Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

More Recommendations from our Erudite Readers!

Top of the Monday to you. At this hour, only the east coasters and our fabulous Europeans are up and writing, so it’s time for another edition of “Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid,” where we throw out a genre type and you recommend reading material for that there style of romance. Not that we’re avoiding the west coasters, since this will be up until Candy wakes up and something romance-related burns her toast. Me, I’m too tired from getting ready to move to get worked up about anything. 

Last time, we did Paranormal: Vampire Romance, so today I thought I’d mix it up and ask for your knowledgeable recommendations for Contemporary Romance: Military/Police/Law Enforcement. All you CSI, NCIS, and Brockmann addicts out there, what regimented authority do you like your heros and heroines to work within, and possibly struggle against?

Covers Gone Lindsey, Part Last

The Magic of You

Sarah: The magic here is: how did the same cover models for Gentle Rogue get hired for another seafaring cover and STILL manage to look equally ridiculous?

What’s with the eyeshadow? Doesn’t that belt pinch? Where’s his shirt? What’s with the garter-showing pose, sans garter? And why is she in her undergarments while standing on what looks like a floating plank in a large storm at sea, with a ship coming apart behind her? And is he holding her up, or casting her overboard?

But by far the most pressing (har) question: DOES HE HAVE…CAMEL TOE?!

Ya’ll. Fabio is a GIRL.

Candy: Sarah, can I just say how very, very much it frightens me that you actually looked closely enough at the cover to discern the camel toe? I admire your bravery, while simultaneously hoping that Baby Bitchlette has not suffered any damage in utero.

Anyway: PEOPLE. Just because you’re stuck in the middle of a ship… read more »

Another Chance to be a Bitchâ„¢ Winner!

The votes have been tallied, and the winner of our Another Chance to be a Bitchâ„¢ contest is…. (Fabio steps up to timpanum and starts vigorous drumroll, man-hooters jiggling hypnotically)

Selah March, for entry number 8! A truly magnificient two-faced piece of writing, and in these here parts, we heartily approve of the phrase “sucks ass” wherever it may be found (unless used in relation to us).

Other contestants who gave Selah a real run for the money include Alison S for entry number 2 (the romp with Caligula’s stallion and slaves speaking Ebonics apparently brought a tear to many an eye), and Bonnie for entry number 11 (people had a hard time resisting The Swollen Stallion, which warms the cockles of my heart while simulatenously terrfying them).

So congratulations to Selah, and many, many thanks to everyone who participated and voted. Without y’all, this site wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Selah, you will be e-mailed soon with details on Guest Bitchery. And! We Smarty Bitchypoos now dub thee:

And and AND! Please pick three books from the following list, and e-mail your choices and mailing address to… read more »

Romance gets Organic Props

In the June 2005 issue of Organic Style there’s an article urging women to take more moments of pleasure for themselves (no, not that kind of pleasure. Put that erotica novel down!).

#13: Read a Romance Novel: See what all the fuss is about - all the eye-rolling disapproval and the secret enjoyment experienced by millions of women. Savor [every] delicious minute!

How excellent! Of course, we here at SBTB are not at all secret about our enjoyment, though we do plenty of eye-rolling at the bad ones and the dreadful beefcake clinch covers. But to be told to use romance novels as an indulgence for women akin to going on a picnic (#12), playing outside (#7), or going for an aimless walk (#1) - probably not a bad thing. Romance novels are certainly an indulgence for me a good part of the time.

Wish the writer has been able to keep the “eye-rolling” to a minimum though.

Coronation Ceremony for CW!

CW, for thine most excellent work in guessing the correct answer in today’s Guess That Lonely Heart contest, the Smart Bitches dub thee:

Tag - we are SO it!

We got tagged by Lynn to answer a meme. About books. And our personal opinions.

Gosh this is going to be SO hard. Candy? Me? Talk about books we like?

*sigh* We suppose we could do it.

A Killer Cook

Another Friday! Another personal ad contest! Be the first to guess the correct book, character name and author, receive your custom Smart Bitches title (Sarah came up with some doozies, let me tell you) and lord it over your obviously inferior title-less friends and enemies.

A KILLER COOK

SWF, excellent cook, looking for tall, dark, handsome and possibly insane aristocrat responsible for the deaths of my family in the Terror and my short stint as a prostitute. Could you be the one? If you are, do try the soup—it’s delicious.

