Blah Books

I am reading a much buzzed about romance book from an author everyone seems to be creaming their pants over. By everyone I mean a couple of bloggers whom I visit regularily (when did they become my "everyone" and what does that say about me and how my reading tastes have changed been molded etc., is a topic for another day). Lyrical writing, rhapsodzies one! Fascinating conflict, moans another. Great villian, sighs someone else. A not-Regency setting (it seems to be very important these days to have a non-Regency setting)-so unusual gushes another.

Blah, says I. To everything.

Lyrical writing -seriously, I read romance for lyrical writing?! Noooooo, lyrical writing is something MFA's in Creative Writing take very seriously. So seriously, they produce volumes and volumes of poetry no one, except their mother will ever buy and who knows if she'll ever read it? The problem with lyrical writing is, well, the lyrical writing. I notice the writing and not the characters, or the romance, or the relationship. Turns me off. And in this author's case, I think the reviewer meant abstract, not lyrical. Because I found the writing in this one full of big abstract words and not adding to my picture of the characters at all.

I didn't hate the book. That would take too much energy. I just felt blah about it. Its the kind of book that makes me sooooo glad to not have made a committment to reviewing books on my blog. Because its easy to write about something you love or hate, the emotion makes my fingers fly across my keyboard. But a book which arouses no strong feelings one way or the other -what can I say? Really what can I say? If I was reviewing it, I'd have to be fair. There are good points about it. The villian is really a villian. I've been told this is good, it creates real conflict for the characters. I just felt like going "dum da dum dum" everytime he enters a room. I mean, its a romance people!

How "real" can a villian be in romance? We all know he's going to get his in the end (and I looooove it when the hero kills the villian or has him locked up at Bedlam) because its a romance, so quite honestly, this knowledge on my part neuters the villian's ability to create conflict. I tend to skip over the really villianous parts because I don't read romance to get creeped out or to shiver unpleasantly. So it just seems to me like an awdul lot of work on the part of the author to create a character that everyone knows will never, ever triumph in Romance Land.

So yeah, the villian character is really really bad. So that's good. The writing style didn't appeal to me. The love scenes were tepid and there was a boring little sub plot romance about two uninspiring characters. I skipped those parts. I felt the male character had more potential to be sexy than he was. As did the female charactr. But still, the conflict between those two kept me reading. So as I said, I didn't hate it.

But I didn't love it.

It was Blah.


Read a blah book lately? Care to discuss it or am I asking too much?

Romance Books You Didn't Know Were Romance Books

Last year, I was fortunate to be on a committee which judged romance books (among other genres) in order to come up with the "best" one of the year. This was my pick for "Best Romance": Chemistry For Beginners by Anthony Strong. You'd never know it was a romance book by the title or by the marketing. It's a trade paperback -and if you find it in the bookstore at all, its going to be in the literary section. Shame that. The market for this book is romance readers not the literary types at all. And it's telling none of the big romance sites (AAR, Smart Bitches, Dear Author) have picked up on it. It's really too bad. This book is the best contemporary romance I have ever read and, as I have detailed before, I do not like contemporary romances for a plethora of reasons. And when I tell you about this book, you are going to grimace and role your eyes because it sounds like a bunch of pretentious literary crapola. But its not. Oh no, its not. And I totally mean that as a compliment.

I wish I could link to a great, well thought out review done by an independent blogger, as reviews are not my forte and I like it better when someone else does all the work. The best I can do is point you the Amazon page and invite you to read the first review. It actually is quite a succinct summary of the book and gives you a fairly good idea of what it is all about. But don't let the reviewer's snarky attitude toward romance turn you off! The reviewer doesn't understand romance books, or readers and thus cannot comment intelligently on this book as a romance. He is to be pitied. I am a romance reader who has read the book, and I am telling you it has all the traditional elements of a romance and an amazing HEA. The reviewer sees these things as detriments and he is annoyed that true love conquers all. But because we are all romance readers here, we like this kind of stuff. I blame the marketing of this book. If you pick it up and expect it to be "literary" you are going to be puzzled. But if it was marketed properly as a romance, you would have the expectations of a romance book and wouldn't expect the litery stuff.

