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Category: Reading

Posts in which we talk about reading habits and preferences

How far can a heroine go?

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First, a quick apology for the inherent bias in this question. It’s so unfair, yet I’ve noticed that readers who complained about too much sex in my books always castigated the heroine. “Ladies didn’t do that during the Regency” was a comment was directed at a heroine who dared have sex with her husband.

OK, I won’t debate that one 🙂 but these readers have a point, skewed as it is. Historically, women paid the highest consequences for sex, biological and social.

I love SEX AND THE CITY. In all the sexual exploration the four main characters go through, they are searching for something, even if they’re not sure what it is. And when they find it, it’s LOVE. BUT I think it’s dodgy to translate their attitudes to women of the early 19th century. Not that they didn’t have sex–and sometimes outside the rules–and sometimes enjoying it! 🙂 But they were living and loving in a different world, with different stakes.

I admit to having trouble with the Regency heroine who experiments with sex lightly. With the heroine who keeps insisting to herself and everyone else that the hero is a loathesome jerk and the last man on earth she’d ever marry, yet repeatedly has sex with him without ever worrying about social disgrace or pregnancy or destroying her sisters’ chances of making good marriages. Such heroines usually strike me as some combination of needy, confused, selfish or just TSTL.

Yet I love so many sexy Regency era romances.

Things that mitigate the “Lydia Bennet” factor: marriage of convenience, no reputation to lose, supposed infertility (though possibly reversible!), birth control (some forms existed, but it has to make sense that the characters would know about and use it). And emotional commitment.

There’s also this mysterious thing: “heat of the moment”. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve written this whole post and I’m still not sure how some authors make me feel that it really is the right moment for the characters to go at it, and why sometimes it just feels too early. Is it just incredibly sensual writing? Or deep enough characterisation that I feel the love even if the characters aren’t fully aware of it?

Maybe part of it is that I want some buildup.

What do you think? When has a heroine gone over from being human and vulnerable to TSTL in matters of sex? What makes “heat of the moment” work, or not? Which authors do you think handle this the best?

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE
www.elenagreene.com

 

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged , , | 11 Replies

The Hotness Factor

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Warning–today’s post will be Very Shallow and Not At All Edifying. Mostly because my spring allergies have kicked in, and my medicine has me even fuzzier-headed than usual. But also because of a book I just finished reading.

The book was “Kiss and Tango” by Marina Palmer, a memoir that had not a single thing to do with the Regency, but was a tale of the author quitting her dull advertising job in New York and taking off to dance the tango in Argentina. (Can this be my new career ambition, too???). She also had hot sex with many hunky tango guys, which leads me to this.

Palmer says “…this city [Buenos Aires] contains the most beautiful men per capita (we’re talking both quantity and quality). To that end, I have devised an index that will hopefully enable others to draw their own conclusions.
The Beautiful Men Index Per Square Mile:
Athens 0
Rio 4
New York 8
Paris 15
London 17
Venice 79
Buenos Aires 86”

She then goes into her reasons for these numbers, which makes me really want to go to South America. I then got the idea (this was excellent time wastage, BTW) to scan my romance “keeper” shelf and devise my own hot guy index based on favorite heroes. here goes:
Medieval/Renaissance 16
Regency 26
Victorian 9
Misc. 11
Paranormal 6

I will have to analyze these statistics as soon as the Benadryl wears off.

In the meantime, what are some of your favorite “great hero” books? Or “beautiful men” cities? (I’m especially interested in hearing about THAT…)

As for the Orlando picture–well, it’s Monday, and I just felt like it. 🙂

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged , , | 4 Replies

Everyone’s a critic

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“I thought this book would never end…What a silly story about people I could care less about. . . . It gave me a headace and this book was not in the least amusing. I never even smiled once while reading it! What a waste.”

Laurie’s post about judging the RITAs had me thinking about other ways our books are judged, i.e. by readers through the medium of Amazon reviews.

A few years ago, an Amazon glitch revealed the identities of anonymous reviewers (Click here to read what the NY Times article) and confirmed what many people had long suspected: that some reviews were written by authors and/or their friends and relatives, either praising their own books or trashing those of rivals.

About a month ago there was a debate on the credibility of reader reviews at Romancing the Blog. Some argue that only writers are qualified to evaluate whether a novel is “good” or not. Some say no one should criticize unless they could do better themselves. I don’t agree with that last statement. If I go to a fine restaurant and order creme brulee, I expect it to taste good, even though I would be scared to wield a blowtorch in my own kitchen. If I need an appendectomy… well, you get the picture!

OTOH many readers can’t set aside their own personal preferences and peeves when evaluating a book. What if a restaurant critic said something like, “I hate fish, and Chef So-and-so’s salmon special was no exception”? It wouldn’t fly, but I’ve read reviews on Amazon that read that way. The reader just picked the wrong book (and sometimes covers and back blurbs are misleading, adding to the problem).

