t speculate.

*Now defunct. But you can still find her rendition of “All the Young Dudes (Stole the Keeshka)” with vigorous Googling.

Sarah of MonkeyBearReviews ranted a bit about the hypocrisy of folks who have embraced the Kindle 3 despite swearing off Amazon in the past. Personally, I couldn’t be happier to have more Amazonians on board.

Personal

I went to Vermont for a wedding this past weekend. Truly wonderful. My favorite line was from one of the toasts or readings (can’t remember which) to the effect that marriage isn’t just about choosing the right partner, but about being the right partner.

Lovely spot for a wedding, huh?

I started teaching today. Love being back in the classroom. (Just remind me I wrote that when it comes time to grade something.) This semester it’s Contemporary Moral Problems, Biomedical Ethics, and Feminist Theory. I am also coordinating the department’s colloquium series (The power!!) … on a very small budget (The stress!!).

On the blog this week:

I am obsessed with Kristan Higgins. Am working on a theory that she is not really a romance writer. Stay tuned.

Also look for a review of that Atwood, and of a romance novel in which art work that depicts a dragon nearly raping a maiden is featured prominently.

HAPPY WEEK!!!

The weekly links, opinion, and personal updates post. Brace yourselves: the personal update this week is actually kind of interesting.

Links of Interest

My heroes of the week: Grad student whistle blowers. I’ve been avidly — not to say gleefully –  following the Marc Hauser story. Unbelievable. And yet … not.

Pop Philosophy is Taking Over Bookshops (via @jafurtado). Yet my idea for a popular volume on Philosophy and Romance has been rejected by three presses.

Is Lady Gaga A Feminist? Five Questions for Philosopher Nancy Bauer

Lately, I have noticed that advertising in blogs has migrated from the sidebar to the body of the posts. And not just the end of posts, like posts from The Millions, but the whole post. The most recent example is a “post” advertising diapers at Books on the Knob. I love the info about free books on BOTK, and I support her by clicking affiliate links when I can. I just hate the migration of ads into content. I know I can click past it, but it feels different to me than the sidebar links.

@sonomalass, whom many of us know from Twitter and her blog hopping, finally has her own WordPress blog, Another Day in Paradise.

Katiebabs is talking about how to stop sites that steal your content. Her post has links to some websites that can help you discover if your content has been scraped. Although I am sorry this happened to Kate, the post is very helpful.

Did you know there were over 70 indie presses for romance? I do now. Check it also for an interesting batch of comments on what indie presses owe to authors by way of promo.

OUT-fail: You all know about this already, but for my own records: The Out magazine article on straight women writing and reading m/m romance. The Gawker follow up. Visit Teddypig for his response, and for  links to the Lamda Literary response (with 50+ comments). A response from Gehayi (also from Teddypig). Erastes’ own response. I am sure there’s lots more out there. If you have any links to suggest, feel free to do so in comments. I don’t have any comment, except to say that there has to be something between wholesale dismissal of the entire subgenre on the grounds that all of it is sexist fetishizing of male homosexuality, and wholesale embrace of it on the grounds that anybody can read and write whatever they want, and that fiction is make believe so it doesn’t matter anyway.

Culinary Carnivale has a new feature: ebooks I would have bought, listing the ebooks that were just too damn expensive — even more than their paper counterparts. I pass up several ebooks a month for the same reason. If we all do it, will publishers get the message?

Male and Female Ability Differences Down to Socialisation, Not Genetics, from the Guardian. Except for the title, this article on researcher Cordelia Fine, and her forthcoming book, Delusions of Gender, doesn’t fall into the usual false nature/nurture dichotomy:

“All sorts of ridiculous conclusions about very important issues are then made. Already sexism disguised in neuroscientific finery is changing the way children are taught.”

It will give you a ready response the next time you are at a playground and a mother says of her boy, “He just came out that way!”

Check out this interview with Wicked Gentlemen author Ginn Hale at Fantasy Cafe.

Read But Not Reviewed

I read Ava Gray’s Skin Game after Tumperkin posted about it, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I also recently read and enjoyed Pamela Clare’s latest I-Team book, Naked Edge, so I guess I’m back in the game as far as rom suspense goes, after a long period away.

