Bitchery reader Lynn sent me an email that tickled me so much, I nearly fell off my chair laughing.
I was recently wandering around the internet searching for a new category author to add to my ebook library because my personal mission is to help insure the solvency of Books on Board. I came across Annie West through an old recommendation to you from Courtney Milan and, as I was reading through the titles in her back list, I pulled up Protected by the Prince and read the back of the book description. The third thing I thought after reading it was that I had to share it with you.
Right there in the back of the book copy was the phrase “…and he finds himself drawn to her burgeoning purity!” (exclamation point included) and, well, my first thought was What? I was mystified, as my understanding of those two words made their usage together puzzling, so I looked up the definition of burgeoning and then I looked up the definition of purity and my second thought was double What?! Is this any relation to ripening virginity or possibly the shy younger sister of fermenting sexuality?
Although it’s a humdinger, I’m fairly certain it is not the wildest hyperbole out there; so I thought you might pose a question to your readership as to their favorite What?! moment in flap copy, back of book copy, or cover blurbology. I can see a good game of one-upmanship in the making and would love to know what turn of phrase tops “burgeoning purity”.
Lynn isn’t even kidding: here’s the cover copy.
Prince Alaric of Ruvingia is as wild and untamed as the remote kingdom he rules. Women fight to warm his royal bed, but he ensures that none outstays her welcome. Then reserved, bespectacled archivist Tamsin Connors uncovers a shocking state secret….
Now Tamsin has Alaric’s undivided attention—and he finds himself drawn to her burgeoning purity! Duty demands only a temporary arrangement…but soon their powerful passion is enough to fuel a lifetime’s love….
I’ve got a crisp burgeoning dollar (US) that nothing tops “burgeoning purity.” My burgeoning curiosity is hopping to see your answers to this burgeoning question on cover copy because it is burgeoning awesome. Do your worst: what cover copy description sent your burgeoning eyebrows to your hairline?
I recently came across this gem in the bookstore. The title was ” Amnesiac Ex, Unforgettable Vows”
From the back blurb of Patricia Potter’s Wanted:
And yes, this is the hero. Who is identical to her brother. What, you mean that’s not normal??
Does it take place in Kentucky?
My, oh my but the absolute political incorrectness of that is making me smile. I’m guessing Coulter didn’t go the completely authentic route of putting the cats in sacks and releasing them in the dead of night. I feel compelled to read Lyon’s Gate now and I suppose The Sherbrooke Twins comes along for the ride. $8.99 for the ebook of Lyon’s Gate (ouch) means I’ll be going the PBSwap route for these gems.
language34: Finally, a CAPTCHA I can work with. If you play your language right, 3 plus 4 no longer equals 7.
I think this may be an appropriate place to revive my favorite romance line ever. It was in a HABO months ago, and the mystery of the book itself remains tragically unsolved.
“Sure, he loved pot roast, but he was careening completely out of control here.”
Cause nothing says hot sexy lovin’ like… pot roast?
Spamcode: lay68… the heroine got laid 68 times that week as a result of her aphrodisiac pot roast recipe.
I am not sure that this tops “burgeoning purity” but when I was 16 I read a book where the couple starts to have sex and the writer writes that the hero unhooked her bra and “her breasts flew free like two doves released from a cage”. That sentence did untold damage to my brain! For the record, this was not a romance it was a horror novel which is fitting since I was certainly horrified.
Laughed so hard the dog ran outside through the dog door! Fabio as a Cherokee on a cover? “Cat races?” Come on. If you can’t herd cats, how can you race them? Although I assume this refers to big cats, not house cats. Heroes looking like an older brother (set in Arkansas, maybe?)
“Aphrodisiac pot roast?” Hey, if anybody comes across that recipe, please e-mail SB Sarah so she can post it here! With proper credit, of course.
This one stopped me in my tracks at the used book store:
Eloise James- Pleasure for Pleasure
“Josephine has barely appeared at her first ball before she’s labeled the “Scottish Sausage.”“
Er….what???????
Sadly, I set it down to chase a kiddo down and forgot to pick it back up again so I still have no idea WTF they are talking about.
