On expectations and predictability

I’ve been having issues lately with my leisure reading. Part of it is certainly lack of time—instead of immersing myself in high adventure, slick passages, throbbing stalks and Love Conquering All (and by “all,” I mean 350 pages of limp conflict and the hero’s ability to think with things other than his fiddly bits), I’ve been drowning in the endless procedural minutiae of the federal courts, which is just about as fun as it sounds, and also arguing whether New Jersey barring Philadelphia from shipping its garbage into its borders is constitutional, which is, weirdly enough, a great deal more fun than it sounds. (The term “gerbil jurisprudence” actually came up while discussing that particular issue, which is one of the many reasons why I enjoy my Constitutional Law class immoderately.)

So yes, law school is fun and challenging and HOLY FUCKMONKEYS a lot of work. But besides the paucity of reading time, I find myself feeling very restless and impatient with the fiction I picked up in recent months. What has been galling me, in particular, has been how distressingly predictable a lot of the stories have been.

I’m not complaining about overarching structure here, nor about genre requirements. Knowing there’s going to be a Happily Ever After at the end of a romance does not, and likely will never bother me. Neither is knowing that the mystery will be solved at the end of a detective novel, or that the hero will survive mostly intact (if not necessarily mostly sane or healthy) at the end of a thriller.

What I’m talking about is my current ability to see plot twists and character fates writ large on the wall. It’s sort of the equivalent of having a very large, very loud person walking up to a tree, poorly concealing himself behind it and yelling that he’s not really there, and there’s really no way I can ever guess his location, oh no, because he’s a clever one, he is.

I don’t mind a certain amount of predictability in my fiction, but when it comes down to it, I am most truly delighted when I have my expectations quite thoroughly fucked with. It especially fills me with glee when an author take some sort of shorthand that we’ve all taken for granted and turns it upside down or just molests it in unspeakable ways.

For instance: I am sick unto death of picking up a certain sort of genre work, encountering a male character in the military who has a wife at home who’s just had a kid, and knowing just from those facts that he’s a) a Good Guy, and b) going to make it through the book in one piece. Just once, I’d love to have that guy die painfully and pointlessly, or have him reveal some sort of genuinely horrific perversity—the Goebbels, for example, genuinely loved their children and killed them out of loyalty to Hitler and to spare them what they thought was an untenable future. In short, I am sick of many things, and one the biggest peeves I have right now is how being a good guy means loving kids and puppies and kittens, and being a bad guy means being child molesters and puppy kickers and kitten killers. Not that I can imagine a good guy being physically abusive towards the weak and vulinerable, but one can dislike something without acting violently to that dislike, just as one can love something soft and cuddly while being a thoroughly evil bastard.

We’ve talked before about how there’s a tendency for this sort of shorthand to stand in for actual characterization. Is your hero dark-haired and large? Odds are high you have an alpha on your hands, whee! Is your heroine redheaded? Then please choose from either the Awkward or Feisty variants. If there’s a psychotic killer on the loose, just look for the one character who gets significant airtime in the book who a) doesn’t have a sense of humor and/or b) is not especially attractive. If you’re the Other Woman? Expect to be older than the heroine, being fond of orgasms for their own sake and considerably more savvy about make-up and nail polish.

Certain plot conventions also tend to have shorthand resolutions. Have an impotent heroine? The hero’s super sperm will save the day and bless her with many bouncy bairns, guaranteed. Identical twins? The True Lurve is the one who can recognize the difference with no apparent effort. Is the hero surly and jealous, and is there a more easy-going male secondary character who becomes a good friend of the heroine’s? There will almost definitely be a blow-up in which the hero will accuse the heroine of being a dirty, dirrrty hoor.

I don’t like the implications of some of these standards, but mostly, I get really goodamn tired of them when they crop up over and over and over again. That’s not to say that talented authors can’t create convincing, nuanced iterations of these archetypes, but it’s so good when somebody takes the norm and deliberately, thoroughly flouts it. For example, when the protagonists don’t want children, as in a couple of Jennifer Crusie books, I just about keel over with glee. Loving And Desperately Wanting Children is such a marker of being a Good Person, and enjoying fucking without some sort of greater Family and White Picket Fence agenda lurking in a background is usually reserved so much for the villain that characters who are about to violate those particular conventions tend to get automatic props from me, if only because they don’t seem to rely on what seem to be somewhat lazy character-building methods.

