Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

Top posting rather than putting it in comments over and over... (See previous post for context)

Yes, The Merry Misogynist might be an accurate description of the book's contents. But is that necessarily a good thing? Because I was thinking last night about descriptive titles and what some of the books I've reviewed might have been called if the title is a description, no matter how blunt, of the contents/villain/attitude:

I Miss the 60s Before Feminism Ruined Everything

Femjep-o-rama!

All Women Are Castrating, Lying Bitches

She's Cute, But She Needs the Right Man to Save Her (a comedy)

Revenge of Femjep-o-rama

I Heart Torture Porn

I Only Added The Murder For Marketing Purposes; Don't Worry, It's Mostly a Quirky Romance

Lydia Bennett Is My Greatest Inspiration

Femjep-o-rama Returns

Ripping Off Famous Classical Authors 101 (102, 103...)

Why Do All The Reviewers Call My Heroine "Mary Sue?" It's Not Her Name!

Sex Sells, Plot Doesn't: Suck It Up and Stop Looking for Logic Cos You're Only Gonna Get Lube

The Series Didn't Sell, So I'm Wrapping Everything Up Now The Contract's Ending

I Might Have Signed the Contract, But I'm Bored to Tears With This Series So Don't Expect Me To Put Effort Into It

Bride of the Son of Femjep-o-rama


...I'm sure you can add more in comments

Dear Author,

If you're interested enough in publicity to turn your book's title into a URL, I've got one word for you: EXCERPT!

I don't care if three other published authors, your publicist, and your mother think this is the greatest novel since Dickens, will cure psoriasis, and serves as both a dessert and a floor wax. (Publicists say that to all the girls.) I want to see for myself if it's going to make me spit acid like a velociraptor with reflux.

Signed,
I don't think so!

(I have signed up for another one sight unseen having found the excerpt: Fearless Leader is right about that one. It sure as hell isn't the standard cozy!)

Dear Author:

When you brag about how you've never lived in one place or held a job for more than a couple of years at a time and then you go try to get a job that requires a lot of experience and nobody takes you seriously? It's not just 'cause you're a girl.

Also, that bit about how your childhood was worse than anything Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens could dream up together, and how your young adulthood was more exotic than any seven travelogues rolled into one? I can read Marysue fiction for free on the Internet, honey.

Took 12 pages of notes at "Malvolio's Revenge" last night and will type up all when I have the time, hopefully tonight. (I'd say so at Facebook but I still don't even know how to respond to comments there. I'm flunking Facebook.)

Dear Author: Do not be using the finale moments of very famous movies for your plot twist. The reader is supposed to think "I never saw that coming" not "I can see that every time I reach for my DVD collection."

Regeneration episode casting spoilers are sweeping through fandom at the speed of squee. I'm throwing open comments not for the spoilers, but for the most silly "why he'll regenerate" theory you can come up with.

I'll start with a couple:

- Ten poisons himself with hair gel overexposure.
- Donna's mother and Martha's mother meet, compare notes, and take a hit out on him.

Dear Author,

The whole superior journalist thing of "I went to investigate these losers and then found out they're decent interesting people" trope only works if your disgusted bias doesn't continue to ring through every chapter and description.

I was quite interested in reading "Cookoff" Ms. Sutherland; there aren't many books about the people who like to compete in cookoffs, and recipes are always a nice touch. Such a pity that your attitude was a turnoff, from your oh-so-disingenuous discovery that liberated women like to compete through your "Well, I've entered a contest but I'm not like many others" conclusion. This was supposed to be about cookoffs, not "my superiority complex, let me show you it."

Could you - could *anyone* - possibly be shocked that modern women enter contests for prestige, prizes, and, oh, let's not forget the cold, hard cash? And why is cooking somehow retro and antifeminist as opposed to, say, beauty contests? At least cooking is a skill. You described people driving for miles to get the right presentation dish, but nobody had to vaseline their teeth and glue a swimsuit to their ass to be judged on their waist and tits.

You certainly judged by ingredients and tools. Scallions are not automatic indicators of haute cuisine. There is no "war" on crock pots except in the mind of technology snobs. (Little hint: All those pre-technology recipes that say "long slow simmer"? What the hell do you think a crock pot DOES?)