That one earns a very unladylike snort from me! I think we have a “weiner.” (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
Let me guess – Nick is actually Morgan’s long lost twin whom the Bradens adopted?
(My first guess was even more soap-operish – maybe “cold-eyed lawman” for plot-related reasons had a plastic surgery to look like some guy from some old portrairt, and this guy just happened to be Bradens’ ancestor… )
This sounds strangely…yummy. I am tempted to buy this. Should I not go romance-shopping on an empty stomach? Or maybe it’s just been too long since I read a romance about a full-figured heroine. They are too few and far between.
Jessi, that blurb on Jayne Castle’s ‘After Glow’ was clearly supposed to be witty/funny/ironic. Obviously humour that doesn’t come off is a problem, but I think that most people who had read ‘Bridal Jitters’ and ‘After Dark’ — or, indeed, most of Jayne’s other books —would ‘get’ the intended tone.
I know Tracy- and wait, wouldn’t you think the hero would be the “Scottish Sausage”? Still don’t know WTF they were talking about….
can42- can somebody please help?
Josephine was a little pudgy and one of the young rakes who made a name for himself with clever insults called her the “Scottish Sausage.” Quite a good book actually. The series is one of my favorites from Eloisa James. If you prefer your scottish sausage a bit more traditional, the second book in that series, “Kiss Me, Annabel” has a Scottish hero.
Pleasure for Pleasure by Eloisa James is one of my top 5 best books I’ve read! Its a awesome book! Josie is supposed to be a full figured heroine and she wore a girdle or something and some jerk labled her that at the start of her first season out! I’m sorry that the blurb ruined it for you! The heroine on the cover is stick thin and NO Josie, that bothered me!
I don’t mind body parts committing action – hearts melt and yearn and lodge in throats, fingers itch to touch, souls tremble and eyes rove. Without metaphor life is boring.
What really annoys me is when body parts are ascribed emotions. My candidate for all time worst song line ever is by George Michael in Careless Whispers “…never gonna dance again / guilty feet have got no rhythm…”
Feet do not suffer guilt!!! That’s the stupidest line ever!
It’s the little things that drive me nuts.
little87 – I had a little crush on George in 1987. Wasn’t all that surprised when he professed allegiance to the other team, tho.
I loved the cat racing and on Amazon.com, you can read several pages of a cat race in Coulter’s Pendragon.
I also love Jayne Castle’s books and as AsTigress said, the blurb was intended to be funny and totally cracked me up. Interestingly, I just checked my copy to confirm a point I wanted to make but saw that the back cover blurb for the 9th edition that I have, does not have that phrase. After the sentence about the “eerie, glowing green passageways of the Dead City” it says:
The 5th edition that is shown on Amazon.com, and Jayne’s own website, still include the dress thing, though. The point I wanted to investigate was that I don’t recall the heroine being all that concerned about her dress, which made the back cover even funnier. And the quote is:
(Melanie is the heroine’s friend and helped her buy an actual ball gown. Which she wasn’t going to get and only bought as form of revenge.)
Great posts that also cracked me up. But I’ve gotta say that burgeoning purity is the definite winner!
(Aside: I am trying to use the formatting offered above the text entry box, so if this post looks funny—it’s not my fault! Well, except if you think it’s the content that’s funny—that I guess is my fault.)
I loved this blurb so much, that after my copy of No Wind of Blame fell apart and I replaced it with a differen edition, I tore off the back cover to keep. It’s the italics that really get me.
PROFIT AND LOSS
No one cared that Wally Carter was dead. Certainly not fleshy Ermyntrude Carter, Wally’s flamboyant wife. Good riddance to bad rubbish! As for Ermyntrude’s impossibly intense teen-age daughter and Wally’s vapid ward, Mary, the inheritance money was *so* consoling. Strong, silent, *strange* Robert Steel and tall, dark, *phony* Prince Alexis Varasashvili danced graveside attendance on the overly merry widow, while shady Harold White (under-the-counter business partner of the deceased) heaved a sigh of relief. No one cared that Wally Carter was dead. Pity. But someone had cared enough to shoot him through the chest. Who the devil could it be? Asked absolutely super Inspector Hemingway.
