Musings of the Obsessive Kind

On a complete random whim, I tried Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (it was a rec of a rec of something else I got on Kindle)

I was looking forward to a fun romance novel.

Ummmm.

Ummmmmmm.

Note to self, read reviews first.

I have a ginormous, innate loathing for dom/sub stuff - it's irrational, but there it is. if someone tried that on me, they'd be missing limbs. The movie Secretary makes me want to scrub my skin off.

Guess what this book is about?

Heroine is a college senior who meets super-rich, super-screwed-up and super-kinky 27-yr-old hero and they embark on the most messed up relationship I've ever had the privilege to read about in a romance novel. Thankfully, though heroine is OK with dom-sub games, when s/m comes in, she ditches. The aaaangst. Also, I think heroine kinda looks like hero's abusive mother which is a whole other level of wrong.

If people are into BDSM or anything else as long as it involves consensual adults, it's their right, but reading about it for entertainment in graphic fashion and being supposed to root for the relationship - Good Lord.

I read this in increasing, horrified fascination, like looking at a trainwreck. I kept wanting to tell the heroine to run run run and I cheered when she dumped the hero at the end, after very sensibly telling him 'look, I don't mind bondage but you are into inflicting major pain and I am not into getting it, so this ain't going to work out, because even if you decided you liked me enough to give your preferences up, it isn't going to last because you'd be suppressing what you need, so find someone compatible.' But we are clearly supposed to think this is OMG!tragic when it is not. And there is a sequel in which they get back together - I flipped and they seem to find some sort of compromise and she is being very "I am going to need to get reassurance from your shrink" sensible, but seriously. Just no. I logically understand that it works for them but I am simply too vanilla for this.

I need to scrub my brain with bleach.

Bleach!

It's well-written BDSM erotica but (1) I was not looking for erotica or (2) BDSM. I wanted something like a modern Pride & Prejudice. Talk about shock.

Yes, I will make a drama post soon. I am taking a little break. Though if this is what I come across during it, maybe I shouldn't.

Years ago, I read this lady's unintentionally hilarious Christian romance about an heiress being redeemed by a football player's Christian love, written in the 1930s.

I always wanted to come across another gem of hers. Behold "The Witness."

The amazon summary:

In this powerful story of grace, star athlete, student, and fraternity president Paul Courtland watches while a college classmate falls to an untimely death. Struck by his own part in the tragedy, he seeks solace in the classmate's peaceful room--and in the faith he has discovered.

Bwahahahahahahahahhahahahaaaaa. It is $0.00 on amazon for the kindle. I cannot wait.

That is all.

Years ago, I read this lady's unintentionally hilarious Christian romance about an heiress being redeemed by a football player's Christian love, written in the 1930s.

I always wanted to come across another gem of hers. Behold "The Witness."

The amazon summary:

In this powerful story of grace, star athlete, student, and fraternity president Paul Courtland watches while a college classmate falls to an untimely death. Struck by his own part in the tragedy, he seeks solace in the classmate's peaceful room--and in the faith he has discovered.

Bwahahahahahahahahhahahahaaaaa. It is $0.00 on amazon for the kindle. I cannot wait.

That is all.

Titles of romance novels lying as reading material for parents in children's indoor play center I like going to with Baby Mousie:

The Billionaire Boss's Bride
The Outback Marriage Ransom
Sheikh's Castaway
The Ice Maiden's Sheikh
The Fierce and Tender Sheikh
The Prince's Virgin Wife
Possessed by the Sheikh
The Spaniard's Seduction
The English Aristocrat's Bride

Ahahahahahahahahha. I have no words. Mr. Mousie keeps groaning whenever he even catches a glimpse of these so I keep sticking them in his face. :)

When I was younger, I was volubly dismissive of anyone who read romance novels for anything but sex scenes. Now I am older and mellower and will willingly admit that I enjoy the frothy heavy-breathing world of those books sometimes. Still, there are certain things that are ridiculous - if a romance novel has them, I will likely laugh at them and never ever pick up the book again.

Here they are.

