Oh, the nostalgia

The new At the Back Fence on AAR presents some of the more memorable shouting matches on the messageboards. Ahhh, the memories. No links to the recent kerfuffles involving bisexuality or Adele Ashworth attempting to defend bad grammar as good style, but then they’re recent enough that people can remember what went on without reminders. I do feel it’s pity that old threads on the AAR boards are simply deleted once the boards reach capacity, because high-grade stupidity deserves to be memorialized. Anyway, go read, and if you’re a veteran of the AAR boards, feel the sweet wash of memory as you read about bad behavior from both authors and readers alike—because God knows there’s more than enough bad behavior to go around.

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  1. Michelle says:

    Did you see the link to the newspaper article about too much sex in books?  Did you see the quote from the one woman who gave up reading romance books because her husband didn’t want her to read them?  My mind just boggles.  Can you imagine letting someone dictate to you what you can or can’t read?

  2. Robin says:

    Can you imagine letting someone dictate to you what you can or can’t read?

    Don’t you think this happens all the time?  Not necessarily in such a blatant way, of course, but in a more general pattern of pressure from peer groups and the media? 

    In some ways, we’re always being courted to read one book over another, either by readers, or reviews, or publisher dollars thrown behind one author over another.  I adored The Time Traveler’s Wife, but is it really so much more deserving than any number of other books that got less publicity and publisher support? 

    And what about Romance, for example, that enjoys such a terrible public image (still!) that perfectly intelligent women are convinced that they shouldn’t be reading such “crap,” all the while we’re here discussing feminist theory and differences between race and gender and sexuality relative to Romance novels? 

    Sometimes I wonder which is scarier:  letting one person determine what you read or letting a a particular cultural discourse do that for you?

  3. Michelle says:

    I personally find it more offensive that a person would give up individual decision making and rights to their “lord and master” husband.  This bothers me more than slick marketing, or going along and reading the “in book”.  Just because a book is heavily marketed doesn’t make it inherently inferior just as a small market press book automatically makes it superior.  There is a lot of snobbery with regards to reading material.  I just don’t equate snobbery with censorship.

  4. Helen says:

    Last week one of my best friends said ‘For someone who’s so well read, I can’t believe the crap you read sometimes’. Nice of her. What annoys me more than other people who don’t read romance calling the whole genre crap or trash though, is when I find myself being the one doing the name calling. As in: ‘what’s that you’re reading?’ / ‘oh, just some trashy romance novel.’ I hate myself for doing it, but it’s often easier to pretend I’m laughing with them at myself than to start an argument about how non-readers make inaccurate assumptions about romance and romance readers, and how, like in every genre, there are books and authors that are the classics, there are good/bad/ugly ones, ones that will make you laugh/cry/frustrated, ones worth keeping and ones that you shouldn’t bother with, and if you would only try one, you might just like it, (‘oh no I wouldn’t I’m far too intelligent to read that kind of thing’/‘ARGH!’).

    Am I the only person too weak to stand up for herself and her books in person?

    Oh, and on a slick marketing and ‘what-everyone-else-is-reading’ note: I hate being told what to read. Even more than being told what not to read. (Unless, of course, I asked for an opinion.) And so if eveyone and his dog are raving about the newest book to take the fiction world by storm, if I didn’t want to read it already for my own reasons, I tend to put off even trying it out for ages. Like years. If ever.

    Clearly, I’m still a stroppy, won’t-be-told teenager at heart.

    (LOL’ing at my last sentance now, because my word submission is ‘analysis98’!)

  5. Am I the only person too weak to stand up for herself and her books in person?

    I very much doubt it. There is a lot of disdain for romances. It does seem to be more acceptable to read Heyer (at least one of her novels was turned into a radio play by Radio 4), but not Mills & Boon or Barbara Cartland.

    Nowadays I could go on at length about metaromances, the difference between ‘romantic’ and ‘romance’ when referring to the genre, feminism and romance etc etc. And then point them to the blog I contribute to.

    Unfortunately I don’t seem to meet many people, and even fewer to whom I’d talk about books, so I haven’t had a chance to air my pro-romance rant. It does annoy me, though, that I can easily imagine situations where it would come in handy. I doubt that would be the case were I to say I liked mysteries, for example.

  6. As I reminded an audience at Worldcon (World SF Convention) last week, romance makes up nearly 50% of mass market book sales.  SF makes up about 6%.  One would think romance would get more respect based on sales, if nothing else.  We are a powerful market in publishing.

  7. Ann Aguirre says:

    Quite often, I find literary books boring as hell. The Lovely Bones and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time are excellent examples of this. Can’t stomach anything by Jonathan Lethem for the same reason.

    Back in the day when I cared more about what people think of me, I had some need to minimize my romance reading habits. If I was going to take a book somewhere I’d make sure it was something people would be impressed to see me reading. Now I don’t give a rat’s ass and if I want to read Her Heaving Breasts I will and I don’t care who knows it. Sometimes people will make a crack and then I ask them what book they’ve read this week that I should be reading instead. Usually they hem and haw and admit they don’t get much time to read these days. At which point I politely invite them to STFU and stick to discussing subjects they’re familiar with, like foot-in-mouth disease.