Thanks for clearing that up everyone! I am gonna have to go back and get the book!
Susan
I’m pretty sure they are indeed housecats.
I was 15 when I disgustedly put that book down, but now I’m thinking I might go read them!
Well, they have turtle races at one of our local Renaissance festivals. (Wrote the impure mutant- think I need a T-shirt with “I’m an Impure Mutant.” Great conversation starter.)
Hmmm. No.
Language is full of figures of speech that cannot and should not be taken literally. Only the most basic level of learner’s English (or any other language) is written without any embellishments in the form of metaphors, similes and other rhetorical devices.
If I say that someone was ‘incandescent with rage’, we know that she was not literally ablaze, emitting quantities of heat and light. I get irritated only when the word ‘literally’ is used to mean its opposite —as in ‘she was literally incandescent with rage’. That is common these days, and it is a solecism, though perhaps in time, ‘literally’ will take on that meaning, just as ‘egregious’ now means the exact opposite of its original meaning. But attributing feelings and sensations to body-parts (‘my heart aches for the victims’) is perfectly acceptable. If we are to demand literal meaning, then I am a good deal more bothered by a heart jumping into someone’s throat, or melting, than I am about it aching or yearning, to be honest. But everyone knows that ‘heart’ is being used with the traditional symbolism of ‘seat of the emotions’, not with the meaning of ‘specialised muscle that pumps blood around the body’.
We tend to notice infelicities only when the use of metaphor is a little clumsy. Poetry is almost unthinkable without figures of speech, and good, elegant English prose usually contains plenty of them too. If they leap out at us and create an inappropriate picture, it is not because of the *literal* definition, but because the writer is unskilled.
As a bespectacled Tamsyn, I’m actually going red reading that. Smut with my name on it! Egads! (My name usually only shows up in worthy historical sagas about Cornwall.)
@AgTigress Could you give me an example of egregious now meaning the opposite of what it really means? I thought it meant “blatant’ or overly obvious or overstated and when I dictionary.com-ed it that is kind of what it says. I tend to be overly colloquial, but it is one of my favorite words. Also, ‘gratuitous’. Always appreciate your comments.
@Virginia Llorca – I never hear or see the word “egregious” without thinking of the very early “Yes, Minister” episode when Hacker sees the word applied to himself and says:
It was the first time I heard the word “egregious” and the first time I understood a joke about connotation vs. denotation.
In fact, according to my shorter OED the first definition is: “remarkably good; outstanding, striking; distinguished; excellent” However the OED lists this definition as “mid 16th Century now RARE.” The second definition, which is currently more common is “remarkable in a bad sense; gross, flagrant; shocking.” That definition is late 16th century, so it appears that the two meanings were in competition for a while and the latter one eventually won out.
So Sir Humphrey is technically correct (as always), but also able to laugh at his uncouth minister. I loved Sir Humphrey. (I still mourn Nigel Hawthorne.) Come to think of it, Humphrey’s “egregious” command of English probably paved the way for my falling in love with Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey when he defends the meaning of the word “nice.” (Another lost battle.)
If they leap out at us and create an inappropriate picture, it is not because of the *literal* definition, but because the writer is unskilled.
Typically insightful of you, AgTigress. I was thinking about this when I heard a new song today (altho a simile, not a metaphor): “Hold yourself together like a pair of bookends.” That makes no damn sense. I said, “that’s a ridiculous simile. What’s it even mean? It’s not even a good rhyme with the rest of the song.” And Diva said “Moommmm – can’t you just listen to the song without overanalyzing everything?” Why, no. No I can’t.
@kinsey I like the idea behind guilty feet but, if that type of personification makes you nuts, get as nutty as you want. I go wallbanger crazy over authorial intrusion. Alas, our likes and dislikes are as dust when the tigress is on the prowl.
@AgTigress Literally incandescent with rage got me thinking. As to the solecism issue, I suppose it depends on whether you’re using literally as a qualifier for incandescent under its secondary definition, how complementary your phrasing is, and how much you want to take your grammar for a stroll on the wild side.