In short: right now, I want something to surprise me, and surprise me good. I don’t want to read a book and be able to predict the character and story arcs for just about every damn thing within the first 50 pages or so. The enjoyment I get from being right is a poor substitute for being delightfully surprised or having my jaded expectations thoroughly fucked with.

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Ranty McRant

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  1. Marty says:

    Which is why I love Dr. Evil, he is evil, incompetent, but he loves his kitty, Mr. Bigglesworth.  MWAHAHAHA.

    spam word is months12,

  2. Madeleine says:

    I know how you feel – I have this problem with almost all forms of media. Books, TV shows, movies, plays. There’s hardly an element of surprise. Sometimes the books (etc) are well written and intelligent enough that I don’t notice how unsurprised I am at the end. Mostly, they’re not.

    The good stuff, though, recently. Uh, Madeleine E. Robins (I do like reading stuff from/about people with my name – is that weird?) has a book called Point of Honour which had an unusual enough premise and tight enough plotting that even though I was confident of the ending I enjoyed the book thoroughly. It’s sort of a Veronica Mars meets Georgette Heyer book. The second is on my reading list.

    I also like Sarah Monette’s Mélusine books: Mélusine, The Virtu, and The Miraodr (although I am poor and have not yet read the last one). They are hardcore fantasy, with some excellent world-building and plotting. The original “twist” is fairly evident from the copy on the cover of Mélusine, but Monette moves beyond that. Fair warning: the books do deal with fairly explicit sexual content. Rape, homosexuality, incest, etc. They’re also written in alternating first person POV.

    Susan Carroll’s triology about three sisters known as Daughters of the Earth refreshed my outlook on historical novels.

    I actually only read the first one and couldn’t continue. It wasn’t very well written or surprising (at all), and I thought the characters were very shallow. Maybe I am just oversensitive to people writing Catherine de’Medici off as a simple villain.

    There’s always the classics. I’m reading Middlemarch now, but Colette is always good for some really insightful (but not OBVIOUSLY so, you know?) writing. And Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy is – just brilliant. There were elements that genuinely surprised me, for all that it’s historical fiction about a time period I have a good grounding in.

  3. Robyn says:

    It’s sort of the equivalent of having a very large, very loud person walking up to a tree, poorly concealing himself behind it and yelling that he’s not really there…

    Totally off topic, but now I’m remembering Monty Python’s How Not to Be Seen.

    I know I’m tired of the sexual pervert as villain. Can we have another motivation, please? At this point I’m willing to read about accountants going mad at tax time rather than ‘get inside the mind’ of another pedophile.

  4. iffygenia says:

    I’m tired of the sexual pervert as villain…. I’m willing to read about accountants going mad at tax time rather than ‘get inside the mind’ of another pedophile.

    I’m also tired of villains who have no motivation except to be villains. That’s an issue I had with CL Wilson’s Lord of the Fading Lands—the evil sorcerers seem to be evil for the sake of evilness. They’re a one-dimensional Nation of Evil.  I’d rather read an antagonist whose motivation makes sense, not a stock “Me so evil!” character.

  5. I didn’t realize you were in law school, m’dear.  And in Con Law 1 along with me, to boot.  I too just experienced the fun of City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey. 

    In fact, I am currently surfing the Net taking a break from those damn Bill of Rights cases.

    KJ

  6. Katie says:

    Goodness! I’m a 1L too. Look how smart the Smart Bitches are.

    What I’ve found is that I’ve had to go back to tried and true books… I’ve only bothered to pick up one new book since classes started (the C.L. Wilson stuff… good!) and only because I read the review here. After an intimate session with Torts or Contracts, I want a story that I know I’ll like and that won’t try my patience.

    Maybe you’ll be more tolerant at Winter Break when you can leaf through books before you commit.

  7. Oh, re. non-stereotype heroes: I remember reading a Georgette Heyer whodunnit.  For those who haven’t read them, she usually had a recognisable cast of ‘type’ characters, and the discovery of the murderer would coincide with the HEA for at least two of the other characters.  This is not a criticism—I like it. 

    Anyway, I got about halfway through this book and realised I really wanted Ronald (Rupert?) to turn out to be the romantic hero.  But I knew he couldn’t because he was the stock well-dressed, slightly built (‘willowy’), camp character.  In the last book I’d read he’d turned out to be the murderer.

    And then it turned out he *was* the hero, and I was both surprised and very very happy.

    I cannot tell you the name of the book, though.  But you could do worse than buying up all her whodunnits—she didn’t write very many.

