Reviewing the New and the Old

I will ocassionally post book reviews. These reviews will be on just released books as well as those that are a tad older, my comfort reads. They will not include grades. Maybe it’s just me, but I find offensive to put a grade on a book. I am not a teacher and authors are not my students. So there will be no ABCD or F’s assigned to a book, but there will be an honest opinion on  content.

There Ain’t NO thing as Bad Publicity…

This morning I went to Barnes and Noble with Son #4. He was looking for a book for his class while I was merely window shopping. I strolled through general fiction, cooking, Sci-fi/horror and romance. I couldn’t find anything that I wanted, but kept looking. I like the way that Barnes & Noble displays new releases and bestsellers prominently. This is the way that I have discovered new authors as well as what books are hot in the market. So there I am strolling through romance…and who is prominently displayed? Cassie Edwards…

Whenever I had walked through romance Cassie Edwards had never caught my eye. They had few of her books and they were always placed sideways. But today they were up front, cover to the public, fully displayed. I guess there ain’t no thing as bad publicity because the clerk in B&N said they were selling well. I’m just wondering how many of those books have sold to romance readers and how much have sold to the curious people that have never read the genre, but heard about the case.

Cassie, you ferret loving maniac, you might end up laughing yourself to the bank…

Current Recipe: Shortcut Bien Me Sabe

One of the perils of being a parent is that your children tend to offer your services without your knowledge or consent.  Children are cute that way. Since my darlings believed that their mother had no life they nominated me as frequently as possible as a substitute teacher, a parent for a field trip, transportation (save yourself, don’t buy a van), food from a region they were currently studying in class,  and cupcakes or snacks. I love those boys…I earned every single gray hair on my lovely head. Every morning I trembled in fear. What would it be this week? I was going to get fired. I wanted to tape their generous (with my time) volunteering hands to their sides. What I did instead was to use shortcuts for some traditional deserts. The current recipe is one of those.

A literal translation for “Bien Me Sabe” would be ”taste so good to me.” And it does. You can use it as a topping on Ice Cream, as a filling between layers of cakes, a perfect substitute for vanilla custard in English Triffle or simply a glaze for cakes. Bien Me Sabe is perfect for spongecakes. My son, Armando, adores a coconut Jelly roll that I bake every Christmas.

Shorcut Recipe for Bien Me Sabe:

I can Coco Lopez (cream of coconut), 6 egg yolks

Procedure: Beat until lemon colored the 6 egg yolks. In a medium saucepan pour the Coco Lopez Cream of Coconut, then slowly integrate the 6 egg yolks until smooth. Cook at medium heat, constantly stirring so the mixture doesn’t stick to pan. Cook until the mix starts to boil, retire from the heat, cool and refrigerate. Enjoy!

CLOVERFIELD, Review by a Pissed off Mom

If your idea of a good flick is a home video by Cousin Bernie (blury images included), then Cloverfield is for you!

You have to give it to the man…JJ Abrams is a genius. He managed to create a high degree of speculation and expectation with tons of lovely theories on the basis of a successful viral campaign…then released it, giving the public exactly what he’d shown on those viral videos, a friggin’ home movie taken by an annoying, dazed and confused character that I swear is based on one of my son’s friends.

Perhaps I’m getting older or I need a new pair of glasses, but after watching this flick I still don’t know what kind of monster it is or what exactly does it look like. For all I know it could be an alien, a mutation or some kind of sexual deviant full of crabs. I also don’t know where it came from. Why did it attack now and why was it in New York.

Okay maybe that last question is ridiculous because everybody knows that for some reason most monsters, aliens, bombs and deadly virus end up in New York. But it pisses me off because my ex-mother-in-law is scarier than the Cloverfield monster and I get her for free.

What I got from Cloverfield was a migraine because the damn camera wouldn’t stay still. It swerved left! It swung right! It jumped up and down! Up and down. Up and down. Left and right until I was dizzy and nauseous. I think I’m pregnant. with JJ Abram’s child. And only for $8.50 plus taxes…

I’m feeling bitchy

A good friend recommended a book that was written for the YA market. The story is a paranormal, a gothic, an urban fantasy or whatever the hell they are called this week.

Though this friend knows my taste, in this case, I will pass up the chance of reading this book. First of all, the cover intimates me. I don’t have the flexibility to that with my legs. And second, I do not want to read about any teenager at all.

Been there, done that.