Another book I read and really enjoyed was Kristan Higgins’ RITA winner, Too Good to Be True. This was an odd reading experience. I was totally into this book, and thrilled with it while reading it. I liked it so much, that I immediately bought several other books by the author. But whenever I try to write a review, it comes out sounding negative. A recent post from Kati of Katidom on The Last Minute HEA helped me nail one reason: Higgins’ characters don’t get together until the very end, kind of like in old school romance where the hero says “I love you” and the book ends. I think I’ll do a post on a group of her books, like I did with Susan Napier.

When the setting hits too close to home

I often notice readers saying they can’t read books that feature a heroine whose career is the same as their own. but how about the setting. Can you read a romance set in — or even near — your hometown?

Speaking of Higgins, I tried to read Catch of the Day, a 2007 Rita Winner, about a woman who owns a a diner and a lobsterman in Washington County, Maine. The problem I had with this one was that I live pretty close to the setting of that book, and, to me, it is not a romantic setting. On the front page of my newspaper this weekend was this headline: Drugs Weigh Heavily on Maine’s Poorest Area, Washington County. Here’s how the article begins:

Nicholas Ames has been a fisherman, a carpenter and a crewman for the Maine Department of Transportation. He is a son, a brother and a father.

Ames is also a drug addict.

Washington County is very hard hit economically, by the exodus of major employers, mainly paper mills, overfishing and tighter restrictions on fishing, and the aging of the population. Illicit drug use is very high, partially as a result of these economic problems. Of course, there are wonderful love stories that happen in Washington County. But the place described in the book bears so little resemblance to the area I know, that I just couldn’t get past it. This is 100% reader bias, I realize, and no fault of the author. I am sure to pick up the book again soon.

I also joined Goodreads. I am not sure I have the energy for another social networking endeavor, but if you blog and have a Goodreads account, I’d be curious to know how you balance or integrate them.

Personal

I went to Boston for the weekend to meet my husband’s family for my father in law’s 80th birthday. At 2:00am on Saturday, the fire alarm went off in our hotel, and we raced down 7 flights of stairs to the smell of smoke and no fewer than 10 emergency vehicles lined up on the street with firefighters, cops, and EMTs running to and fro. Several quick thinking guests grabbed their terry cloth robes from the bathroom. At least two brides grabbed their wedding gowns, trying to keep them off the dirty stairwell floor and later using trees as makeshift hangers. I grabbed only my kids and my purse, leaving me stuck in my ratty gym shorts and braless in an old college t-shirt. If anyone ever asks me what I would take in a fire, I now have a definitive answer.

After about an hour standing half clothed in the chilly night air, we were herded into an adjacent hotel’s ballroom, where we stayed — with tablecloths for coverings — for the next four hours. Here’s a pic of my boys asleep on the floor. It was quite an adventure. The Boston Herald reported that there was an electrical fire, which they took hours to put out. No one was hurt, and we ended up having a wonderful weekend anyway.

Someone tweeted that this sounds like a great premise for a contemporary romance. I agree. But since I am not likely to write one, I thought I would brainstorm a few ideas and let you guys take it from here:

1.  Blaze: Heroine, who lives in San Diego, is in Boston for a wedding. She recognizes that she was invited to serve as bridesmaid mostly because the bride  — a real bitch –  has so few real friends, but is game, and looks forward to returning to Boston, the home of her undergrad alma mater. A fire alarm goes off, and they have to evacuate the hotel. As she holds up the train of the bride’s gown (the bride is clutching the bodice with all her strength) and races out the door, she notices a gorgeous male firefighter. She’s mortified when the bridezilla starts screaming at him for information. Angry, the firefighter answers bridezilla’s questions with a brevity bordering on rudeness. As he turns, he catches sight of heroine in her ridiculous pajamas, gives her a once over, and dismisses her. Suggested title: “Hot for Her”

2. Medical: Elderly woman collapses in the stairwell when trying to exit a burning hotel. Dashing male doctor comes to her aid. Gorgeous female med student comes to his. Together, they save the elderly woman and go their separate ways. Until she is a resident in his hospital 4 years later. (Can turn into a Blaze by having them go out for a drink and a quickie after the rescue. Can turn into an erotic romance by having them do it right in the stairwell).

