It's Not Your Mother's Book, But Are You Your Mother?

Random pet peeve time! One marketing line I hate is "It's not your mother's romance novel." Here's why:

1. Way to be outdated, publishers. I don't know if you've noticed this (I say that to be polite; you clearly haven't), but my generation isn't as anti-parental, never-trust-anyone-over-thirty as the Baby Boomers were. You see how we tend to bring back their fashions and listen to their music and all that? So unless you're trying to sell to Baby Boomers with that phrase--and, if you are, fair enough--that might not be the best marketing tactic.

2. Romance novels aren't cell phones. They haven't really evolved all THAT much in the last forty years, so I'm not sure what the quantifiable difference between one generation's romance novel and another's would look like. And don't say Fifty Shades, because my mom was way more into that book than I was.

3. I like old books.

4. My mom and I basically read the same books.

5. This whole generalized mother issues thing is coming from a sexist and stereotyped place, you do know that? I had a professor in college who was always saying offensive things (he had tenure), and one of the things he told us once was that women are terrified of becoming their mothers, even though they ALWAYS do, and that was the secret to understanding female psychology. Obviously he was a Freudian. But the point is, that's a gross oversimplification of a complex familial relationship; and helloooooo Freud lived a hundred years ago and knew shit-all about women to begin with. So maybe we could stop using these ideas as the baseline for thinking about and relating to women. I'm not going to magically turn into my mother anymore than my body will magically repel rape sperm.




What marketing phrases get on your nerves?



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Review: DEFENDING THE DUCHESS by Rachelle McCalla

Proposed alternate title: Crossing the Line with the Duchess (it is said twice)




Julia is visiting her sister, an American who married into the royal family of a very obscure country in Central Europe named, for some reason, after Elizabeth Bennet's flighty sister. Anyway, now that her sister is a queen, Julia is slated to become a royal duchess--if she survives long enough to make it to the ceremony! Fortunately, she has a bodyguard with the unlikely name of Linus to keep her safe. Nothing's sexier than safe!

Defending the Duchess started out pretty good, with Julia almost immediately being abducted and Linus chasing after her. Very exciting! Buuuuuuut then the book became all about finding out who attempted to kidnap Julia and why, and it had something to do with engines, and I just really did not care. The less I know about the MacGuffin the better, and unfortunately Defending the Duchess was 90% blah blah blah about engines and legal documents and cars. Snoresville, especially since it seemed like the author didn't know a whole lot about any of those things.

I can understand why there was so much about the MacGuffin, though, because without it the book would have been fifty pages! There was no character development at all and very little romance. Julia was the most bizarrely weak character, both physically and emotionally, that I have come across in a long time. Maybe ever. She bangs her shin and is completely unable to walk; she gets a phone call from the baddy bad guy and "whimpers"; and whenever one tiny thing goes wrong she has an emotional breakdown and can't deal. I'm not saying I'm a rock or anything, but how on earth did she make it through law school if she faints at every sign of conflict?

Also, the writing was super-stilted. When Defending the Duchess first started I found it a bit hilarious ("The handsome guard's chivalrous actions;" "Julia caught a whiff of a manly scent;" "Were all royal guards so perfectly sweet and attentive? Julia couldn't recall a time when she'd felt so pampered;" "Julia felt her heart warm a little more for the thoughtful guard;" etc. etc.), but after a while it started to wear on me, especially when there was nothing interesting going on in the story.

I'm not sure why I kept reading, except that I'm a sucker for Ruritanian romances and I kind of liked Linus (even if I did think of the movie Sabrina every time I saw his name and reflect on how that's the most inappropriate name for a bodyguard ever). I skimmed through most of it, I'm not going to lie, and was pretty relieved when it was over. Nevertheless, I might consider reading the next book in the series, even though I have no idea what other relatives King Thaddeus and company are going to dig out of the US.


ETA: Oh, oops! I forgot to add, I got a copy of this book from the publisher for free on Netgalley. Thanks, publisher!



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Why I Don't Read Literary Fiction: A Case Study

I started Bel Canto at the beginning of February and I'm not here to say it isn't amazing. There's a quote on the cover of my copy that says it's "its own universe," and that is a completely accurate statement. When you're reading it, you're completely immersed in the world of the book. Ann Patchett's writing style is lyrical and beautiful, and it's a really really good novel.

So then why do I have such trouble picking it up again after I put it down?

It's not because there's no plot, because there is a plot; and it's not because the story's boring because how can a story about people being held hostage be boring? It's not boring. I just feel no investment in the outcome of this situation and have no curiosity about what will happen next.