  8. Robin says:

    Hey Darlene,

    Do you know how many Romance titles are published in any given year?

  9. Robin—From RWA’s website:

    There were 2,285 romance titles released in 2004.

    Romance generated $1.2 billion in sales in 2004.

    Romance fiction comprises 54.9% of all popular paperback fiction sold in North America.

    Romance fiction comprises 39.3% of all popular fiction sold. (Different from above, this figure includes not just paperbacks, but hardcovers and trade-sized paperbacks as well.)

    To compare:

    Mystery/Detective/Suspense is 29.6% of popular fiction sales

    General Fiction is 12.9% of popular fiction sales

    Science Fiction/Fantasy is 6.4% of popular fiction sales

    Religious, occult, westerns, male adventure, general history, adult and movie tie-ins was 11.8% of popular fiction sales

    *Statistics were compiled by RWA from Ipsos BookTrends, Book Industry Study Group and American Bookseller Association reports, and from tallies in Ingram’s catalogue of all book releases.

  10. Robin says:

    Thank you, Darlene!

    I’m often suspicious of RWA’s press package “research,” but in this case, I feel completely comfortable taking those stats at face value.

  11. Doina says:

    Cheers to all,
    You have no idea how many times I heard disdainful comments ref. my new readings—romance novels—ref. my lowering my literary standards to trash. Culprits: some friends and co-workers (I work for an Ivy-League academic library, so you see.) True, my reading background inclines heavily toward literary fiction & classics, which I’m re-reading in English (FYI English is not my native tongue so I beg you to have mercy on my grammar blunders.)

    I stand up for my romance-taste-budds. One can’t feed one’s soul with only high-brow readings and I don’t mean by that to diminish the literary value of well written fem/romance novels. It’s also true that some are so badly written that even I, a humble non-English speaker, dare to make unsavory comments in frustration. But those badly written novels shouldn’t shadow the good ones. Plenty mainstream novels highly reviewed (I agree with Ana ref. The Lovely Bones) could be boring and uninspired.

    BTW this is my first post in this site. This Labor Day I happened to cyber-stumble over your site and frankly, I spent the whole day browsing up and down, left and right, laughing my ass off at Reviews marked F,D,C (especially those about art-covers.) Congratulations, ladies, for your humor and intelligence. So refreshing!

    Candy, I wrote you an e-mail because I haven’t been able to register. So far, I got smarter and here I am, truly yours, Doina.

  12. Becca says:

    Darlene wrote Romance fiction comprises 54.9% of all popular paperback fiction sold in North America. and then Mystery/Detective/Suspense is 29.6% of popular fiction sales

    This is a bit misleading, I think. Most of what I read is categorized as Romantic Suspense, I think… and is filed under Romance rather than Mysteries in book stores, but the main plot element frequently is the mystery with the romance as a sub-plot.
    frex Sandra Brown’s Chill Factor: it’s mostly a suspense/mystery, but gets filed under Romance because that’s the genre where she made her name so that’s where people will look for her. Ditto Nora Roberts’ Blue Smoke: to my mind, more mystery than romance, but filed under romance because that’s where La Nora’s fans know to look for her books.

  13. Becca—I haven’t read the Brown book, but I think I’d disagree about Nora Roberts’ Blue Smoke.  The structure of the plot was clearly leading up to the relationship between the h&h being the focal point of the book, even though it took them a while to get together.  All those missed meetings when they were younger laid the foundation for what followed.

    And Roberts’ newest, Angel Falls, has an enjoyable if predictable mystery—the killer couldn’t have been anyone but who it was—but the real story was the heroine’s recovery from tragedy with the hero standing at her side, believing in her.

    So unless they’re throwing the J.D. Robb figures in with the Nora Roberts figures, the statistics seem to be fairly accurate.  Also, while this isn’t a scientific method, look at an average supermarket book rack.  At a glance I’d say I see more romance novels in various sub-genres—category, suspense, historical, inspirational, historical, chicklit—than any other single genre.

  14. Becca says:

    I didn’t intend to question the accuracy of the statistics cited per se, but rather to make a comment on how it seems like so many mysteries-with-romance seem to be filed under Romance rather than Mystery. It’s a fine line between mystery-with-romance and romance-with-mystery, and it seems to me that when publishers are in doubt which category a book belongs in, they seem to go with Romance.

    And I think the J. D. Robbs count as romance too, because that’s where I find them, at least in the bookstores where I shop.

    And I maybe should have used the Robbs rather than Blue Smoke as my example, although I’ve read books from the mystery section that had as strong a romance theme as Blue Smoke did but were by authors better known for mysteries than for romance.

    Chill Factor is very good, although it reminds me rather strongly of a Linda Howard short story that I read some where.

