Here, have a tour of different awesome things to read on the internet. Links and how to wear them!
From Tamara: The NY Times and others are reporting that several libraries in the US, including one in California that wasn’t in too bad of shape, have been taken over by a private company. The outcry is vaguely reported, and the article makes it seem like the major cripping factor is the pensions of the library employees. How much would that suck, by the way? One day you’re a state or city employee with a pension and retirement fund, and the next you’re a potential employee of a private company offering a (401)k and no pension? Ouch.
Do you live in one of the towns with a privately-managed library system? What do you think?
Moving on to other private enterprises: Danielle Steel has fallen out of love with romance novels. That’s nice. She didn’t write them to begin with.
“They’re not really about romance … I really write more about the human condition,” she said. “[Romance] is an element in life but I think of romance novels as more of a category and I write about the situations we all deal with – loss and war and illness and jobs and careers, good things, bad things, crimes, whatever.”
Steel is the point of reference for so many people outside the genre when they ask me about romance novels. Fact is, most people think she’s romance. So it’s actually rather useful for her to declaim the romance connection because my response to the “Oh, like Danielle Steel?” comment is usually, “Oh, no, she doesn’t write romance. Romance is actually better than Steel, and uses far fewer ellipses.”
Thanks to Rebecca for the link.
Speaking of breaking yourself to avoid the romance cooties, Maureen Johnson’s recent essay is so entirely awesome, particularly in her discussion of genre type and gender. Thanks to JD and Christine and many others for the link.
And finally, Kathy sent this article that totally has me running for the shelf of Romance That Shalt Not Be Touched: the 99 page test is, according to this person’s report, is a better evaluative technique for a book than reading the first page. This has worked for me with a few of Nora Roberts’ books, but I haven’t tried it on the rest of the library yet. Does this test work for you? What’s your 99th page test result?
Hi Sarah:
Am a bit confused as to why you state Danielle Steel is not romance. How so? I’ve read a few of them myself and while they are all the same, I’d definitly say they were romance. Her novels always revolve around a fortyish -fiftyish woman who finds love for the second or third time. With your comment of “That’s nice. She didn’t write them to begin with.”, I thought you meant she was just a “brand” name with a team of writer slaves pumping out her novels, (ala Tom Clancy) thus not really writing them. But I don’t think this is what you meant.
Just because she’s a crappy romance writer doesn’t mean she doesn’t write romance. 🙂
So tell me, (I really an interested in your response!) how is Danielle Steel not romance?
I don’t know if Danielle Steel writes romance or not, but holy cow I can’t stand her books! I don’t need to have my heroine dragged through the gutter of life before getting her HEA! I have enough crap in my own life, so I prefer not to spend my entertainment time suffering with someone else!
I’m going to try the 99th page test on some of my keepers and my TBRs. Maybe that’s how I can decided which ones I’ll make time to read.
Thanks for mentioning the library story. Librarians have been upset by the recent statements of the CEO of LSSI, the private equity owned company which is the main player in the for profit running of public libraries. He accuses librarians of sitting around, doing nothing for 30+ years and walking away with large pensions. I, for one, am happy that LSSI has finally come out with what they really think of libraries and the people who work in them. The LSSI comments feed into the current popularity of bashing the tax funded worker. I didn’t become a librarian to get rich, and with 30 years of work ahead of me (at least), have no anticipation of a cushy retirement. I’m a librarian because I believe in the power of having an institution in the community whose purpose is intellectual enrichment, however that gets defined by those who use us. Libraries should shoulder some of the service decreases that every public agency is facing at this time, but handing tax money to a private firm that fires all the employees, hires some of them back at reduced wages and benefits and then crows about their profits is just wrong.
My first introduction to a sex scene in a book was a DS my friend Connie swiped from her mom. I remember sitting in Connie’s closet all agog at the whole thing, but at the end! MAKING BREAKFAST WHILE NAKED WHAT WAS THIS NEW WORLD.
But I’ve never actually read any of her other stuff, and really am not interested in doing so. She always seemed like an author for middle aged, grown up people, and I want my fabulous clothing, dammit.