I seriously think there's something about my brain that only responds to genre novels. Like I'm really only interested in genre novels, have been ever since I was a kid, and if a book doesn't fit into a certain genre I don't even know how to approach it. What's a story even supposed to be about if it doesn't fit into genre? That's the question.

Maybe I'm just not used to dealing with literary fiction and I need patience to work through Bel Canto. It would probably be worth it; but it's a library book, so I might not finish before it's due. Clearly I don't have a lot of motivation here.


Is there a type of book that you struggle with?



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TSS: The Germanic Horde

Have you ever watched old movies and noticed that the Germans are always the bad guys? If you're like me, you probably thought that was because of WWII; but actually the stereotype goes back much farther than that. There's one thing you can count on when you're reading Edwardian (c. 1900-1910) novels, and that's that everyone with a German accent is evil. This is true even of books that predate WWI by more than a decade. England viewed war with Germany as inevitable for more than a generation before it finally broke out in 1914, likely since the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, but possibly even as far back at the 1860s. The Franco-Prussian War, where Prussia defeated France handily in a matter of weeks and completely destroyed their military confidence, is likely the most important war no one has ever heard of; it led to the unification of the German states and set the stage for the debilitating Treaty of Versailles, in which France exacted long-waited revenge for losing the Franco-Prussian War.

Anyway, here is a list of books I've read recently where the Germans were evol:

Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers: A bourgeois employee of the Home Office goes on what he thinks will be a pleasure cruise around the Frisian Islands, only to discover a German plot to invade England through the North Sea. This is a great book!

Princess Maritza by Percy James Brebner: There is a name for these types of books and I totally forgot what it is. Basically it's like Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope: some British guy goes to a small Germanic state to save the woman he loves. This book was pretty bad, and it had a whole bunch of paranoia about how Germans want to take over the world.

The After House by Mary Roberts Rinehart: I already told you guys the German is always the bad guy, right? Not to spoil anything, of course.

The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Bowen J. Tyler is trying to get a group of German and American sailors to work together so they can reach port, but someone keeps sabotaging the submarine. GUESS WHO IT IS.

The Green Rust by Edgar Wallace: This is probably the most hilarious case of Hun paranoia I've come across yet. Van Heerden is an evol German doctor, but he's not actually German--he's Dutch and was just born near the German border. I guess that's enough! Ahahaa.

Still, it does get slightly tiresome when EVERY German character turns out to be evil. Like really, people? You didn't get tired of that cliche after two or three or ten years? Drives me crazy.



Further Reading:

• Review: Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
• Review: Princess Maritza by Percy James Brebner
• Review: The After House by Mary Roberts Rinehart
• Review: The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Beware of Women Readers

The Following is a new TV show about a former professor named Joe Carroll who goes crazy and starts killing women in honor of his hero and scholarly raison d'etre, Edgar Allan Poe. The show actually doesn't weave Poe into the story THAT much, which is kind of disappointing (seriously, one quote every other episode does not a literary take-off make); but I do find how it treats the female characters interesting.

One of the major characters on the show is Emma, a follower of Carroll's (why didn't he study Alice in Wonderland, one wonders) who appears sweet and innocent, but is one crazy bitch. Here's how she gets involved with Carroll: as a teenager she was a huge fan of his writing (so romantic and tragique! le sigh) and went to one of his signings. At the signing--which appears to be a bust since only she showed up--Emma is immediately attracted to Professor Suave, and he makes it clear he returns her attraction. Fast forward: because of her meeting with Carroll, Emma discovers her sexual power and independence, and as a result Carroll gains her devotion and loyalty.

The dynamic Carroll has his with fans/followers is interesting, and I think Emma is a great example of that. They're all devoted to him, but Emma seems to be the leader of the group because she's the smartest, and she has an emotional connection with Carroll--a connection that might be one-sided, but that Carroll nevertheless encourages. There's a sexual aspect to Carroll's relationship with all of his female followers that isn't necessarily present in his male followers. They seem to follow him because they're gutless wonders looking for a leader; the women in this group are definitely not sheep. They're fans.

I've blogged about how publishers use sex to sell books to women before while men are usually marketed to using their intellect. The same sensibility can be found in The Following's females--they're emotionally volatile and unpredictable, while the men (even the homicidal ones) appear to be more logical and sensible. Of course, Carroll, the author manipulating everyone, is über-intellectual, calm, and attractive.

