What Would You Do

for the love of books?

I've been a member of Salon.com's discussion forum, Table Talk, for over 10 years now. One of my all-time favorite threads was about the lengths we book-lovers go to for books: acquiring them, owning them, shelving them, admiring them, fondling them, and of course, most of all, reading them. The thread is frozen now, a little time capsule of book-love from the end of the last century, but I still go visit every now and then. You can read the thread in its entirety in guest mode here. You can also consider paying a nominal subscription fee and joining up. If you think that conversations in comments around the blogosphere are addictive, you just have no idea what a discussion forum can do to you.

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Kat: I read in the bathroom at work.

Rachel: Okay, I'm giving away one of my best secrets here...

During our extremely boring monthly sales meetings, I've passed the time by photocopying twenty pages or so from whatever book I'm reading and adding the photocopies to the stack of papers I normally have to wade through. Thus, I can continue reading my book without holding a book in my hand, and people just think I'm studying up on work.

Kat: In my viciously voracious, no-book-is-spared episodes, I often never really look at the title or the author. Just open the book and start reading. The next day I couldn't tell you who wrote it or what it was called although I usually am able to tell you what it was about. It's the bookish equivalent of a one-night stand in which not only is the stand's name forgotten but even its gender is fuzzy.

Mary: I recently got caught up reading up a book on the subway and wound up in entirely the wrong borough.

Emily: I work one part time job, one full time job, go to school full time, and still read two books per week. I keep my underpaid job at Borders just for the 33% discount.

Stirling: I dated a girl for her access to the Harvard Libraries.

April: I read at stop lights as I drive to work.

Robyn: Before marriage I used to sleep with my books all the time. Now I have brief flings before my hubby gets home from work.

Iain: A guy I was at school with fifteen years ago recognised me on the underground because I had my nose in a book.

Olivia: it has been recently pointed out to me that taking books to the movies (so I can read while I'm waiting for the movie to start) is highly unusual behavior and probably indicative of some sort of neurosis.

Annie: I also have certain criteria when I am purchasing handbags. I can only buy bags which have the capacity to carry big hardback books, (just in case I can't wait for the softback in something and have to buy the hardback. Sometime if I am carrying an especially big book I do a trial run in the store. Friends, shop assistants think I am mad.

Jeff: Does taking the bus or train somewhere, when it is possible to drive, so that you can read in transit count?

Meghan: Or how about taking the local train rather than the express, just to have more reading time. Does that count?

Ted: I sometimes travel with virtually no books. That guarantees that on arrival I head directly for the local bookshops to get my fix. Two years ago, when I was sent to Portland OR., my employer couldn't understand why I insisted on going a day early. He doesn't know about Powell's.

Sky: We wanted to keep our cross-country move as light as possible, so we got rid of our couch, bed, most chairs, tables, etc., and brought only the essentials--close to 80 boxes of books or so, as I remember.

Marya: I only buy books I'm pretty sure I will read again, and I even hesitate to check crap out of the library. But THEN--THEN I have these sordid, stand-up affairs in bookstores and libraries with books I would never, never, introduce to my mother or acknowledge knowing on the street. Sometimes I go as far as lying down on the floor with one, but mostly I just creep into a corner and have my way. Ugh.

Kelly: Strolling through Victoria, BC, my heart missed a beat when I saw a sign that read Book Tours Here. Book Tours? Book Tours?!? Oh, book tours. I don't know what the heck a book tour would be, but it sure sounded terrific.

DG: I once wallpapered a bathroom with the pages from duplicate copies of "Jane Eyre" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray." (Duplicate copies so you get both sides of each page). I did them in neat ascending rows, then varnished the Hell out of them. If you ever got locked in, you could read two complete novels. It was really very very pretty.

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These are my people, my kindred spirits. I just love them and I figured you might too. Thus, this post.

Lora Leigh - The Military Books - Review

Surely there is an archetype for the flawed hero, the one who drives you crazy and NOT in a good way… but yeah, in a good way, too. He makes so many mistakes. Does stuff that any reasonable heroine could not and should not forgive – maybe they’re small things, but they are so eminently avoidable and it could be SO DAMN GOOD with him if those mistakes weren’t there.

