I did the mother of all decluttering cleanups in my house this morning, which consisted of relocating a LOT of books and digging papers out of various locations where I’d stashed them. One paper was an article I’d meant to link to from the New Jersey paper, the Star-Ledger, back on March 26, 2006: a tongue-in-cheek guide to avoiding bad purchases at the bookstore – Don’t Read This Book! by Charles Taylor. (Candy interjects at this point to shriek in horror at the idea of somebody not loving The Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye, but the dude has a point about books labeled as “in the tradition of…” or “This generation’s…”)
So…what would the Don’t But This Book list for romance look like?
“In the tradition of Cassie Edwards…”
Any book with the word “Savage,” “Desire,” or “Loins” in the title.
Also, any book about a brown-skinned savage’s desire for the loins of a white beauty.
Any blurb containing the word “heartstrings” or “heartwarming.”
Any book with a baby on the cover—and this goes double if the baby has “Who’s Your Daddy?” written on its ass.
If the book promises a “secret that may destroy their love,” you can pretty much bet that it’ll also make you want to destroy the book.
…especially if the secret is a baby.
Does the book feature an amnesiac bride, or an amnesiac anything? Forget about it. (Yeah, yeah, whatever, it’s Monday, dammit, and I’m taking what I can get.)
If the woman’s virginity is prominent enough that it deserves a spot in the title, you’d almost definitely want to leave the book as unsullied as her virtue.
Any book that promises you a glimpse into the exciting, high-stakes world of finance, because it’ll be yet another goddamn book about another goddamn tycoon seducing his goddamn secretary so she’ll be his goddamn boardroom mistress. Either that, or he seduces his enemy’s ingenue of a daughter in retaliation for hurts past, both real and imagined.
Any romance featuring revenge as a major theme, for that matter.
Any romance featuring a sheikh. Or more than one sheikh.
…Double that if the Sheikh is also a boardroom tycoon.
Any romance whose cover makes you feel underwhelmed with your own breasts because the male cover model’s are better looking than yours.
If there’s a blurb that asks the obvious question, such as “Will they have a happily ever after?” Run away. Run far away.
If the woman on the cover is wearing more eye shadow than a bus load of drag queens.
If the man on the cover uses more AquaNet than all 80s hairbands put together.
If the man looks like he was rejected from an 80s hairband.
If the blurb refers to the heroine’s long legs.
Yeah, but what if the boardroom tycoon sheikh is also the virgin of the title? And he has long legs?
You should avoid a book when the cover shows a hairy naked man with matted chest hair sitting spread eagle with a plate of salmon rolls on his crotch. Amazingly, such a book exists:
http://www.sashawhite.net/losingit_two.php
Any book with the word “Savage,†“Desire,†or “Loins†in the title.
This had me racing to Amazon to see if there were romances with “loins” in the title. I shall never doubt again.
I have a brilliant new book idea: The Virgin’s Savage Revenge, where a young woman is kidnapped by a shiek, and escapes, but during the escape is hit on the head and loses her memory, and now she’s pregnant. She then becomes a high powered business tycoon, and she and the shiek meet again in this big business deal, like a merger or something, and the shiek recognizes her, but she doesn’t remember him, and he doesn’t know about the kid, and… and… yeah, I got nothing.
Any book that features mullets on both the hero and heroine.
dilene: Yeah, but what if the boardroom tycoon sheikh is also the virgin of the title? And he has long legs?
I’d buy that book for sure. I likey the hot male virgins.
Candy and Sarah have about covered all my key romance traps to avoid. I especially despise the “half-breed soothes by white blonde soulmate” and the frickin’ secret baby story lines. Aww man do I hate ‘em.
