Reading binges, romance novels, pumpkin pie and other stuff

[shadowkat]

I'm enjoying the hell out of this four day weekend and all I've really been doing is reading for pleasure. Pure unadulterated guilty pleasure reading. Ripped through two books in two days. Now on my third. Haven't done that since maybe the Jim Butcher novel. Granted they were fairly short books and easy reads. But fun, fluffy, and sexy. No violence. No death. No rape...seduction yes, BSDM definitely, but not "rape". (ie. rough consensual sex.) The Kindle is wonderful - did you know that you can buy books between 0$ and $3.99 in the romance/erotica/chickflick genre? I don't how these people are making any money. I used to rob my mother's and Granny's bookshelves for these items, or the corner used book store. Now - I can stay comfy in my flat, search for them on Amazon, read excerpts and reviews, then wham, buy them on the Kindle. It's quite delightful. Plus you don't have to deal with the embarrassment of people seeing you read the things.

(Although why I am embarrassed, I've no idea. As Nora Roberts recently stated - we shouldn't condemn ourselves or each other for "reading for pure pleasure". I read a lot of tech stuff for work (read the equivalent of ten books on railroad switches and station design in the last two months - to say they are sleep inducing would be an understatement, but hey cool pictures), also, ex-English Lit Major here, not like I haven't read and analyzed the classics. Carl Sagan once said that there are a 100-200 books you should read before you die. I disagree. In part, because it's been my experience that most people lose 85% of their memory by the time they die and don't remember half the stuff they've read anyhow, so who cares? I think Neil Gaiman is right - you should love what you are reading whether it be Twilight or Lord of the Rings or The Mayor of Casterbridge or Candide or Crime and Punishment...screw what everyone else thinks. One doesn't read to impress after all (okay maybe some people do?), one reads for love. I try to find the love in all that I do, otherwise...life is just hard. For me? Books, specifically fiction, have always been my first love. I love them more than anything else in the world. Books and writing. I could give up everything else - just not those two things. There's no greater pleasure in the world - no bigger stress reliever - than losing oneself completely in a book, laughing with it, and reading til the wee hours. The only thing better? Losing yourself in something you are writing yourself...that story you are telling yourself with words typed or handwritten, fingers not moving as fast as your mind.)

Any romance genre fans out there? Do you want reviews? I'm reading erotica, chick-flick, sweet romance, and BSDM. Sort of everything including the kitchen sink. On a bit of a binge at the moment - no clue how long it will last, anywhere from four days to a year. Some people go on drunken binges, or clothes/electronics binges - me? I go on cultural binges. And.. This - my friends is what happens after three months of plodding through the gritty war torn world of George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire Series, not helped by a series of other, equally violent fantasy novels read prior to it. I think I may read the comic novel How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely which I picked up off the street, next. Been saving it for after Feast of Crows but I needed to take a break from Feast for a bit. I was getting depressed.

Did watch two Harry Potter films - the first two, before things got all dark and bleak. Am considering a rewatch of A&E's Pride & Prejudice which I haven't seen in 10 years. Either that or West Side Story. Also watched part of the Woody Allen doc on American Masters (which was fascinating...they had to drag poor painfully shy Allen into being a stand-up comic and performer kicking and screaming, he used to throwup before his gigs and really only saw himself as a joke writer.).

Oh and made another pumpkin pie - which turned out far better than the first attempt, it's not lopsided and the custard didn't fall. Yes, the other one tasted fine, excellent even. But I think this one may be better.

Comments

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Hehe, I'm really easy to scare off with romance novels because heteronormative clichee's ick the hell out of me. Everything that ends with a wedding or where the woman "wants it after all" really puts me off. The only romance novels I can read are either fanfic or gay romances, because all the manly men and womanly women of the normal het romances make me barf.

By which I do not want to judge anyone who likes them because I have a gazillion guilty pleasure ready and totally get the appeal of not only reading high quality works. My sister always wanted me to read thomas bernhard in the middle of my hardcore a book a day dragonlance phase. I have times where I will read anything that has an elf or a spaceship in it, no matter how bad.

and i wont even start with how much I swallow from comic books.


It's weird that it's the sexism that puts me off romance novels but that I can read Fables or even some Manara porn thingy without being much bothered by it. I guess it is because it's easier to discount it as completely off the rooker male fantasy than seeing the internalized sexism in chick lit, where the woman is at the center but is still all about men.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Good fluff? Yes, review.