So no matter the talent of the author, no matter how fascinating the plot might be I will not revisit the drama and the angst associated with those years.

Why put myself through that torture? Until recently I was raising teenagers. I’m so delighted that this period of their lives is over and that I survived it without committing a felony. Besides there are so many clichés associated with this age group and they always seem to make their way into the plot or characterization: The cheerleader. The dangerous, sexy bad boy. The bully. The geek. The bitchy, blonde queen. The mean girls. The popular clique and the ostracized AKA the rejected. The cool ones and the losers. The Goth. The ones who supposedly don’t give a damn because they do their own thing.

Have you noticed that these kids always seem to be fighting or arguing, making cool comments, using the current lingo?

Oh please, I prefer to give birth to read about this. It’s difficult enough to find a heroine that I like or one that I can identify with. I am not a blonde nor have perky breasts. I am not a virgin or spend my day panting about sex that I can barely remember.

Then there’s the kickass heroine, the one that can emasculate the hero at fifty paces. I want to kick the ass of the kickass heroine because frankly, she’s starting to irritate me. I don’t want a doormat, but a sexy expert in martial arts, guns and explosives, which slings the hero over her shoulder I want even less. The fighting scenes in these stories consume the plot to the point that I’m exhausted. For heavens sake, I don’t even go to the gym. I don’t like to sweat. The dead pile up, but no worries because most of these stories have a magical clean up crew to dispose of the corpses. Watch for the van that says, “Bodies R US.” If it comes to your neighborhood, run.

Oh hell, maybe I just need some chocolate. Maybe I need a couple of hormones to tie me over. Maybe then I’ll want to read about some angst-filled teenagers who can save the day.

Is it too early to have a drink?

   

Going Back to Basics

            I’m over my funk. My children are back in college. I’m alone and that’s fine too. I have my books and music. I have friends. I’ve paid my bills and even have a little money left for my books—all is right in the world.

Yesterday, I put on some CD’s and danced around the family room. I will not be winning any contests, but it was damn good exercise. I shook, jiggled and wiggled, hopefully sweating a couple of pounds off. But my youngest might need therapy because his eyes almost popped out. What, he didn’t know his mother could move like this? He said Texas already had tornadoes, so why tamper with earthquakes. Hardy-har-har…

Nevertheless, I’m over the drama that has been affecting Romanceland. I have a lot of books in my TBR pile that need to be read and now that my children are gone, I can enjoy a good book without being interrupted as in “what’s for dinner.”

My TBR pile is huge. The best gift my children gave me for Christmas was that B&N gift card, so I have indulged. I have Lynn Viehl’s Evermore, Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Patricia Brigg’s Iron Kissed, Nora Robert’s Blood Brothers, Julie Garwood’s Shadow Music, Shana Abe’s Queen of Dragons, Mary Janice Davidson’s Swimming Without a Net and Cheyenne McCray’s Moving Target. This last book means a lot to me. Cheyenne is a friend. Every time I see one of her books in print I feel so proud I could burst.

It couldn’t have happened to a better person. Cheyenne is a good human being. She’s talented and nice, wonderful as a friend. She takes her talent seriously. From the beginning, she was no newbie.

I had the honor of editing some of her books. Cheyenne was harder on herself that I was as her editor. She had great instincts. She planned and defined her story. Whenever I was going to make a comment about something that I’d found in the plot, she had corrected by the next paragraph or further into the story.

Cheyenne’s erotic romances didn’t bleed sex. She stuck to the basics like complicated characterization and plot, and so, when finally these characters had sex, we cared. This is something that I have seen missing with most of what is currently being released as erotic romance, good characterization and plot as well as (and I hate to say this) too much sex. If from the first page these characters are thinking about sex, panting for sex or having sex, why should I care? I don’t know these characters, my emotions are not involved and since I don’t read porn, I don’t give a damn. It’s the main reason why I stopped reading e-books and I used to be quite the fan.

I’m still grateful to the medium. E-books opened my eyes to other genres. I became a fan of paranormals, fantasy and sci-fi thanks to e-books. And wouldn’t that have been a shame because I would not have discovered authors like Lynn Viehl and Patricia Briggs.

Chey, congratulations on your new release Moving Target. I have it in my hands. Thank you, darlin’, for a good read.