Pets are great and so are lovers but I fail to see the need to combine them both

I am referring to the new popularity for were-anythings. I believe that if heroine wants someone who drools, rolls around in mud, and has a potential for biting, she should get a dog. I really do not get the recent obsession with romance novel heroes which bark at the moon a few times a month. Leaving anything else aside, the shedding has got to be horrendous. I fail to see anything sexy in a man who is a leopard, a tiger, or a swan (indeed!) part of the time. If I want to see a wild animal, I will go to the zoo. I suppose this would be heaven for a furry, however.

The word 'mate' should never be used outside of a nature documentary

Self-evident. Usually used in novels where the heroine or hero is a were-something. Who can imagine anything sexier than your significant other referring to what you do in bed together in terms usually used on Discovery Channel? Also, anyone who can refer to their significant other as a 'mate' without laughing is probably someone I do not want to be around.

Devil is not an acceptable boy's name

Ahhhh, who doesn't want to name their delightful bundle of joy Devil or Satan or Sin or Prizefighter? OK, I kid about that last one (I hope) but I have certainly seen all the other ones in various romance novels as names of the macho macho heroes. JR Ward's entire series is a horrifying lesson in what atrocities one can perpetrate with a naming scheme if one has a crazed imagination and utter disregard for spelling (Rhevenge? Really?) Let's face it, unless part of hero's secret sorrow is that he is a child of devil worshippers or hippies with a sense of irony, he is NOT going to be named Lucifer. Just take it on faith. Especially in a period novel unless the parents want him in the neighborhood ducking pond while they get burned for being satan-worshippers. Which leads me directly to my next point.

Jessica is NOT a medieval name

When you think of names Jessica or Jason a lot of things come to mind. Medieval individuals are not one of those. Yet all these and more are names I have seen in novels set in 12th century or 15th century or what not. I don't care how fierce and manly your Saxon warrior lord hero is, he is not going to be named Dirk. Hrothgar or Abeordan, possibly, Dirk - no. If you hate the period-appropriate names so much, perhaps you should write in an era where names you like can at least plausibly be used. No, Eleanor of Acquitaine isn't going to have a court lady named Marissa. Your Victorian heroine will not be named Jennifer. Muriel and Ida may not roll off your tongue the same way, but trust me, at least they will not leave any reader of yours with any familiarity with any time period before 1960 rolling her eyes and laughing.

The Case of the Improbable Virgin

You all know the scenario - the heroine may be a widow, kidnapped by pirates, even a courtesan or a harem girl, but she has never been with anyone but a hero regardless. Good Lord must have intervened himself, otherwise I am not sure how that could ever occur. And even if she is not *gasp* a virgin, she must have been a victim of rape (for hero to heal her with his penis) or, at the most, never enjoyed it before with her previous boyfriend/husband. Just once I want a courtesan heroine who knows what she is doing in the sack.

Who doesn't want to die of influenza or smallpox?

I have a special loathing for time-travel novels in which modern heroine goes back in time and decides to stay there, abandoning all her modern family and friends, not to mention healthcare and lack of endemic violence, in order to live with a studly hunk. I want to take the silly twit and shake her, asking: "you do realize there are no antibiotics, you have few rights, you can die in childbirth, you can never travel much due to logistics, you new husband will be off on regular murdering and raping expeditions, and you and your new loved ones are subject to a high chance of violent death" whenever some modern day PhD ditches it all to shack up with a Viking.

Pirates, God's gentlest creatures

There are some professions where the author has to bend over backwards to be able to convince me that the hero should shack up with the heroine instead of being hanged - pirates, highwaymen. But usually she believes that having the man in question be sexy and have an open shirt is enough. Heroine, I hate to tell you, but unless you found the world's sole Quaker Pirate, he probably has enough STDs to fill up a hospital ward and is a repeat violent criminal and rapist. Enjoy.

Everything is better with a little rape

I don't particularly care if people have rape fantasies but it's a little hard to sell a rapist as a viable romantic prospect. Many an author seems to believe that if the guy is hot, it's not rape. Hate to break it to you, lady, but if she stuggles away and says no, it's rape even if the guy is an Adonis and she has the best orgasm of her life (that's another point - if one is being raped, I fail to see why the mere fact of the guy being hot would matter enough to make one aroused. It's one thing if it's a weird form of kinky play or the woman has some odd rape fetish tastes, but in novels it is never presented this way).

