it's not easy being green...
I'd like to start off the morning hoping that a certain adorable bartender's sexy facial hair survives the day. Happy 33rd, wherever you are, Josh. Probably asleep.
Bastard.
tiffanynichelle, my obsession with remembering to buy milk when I got home was all for naught: The store closed at nine! :::shakey fist of DOOOOOM:::
Moving on...I'm SO glad Battlestar is back on Friday! It's been so long I almost forgot about it. But, hey, my lobster hate for the gang on the Pegasus has returned with a vengeance and I really, really, hope the Old Man kicks their asses.
Moving even further along, I'm feeling bookish this morning and I'd like to discuss one of my favorite novels: Envy, by Sandra Brown. Yes, I know what people are probably thinking: "Sandra Brown? The romance novel author? Jesus, Mala...your taste is abysmal." But you know, I honestly think that our prejudices against genre fiction often get in the way of finding really, really, good work. We've got this idea that everybody needs to be the next Faulkner to be considered a good writer and I think that's crap. I mean, you can guarantee that even Faulkner wasn't the next Faulkner some of the time.
(And, okay, I don't even LIKE Faulkner.)
Romance novelists, or "romantic thriller" writers (which is becoming a popular sub-genre if you look at authors like Iris Johansen and Catherine Coulter, etc.), often get short-changed and pre-judged. But, really, just like any other mainstream author, you get the books that you can tell they put parts of their souls into and the books that are, simply, "rent check books." Come on, you know what I'm talking about. Everybody from Tom Clancy to John Grisham to Patricia Cornwell has written a Rent Check Book. It's just that authors like Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, the aforementioned Coulter and Johansen...they all do it more often! Heck, with publishing houses like Harlequin and Silhouette, it's pretty much par for the course to churn out formulaic novels (which is why, a few years back, I was delighted to find Jenna Ryan and Gayle Wilson, Harlequin authors who deviated a little). Nora Roberts is a great example as well. There are people who theorize that she's not even a person anymore, that there's a VC Andrews-esque writing team churning out her stuff. And I wouldn't doubt it! At this point, *I* could write a Nora Roberts trilogy! It's a simple recipe: blonde, redheaded, and brunette heroines + an Irish/Welsh/Scottish curse + an island + flower or jewel symbolism + blackmail + optional molestation + an eventual happy ending. But then you get a novel like Birthright and you think, "Hey, Nora put some thought into this one. It has layers. She may just have written it for herself."
And, thus, we cycle back to Envy. I'm not even sure I can properly articulate why I love this novel so much. Brown has written a "romance novel" that, really, is a book about the writing process - along with being a book about envy and malice and greed and passion. Heck, as a writer, I think those things actually go together really well. It's a novel about writers, about publishers, and sucks you in immedietely with a compelling story-within-a-story that's in a distinctly *male* voice. I think that's what impressed me the most...because you know that, these days, there's more and more emphasis on "chicklit", on women developing distinctly feminine voices and you can pick up a book where the author's name is gender ambiguous and STILL tell whether a man or woman wrote it. But "back in the day," you had your SE Hintons or George Elliots and you would never have guessed. So, in Envy, we have Sandra Brown writing as the elusive "PME." That's the first thing you get, this really engaging prologue that sucks in the female lead, Maris Matherly-Reed, and the reader, at the same time. And, then, when we launch into Sandra's narrative in the next chapter, she stays strong and solid and her *imagery* is amazing, both as PME and as Sandra. To me, she's a really solid Southern writer and nowhere is that more obvious than in this book. Her passion for the craft is so obvious, so tangible.
I can and have re-read this a dozen times since I bought it. I always find some new detail, something I missed the previous time. I wince, I laugh, I fan myself because it's racy, and I just *enjoy* that these characters love to write and create.
I think it might even make a really good movie, given its twists and turns, and have cast Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts as the leads in my head. But even so, since it's a book about writing, I feel like it's perfect in its current format. Okay, not *perfect*. I mean, there's a bit of hokiness, but nobody's actually perfect. LOL.