I'm not talking about lovable eccentricities. I’m talking about rolling your eyes, you just made me throw up a little bit, aw-fer-*&$$&%%-sake, didja HAVE to go and do that, kind of mistakes.

But in spite of all the reasons not to love this guy, the heroine—and maybe the reader—still just can’t get enough. Just when you’re completely ready to throw in the towel and go meet that nice guy that your mom’s friend of a friend knows… there’s that little spark. And you stick around just along enough for another spark to come along. There’s just enough there to keep you going.

This is a dysfunctional relationship for sure. And it’s the one I’ve got going with Lora Leigh’s books. I still cannot manage to get interested in the genetically-modified Breeds with their bizarre genitalia and chemical sexual slavery, but the military ones…. hmmm. I can’t seem to leave those alone, even though they drive me nuts.

I’ve read Wild Card, Dangerous Games, and Killer Secrets thus far. In each one, there are enough technical mistakes to make me want to hurl the book across the room. For example, in Dangerous Games, there’s a scene where the hero makes it a point to tell the heroine that he's already ordered room service for himself and the heroine. Two pages later, she digs into “the cheeseburger that she’d ordered.” In Wild Card, an obnoxious potential villain guy starts talking smack to the heroine, saying rude and repulsive things to her. The hero goes all psycho on his ass, pins him by the throat and says “Touch her again and I’ll kill you.” Very dramatic, very alpha – except the Bad Guy never touched her at all in the scene; it was all talk. There’s just no reason for that, it’s pure sloppiness.

I’ll say right up front that I don’t know diddly-squat about military men, military operations, or any of that, much less about SEALs or Special Ops. But a lot of the plotting and action and even the language around these operations rings false and clunky to me. In Dangerous Games, there’s a pivotal scene where they’re expecting a very powerful, very dangerous enemy to make a move, to try to kidnap the heroine from an exclusive club. The hero is sitting around the lounge drinking whiskey. I call that very unlikely. Swirling it around the glass, making a show of drinking, all fine, but no – he’s specifically drinking hard liquor. Stuff like that.

Even the characters start off a little stiff, like they’re fighting their way out of a cardboard box. Fortunately they seemed to generally loosen up by 1/3 or so into the book, and I really liked Sabella in Wild Card right from the start.

So why keep reading? Well, the same reason we all go back to that mythical bad boy: the sex.

I don’t just mean the explicit erotic scenes. Leigh also writes erotica and her love scenes are hot, explicit, x-rated. Although I haven’t read all of her books, I believe it’s safe to say that her trademark is writing relationships with a power struggle, physical and emotional. She writes characters that are fiery, smart and stubborn; the heroines are nobody’s doormat but the sexually dominant partner makes them crazy – and that would be the good kind of crazy.

I make no moral judgment about writing, buying, or reading books *just* for good sex scenes. Which these are. But far more interesting are books with sex scenes that cause the characters some struggle and conflict and growth, and I believe that Leigh’s books do that. For every woman who has worried that “nice girls don’t do that,” this is a believable and important examination. And given that male readership of romances is on a sharp rise, I’ll add that the same goes for any man who has worried that his partner would be shocked, horrified, etc. by some of these, hmmm, earthier pleasures.

THIS is what keeps bringing me back to Leigh’s books – the chance to see her characters struggle through realistic inhibitions and insecurities, and share themselves fully, sexually and emotionally, with a partner who does the same.

Reading order:

Tempting SEALs:
1. Rescue Me*
2. Killer Secrets
3. Hidden Agendas
4. Real Men Do It Better*
5. Dangerous Games
6. Honk If You Love Real Men*

Elite Ops (related to Tempting SEALs)
1. Wild Card
2. Maverick

*Anthology containing a related novella

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ps, if you have a review from either of these series or about Leigh in general on your blog, feel free to post a link in comments!

Starting the New Year with a Bang

NO not that kind of bang.