Medieval Russian Vegetarians FTW

Ah yes. Please make sure whichever characteristics you give your protagonists, they are at least vaguely consistent with the time period. Vegentarianism is, no doubt, a praiseworthy lifestyle, and there are a number of time-periods and cultures where you can have a vegetarian heroine. The court of Ivan the Terrible is not one of them. I remember laughing myself sick reading some romance novel where court lady at Ivan's court was a tender, fluffy-bunny vegetarian. Indeed. There was also a novel where a medieval heroine happily cooked potatoes and tomatoes for her kin. She also had a dowry of 50,000 pounds which was probably the entire annual budget of the Crown at the time. Just a teeny bit of research won't kill you, I promise.

There are other people living in England beside Earls

If the romance novels are any indication, 18th-19th century England was filled shoulder-to-shoulder with hot young noblemen, so much so that if you added even one more, England would get so crowded some of them would start falling off into the sea for lack of space. There can't be that many of them! What's wrong about having an untitled hero? Or even *gasp* a merchant or a lawyer? Or, and I know this is shocking, a working-class one? The horrors, the horrors, I know. But it might be fun.

What are your pet peeves?

When I was younger, I was volubly dismissive of anyone who read romance novels for anything but sex scenes. Now I am older and mellower and will willingly admit that I enjoy the frothy heavy-breathing world of those books sometimes. Still, there are certain things that are ridiculous - if a romance novel has them, I will likely laugh at them and never ever pick up the book again.

Here they are.

Pets are great and so are lovers but I fail to see the need to combine them both

I am referring to the new popularity for were-anythings. I believe that if heroine wants someone who drools, rolls around in mud, and has a potential for biting, she should get a dog. I really do not get the recent obsession with romance novel heroes which bark at the moon a few times a month. Leaving anything else aside, the shedding has got to be horrendous. I fail to see anything sexy in a man who is a leopard, a tiger, or a swan (indeed!) part of the time. If I want to see a wild animal, I will go to the zoo. I suppose this would be heaven for a furry, however.

The word 'mate' should never be used outside of a nature documentary

Self-evident. Usually used in novels where the heroine or hero is a were-something. Who can imagine anything sexier than your significant other referring to what you do in bed together in terms usually used on Discovery Channel? Also, anyone who can refer to their significant other as a 'mate' without laughing is probably someone I do not want to be around.

Devil is not an acceptable boy's name

Ahhhh, who doesn't want to name their delightful bundle of joy Devil or Satan or Sin or Prizefighter? OK, I kid about that last one (I hope) but I have certainly seen all the other ones in various romance novels as names of the macho macho heroes. JR Ward's entire series is a horrifying lesson in what atrocities one can perpetrate with a naming scheme if one has a crazed imagination and utter disregard for spelling (Rhevenge? Really?) Let's face it, unless part of hero's secret sorrow is that he is a child of devil worshippers or hippies with a sense of irony, he is NOT going to be named Lucifer. Just take it on faith. Especially in a period novel unless the parents want him in the neighborhood ducking pond while they get burned for being satan-worshippers. Which leads me directly to my next point.

Jessica is NOT a medieval name

When you think of names Jessica or Jason a lot of things come to mind. Medieval individuals are not one of those. Yet all these and more are names I have seen in novels set in 12th century or 15th century or what not. I don't care how fierce and manly your Saxon warrior lord hero is, he is not going to be named Dirk. Hrothgar or Abeordan, possibly, Dirk - no. If you hate the period-appropriate names so much, perhaps you should write in an era where names you like can at least plausibly be used. No, Eleanor of Acquitaine isn't going to have a court lady named Marissa. Your Victorian heroine will not be named Jennifer. Muriel and Ida may not roll off your tongue the same way, but trust me, at least they will not leave any reader of yours with any familiarity with any time period before 1960 rolling her eyes and laughing.

The Case of the Improbable Virgin

You all know the scenario - the heroine may be a widow, kidnapped by pirates, even a courtesan or a harem girl, but she has never been with anyone but a hero regardless. Good Lord must have intervened himself, otherwise I am not sure how that could ever occur. And even if she is not *gasp* a virgin, she must have been a victim of rape (for hero to heal her with his penis) or, at the most, never enjoyed it before with her previous boyfriend/husband. Just once I want a courtesan heroine who knows what she is doing in the sack.