3. Suspense: Heroine is a journalist who happens to be staying at a Boston hotel when it burns down (luckily no one is hurt) Hero is an undercover FBI agent based in Boston who is on the scene within seconds of the alarm sounding. He’s sure it’s terrorism — he has been following this particular terror cell for years — but won’t reveal anything to the press. She wants to get the story of her career… (Can turn into erotic romance by having her lock him in an elevator and … well, you know)

4. Inspirational: The heroine and hero bond while delivering bottled water, handing out blankets, and leading prayer groups in the ballroom/refugee camp.

5. Paranormal/chick lit mashup: Hero is a werewolf/valet parking guy who set the fire by making mad wolf love to some random person in the hotel’s parking garage. Heroine is a human bride-to-be whose wedding is delayed by the fire, giving her fiance time to rethink and call it off. She drowns her sorrows in the hotel bar (once it reopens), and then in the arms of the werewolf hero (he shows up later). Conflicts abound: the human/nonhuman pairing, the class differences (heroine is an upwardly mobile stock analyst), the big secret of how the fire started, and we can throw in a scene where the human fiance wants her back.

6. Erotic: After spending time in a park, everyone is ushered to a nearby hotel for shelter. A few people sleep through the move, waking hours later to the lawn sprinklers soaking them to the skin. Two people notice how their clothes cling sexily, and decide to make the most of this bizarre moment. They don’t plan on seeing each other again but …

Ok, I’ve used up all my creative energies for at least a month, feeble as they are. If you successfully use any of these, all I ask is that you name one of the characters — it can be a pet gerbil, I’m not picky (but I draw the line at sex toys) — Jessica.

FYI: Persuasion is the next Romance Roots Read. I aim to post on it end of September.

HAPPY WEEK!

The weekly links, opinion and personal updates post

The winner of the blogversary contest is Vi. Send me an email with your choice of two books I have reviewed, and your snail mail address. Congratulations!

1. Links of Interest

Quote of the week:

Moral disapproval is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.

–Vaughn R. Walker, United States District Chief Judge

Dorchester Publishing announced that it is abandoning mass market paperbacks, effective today. Dorchester titles will be available only in digital format and print-on-demand. Or, maybe ebooks first with the trade paperbacks 6-8 months later? I guess it is still unfolding.

I’ve long felt proud of romance readers for embracing digital reading technology. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal (Registration required) sees it in their reporting on Dorchester:

Dorchester, which has been publishing mass market paperbacks since 1971, publishes 25 to 30 new titles a month, approximately 65% of which are romance works. The company launched its first mass paperback titles in 1971.

Romance fans in particular have already embraced e-books, in part because customers can read them in public without having to display the covers. In addition, type size is easily adjusted on e-readers, making titles published in the mass paperback format easier to read for older customers.

As a reader, I gained a better understanding of what the Dorchester changes mean for me from Wendy the Superlibrarian.

As for the business side of things, I found Dorchester romantic suspense author Anna DeStefano’s My Publisher Went Direct-to-Digital the most helpful.

In the meantime, via Author Scoop, Slate is saying that digital publishing has leveled the playing field for small presses. I found the comments on social media and small presses particularly interesting:

Small presses are almost like offline communities, which allows them to move more seamlessly into the digital realm than bigger houses that don’t engage audiences on an intimate level. Independent publishers literally live and die by their networks. Featherproof Books, which publishes two books per year and borrowed its 50-50 profit-sharing author model from a small record label, posts requests to buy books on Twitter and Facebook if it is having trouble making ends meet on a given month—and the audience responds. “They know where we are and we know where they are,” says co-publisher Zach Dodson of his audience.

These little entities, like many small businesses, have exchanges with readers that transcend the commercial. Like much of what transpires in the digital space, it’s personal.

