You know how there’s always a mind-bogglingly popular, yet not as quality, version of just about everything? Hubby and I call it the “White Zinfandel” effect. Thomas Kinkade? The white zinfandel of art.
Andrea Bocelli? The white zinfandel of opera.
This is nothing against white zin itself, as there are some that are quite good, but it has a major rep as a plebian wine, and I almost busted an internal organ at the absurdity of watching a dude go through the wine sniff-and-taste ritual with a bottle Sutter Home White Zinfandel on a cruise one time.
Yeah, I sound like a snob. But I do have a point. And it’s not that I like wine a lot, even though I really do.
Nicholas Sparks the white zinfandel of fiction, has been nominated for the Romantic Novel of the Year award, which comes with much relative prestige, of course, and, holy crap, £10,000.
Fellow nominees include Brits Veronica Henry and Audrew Howard, Irish writer Kate Kerrigan, and Aussie Asheigh Bingham. I’ve not heard of these people – anyone in the UK Bitchery care to enlighten me?
Sparks was nominated for True Believer, which, judging from the Amazon reviews, was a disappointment to those readers who enjoy romance. One reviewer likened it to Danielle Steele, who also might be called another white zin of romance. Another called it a “watery” disappointment.
I gotta tell you, this just burns my toast more than a little. I’m not sure if Sparks gets the attention for writing treacly spooge because he’s a male writing “romantic novels” or if he’s somehow been singled out as the author of “socially and commercially acceptable and award-worthy romance” for some other reason (perhaps an alignment with Satan?) but whatever it is, it bugs the crap out of me when there are so many other authors who write clever, insightful, and emotionally provocative romance but don’t get nominated for £10,000 awards.
Who would you nominate instead? Maybe we need to create the Smart Bitch White Zinfandel Award for mediocrity in romance, so when we take the award nominations away from people like Sparks we can give them something nice to hold onto in return.
Un-frickin’-believable. What criteria were they using for this!?
Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde write better romance! And they’re Brits!
Great comparison with Kinkade and Sparks but I think they are more like Mad Dog 20/20 in a waterford glass. All of the packaging, none of the flavor.
DUDE! A “Mad Dog 20/20 of Romance” award would be so awesome.
What would the statuette look like?
I bet Sarah could design something appropriate. I am thinking a rabid dog peeing on the book.
Probably a goblet that’s all crystal in the stem and base and aluminum can at the top.
See! I knew Sarah’s creative genius could think of something.
I think for this award it’s snobbery by publisher/imprint, rather than snobbery by author.
All the publishers of the books on that list I’ve checked on amazon.co.uk so far appear to be resolutely non-genre mainstream literary imprints. Not even the romance divisions of big publishing houses. And only one of them actually gets any ‘romance’ classifications on amazon.co.uk. All the rest seem to be under ‘fiction/general’ or ‘fiction/contemporary’.
I’m also noticing a severe lack of man-titty on the covers of these books… 😉
Tho’ I didn’t check the whole list.
Nicholas Sparks? Commence the puking.
*puke*
If I hear another rave about “The Notebook” (film or book) I’m going to belch.
OK, let’s just stop there a moment. What we are talking about is the big award given out by the Romantic Novelists’ Association; a British body of which I am a member (but this post is not on behalf of the RNA – this is just me writing). It is a British award, for books first (or simultaneously) published in the UK. OK, so we don’t mention “British” in the name of the award, but I don’t think that we’re the only country that tends to assume that its own nationality is the default setting for such things. The Foster Grant Reading Glasses Romantic Novel of the Year award is always going to be dominated by mainstream books because that is what we all read. There is only one significant category romance publisher in the UK – Mills & Boon. The RNA runs a separate award (unsponsored, sadly, so with a somewhat smaller prize) for category romance, and M&B usually have around 5 of the 6 shortlisted titles.
Back to the main award. Publishers enter whatever books they like, and each book gets read by at least three readers, none of whom reads more than five entries, so we get a very broad spread of real opinion (not the views of “professional” readers). RNA members cannot take part. Readers judge the books against a number of criteria, but having a strong element of romance is weighted very heavily. The RNA is not seeking to honour literary lite books with a vaguely romantic strand somewhere within them. The selection process was adjusted this year to increase the importance of romance because of just such concerns over recent short and long lists.