Who doesn't want to die of influenza or smallpox?

I have a special loathing for time-travel novels in which modern heroine goes back in time and decides to stay there, abandoning all her modern family and friends, not to mention healthcare and lack of endemic violence, in order to live with a studly hunk. I want to take the silly twit and shake her, asking: "you do realize there are no antibiotics, you have few rights, you can die in childbirth, you can never travel much due to logistics, you new husband will be off on regular murdering and raping expeditions, and you and your new loved ones are subject to a high chance of violent death" whenever some modern day PhD ditches it all to shack up with a Viking.

Pirates, God's gentlest creatures

There are some professions where the author has to bend over backwards to be able to convince me that the hero should shack up with the heroine instead of being hanged - pirates, highwaymen. But usually she believes that having the man in question be sexy and have an open shirt is enough. Heroine, I hate to tell you, but unless you found the world's sole Quaker Pirate, he probably has enough STDs to fill up a hospital ward and is a repeat violent criminal and rapist. Enjoy.

Everything is better with a little rape

I don't particularly care if people have rape fantasies but it's a little hard to sell a rapist as a viable romantic prospect. Many an author seems to believe that if the guy is hot, it's not rape. Hate to break it to you, lady, but if she stuggles away and says no, it's rape even if the guy is an Adonis and she has the best orgasm of her life (that's another point - if one is being raped, I fail to see why the mere fact of the guy being hot would matter enough to make one aroused. It's one thing if it's a weird form of kinky play or the woman has some odd rape fetish tastes, but in novels it is never presented this way).

Medieval Russian Vegetarians FTW

Ah yes. Please make sure whichever characteristics you give your protagonists, they are at least vaguely consistent with the time period. Vegentarianism is, no doubt, a praiseworthy lifestyle, and there are a number of time-periods and cultures where you can have a vegetarian heroine. The court of Ivan the Terrible is not one of them. I remember laughing myself sick reading some romance novel where court lady at Ivan's court was a tender, fluffy-bunny vegetarian. Indeed. There was also a novel where a medieval heroine happily cooked potatoes and tomatoes for her kin. She also had a dowry of 50,000 pounds which was probably the entire annual budget of the Crown at the time. Just a teeny bit of research won't kill you, I promise.

There are other people living in England beside Earls

If the romance novels are any indication, 18th-19th century England was filled shoulder-to-shoulder with hot young noblemen, so much so that if you added even one more, England would get so crowded some of them would start falling off into the sea for lack of space. There can't be that many of them! What's wrong about having an untitled hero? Or even *gasp* a merchant or a lawyer? Or, and I know this is shocking, a working-class one? The horrors, the horrors, I know. But it might be fun.

What are your pet peeves?

Ah, and now I remember why I gave up on romance novels - blistering hero hate!

I got lulled into security by reading four romances in a row where the heroes were likeable, treating heroine and others around them with respect, and not in need of reform.

But that's all right.

Things are back to normal with Gaelen Foley's Lord of Fire. What an apt name for the novel because that is precisely what I want to do to the hero - stick him into the fire and have some barbeque while he roasts.

OK, let's get down to this hypothetical. You are a young woman and this is your experience with a guy - you first see him presiding over a disgusting dusgusting orgy during which he drags you off against your will (and you fully believes for raping), sticks a pistol between your eyes, and feels you up everywhere against your will. Even when he finds out you are actually the sister-in-law of his mistress, come to fetch her to her sick child, and have never done anything improper or sexual in your life, he still offers you some sex.

Next morning, he tells you that only one of the two, you or your sister-in-law, can go to the sick kid, because he knows you treasure the child and wants to use your weakness for the kid to get you in his clutches.

OK, in this hypothetical, if you are in any way sane, are you going to (a) assume this is a horrible monster who deserves to be castrated and soon the hero of the piece will appear to help you heat the knives or (b) decide that all of this is OK because he's hot and angsty.

If you picked (a), congrats, you are a normal human being. If you picked (b), my condolences, you are Galen Foley.