A little about the book...yes, the book is in the form of a scientific paper. There are footnotes. It is about scientists. It is about academia. It is about female Viagara. It is about a Cary Grant type handsome nerd who falls in love with his research subject. It is also about sex. And fun. And what happens when you try to study sex in a scientific way. It is also about bonobos. They have a lot of sex, don't ya know.

This book was nominated by a woman who confessed to me she had never bought a romance book in her life. Just doesn't care for the genre. But she couldn't put this book down. So when she told me about it, I had my doubts. And I was deeply sceptical. And I thought, how good could a romance be, if its reccomended by someone who doesn't like romance. Boy howdy, I was wrong!

So try it. Trust me. You will like it.

And then let's storm his publisher and demand they put this book in the hands of romance readers everywhere and market the hell out of this book to the romance blogs, etc., Its that good. And romance readers deserve to know about it.

A Conflict in Need of a Good Romance

Okay, I'll be the first to admit I have a hard time with contemporaries. Nothing against all the wonderful romance writers who specialize in this genre...it's just I tend to find the conflict in modern romance to be somewhat lacking. Perhaps because I have had too much real drama in my life, I see the problems associated with straight contemporaries to be not very problematic at all. A perfectly good contemporary might revolve around rival restaurant owners and a stolen recipe. Shrug. Can't they just share? Or maybe she's an antique collector and he owns an antique she really wants and won't sell it for love or money. Yawn. Go buy something else why don't ya? And then there's the whole sex thing. A writer (who shall remain nameless) for a category line has the heroine jumping into bed with the hero in the first fifty pages. They spend the next couple hundred pages trying to figure out what it all means, and if it means anything and if it does, does it mean more to me than it did for you, and OMG you are getting too close and I have such a fear of intimacy and blah blah blah. I don't fault the writing or the character development (shoot, I should write as well as this chick) it's just the central idea and premise of most contemporaries leave me cold. And then the whole lack of sexual tension, the whole will they, won't they, and what are the consequences if they do, is missing in alot of contemporaries for the simple reason, it just doesn't much matter anymore if the characters jump into bed on the first date. So conflicts regarding sex tend to strictly of the internal kind. I end up feeling a good session on the couch with the shrink would solve most of their problems.

I guess the reason many readers enjoy contemporary romance is that it reflects their own lives, or maybe slightly idealized versions of their lives. Problems are real and relatable. And its sexy and wonderful to think a real romance can happen amid the ordinariness of most lives. That's great, but it's not for me.

Here's what I want and I wonder if there is a writer who can manage it or dares to "go there." I want real world problems but ripped from the head line kind of problems. There's lots of people in the world who have to live with very dramatic external conflict which keeps them from true love. And by "dramatic external conflict" I don't mean that her business associate won't like her much for dating the hero, or her revenue from her inn keeping will decline by ten percent if the hero's inn attracts more customers.

This is what I mean by dramatic external conflict. Ayann Hirsi Ali. Need I say more. Yes, I know she's too "real" but wow, if you could imagine how a woman like that could find love in this world, the story would practically write itself wouldn't it? She's been mutilated, a price put on her head, and is not well liked by many left wing intellectuals for her unwavering criticism of Islam. Her whole life is a conflict. Is there a man for a character like that? Does he exist and how would you write him? It helps that she is beautiful.

I see characters similar to Ali in historicals or even paranormals. Tortured by what has happened to them both externally and internally, characters who live in a world that is conflicted and yet, they find love anyway. And manage to make a happy life for themselves. Why is we can write about werewolves gang raping women, but not real Muslim women undergoing genital mutilation?

Is it wrong to think about Ali and women like her in this way? Is her conflict something most writers would rather not confront because it is too real? Can no one can imagine a happy ending for women who have undergone and continue to undergo what Ali has been through?

Discuss....Tell me what you think.