As for other genres I studiously avoid any fantasy book where the author is described as the “new Tolkien” and/or has busty babes in straps and fur boots on the cover standing beside a man in a viking hat and a dwarf. In fact, any favourable comparison to Tolkien makes the book DOA to me. If I want to read Tolkien or Pratchett (god no) or C.S. Lewis or Jane Austen I’ll get their novels. I wanna read your work. Also no strikingly beautiful maiden in medieval garb staring soulfully over some kind of cliff: reminds me too much of V.C. Andrews.
Does anyone ever pay attention to author photos? I don’t. For lit-fic I drop any novel described as “Kafkaesque”.
Wait, wait, wait. Most authors, unless they are la Nora, don’t have the clout to choose their covers. So it would be a shame to judge a book by its cover.
As far as fantasy goes, I just check the frontispiece. If there’s a map on it, I put the book back on the shelf. There are good fantasies with maps on the frontispieces, but you should already own them.
Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters wears a hat in her author photo.
Any romance featuring a sheikh. Or more than one sheikh.
I think we’ve discussed this before w/ regard to M/M romances. I mean, what are the two sheikhs doing? Each other?? Coz then I’m SO there.
…Most anything from the Harlequin Presents imprint? I mean, shiekh-tycoons, secret babies, rich businessmen of any nationality that sports swarthy handsomeness and/or a hot accent? They’ve got it all.
This didn’t stop me from devouring them by the bucketful in high school and college, of course.
Rose, I just had to run and scrub my eyes out with Borax. Sushi crotch. I think I’ve seen it all.
Sandy, I know that most authors don’t have the clout to choose their covers and it is a shame but this does not garner enough sympathy for me to actually pick up and consider a book with a cover art similar to what Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” series usually sport. I’m kinda artsy you know? Those covers literally offend me to the point where I walk over to the other side of the aisle so that I don’t accidentally catch malformed-viking-dwarf-cooties. Or, from romance novels, sushi crotch. (Best.cover.ever btw, thank you Rose!)
Sometimes covers get so bad I begin to think that the publisher is insulting my intelligence and I don’t like that. The one exception for this is Emma Holly’s Midnight series but I hope that one fine day Berkely will stop putting those constipated steroid bundles of man-titty on her covers. 🙁 Think of the children, Berkeley Sensation! The children.
Twins, missing twin or murdered twin, or slimey twin, or any fricking twin at all. One plot hinged on the dead twin having had a hysterectomy and the “living” twin having an intact uterus. And the pathologist MISSED this fact on the autosy. A major organ surgically removed and he doesn’t notice. Must have been drunk, or loaded, which would have helped out the stinking plot. Avoid all twins.
Rose and Lisa-
Almost fell out of bed trying to get away from the crotch-sushi. Did you notice how his torso was all serpentine? I think he may be a transmogrified eel, performing hari-kari on his own kind with soy sauce. Think we can get a class-action suit together for being damaged by that thing?
dittos on the lawsuit. And the title…“Losing It”, what somebody threw up on the sushi?
Turn offs for me when book shopping…anything Harlequin. Alot of the peeves already mentioned, preggers, babies, children, shiekh, tycoon, amnesia, bu**ugly covers, sequil #849, historicals that aren’t, anything mentioning heat (rutting, mating season, or any other condition guaranteed to generate callouses), I know there’s more but just now the brain’s fried.
Hey, I’ll practice in the bookstore tomorrow (right after the school field trip). Yeah, that will refresh my memory!
Personally, anything with blondes as half or all of the main duo. I like blonde people just fine in real life, but I can never quite believe that any blonde person could ever have believably decent sex.
Or maybe it’s just my misfortune that every blonde heroine I’ve ever read has been insufferably annoying or preachy and every blonde hero has turned out to be a macho pain in the ass.
(Submission word: tried25. I’ve tried. Oh, how I’ve tried to like the blondes…)
So a blonde on the cover will turn me off—if it’s vague enough or the characters on the front don’t match the basic physical descriptions within the book, I have been known to let a few blondes slip in under my radar. And I never enjoy them.