I am supposed to believe the heroine feels physically drawn to him after that? In what Universe, unless she is a closet BDSM afficionado with a rape fetish?

How on earth the author expects me to root for them as a couple is beyond me. As it is, there is some evil French spy who supposedly wants to off our "hero" and I keep hoping he will succeed. I mean, when "hero" was relieving his hideous torture at French dude's hands, my reaction was not "poor woobie" but a "serves you right, you bastard!" and a fierce desire that the French Dude do it again.

This is all the more disappointing because the reason I got this sick-making book was because I finished Foley's The Duke and really enjoyed it - the hero *gasp* had morals, was in no need of reform, and actually listened when heroine told him "no".

Now excuse me, I need to go barf.

For a novel whose avowed purpose is to describe Simon de Montfort as some sort of a sex god, The Dragon and the Jewel is not too bad (nobody has raped anybody, and for a large chunk of the book the protagonists are happily married to each other) even if historical accuracy in the book is not the strongest.

But my main interest lay in trying to see how the author would deal with the ending. Romance novels are known for their 'happy endings at all costs' approach but I could not imagine how even the most optimistic writer could turn "and then Simon and some of his and Eleanor's sons were killed in battle of Evesham and his body was chopped up to bits to be sent as gifts to barons who helped defeat the rebel against the Crown. Oh, and Eleanor became a nun after his death" into a "and then they lived happily ever after."

Well - she avoided that very simply - she did not deal with that at all. She basically ends the book once Simon calls the first Parliament. She doesn't even mention his death in her afterword. Ahahahahahahha. He gets killed two years after her book ends but you would never know it from her novel.

Bwahahahahah!

That is a brilliant idea, actually. I can see a whole series of happy romance novels if you just do a little surgical removal of the historical ending. Maybe someone should write about the great romance of Isabella, wife of Edward II and Roger de Mortimer, an escaped rebel baron. It would all be mushy and awesome and end with their triumphal return to England together to defeat Edward II and take power. The author will just have to omit all the gruesome medieval punishments they inflicted on their enemies (including EII) and the little fact that as soon as Isabella and Edward II's son came of age he had his mother's lover put to death in a gruesome medieval way as well. (Isabella only forgave him after he got her some grandkids. Must have been an interesting Christmas dinner). Or how about a triumphant novel about Harold Godwinson, the powerful Saxon earl. Read all about him being crowned King of England and his sexytimes with his mistress Edith the Swan-necked. We'll just forget the pesky battle of Hastings.

I'd write such masterpieces myself but, alas, I am busy reading another one of "Dragon/Jewel" author's creations - the one where a Georgian lady drops through a time portal into when Romans ruled Britannia ans gets some really good times with a hunky Roman general. I am reading it for a deep deep plot.

ETA: Now I am going crazy trying to locate my copy of Falls the Shadow, i.e. the good novel about de Montfort but I have no idea where it went off to. I found every other Sharon Kay Penman book I own, including my favorite, The Sunne In Splendour about Richard III (I have never cried at the end of a book the way I bawled with Sunne) but no Falls the Shadow. Argh.

For a novel whose avowed purpose is to describe Simon de Montfort as some sort of a sex god, The Dragon and the Jewel is not too bad (nobody has raped anybody, and for a large chunk of the book the protagonists are happily married to each other) even if historical accuracy in the book is not the strongest.

But my main interest lay in trying to see how the author would deal with the ending. Romance novels are known for their 'happy endings at all costs' approach but I could not imagine how even the most optimistic writer could turn "and then Simon and some of his and Eleanor's sons were killed in battle of Evesham and his body was chopped up to bits to be sent as gifts to barons who helped defeat the rebel against the Crown. Oh, and Eleanor became a nun after his death" into a "and then they lived happily ever after."

Well - she avoided that very simply - she did not deal with that at all. She basically ends the book once Simon calls the first Parliament. She doesn't even mention his death in her afterword. Ahahahahahahha. He gets killed two years after her book ends but you would never know it from her novel.

Bwahahahahah!