  8. Oh damn the random smiley.  My fault.  Sorry.

  9. Oh no—not City of Philadelphia v. N.J.  Bad flashbacks.  My first month of law school, I had to read a Judith McNaught a day to keep the doldrums away.  And when my Judith McNaughts ran out, I hit the Gaelen Foley pile.  I went straight for the comfort reads after a hard day slaving over Torts.

    As for books that aren’t like a very large man hiding behind a very small tree….  (Love that image.  So much.) Hmm.  Kasey Michaels’ “Maggie” books might fit the bill, since those don’t really follow a conventional romance arc.  And there are no cheering noises loud enough to convey my admiration for anything by Judith Merkle Riley.

  10. Tracy Grant says:

    “Anyway, I got about halfway through this book and realised I really wanted Ronald (Rupert?) to turn out to be the romantic hero.  But I knew he couldn’t because he was the stock well-dressed, slightly built (’willowy’, camp character.  In the last book I’d read he’d turned out to be the murderer.

    And then it turned out he *was* the hero, and I was both surprised and very very happy.

    I cannot tell you the name of the book, though. “

    Are you thinking of Neville in “A Blunt Instrument”?  A very nice and quite nontraditional hero.  I liked the romance in that book a lot.

  11. Tracy Grant says:

    “Anyway, I got about halfway through this book and realised I really wanted Ronald (Rupert?) to turn out to be the romantic hero.  But I knew he couldn’t because he was the stock well-dressed, slightly built (’willowy’, camp character.  In the last book I’d read he’d turned out to be the murderer.

    And then it turned out he *was* the hero, and I was both surprised and very very happy.

    I cannot tell you the name of the book, though. “

    Are you thinking of Neville in “A Blunt Instrument”?  A very nice and quite nontraditional hero.  I liked the romance in that book a lot.

  12. willaful says:

    That Georgette Heyer hero would be the exceptionally nummy Randall from _Behold, Here’s Poison_, I betcha.

  13. Kristin says:

    I am currently a 3L, and my taste in reading selection has changed every year.  1L year I read the trashiest, most cliched romance novels I could find because it was as far away from the law as I could possibly get.  Looking back at the books I read that year, I can’t believe I enjoyed them as much as I did.  Probably something to do with escapism and/or my brain turning to mush….

    2L year I kind of returned to my old standards, and reread a lot of stuff. 

    This year seems to be the year of experimentation.  I’m reading all sorts of stuff I’ve never read before.  I’m reading different sorts of romance (contemporaries instead of my typical historicals; actually tried my first paranormal a couple of weeks ago), reading some classics I never got to during my English major days, and I’m even starting to venture into the world of nonfiction.

    I hope that you find something fresh and exciting to divert you, and don’t worry, exams aren’t as terrible as people make them out to be.  You will survive, and before you know it, you’ll be a 3L and almost done!  🙂

  14. cecilia says:

    If I can add my 2 cents’ worth: I’m with most of you on the “tired of..” bandwagon. I’ve had more books that I’ve not bothered finishing in the past few months than I think I’ve had in the 3 years previous, combined.

    A lot of what gets annoying is what many have mentioned – transparency of the “suspense” building. For myself, in romance, what I’m tired of is the obligatory big suspense plot, period. (Emphasis on “obligatory” when the author doesn’t seem to have her heart in it). Is it not challenge enough to find a person you can live with and enjoy living with (and who enjoys living with you)? Is there not enough story and characterization to mine in that?

    I’m a person who’ll read just about all the sub-genres of romance (even if they make me grind my teeth at times). For me, what is a real “twist” is when the story is just about people, living recognizable lives. Jennifer Crusie is often good for that. Loretta Chase and Eloisa James, too – historical, yes, their stories are not filled up with a ridiculous spy story. I’ve been reading Gaffney’s Mad Dash – it’s actually taking me more than one sitting to read it, because I don’t have all those unnecessary (and too often completely unconvincing) villain POV pages to skim past. What a treat!

    (Having come here from Dear Author, I’d just like to say that no authors paid me for this comment)

  15. Charlene says:

    Do American law students have to spend a year articling with a law firm before writing their final exams?

    I ask because that’s when all the good practical jokes take place. The students are sent out to write a paper on the implications of Byrne vs. Boadle on native fishing rights in Yukon or the application of US v. Nixon with respect to pension rights for separated same-sex couples in Alberta. It’s especially good in a small town where the students have to spend half an hour scouting up the correct book of reports. Then they come back and throw things at the paralegals.

    One year, one law firm up north sent a request for discovery documents on Byrne vs. Boadle to the law firm next door that had their law students in a wild tizzy for almost a full week, until the senior partner found out what was going on.

