Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Poonam Sharma’s first book was an unholy, awful mess of spun out plot and shallow characters. Thanks for the head’s up on this one.

Sweet mother of Gawdess, I thought it said . . .

  Um, nevermind.  I thought it said Clint.

” the clint ..the clint…  a little more to the west!!!”

So much for me making a groundbreaking foray into Chick Lit by writing Indian-American protagonists…

Aargh. 

I’ll be over here downing martinis at the table reserved for Bitter, Party of One.

But Mala, you can write a GOOD and INTERESTING Indian-American protagonist and a coherent plotline. There’s a huge need for that.

Mala, I’ll join you at that table. I had hoped to write something involving the only Indian-American girl in creation who doesn’t go to Harvard, but the Kaavya Vishwanathan plagiarism thing poisoned the YA well, and this just makes me cringe. Oy.

Ok, I totally thought Camydia were a lesbian couple. Would that make it better or worse?

Kerry - Thanks for the comfort! Is that your way of indicating that Sharma is basically doing crappy The Desi Wears Prada type knockoffs?

. . . hello there, rogue bold tag. 

Here’s my brief review from 7/07:

Girl Most Likely To—Poonam Sharma: This is a book that sent me on a weeklong rampage of asking the question “Do you think I’m retarded?” Because this book insults the reader by feeding her a drippy heroine, a plot that rampages through everything but the kitchen sink with the search for true love, gay friends finding love, straight friends getting a clue, thinking your one night stand taped your sex to sell on the internet, insider trading, a yoga retreat, meddling Indian parents, and a deus ex machina arrival of a career change from banking to writing. Hi, I’m the author and I’m going to distract you from the lameness and unrealistic plot of my tale and paper thin characters you care nothing about by throwing EVERYTHING at you. Then I can cross “wrote a novel” off my life to do list.

Honey, it’s okay to be an underachiever if you do it well.

Will somebody please explain to me why stuff like this gets published while other, intriguing books languish on the reject pile?

And here’s three more books I can add to my DNR* list: Decadent, All Eyes, and the cLInt that ate Westmoreland.

*DNR - Do Not Resuscitate - also translates at Do Not Read….

Sorry about the rogue bold tag. *gulp*.

I can’t help noticing that Brenda Jackson’s cover over-uses Trajan, the Movie Font.

The worst part about the Kaavya thing is that I really think it wasn’t entirely her fault. She got blamed for it, and that is a pain. The worst part is that I actually rather enjoyed her book—it was nice to see a YA novel featuring an Indian-American protagonist who didn’t have super-traditional parents. I could actually relate to her protagonist.

If only that pesky plagiarism thing hadn’t come up. ;)

Though now you make me want to write something incredibly silly titled The Desi Wears Prada.

On the, er, “clint” front, allow me to share a slightly-irrelevant story that my BFF told me this weekend.

She went to the zoo with a male friend-who-once-was-maybe-kinda-sort-more-than? You know, that kind of friend. They stood there looking at the monkeys. BFF noticed that all of the monkeys appeared to be male, as they all had dangly bits between their legs. The aged (70-something) docent standing nearby says, “Notice anything strange about them monkeys? They’re not all males.” BFF: “Huh. Interesting.”
Docent: “Yep. Can’t remember what that’s called.” (Silence.) “Oh! I remember! It’s the clitoris or ‘clitoris.’” (Pause while BFF dies of humiliation.) Docent: “Can you imagine how much fun you could have…” (BFF makes obvious mental leap and gapes in horror) “...with a prehensile tail?”

Meanwhile, I am feeling sorry for the docent’s wife, if he’s only ever heard of the “clitoris” on monkeys.

agh! fire that docent! agh!

rebyj: HA!!

Man, this whole post/conversation just deeply satisfied my need for dirty laughs and silly sexual puns today. Thanks everybody!

Oh, dear…I think I have Trajan on my new book.  Who knew?

I have a funny clitoris story!

>haha

<

We had to perform skits in 8th grade Language Arts class. My friend roped me into performing a Monty Python sketch. I hadn't seen very much, but I was on board.

Well, she decided to perform

“The Crunchy Frog Sketch”.

I can’t remember, but one of us had to be Constable Clitoris.

I kid you not that I had NO idea what that was in 8th grade. I was the oldest of three daughters, and so I was sheltered in an attempt to keep them young and naive (ha…haha…hahahaha), and so there I was, saying “Clitoris” over and over again in my 8th grade English class.