  15. Doina says:

    Speaking of Chill Factor: It kind of chilled me. It has all the ingredients to make the soup tasty plus a bone-chilling description of the wintery-blizzardy-environment (interior & exterior.) It describes I assume with accuracy the small-town atmosphere, but the romance story failed to convince me in spite of the heroes’ desperate need of corporal heat—literally. I won’t say too much why it disappointed me (spoiler fear factor.) But yes, I admit that I wondered whodonit, so, to La Nora, mission accomplished!

  16. Nora Roberts says:

    Thanks, but I didn’t write Chill Factor. Pretty sure that was Sandra Brown.

    Nora

  17. Doina says:

    Oops, yes, I realized my mistake after I got home from work and my gaze fell on the Chill Factor. I slapped my forehead—literally.

    Nora Roberts, please accept my apologies. I should probably address them to Sandra Brown too, in case she lurks in this forum. When I wrote that post I was at work, my mind rambling this way and that, trying to focus on various tasks, but this is no excuse.

    Lesson: I should do my homework before posting, or at least verify the veracity of my statements.

    I do have something to say about your novels, something that amazed me since I read the first one: The way you manage to handle the omniscient POV, to go from one head to another and let us, the readers, grasp what the characters think and feel almost at the same time. I’m sure it isn’t easy to control this technique. It comes with experience.

    In one of my reference books about writing fiction, the author cited you as a positive example of HOW TO DO IT THE RIGHT WAY, and that brought the issue to my attention and made me sit and mule over.  I don’t like very much the limited 3rd pov. If it’s so limited, then why not the 1st POV? If it’s 3rd, then why not the omniscient? I’m trying to remember—I think it was Elizabeth Lyon’s Writer’s Guide to Fiction. After my earlier blunder, I better check my shelf before citing names and make again a fool of myself.
    Happy writing!

  18. Nora Roberts says:

    Doina,

    No apology necessary. It’s easy to mix up titles and authors. And seeing Sandra’s gorgeous, slim, charming and talented, not a hardship to get mixed up with her.

    Appreciate the nice words on my POV style, too.

  19. Doina says:

    Oh, yes, you both ladies are gorgeous, slim, charming AND TALENTED!

    I’m looking forward to seeing you in my hometown, New York, Sunday Oct.15. I might keep a low profile though, as I am none of the above!

  20. Adele Ashworth says:

    Hi, Candy.  I check out Smart Bitches occasionally and really enjoy the site.  I don’t post on or read blogs all that much (lack of time), but I did notice you stated here “…Adele Ashworth attempting to defend bad grammar as good style…”

    I don’t want to re-hash the event that took place on the AAR board a few months ago, but I do want to state—I guess just for the *record*, whatever that might be—that in posting on the AAR board, I never attempted to defend bad grammar as good style.  Actually, I only took issue with one poster whom I felt had begun a personal attack on me – as someone who doesn’t know good grammar and can’t write. 

    Knowing there are readers out there who don’t like my books has never bothered me much.  I try to write books that everybody will love (all authors do), while knowing for a fact that lots of people are going to dislike them.  That’s just part of the business.  But in this particular instance, I wanted to defend myself because I truly felt that one individual was *trying* to goad me, in fact, trying to draw me out into an argument.  Some people thought I’d had my feelings hurt, when in actuality, I was simply spitting mad.  I’m human, and I thought this one person had crossed the line, that she had attacked me as a person who writes rather than the book I’d written.

    I would never, ever, ever defend bad grammar as good style.  I have a journalism degree, have worked as a professional editor, and grammar has always been my forte.  Good grammar in any book is imperative, but style also plays a part when writing fiction.  Some sentences simply don’t have verbs, for example, and that’s okay.  Perhaps I can’t write great prose, or my love scenes might be a tad too flowery, or purple.  I’ve read where some readers think my books are on the melodramatic side.  These are probably true statements, though I write as I write, and my style is my own.  Can’t help that.  🙂

    As far as this particular book went, I *did* post on the AAR board that there were mistakes in DUKE OF SCANDAL that I will swear to my dying breath did not show up in the revisions, and three editors were involved in the process.  On the flip side, however, I absolutely did write sentences in the book that were run-ons, some ending in dangling whatevers, etc.  This, to me, is what I mean by style.  I like long sentences, whether they’re *technically* correct.  My opinion is that this is fiction and not a term paper, and yes, I’m sure I’ve written technical mistakes in the name of writing the book I want. 

    I’m pretty easy to get along with and rarely take comments to heart when I know not everybody is going to like my books.  I think using correct grammar is EXTREMELY important, and I *do* know how to use it and use it well.  But when I feel someone attacks me personally, knowing I’m reading the board and answering posts (and this is the first case I’ve ever seen this happen to me) the human part of me needs to defend myself.

    Thanks, Candy, for allowing me this opportunity to reply.

    Best wishes,
    Adele Ashworth

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