  16. Meriam says:

    Meriam, funny you mention Whitfield’s Benighted/Bareback—I have a post on that book waiting on my other computer.  Syn-chro-ni-ci-ty. [cue synth]

    Oh no! I just posted a review. I spent forever chewing my hair and stressing over it because I wanted to do the book justice. And now you’re going to show me up! I can’t wait to read your post.

    I tried that, too, but my one attempt at mainstream fiction ended in disaster when I picked up a novel which was soo-hooo-hoooooooooo predictable that after reading the cover blurb I could tell what the Big Secret of the story was. *head desk*

    Sandra, what was the book? I’m morbidly curious. Also, I love Terry Pratchett and can’t wait to dig into Making Money, but I’ve never entirely warmed to his Tiffany books.

    It’s sort of a Veronica Mars meets Georgette Heyer book. The second is on my reading list.

    Madeline, you’ve just described two of my favourite things. Really, I think my head just exploded. I’m off to investigate Point of Honour.

    I second (or whatever) Megan Hart – I really enjoyed Dirty. Haven’t tried Broken yet.

    Is everyone here a lawyer?

  17. TracyS says:

    “Is everyone here a lawyer?”  Nope. I’m a SAHM who is just getting back into the workforce. I’ve worked from home for a few years. I was a teacher before kids and now that both kids are in school full time I’m substitute teaching. Believe it or not, I love to sub, it’s fun and different every day!

    Bet you didn’t want to know all of that about me did you? 😉

  18. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m married to one who’s past president of his FAWL (Florida Association for Women Lawyers) chapter, where they voted him their “most upstanding male member.”

    Some of those older female attorneys tell hysterical and outrageous stories of what it was like for women practicing law in the Bad Old Days.  Remember, lady law students, you stand on the shoulders of giants—in high heels.

  19. Bronwyn says:

    Amen, Candy.

  20. My heroine is over forty and a little overweight, my hero is a former movie star now doing crime drama on television, and he’s gone a little soft over the years. The antagonist is a skinny used car salesman who goes ballistic, and the other antagonist is a shark.

    When they get to the HEA, neither of them expects to have more children.

    So, like… read my book. It’s in the queue.

  21. ~Oh no—not City of Philadelphia v. N.J.  Bad flashbacks.~

    Hey, damn sure beats Pennoyer v. Neff. 

    True to law school fashion, my school is a damn gossip factory.  Some of my close friends know I’m a writer and my pen name.  But I found out just the other day that someone else somehow found out, bought one of my books, and has proceeded to tell everyone he knows that I write “raunchy stories.” 

    Honestly, it amused the hell out of me.

    KJ

  22. michelle says:

    Ok I have an author for you-Megan Whalen Turner.  The Thief is very good and had some very suprising twists and turns.  Then comes the next the Queen of Attolia.  It has one of the oh my goodness-it can’t happen-jaw dropping on the floor twists.  Then the latest The King of Attolia which in my opinion is the best of the three.  It has one of the most romantic storylines (subtle but it is there) and all sorts of political shenanigans and a totally clueless but hot guard named Costas.

    Plus as a total aside The King of Attolia has one of the most BEAUTIFUL covers I have ever seen.http://www.amazon.com/King-Attolia-Megan-Whalen-Turner/dp/0060835796/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6581270-2647147?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194316182&sr=8-1
    Can you tell I am a total fangirl of this series?  Squee!!

  23. Wry Hag says:

    So nice to see you back, Candy!

    Strange coincidence, your message.  I just finished posting to a private authors’ loop about how my recent output has been slapped down by my editor because it doesn’t conform to the publisher’s standards.  So if you’re getting that “deja vu all over again” feeling, BLAME PUBLISHERS!

    I’ve been getting gypsy feet when it comes to my writing and, therefore, have been venturing farther afield of current romance standards…even the erotic ones.  “Fuck the predictability from Chapter One on,” says my wayward imagination.

    But—know what?—publishers don’t like that.  Uh-uh.  They want that ol’ HEA to be visible from the jump.  They want relationships to proceed according to established norms.  Even if the heroine is having nothing more than a string of sexual interludes, they want her irresistible wondrousness to be obvious from the start.

    So, good luck.  I feel your pain…just from the other end.  (Uh, sorry, that didn’t sound quite right.)

  24. Heidi says:

    Imogen, you are now my bestest friend. I tried to tell the lady at the used book store that Georgette Heyer used to write mysteries, and she scoffed at me. I loved her stuff and wish I could find my old paperbacks. They are fantastic.