This article in Business Week talks about romance and social media, in terms of micro-trends, like Amish romance and knitting romance:

Therein may lie the secret to the rise of the romantic subgenre. Twitter feeds, author blogs, and other forms of social media are providing limitless opportunities for virtual Ya-Ya Sisterhoods of like-minded readers to develop. “These authors are all masters of social networking,” says Pam Jaffee, the publicist in charge of Avon, HarperCollins’ romance imprint. Macomber boasts an e-mail list of 130,000. (By comparison, Jaffee says, most successful authors have “between 3,000 and 9,000 friends” on Facebook.) Bostwick’s fans have even formed an online quilting club. This fall, readers from 13 different states will tour her favorite places to quilt.

Devoted fans of Robyn Carr—who hit the jackpot in the military romance niche with her Virgin River series—find each other at the Jack’s Bar chat room on her site. “There are so many people out there who have a relative or a loved one who’s serving. Those people want to celebrate and honor these men and women. And they want military characters in the books they read,” says Carr, a former military wife whose son is serving in Iraq.

Speaking of Amish romance … here’s a story on it in USA today. (via @shannonstacey) Quoted are romance scholar Pam Regis, and bloggers Sarah Wendell and Jane Litte, among others.

Has there ever been a social phenomenon more anticipated and less actualized than Steampunk? I’ll do my part by linking to The Guardian’s Steampunk: an introduction.

Julie Garwood is one of those old school authors I have never been able to read. but — unless Amazon changes its mind — you can get Kindle versions of some of her books for 99 cents (Books on the Knob)

Prospect considers Self-Serving White Guilt. This is a review by Eric Kaufmann of The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism by Pascal Bruckner, trans Steven Rendall. Bruckner is a novelist whose Bitter Moon was made by Roman Polanski into one of the dumbest, most unintentionally funny movies I have ever seen. As Kaufmann sees it:

Beneath Bruckner’s eloquence is a serious message: we remain prisoners of a white guilt whose victim is its supposed beneficiary. Our guilt, he writes, is actually a means for us to retain our superiority over the non-white world, our masochism a form of sadism. After all, if everything is the fault of the west then the power to change the world lies squarely in the hands of westerners.

(via Arts and Letters Daily)

From GalleyCat, Kindle now has games. Actually, I’ve already downloaded and played one. Then again, I was on a 14 hour car trip with a dead iTouch battery.

Should women attorneys wear peep toe shoes in court? Feministe weighs in on the fashion controversy.

From Jacket Copy, Twenty Classic Works of Gay Literature. Read it for the comments. Great suggestions.

Did the NYT’s article on plagiarism in school piss anyone else off?

the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.

I liked this bit at the end, though:

At the University of California, Davis, of the 196 plagiarism cases referred to the disciplinary office last year, a majority did not involve students ignorant of the need to credit the writing of others.

Many times, said Donald J. Dudley, who oversees the discipline office on the campus of 32,000, it was students who intentionally copied — knowing it was wrong — who were “unwilling to engage the writing process.”

“Writing is difficult, and doing it well takes time and practice,” he said.

Great discussion over at ClitLit by Jodi — a critical romance reader, and we need those — and Laura Vivanco and Victoria Janssen on the subsumed heroine.

From Feministe, a discussion of the “Afghan girl”, a National Geographic cover photo from 1985 that adorned so many of my male friends’ bedroom and dorm walls, and the more recent photo of Aisha, a disabled Afghan woman on the cover of a recent Time Magazine.

Lady Gaga proves what romance readers have known all along: the hoo ha really IS magical. Via Vanity Fair:

Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy—“I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”

Speaking of the glittery hoo ha, I am sad that Jenny Crusie’s new book — her first solo outing in 6 years — will be $11.99 for the Kindle. Then again, my love affair with Crusie is closer to a two night stand. I am trying to listen to Agnes and the Hitman on audio and having a hard time getting through it.

2. Remember how I did a post back in April on True Vows, the new “memoir meets romance” venture of HCI books, the Chicken Soup series publishers? And I was skeptical? Well, I picked up an ARC of Judith Arnold’s Meet Me In Manhattan at RomCon back in July. And I regret to say my suspicions were justified. I DNFd the book. It read like a long version of those impersonal stories in women’s magazines. I was rarely lost in the story, which was written in a way that felt — perhaps necessarily — somewhat distant, and when I was engaged, it felt voyeuristic. Not for me. I’ll be amazed if these things sell.