But that's nothing on how you judge the way people spend their time. You're above convenience food, I get it. But how dare you talk about how you can't understand how people can "drive for hours" and not want to spend time in the kitchen? Maybe they're using convenience food because they're tired and hungry and don't want to pfaff around in the kitchen. And it's not like you approve of anything else people do outside the kitchen. I notice that every chapter includes a dismissive description of the parties and events surrounding the cookoffs. Parties in bars are drunken orgies where women spray nameless liquids. Dressage is "interminable prancing to music."

And then there are the people. You're nice... to a few of them. But you will keep throwing in those little digs about "widening hips," "a gangster moll," women talking about hair dye, and (in almost every chapter) people talking to "no one at all." After that was repeated a few times, I started to think that they were probably trying to talk to you but couldn't penetrate the bubble.

Actually trying to put your money where your mouth was in the final chapter showed a little humanity. Such a pity that by then I was fed up with your dictations on the "right" ingredients, tools, and forms of cooking.

Dear Author isn't just one of my tags, it's a blog. (Not by me.) In this post, an author illustrates how to never get another good review in her life.

I have had someone do that to me, by the way. Not get in my face over a bad review (surprising, considering how many options there are; I'd better be wearing track shoes if I ever meet Hess... or perhaps she should be, because the problem with insulting people is sometimes they find out about it and Have Opinions In Return.) No, this is a woman who got up in my face because I objected to being handed 300+ unbound, unnumbered sheets to review and sniffed that I obviously didn't know a lot about real authors and real publishing if I was going to be THAT way.

(The garbage can was That Way over yonder, which is all I'm going to say about the fate of that one.)

My review for Acts of Nature is up on Reviewing the Evidence. (Wow, that turnaround was particularly fast!) Obviously, I need to hustle on the last June & July books.

Speaking of which:

Dear Author:

I remember a long time ago, there was a fanzine that promised "200 pages of hot, hot action, and that's before he even gets his shirt off!" This was accomplished through a combination of printing on only one side of the page, huge font size, acres of white space, and last but never least, really crappy writing.

I mention this because you should not start your book suggesting that it has taken 6 novels to tell one storyline. It has only taken that long because your page count is miniscule, your typeface rivals Books For The Blind, your per-page white space looks like the arctic, and your plot points move more slowly than an overpadded episode of Lost. That you've had the nerve to sell these overinflated novellas at hardback prices adds insult to injury.

I thought your first two books were hilarious, but then you started seeing how little you could sell for how much on a per-volume basis. Just because I get this crap for free doesn't mean that I'm not going to point this out to the people who might otherwise cheat themselves paying you $24.95 for 1/3 of a story.

In a rush on my way out:

If you've seen Poison Sky yet, go read wendymr's character interlude Given the Choice. If you haven't, bookmark for later. Her Donna is perfect. (Can't quote 'cause of spoilers.)

And another in what will probably be a burgeoning series:

Dear Author,

So, you've got a fish-out-of-water protagonist who is thrown into a new world by inheriting a niche business upon which the series is hooked. Well that's... the second time I've read that in two weeks. Okay, not your fault. It's a perfectly good means of kick-starting things.

However, you've kicked it right over. And that is your fault.

First of all, if your protagonist is supposed to be a silicon valley hotshot, she would not be frantic that one of the antagonists "crashed" a laptop by "pulling out the power cord." Apparently to your computer expert's surprise, that won't crash a properly functioning laptop. No, closing the lid on it while it's running won't crash it either. I promise.

Many, many of the "middle-aged" (ta so very much for that repeated description) practitioners of the craft you've chosen as a hook actually OWN laptops. Surprise! It's called the 21st Century, my dear. You might want to join it before you write a couple of pages of how your protagonist is frantically fighting across the sea of people to save the data and check the poor "abused" laptop.

Speaking of abuse, your character isn't quite as hard-put-upon as she likes to think. First of all, that uber-cutesy sister-in-law? Yeah, she's passive-aggressive and all, but I find it hard to believe that she's that much of a technophobe. Because she IS running a successful business and one of the bigger-ticket sales items in said business is - Gasp! - craft-oriented software. No, really. I told you your audience was familiar with the 21st century. Even if your antagonist didn't like it enough to stock, if she's that familiar with the market I guarantee you she knows about the stuff... even if you obviously don't.

And then there's the female assistant of the Very Famous Female Celebrity. That scene where she is stopping your protagonist from waltzing in on the VFFC? And gets really nasty when she instantly catches your protag's lie about a nonexistent meeting? She is not a jumped-up bitch with delusions of grandeur, she is doing her job. It's an important job, and the fact that your protag has to shove her to get the room key does not mean that your heroine has triumphed over the pettiness of people around her. It means that she was doing her job and your protagonist has committed assault.