The top 20 novels that come through this process form the long list, which is then whittled down by a panel of judges to a short list of seven, announced today. From this short list a winner will be selected on 20 April.
So how come Nicholas Sparks made the short list, while Jennifer Crusie (say) was not on the long list? Many of you Smart Bitches may not be aware that British tastes in romantic fiction are very different from American tastes. Even as big a name as Nora Roberts does not sell particularly well in the UK, despite a very hefty marketing push by her UK publishers, Piatkus. Conversely some of our biggest sellers can’t get a publisher in the US – Katie Fforde, for instance (whose work is considerably more romantic than her husband’s cousin Jasper’s). It’s not snobbery, it’s not elitism, it’s simply a difference of taste.
I don’t usually find myself in sharp disagreement with Candy and Sarah, but the suggestion (and I know that it is only in jest) that you should “take award nominations away” from writers chosen by British readers to match British tastes sounds a bit like cultural imperialism. :-S
All the more so when you bring White Zinfandel into it. Friends don’t let friends drink White Zin. It’s revolting muck that is not grown at all in Europe – there’s nothing preventing it from being grown or drunk; we just can’t stand the stuff. ;-P
Nicholas Sparks is a major sore spot for me. But intead of going off on a rant, like I so sorely want to do, I’m going to instead take a deep cleansing breath and restrain myself to just writing down my favorite self-made description of books like The Notebook: over-sentimental crap.
Now I’m sure you’re thinking you’ve never known crap to be sentimental, much less “over-sentimental”. If so, that’s only because you’ve been lucky enough not to read anything by Nicholas Sparks.
::Whew:: I feel better. Thanks for the chance to get that off my chest, SB Sarah.
P.S. Awards are a must…perhaps with a few categories, like the Razzies, such as worst sex scene and most unbelievable climax? (Uh, no pun intended there. Well…maybe a little bit intended :).)
Ah, Stephen, thanks for pointing that out. There is indeed a huuuuuge gap between the tastes of the majority of British readers and their North American counterparts. Unsurprisingly, it’s one that’s cost me a fortunate in postage/import/excess luggage. It also means that I’ve received enormous numbers of second-hand books from well-meaning people who just don’t get it (we shall not speak of the Jeffery Archer incident). But then, I don’t get Corrie or ‘Stenders either, so we’re pretty well even.
Anyhow, here’s a brief run-down of what flies off the shelves of your average WH Smith (big book retailer now featuring in many fine North American airports in a posher guise), leaving a few poor freaks like yours truly to haunt the second-hand book stalls near enclaves of our cousins across the pond (I swear when Jude Deveraux lived near Cambridge a while back I was getting her cast-off books).
Veronica Henry – British chick lit/aga sagas. Think updated pre-Riders Jilly Cooper: Octavia, Polly etc. and the second Bridget Jones book. Lots of countryside, parties, wellies, dogs, toffs, middle-class people, hats, rusty rural folk, nannies, moorish glazed tiles, picturesque towns/villages, horses, National Trust tea towels, foccacia, balsamic vinegar, lavender and freshly-pressed linen.
Audrey Howard – Immensely popular writer of family sagas with a healthy dusting of coal dust. The library usually has a good stock of these in extra-large print and braille. Actually, I bawled my way in delight through many of these as a teenager but find it hard to connect with them these days. Possibly because I can only take so much heartache.
Anyhow, think Lancashire, suffragettes, Great War, mills, slums, riches, rags, destitution, pubs, the echo of Salvation Army bands in the cold air, Liverpool, searing poverty, tattered shawls, rain, orphans, bittersweet anything, glass works, match girls, grinding poverty, Industrial Revolution, docks, and the occasional outing to a croft after the bailiffs have been ‘round to take all the food.