3. On the blog this week:

Tomorrow: a long post on “what does the romance genre say about the good life?”

Some reviews. One very negative.

Probably — a joint post with my spouse on Dracula.

HAPPY WEEK!

The weekly links, opinion, and personal updates post

1. Links of interest

The Romance Writers of America handed out its annual awards Saturday night. Complete list of winners here. I am thrilled that one of my all time favorite writers, Sherry Thomas, won her first RITA for Not Quite a Husband. Way to go, Sherry!

Harlequin is fast tracking submissions to its Medical line — submit a query letter and a few chapters and you’ll hear back by the end of the month! My submission, The Bacciform* Bioethicist and the Daunting Doctor — is in process.

I don’t know anyone who actually reads this line, do you?

*Berry shaped

Two very worthwhile posts about literary endings, one from The Millions, and one from Isn’t It Romance?

Maili — who has managed to get her name in the post title, cheeky chit — has a great interview with Meljean Brook over at Dear Author, on  “What is Steampunk? I chatted with Meljean about her upcoming steampunk romance, The Iron Duke, at RomCon, and I cannot wait to read it.

As a formerly content Kindle 2.0 owner, I have mixed feelings about the faster, lighter, cheaper, all-around-better Kindle 3.0.

Kind of sad about this: Carolyn Kellogg of the excellent NYT blog Jacket Copy was hired as a staff writer for the New York TImes

This post by author Nicola Marsh on The Importance of Fans warmed the cockles of my heart.

Everyone who reads this blog has probably seen Sarah Wendell’s video of authors at the RWa literacy signing in Orlando singing to Ke$ha’s Your Love is My Drug. Isn’t it fun?

The Book Vixen narrowly escaped the Southern Cali wildfires and lived to blog about it. She’s asking what books you would grab if flames threatened to engulf your library.

Two of my favorite bloggers, Carolyn Crane of the Thrillionth Page and Chris of Stumbling Over Chaos have teamed up on a guest post at Tor.com on Best and Worst Job Prospects in the Urban Fantasy Economy for 2011. Among them:

7. Tattoo artists
In the paranormal world these days, it’s no longer enough to have a mere tattoo or tramp stamp. Hello! Plain old tattoos are so 2009. Hero(ine)s now require elaborate body art of all kinds, including animate, arousal sensing, kill-tallying, and celebratory tattoos.

8. Tattoo removal specialist

See #7.

Jason Boog of Galley Cat on Best YA books for adults. And as a chaser, check out this fun blog for adult readers of YA (love the banner!) (via @mcvane)

From The Awl, an article on the history of the use of the term “spoiler alert”.

Great discussion at Racialicious, of the July 25 True Blood (aka the head crush ep).

Not so much feeling Sookeh. You’re dead on with your assessment of her “spunkiness.” It’s a rather privileged willfulness where the needs and safety of others be damned in favor of what Sookie wants and needs. It’s childishness masquerading as strength–a faux sort of girl power that is nothing new. It’s Scarlett O’Hara for a new millenium. It is also very related to race, as I think few women of color can get away with playing Sookie or Scarlett.

My post on True Blood and Philosophy was syndicated by Thought Catalog which was very nice, especially because I have a fun new place to visit online.

2. Book Smugglers Backlash

The Book Smugglers have reached a point in their blogging lives where they are going to take some heat for any negative review, not just by readers, but by the author. The Book Smugglers’ reviews are thorough, and often treat cultural and social issues, something that the backlashers don’t like.

I’ve been to two academic conferences on popular culture in the past two years, in which YA was a favorite topic of middle aged academics who don’t read it, don’t care for it, and don’t understand it. Maybe some of you have also seen the critiques of YA on Fox News, and in other media.

Thanks to living in a situation (some might call it “patriarchy”)  in which women are special objects of concern and control, when books are written (primarily) for young women, and read (primarily) by young women, our society is going to take an interest in this phenomenon as not just a literary one, but a cultural and political one. You can either have two young women who love the genre and are members of the YA community asking these questions with insight and sensitivity, or you can have talking (male) heads on cable news doing it, with a view to keeping a leash on young women’s sexuality.

