Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan
aka The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels
aka the most awesome non-fiction book I've read this year.
And it contains all you ever wanted to know (and more) about the romance novel heroin's irresistible Magic Hoo Hoo and the hero's untamable Wang of Mighty Lovin'.
If some parts of the book are quite serious, the Smart Bitches know how to make me laugh. That's why I love their website and that's why I loved their book. And well, I even find in it mentions of some books I hadn't read I really should have. That means book shopping ♥
And it's not so often we can find a book with such a colorful vocabulary and I found it really entertaining. Who else could write " It's almost like a cake recipe : to make heroin happy, remove pants, add cock, and stir until creamy consistency is achieved." ?
My least favorite part, strangely enough, was the segment on the romance novels' covers. My favorite... well there was the "Holy Crap, I raped a virgin" greeting cards which was hilarious and the chapter about the "Cringe worthy plot devices we know and love". I love a good cliché.
The only thing that made me raise my brow was the porn vs romance part.
Well obviously romance novels are not porn.
But they talked quite a lot about Ellora's Cave in the book and I'm sorry but the majority of their publication isn't romance, it's porn. As in characters and plots are paper thin and totally interchangeable and only a vector to place a max amount of sex scenes. Nobody reads them for the plot but hypocrites.
Don't get me wrong, I still like books from Ellora's Cave (duh!). But I wouldn't called them romance. Well maybe some of them are but I haven't found them yet.
There are romance novels with erotic parts (most of them nowadays, it's a seller and well we are in the 21st century sex is part of the romance) and there are porn novels with love stories but the difference is there.
It was a great book. I can't recommend it enough.