But I am a completeist and a glutton for punishment. There have been a few books where I had to work at finishing them. Mostly, I finish what I’ve started. Sometimes for longer books it takes multiple tries (Shogun is something I’m going to need a third try, Mists of Avalon took four before I finished it, Les Miserables took more times than I care to admit BUT IT WAS UNABRIDGED YO).
I kind of take a similar approach to new TV shows- I’m VERY forgiving of pilots, and will give things that I think are terrible a few more episodes to see what happened between shooting the pilot and the actual pick up (Outlaw being a notable case- but then, Jimmy Smits), but if I hate everyone on the screen but the baby (I’m looking at you, Raising Hope) than 20 minutes is all you’re going to get out of me.
THANK YOU!!! I agree… I’m definitely one of the people who don’t see DS as a romance writer. I think some of her earlier stuff could qualify, and yeah, there might be romantic elements, but that doesn’t make it romance.
Maureen Johnson’s article is interesting. I see where she’s going (works by male authors dominate the canon), but as the mother of a boy who is smart but doesn’t like to read, I think she’s kind of missing the point of the “boys reading” issue.
I wish my brilliant son shared my love of reading. I wish he would read something other than Pokemon, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, and nonfiction about space. Books I enjoyed as a kid (Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Twain, Lewis, Eager) don’t appeal to him. I don’t think making him study female authors in school is going to help that—a lot of the time required reading in grade school is implemented so badly by the teachers that it ends up souring the kids on the works studied. I’d be happy enough for him to read Twain or Stephenson or Hardy Boys or any classic “boy” books but as it is I’m off to get him a Guinness Book of World Records because I know he will read it and that’s something.
When it comes to reading, I don’t think my son is all that unusual.
I always thought Danielle Steel wrote romances, but bad, painful ones. About 20 years ago after reading horrifying description of childbirth in one of her books, I have never picked another of hers up again. Honestly, now that I’m thinking about it, all I can remember is that her heroines had tons of kids (hate that) and …. actually that’s it. And the horrifying childbirth. Bleh.
As for privatizing libraries… can’t comment. Too infuriated.
So for those of us who read ebooks the equivalent to the 99-page test would be to go to around 30% into the book, I guess.
@ Joy: Things that are worth a shot: Jack London, Walter Farley, possibly the Misty of Chicoteague books by Marguerite Henry. Rick Riordan (especaially if he has any interest in Greek or Egyptian mythology) is AWESOME and I LOVE HIM (and the movie is crap), Harry Potter, of course.
I work at Borders to put myself through school, and this is a question that comes up a lot- what do boys read? There’s a bunch of series (Redwall, Rangers Apprentice, the Warriors with the owls or whatever) that I haven’t read, but seem to move pretty well.
Hi Mary!
I am of the opinion that Steel does not write romance for a few reasons:
1. Not always a happy ending. The love story she spends the majority of a book building, particularly in her last 10-15 novels, is going to end, and likely end badly.
2. More attention to the historical setting and the heroine than the romance/courtship. See above also re: happy ending. There’s an ending for one of them, usually him, and it’s usually death.
I loved some of her earlier books, especially Star and Zoya – I still think about the trainwreck of omgwtf that was Zoya – but I do not at all consider her romance, and if you read one of her novels and followed with a historical romance like “The Spymaster’s Lady” or “Seven Nights to Forever” you’d notice a marked difference in the emphasis and focus on the protagonists and focus on the courtship/emotional journey.
This is my favorite Steel review. Enjoy.
For boys reading: if they’ve outgrown Rick Riordan and Redwall, I recommend Terry Pratchett, either his juvies or the Night Watch series, starting with Guards! Guards! (I work at Borders too!)
I’m surprised that more people haven’t heard of the 99 page test, although I personally think that’s too far into the book, and potentially spoilery (especially if we’re talking about a 200 page category)
As a librarian (when not sitting around waiting for my pension), I have for decades told patrons to “Double your age. Now read that page of the book. Do you want to keep reading?” This nicely accounts for the different lengths of books aimed (roughly) at different audiences, and also gives people the feeling that the “rule” was designed “just for me.”
