Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Gold Plated Garbage Truck by T.C. Allen

I paid $5 to read this book on my Blackberry, and took two Tylenol for the headache I got from reading on the tiny screen, and two more this morning for residual agony. I’m thinking that I might need some kind of counseling to recover from the utter badness that is this book, and that’s roughly, what, $80-100 an hour?

This was a very expensive mistake indeed, but when the Bitchery clamors for a review, I try to step up.

Even Hubby said, “You’re seriously reading that?”

I exacted revenge for his doubt by reading portions aloud, prompting the following responses:

“Oh, my God.”

“Please, please stop.”

If I had to describe this book in two words, those words would be: complete bonerdeath. This book will suck the sexy out of any known being, and leave any libido in the tri-state area dry and gasping. This book is the real reasons all those erotica novel vaginas are weeping.

The Dump: The Code of Love by Cheryl Sawyer

Update! On July 5, Cheryl Sawyer dropped by and clarified her use of de rigueur in the comments and very politely pointed out that I was, in fact, talking out of my ass, for which I apologize. My statements about how stilted the book came across to me still stands, however.

Mark Twain once said that an author should “say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it,” and as far as a rule of writing goes, that’s a good ‘un to keep in mind. It certainly was what sprang to mind when I attempted to read Cheryl Sawyer’s The Code of Love recently.

Here’s the setup:

In 1810, some English soldier dude escaped from a Mauritian prison, but was betrayed, recaptured and brought back. Now, let’s play “spot the strange word usage” with me in this excerpt, hmmmm?

Only Delphine Delgaish knew who had betrayed him to the legion, and she told just one other person, so no one else knew what to think. Which made a visit to the Garden Prison de rigueur at the earliest opportunity.

That particular use of de rigueur stopped me cold and had me running for my dictionary. It was… read more »

Take Me by Lucy Monroe

Candy sent me this book in a box full of other books with the warning, “I’m sending you this because you have to read it. I can’t.”

If Candy can’t bring herself to read it, I’m in such deep trouble.

And yup, this book pretty much irritated the shit out of me right from the get-go.

Calantha, Duchess of Clairborne is the reclusive and quiet widow of what had to have been a right bastard of a husband. She was monstrously abused on an emotional and physical level by her late dickhead of a Duke, and he effectively isolated her from everyone who might have helped or befriended her.

Jared, Viscount Ravenswood (and how is THAT for typical “Animal + Item found in Nature” aristocratic title?) is asked by his childhood friend Mary to bring Mary’s daughter to Calantha.  After making this bizarre request, Mary dies. Jared would rather cut off several key parts of his anatomy than deal with Calantha, because Calantha’s late husband was responsible for Mary’s daughter. He raped Mary while she was a servant in his household.… read more »

The Dump: Don’t Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World’s Greatest Chefs

This book made me quiver with anticipation. Quiver like a giant quiche before it collapses in a soggy, underbaked mess on the night of the King of Brunei’s birthday. I love to cook, I love to read about cooking, and I love me some trainwrecks. So the very idea of a collection of kitchen disaster stories as told by world-class chefs made me incredibly happy IN MY PANTS. Not to mention it features a short story by Anthony Bourdain, and I am totally Anthony Bourdain’s bitch. Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour, for all their swaggering flaws, are two of my all-time favorite books simply because they’re so much goddamn fun to read.

And Bourdain’s contribution about a disastrous New Year’s Eve catering job is fantastic. It’s as trainwrecky as my schadenfreudinous heart could’ve desired. The cooks are coked up and tweaking, the head chef is an asshole who doesn’t plan the menu correctly, nothing is going right in the kitchen, and the bouncers end up assaulting the customers.  I know it’s a good disaster story when it makes me go “HOLY SHIT” out loud, and this story made me do that multiple times. 

There were some other gems,… read more »

The Dump: Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa

OK, all you bitches who’ve been making fun of me all this age for having Musashi up on the sidebar for about year can quit now. I’ve finally admitted defeat. I’m about 245 pages into this monster, and I can’t stands it no more.

And by “it,” I mean “the most gawdawful translation job I have ever encountered this side of Kafka, and I’ve encountered some pretty shitty translations of Kafka.”

Seriously, every time I read a medieval Japanese character saying “Yeah,” “okay” or “all right,” I wanted to punch the translator in the crotch. I understand that rendering the language accurate in every way is impossible, and is, in fact, undesirable. And I understand that conveying the nuances of Japanese vernacular can be trying. But dude. Seriously. ENOUGH ALREADY.

I do hope to some day finish this. The day is not now. The story is too slow, and the translation is too…well, too crotch-punchy.

The Dump: Drive Me Crazy by Nancy Warren

This is the poor book I picked up to read after finishing Slaughterhouse-Five—which, by the way, is an incredible book, and why in the hell I waited so long to pick it up, I have no friggin’ clue. Anyway, I wanted a complete change of pace and subject matter, so I grabbed a library book. I have over 10 books checked out from the library, and I need to thin the herd. Drive Me Crazy just happened to be on top of the stack.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with this book, but there’s nothing terribly right about it either, if you know what I mean.

Introducing: The Dump

Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been really, really good about finishing books I start. For my sanity and the sake of my huge TBR stacks, though, I’ve decided that this cannot go on. From now on, the only books I’ll make a point of finishing are books that are sent to me for review.

It’s usually not the really gawdawful books that I abandon. The most frequently-abandoned books would probably be the “meh” books: they’re not bad, they’re just kinda boring. Or annoying in really petty ways.

Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted, for example. Between the self-conscious writing style, the constant tense changes, getting shit wrong more often than making shit up convincingly and characters I really couldn’t care less about, I didn’t finish it. What I read (about 100 pages or so) I’d give a C, maybe a C-.

And yesterday, I officially abandoned Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn. This would be the first book of hers that I can’t finish; nothing I’ve read by her so far ranks below a B-. The premise is pretty interesting: kickass chick with mystical powers has a mandate from the king to investigate what are essentially hate crimes against other people… read more »