Literally and figuratively usually seem to overstate things to me. If the meaning of what is being written or said is that unclear, it should probably be reworded or restated. People possess an anxious tendency to want to be “absolutely” certain they are being understood and another tendency to want to appear clever, so literal(ly) and figurative(ly) are here to stay. I don’t see literal flipping it’s meaning; plenty of people use it the right way and, if not, someone is always available to correct them. Virginia (hi there Virginia) already asked the question I had about the misuse of egregious. I’m enjoying this, but I have to stop; it’s cutting into my reading time.
@LynnS. I think I am guilty of authorial intrusion. Like if I said “She was incandescant with joy, but, of course, only figuratively.” That would be authorial intrusion, right? I do that all the time. But I am four for four rejection-wise.
Virginia, Rebecca has answered your question about egregious in my absence. Though the original Latin etymology (e + grex, ‘(standing) out from the flock’) could be taken to mean standing out either badly or well, the Latin adjective *egregius*, from which the English adjective was a direct borrowing, does mean ‘illustrious’. And intuitively, that is the obvious meaning. Yet it switched completely, from meaning ‘outstandingly good’ to ‘outstandingly bad’, undoubtedly because of sustained deliberately ironic usage. It is the most egregious example of total meaning reversal I can think of. I do not normally use the word at all either in speech or writing, because I find its current definition so disconcerting.
We all have to accept the continual evolution of language; change over both time and space ensures that one person’s ‘correct’ English will often set another’s teeth on edge, and complaints about the sloppy grammar of the young are not confined to our language, or our era of history: they are universal.
Lynn S., this is another fascinating issue, and relates to the very different preferences and expectations of readers. To me, ‘direct contact’ with the writer is highly desirable. It is what I am seeking when I read fiction. I want to be reminded of the author’s presence, and to be able to hear her voice; I love the ‘dear Reader’ interpolations of some 19th-century novels(*). It is widely assumed that readers of fiction prefer to identify with one of more of the principal characters in the story, but if I identify with anyone, it is with the author. The characters, her creations, are on a stage before me, acting out the events of the plot. I am not in there amongst them: I am watching, alongside the author, and sharing, to some degree, in her process of creation.
There are other deep differences in reader perception, for example, the majority who ‘hear’ the words they read, and the minority who bypass the words completely and ‘see’ the meaning pictorially. Readers like me, who think in pictures, are hopeless at spotting puns and other sound-based forms of word-play, but paradoxically, I seem to have no problem with metaphor. I infer from this that there are people who are intrinsically uncomfortable with or insensitive to figures of speech. After all, although it is difficult to define why we like one writer’s style and dislike another’s, these are some of the countless factors involved in defining our personal preferences.
My defence of the use of metaphors, however, is based on their universal occurrence in human language, just as universal as systems of symbolism (and, of course, related to symbolism). A metaphor that doesn’t work for a given reader may be well conceived in itself, but will fail if the reader is insensitive to the concept, or if the writer is unskilled, and has used it clumsily. What one cannot say is that good writing must always be strictly literal, and may not contain figures of speech. That may be a good rule for writing a notice on fire alarms and evacuation procedures, but it is a very bad rule if applied to storytelling and poetry.
(*) It did go on into the 20thC, for example in the witty and bizarre whodunnits of Edmund Crispin, where the author’s sly comments and footnotes are an essential part of the atmosphere.
@Virginia Llorca In a third person narrative I don’t see a problem with an author telling me a character is incandescent with rage. The narrator would be aware of how raging the rage is, whether a character is red in the face, blue to the soles of their feet, full of the joy of life, or stepping into a world full of danger. A lack of skill on the part of the author is the only problem I would have with that sort of thing (e.g., they actually said their character was stepping into a world full of danger).
The type that aggravates me is obvious intrusiveness. In third person it crops up more in dialogue. He is talking, she is talking, Aunt Susie is talking, then she – well no, it isn’t she anymore. Who is this person talking? It’s the author spouting forth in one of their character’s voices. I don’t think most authors are aware of doing this, after all the characters come from their imagination and, when immersed in your creation, objectivity and distance aren’t always easy to find. And don’t get me started on how mad I get when it’s the narrator doing it, that is generally done on purpose and, for me, it never works. If an author wants to play that game, they should write an essay or put the novel in first person.