A part of me wonders if Carroll's female fans in The Following--who are all total psychos--reflect a greater tension in our society over reading and writing being cast as a feminine activity, and the supposed rise of books by books by, for, and about women (if you don't think this is an issue, Google boys and books). I think in part it might be, because the show is really all about masculinity and Carroll trying to reassert his power: all his actions center on punishing his ex-wife, who slept with the man who put him in prison; and on removing his son, a physical embodiment of his virility, from his mother's influence and remodeling him in Carroll's own image. 19th- and 20th-century painters faced a similar dilemma, in that their profession was considered very "feminine," and so they often overcompensated by being chauvinistic assholes. In any case, Emma is the most powerful female character on the show because she's smart (see: reading), sexually manipulative, and emotionally unpredictable--a femme fatale trifecta.

Overall I find The Following to be pretty misogynistic. Yet I still watch it. What can I say, it's entertaining.



Further Reading:

• "A Literary Hard-On" on Truth Beauty Freedom & Books
• "OMG SOMEONE THINK OF OUR BOY CHILDREN" on Bookalicio.us

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Guest Post: I Was a Teenage Veggie

By Stephanie Wardrop, author of Snark and Circumstance

Like my heroine, Georgiana Barrett, I was a teenage vegetarian. But I did it back in the 1970s, in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where one starts the day with a plate of scrapple and ends it with some other form of sausage and three different kinds of starch on the plate. I brought a lot of peanut utter and jelly sandwiches in my lunches and kept a much lower profile than Georgia does. Her earlier commitment to her principles makes her a much better cook than I was at her age. It took me a long time to learn to be a good veg*n (vegan or vegetarian) cook.

At first I made a lot of boring stir fries back in the dark days before one could purchase tofu at your neighborhood grocery store. But I learned my way around those precious blocks of soybean curd and discovered that if you freeze it and thaw it, you can crumble up the tofu and it’s now a cruelty-free version of ground beef, so I sautéed it with taco seasonings and made lots of nachos that non-veggies gobbled up at parties.

Cheap and Easy Peanut Noodles

An early creation, designed for the student budget, was this version of peanut noodles using good ole’ ramen packs that often sell four for a dollar! Just throw out that nasty packet of MSG and other flavorings and do this instead:

1. In one pot, boil your ramen noodles in plain water.
2. Meanwhile, in another pan, put about a ¼ cup of peanut butter, ½ cup of water or broth, about 2 T of soy sauce, some sesame oil, some ginger (fresh or powdered), and some garlic in and heat it up. The peanut butter will melt into the sauce.
3. Drain the noodles and mix them into your sauce. Serve with sesame seeds, some cilantro, chopped scallions, and peanuts.

But baking is my favorite culinary activity. Like Georgia, I love the alchemy of it. It feels like alchemy because I do not entirely understand the chemical processes that turn some pretty yucky tasting substances, like baking powder and unsweetened cocoa and whole wheat flour into something amazingly delicious. My favorite recipes at present come from two sources:

• Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s amazing Post Punk Kitchen at http://www.theppk.com/. In Snark, Georgia bakes her way through Moskowitz’s Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and you should do the same.
• Chocolate Covered Katie at http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/ which features vegan treats that are not only delicious but healthy. Her chocolate cake with a secret ingredient will change your world. You will not taste the secret ingredient or even suspect its presence, and I say this as the mother of a boy who has never willingly eaten a vegetable but scarf’s down this cake. Just try it. Trust me.

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TSS-Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Sorry for the not-radio silence this past week; I went on a trip to pick up all my stuff from storage and move it into more storage. The good news is I have all my books now and more bookshelves! There's just something satisfying about setting books into an empty bookcase, isn't there? My brother, who just turned 20, is also moving into his own place, so there are SO MANY FEELINGS going on right now. Luckily he's only like 10 miles away.

Also, since my parents are letting me use their storage for a while, I figured I could clear out some space in my room to create a reading nook, which I blogged about here before. I was planning on doing that on Saturday, but I OD'd on moving and just didn't feel like it. I will eventually, though.

In other news, I started a new blog called Nowhere Bites, because if there's one thing I need it's another blog. It's dedicated to small town and rural area restaurants. I actually had the idea for Nowhere Bites years ago but didn't know how to put it together. After finishing the road trip on Thursday, though, I just decided to go for it! I hope people will contribute their favorite restaurants, since it will be hard impossible for me to visit places all over the country (and possibly the world? I wouldn't be averse to going world-wide) to write about.

As for reading, my dad agreed to listen to about six hours total of The Night Circus audiobook on the drive to and from the storage place. Dang, that's a long book. He thought it was funny the word "proper" was used so often (I wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't pointed it out). I also started Bel Canto before I left and still haven't passed the fifty page mark; too much stuff going on. I have issues concentrating on reading when I'm not settled. Who knows, I might get to fifty pages and decide it's boring. It's really good so far, though.

Did I miss any important bloggy things while I was away? What was your week like?



Further Reading:

• Nowhere Bites
• The Perfect Reading Spot

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