ETA: I forgot another biggie. Any historicals with female detectives/female masked avengers. I grind my teeth over these supposedly liberated virgin widows who make a meagre living doing something impractical, end up investigating the hero’s suspicious activities while the real villian is hot on their trail, are suddenly too thick to figure it out on their own and must be saved by the hero who winds up respecting her anyhow for being some kind of Sherlockean-superwoman who possesses brilliant mental faculties and a “feisty” and untameable spirit.
Which—she isn’t, and she doesn’t.
Robert Jordan, like an unfortunate number of fantasy authors, got socked with Darryl K. Sweet doing the cover art. I’ve gotten to the point where I can spot his stuff half a bookstore away, and I hate it every time. When my editor asked if there was any artist I particularly wanted to request, I told her I wanted to ANTI-request Sweet.
Any title with (but not limited to):
– Seduction
– Passion
– Touch
– Anything with -ing (those too-cute-for-words titles “Searching the Blabla” or “Undressing Jake’s Calf”, “The Claiming of Miss Titette”…ugh)
– Savage
– Taste
– Lord/Lady
– Eternal
In the blurbs/excerpts, any mention of the following will make me slap the book back on the shelf (and none too gently too!):
– bee-stung lip (hey, I have a good story to tell about that one…see following blog entry)
– heart *anything* (warming, breaking, wrenching)
– fiesty, spirited, untamed
– creamy *anything* (be it skin or whatever)
And it goes on and on.
Any book where the heroine has lived in a harem/ ends up in a brothel. [Unless she’s a prostitute, in which case, fair enough.]
Barbara Cartland.
Any British-set Regency where the hero wears ‘pants’ as outer garments.
Books where the hero is imprisoned at any point in a S. American jail.
Non-romance, I have a complete inability to buy any book where the heroine is in her forties and her husband is suddenly unfaithful/comes out/is struck by a meteor so that she suddenly has to reassess what she had formerly thought of as a completely happy life.
They may be great, but that blurb never attracts. Same goes for any book where the protagonist is a university lecturer trying to write a book, or any book about an author trying to write a book.
Bee-stung lips.
I have a whole other mental image when I read this bit of descriptive romancalese.
Several years ago, my dad took my brother and I fishing. We had a blast. At one point, we sit around the campfire (yeah, folks, a real honest-to-god campfire with, like, stuff burning and all). My dad gets a beer can and opens it. We start talking. Then at one point, he takes a drink from his can, makes that “RHUH?!” face and spits it out, starts running around in circles, cursing. Thing was, a bee had gotten into his can and stung him on the lip.
Well.
A few hours later, his bottom lip was so swollen it curled outward and he looked like those from the African tribes, you know the one, with the thing in their bottom lip? Anyway, that’s the visual I get anytime an author uses the “bee-stung lip” thing.
Did I ruin it for everyone else?
Sorry.
I’m pretty sure that Elizabeth Lowell has done every single one of those.
You don’t see this much any more so I’m dating myself (good thing too, most of my other dates are disasters) but “In the tradition of Georgette Heyer.” This usually just meant regency set romance with part of the plot and/or slang stolen from Heyer. The majority of these people would not know a comedy of manners if it bit them on the ass.
ANY book with a blurb by Jayne Ann Krentz.
Books that make me run the other way…
Anything that makes the heroine look like a simpering ass that needs the big, strong man to come rescue her from all of her misfortune.
Secret babies.
The couple was married before and now they’re getting back together—especially if they had kids, too. I don’t want to read about the shit that drove them apart and I couldn’t care less about the shit that gets them back together.
The couple were lovers in highschool and the romance ended tragically. Now he’s back in town to win her back! GAH!
To stupid to live heroines and/or heros, which unfortunately I don’t find out until chapter 5 or so. I never buy another book by that author when that happens.
Romances that center around pets, where the pet is the spokesperson.
The heroine can’t have kids and she winds up meeting some guy with kids so YAY, now she can have kids.