Have you ever checked out Fiction Groupie’s blog? She has a lot of good writing tips and a great post on all aspects of authorial intrusion. Keeping plugging away at your publishing quest and be sure to let us know when you make that sale.
@AgTigress Sorry that word play doesn’t work for you. I’ll try to keep that in mind, but no guarantees as it is my favorite sport. I am glad to hear that you enjoy metaphors. I love all figurative language and have a particular fondness for simile and personification. I still say that if a metaphor requires to be proceeded or followed by “figuratively speaking”, it probably isn’t a good metaphor. I think more readers are also visual readers than you realize and that would make a good subject for a post of its own.
On the misuse of egregious, I’m wondering if it’s a cultural thing. From your spelling of defence, I’m wondering if you are from the British Isles. I’m from the Southwestern United States and I rarely hear anyone use egregious, let alone misuse it.
I addressed my problems with intrusive authors to Virginia but I do know that everything in the book is the author’s imagination speaking through their characters, leading and misleading the reader. I’m of the school of thought that you shouldn‘t notice the strings or be aware of the lips moving.
@Kinsey You nailed it with the pair of bookends simile. That one falls apart before you even have to think about it. A pair of bookends hold books together, they don’t hold each other together. Maybe it’s a deeper simile than we think. Maybe it means she’s not holding herself together at all. Nah, that’s so deep I can’t see it anymore. Catchy song though; and Blake Shelton, my goodness he is aging beautifully.
Lynn S. No, it’s not cultural, and it’s not a ‘misuse’ in the ordinary sense: ‘egregious’ used to mean illustrious, like its Latin equivalent, but since about the 18th century has come to mean very bad indeed, in both British and American English. The definition has actually changed. All word definitions are mutable, but it is not that common, fortunately, for a word to change its meaning to the exact opposite of what it first meant, and what is implied by its etymology.
Yes, I speak British English.
On the issue of visual and verbal thinkers, and the effects on reading, this is a subject that I have discussed so extensively on another forum I frequent, as well as with many friends (since the 1960s), that I don’t think I could face detailed discussion of it once again. It is, however, one of the many factors that influences people’s style preferences when they read.
Your definition of ‘authorial intrusion’ seems to focus chiefly on the problem of shifting points of view, which I would simply class as poor writing technique. I agree that unclear POV is irritating in a book, but I don’t think it is the author *intruding*. I thought you meant devices whereby the author addresses the reader directly, gives the reader advance information that is unknown to her characters, or enters into a long exposition that is not directly connected with the progress of the plot (what Crusie refers to as ‘infodump’). I am not bothered by any of these, as long as they are done well. I don’t seem to be as impatient as some readers are for the author to ‘get on with the story’, because I like to enjoy the journey as well as reaching the destination.
I love italics. And I can’t do ‘he said’, ‘she replied’, ‘he wondered’. John Sandford couldn’t make his word counts without it. But shifting pont of view? What he thinks and what she thinks and what she does about what he thinks and what he does because of what she did. . . I don’t know. I took English Literature in the Dark Ages so there was not a large body of work. I just like ‘telling’. I speak Midwestern US with a strong Chicago accent, or so I’m told. Someone from the actual continent of Africa once asked me if I was Irish. Oh, a little. The way my daughter pronounces the word ‘sausage’ is anathema to me.
I find the italics extremely irritating, and wish I knew how to turn them off.
Then, WHEN I am published, you’d better not read my work.
@Virginia Llorca Oh, Virginia, you made me smile this time. An old school egregious smile, in fact.
learned59: I learned 59 new things this week at SBTB.
I tried to read this line aloud to DH and could barely breathe from laughing so hard. Then he said “her breasts fell like cantaloupes from the back of a truck”. I can barely stay in my chair! Best laugh in days.
Lunarocket, I think your husband’s version is vastly superior to the original! I shall never forget it!
😀