Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Pathos
November 17, 2010 | Wednesday | 24 Comments
I finished this book feeling emotionally wrung out, with a bittersweet happiness at the ending. But the more I thought about it, the less the emotional journey was matched by an intellectual strength in the plot, leaving me with too much pathos in the argument towards a happy ever after, and not enough logos or ethos. Yet weeks after finishing the book, I remember it with the breathless “Oh, my Gosh” sigh because the journey these two go through is just painful and so very, very well written. This is some fine, fine romangst. Rose Marlowe’s father left her family…
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November 04, 2010 | Thursday | 7 Comments
I like YA romance and I really like Elizabeth Scott’s writing, so when I saw that her newest book was on sale for the Kindle at Amazon, I bought it, even though I have a paper copy. One of the features of books purchased from Amazon that I kind of enjoy in a voyeuristic kind of way is the highlights that other people have made. I can see what passages catch people’s attention, and if they match what I thought was a key part of the prose. The thing with Scott’s writing is that it’s all emotional and powerful but…
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October 06, 2009 | Tuesday | 22 Comments
Lindsay Bingham is a small town girl who finds herself in St. Michel, a small European country similar to Monaco, as a bridesmaid to her friend Sophie, who is marring the crown prince of said country. At the wedding, she meets the gaze of one hot celebrity chef, Carlos Montigo, and the attraction is immediate. As Carlos goes off to fetch champagne for them both after a short but charged conversation on the balcony, another man, a television producer, asks her to dance and drops an amazing opportunity in her lap: television show hostess for his newly-purchased cooking network. Sophie,…
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December 03, 2008 | Wednesday | 48 Comments
Thanks to FD, I have a link to an advice column from the Guardian penned by one Mariella Frostrup which addresses the emotionally unavailable man. As FD said in the email to me, the part in the beginning where she ladles on the pathos in an attempt to establish empathy was irritating, and her assumption about Mills & Boon heroes is way off the mark imo, but her point about the emotionally unavailable man is thought provoking. I have to wonder if everyone went through the “tragic mate” phase in their 20’s, finding partners with the urge to fix and…
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July 07, 2008 | Monday | 70 Comments
In the course of writing The Book, I’ve done a lot of thinking about why I read romance, and what it is that I’m looking for when I read romance. After spending way too much time contemplating my reaction to romances, I came to the conclusion that I love romance reading because I like being induced by a skilled writer to feel and empathize with the characters, to care about what happens to them, with the unwavering reassurance that no matter how bad it gets, how scary, how awful, how heartbreaking, it will all be ok in the end. There…
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