Tag: Reading

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Read Along!

picture of books on shelves, including several titles by the Brontes and Jane Austen

For several years, my critique partner/co-writer Genevieve Turner has been trying to get me to read Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). “It’s a feminist novel with a kickass heroine,” she’s argued. “You’ll like it.” Every time I’d mention some obscure nineteenth-century American novel with a subversive heroine, she’d say, “But in Tenant of Wildfell Hall, something even more shocking happens.”

And I…have been stubbornly refusing, or–if not refusing–avoiding. I like Jane Erye a lot; you may remember my theory that while Jane Austen gave romance a parcel of plots, the Bronte sisters gave the contemporary genre a style. (I’ve actually written about Austen, see also this.) But I’m a bit lukewarm on the Brontes I’ve read other than Jane Eyre.

However, loving Gen as I do, I’m going to trust her and avoid Tenant no longer. You’re cordially invited to a read-along. Bronte fangirls on their tenth re-read (like Gen) are welcome; so are newbies (like me)! The book is divided into three volumes. Our plan is to discuss Vol. 1 on Twitter on December 21 at 9 PM EST/6 PM PST using the hashtag #TOWH. We’ll tackle Vol. 2 at the same time on December 28 and Vol. 3 on the evening of January 4.

If you want to join us, the free e-book is available at Amazon, iBooks, B&N, Google Play, Kobo, and Project Gutenberg and you can add it to your Goodreads shelves. I hope to see you there!

PS Speaking of things to read, A Midnight Clear is still out, still free, and still adorable. It’s one of the titles in today’s holiday-themed Stuff Your Kindle event; check out the rest here!

10 Romantic Books to Read…Because Romance is Awesome

Today, Book Riot published a piece entitled “5 Romantic Books to Read in February (even if you hate romance).”

I could rant about this (see me respond to romance trolls here and here), but I don’t want to–not because the assumptions and commentary in the Book Riot list aren’t frustrating but because I’d rather celebrate the wonderful writing that I see in genre romance.

Every book here I’ve recommended to friends and family. Many I’ve forced onto people when they insist to me, “No, I don’t like romance.” I can’t say that every one of these conversion attempts has succeeded–but these books all have sharp writing, smart plots, and fascinating characters. These are perfect for February or July or anytime; they aren’t organized in any particular order.

1.) The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley, novel with strong romantic elements

Kearsley’s prose is lovely. Anyone who thinks the writing in romance is substandard should pick her books up. From the opening page of The Winter Sea, they’ll find a strong sense of history and place and not one but two compelling romances. Once I’d started it, I could not put it down. I’ve given easily half a dozen copies as gifts, and almost everyone I’ve gifted it to has gone on to read everything Kearsley has published.

2.) The Iron Duke, Meljean Brook, steampunk
Brook writes my favorite steampunk world in the Iron Sea series and any of the books or novellas in it would be good for those individuals who think they don’t like romance. (It’s worth saying that the titular Iron Duke does something almost unforgivable in this book.) Brook’s prose is crisp and compelling, the characterizations interesting, and the world, well, riveting. If this series isn’t adapted into a film, I’ll be pissed.
3.) Welcome to Temptation, Jennifer Crusie, contemporary
As far as I’m concerned, Crusie is the queen of smart, hilarious contemporary romances. This dance between grifter-adjacent Sophie Dempsey and small town mayor Phin Tucker is my favorite. The dialogue is delightful and the chemistry sizzling.

Continue reading “10 Romantic Books to Read…Because Romance is Awesome” →

Thoughts on Online Book Discussion

I keep writing and deleting this post. No one needs my thoughts on this matter; no one asked for them. Others have explored this topic much more elegantly and insightfully (see here, and here, and here, and here). This is little and it is late. But I can’t leave this unsaid.

Talking about books is the most important part of my intellectual life. When I was a freshmen in college, I was an English major, but considering changing to classical archeology (true story). Then I stumbled into the first half of the American literature survey. It was as if I had landed on a planet with more gravity. Everything shifted and settled around me; everything changed.

In that class, I found people talking about books in the way I did in my head except they did it out loud. And they did it better than I did: more insightfully, with connections to texts I’d never heard of, respecting theories I didn’t understand. So I kept taking English classes. I studied British literature and Irish literature and literature in translation. I analyzed contemporary popular culture and critical theory and linguistics. I wrote about Austen and Shakespeare and Marx. I fell in love with New Historicism. But thanks to that first college literature course, early American book culture stayed central in my heart.

For a while after college I did redacted things in Washington, but I missed books. I missed talking about books. So I went to graduate school to get back the feeling I got from the literature classroom. And now I do it all day.

