Category: Reading

Posts in which we talk about reading habits and preferences

Critical Opinion

Updated on January 14, 2013 by megan

“Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.” — Mark Twain

“Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.” —Dorothy Parker’s Book Review of The House at Pooh Corner.

“People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.” — Abraham Lincoln, in a book review

Reviews. The thought of them can strike terror into an author’s heart. Will the reviewer appreciate the sly wit and clever heroine? Find the hero dreamily attractive and powerful? Or will she point out that if the hero and heroine had only cleared up one little misunderstanding, the book would have been over after fifty pages?

My first book comes out on Tuesday, and it’s already received one review, a complimentary one from Romantic Times. When it reaches the general reading public, chances are good it’ll get some bad reviews, too–after all, I made one huge historical inaccuracy, which will bother some people, my heroine can be perceived as snotty, and the plot, well, is not so layered.

I welcome any and all reviews. Prior to writing fiction, I wrote music reviews for 15 years for two different music industry publications. I fielded many, many calls from musicians and record labels who wanted reviews, people who disagreed with my, and my staff’s, reviews, and people who thought our magazine had been accurate in its subjective opinion. So for me to dismiss any bad review out of hand would be hypocritical.

What I do not like, at all, are sycophantic reviews. You do romance authors and their potential audience no favors when you gush about a book, or an author, with no degrees of assessment. For example, I love Anne Stuart. Do I think Shadow Dance is as good as To Love A Dark Lord? No. That doesn’t mean I’m not supportive of her work, don’t love her as an author, won’t buy her books in the future. A few posts ago, Elena posted about Laura Kinsale, an author who inspires fanatical devotion from her fans. If a fan of her dark books didn’t like her light books as much, would that mean she was somehow disloyal? No.

And yet, it is a peculiarly romance genre thing to insist on blind devotion. The New York Times Book Review usually features reviews written by one author about another’s work. Is that author accused of disloyalty if they don’t like the book? I should hope not. It’s an opinion, a subjective one that, if written well, should demonstrate exactly why the reviewer didn’t like the book. It doesn’t mean the reviewer isn’t a nice person, or isn’t appropriate to review the book in question, or has a personal vendetta against the author. It simply means that, in the reviewer’s opinion, the book wasn’t that good.

When I first started writing romance, I also started writing romance reviews for the website All About Romance. I was proud to review for them because I got to state my opinion, recommending plenty of good books and advising readers to avoid some others. Although I don’t write for them any longer, I still go to AAR for reviews, and lately I’ve taken to visiting readers’ blogs to find recommendations (I’ve got a sidebar full of links on my Writer’s Diary page: (www.meganframpton.com/diary.html).

I don’t look to reviews to corroborate my own opinion. I look to reviews to help me decide what to read, not to cheerlead. I want honesty, and if someone doesn’t like my book, or books that I like, I won’t take it personally.

Do you read reviews? If so, why? If you’re an author, do you hunt for them, or avoid them? As a reader, do reviews influence your buying decisions?

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged Reviews | 4 Replies

Mansfield Park – A New Ending?

Updated on January 14, 2013 by Diane Gaston

This weekend was Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s Mansfield Park talk at our Washington Romance Writers meeting. As it always is with Kathy, the talk was intelligent, stimulating, instructive, and enjoyable.

In the morning we discussed what didn’t work for us in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, some of the same things I talked about in the blog last week. In the afternoon we speculated about alternate endings.

Some Alternatives

Mary Crawford is reformed and marries Edmund

Henry Crawford is reformed and marries Fanny

Tom is reformed and marries Susan, Fanny’s sister

The basic idea was that the flawed characters were more interesting than the wholly good Fanny or the easily besotted Edmund and that we like to see flawed characters change and be redeemed.

What Would You Change?

This got me thinking about other books or movies that deserve an alternate ending. The main one that comes to mind for me is Little Women. I always wanted Jo to wind up with Laurie. It still bugs me.

What books or movie endings would you change? Gone With The Wind? Wuthering Heights? Almost anything by Nicholas Sparks?

Posted in Jane Austen, Reading | Tagged Endings, Jane Austen, Little Women, Mansfield Park | 13 Replies

Kate Ross

Updated on January 13, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I was originally going to cover the subject of “What else do you read?” but decided instead to talk about Kate Ross, whom I would have talked about anyway. She’s a writer who died in her early 30s, having only written four books; and she was the sort of writer you wanted to have around for years. She’s not a romance writer, but her books are set in the mid-1820s and feature a dandy and detective called Julian Kestrel (great name!).
I find with a lot of historical mystery series I find myself muttering, “Oh, for God’s sake, check the fingerprints,” before realizing the technology was decades, or centuries ahead. Or frankly, they’re just silly (like the impeccably researched medieval series, I mention no names, that had chipmunks frolicking in the grounds of a medieval abbey). But Kate Ross and Kestrel are just, well, in a word, fabulous. He’s not an aristocrat, but a self-made man who lives on his wits and gambler’s instincts. He reminds me a little of Lord Peter Wimsey set a century earlier–cultured, witty, super-intelligent, and with a frivolous, flippant demeanor that hides a deeply serious and private personality. He moves easily between the fashionable world and its dark side, both beautifully evoked by Ross.
Three of the books are set in England. The fourth, and her most ambitious–I suspect Ross knew time was running out, and stretched herself–is set in Italy, has an extremely and convoluted operatic plot, and finally gives us the truth about Kestrel’s origins.
Ross’ secondary characters are great, too. There’s his manservant, Dipper (slang term for a pickpocket, which was his former profession), and Sally, a whore and thief and his sometime accomplice and lover. Kestrel resists Sally for a time, and then capitulates. This wonderful bit of writing describes his state of mind before they make love for the first time:
So it was over–the struggle and suspense between them. But it was no ending as he had expected, or resolved. Because in that moment his perspective shifted. He had often tried to fathom what she meant to him; he had never once asked himself what he meant to her. Looking into her upturned face, he saw her for the first time, not as a seductress, but as offering him the only thing in the world she had to give.
All four of the novels–Cut To The Quick; A Broken Vessel; Whom The Gods Love; and The Devil In Music–are all still in print. Check them out.
Janet

