Romance and More: We Do Read OTHER Things!

While I do read a lot of romance, I do in fact also read other things. Many romance readers do—we're incurable ...

Read the full post >

Looking Forward to June

I happen to love the month of June for purely selfish reasons. First, it's my birthday month. And second, it's the month of "getting out of school." Thought for many people that's May, for most of my life it's been June that housed the much-awesome "last day of school." I'm not even IN school and I look forward to it. Because SUMMER.

Summer is for reading! Summer Reading is a big ol' list-making opportunity for all the people who write the words, right? And what's bonkers about my making a summer reading list is ...

Read the full post >

Forbidden Romances

I recently finished a book that worked for me on some levels, but didn't give me a case of overall great book squee. The book, The Englishman by Nina Lewis (Omnific, 2013), focused on a young professor in her first tenure-track position at a small liberal arts college in the South, and her relationship with her mentor, a senior colleague who is older than her, and who is, in a way, her boss. One of the elements of this book that I'm still pondering is the fact that the romance was, for all intents and purposes, forbidden. Not ...

Read the full post >

Romantic Times

I'm still recovering my equilibrium (and my voice) after a week in Kansas City for the 2013 Romantic Times BookLovers Convention. It was a terrific convention this year, and I enjoy RT more each time I attend. At some point I'll reach maximum velocity of squeeing joy and spontaneously combust, but it hasn't happened yet.

RT is an amazing enterprise for a few reasons—and if you're a librarian, it's worth considering a trip. As a fan convention, RT is a four-day event centered around a much-loved common interest—in this case, romance novels, all ...

Read the full post >

These Days, There's Only One Shade of Cover Art

Short answer: NEVER!

Longer answer: Someday? Maybe.

Because the Fifty Shades of Grey covers were so distinct and so very, very not romance-like, and, obviously, so successful, there's been a lot of Shadesesque cover art of late. 

If there's a stock photograph of a monochrome close-up on some fashion accessory possibly carried by a dude, chances are, it's been on a book cover. Considering how many people bought Fifty Shades of Grey (and according to Bookscan ...

Read the full post >

The Sweeping Broom of Reader Judgment

On Facebook this week, I asked folks if they had any questions they'd like me to address here, and I received some awesome ones. Carrie S., who reviews science fiction and fantasy romance at SBTB, asked the following: 

Why do readers feel so compelled to make blanket judgments about genres? In general, I'm not usually a fan of erotica or horror, but that doesn't mean that I hate all erotica or horror, or think it's stupid or all the same. I wish I had a penny for every time I heard someone say, "Oh, I don ...

Read the full post >

Passing Over the Tropes You Don't Like

This week is the Jewish holiday of Passover, and since I've been writing about identifying the tropes and familiar elements of romance that you like, this week I'm going to talk about the ones you might not like. The ones you'd...pass over, if you will. 

Hey, stop groaning!

Just as identifying the character types and storylines that you like is a powerful and useful tool for finding more romances you love to read, knowing what to avoid is also a powerful and very useful tool. There is nothing less fun than realizing you are not enjoying ...

Read the full post >

The Sneaky Appeal of the Beta Hero

For the past few weeks, I've been writing about familiar romance tropes that might help you identify what books you love and why you love them. Plot devices and sources of conflict often attract readers who seek out similar tension across several stories. But did you know that you can also have a reading addiction to a character type? It's true: Many of the things you like about a particular character may suggest a type, and thus have a name. Once you can name your favorite type, you can search for lists of other books with that same ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Identifying Your Reading Catnip

Part of the reason I've been exploring tropes in this series of entries is that once you can identify what themes and elements you like best, you can find many, many more books to read, ones that you're very likely to enjoy. Being able to identify your own reader catnip is a powerful thing.

Everyone's romance catnip is different, too. My closest friends hardly ever recommend romances to me because my reading tastes are so different from theirs. But when I can identify a book that will absolutely appeal to one of them based on that fact ...

Read the full post >

Honorable Resistance: Characters Who Try to Be Good

I've mentioned before that "I don't want to like you, I don't want to like you, I can't stop thinking about your hair, DAMMIT" is one of my very favorite tropes in romance. This trope is most identifiable by some Very Large Reason why the hero or heroine cannot act on their attraction. Whatever that Very Large Reason is, it must be large enough to sustain tension through at least part of the story, but it can't be so large that it makes a believable or acceptable happy ending impossible. The "I don't want ...

