Need a giggle? We at SB HQ are happy to provide with enchanting and coquettish actions.
A “respected research institute” used what they thought was a Chinese poem on the cover of its recent journal.
It was. If by “poem” you mean “advertisement for strip club in Macau that specializes in ‘hot housewives in action.’”
The latter section of the article detailing tattoos on non-Chinese-speaking individuals confirms my own personal paranoia. My middle name is Japanese (in origin, not literally), and I’d love to get the accurate characters in kanji, hiragana, or katakana, but I haven’t received the same characters from any of the people I’ve asked, so I’m too paranoid to get it as a tattoo, much less as a piece of art for my home – even though it’s my actual name. I merely respect for the mysterious written form of my name from afar with my sparkling (very very round) eyes.
Watch – my name doesn’t really mean “clarity” or “purity” like I thought. It means “enchanting and coquettish.” Ooh, ooh! Or “pole-dancing housewife!” Which, hey, not bad!
[Thanks to Suze for the link.]
If you’re looking for a sneak peek of the 100 Years of Mills & Boon covers book, have a look-see. I love how completely miserable the women are portrayed in the early cover illustrations.
[Thanks to Gin for the link.]
And finally, if you’re an erotica author looking for inspiration, and you haven’t found it yet, go shop at Sharon Buchbinder‘s grocery store.
Why? All your erotica heroine’s needs are on sale.
While the journal cover was hilarious, I found myself staring at the legs of the two figures on Sara Seale cover Grace Before Meat. Could this possibly be a love story between two satyrs?
omg, DS, you’re so right! *stares*
Personally, I’m finding #6 amusing. Romance goes tenting, eh? Tenting in his pants.
What is up with those titles???
“Die with Me Lady.” I don’t want to read that! And “Grace Before Meat.” WTF does that even mean??? And let’s not forget “Hay Fever” ‘cause that’s a sexxxy romance title right thur.
that was my immediate thought. As was the tenting.
but Grace Before Meat was just too much this early in the morning and right after breakfast.
A meatless one.
The Grace before Meat legs look like the two of them are post-gastric bypass but pre-getting 37 extra pounds of skin surgically removed. Mmm, sexy.
What is a W.A.A.F. anyway?
I like the Euromance: Mask of Deception cover. Looks more like a mask of dear god, please stop groping me when we ask people to take our tourist photos you skeeze.
The Grace before Meat covers are meant to be jodhpurs. Think old 1930s movies.
Wow. My submit word is make69. Maybe I should say Grace first?
His stumpy t-rex arm in #5 baffles me.
Midknyt—WAAF was the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in WWII. They didn’t actually fly, but performed all sorts of other duties, according to Wikipedia—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women’s_Auxiliary_Air_Force
I will never make a disparaging comment about current romance novel titles again. “Heart, You Have No Wisdom?” How does one even make that a question?
Oh noes, too late for the contest! I was going to have such fun coming up with a title for that last one. (Too bad Coffee, Tea or Me? is already taken.)
I’m only an honorary Brit, so I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that in 1938 and 1956, respectively, the double entendre of “meat” and “tenting” would be purely American. These two are M&B;for the UK market. So certainly our snickers are understandable, but I doubt the same would have occurred to the original audience.
Don’t get me started on Jungle Love, A Tropical Tangle. Oh, oh, oh!
Undoubtedly. Indeed, the double entendres did not occur to this Brit even in 2008, though I can see them when others point them out. Come to that, at both the dates mentioned, I doubt whether ‘tenting’ would have had any erotic meaning even in AE (American English), since I suspect its use is chiefly in romance novels from the late 1970s onwards.
I find the changes in style and in the fashions depicted much more interesting than the bad drawing, which is common at all periods. 🙂
Delightful thought. But they are just wearing perfectly ordinary breeches, albeit rather badly drawn!
Mystery at Butlins.
Please don’t tell me romances actually happened at the holiday camps…
When I was in China in 2005, I purchased two character scrolls outside of Beijing, one with my name on it and one with my brother’s. I loved the way they looked, but worried a little about whether they were actually correct. Fast forward a year and a half, and I was entertaining a Chinese exchange student when it occurred to me that this was a good opportunity to double-check the language (I’d asked a Chinese-American friend when we’d returned and got the OK, but wanted the approval of a native speaker, as well). Without telling her what each one was supposed to say, I showed them to her and, lo and behold, she sounded out each of our names! I was very relieved.
I don’t think I’d EVER have the nerve to get a tattoo of something in a language I didn’t speak personally. Too many pitfalls there.
1. Is the Jungle Love an interracial one? And what is that white thing behind her head? A halo? Knocked askew when she fell out of Heaven, perhaps?
2. The couple in MASK OF DECEPTION had better watch out, because a Death Eater is sneaking up behind them.
3. The obvious title for the cover contest book is, of course, MILE-HIGH MADNESS. Spamword is doubt84 as in I doubt 84 people came up with a better title.
The Chinese text reminds me of when my young cousin came to visit my daughter in D.C. – they’re the same age. Anyway, it was Halloween, and my cousin had a Kimono that was a freebie from Delta Airlines when they started flying to Japan. The girls were out doing the Halloween thing, and Japanese people would see them and laugh and laugh, or ask to have their pictures made with them. Turns out the lovely Japanese script said “Fly Delta” all over it.
The little death, maybe?
I actually have to tell my students to analyze the rap songs they are singing to make sure they know what the singer is saying… they seem to think my connection between sound and sense is frivolous and silly, until I point out that many of them speak Spanish and I don’t. They could tell me “I eat shit for breakfast,” means “Hi, pleased to meet you,” and unless I looked it up, I could make a total ass out of myself and never know—and how do they know they’re not doing the same damned thing.
The Mills & Boone covers were… well, they were somethin’. Somethin’ hilarious, that is!
Well, you could easily get different characters for the same name, because in Japanese (I don’t know about Chinese), kanji have more than one pronunciation, and one syllable, e.g. ‘mi’, could be any of several kanji that mean different things. There are a lot of ‘common’ name kanji, like (for girls) names with ‘mi’ (with the kanji for beautiful) or ‘ko’ (with the kanji for child) at the end, but lots of people have unusual names too.
So I’d say, unless you know that your parents had a definite idea of what your Japanese name means, pick the one you like the most! You can get someone to double-check in a dictionary, heck if you like I can do it for you, I have a Japanese name dictionary.
word – should16 – You should have at least 16 meanings to choose from!
My friend Keebler’s parents are Chinese (internationally born, that is), and own a store. One day, a woman comes in with a Chinese character tattooed in a visible location. Keebler’s dad immediately starts snickering and hightails it for the back room.
When she’s gone, Keebler demands to know what was so funny. Apparently, the tattoo read “I am in kindergarten.”
I could be very wrong but I think the “white thing” is supposed to be a hat.
As for Die With Me Lady, I think the characters are in more danger from all those power lines than from the dope rings in Canada. I always thought the Canadians were power hungry and this book cover just proves it.
Now Take Me! Break Me! Save me from that lion, Jungle Man!
I thought it over and decided that MILE-HIGH HIJINKS would also be a good title for the final novel. Or possibly STOMACH, ART THOU ABOUT TO GET AIRSICK? Spamword is any98 as in “Any 98 people got a better suggestion?”