I’m mortified now, but I’m pretty sure no one knew what the hell a clitoris was, since there was no cascade of laughter and mockery.

That I know of.

>darts eyes insecurely<

Oh, God, Erin! That’s worse than my horrifying class presentation story!

In 11th grade speech class, we had to invent and advertise a product. If the user name didn’t give it away, I’m a big Lewis Carroll fan. I was also very…innocent. I knew oral sex existed, but I didn’t know any of the slang terms for it. So my “product” was the Eat Me/Drink Me growth/shrinking stuff from Alice in Wonderland.

So I stood up there and advertised something called “Eat Me,” which will make you grow.

I suddenly want to crawl under my desk.

OMG Erin and snarkhunter!!  I am LMAO. 

I have a similar story, but it didn’t happen at school and I had no clue I should be embarrassed…I embarrassed my sister and her friend.

Anyway, we were shopping at a grocery and they had a Princess Leia doll.  I saw it and said ‘Hey Julie, they have a Leia Orgasm doll’.

Julie was not impressed.

Sam

SamG—the sad part is, there probably *is* somewhere (deep down in the dark basement-like reaches of the Interwebs) where you *can*, in fact, buy something called Leia Orgasma.  Rule 34 says it must be so.

I have to say, I also thought Camydia was a lesbian couple. It wasn’t until later on in the synopsis I realized my mistake.

I don’t understand.  The infection is called chlamydia, so why is camdydia so funny?  Daft, yes, but not funny.

Sorry about the extra ‘d’ there.

I didn’t even read the title…was too busy drooling over the hot black cover dude.  Let’s have more of that, shall we?

Hot black cover model, yes, but also…..

Making the Derek Zoolander face.

I’m just sayin’.

who’s looking at his face?  *blinking*

lol.

Heeeeee, sula.

I cant believe i almost passed up the opportunity to yell..

” CLINT NECTAR!!”

Why can’t I see things like everybody else?  What a freakin’ curse!

First, I didn’t get what was wrong with the cover…until I read the comments, went back, and crossed my eyes a little.  Then, I didn’t understand the raves about the cover model (very dim photo that doesn’t highlight many contours at all, further obscured by author’s name and title pasted over his torso)...until I realized I was maybe supposed to pretend I could clearly see the man’s physique so I could bust out and polish my LIBERAL WHITE CHICK button.  And finally, I thought snarkhunter’s anecdote was going to end with “prehensile penis” (probably because I know someone who talks about these.  A lot.)

Guess I’ve been driving the wrong way on a one-way street lately.

A little off topic but once I asked a guy at work if he wanted some of my peanut M&Ms. He look straight at me dead serious and said “No thanks I’ve never like chocolate on my nuts.”

Not sure where to find the liberal white chick button.  I do however have a ‘dating a black guy for the past four years and counting’ button and it works fine.  You could say…it pushes my buttons, even.

That is 100% Blue Steel.

Niiice.

Nah, that’s totally Magnum!  Blue Steel is so last year.

Ok…what is wrong with me? I didn’t even notice the cover model was black! Or maybe it was the name that threw me off - because is he supposed to be “Clint”? I guess I don’t hang around cowboys enough but I’ve never met a black man named Clint.

I recall being in Catholic school and in 8th grade all the girls were brought together into the church to have a sex talk given by a hip visiting priest. He asked if we all knew was oral sex was. No one raised their hand to ask for clarification so he went on to explain how it still counted as sex and was wrong, wrong, wrong. As soon as everyone got the idea there was a general rumble of surprise and disgust which of course really embarrassed him. Hard to look hip when you are blushing…

Boy, howdy, he is hot. (blush) and I not only misread the Clint, I thought “taming” said “timing.” I have no idea what that says about my psyche.

Perhaps it just means I need to lay down with a nice cucumber . . . eyemask.

_Taming Clint Westmoreland_ is a stupid name for a book, but that guy is some serious eye candy.

river62: It’s not just in Egypt

There was a kid who went to college with me named Clint. One of his floormates would always change his name (on his dry-erase board) either to elide the LI, or just remove the ‘n’ altogether. :)

So nice to have options.

Also, my traumatizing school story: There is exactly one curse word (‘damn’) in the entire novel The Cay, and in seventh grade, I was the lucky kid who got to read it aloud. Everyone giggled and looked at me.

Spamblocker: size34. Well, 36, actually. Close enough.

Wry Hag:

Maybe the brightness and contrast on your monitor could do with a tweak, because I can see the contours on the model’s torso just fine.  And the rather nice cheekbones.