These days I prefer my novels to have slightly more fun than the unaccompanied singing of some blind ex-coal miner whose lungs have been rotted away by emphysema and legs have been crushed in some horrible but completely preventable accident if only the proper safety precautions had been taken, lawksamercy, rather than deliberately circumvented by the overseer and his arrogant boss for glorious gain and increased production, or possibly even to teach the miner’s colleagues a lesson after he asked for more gruel, so they made him work for 58 hours solid with no sleep while suspended by his toenails attached to a frayed cord above great big crushing metal things under which he had to reach at split-second intervals to remove bits of fluff and dung from enormous iron cogs and then the overseer, oh it was a sin, it was, he shouted at the miner and maybe even gave the poor man a push and now he’s singing for pennies dropped a tin cup and it’s only the two-bar fragment of some haunting tune that harks back to a lost idyll of green England sung by his dear mum because that’s all he knows, ‘cos the pain in his limbs has driven him near-mad, and it makes our Maggie cry with heartbreak for the first time in her harsh and brutal life, and she’s got a heart of gold, she ‘as, so she gives him her last penny and he gives it back to her for a smile and the next day she comes back with a mug of soup to warm him and he’s died there, frozen stiff in the cold night without coal nor fire nor coat.
More catharsis, less aspiration. And you’ll be relieved to know I’ve never read any Ashleigh Bingham.
Dearest Stephen, of COURSE it is cultural imperialism! Why, commence jingo-sarcasm, we host “world series” and “world championships” in our sports but only invite teams from OUR Country! So what do you expect of our opinion of your UK romance awards? (end jingo-casm)
Seriously, thank you – I was aware that the tastes were different but I didn’t realize the depths of it. Fascinating that Sparks, if I’m reading correctly, was included because the contest just opened up to include romance fiction.
So, tell more: what are some of the differences between Brit romance tastes and US romance tastes? Why would someone like Nora Roberts sell like cocaine gangbusters here but not so hot across the pond?
…so they made him work for 58 hours solid with no sleep while suspended by his toenails attached to a frayed cord above great big crushing metal things under which he had to reach at split-second intervals to remove bits of fluff and dung from enormous iron cogs and then the overseer, oh it was a sin, it was, he shouted at the miner and maybe even gave the poor man a push…
Evil Auntie Peril, you make me laugh.
Everyone always posts this at some point whenever you write a wonderful comment, but I simply had to be the one for this thread.
I think Auntie oughta be writing a serial novel, too.
And speaking of serial novels, when’s the next installment of TBoA coming out? 🙂
I love Katie Fforde. Although, I’ve only read her because my Brit CP sent me her stuff. I don’t know that I’ve seen her in bookstores here. Maybe in the indies, but the chains? Anyone???
Is Kate Snow still writing? The one book of hers I read was over the top with family secrets and whatnot, but I still loved it.
Nicholas Sparks’s books definitely move me. His work makes me weep with impotent rage. Oh, the cardboard wasted to create those characters!
“So, tell more: what are some of the differences between Brit romance tastes and US romance tastes? Why would someone like Nora Roberts sell like cocaine gangbusters here but not so hot across the pond?”
Well, all I can say is that it’s hard to even find Mills & Boon romances in most bookshops, never mind any of the others. There just aren’t romance sections in the bookshops. This means that I haven’t been able to get hold of very many American romances. What I have noticed in the regencies I’ve got hold of by American authors is that they very often feel American. There are people going off to ‘freshen up’, ‘rolling their eyes’, sitting in the ‘den’ and the end result is books set in Regency England but which feel like they’re about Americans in fancy dress. I can see why those wouldn’t sell so well in the UK. I also have the vague feeling that American romances are more likely to have perfect-looking protagonists, but I might be wrong about that.
I also have a feeling that in the UK there isn’t an equivalent of romances about Navy SEALS, cowboys or cops. I can’t remember seeing a M&B about a member of the British military, a British farmer or a British police officer. Not saying that they don’t appear in other books, just that I have the impression that they aren’t seen as such ‘sexy’ occupations as they are in the U.S. In fact, now that I come to think of it, most of the contemporary M&Bs I’ve read have heroes who are not British (with the exception of medical romances). The heroes are usually American, Australian, Greek, Spanish or Italian. If that’s true, and I’m not just imagining things, then it might be that British readers very much see romance as fantasy – they don’t really expect to meet someone tall, dark, handsome and alpha in the UK (unless he’s a foreigner). The medical romances are more reality-based anyway, so perhaps that’s why they don’t break UK readers’ suspension of disbelief when the hero is British. I know that when I read descriptions of American alpha males, and read what American readers say about men, their comments don’t resonate with me. I wonder if this is because UK culture and American culture make UK men different from American men? Maybe the gender roles are less distinct in the UK?
