In this month’s Defenders of Wildlife newsletter, there’s an article that links to the original Tolme piece from the magazine, but even better: Nora Roberts, Candy, myself, and you guys - the readers of this here blog - were named this month’s “Wildlife Heroes.” Yay! Way to go!
read more »It seems the vast knowledge of the Bitchery when it comes to all things cover art is not a secret, especially among the publishing houses. I received an email from Lauren Naefe, Online Marketing Manager at HarperCollins, who asked if I consult the Oracle of the Bitchery to help settle an in-house debate. It seems the cover art for a particular book is under discussion, and there are two hotly-contested candidates for the coveted position. It’s like deciding the Democratic presidential nomination, only with Bitchery, cussing, and fun! How perfect for SuperTuesday, eh?
The book in question is Confessions of a Beauty Addict, the fiction debut of Nadine Haobsh which comes out November 18. Haobsh is the beauty editor who was outed by New York Post as blogger behind “Jolie In NYC”, a hugely popular blog about all things involving beauty secrets. Her nonfiction advice manual, Beauty Confidential was published in October of ‘07.
The summary of Confessions of a Beauty Addict reads as follows:
When Bella Hunter, Beauty Expert and all around magazine editor wunderkind, loses her job for spilling top industry secrets to Page 6 she thinks her life is over. And, to… read more »
Link the first: New York Magazine reviews Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth,
From the review written by Sam Anderson:
Anyone terrified by the rigors of poetry—its arcane references, pickled language, and subtle Keatsian line-stitching—has nothing to fear from Sharp Teeth. Its verse is prosy, slangy, aggressively unchallenging, and very, very, very free. Occasionally a tiny herd of iambs will break free and gallop in formation (“they kill to fuck, they kill to eat/and they sleep in the noonday sunâ€), or nouns will line up in rhythmic strings (“Bone, love, meat, gristle, heat, anger, exhaustion, drive, hunger, blood, fat, marrowâ€), or a sentence will fold itself neatly into a couplet (“Smiling straight into Venable’s eyes/Cutter chews up the last of the friesâ€). But most of the book reads like nice snappy prose arbitrarily pinched into fragments. Its tone is often so determinedly anti-poetic it would have made Wordsworth (advocate of “language really used by menâ€) vomit into the nearest cold lake….
Werewolves in poem format? Holy cow. Romance fans have been reading about lycanthropes ad nauseum. I’ve read many… read more »
Thanks to Michelle Styles, my UK source for all really interesting news across the pond, I have word that the RNA has announced the winners of their annual prizes:
Freya North has won 2008 Romantic Novel of the Year for Pillow Talk.
And Kate Hardy has won the 2008 RNA Romance Prize for Breakfast at Giovanni’s, which will be released in the US as In Bed With Her Italian Boss
I like the UK title better, but then, that’s probably not news.
read more »Growly Cub writes:
When I lived in Scotland in 93/94 I read a Mills and Boon (historical) category from a local library about the one of the Duke of Sutherland's daughters, or maybe a woman who married into the family.read more »
I can't remember much about it, just that the female was very young. I want to say it took place in the late 1700s, early 1800s, but I'm not sure I trust my memory; and that the story was inspired by somebody who lived at Dunrobin Castle as some point in her life.
The unreliable mind also spits out a memory of a pinkish cover, no author or title though.
Would love to find this title again! Although I'm all aware that it's nowhere near as interesting as the Regency time travel!
1. Hot Dutch doctors, especially the wealthy ones, are incredibly generous and once in the hot throes of lovin’ say things like, “Oh, my darling, my darling!” And I have a hard time imagining Dutch doctors going into raptures of romantic expression by saying, “Oh, my darling! My darling!” However, I can imagine them saying, “But sit and fart in the duck!” Wait, no. I can’t.
2. If you get in a wreck in Holland, and are a British nurse, you and your bus full o’ spastic children (nice vintage terminology!) will end up at a hospital, one which will happily arrange to pay you as if you were one of their staff while you tirelessly and selflessly care for the children. Yeah. But what about retirement?!
3. The heroine is so relentlessly selfless it’s astonishing that she can stand upright. She’s got… read more »
After an article in Newsweek, a weekend of coverage on NPR, and a lot of email requesting pictures with his shirt off, preferably holding a ferret, journalist Paul Tolmé agreed to an interview with Smart Bitches. I’d sent a request for questions to our readers using our top-secret email list of Bitchery members, and using those questions, Paul and I chatted for nearly an hour about plagiarism, ferrets, the environment, romance and writing.
Any reader-submitted questions are notated with the author’s name in parenthesis; otherwise the question is one that either multiple people asked, or I made up. He also answered my request for a picture - one we haven’t seen before. He obliged with the one on the left, wherein he sports long hair. Try to keep from fainting, ladies.