It seems to me that the Book Smugglers have reached a point in popularity and influence such that authors and fans who disagree feel they need to do damage control. I think that’s a sign of their great success. I hope they keep it up!

3. On the Blog

I’ve put off my Dracula post yet again, this time because my spouse is reading it, and he doesn’t know this yet, but he and I will write a joint post when he is done. He’s a historian who specializes in Victorian Britain, so I thought he might have a few insights.

Also, I’ve been working with some talented folks on a new logo, and this is it:

Thanks to Shelley at Webcrafters Design for the image and color scheme, and KMont of Lurv a la Mode for the text. And thanks to everyone on Twitter and email who put up with my many requests for feedback.

I’ve been using the image as my Twitter icon and gravatar. Look for it to become part of my new blog banner when I roll out Read React Review’s “freshened” look later this month.

4. Personal

The kids finished up art camp on Friday. They do this camp every summer. They absolutely love it. To parents, it looks like a cluster of dilapidated buildings in the middle of nowhere, but to children, it’s a wonderland where they have free reign to write, direct, costume and perform plays and movies, take and develop pictures, work on fused glass or ceramics, write, draw, and paint.

On the last day, the campers take their parents around, showing them the different work areas, and then we gather in an old barn for a “show”. Here’s a shot of Mr. Tripler and Tripler the Younger entering the dark room:

My boys made and screened a film in which one of them dressed up as Evil Big Bird and menaced the campers. The other son saved the day, which involved sacrificing his right arm in a bizarre bird fight. I am so proud.

By the time this post goes live, I will be far away from Maine, on the TripleR Family Rust Belt Tour 2010. The South Africa sojourn having depleted our travel reserves, we decided to make a trip out of driving to Comerica Park to see the Tigers play the White Sox. So we’ll be gone for a week with stops in Niagara Falls, Detroit, Dearborn, Cleveland, Sandusky, and any place else we care to. Not sure what or when I’ll post.

Disclaimer for potential thieves: As per usual, we have two large dogs just looking for an excuse to bite a human at the house, and have left a few terrified grad students there –ostensibly looking after the gardens, but really just bait for the dogs — as well. Our cats are pretty tough, too. You’ve been warned.

HAPPY WEEK!!

The weekly links, opinion and miscellaneous post

1. Links of Interest (from the past 2 weeks)

It’s Jean-Paul Sartre’s birthday today. In honor of the occasion, I will link to that beloved old chestnut, The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook:

I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones.

All About Romance’s redesign is on display today. The aesthetics are not my cuppa, but I think it is much easier to navigate and read. What do you think? I am planning a major redesign and am intensely interested in these things at the moment. It’s like when you are shopping for new light fixtures or a new car and suddenly you notice every make and model on the road.

What You Talk about when You Talk About Not Having Time to Read by Minnesota writer Jodi Chromey (from @bookladysblog)

I hate “have time to read” for two reasons. First, it insinuates that the reader does nothing but fritter away his/her time lazing about reading . . . books! Books! Oh, just think of all that lascivious self-indulgence. If only we too had the time to do something so decadent. But no, we are much too busy and important to have time to read books.

It was only a matter of time. From On Fiction, a report on a presentation about the neural bases of creative writing. Follow the link for an image of your brain on writing.

Mrs. Giggles on the Hierarchy of Nationality in Romance. Guess who comes out on top?

Over at Unusual Historicals, author Lisa Yarde on What Surprised Me: Ancient and Medieval Prostitution

Author Jeannie Lin links to a discussion about Asian characters on covers.

I liked this post from The Reading Experience on John Dewey and Perception. Dewey identifies the function of and two common errors in criticism. The post makes me want to re-read Art as Experience.

A brief but compelling defense of the claim that Romance is THE genre from Karen Anders over at the Blaze Authors Blog.

At Abe Books, Beth Carswell on Literary Towns, with a discussion of the effect of The Twilight Saga on Forks, Washington (via Books Inq.)

Forget zombies: Minotaurs are the New Vampires. From The Onion.

Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader asked What Is A Book Blogger? Is an author blog a book blog? Good question.