Though given the content of my last post, I suppose you could be forgiven for lingering in the gutter just a bit.

I am more than a little bemused at the result of having sites like IO9 and Dear Author link to my tiny little blog. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that my 15 seconds of internet fame, such as it is, would come as a result of writing on the topic of penises. I confess that even though I’m thrilled about the traffic, I remain a little bit embarrassed. My husband is embarrassed too (sorry honey). I’m also fairly resigned to the notion that this is a flash in the pan and I’ll be back to my usual modest numbers in another couple of days. I would love to see a general increase in my readership, but I suspect I’m looking at a pretty low conversion rate.

Then there was another bang this morning, but also not that kind: fender-bender at the doughnut shop. In my 20+ plus years of driving, this has happened exactly once before – so not a particularly common event. Egads.

I’m pretty much ready to get back to normal.

As you were, people.

The Curious Case of the Paranormal Penises

I’ve been reading romance for a long time. Really, really long.

I’ve been reading paranormal romance for a good two or three years now – I’ve covered a lot of ground.

I’ve gone through a number of high fantasy, swords-and-sorcery, Arthurian and pseudo-arthurian fantasy phases.

And I’ve read my share of erotica, too.

Still, it seems I’ve led a sheltered reading life, because just in the last few months I’ve come to recognize a rather disturbing phenomenon.

It started out innocently enough. (OK, perhaps innocently is a poor word choice.) Christine Warren’s wolves are eyebrow-raisingly well-endowed in their human forms. OK. JR Ward’s Brothers are also well-endowed --well, that’s just proportionate, right? They’re big guys. Oh, they also have extreme staying power, multiple orgasms, and apparently large volumes of, erm, jizz. Kind of like regular guys only more so.

This makes sense to me. It works for me.

But then there was this, from Ward’s Lover Enshrined: ”Her tongue snaked out and teased the barb at the base of his erection. That barb was the part of him that she liked best, the one that locked into place when he came and kept them linked.” Erm. Barb?

I was assured by Lora Leigh fans that there was precedent for this: He slammed in deep, his body tightening as she felt an additional erection, an extension swelling from beneath the hood of his cock, locking him inside her, caressing a bundle of nerves high inside…" (From short story “The Breed Next Door.”)

More prosaically, according to about.com: "Whole male cats have barbed penises (much like a fishhook), and upon withdrawal, the female cat will often scream (whether from ecstasy or pain is questionable). It is also believed that the barbed penis stimulates ovulation."

Yikes.

Then there's Cheryl Brooks' cat… alien… dude: "…but when I washed it, it blossomed like a rose, the head putting out a wide corona with a scalloped edge…then I noticed something else, which was that he already had plenty of lubrication dripping from the star-like points of the corona.” Said lubrication is later referred to as “orgasmic cock syrup.” I couldn’t bring myself to read much further than that.

Yeah, I’m not so down with that.

Call me old-fashioned, but this kind of stuff is not sexy to me.

Keep the paranormal options package please, I’ll just stick with the basic model.

Though I might go with the, erm, expanded wheelbase.

So to speak.

What Guilt?

According to the New York Times obituary for Julia Child, “Whenever she was asked what her guilty pleasures were, she responded, ‘I don't have any guilt.’”

I feel that way about my reading. I don’t read to prove anything to anyone – what on earth is there to feel guilty about? Maybe if I were reading white supremacist propaganda, then I’d feel guilty. But romance? Where people fall in love and live happily ever after?

I don’t get why that would make me feel guilty.

Is it a puritan thing? Like, this is too much fun, I should be mortifying the flesh instead?

Eh. Fuck that.

Assuming your responsibilities as an adult (or student, or whatever) are largely done – read what you want. Read something that makes you feel good, whether that’s brain-bending philosophy, seat-of-the-pants suspense, canny-make-me-rich investment books, cry-in-your-hanky drama, improve-my-life self-help, or happily-ever-after romance.

Feel guilty if you’re not reading. If you have kids, feel guilty if you’re not reading to your kids. But for reading?