And I was taught this trick by a librarian who was probably using it back when books were chiselled on clay tablets, so…
99 pages is as good a number as any to trial a book. Now where is that 99th page in my e-book? Perhaps it is location 1000-1200? Of course I will have to buy the e-book to do this readability test for non-print items.
About contracting out library work, well that just ruins any idea of long-term collection plans. Any schemes to develop grants to bolster puny budgets are gone with the dedicated library staff as well. Which is really a shame.
Hi, Joy,
Keeping boys reading for pleasure is one of the great challenges of the English teacher. How old is your son? Is he more or less at grade level for his age?
If he’s a high-schooler reading non-fiction about space, and you think he could stretch into more adult material, why not consider some popular non-fiction about science and math, like James Gleick’s CHAOS, or J.E. Gordon’s STRUCTURES; OR WHY THINGS DON’T FALL DOWN? If he tends to read more at the DIARY OF A WIMPY KID level, I’d definitely check out the work of Walter Dean Myers, especially MONSTER and FALLEN ANGELS. If you don’t object to profanity and sexual activity (well, I assume you don’t object to sex in books, since you’re on this blog, but just in case), I liked Coe Booth’s novel TYRELL, and it entranced a number of my reluctant readers last year. It’s first person, written in a very true idiom (hence the cursing), and the title character strikes me as a modern update of Huck Finn – someone who is forced to calibrate his own moral compass, because he is essentially an outcast.
I hope you find something your son enjoys. Why not ask his teachers as well? They probably have a good idea of the juvenile or YA fiction published around their grade level.
Cheers.
Spamword: report27 – I squirm 27 different ways when I hear that elementary school students are made to write reports as “punishment.” Way to kill a love of reading and writing.
Danielle Steel, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a worse writer. I’ve picked her books up hoping for another Judith Krantz…. tried her audiobooks on several occasions when I wanted something light to listen to on a long drive. Her work reads like she accidentally published the bland outline of a book instead of the actual finished book.
I think the only one I managed to get all the way through was Amazing Grace as an audiobook. The plot had promise, but the characters, the dialogue – ug! – a perfect storm of syrupy, wooden, cliche, banal, and ridiculous wish-fulfillment. I wanted them all to die horribly in an aftershock (the book took place after an earthquake).
So, keep her out of the romance genre; it deserves better. While we’re at it, can we remove her oeuvre from English letters altogether? At least Bulwer-Lytton could come up with a catchy phrase!
Sorry for the rant… returning to lurkerhood now.
Re: The Times Article
“Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.” Yes, they have!
This scares me, once libraries are run by private companies what’s to stop them from deciding what books to carry?
These are frightening times.
Thanks for the suggestions. My son is 9 and reads above grade-level in terms of ability, but he’s still very much a kid in his approach to things. I think we’ll be avoiding the sexy books for a few years yet—I don’t have objections to cursing/sex in general but it’s not age-appropriate for him at this point.
The best reaction he’s had to any fiction I’ve recommended for him is that he didn’t MIND reading it too much. He just seems to have little interest for 95% of fiction. And in the remaining 5%, he seems to prefer tie-ins to his favorite computer games and TV shows (Pokemon, Club Penguin, Ben 10, etc.). I know some people just aren’t cut out to be readers…but he’s MY KID ::cry:: I just want to recommend a book to him and have him say that he enjoyed it.
I read a few Danielle Steele books years and years ago – we’re talking 20 years ago. Then one time I was reading one, and was so tired of the tragedy after tragedy, and read my 15th run-on sentence that went on for lines and lines and lines, and I threw the book down and never picked up another one.
I’m glad she has fans – I don’t see the draw myself, but then, I don’t have to. Just please, God, don’t make me read one.
My son is 11 years old and finding books for him is a process which I am committed to. Thank god for Harry Potter.
But after Harry I still had issues. He loves Diary of a Wimpy kid and Captain Underpants (when he was much younger). He, luckily, had a 4th grade teacher who was mad about graphic novels and got him into the Bone series by Jeff Smith which is really quite a well done fantasy epic over eight volumes.