    Candy, I’m with you girl, not literally in law school, but in trying to find something *new* to read. After reading romances through my teens, I delved into mysteries for years, and have returned to romance because I desperately needed a break from death and mayhem since I live with it now daily as a SAHM.

    I’m hoping that somehow you get a cut of my Amazon basket since I’ve added a gazillion (the technical term) books just from this post alone.

    My only complaint about authors and surprises is please don’t kill off one of the central figures in your series after several (5-6) books and getting people invested in the person. I loved Elizabeth George, but after one of her books that had a hideous ending involving one of the central characters, I won’t read her again. Okay, maybe it didn’t help I was pregnant at the time and hormones were running high, but if I knew where that woman lived, I would have flown/driven/boated there and bitch-slapped that woman down. Grrrrrrrrr.

  25. TracyS says:

    Heidi, I had to laugh at this comment you made, “because I desperately needed a break from death and mayhem since I live with it now daily as a SAHM.” LOL I totally understand that! I was a SAHM for 8 years! Like I mentioned above, I substitute teach now that the boys are in school full time, but that job is not too far from the mayhem part of that either! 😉

  26. Anna says:

    I’m with you, Candy.  Tired of the same old cliches and simplifications in novels. 

    As for “Loving And Desperately Wanting Children” as a “a marker of being a Good Person,” I’m personally tired of people in novels AND in real life making this assumption.  Recently, I had to, yet again, explain my not wanting to have children to some people, as if my desire to remain child-free was somehow alien or unnatural.  Clearly, I’m a villain if I don’t want children.  Next, I’ll be standing in the way of the hero and heroine because of a nefarious plot I’ve concocted to keep them separated.  Now, I simply need to work on my cackling laughter…

  27. WriteBlack says:

    This post is so right on time.

    Gimme a short, fat hero for a change. Or a genuinely creepy, scary villain who isn’t a complete cartoon.

    Wry Hag, thanks for the info about being slapped down by publishers for daring to write something different. It makes perfect sense that the industry doesn’t want to veer in any way from tried-and-true—and profitable—formats.

    I want to be surprised again.

  28. TracyS says:

    I’m realizing as I read some of the responses here that perspective can play a part in how we react to certain cliches.  The “desperately wanting children” plotline has never bothered me b/c I always wanted to marry and have children.  I don’t really think twice when I read that plot over and over.

    However, someone who does not want children will notice that b/c it doesn’t resonate with them.

    I just find that fascinating~how our personal experiences are so much a part of our reading experience.

  29. willaful says:

    Oh, I dunno, I was infertile for a long time and desperately wanted kids and the cliche still bores me. 😉

  30. Shannon C. says:

    Like someone (Rosemary?) said way up thread, I am reading lots of light, fluffy fare and haven’t been disappointed, but I’m also trying to space out the types of books I read and not let myself get into glomming a certain genre. And yeah, count me in the please to be surprising me camp. My current book is fantasy, and my major complaint is that I’ve read a lot of this author’s work, and I recognize every single one of her tropes, and the one remotely interesting character with ambiguous motives I’m expecting will either redeem herself at the end or go into cackling villain territory. Either way, I will be bored.

  31. JMM says:

    Ah, Heyer. I didn’t even know she wrote romance until after I read several of her mysteries!

    You wanna talk about surprises? In one of Heyer’s mysteries, the murderer *gets away* with the murder! Even more surprising, the lower class girl marries the landowner’s son!

  32. DebL says:

    ‘nother law student (Cdn).

    I feel free to confess now that I have long been loving the smart bitches more than the trashy books.

    My frustration with romances is less to do with the foreseeable plot movements, and more about how I just don’t care what happens to these people. But it’s probably the same thing—lazy characterization.

    So I’ve been reading Dorothy Sayers mysteries lately. They’re tedious at times, but not predictible. And I was thinking just today how… surprising it was, the amount of dark eroticism she could project on a character who was twittish-looking, blond, effete and given to irritating slang.

    Meanwhile, I’ve thought a lot about why I don’t enjoy most romances anymore. I think it’s the shortness on ideas. I keep coming back to Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, George Eliot, L.M. Montgomery and Dorothy Sayers because they wrote stories about love that were difficult and conflicted, and big on ideas about men and women.

    Conventional romance, the kind that bores us, has maybe one idea: perfect woman finds perfect man? Yawn.