A Matter of Trust: Authors

Since I was a little girl books have been my refuge. I lost my dad, my hero and best friend, when I was 13. While the whole family fell apart, I submerged myself in a good read, flying away from the pain.  I continued the same pattern throughout my marriage and my divorce. Books were my “company” through endless lonely nights of fear and disillusion. They gave me hope because in fiction, most of the times, there is a happy ending or at minimum, a sense of justice. And when there is none in real life, isn’t it nice to grab a book which soothes your broken heart, freeing emotions that you have tried to keep deep inside you in fear of breaking in a million little pieces.

Books have been my entertainment and my salvation. The authors that have created them have been my friends and saviors. They have been my heroes and have always held my highest admiration, gratitude and envy.

 I will never write a book nor want to.

I do want to feed my intellect and emotions with their gift.

But because it is just that, a gift, it should never be abused or taken for granted.

The whole Cassie Edwards debacle has left a bad taste in my mouth. I, who am an avid reader, have not been able to read a book in a week. Though I do not condone what Ms. Edwards did (she stole, period) I still feel for sorry for her. It has become a bloodbath, one that seems not to end. As a human being I pity her. I do not enjoy public flogging nor the constant humiliation heaped on her. She’s a lazy author. She’s a bad author. Her writing and her covers suck. She’s a thief. She stole. She has no ethics or morals. Off with her head!

You see the problem with a constant public bloodbath is that after a while the culprit becomes a victim. I feel horribly sorry for readers. Can we recover our trust? Should we now examine every book with cynicism and doubt? Should we go back and check every book that has been printed? Who should be next, Johanna Lindsey? Bertrice Small? Kathleen Woodiwiss? Why not go for broke and check every bodice ripper author who sustained and made the romance genre popular?

I’m just sad. Sad for fiction authors in general, hell for authors per se because plagiarism is a wide spread problem across the genres. We see it in autobiographies. We see it in fiction. Big names like Dan Brown have been linked to it. We see it in cookbooks and academia. I guess that from now on BEFORE an author delivers a manuscript to a publisher, they should run it through the software that checks for plagiarism. I wonder what the result would be, kind of scary. I wonder if editors will be more careful. I place as much responsibility in Ms. Edward’s editor as with the author herself. One of the reasons why this plagiarism was caught is because the text Ms. Edward copied was so different from her writing. How could her editor not have noticed the change in writing style???

It’s clear that there is a need for change, but what will that be I’m not sure. I think that authors are going to be more careful. I think that writer associations need to address this issue. I think that fiction readers are going to find pages of credited sources which gives me a headache because I already hate the pages and pages of language created for sci-fi and fantasy. Oy!

Innocent until proven guilty?

With the debacle about Cassie Edwards I can only state that I’m glad that my talents are limited. I will never write the great American novel. I can’t sing or dance. I can barely cook and I really suck at crafts. Whenever I helped my children with their school projects the teachers never inquired if a parent had helped them. And that’s fine by me. I might not have a talent that will serve the world, but I am a good mother and a good friend. I’m loyal to a fault. I genuinely enjoy people. I love puppies, cats and birds and I’m starting to sound like a Miss America Pageant and before I state that people can’t find a country ‘cuz they don’t have a map, I better shut up.

Nevertheless, after seeing what has happened to Cassie Edwards obscurity and anonymity seem like a good thing. Right now Ms. Edward’s name is mud.  Whether Signet, her publisher, and RWA take action or not, her reputation has been damaged. And that makes me sad not because I don’t take plagiarism or copyright infringement seriously, but because I still believe that a person should not be condemned until proven guilty.

Maybe Cassie Edward didn’t know any better and it was an innocent mistake. Maybe she’s just a lazy author. Maybe she doesn’t like to share the limelight. Maybe some of the problem could have been corrected by simply acknowledging her sources. But then again, there is a school of thought which states that in fiction it is unnecessary to cite sources, considering it pretentious in fact. The New York Times had an article on this subject and I quote: “Traditionally confined to works of nonfiction, the bibliography has lately been creeping into novels, rankling critics who call it a pretentious extension of the acknowledgments page, which began appearing more than a decade ago and was roundly derided as the tacky literary equivalent of the Oscar speech. Some novelists defend the bibliography, pointing out that for writers who spend months or years doing research for historical novels; a list of sources is proof of labor and expertise. And it may protect them from accusations of sloppy sourcing in a climate fueled by lawsuits and plagiarism charges. (In his 2005 novel “Saturday,” Ian McEwan, who was accused of misappropriating material in his earlier novel “Atonement” from another author’s autobiography, lavishly thanked a London surgeon he observed for two years while researching his book.)  Some novelists may be rebelling against the trend toward fictionalized memoirs, perpetuated by writers like James Frey, by beefing up their own books with facts, said Samuel Cohen, a professor of English at the University of Missouri. But “this shouldn’t be an issue for novelists,” Mr. Cohen said. “Novels are supposed to be borrowings and stealings.”