Don’t have any guilt.

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ps, this post was written for the Bookworm Carnival, theme "Guilty Pleasures." Check it out!

New Author Challenge

I've got a couple of posts in progress, but I keep getting stuck somewhere before the "post" button. So I'm going to take the easy way out and give you a quick list of authors that are on my list so far for the 50 new authors challenge:

50 New Authors
1 Ilona Andrews
2 Linnea Sinclair
3 JL Langley
4 Samantha Kane
5 Kelley Armstrong
6 Josh Lanyon
7 Rachel Vincent
8 Karen Chance
9 Justin Gustainis
10 Jeri Smith-Ready
11 Shannon McKenna
12 Katie MacAlister
13 Alexis Morgan
14 Anya Bast
15 Nina Bangs
16 Vicki Pettersson
17 Brunonia Barry
18 Julie James
19 Jacquelyn Mitchard
20 Ivy Alexander
21 Judith James
22 Carrie Lofty
23 Keri Arthur
24 Charlie Huston
25 Virginia Kantra
26 Angela Knight
27 Geralyn Dawson
28 Janice Maynard
29 Shelley Monroe

Not a bad list, although I may have to disqualify Julie James because I sort of gobbled up The Sexiest Man Alive (so to speak. heh.) for my personal rockin' New Year's Eve. Since I finished it at 11:30 pm or so, technically, I think it has to go in the 2008 pile.

My rule about anthology authors: if I've read a short piece of theirs before, but not a full-length novel, they still count as new-to-me.

Thursday Thirteen, Edition 5

OK, because I'm a sucker for lists here's another Last Antholopalooza post.

13 Random Thoughts About Anthologies 1. Verdict? I still don’t like them very much. I’d rather read a full-length story. 2. Unless Meljean Brook is a contributor. * 3. Or if there is a story by another author that is related to a series that I’m addicted to. See also: JR Ward, Kresley Cole, Nalini Singh.* 4. I think it’s a great way to get some “bonus” material about an existing series or “world;” I’ve seen authors say things like “Character X just doesn’t have a full story to him, but maybe a novella…” 5. They can work nicely as prequels too, where perhaps an author realizes that there’s more to a secondary character’s backstory, or an element of world-building that would have to take place out of chronology to make sense. 6. I won’t pay $14 bucks for an anthology, even if there is a Psy-Changeling story in it. Sorry Nalini, it’s a used or library version for me! 7. It’s a bad way for me to get to know a new author, because I’m pre-disposed not to like it. An unknown author could unfairly get onto my “Nah, no good” list, because I might still like their full-length work. 8. On the other hand, if you impress me with a novella, then color me *really* impressed. Angela Knight & Virginia Kantra, I’m lookin’ at you! 9. So in statistically geeky terms, you could say that my novella-test of a new author is biased against a false positive. 10. On an up note, there is a marked absence of novella characters who are TSTL. I think it’s because the short page count doesn’t allow enough room for The Big Misunderstanding to grow to TSTL proportions. 11. Another reason they don’t work for me: a single novella is typically too long for one bus ride, but too short for the round trip. My reading rhythm gets thrown off. 12. On the flip side of that, the other day when I finished a novella, I ended up getting off my butt and starting something productive a lot sooner than if I’d just waited to run out of reading steam or to finish the whole thing. Although I feel compelled to poinr out, one should not expect "reading novellas" to have a causal relationship with "more housecleaning." (I know, again with the statisti-geek). 13. I have learned that if I’m going to write a review of an anthology, I should do it right away because it doesn’t take long for all the relevant details to fall right out of my head. This is true of most of what I read, actually, but more so with the short things. ________________ *In which case I'd still rather read a full length story by that favorite author in that addictive series, but I'll take what I can get.

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**Note: apparently I'm out of the loop on the official Thursday Thirteen site -- the administrators are no long going to manage the meme. However, there are still plenty of T-Thirteeners out there, posting their Thirteens and tagging them, and they still show up on the Technorati link. So I'll keep playing for a while.