I love library book sales. I love used bookstores. I love thrift stores. Why? Cheap paperback books. I used to scour the thrift shops of the East Village for hidden romance treasures, certain in the knowledge that they knew not what they had. And indeed, they didn’t. The following proves it.
I bought this in a [...]
Over at All About Romance Abi Bishop has written a post on fat heroes and heroines in romance.
Fat and love. Love and fat. The question, as far as fat in romance is concerned is this: Will the reader find a fat hero/heroine believable as a romantic lead? Or does being fat preclude having an erotic [...]
On Monday I start my graduate work, both the classes that I teach (how to write to freshmen) and the classes I am taking (three plus a colloquium). As such, I will be wonderfully overwhelmed. I am already overwhelmed. Thus, I will be updating this blog more infrequently than I already do. I will be [...]
Here is a sampling of several songs I find particularly delicious. Enjoy!
“The Rake’s Song” by The Decemberists
“True Romance” by She Wants Revenge
And last but not least:
“Wicked Game” by HIM
Over at All About Books, Rike has posted a blog about inequality in romances and marriages. Comments, right off the bat, became very defensive about posters own marriages and what-not . . .
However, I do think that Rike has a point and as I was thinking about it, I realized that this is actually the main [...]
The romantic comedy genre is full of really, really bad movies featuring douchie male leads and women who can be politely described as harpies. Think Made of Honor in which Michelle Monaghan berates Patrick Dempsey for his sex-toy bridal shower (an accident on his part) like a prudish little schoolmarm instead of a sophisticated 30-something [...]
This is Jarvis Cocker, minor deity and rock god.
Jarvis and I have had a long relationship, a relationship that goes back to 1995.
Picture it: Utah in late February of 1996. Grunge is dead. Eddie Vedder is spending most of his time in Washington D.C. doing god only knows what, Kurt Cobain has been in his [...]
Lloyd Dobler is the anathema to sexual passion.
In this column over at The Frisky, Natalie Krinsky very rightly points out the problem with today’s romantic comedy: namely, that women are expected to settle but men never are. There’s an implied entitlement in movies and television shows like Knocked Up and Everybody Loves Raymond that insists that men deserve the best in female companionship despite their inability to stand-up to their Italian mothers or to get a job and stop smoking pot.
The trouble with rakes in romances is that the author is constantly telling us that they are ever so bad and ever so nototrious and oh so dangerous but then they don’t actually do anything rakish except throw out a few sexual innuendoes and maybe get the heroine to try oral sex.
The topic for this [...]
The ingenue may be my least favorite heroine type. In fact, I would go so far as to say that my dislike of the ingenue is not only active but that it borders on hatred. There is no objectivity when I am faced with an ingenue. I cannot divorce myself from my knee-jerk, visceral reaction [...]
