Reading year to date

AvidReader Keishon posted a request for reading recommendations the other day, and I had to check out my reading journal (on a spreadsheet this year, thanks to Rosario!), for suggestions. I’ve read 122 books so far this year (that number includes partial re-reads and all of the books I’ve started and discarded, too), the majority of which are romance novels, scattered over a variety of sub-genres. The highest grades belong to books that are not straight romances or even romance novels at all: The Thief (YA); The Queen of Attolia (YA); The King of Attolia (YA); Born Confused (YA); Imaginary Men (chick lit); The Curse of Chalion (fantasy); Speak (YA); Fluke (Christopher Moore defies classification, other than general fiction, I think); and Finding Serenity (essays on science fiction). The large percentage of YA in the best books so far this year is a little odd, especially since YA makes up only a small portion (maybe 10%) of what I’ve read so far this year. Am I regressing to adolescence? Or is YA getting better? Or am I just more open to other genres? I don’t know. The best straight romances that I’ve read so far this year: The Masque of the Black Tulip (historical); The Givenchy Code (chick lit/adventure); Off the Record (m/m romance); and Memory in Death (futuristic romantic suspense).

I can’t decide – is my taste changing? Or is what’s being published simply not to my taste? I don’t know. But I’m bored. Maybe I need to take a break from romance.

SBD - Letter to Authors

Today is Smart Bitches Monday, but the well is going dry.

An open letter to romance novel authors:

Dear Ladies . . . and Gentlemen, too, although you are a teeny tiny minority in RomanceLandia:

Stop. I feel like Susan Powter, screaming "Stop the insanity!" But really, you’ve got to. Stop with the paranormals and the erotic romance. They’ve been done to death. I’m bored. Bored, bored, bored. I wandered around the romance section of the bookstore this past weekend, and what did I see? More paranormals, more erotic romance, very little else. Blah, blah, blah. So I decamped to the fantasy and mystery sections, along with the general fiction.

I’m pretty much over vampires and werewolves and other creatures that go bump in the night. Seriously, if I read about one more world weary creature of the night whose ennui evaporates under the enlivening Power of Love and Hot Sex, I’ll gouge out my own eyeballs**. And no more slapped-together plot as an excuse for a dozen sex scenes in various locations in a myriad of positions, please, or I might go crazy and beat someone to death with a sex toy.

Is it too much to ask that there be a story in addition to the sex? And really, while I like the occasional well-done nookie interlude, it works for the story only when it fits into the story. Authors, please don’t wedge a love scene into your MS with a shoe horn, interrupting the pacing, having the h/h bump pelvises when they are supposed to be on the run or doing something under time constraint or are under pressure to accomplish a particular goal. ‘Cause, you know, stopping for sex when you are supposed to be running for your life is dumb and any h/h that easily distracted (hmm, live long and have sex later, or have sex now and possibly die?) should be killed off.

I know, sex sells. And publishers seem to be hot for paranormals. I know you authors walk a fine line, trying to satisfy the Muse while also writing something that fits into the shoebox definition of what is publishable today. It’s a hard job, and I feel for you. But there has to be another story in you, one that doesn’t have a blood-sucking fiend, or a wolfman, or a hero and heroine (and I use those terms reluctantly) having as much sex as possible in 200 pages of large-spaced font bound as a trade paperback.

I’m not the most demanding or discriminating of romance readers, so if I’m this disgusted by what’s on offer, there must be other bored readers out there. Don’t you want to keep us around? If we’re bored, we’re gonna go elsewhere. Entertainment dollars are too dear to waste on books that bore or genres that stagnate. Just stop.

Regretfully yours,
jmc

**My favorite paranormal character, Kelley Armstrong’s Clayton Danvers, is unrepentantly pleased to be a werewolf. No angst. No woe is me. He is what he is, and he doesn’t suffer guilt or regret about it.