Oh, and by the way... having said protagonist bitch about "the noise of all those women's voices" and muse about wanting to go back to being surrounded by men talking was creepy. That she then lies to and assaults an assistant while bitching mentally that she's always been blocked by "women whose only power comes from doing their jobs other people" isn't a blow for feminism. It's "My skanky issues with my own gender, let me show you them."

Fortunately, this is a Malice pickup and not an assigned RtE book, so I don't even have to skim it. Please learn a little bit about your chosen hooks and leave your issues behind in copyedit next time

Signed,

I need to read a historical true crime to wash my mind of THAT cozy!

In case anyone was interested, the answer was "I took as much as I could carry." I wrote two book reviews, read and wrote another review, finished Yarn Harlot's latest book, and finished another rectangle for the knitalong afghan. I had time to do this in the 10 minutes to jury selection for my panel that stretched for about 5 hours until they told us to turn the cards back in and go home.

And also, thanks to Tangled Skein having the rare 5.5" double-pointed needles in larger sizes, the Swiss Army knitting kit is done without any special work on my part. Two short needles, two point protectors, and a hotel sewing kit equipped with stitchmarkers and those itty bitty scissors. Add yarn and done!

However, that book I read? Hoo, boy, did I wish I could write a Dear Author right there! So, to get it out of my system:

Dear author:

There is more to having a feminist heroine than making her female. Even if you make her a progressive woman. Even if you give her an education and the aspiration to hold a job at the turn of the previous century. Especially if you make her a socialist suffragette with an Oxford education and then forget to remind her that the working poor she's always worrying about includes her own servants, whom she treats like furniture.

Making her repeat "I have an education and I want to be a journalist and I won't let men push me around" doesn't actually count when the pedal hits the metal feminism-wise. She has to actually back up those words... and frankly? Not seeing too much of that. I've been reading crime stories for years now, and you've written the first one where the investigator never actually talks to the victim's friends and family or investigates the scene of the crime. That sort of thing is for the menfolk, apparently.

It's not a feminist novel when most of the other characters are women too. Even when the suspect is an art-loving, recreational-drug-taking, socialist suffragette lesbian. Even when the victim is an art-loving bisexual free love proponent. It's I-think-I'm-so-edgy bingo, but it's not automatically a feminist novel.

It's not even a feminist novel when the plot revolves around birth control.

It would be a feminist novel if the heroine did more than bitch and flounce and sass at men, or if women weren't being picked off like flies, or if men weren't deciding to control women's fertility... but that's not the book you've written.

Signed,
A reviewer who likes good feminist crime and good historicals, and wish she'd just read a book that rated as either

Dear author:

The fact that you couldn't get the chapters on your intricate politico-scientific-historical-conspiracy thriller to be longer than a page or two should have been your first clue that your plot was only half-baked.

Or maybe a quarter baked. Because the idea of hiding messages in DNA? Moderately interesting, in a *giggle*snort* way. But hiding messages about cycles that, by the time humanity (re)discovers DNA sequencing, will have repeated about four or five times? Um, hello? The reaction to The Great Big Fancy Coded Message shouldn't be "Le duh! We have been paying attention to recorded history, you know."

Signed,
Oh, please, is there anyone on this Earth who DOESN'T know that by now?




Dear Every Author Who Writes Conspiracy Thrillers, Ever:

Please to be knocking off the plots that hinge on the following premise: There is abstruse knowledge in the world. There is a hidden cabal that kills anyone getting close to the hidden knowledge. Therefore, the catalyst tells the protagonist "I have seven seconds left to live, so I'm going to pass on my abstruse knowledge in a crossword/sudoku/rebus/cross-stitch pattern/linguistic puzzle for you to figure out over the next 300 pages."

Because honestly? If you want to spike the wheels of hidden homicidal cabals, post the damn thing in plain English on your MySpace and watch them disappear in a puff of "Oh, god, I can't kill the whole Internet!" Or possibly laughter that they've been so crazy to believe whatever it was in the first place.

Special "Oh, PLEASE" award to plots based on the SuperSekrit Killer Klutzes deliberately posting codes and secrets just to prove they're unbreakable and then wetting their pants when somebody breaks it. (Yes, Bruce Willis movie who's name I've forgotten, I'm looking at you.) SuperSekrit things are not secret anymore when they've been in a major newspaper. Period. Even if you add the magic words "neener, neener, betcha can't figure this out."