Posted in Reading | Tagged Julian Kestrel, Kate Ross | 7 Replies

Mothers!

Updated on January 13, 2013 by Elena Greene

Yesterday I wrote a short scene between the heroine of my very new mess-in-progress and her mother. The heroine’s father had to be dead, for plot purposes, but I thought perhaps the mother might prove an interesting character. Well, I tried her one way and another—sympathetic, controlling, whiny, funny—and nothing clicked. So I decided she was just better off dead, too. I may revive her at some point, but only if she has something entertaining to contribute to the story!

I think there’s a reason why heroines of romances often don’t have mothers, or at least not ones who are present for most of the story. The mother/daughter relationship is very complex and can take over from the romance. A mother’s good counsel might keep a heroine from making her own mistakes and learning from them. And depending on the story, having a mom around might destroy the mood.

And yet, is creating orphaned characters an easy (and cheap) way to buy a reader’s sympathy? A problematic mother (like Mrs. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice) can escalate conflict, but wouldn’t it be refreshing to see more positive mother figures in romance fiction?

Most books I recall that included such a mother also featured a hero with bigger problems than the heroine’s, where it made sense that a mother’s support would help her deal with him. Some examples: Julia Ross’s MY DARK PRINCE and Jo Beverley’s DEVILISH.

Can anyone else think of examples of interesting fictional mothers, good, bad and ugly?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com/

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged fictional mothers, mothers | 7 Replies

Your first time

Updated on January 13, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Like almost every other writer/reader, I have a TBR pile. No, pile is a vast misnomer–it’s s structure, a mountain. For a long time, I had these books stacked in my hallway, blocking the coat closet and waiting to brain unwary passers-by. Until one day, when the volumes went almost to the ceiling, my cat tried to climb up the pyramid and started an avalanche. Books were scattered far and wide, and I knew I had to make a change. Get organized. So, I bought a slew of clear plastic tubs at Target and started packing the volumes away to store them in the garage (after I moved the car out, of course). To a non-reader this sounds like a quick and easy job, but we here at Risky Regencies surely know better. This job took days, weeks, because I ended up sitting on the floor re-reading old favorites, starting new books I’ve been meaning to get to, just basically wasting time and having fun.

I sorted these books into several stacks–books I will read soon, books I will read some day (when I’m 80?), and books to give away (I think there were about 3 of these). Then I found it. A battered, taped-up copy of the Very First Regency I ever read–Marian Chesney’s AT THE SIGN OF THE GOLDEN PINEAPPLE. And nostalgia set in.

A little backstory. Unlike lucky Megan, my parents were never great readers. But my grandmother was, and she was always taking me to the library and giving me books as presents. Some of them I loved, like the Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables series (for their romantic elements, and their plucky, wanna-be writer heroines). Some I loathed (like the egregious, treackle-beset POLLYANNA and ELSIE DINSMORE). But I devoured them all.

My grandparents lived on a sort-of farm, and every summer we visited them for several weeks. This particular summer, when I was 8 or 9, someone gave my grandmother a couple of big boxes full of romance novels, and I ended up sitting in the closet (where the boxes were stored) and reading the whole time. At first it was just a fun way to avoid my cousins, who only ever wanted to play Star Wars and brooked no deviation from the script. Boring. Soon, though, I was totally hooked, living in a world of country estates, Almack’s, handsome dukes, and high-perch phaetons. I could not even be lured away by my grandmother’s German chocolate cake.

These boxes were filled with mostly Cartlands, with a couple of Heyers, and some old Fawcett and Harlequin Regencies. I was somewhat familiar with the period, having seen the Garvie-Rintoul P&P, and I loved the clothes, the manners, the witty atmosphere. I was so excited when I pulled a book out of the box–AT THE SIGN OF THE GOLDEN PINEAPPLE–and saw the words “Regency Romance” at the top. I devoured it on the spot, and then dug out every single volume that also declared itself a “Regency.” The monster was unleashed.

I don’t remember a huge amount about that particular book. It was maybe set in Bath, and the heroine ran a Gunter’s-style shop. But it sucked me into a fabulous, fascinating new world I couldn’t get enough of. I still can’t.

So, I’m curious. What are the books that first drew YOU into the Regency? What did you like about them, what kept drawing you back? What was your first time like?

Posted in Reading, Regency | Tagged Barbara Cartland, Georgette Heyer, Regency genre | 16 Replies