Link Whore Part XVI: The Link Whore RETURNS

Ummm, personal ad contest is set to post at 12:05 p.m. And I got nothing much to say this morning because I have some way, way overdue crap to ponder and work on (including a couple of reviews—White Raven, apologies for what a slack-ass beeeyotch I’ve been about your review). So instead, I invite you to read Keishon’s most excellent “As The Covers Turn.”

Seriously, go check it out. Funny, funny shit.

Erotica = Literature, Romance = Formula. GOT THAT?

Hey, remember my quick drive-by bitching about the accusation by Susie Bright that romances = formula, erotica = literary? Maili provided me with a link to her blog, where she goes into even greater detail on why this is so, peeving me even more in the process.

Cutting and pasting commencing NOW!

Another Chance to be a Bitchâ„¢! Contest Entries

OK, y’all, here are the entries for the Another Chance to be a Bitchâ„¢! contest we started last week. Please e-mail all votes to either .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by Saturday, May 21. Each person can vote for one eligible entry. I also included the ineligible entries we received because they’re pretty damn funny, but you can’t vote for them, alas. The winner will be announced Sunday.

Ready… Get set… BITCH!

Entry No. 1
It is heartbreaking to think that work this bad has actually been published. This book is drivel, from start (where the auburn heroine becomes the bride of a Sioux warrior) to finish (where they are seen staggering away from a tornado). You don’t need to be a genius to realise that every scene is garbage.

Entry No. 2
This book is a fantastic example of an inexperienced author trying too hard. To set a romance in Ancient Rome was unusual: to have dialogue in Latin was idiotic. It was not witty to make the Nubian slaves speak Ebonic, and the romp involving the heroine, three centurions and Caligula’s horse was, frankly, revolting.

Entry No. 3
Although there is a heap of… read more »

In the Garden with Parnormal Nora

I got an email from Amazon letting me know that, as “someone who purchased a similar book in the past,” I might be interested in Black Rose, book two of the In the Garden trilogy by Nora Roberts.

There are a lot of mixed feelings about Nora. Some people hate her, some are completely indifferent, and some people really love her. I used to love everything she wrote, and relied on her for unequivocably entertaining reading. If there is a new Nora Roberts within a few months of a time when I know I’ll have a lot of reading time (car trip, plane trip, vacation), I buy it, hoarde it, and read it start to finish.

Duchess in Love

All right, finished my first Eloisa James novel, and… well, it wasn’t painful. It was, in fact, mostly pleasant. Overall, though, I think the book was pretty damn lukewarm because—ah, hell, Sarah said it best when we were discussing it last week: “Early parts of the book were fab. And then it felt like the author had a big, “Uh, what do I do now?” moment and ended up driving the story while she applied mascara with one hand, drank coffee with the other, and changed the radio station with her right big toe.”

Hie thee to Romancing the Blog

My RTB column is up today, my pretties. I called it “I’ve been told you’ve been bold with Harry, Mark and John.” Check it out NOW. So goeth the bitchly decree.

For the love of Petes!

This has nothing to do with romance novels. Repeat, this has nothing to do with romance novels.

BUT OH FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST THEY’RE FINALLY RELEASING THE ADVENTURES OF PETE AND PETE ON DVD SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

In case you are uninitiated in the wonder that is Pete and Pete, this is how very fucking cool they are: one of the episodes has Iggy Pop in a cameo playing a mild-mannered suburban dad.

THAT is how very fucking cool Pete and Pete is.

Now all they need to do is release Rocko’s Modern Life on DVD. Do you hear me, Powers That Be at the Great Orange Splat?

My kingdom for a decent copy editor!

Romance novels suffer from the worst, most sloppy (possibly non-existent) copy editing I’ve ever encountered. This was rammed home during the weekend when I was reading White Tigress by Jade Lee. The hero’s father’s name is Sheng Fu, yet it switches back and forth between Sheng Fu and Cheng Fu with dizzying frequency in the middle of the book. The family name also briefly changes from Cheng to Chang. And in one spot, something which clearly took place during the night time is referred to as having happened during the day in the next chapter.

This isn’t the only romance novel with this sort of problem. I bitched long and hard about the huge honkin’ continuity mistake in Sally MacKenzie’s The Naked Duke. The villain’s eye color switches from tawny to blue in Loretta Chase’s Mr. Impossible. In Taboo by Kathleen Lawless, the hero and heroine allegedly spend a week together but the book clearly covers only four days, with no “And then three days went by in delirious humpalicious bliss” to account for the disparity. And I’ve seen the words “feisty” and “chaise longue” mis-spelled more often than I can count.

These problems aren’t entirely the… read more »