It was a great jumping off point for him to get into some fantasy. She also intro’d him to a prose/graphic hybrid Malice by Chris Wooding (this book has the COOLEST 3-d cover). We are venturing out and we are finding a nice mix of longer form novels and graphic/prose hybrids. yeah, they are not the classics but many of them are very well done and keep him interested and reading.
@Joy I might be wrong but it sounds like you are equating reading with reading fiction. If your son enjoys non-fiction and not novels, then I don’t think pushing novels is the best idea. Actually a lot of males prefer non-fiction, magazines and newspapers to novels. For more challenging non-fiction, try the Sibert award: http://ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/sibertmedal/index.cfm
@ Joy – I’m chiming in with Sarah Mae…
Reading is reading – its all good. You might like to take a look at:
http://www.guysread.com/
It is a website put together by Jon Scieszka and friends, and there are some terrific suggestions.
/soapbox
I’ve never called it the 99 page test (or really called it anything) but for years if I’m looking for a book to read I’ll flip a prospective tome open to about a third or so in to see how well it reads. Of course this has hidden dangers as this might reveal an important plot twist before I’ve even started to find out who’s who and what’s what.
Naturally, when it came to Zebra hysterical romances, I would immediatly to go the middle/post card section because that area always guaranteed a love scene and I could judge whether this was worth my time or not.
But yeah, how are we supposed to do this test for ebooks?
Man, I’m just full of typos today.
@ Joy et al. I just wanted to add my two cents- my husband is one of the smartest and most well rounded people I’ve ever met, but he never read any fiction as a child. In fact, he mainly played video games, with some non-fiction, instructional reading. His mother is a rabid reader, as is his older brother (so some boys do read, apparently), and she was at her wits end to try to get him interested, but nothing worked. Even now, he only sometimes reads fiction (almost exclusively fantasy or science fiction), and does tend to read things like physics textbooks for pleasure. However, despite this lack of reading, he is an excellent writer (non-fiction), and extremely knowledgeable about most things not involving fiction. He is also very creative (paints, plays multiple musical instruments, sews, creates truffles). Therefore, I have concluded that reading books as a child is not that important as long as the child can read/write well.
Despite this, I, as someone who read non-stop as a child, am sad that my 3 year old son appears to be completely uninterested in books or being read to. He is already outstanding with computers and video games, so, clearly, that’s his thing. Meanwhile, my 1 year old daughter can’t toddle past a book without plopping down, picking it up, and riffling through the pages. Sigh.
@Joy. I agree with Sarah Mae and JodyS – if he likes non-fiction or tie-in books, thats great – at least he’s reading. If you want to try to get him interested in fiction, you might want to try graphic novels – a friend of mine’s boys who are roughly the same age as your son love them. If you want to keep trying chapter fiction books, you might want to suggest he try Kenneth Oppel’s books – great adventure stories.
I used to read Danielle Steele when I was a teenager back when I didn’t know any better 😉
However, I always put her books in the Romance section of our UBS. That is where her readers look for them. No point putting them anywhere else.
I am really going to have to try this 99 page thing. Mind you I don’t think it will work with category romances. Maybe page 49 for those.
I’ve read exactly one Steele book and will never read another. It was Big Girl – her “fat girl romance.”
First off, I never saw the book as a romance as it focused too much on her childhood with her verbally abusive parents. The love came at the end of the book with no real character development. I hated how she just ups and lets her sister marry a guy who cheats on her instead of doing the right thing and denouncing him at the wedding as a cheating SOB – with evidence. I totally would’ve hired a PI to follow him and show video and photographic evidence of him cheating humiliating him in front of the entire wedding party, then said to the sister, “If you still marry him don’t come crying to me when he gives you HIV.”
Most of all, the biggest size she ever is in the entire book – a 16. In America the average size now is 12. 16 is NOT fat. I’m a 22/24. I’M fat. She’s just ordinary.
I’ve used a lot of modern media to hook my son into reading. After the movie, we went through the series of How to Train Your Dragon. Same reading level as Wimpy Kid, I think. My son is a huge fan of classic Beverley Cleary – the Henry Huggins series and the Motorcycle Mouse guy – and he’s even reading the “girl” ones with Ramona b/c he got hooked by the books on tape in the car. Stockard Channing reads all the Ramona books, and she’s awesome – inspires me to be a better mother – I ask “What would Ramona’s mom do?” when I’m losing it. Now my son reads Ramona during free read at school (his little sister IS Ramona).