An older post, but as a Buffy fan, I found it really interesting. At Feministe, “How Come It’s Never Joss’s Fault?”

What [a critic of season 5 or 6] wants to talk about is not characterisation, plot, embedded contexts in the show, but what a horrible person Marti Noxon is, and how she ruined everything, and how Joss never should have abandoned Buffy, leaving the show in the hands of a woman. How it’s obvious that Marti and other female creators involved in the show are to blame for everything that went wrong. They’re ‘working out their issues’ or they are just not capable of handling a big television show all on their lonesomes or Joss gave them too much leeway.

Penelope is talking about the ARC conundrum:

So, in conclusion, you can probably tell that I am really conflicted about this whole issue. On one hand, I hate having the magic wrecked by so many folks reading books before I get my hands on a copy, and on the other hand, I am eternally grateful to reviewers willing to read them from an author’s perspective.

I’ve mentioned the new series on Philosophy at the New York Times. Well, this week it’s feminist political philosopher Nancy Bauer on Lady Gaga.

The tension in Gaga’s self-presentation, far from being idiosyncratic or self-contradictory, epitomizes the situation of a certain class of comfortably affluent young women today. There’s a reason they love Gaga. On the one hand, they have been raised to understand themselves according to the old American dream, one that used to be beyond women’s grasp: the world is basically your oyster, and if you just believe in yourself, stay faithful to who you are, and work hard and cannily enough, you’ll get the pearl. On the other hand, there is more pressure on them than ever to care about being sexually attractive according to the reigning norms. The genius of Gaga is to make it seem obvious — more so than even Madonna once did — that feminine sexuality is the perfect shucking knife.

When we were in South Africa earlier this year, we spent a lot of time talking with our tour guides about the social and political issues facing the country today. One of them was rape. A child is raped in south Africa every three minutes. When you have a country in which 1 in 4 men admits he has raped someone, you have a very big problem. Is a female condom with teeth one way for women, at least, to fight back?

2. Addiction in romance: a minirant

Holly at the Book Binge reviewed a book in which the hero is a gambling addict. She didn’t like the book for legitimate literary reasons: because she felt the relationship with the heroine was abusive, and because she didn’t believe in the hero’s recovery, which was addressed in a brief unpersuasive epilogue. You can read the full review here. A month or so, there was a similar discussion about a book by Stacia Kane, whose heroine was compromised by addiction. Some folks made comments along the lines of not wanting to read about addicts.

I would just like to be a voice, right here, for recognizing the right of addicted people to love and be loved, and to have their happily ever after. I understand that we are genre readers, and just as having a heroine who is battling cancer or poverty or partner abuse lose — or appear to lose — her battle at the end of the book violates our legitimate genre expectations and disappoints us as readers, so I can understand why an unrecovered addict might do so as well (unless, as is apparently the case for Kane’s book, it is the first installment of a series). But unless you have a personal experience which makes reading about addiction struggles triggering for you, to say “I won’t read about addicts”, sounds, to me, an awful lot like a negative moral judgment. Addiction in the US is a major issue, not just to drugs and alcohol, but to nicotine, to gambling, and even, dear reader, to the internet. People can become addicted in all kinds of ways, including by being introduced as children by their parents, as patients by their doctors, and as victims by their abusive partners. Today, we understand that addiction is a disease, like any other disease. We know that addicts’ brains are different, sometimes before (thanks to genetics) and always after the addiction. Addicts are struggling against chronic and sometimes terminal disease, just like someone with cancer. But, unlike someone with cancer, the addict has to face discrimination and negative moral judgments as well. I am glad that romance writers are writing characters who struggle with addiction, and I hope they keep doing it.

3. On the blog this week

I have so many ideas for blog posts and so little time to write them! But watch out later tonight or tomorrow for my post on iconic romance novel covers, inspired by Abe Books’ post on 25 Iconic Covers. (posted it here)

I also have some reviews, of romance and nonromance. You may have noticed that, despite my name change, I’ve hesitated reviewing the nonromance, for the really bad reason that I am afraid people won’t read those reviews. I’ve decided not to care. *shrugs*

HAPPY WEEK!