2007-12-14

jmc_bks: (Chocolate)
2007-12-14 10:29 am
Entry tags:

That's just wrong

In a romance novel I read recently, the hero, heroine and kids made s'mores.  How?  By melting marshmallows onto graham crackers and then squirting them with chocolate sauce.  

Chocolate sauce s'mores?  Now, that's just wrong.  It's a perversion of the entire s'mores mystique.  The chocolate must be in bar or chunk form, melted and gooey from the heat of the roasted marshmallow.  Squirty or spoonable chocolate sauce may be acceptable for sundae-making but not for the melty, messy, goodness of properly constructed s'mores.
jmc_bks: (Truth by John Hodgman)
2007-12-14 01:48 pm
Entry tags:

Sony reader

At the Gallery Place metro station today, I saw Sony's new series of ads for the Sony Reader. They are plastered everywhere. The taglines of one of the ads reads: 160 romance books. Discreetly. 

Because reading romance is something to be ashamed of. Not a single other add was specific to genre. [Although one of the other ads was a bit insulting. As Dear Author mentioned earlier, Sony managed to irritate a lot of librarians with another part of this same campaign when they claimed the Reader was sexier than librarians. The current version of this ad here in DC includes a parenthetical in the text (your librarian may vary) so I'm guessing that the marketing gurus decided to modify the campaign.]

And the books stacked below the text? Jodi Picoult, Nora Roberts, Robert Ludlum and several others. Only La Nora was a genre romance writer.

The density of ads was mentioned at MobileRead last week.