When I started reading romance almost four years ago, the reason I kept doing it wasn’t how romance did deeply imaginative things related to gender norms and sexuality (though also that), it was the book culture I found online. Here were people talking about books in way I did at the university except without all the things that can come with academics–some of which had become loathsome to me. The online romance discussion seemed more radical, more subversive, and more democratic than what was happening in my university classroom.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I felt like I could start writing because of the online romance community. The academic world routinely makes me feel stupid and disempowered, but romancelandia does the opposite. The book culture around romance gave me permission to use my voice in a way I’m not certain I would have otherwise.

I don’t think this is about Kathleen Hale anymore. Not really. It’s about the fact that the book culture online has stopped feeling fun. Since I’m now writing and have a vested (albeit tiny) commercial interest in that culture and since I don’t review (related to my author role), I’ve mostly seen this from the sidelines. But the hype machine and its relation to book blogging seems qualitatively different today than it did 3.5 years ago when I started reading book blogs.

I have no solutions here, but it breaks my heart. Because every time I read a good book, I feel less alone. I feel more connected. I feel human and giddy and alive. And online book culture at its best networks those private reactions and feelings. Amplifies them. And it can be awesome.

I don’t know how to preserve it. And to the extent that my author activities may have taken away from anyone’s fun or just contributed to the blurring of public (in the Habermasian sense) and commercial spaces, I am sorry. Because if there’s no joy in talking about books, I don’t know what else we’re doing or why else we’d be doing it.

Book-Ends

(This is the latest in a series I’ve been writing about how we read, why we read, and what we read. It’s, um, a bit ponderous. These things happen.)

Over at Dear Author today, Janet writes about how the specialness of books should be determined by readers:

If anyone should be deciding whether books are special, it should be readers. No, let me correct that. Anyone can believe that books are special. Authors, publishers, editors, cover artists, marketing advocates – whoever. But the only people who should be deciding for readers if and when and which books are special, are readers.

I agree with this whole-heartedly, as I do with most of the piece. Books are consumer goods whose use value is determined by the reader. Their worth isn’t intrinsic. While gatekeepers like marketers, reviewers, booksellers, teachers, academics, and other readers influence these determinations–insofar they shape our taste and teach us how to read/make meaning from texts at all–it is ultimately the individual with the book on her couch or on the subway who decides if Moby-Dick was worth the slog.

To the extent that anything separates books from other consumer goods, it is that books in their physical or digital form are unfinished. We must decode them. And I do think that the reading experience provides a more intimate communion with books than consumption does with many other consumers goods. When I read, I have a reading voice in my head that repeats every word (or every few words if I’m skimming). I literally re-articulate everything the writer transcribed (and which editors, formatters, etc. shaped) and then filter it through my education, my past reading experiences, my mood, and so on in order to decide what it means. This is a somewhat different experience than eating an apple, wearing a shirt, or even looking at a picture.

I don’t think that my Moby-Dick is necessarily your Moby-Dick. And my Moby-Dick isn’t the same as when I first read the novel seven years ago. Today’s would be shaped by the first and the subsequent reading experiences. A rose is a rose is a rose: the first rose isn’t the last.

We must “finish” other consumer goods, of course, either by assembling them (e.g., Ikea furniture), making things out of them (e.g., groceries), etc., and we do have to decode other cultural goods, like film, music, and television, but books have always seemed different to me both because I value them more but also because the process takes longer. I’m a fast reader, but it still takes me four to eight hours to read a 70,000-100,000 word novel. I’m going to spend a lot of time with the writer (and the editor, etc.) in my head. And the form in which I’m going to experience a book is closely aligned with the form in which it was produced. A writer wrote on a page and I’m looking at a page, or a screen as the case may be. This may give books a sort of…liveness that other cultural productions don’t have. (I’m not sure what to call this quality.)

So books aren’t special but they are participatory in a way that marks them among consumer goods.

Continue reading “Book-Ends” →

The Problem with Politics

I hate electoral politics and think politicians and staffers are all creeps. Should I read Special Interests?

I’ve written before about politics in romance novels, about how I think all romance novels are political but some politics announce themselves while others hide in plain sight. So if you read romance, I would say you’re already reading political books.

But…the politics in Special Interests aren’t hidden, not even a little. The hero, Parker, is a senior aide to an important senator; the heroine, Millie, works for a construction union. The book revolves around a budget negotiation. It is very much about the American political process–good, bad, and indifferent.

Further, it’s partisan. Millie and Parker are both liberal Democrats, though being members of the same party doesn’t help them. They argue about politics and their different orientations toward the political process, and what these differences mean about their personalities, are at the heart of the conflict in the book.

Despite all that, I don’t think it’s a partisan book. There are characters in the book who are “bad” (broadly speaking) who agree with our hero and heroine politically. There are characters in the book who are “good” (again broadly speaking) who are conservative. I don’t want to spoil the end of the budget subplot, but it isn’t achieved at anyone’s expense. It isn’t about demonizing or lionizing either party.