Nonfiction: David Macaulay, all of them (except we weren’t huge fans of the human body one). Underground was fascinating for a city kid obsessed with transit. He and his non-fiction loving dad spent many nights together with The New Way Things Work. The series has cute videos we checked out of our local library to hook into the book. Also try The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher. Spent some of the summer scouting out the port, the sewage facility, etc after reading that.
And – it might sound morbid – but many boys of a certain age are deeply intrigued by the Titanic. We have quite a collection of books, including ones aimed at adults, that my son loves. DVR the classic 1958 movie “A Night to Remember” – no Leo schmaltz, just the facts and really focused on the crew’s experiences. We branched out to various Andrea Doria books and The Terrible Hours (SS Squalus – submarine rescue). If he’s at the computer age, the Titanic can also be really fun family internet research. There are many great shipwreck sites and ocean liner sites, and of course fabulous old folk music to listen to – anyone else remember singing the Guthrie “When that Great Ship went Down” in Girl Scouts? Not to mention the zillion people who build Titanics out of everything from Legos to milk cartons and sink them in swimming pools and put it on youtube – again something your son might really like to do. (Oh geez – I sound like a freak. Just don’t get me started on Kikkoman!) There’s a Magic Treehouse Titanic book and some others, but my son prefers the Walter Lord classic. (no annoying kids)
(Full disclosure: my next novel has an immortal hero who had the rotten luck to be on the Titanic and the Lusitania, so he’s now an immortal Viking who won’t get on a boat).
“The56”: don’t get me started on the OTHER 56 sunken ships…
“Oh it was sad! (so sad!)
It was sad (too bad!)
Sad when the great ship went down
to the bottom of sea
(Uncles and aunts all the counselors lost their pants!)
It was sad when the great ship went down!”
Anna, that sounds like awesome. I need to read it!
Books for boys suggestions from a woman who read everything under the sun when she was a girl, and it didn’t matter if they were for boys or not…and who still reads a lot of YA fantasy and SF: Alfred Hitchock & the 3 Investigators (the originals) were great. I so wanted to be friends with these guys and have my own color of chalk! I second the Artemis Fowl suggestions, and I also really like Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series. The movie was kind of meh, but the books are great fun. The Young Bond series is good, too. It’s 007 before he was 007 in the original series time frame, as a boy at Eton in the 1930s.
@Joy, if you can stand another recommendation, the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer are great. Artemis is an evil genius, from a family of Irish thieves and there are fairies but not cute Disney fairies, action and technology plays a big part too.
Shoutout to redheaded girl and Becca! Hey, from another bookseller/IPT member!
I tried the 99 pager test and admit Ford was onto something. I took 5 very random books—Blameless by Gail Carriger; Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty; Miko Kings by LeAnne Howe; Miss Clare Remembers by Miss Read and You Suck by Christopher Moore—all passed the test.
There is a huge push for governments to “invest” in Private-Public Partnerships, or P3’s. Essentially, the government sells property or an institution to a private company, or leases it to them for a quarter century or more. The gov’t benefits by an immediate influx of cash.
However, the private company needs to make a profit, so they lay people off, stop doing maintenance, cut corners, and raise user rates. At the end of the lease, or the instant it become unprofitable, they dump the institution back on the gov’t in terrible shape. The practice has devastated the Philippines.
And every friggin’ time it comes up in the media, all the objections are boiled down to “unions don’t want to lose their cushy jobs and pensions”.
And even if that were the only reason (which it is NOT) why the friggin’ hell would people not object to losing their pensions? We pay into those for our entire careers.
Anyway, end rant. Here’s a link if anyone is interested in learning more about P3s.
When I learned it, it was (Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives).
@Joy, the message I got from the essay was not that boys need to read women authors, but that there’s not really a dearth of novels out there for boys. If boys aren’t reading, the problem is not a lack of available books, and it’s kind of insulting to females that there seems to be a movement afoot to push the market toward books for boys.