Bastard.
tiffanynichelle, my obsession with remembering to buy milk when I got home was all for naught: The store closed at nine! :::shakey fist of DOOOOOM:::
Moving on...I'm SO glad Battlestar is back on Friday! It's been so long I almost forgot about it. But, hey, my lobster hate for the gang on the Pegasus has returned with a vengeance and I really, really, hope the Old Man kicks their asses.
Moving even further along, I'm feeling bookish this morning and I'd like to discuss one of my favorite novels: Envy, by Sandra Brown. Yes, I know what people are probably thinking: "Sandra Brown? The romance novel author? Jesus, Mala...your taste is abysmal." But you know, I honestly think that our prejudices against genre fiction often get in the way of finding really, really, good work. We've got this idea that everybody needs to be the next Faulkner to be considered a good writer and I think that's crap. I mean, you can guarantee that even Faulkner wasn't the next Faulkner some of the time.
(And, okay, I don't even LIKE Faulkner.)
Romance novelists, or "romantic thriller" writers (which is becoming a popular sub-genre if you look at authors like Iris Johansen and Catherine Coulter, etc.), often get short-changed and pre-judged. But, really, just like any other mainstream author, you get the books that you can tell they put parts of their souls into and the books that are, simply, "rent check books." Come on, you know what I'm talking about. Everybody from Tom Clancy to John Grisham to Patricia Cornwell has written a Rent Check Book. It's just that authors like Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, the aforementioned Coulter and Johansen...they all do it more often! Heck, with publishing houses like Harlequin and Silhouette, it's pretty much par for the course to churn out formulaic novels (which is why, a few years back, I was delighted to find Jenna Ryan and Gayle Wilson, Harlequin authors who deviated a little). Nora Roberts is a great example as well. There are people who theorize that she's not even a person anymore, that there's a VC Andrews-esque writing team churning out her stuff. And I wouldn't doubt it! At this point, *I* could write a Nora Roberts trilogy! It's a simple recipe: blonde, redheaded, and brunette heroines + an Irish/Welsh/Scottish curse + an island + flower or jewel symbolism + blackmail + optional molestation + an eventual happy ending. But then you get a novel like Birthright and you think, "Hey, Nora put some thought into this one. It has layers. She may just have written it for herself."
And, thus, we cycle back to Envy. I'm not even sure I can properly articulate why I love this novel so much. Brown has written a "romance novel" that, really, is a book about the writing process - along with being a book about envy and malice and greed and passion. Heck, as a writer, I think those things actually go together really well. It's a novel about writers, about publishers, and sucks you in immedietely with a compelling story-within-a-story that's in a distinctly *male* voice. I think that's what impressed me the most...because you know that, these days, there's more and more emphasis on "chicklit", on women developing distinctly feminine voices and you can pick up a book where the author's name is gender ambiguous and STILL tell whether a man or woman wrote it. But "back in the day," you had your SE Hintons or George Elliots and you would never have guessed. So, in Envy, we have Sandra Brown writing as the elusive "PME." That's the first thing you get, this really engaging prologue that sucks in the female lead, Maris Matherly-Reed, and the reader, at the same time. And, then, when we launch into Sandra's narrative in the next chapter, she stays strong and solid and her *imagery* is amazing, both as PME and as Sandra. To me, she's a really solid Southern writer and nowhere is that more obvious than in this book. Her passion for the craft is so obvious, so tangible.
I can and have re-read this a dozen times since I bought it. I always find some new detail, something I missed the previous time. I wince, I laugh, I fan myself because it's racy, and I just *enjoy* that these characters love to write and create.
I think it might even make a really good movie, given its twists and turns, and have cast Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts as the leads in my head. But even so, since it's a book about writing, I feel like it's perfect in its current format. Okay, not *perfect*. I mean, there's a bit of hokiness, but nobody's actually perfect. LOL.