The next book in the series isn’t partisan at all and is in general less overtly political. The third book is going to feature a cross-party romance. Things worked out the way they did in Special Interests because it felt like the truest representation of the characters and the place, not because I have any sort of agenda. Most importantly, I don’t think that one’s enjoyment of the book is contingent on agreeing with the characters.

So should you read the book if you think Washington is a cesspool of corruption? Only you can answer that. If anything to do with laws and politics raises your blood pressure, probably not. (Though in light of all the discussion about online reviewing and author backlash, let me say that if you don’t like the book–either because of politics or anything else–I totally support your right to review it honestly however and wherever you want. Reviews are for readers not writers. While bad reviews are unpleasant, I’ll live and I won’t harass you about it. Promise.)

But if you want a (I hope!) witty, sexy, honest portrait of young DC staffers trying to make the federal budget and love work, I think Special Interests is for you.

And Yet Do I Read

(This is a meditation on how I read. Here are my thoughts on why and what.)

As you probably know I wrote a book, a historical romance set during the American Civil War called Brave in Heart. It released in July and a handful of people read it. Some went so far as to write things down about it. Some of the things were joyous and celebratory, others were more measured or censorious, but still: people read what I had written and said thoughtful things about it. All together, it was one of the nicest intellectual experiences I’ve had.

In becoming an author, in adding creator to reader and scholar in my list of bookish roles, I began to wonder about the process of reading–and not just reading but evaluation. How do we do it? And how should we?

Continue reading “And Yet Do I Read” →

All About Romance Top 100 Books Poll, 2013 Edition

I’m alive. I swear.

I’m trying to finish writing the second book in my contemporary series for Carina, not to mention completing my dissertation. I just finished two rounds of edits on the first book for them (the one formerly known as The Easy Part; new title forthcoming). I’m also beginning to think about NaNoWriMo, when I hope to finish Brave in Heart’s sequel. Plus I’ve been teaching and grading. So much grading. Grading like it’s going out of style (which I hope it is).

With all of that in mind, while I was filling out my ballot for the All About Romance Top 100 poll, I decided to share it here.

A few caveats: it’s probably obvious I’m not a long-time romance reader; there’s not much old school stuff here. I did not like the first two books I read by Nora Roberts, so I gave up on her. In general, I don’t like romantic suspense, erotica, and paranormal romance. I’ve read nothing by Susan Elizabeth Phelps, JR Ward, Diana Gabaldon, or Nalini Singh, among others. With all that in mind, I decided to stop at 50 rather than 100.

So, tell me where I’m wrong. Tell me what I need to read.

Continue reading “All About Romance Top 100 Books Poll, 2013 Edition” →

Hard Work

I was thinking about a review that I read for Ruthie Knox’s latest novella, Making It Last — which in the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t read yet — specifically of a line in which the reviewer called it and other ‘marriage in trouble’ romances Important.

I can’t find the exact review now; I don’t mean to establish a strawman. I doubt the reviewer capitalized Important, and yet I sensed the emphasis, the sort of 18th century abstract, personified ideal attached to the pronouncement.

Certainly it is accurate to say happily ever afters do not simply happen. They must be cultivated and protected. Relationships are, as your aunt explained to you at your bridal shower, hard work.

More seriously, not every moment of a long-term relationship is sunshine and flowers and champagne. The trust that you build up in the difficult moments (and years) bears fruit in the balance. You love each other more for the wee small hours when you’re caring together for a sick child, or for the unconditional support he offers you during a professional crisis, etc. I’ve been in my relationship for 14 years (married for 9 of those); this is not simply something I believe, but something I live.

To the extent that romance doesn’t represent past the happy ever after and that ‘marriage in trouble’ romances are corrective, I am behind this designation. And yet…

Continue reading “Hard Work” →

The Stages of Hating Your Manuscript

I finished a radical revision of Together is Enough this week and I’m so very close to finishing Brave in Heart. So incredibly close. As a reward, I made the catastrophic mistake of picking up a book that shares both a genre and a setting with the former. It was a lovely book. Character-driven, tense but believable, politically progressive, compelling, and concise. Just terrific. After I finished, I said, “Damn it! I’ll never write anything as good as that!”

Those different processes — writing, editing, reading — are part of our lives as aspiring novelists. But they bring with them almost predictable attitudes towards our works in progress. I think it plays out something like this…

When you start drafting, you’re enthusiastic about your project. Out of all the ideas you have, this is one you’re writing now. So you naturally think it’s going to be awesome.

Then, you start writing and you hit the first plateau. It suddenly doesn’t seem so awesome anymore. If you’re like me, this happens at about 20,000 words.

After a lot of hemming and hawing, you push through and finish the manuscript. As you type those words, those lovely “the end” words, it is so gratifying. “Gosh darn, this project is awesome,” you think.

Continue reading “The Stages of Hating Your Manuscript” →

Five Favorite Books

There’s a five-favorite books meme making the rounds on the interwebs. I couldn’t limit myself to five, but here’s mine:

Non-romance fiction

Romance

Non-fiction