That is a brilliant idea, actually. I can see a whole series of happy romance novels if you just do a little surgical removal of the historical ending. Maybe someone should write about the great romance of Isabella, wife of Edward II and Roger de Mortimer, an escaped rebel baron. It would all be mushy and awesome and end with their triumphal return to England together to defeat Edward II and take power. The author will just have to omit all the gruesome medieval punishments they inflicted on their enemies (including EII) and the little fact that as soon as Isabella and Edward II's son came of age he had his mother's lover put to death in a gruesome medieval way as well. (Isabella only forgave him after he got her some grandkids. Must have been an interesting Christmas dinner). Or how about a triumphant novel about Harold Godwinson, the powerful Saxon earl. Read all about him being crowned King of England and his sexytimes with his mistress Edith the Swan-necked. We'll just forget the pesky battle of Hastings.

I'd write such masterpieces myself but, alas, I am busy reading another one of "Dragon/Jewel" author's creations - the one where a Georgian lady drops through a time portal into when Romans ruled Britannia ans gets some really good times with a hunky Roman general. I am reading it for a deep deep plot.

ETA: Now I am going crazy trying to locate my copy of Falls the Shadow, i.e. the good novel about de Montfort but I have no idea where it went off to. I found every other Sharon Kay Penman book I own, including my favorite, The Sunne In Splendour about Richard III (I have never cried at the end of a book the way I bawled with Sunne) but no Falls the Shadow. Argh.

Looks like a typical cheesy 1980s romance novel cover, right?

Wrong.

Do you know who the man with the waxed back, Fabio hair, and a distressing lack of shirt is supposed to be?

Simon de Montfort. That's right, the man known to history for leading a revolt against Henry III and convening the first elected Parliament in English history. He is known as one of the fathers of modern Parliamentary democracy. Somehow I never knew that in his free time he liked parading around a la gigolo.

Do you know who the scarily-painted woman with the mysteriously sliding dress and a precarious crown (who wears a crown for making out anyway?) is supposed to be? Eleanor of England, the daughter of King John, and eventually de Montfort's wife. I would think that an intelligent, powerful noblewoman of the period would know better than to parade around England in an outfit designed to cause hypothermia, and would have enough money to buy an outfit that covers her shoulders. Apparently not.

Basically, I was rereading Sharon Kay Penman's Falls the Shadow, a brilliant historical novel about de Montfort and Eleanor (it's the second part of her Welsh trilogy). I have such fond memories reading it all night in my dorm with music blasting. That made me want to look if there are any other good fiction or non-fiction books on de Montfort, aside from Ellis Peters' The Brothers of Gwynedd trilogy (found a good nonfiction one btw). However, by mistake I hit images and this popped up - I could not help but look.

This is the summary on the back:

HE WAS HER FOLLY AND HER PASSION. With her sapphire eyes and silken dark hair, Princess Eleanor was a bewitching beauty made for a man's pleasure. But once a child bride widowed at a tender age, she swore never to marry again and took a vow of eternal chastity ... until Simon de Montfort marched into England and set his smoldering dark gaze upon her, King Henry's youngest sister, the royal family's most precious jewel. Bold, arrogant, and invincible, the towering Norman knight inspired awe in the bravest of men... and a reckless desire in Eleanor's untried heart. SHE WAS HIS PRIZE AND HIS LOVE. They called him the Dragon, but the most feared and dangerous warlord in all the land had one fatal weakness. Inflamed by Eleanor's incandescent loveliness and intoxicating innocence, he would pursue her with a passion that demanded unconditional surrender ... a passion that would erupt in scandal and rock the embattled realm, staining the pages of history with blood and betrayal ... igniting the pages of history with the rapture of all-consuming love...

Ahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I could not help it. Judge away, for I am now an unabashed owner of Dragon and Jewel on my Kindle. It is going to feel a lot like RPF porn and hence lies my horrified amusement. I mean - it's like writing smut about Benjamin Franklin or describing Henry VIII's loins of passion or whatever. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

In author's (slim) defense, Simon de Montfort and Eleanor did have a very famous romance - she did ditch her nun-like wow of chastity, they married secretly, and there was a huge uproar among nobility when they admitted their marriage (de Montfort was not English by birth and not noble enough for a Princess etc). And it's rare enough to find a love match for Medieval nobility, in the first place. But still...it's Simon de Montfort as Fabio. My God.

(Yes, I know I am behind on replies).