  33. bettie says:

    Ditto on the recs for Gordon Dahlquist (Super long, but soo strange and dreamy. I don’t think he even knew how the book would end), Jasper Fforde (sly, irreverent, and in love with English Lit), and Kressley Cole (totally readable and fresh because she commits to her premise, world and characters).

    I can’t stand the nicey-nice brand of heroine.  Maybe I watched too many Aaron Spelling shows at a formative stage in my psychological development, but I tend to like villains way better. They dress better, have better lines, and have more fun. Even Disney villains get catchier songs than the heroes do.

    Stories I write tend to feature heroes and heroines who could easily be the villains, if the story were told from another perspective.  It’s not that I go out of my way to “mean things up” (well, maybe a little) it’s just that nice is so dull.

    And, speaking of nice, have you read Nice by Jen Sacks? :sigh: The title is sarcastic; the book is delightful.

  34. DS says:

    Law school seems to have changed a lot.  It used to be smoking, drinking and who had the most interesting sex life.  I believe my sedate late middle age is related to having got it all out of my system earlier. 

    Loved Heyer’s mysteries.  I’ve been listening to them in audio book format—the reader is very good. 

    I also have the second book by Robins—Petty Treason (the charge brought against wives who killed their husbands)but I haven’t started it yet. 

    I would also recommend Fidelis Morgan’s Unnatural Fire as read by the author. She’s an actress and does a great job as both author and reader—but it’s a bawdy early 18th century mystery and not a romance. 

    While I like Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next series, I really loved the second in the Nursery Crimes Division series, The Fourth Bear.  Read by Simon Vance who does a great job.  Fforde’s web site is also fun (http://www.jasperfforde.com/) and I even recommend his Blog on Amazon—which is high praise since the majority of those things are a waste of bandwidth.  I cannot get rid of LKH’s no matter how had I try.  I think it has something to do with the fact I bought all of her books until the one after Obsidian Butterfly.  Now have some sort of curse that forces me to continually delete her current babbling.

  35. DS says:

    Awrg:  Thursday Next not Tuesday Next.

  36. Julie says:

    I’d really recommend my best read of 2007 (so far) to all SmartBitchistas – ‘The Needle in the Blood’ by Sarah Bower.  Gut-wrenching love story set against a semi-true backdrop of the Bayeux tapestry.  Not released in the US yet but you can get free shipping from The Book Depository.

  37. dl says:

    Yeah, a timely subject.  Doesn’t even have to be romance, I just want to read an interesting & well written story.  Predictability, flat characters, unlikely plot, TSTL heroine, sterotype bad guy, author using “she couldn’t believe it” waaay to many times, I just don’t care about this h/h…yuck.

    I have refused to finish, or wallbanged many books the last several years.  IMO publishers are currently trashing the fiction industry with poor authors, poor editing, and awful covers.  I love something new, fresh, non-traditional, interesting, and well written.  For new authors, the Library has become my best friend, sooo much badly written stuff available these days.

    More & more I find myself reading cross genre, as long as it’s well written & interesting.  Recently read “Inda” by Sherwood Smith…a novel which follows the hero from age 10 to about 16ish.  No sex, no perverts, minimal romantic elements, but very good reading.

  38. Ginger says:

    Add me to the list who is tired of “we want to buy a house and have kids together so that proves we’re madly in love”.  Ever since I got married people keep hassling me to say when I’ll have children and now that plot in romances drives me crazy.  I’m also a bit played out on heroes who are totally emotionally closed off from everyone but the heroine – it can be done well, but I think I’ve read too much of it lately, especially in paranormals.  I like it when the hero and heroine both have friends and some kind of social network / interests beyond just their relationship.

  39. Heidi says:

    I just recently read a novela where a woman was having phone sex with some guy and then he came to visit and she was sort of anxious about it and BINGO When he appeared he was not the stud muffin she was expecting and she was all about the looks but it worked out very nicely. I’m trying to remember whose it was. It was in a book with three novellas and hers was the last. hmmm… it was quite delicious in that he was not all that and yet, he was 😉

  40. I second the recs on Jasper Fforde and Sarah Monette. I’ve been meaning to reread Fforde for awhile now before buying his newest, but all my books are in another country…

    I also really enjoyed the Gordon Dahlquist, though it took a few chapters for me to get into it properly. As far as other recommendations go, I loved Dark Angels by Karleen Koen mainly because the love story was so beautifully subtle and she’s got a great eye for historical detail. Also The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox are two books where I was able to predict some of the massive twists, but the writing and the setup were so good that I simply didn’t care.

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