Read the full post >

"This Is Only Temporary": An Idea Some Readers Permanently Adore

In my last column, I set myself up for one heck of a task. I wrote about the familiar tropes and characters that reappear in romances, and why they can work wonderfully in the hands of a good writer. Now, I have to assemble my favorites and share them, which pretty much guarantees that any ideas will fly out of my head, leaving me adrift and lost like I usually am in the romance aisle of the bookstore, struggling to remember what and who it is I love reading. You'd think it would be easy to describe my reading ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Finding, Recognizing and Celebrating the Familiar in Romance

In a recent DBSA podcast, Jane Litte from Dear Author and I answered listener mail, including one message from a reader named Jennifer who was trying to figure out how it happened that she had two very separate reading experiences with a single book. The first time she read Fifty Shades of Grey, she was absorbed and transfixed by the story. But after reading negative reviews of the book, she went back and read it again, and that time noticed the grammatical errors and phrase repetition other readers had complained about. For Jennifer, the emotional connection she had with the ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Books to Look Forward to in 2013

What, you thought I'd be immune to more end-of-year listmaking? Please. I make resolutions at the Jewish new year in the fall, and then again on 31 December. Lists of books I want to read are nothing when I've already composed lists of things I want to do and places I want to go in the coming year.

Here are some books I'm looking forward to in 2013:

The Ashford Affair, by Lauren Willig

I mentioned this book in our latest podcast episode, but I learned about it a month ago. I've been trying to stop ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Three of My Favorite Books from 2012

When I went back to see which books I'd enjoyed most this year, I had to look at the archives of my site sorted by grade because (a) I have a terrible memory and (b) I have no concept of time. I might remember very clearly a book I read in 2010, but have no memory of a book I read last month. My brain can be a very foggy place—though it's also quite happy, since I read some terrific books this year.

My favorites of 2012 include three books that I do recall nearly perfectly, because ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Food in Romance

Do you still have leftovers in the house? I have a serious weakness for leftover stuffing straight out of the fridge, and as I was carving a wedge out of the casserole dish last night, I tried to figure out why I love stuffing. I only eat it once a year, it's not particularly good for me, and yet when it's Thanksgiving time, I could eat a metric ton of it without stopping. It's a combination, I think, of the deliciousness, which is always agreeable, coupled with the sense memory of all the other times I've ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Comfort Reading

Comfort reading is something I write about regularly and it's a familiar term to romance readers. One thing we do often is re-read books, especially books we love. Romance is, if you haven't gathered, a very intimate genre, not only because it depicts the emotions surrounding courtship, but also because it invites empathy from the reader based on those same emotions. So if you think about the emotions you feel in a relationship – love, fear, joy, attraction, for example – and you think about the fact that romance is asking the reader to identify with or even feel a ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Things I Learned in Australia

For the past 10 days, I've been in Sydney, Australia, attending the first annual GenreCon, hosted by the Queensland Writer's Centre. The conference was attended by over 100 fiction writers in several genres, with romance, mystery, thriller, women's fiction, chick lit and rural contemporary—also known as 'outback stories'—represented.

Check out Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on the allure of the novella.

Here's a list of things I learned about the Australian fiction market and the writers who work within it, all of which I found uniquely fascinating.

1. Books are holy-crap-you-will-be-light-headed-in-the-bookstore expensive.

Several people explained ...

Read the full post >

The Comforting Allure of the Novella

Sometimes I can tell my stress or busyness levels by what my skin looks like, how hungry for comfort food I am, or the number of times I reach for sweat pants the minute I get home. Another way I can identify my stress levels is by what I want to read.

When I need comfort food reading, I reach for historical romance; the fluffier, the better. But when I'm really busy and stressed and have 65 things to do in each hour of the day, I find myself buying novellas. Lots of them. When I looked at my ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Difficult Heroines

The way in which romance readers interact and process the narratives they read is a fascinating subject for me. I've found that in many cases, readers are more forgiving of outlandish asshattery on the part of a hero, but much less forgiving of the heroine. In Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels (2009, Simon & Schuster), I wrote:

...consider the lukewarm twinkle of the average romance heroine. [Lisa] Kleypas calls her a "creature of moderation." A romance heroine is like the ideal porridge for Goldilocks, if Goldilocks is a romance reader and the porridge is the ...

Read the full post >

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Jew Year's Reading Resolutions

Fall represents major change for me, and I suspect for many people. It's a new year in several ways. For some, it's the start of the school year, with new teachers, classes and school supplies (the best part). The seasons are changing from summer to fall or winter to spring. For Jewish folks, Rosh Hashana, which falls usually in September, is the Jewish liturgical new year.

I tend to make what I call "Jew Year's Resolutions" in the fall and another set with the January 1st new year a few months later. The purpose is the same ...

Read the full post >