The Art of Romance will be a book – thank heavens! My coffee table has a burp rag, some clickers, a graham cracker, and a copy of Bar Mitzvah Disco, but does it have a paperback collection of the visual history of Mills & Boon romance covers? No! It is lacking! Oh, the sorrow! The woe!
You can order your own copy of the book, which is due out October 2008. It traces the development of the genre and provides a visual history of one of our favorite elements, the cover art. Thanks to BB for the link.
And if cover art wasn’t enough joy for your eyeballs, here is an EXTREMELY NSFW OMGHOLYCRAP link (that I saved for Saturday for that very reason) provided with thoughtful care by Sarah (not me, another Sarah). Two words that express limitless pleasure: Naked rugby. Members of New Zealand’s national team, All Blacks, participated in a nude rugby match for charity. Yeah, yeah charity. I wanna know what the Haka looked like performed by full monty rugby players.
And if nude bottoms are not on your work agenda today, try this, courtesy of Debunot: “What did you do today?” “Oh, I rescued a family of baby ducks who were jumping off an awning.” So cute my teeth hurt. *le sigh*
Speaking of teeth hurting, if this cake were mine I’d never eat it. No matter how much I wanted cake. (Thanks to Miri for the link).
Too much sweet and Selleck? Then I’ll smack you silly with a slightly late link to the Purple Prose winner for worst sex scene, from Rebecca Miller’s The Private Lives of Pippa Lee:
a pleasure ballooned from her sex, swelled to fill her body until it burst, the sensation running down her legs, and she cried out, her head falling lifeless on the mattress, her body lank as the neck of a dead swan.
That’s just comedy freaking gold right there. Wow. Dead swans and sex balloons. It’s like Lisa Frank mixed with hardcore porn.
What a very coindence. Downstairs my husband is watching the Australians playing the Springboks in the Tri-nations, Mandela cup.
Tana Umaga, NZ Captain and edible man, led that Haka that you linked to.
As an Australian, I have to say that that French bloke that everyone pants over isn’t much of player(we did ‘em like a dinner a couple of weeks ago). Now, Victor Matfield, South African captain, yum, yum. AND his hair doesn’t go greasy and stringy.
And for pretty boy good looks you can’t go past new NZ captain Richie Mc Caw.
Those bottoms did what my day singularly failed to – which was to make me smile. Thank you.
Good lord, it’s Winter here, what were they thinking!?
Actually, getting boys to get naked for amusing stunts is not that hard, over here.
Nakedness in Dunedin in mid-winter? I’m not sure if that’s major heroic courage, or total and complete insanity.
Bbrrrrrrr. The phrase about balls and brass monkeys comes to mind. (Hmm… maybe that’s why there were no pictures from the front…..)
Okay, so after commenting I went to You Tube and sighed over Tana Umaga and watched Richie McCaw tributes and smiled at Victor Matfield and then watched the Wallabies do the Springboks with my DH (world champion Springboks I mean).
that explains the complete lack of dangly parts…Rats.
seen46…some many comments, so little time
The cover art book sounds way cool. I had no idea category romance started back in the first decade of the 20th century—as a sporadic collector of pre-WWI romance novels I’m now inspired to go looking for some of those early gems. Wonder if the earliest ones were hardcovers or pulp paperbacks? As for the nude Rugby players, I have super-slow dialup, so sadly, they will have to wait. 🙁
-Liz
OMG. I so totally want to move there now. That was awesome.
I thought it was going to be a video! No fair!
Naked haka? We got your naked haka right here. 🙂
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2008/07/how_to_dung_beetle_truffles.html
Also on the Selleck site. Wow.
I’m looking forwards to getting my mitts on a copy of the cover art book though, it sounds very interesting.
I had no idea category romance started back in the first decade of the 20th century—as a sporadic collector of pre-WWI romance novels I’m now inspired to go looking for some of those early gems. Wonder if the earliest ones were hardcovers or pulp paperbacks?
The early Mills & Boons were all hardbacks. They didn’t have paperbacks until the late 50s/early 60s:
During the years from 1958 until 1964, the commercial libraries were winding down, and the transition to paperbacks was under way, but not yet complete. In 1964 Mills & Boon started printing paperback novels in Britain (as opposed to importing a limited number of novels printed in Canada), allowing a fuller saturation of the home market. Readers responded – and profits rose annually. By 1966 paperbacks represented 50 per cent of Mills & Boon’s turnover, and were the most profitable half of the business. (McAleer 114)
So presumably Harlequin were printing M&Bs;as paperbacks a little bit earlier. It’s also worth noting that for decades M&B;didn’t just print romances. Particularly in the beginning they published other types of fiction, and even once they began to specialise in romance for their fiction list, they kept publishing some educational works. For example, “By 1968 Mills & Boon was publishing 130 hardback and 72 paperback romances a year, and 30 titles in the General and Educational list” (McAleer 130).
McAleer, Joseph. Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.
I just assumed it would be a video too; didn’t bother to click the link. Still pics I can look at okay, though. Could one of the New Zealanders on board please explain the signifigance of whatever they’ve got lettered on their bums?
-Liz
ran31: 31 naked rugby players ran around a field…
The naked rugby is…nice. I’ll take the #7, to go.
Guys who rescue baby ducks are hot.
“hard79” the verification phrase.
Tom Selleck cake and “hard79”
Really at his prime in ‘79.
