Just breath it
A drive-by post, mostly about books:
Item one: I have been given a terrifying self-help manual to review for the March issue of my magazine. The husband-and-wife team on the front cover look like they’re exhorting the reader to join a particularly terrifying cult - one that starts with promises of Joy and Rapture and ends with the bad Kool-Aid. Also, they are inordinately fond of bold, italicised and just plain ugly fonts, BLOCK CAPS LIKE WOAH and exclamation marks. And they don’t know the difference between ‘practice’ and ‘practise’ and ‘breathe’ and ‘breath’.
Sample line (emphasis and layout all theirs):
So be true to yourself!
FIND YOUR PASSION!!! EMBRACE IT!!! DRINK IT!!! BREATH IT!!! LIVE IT!!! BE IT!!!
Item two: Last night in the library (in the Read This! section), I discovered the unholy alliance of trite shopping-based chick-lit and trite Buffy rip-off horror. With, I think, some Mills & Boon. The result?
The Undead books, starting with Undead and Unwed and moving on to Undead and Unpopular, Unemployed, Unappreciated and all manner of other Un-things.
My favourite samples from the blurbs include:
Undead shopaholic Betsy Taylor has found that being Vampire Queen has more problems than perks. It may be easy to find blood in the dark of night, but try finding a strawberry smoothie...
And:
... The scrumptious [vampire] Sinclair and his cohorts want her help in overthrowing the most obnoxious power-hungry vampire in five centuries. Frankly Betsy couldn’t care less about vamp politics. But Sinclair and his followers have powerful methods of persuasion. Not least of which is unlimited access to Manolo Blahnik’s Spring collection…
Please. Send help.
Merry Christmas/season's greetings/happy holidays/entirely non-denominational best wishes to all my flist. I hope to be much less lame about posting in the new year.
Item one: I have been given a terrifying self-help manual to review for the March issue of my magazine. The husband-and-wife team on the front cover look like they’re exhorting the reader to join a particularly terrifying cult - one that starts with promises of Joy and Rapture and ends with the bad Kool-Aid. Also, they are inordinately fond of bold, italicised and just plain ugly fonts, BLOCK CAPS LIKE WOAH and exclamation marks. And they don’t know the difference between ‘practice’ and ‘practise’ and ‘breathe’ and ‘breath’.
Sample line (emphasis and layout all theirs):
So be true to yourself!
FIND YOUR PASSION!!! EMBRACE IT!!! DRINK IT!!! BREATH IT!!! LIVE IT!!! BE IT!!!
Item two: Last night in the library (in the Read This! section), I discovered the unholy alliance of trite shopping-based chick-lit and trite Buffy rip-off horror. With, I think, some Mills & Boon. The result?
The Undead books, starting with Undead and Unwed and moving on to Undead and Unpopular, Unemployed, Unappreciated and all manner of other Un-things.
My favourite samples from the blurbs include:
Undead shopaholic Betsy Taylor has found that being Vampire Queen has more problems than perks. It may be easy to find blood in the dark of night, but try finding a strawberry smoothie...
And:
... The scrumptious [vampire] Sinclair and his cohorts want her help in overthrowing the most obnoxious power-hungry vampire in five centuries. Frankly Betsy couldn’t care less about vamp politics. But Sinclair and his followers have powerful methods of persuasion. Not least of which is unlimited access to Manolo Blahnik’s Spring collection…
Please. Send help.
Merry Christmas/season's greetings/happy holidays/entirely non-denominational best wishes to all my flist. I hope to be much less lame about posting in the new year.