The guy is some kind of major asshole but through the heroine’s innate goodness and (gag) inner beauty, she will help him see the light and he’ll roll over like a pet lap dog for her.
This makes me desperate to write a book about a virgin sheikh and the high-powered business tycoon amnesiac heroine who were lovers in high school. They broke up because he had a bigger rack than she did, and refused to wear a shirt. Their secret baby is being raised by her talking Golden Retriever, and his companion, a street-wise tomcat. The sheikh has bee-stung lips and is fiesty. Everyone in the book is blond. The dog and cat recently rescued the heroine from a South American jail where she was imprisioned for impersonating a Navy Seal, and they are all transported to Regency England where the sheikh ends up in a brothel, loses his virginity and is force-fed raw fish, and the heroine wears pants.
When they return, the de-virgined sheikh seeks revenge by seducing the heroine’s evil twin sister, and takes over her company in a canny game of international finance.
I haven’t worked out the ending, but I’m pretty sure the baby, the dog and the cat will bring them all together in a heartwarming comedic romp.
Working title: The Virgin Sheikh’s Passionate Loins And The Desire Of The Amnesiac Tycoon’s Secret Baby.
Probably needs a little tweeking.
I love you all. And Nora should definitely write comedy – I think I just snorted coffee out my nose.
Working title: The Virgin Sheikh’s Passionate Loins And The Desire Of The Amnesiac Tycoon’s Secret Baby.
There is now oatmeal on my computer monitor.
Oh holy crap that’s funny.
Maybe it’s partly because I’m reading Phyllida…, but that was my thought exactly when I read “more than one sheikh.”
Any book where they use gold fish for sex toys.
Any book whose author has had her jacket photo made at a mall Glamor Shots store and/or wears a feather boa.
Yeah, I do pay attention to the photographs, particularly if they are very bad. Sometimes I cringe from embarrassment as in the case of a writer of Scottish historicals who had herself photographed wearing yards of tartan and clutching a very fake looking sword.
Man, I actually like those sheikh virgin tycoon amnesiac high school lovers secret baby ONE SPECIAL NIGHT TOGETHER things.
I subscribe to Harlequin Superromance. Ha ha. They’re so bad, but I can’t get enough of them.
Anyway, mine is where the zoologist heroine who loves all animals goes to some South American country where she meets a mysterious man who is really a werewolf. Oh, and she’s a virgin for some reason.
Actually, I can’t stand books where the heroine is a virgin where she makes such a big deal of it, but can’t actually explain why she IS a virgin.
… not that I don’t read them, anyway.
Gold fish as sex toys?
Rhuh?!
I read one like that. Only the carp was a grandfather spirit or some such, and wanted to…. yeah. Never mind. :sick:
The rest of the book wasn’t much less disturbing, frankly.
Marianne: Barbara Cartland.
Oh man, I was going to mention her. Ellipses seem to be her favourite punctuation mark or all her heroines were asthmatic. Something like that.
Ok I’m sold on Nora’s book and I hope they make it into a movie with big Oscar winning hollywood stars. Dakota Fanning has to be the secret baby.
1. Crotch maki makes me cry.
2. Any cover where the hero is wearing more eye make-up than Cap’n. Jack Sparrow.
3. Any book that has more questions than statements on the blurb.
4. Any book where the heroine has the intelligence of Spam and is waiting to be rescued.
5. Any book, taking place in the present day, that has a 30-year-old virgin. Not buying it.
2. Any cover where the hero is wearing more eye make-up than Cap’n. Jack Sparrow.
But can the hero BE Captain Jack? Please??
**groans with lust for Johnny Depp**
I’ve never chosen a cover or a title for any of my books—that’s a marketing thing. But I can’t bitch cause I can’t title a book to save my life. Or draw. Except stick figures.
So, I don’t judge by either.
I tend to read the first few pages and go from there. If I can’t get through those then I won’t bother with the rest.