And the rosary beads count the one, two, threes.

[lithiumlaughter]

One of the more amusing parts of working at a bookstore is restocking the romance novels.

One, whenever I'm shelving anything with the word 'renegade' in the title, I start humming the song by Styx. You may or may not be surprised at how frequently this occurs. Two, As soon as you think you've seen absolutely every possible way you can use either

Comments

[xenokattz]

I HAVE SEEN THAT ROMANCE NOVEL. I even read the last 2 chapters of that romance novel because I just COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. And you're talking to someone who would borrow up to 20 romance novels at a time in high school.

I love them. I love them like people love MMA, I'm Pregnant and [fill in here] or Slushies. They're easy reads & & 99.99999% of the time you know how it's going to end but occasionally, someone surprises you & the book ends up being and good read and/or hawt hawt hawt pr0n. Occasionally, VERY occasionally, you get crack like cowboy vampires & you want to weep with horrified joy.

1) I know why I love big burly men with claymores: I grew up with comics. You know my taste in men. ;) Also, kilts leave nothing to the imagination regarding the eveness of musculature, unlike slacks or baggy jeans which hide chicken legs. Or EVEN WORSE, skinny jeans that hide NOTHING. A man whose thighs are thinner than my calves is a man I can kneecap by sitting on his lap.

I'm just saying. ;)

2) Outlander is a good book. The second one is meh. The third is all right. The fourth almost gets good again. But everything after that is downhill. Plus, Diana Gabaldon proved to be a douchebag about fanfiction & ficcers so she is nothing to me. In conclusion, read the first book & pretend the rest don't exist.

That said, Jaime Fraser is kind of like Clark Kent in that he's sweet, intelligent, burly & damn good with a sword. And Claire is definitely not a damsel in distress even when she should be. Also, kudos to Gabaldon for doing the older women thing before Demi made it normal as well as writing a middle-aged people as still having sex-lives. But after maybe book 3, Gabaldon throws in way too many side characters, starts to show off her spectacular research skills to the point of "hell, just write a nonfic already!" but also tries to be zomgsuperedgy... yeah. She bored me & lost me.

3) Okay, somewhere in Guildford Public Library, probably misfiled, is an effing porn novel. I am not even kidding. On top of the usual contemporary sex scenes there's a M/F/F where the M is a sexy Cajun, a M/F/M where one of the M's is the F's step-dad except he's closer to her age than his wife's (he's a widower by this point) & the other M is an Italian rent-boy they met at a cemetery, and there was something else that totally shocked my poor 19 year old self but I can't remember it. It's an unassuming grey-ish blue book, maybe a centimeter thick & I think it has a woman sitting with her back to the audience. I remember reading it and each chapter I was like "no. WAY. They WROTE that? I mean, outside of FICS?!"

4) I do like Julia Quinn's books. She's fun. Kind of Austen-esque. She joyfully writes romance novels knowing she writes romance novels & doesn't try to make it zomg edgy/soverydeep/life changing but, dammit, she writes them WELL. That's really all I ask from my romances. A plot that makes sense, enjoyable characters, maybe an action scene/subplot that blends in smoothly.

5) I have a collection of craptacular romance novels. They are... just... crappy. Utter TURDS. The "heroes" are stupid and/or incompetnet & very possibly teaming with STIs. The women are Too Stupid To Live. The sex scenes are horrifically purple. I read them & laugh to myself. I figure this is my version of watching Jerry Springer.

[lithiumlaughter]

I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO THINK WHEN I SAW IT. I had it in my stack, and figured yeah, yeah, just another cowboy romance, but then I saw the back and HOLY CRAP ON TOAST.

1) Like I said, intellectually, I totally get it (even if my taste in fiction runs more along the lines of snarky guys with issues and guns, and in real life is more geared towards guys with body ink and crooked smiles...on a tangent, there was a day last week where I swear every single guy in the city like that came into my store. It was FANTASTIC). Swords are awesome. Kilts are awesome. Guys with both? Awesome. I think it's more the flooding of the market with the books that confuses me.

2) It was exactly that fandom shit that made me rather dislike her. Laurel K. Hamilton did much the same thing (hated on fanfiction, then lent her char don't chacters out), and that's why I refuse to touch her books.
That, and the apparent were-panther orgies. Or the were-giraffes. I don't even know.
But as for Gabaldon, I just don't get why you would say stuff like that when fandom is about love for a piece of work. It's FLATTERING. I don't know if she just has a poor understanding of what fandom is, but I really find myself disliking her all the same. There's a reason it's called fandom. It's because they're fans. But I digress.
Thanks for the tip/warning; if I do try it, I'll certainly stop after the first. Gracias!

3) That's actually...wow. Words fail me, to be hnest. God bless misfiled erotica (it's not PORN in the industry, as we're reminded at work, it's EROTICA), I guess?

4) Julia Quinn. For a second, I thought she was the one who wrote the Secret Circle books, but that's a woman by the name of Quick. Good to know about Quinn though. Much obliged for the finger-point in the right direction.

5) You know, I suppose that's as good a reason as any to read the crappy ones. Walking Venereal Diseases, Dumbass Damsels...it sounds like a page on TV Tropes. (Must not link, mus not visit, cannot get caught in wormhole...)