But if you’re looking for recommendations, my nephew LOVED Despereaux.
Finally, Danielle Steel: Bleh. I read one of hers, thought it was boring and depressing, and was never interested in trying again. I also don’t think she writes romance. Romances make you feel happy at the end.
Hey Redheadedgirl – the next book is awesome. I’m also trying to work in a Mighty Servant. A pretty awful ship to be on if you’re afraid of water. Unfortunately, while I’ve got my characters and plot, I don’t actually have it written … yet.
Ok, I always kinda felt like a freak because I didn’t like DS, but I am the only one in my family that reads romance, and DS was a big name outsiders could recognize.
As for boy books, I have an 11yo boy who is above grade level to the point the teachers/librarian cringe when they see me coming. Right now he is obsessive about “the 39 clues” series, the 10th and final book was just released in Sept. It is kind of like Magic Tree House for tweens without the magic but lots of facts about different countries, historical figures, science, arts, etc. He is also really into books by (kid you not) Pseudonymous Bosch. the series is refered to as “the secret series” The first book is called “the name of this book is secret” which generally generates a lot of confusion and wierd looks if you ask someone not familiar with children’s books for it. I think the 5th book just came out. He also likes the wimpy kid books (new one out in Nov). I try to find books that are fiction with lots of nonfiction facts otherwise he reads books that are just pages of random facts (OH YUCK! or OH YIKES! types). But reading is reading, and he doesn’t complain too much when he has to read a classic for school.
FYI – HAPPY BANNED BOOK WEEK!!!!
Artemis Fowl’s family is not just a criminal family – they’re the freaking Irish Mafia!
I love Artemis Fowl. You have to go to the UK Amazon site for it, but there’s a short story involving Artemis and Mulch that Colfer wrote for a reading festival.
@Joy:
I love books so much, I can’t help but add these ideas—I’m sorry if there’s nothing new here.
Did your son like the movie National Treasure? There’s a recent young reader series his age, adventures that take off from the movies.
Does he like puzzles? Tangrams? There’s a series by Blue Balliet (don’t think I’ve got the spelling right), one of which (not the first one) is called the Calder Caper—that should be enough to track the first one down (it has Vermeer in the title—I think Chasing Vermeer, but I’m not awake enough yet to be sure). The books are not _heavily_ illustrated, but the illustrations are key to solving the mystery, making the book somewhat interactive.
It seems what might be a concern in his reading choices is not so much the content as it is, perhaps, that he might be more focused on pictures and lists than gaining vocabulary and language skills. What about easing him into trivia books that don’t emphasize pictures? The Dangerous Book for Boys has short essays and trivia, but it also has activies, like compass reading and knot tying. And let’s face it, if he’s learning to tie knots from a book, he’s building comprehension skills.
Or what adult trivia books? The Feldman books, like, “Do Fish Drink Water?”, The Book of Useless Information, Mental Floss books, or even the Intellectual Devotionals (like the history one, that has history facts for every day of the year)? These are adult books, but they’re interesting, and information is presented in small bites, so you could ease him away from the lists.
Plus, he’ll have those annoyingly cool conversations with other kids—Did you know (insert noun) could (insert obscure unassociated verb)?
If you’re concerned content that may not be age appropriate, most have a table of contents or an index you can scan for objectionable materials. Definitely stay away from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers, which will be, for the most part, clever and unobjectionable, but will also have tidbits like, what sexual diseases famous people died from.
And there are some really good graphic novel/manga stories out there. In addition to Bone, by Smith, you might hunt for Hikaru no Go. The plot sounds kind of dull: a boy finds an old Go board, which turns out to be haunted by an ancient Go master; the boy lets the ghost compete through him. But, as the series progresses, the boy eventually decides to learn Go himself, and, at one surprisingly key match, decides to compete by himself, refusing to let the ghost play (and, surprisingly, losing!). I have no interest in Go, but the story compelled me simply because the main characters evolve, gradually but not in a boring way (I think it’s up to volume 17 or so); it wasn’t a repetetive wish-fullfillment of the boy and the ghost beating everyone else from the beginning. And as dull as it sounds, the go matches were engaging even though I still don’t understand the game.