These articles are worth reading. The links are here: www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/books/05bibl.html?8br=&pagewanted=all  

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/130914/do_you_need_to_cite_your_sources_in.html 

Cassie Edwards aggravated her troubles by not only citing sources in her books, but also copying text of those same sources. Some of the material is public domain. Some maybe not. I’m confused. At least to me the whole thing is not “clear and dried.” RWA and the publisher need to do their own investigation and this will certainly take time. This is fair to the public, the romance reader and to Ms. Edwards, too. So no, I won’t be writing a letter to the publisher. I won’t be boycotting the publisher neither, especially since they have a lot of writers that I like and that have nothing to do with this scandal. Oh hell, maybe I’m just a wuss or worse, nice.

My “Comfort” Reads

While I am waiting for my favorite authors to release new books I go back to my comfort reads. These are books that I can read over and over, finding something new every time I glance through those pages. Like old friends, they “talk” to me. I know exactly which passage will make me smile or cry because, you know, sometimes a girl just has to cry. I am grateful to those authors that are part of my keeper-shelf. They have save me tons of money in therapy. I don’t know what I would have done when I went through my divorce without them to keep me sane and give me some hope. They might be fantasy, but no matter the age, there is still a little girl inside us, one who believes that one day we will find our prince and we will live happily ever after.

Or maybe not…

  There are still children to take care of, bills to pay and a job that might not be as fulfilling, but when I read that book I can be anyone who I want to be even if for a little while. That is the generous gift that an author gives to the reader. So okay, maybe romance as a genre will never be recognized by Oprah’s book club (besides all those books are friggin’ boring) or by the NY Times high brow reviewer, but who cares? Laugh yourself silly to the bank and remember that those of us who have found pleasure and comfort in your books are so very grateful that you put “pen to paper.”

 

My comfort reads:

 

Jennifer Crusie: If I am broke, moody or had a call from the ex, then these are the first books I read for pick me ups. Favorites are: Manhunt, Welcome to Temptation and Fast Women.

 

Linda Howard:

The Mackenzie series with Mackenzie’s Mountain as favorite. Kill and Tell which has the hottest sensual scene ever written without being exceedingly graphic. Mr. Perfect because every woman I know has done THAT list… Nora Roberts:The Enchanting Irish series with Tears of the Moon as favorite. I love this series. The writing is so beautiful and lyrical it is almost like music. The Quinn Brothers with Rising Tides as favorite. Even though I don’t like fish and I also puke my guts when at sea, I still would have had Ethan’s babies. The MacGregor series, who can resist a series where the patriarch plays matchmaker. 

Julie Garwood: I don’t like Historicals, but Ms. Garwood made me a fan of that genre. I can’t choose which I love more. They are all good comfort reads.

 

Susan Andersen:

Favorite is Exposure, a sexy and fun read with an unusual hero who is tough and tender, followed by Baby I’m Yours and Present Danger. 

There are many other books on my keeper shelf, too many to name. Which are your comfort reads? I just might find another keeper.

This Ain’t Shakespeare…

If you are wondering what your kids are reading in college, wonder no more. In this clip from You Tube, college kids are reading out loud erotic passages from Forbidden Pleasure by Lora Leigh.

Watching this clip can be awkward and funny at times. One of the girls is noticeably blushing. The Asian dude has excellent diction. Most of the males roared with laughter as they read those graphic lines. Makes you wonder how good they really are in the sack or is it simply that saying the word cock and pussy provokes the same reaction as when they said as kids, “fart, fart, fart.” Maybe some of them will use it as a research material and Lora Leigh will be hailed as a heroine, solely responsible for better sex at Campus.  

 Wait a minute, I HAVE kids in college. I think I’m going to hide my collection of erotic romance. I may be a hypocrite, but I don’t ever want to hear my kids reciting these passages. Let me have my illusions where all my children are still virgins and have never said the words fuck, pussy or dick.