In Which I Take a Little Break From the Romance

Hello, friends.

So things don't seem to be getting any quieter or easier or simpler. Which is all fine (no complaints!), however it is not conducive to an environment in which I read a lot of books and then write about them. But whatever, I'm trying.

And with that I have a somewhat startling announcement to make: I'm skipping the romance novels for the moment. I started the much-awaited Tessa Dare sequel, and it's good. Really good so far, even. But then I made the mistake of watching the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows trailer. Not really a mistake, because the movie looks shockingly good (I have not been entirely impressed by them so far), and inspired me to do something I like to do every-so-often, and that is to sit down and read Harry from the beginning. I recommend it, it's pretty awesome.

Perhaps part of the reason I need a bit of a detox is because I indulged in some of my romance crack, and now I need some time alone to think about what a mistake it was, and what I should be doing with my life.

It started at Smart Bitches (doesn't it always?) and it started with this article about book crack. Come on, you know you have it. The stuff that's so bad you just have to read it. It provides a kind of morbid comfort in the fact it always remains the same: bad.

I have a couple of book cracks. At this point anything by J.R. Ward largely qualifies, and as we know, I have a shameful yen for Sandra Brown's back catalog of genre-romances. My my real, true downfall is Diana Palmer.

I've talked before about how formuliac her books are. But now I'd like to put more emphasis on how ridiculous her characters are. Ready? OK: The heroine (I completely forget her name) is a widow, convinced she contributed to her alcoholic asshole husband's death because she didn't like having sex with him. No, I'm not joking.

Then there's the whole "I've been in love with my best friend's older brother since I was 14, but he just thinks we're friends" thing. See, normally you would prescribe a glass of wine and an honest conversation for such problems, but the heroine doesn't drink. And while acknowledging that the first drink for anyone is affecting, I don't think a comforting half a glass of Scotch leads to seriously impaired judgement and a world-class hangover.

This is all to say nothing of the sexorrating which involves (wait for it...) a half-virgin widow. This, my friends, is much better than a virgin widow. A virgin widow at least never had sex with her husband (for whatever reason that she's too traumatized to tell even the omniscient narrator). A half-virgin widow, on the other hand, seems to exist for the sole purpose of giving the misogynist hero something to gloat over quite aside from giving the poor thing her first orgasm.

What is a half-virgin widow, you ask? I have no frakking idea. All I know is that the poor bastard husband must have been hung like a Ken doll. Literally.

Now, is it any wonder I need to take a break and read some quality writing? No. I didn't think so.