This is my feeling: that readers usually aren’t qualified to decide if a book was “good” or not. But they can say whether they liked it or not. That’s useful to other readers, but only if they explain why .

I tend to discount any of the following:

  • Raves like “Best book I ever read!” on a debut novel, sans any detail that might prove the reviewer ever read the book, posted by someone who just happens to hail from the author’s home town.
  • Incoherent reviews filled with spelling and grammatical errors (unless they are incoherently praising one of my books, of course!)
  • Anything that is too flaming. Really angry reviews make me wonder if the person has bigger problems then being disappointed with a book.

Personally, I don’t have the time to write negative reviews. I do try to write positive reviews when I’ve enjoyed a book (but I’m waaaaayyyy behind). I don’t make buying decisions based on reviews on Amazon. I also avoid reading reviews of my own books if I’m in a rough patch of writing, as negative reviews can topple wobbly self-confidence.

I do take seriously the reviews, positive or negative, that are intelligently written with some explanation for the rating they gave. If it’s one of my books, I may not take those comments to heart when writing the next book, but they always make me think. That’s not necessarily a bad thing! 🙂

When do you ever write Amazon reviews? Do you read them? Do they influence your buying decisions?

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, RT Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee
www.elenagreene.com

P.S. That first quote was from an Amazon customer review for my first book. I did find, after searching, that the same reviewer had given 1’s to many Regency authors, including Mary Jo Putney and Mary Balogh.

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged | 11 Replies

Reading, Judging, Objectivity

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Hi. It’s me. Maybe you missed me yesterday? Well, I did! My brain was involved in a historical I was reading for the annual RITA contest and it didn’t come up for air. I have two extreme ways of being: completely focused, or completely not! Well, anyway…I thought I’d crack open that old discussion about rating/reviewing books.

Here are the rules I try to play by:

Be Objective. This means that I take your personal preferences out of the mix. If there’s a type of romance I don’t care for, I don’t judge on that basis. I look at how this romance compares to the standard of its type.

Don’t be a copyeditor. It isn’t the copyeditor you are judging, it’s the author’s work. A few typos, grammar errors or inconsistencies I can overlook. (I might add that I am doing ‘first round’ judging–the finalists will be judged a second time).

Look for something special that makes the book stand out. That may be the use of historical detail; the characters; the way the story draws me in and keeps my interest; the way the story explores its theme, taking me deeper throughout; the writing itself; the way the story plays out, keeping me engaged until the end–so that when I close the book I feel that it kept its promise and did not let me down.

It is difficult sometimes. We all have little things that we dislike that may or may not be an issue for anyone else–that may in fact be expected in the kind of romance we are reading. Yes, we do talk about clothes in traditional Regencies–not always, but we do. We often are writing about the upper classes in England. They had money, society was important, and they wore fashionable clothes, and sometimes it is expected that we tell what they were wearing. A judge may dislike references to fashion, but she should consider the genre.

I have a problem with cliches–little ones, like “her feet were encased in white satin shoes” instead of “she wore white satin shoes,” and various parts of a woman’s finery being referred to as “a confection of …,” and so forth. Just little word combinations that were fresh once but that have been repeated many times. But I don’t let this throw me when judging. I look at the big picture.

Having said all this, I still struggle. So…I would like to hear what you all look for in a book when reviewing it or judging it. What standards do you hold yourself to? Where do you draw the line between objectivity and subjectivity?

And finally…what do you think makes a winning book?

Laurie, with more questions than answers!

LORD RYBURN’S APPRENTICE
Signet, January 2006

Posted in Reading | Tagged , | 4 Replies

Sponge, Sand Glass, Strain-bag, Mogul Diamond?

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Last week, I talked about getting started again after a long break. I did start again, but I am in the middle of writing a scene I absolutely hate, and I am not sure if that means the idea behind the scene stinks, or if my writing stinks and the idea is good, or what. So I am going to finish writing the scene, gritted teeth and all (my heroine DOES get to knock someone out, which is cool, but the hero doesn’t arrive until later, late bastard), but meanwhile, my brain has been doing its best to keep me away from productive time at the keyboard.

So I’ve pulled out a fun book to browse through, Nicholas Parsons‘ The Book of Literary Lists (I cited a Barbara Cartland quote on my own Diary yesterday; click here to read it). And discovered this:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘s Four Classes of Book Reader

Sponges, who absorb all they read and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied.
Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.

I wish I were a mogul diamond, but I think I must confess to being a sponge: I read a lot, and don’t always think too hard about what I’ve just read. Sometimes I read just to keep my mind occupied, sand-glass style, but I do retain more than nothing. My mom is a sand-glass–she can barely remember what’s happening WHILE she’s reading the book, but she reads all the time, and is an even faster reader than me, and I am pretty darn fast.

So–do you think Coleridge is right in his categories? What kind of reader are you? And, as a bonus question, if you were to read a scene where the previously meek heroine decks a guy, would you hate it?

Thanks for sharing–

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

Posted in Reading | Tagged , | 9 Replies
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