Don’t get me wrong: there are still a lot of insipid comics out there with unrealistic sterotyped physical forms and predictably insipid plots. But there are also, if you can find those rare gems, some that are very much worth reading. And you might like them, too, so there would be that one crossover, that shared reading pleasure for the two of you, that you’re looking for.
I completely sympathize that it isn’t going to be Pokeman.
Oh, Sarah, that brain of yours amazes me. Thanks for sharing that review link.
I cut my teeth on Danielle Steele too many years ago when I first started reading “romance” novels in my late teens. At first I innocently gobbled her up like m&m’s, but after a few books you start to see that same old pattern evolving and then after awhile you get sick of falling in love with a character only to have them die or leave.
I read romance for a HEA, with some good hot sex thrown in for good measure. If I cry while reading one it better be from something the hero said to the heroine in his “I love you/can’t live without you” speech, not because he was hit by a bus!
When her book “Big Girl” came out I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about and downloaded the sample chapter on my Kindle. Boy, am I glad I didn’t pay one red cent for that piece of garbage. I couldn’t get through the first chapter without saying “Okay, we get it! Her parents are horrible people!! You don’t have to remind us of that fact in every single paragraph!” Awful, awful stuff.
The sad thing is because of her name alone and the fact that there are people who buy EVERYTHING she puts out, she will continue to write this unedited drivel and take up precious space on a bookshelf when there are other writers out there far better and more deserving of it than her.
Library Takeover by Privateers!
First Badness: they are cheating you:
Most libraries were built and are supported by taxpayers. Those city councils or county budgeteers who have voted to turn public libraries over to management by for-profit companies are hitting taxpayers in two ways: many of these companies are hedge funds—and the financial services lobbyists successfully kept them from being taxed on their gains. That means taxpayers are losing three ways: their public servants are being stripped of pension benefits they paid into; their taxes are going to hedge funds that reap the benefits of the public monies but don’t pay their fare share; and the incentive of business to make a profit means cutting corners on everything from salaries to maintenance—which means less money will be circulated in the community where the library—or other public building—is located.
Second badness: like big box bookstores, commercial “libraries” could end up with the same fast food menu mentality that serves up only the best sellers (and publishers pay for shelf space) which may mean you won’t find the new/old unusual books you want.
Third badness: When educators in certain places are being “encouraged” to teach certain types of “science” and eliminate anything that doesn’t hew the line of religious belief, what will happen when libraries are in the hands of privateers who care only about the bottom line?
DON”T LET THIS HAPPEN IN YOUR COMMUNITY!
forces13: may the Force be with you X 13
that’s funny, I consider my first romance to be Palomino by Ms. Steele. it had a HEA, it had angst, it had some humpity action, and an orphan to boot! Whatever, Ms. Steele. Your perogative, I suppose. The stuff she writes now is not nearly as good as the stuff she wrote when I was cutting my teeth on romance. I don’t tend to read her stuff unless someone hands me a book to read and says its good stuff. 🙂
As for libraries being taken over privately, it can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. First, it could mean better funding and that means the libraries can stay open (an all too sad problem today, so many close) and may buy more new titles (our local library is woefully lacking in newer books, or can’t afford ot buy the whole series). It may also mean more things like e-book/reader borrowing or ordering services could be augmented with equipment the publicly-run library couldn’t afford. You never know what the private company’s philosophy is, I think. it could be honorable and want to keep the library a wonderful place to read, learn, and discover.
The bad part? Potential corporate advertising (gah!), less variety and more focus on certain type of readers, higher borrowing/card fees, or having the library basically become like a massive Chapters/Indigo (sorry, I’m a Canuck) that you borrow instead of buy from, with a store section (eep!). Also, the employees go from being a pensioned/unionized stable workforce to not. Boo.
Ok, I need to go get a coffee, I’m using parentheses (way) too much…. *thud* TGIF
I love Maureen Johnson’s link to the Nicholas Sparks interview and how desperate he is not to be linked to romance novels. The phobia is hysterical.