Like I said, though, it’s hard to find romances in the UK, and I tend to stick to M&B historicals, so I don’t know enough about romances generally in the UK, or about American romance novels to be able to give any reliable description of the romance-tastes of the UK as a whole and compare them to US romance tastes. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will come along and enlighten us.
I really enjoy Fforde’s romances, excepting Second Thyme Around because of one sex scene that squicked me a little and some implausibilities that I just couldn’t get past. I’ve been able to get them at my local B+N and this is the middle of the sticks.
They seem to be pretty middle of the road chick lit to me though. There is a tendency towards physically imperfect characters and some sort of community cause. Her characters tend to be more Jenny Crusie than Harlequin Presents. I can definately see the similarity to Bridget Jones.
This discussion makes me wonder how Elizabeth Peter’s Vicki Bliss series would do over there since they seem to be an early version of Chick Llit although, they feature a dashing englishman so, that might kill it.
Canada seems to fall in between the US & UK—Nora is huge here, of course, but you’ll also find UK authors like Marian Keyes & Katie Fforde in the chain bookstores.
I love Katie Fforde, at least her earlier stuff. I’d recommend The Rose Revived (even tho’ it has some plot creakiness of the Pregnancy variety) and Artistic License.
Evil Auntie, thanks both for the brilliant summation of the “shawls n’ clogs” genre and the scoop on Victoria Henry. I have a shamefaced love of Aga sagas, wellies, labs, etc—my favourite part of Four Wedding and a Funeral was Tom finding a nice county girl to settle down with—so I will have to check Henry’s books out.
With the exception of Audrey Howard, I haven’t heard of any of the authors.
Just a couple of small things to add to the comments made by Stephen and others. The availability of international romance IS changing in the UK. With the introduction of the Borders chain into the UK over the last 8 or so years, UK bookshops have started to compete and many now have romance shelves. I also think it’s important to note that the UK romance publishing industry is tiny in comparison, and not as distinct from mainstream except when it comes to category.
Conversely, as a British author being published in the US I’m often on the receiving end of comments about publishing to an “American audience.†It’s important to realise that US publishing pretty much IS world publishing, (for the very same reasons I’ve stated above) and particularly when it comes to erotic romance, the genre I write. The only UK publisher of erotic romance (and many question that definition 😉 is Cheek – which is only open to North American settings. Go figure… I was lucky to be introduced to US published romance before it really hit the shelves in the UK, through my CP, and to be taken on by US publishers as a British erotica/erotic romance author.
I disagree with Stephen on the “nationality default” point, purely because I believe the RWA addresses the international community more than the RNA does, both in awards and membership. However, the RNA is tiny and attempting to focus on what happens in the UK. The prize, as Stephen pointed out, is not meant to reflect world trends and (ultimately) is based on what publishers submit..
Evil Auntp:
“These days I prefer my novels to have slightly more fun than the unaccompanied singing of some blind ex-coal miner whose lungs have been rotted away by emphysema and legs have been crushed in some horrible but completely preventable accident if only the proper safety precautions had been taken,”
I take it you’ve been reading Catherine Cookson books again then?
EAP wins the prize for “Best 281-Word Sentence, EVER.”
I was just reading this thread and thought I’d throw out a recommendation to another book – mystery, not romance – that deals with the subject of how books get nominated for Literary Awards, particularly those with with large cash prizes attached. I just finished with “Carnage on the Committee†by Ruth Dudley Edwards, and she has a similarly low (but hilariously well written) opinion of how the literati on these select awards committees dole out these nomintions. So if you’re incensed or interested, there’s another brit author with a perspective on the subject.
Um…I kinda like White Zinfandel. My hubby and I call it adult Kool-Aid.
I’m not proud.