If they played in the nude all the time, I could see myself becoming a rugby fan.
bed45: show me a pic of #45, then I’ll decide if I’ll bed him.
Hey, the New England Revolution management tackled that nude guy on American Airlines who was trying to open the departure door, so it’s like a whole theme thing lately.
If only you could get an airline package that included the New England Revolution naked with your peanuts and gingerale.
Dude, I would so buy that ticket.
werd: section19 any section with naked soccer players, thanx
Thanks for the purple prose link. I found that book torturous to read (so torturous, in fact, that the sex scene didn’t even register). I’ll have to add that to my review when I put it back up. With lines like this, who notices bad sex scenes:
“…wondering if she could possibly be pregnant in spite of the vestigial coil still lodged in her uterus like astronaut litter abandoned on the moon.â€
job96: Reading that book was a job.
#1, Woodcock (is that really his name?) is simply a work of art from behind. That first photo from SBSarah’s link, he’s on the right and twisted, catching the ball. I swear, it reminds me of a Bernini sculpture. And, as seen in Jackie’s link, he’s simply got one might fine ass.
I have to admit, though, that I spent the most time watching a lot of the haka clips on YouTube, though. I loved the New Zealand haka vs. Tonga sipa tau the best.
Why isn’t there a naked Haka video? I could really get behind (or in front of) that . . .
Mmmm, naked rugby players.
sales12: It might increase sales of rugby tickets . . .
Comedy gold is right! This is a classic example of when pulling out the “writer’s toolbox” of similes and metaphors is a bad idea: when it means pulling out an image that should not EVER be related to the item you’re comparing it too. I mean, “lank as the neck of a dead swan”? Seriously? Who would write that in a sex scene unless it’s a RAPE scene and has totally different connotations. Oie vey!
Tina C~I followed Sarah’s link to the team and looked up the roster~that is most def. his real name!! Truth is stranger than fiction and all that!
http://www.allblacks.com/index.cfm?layout=playerProfile&playerID=1132
OMG! Is that sex scene really real?? And…someone actually published it?? Hmm…maybe I should think about adding dead swans to my sex scenes.
Tina C—
Absolutely right about Woodcock. That’s such an elegant position. I’m amazed the photographer was lucky enough to catch it.
OMG! I want a rugby player and a piece of cake!! Maybe I can feel pleasure in my sex balloon and then go dead like a swan.
God, I love this site. It never fails to make me laugh.
Spam word: serious35 NOT!
I am so glad to read those passages by Rebecca Miller—so very, very glad. She stole my intended from me. Now her ballooning sex . . . it bursteth all over the blogosphere!
Serves the bitch right. (Give Daniel back, damn it!)
(Heh. Just had to rub it in.)
CLUE to the author of the article: sex is a noun, dumbass. And, yes, sensations can shoot down your legs, unless some sort of spinal injury or degeneration prevents that from happening.
Jackie, you’re my hero. Thanks for the haka link!
How come the World Federation of Hot Naked Rugby Men is never the second convention booked at any of the Romance Writers of America national conferences, huh? We always get Tupperware, Avon, etc. Had church ladies one year. Sweet, yes. Hot… well, maybe deep down inside? I think I’ll jot off a note to RWA right now and see if we can move our next con to NZ.
I think someone mentioned it a ways up but the numbers on their asses are players for New Zealand. The video of the haka is their newer one and never fails to give me goose bumps. Seeing it live is also incredibly cool, real heart in mouth stuff.
If you want to check out any srsyly hot players, cause yeah I am such a perve, have a look for Daniel Carter, underwear model hottie extraordinaire!
I think the writer was more objecting to the use of “sex” to mean “genitals,” which is something I find squicky, too. But poor phrasing on her part, absolutely.
Oh my sweeties, you HAVE to watch this one. It’s worth looking at twice. Oh, three times ;-).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaJSGky4F4U&feature=related
Glad you peeps liked the nekkid rugby. I wandered across it on Dlisted and figured we could all use a *ahem* pick me up.
*fans self*
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Here are another couple of photos
WARNING: for those that don’t want to see any dangly bits, don’t look at the 2nd photo
Speaking of teeth hurting, if this cake were mine I’d never eat it. No matter how much I wanted cake
Nor I, though I suspect my reasons are different. The Tom Selleck chest hair was a good idea, but it failed in execution. All those chocolate jimmies look like a bunch of just-hatched maggots. I couldn’t look at the picture for long without envisioning them writhing around. Ewww…
To read even more hilariously awful sex scenes fom published fiction, click here:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,331379643-99819,00.html
How to keep your teenagers from indiscriminately getting it on: force them to read some of this crap! It may put them off the act for life.
Jackie, ShellBell, thanks for the links. One can never have too much naked rugby male.
I second Gennita’s insistence that you must see the face-off between rugby players doing the haka and a Scottish team, found here.
If the link doesn’t work then here’s the bottom line: the bare-chested Scots watch impassively as the NZ players do the haka, and then they simply lift their kilts.
It likely “bursteth” along with the “steaming pile of poo”, from Friday’s entry.
OMG, as usual I am choking whilst laughing reading this site…
And, naked rugby players – why not – “maketh” my Sunday….
Seriously, there is one very gorgeous blonde Scot in that bunch that I definitely wouldn’t mind having. XD I love the “****! We’re going to die.” looks from the opposite teams.
and naked rugby for the win.