First, and obvious question: when you found out, were you pissed off? What has the attention meant for you?
Paul: No, I wasn’t pissed off. I was miffed, but I also found it absurd, and I think that… read more »
According to my web research, the 30th anniversary gift is traditionally pearls or diamonds. But here at Smart Bitch headquarters, the traditional gift to mark the passing of the big 3-0 is something very very different.
The 30th birthday at Smart Bitches: the year of the Mantitty Mullet. And here to pay tribute to Candy on her 30th birthday are some of the finest mantitty mullet men ever to walk the earth - and remember, I grew up in Pittsburgh during the years of Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux, so I know whereof I mullet. Only the finest mulleted mantitty shall express their luuuuurveâ„¢ for Candy’s 30th. Read on.
read more »My friend Peter sent me a rather interesting link a few days ago: Books That Make You Dumb. The methodology is rather simple: Go to Facebook, download the top ten most popular books by college, look up the average SAT/ACT score for the various colleges, and plot the data on a chart. (The creator of the chart acknowledges that correlation != causation.)
Some of the trends are rather interesting.
1. The Holy Bible scores about 150 points lower than regular-flavor Bible, and 180 points lower than the Book of Mormon. I have ideas on why colleges in which the top-ranked books include The Holy Bible would indicate a lower average SAT score than colleges that list The Bible, but The Book of Mormon? I have no theories on that. I’m just intrigued.
2. A Time to Kill scores about 60 points lower than John Grisham in general, which is very amusing.
3. Books classified as Science Fiction and Classics dominate as the average SAT score goes up. This didn’t surprise me—white nerds, who are more likely to apply to top-tier colleges, are more likely to be exposed to and to love SF/F and Old White Dude fiction. I’m… read more »
Candy, it is often mentioned here, usually by Candy herself, is a big Dara Joy fan. I personally have never read Joy’s books, but Candy, she’ll wank on for hours about them. They are among her guilty pleasures.
So imagine the, well, joy when, just in time for Candy’s birthday, Dara Joy announces she has a new ebook for sale on her newly designed website. Pity I already sent Candy her gift, because I’d be hard-pressed to beat a present entitled Death by Ploot Ploot.
read more »In honor of our third birthday, Sarah looked up what the typical third anniversary gift is…and it turns out it’s *drumroll* LEATHER.
And you know what that means for our cover snark.
Oh yes. BDSM romance covers. Cover your eyes and head for the hills. Or, y’know, don’t, because you’re a masochistic fool and have a strong hankering for 3-D man-titty.
read more »
In a word, this book was Yawntastic. It has such a great setup, but the plot and the characterization were so limply executed. A horror writer’s sister is murdered, and a vampire hero has to save her, protect her from potentially risen sister, and eradicate the bad guy vampire dude what’s doing the killing. The heroine writes books that scare even the hero, yet in the course of the story she’s firmly a wuss on the border of TSTL. I was repeatedly told she authored some scary, chilling books but saw no evidence… read more »
I got this from the mystery writer group blog First Offenders:
Having worked in tech support, I can so, so relate.
read more »Several different readers e-mailed to tell us about this: Amazon.com unveiled a list of the 20 Most Romantic Cities in the United States. Did they calculate the rankings based on marriage rates vs. divorce rates, popularity as honeymoon destinations, historical reputations, the amount the population invested in sex toys? No, the algorithm they used was even more comprehensive and complicated:
They tallied up how many romance novels, relationship books and sex manuals they’d shipped out to various cities and divided it by the total population.
Because books with titles like “If It’s Tuesday, There Must Be Dildoes,” “Tantric Sex for Dummies” and “The Ultimate Man’s Guide to Internet Dating” are the epitome of what “romantic” means to us as a culture.
Sarah: The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I have at last found my dream job. I am for all intents and purposes a complete and utter epic fail at math. I can’t remember numbers much less hold them in my mind for 2 seconds so that I can do sexy things to them like divide or multiply or even add. I work in a city that’s designated with about 90% numerical… read more »
Bitchery reader Joopiter writes:
I’m a new reader to your site (thank you StumbleUpon) and going through your archives has inspired me to go find some of the old historicals that I devoured during my teenage years. There’s one that I’m blanking on and I’m hoping you or your loyal readers can help me identify it. I think I read this during high school (‘90-95) or possibly earlier. What I remember
* The hero was in possession of a stolen jewel which cursed his family and maybe led to the murder of his fiancée/wife. I’m pretty sure his name was Saxon.
* The heroine was rescued from an attack on her family’s ship when she was a child and was adopted into the family of a sultan (I think) who possesses the other cursed jewels. She is tasked with getting the other jewel back and meets the hero when she dances for him when he’s a guest of the sultan. And she has a rose tattoo on her forearm that covers a scar she got during the initial attack.
* There may be a tiger involved somewhere. I have a vague recollection of the… read more »
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