Read Whatever You Want, You're Still a Reader

I'm pissed, so there will be swearing. A LOT of swearing.

I have been in the book business off and on since 1994—more on than off, to be clear—and I have always read genre fiction. This made me an outlier and, to be perfectly honest, an outcast among independent booksellers for a long time. I always found kindred spirits with whom I could talk Romance or Science Fiction or Mystery, but we were like Catholics during the Reformation, recognizing each other by secret hand signals and fearful of exchanging more than whispered recommendations for fear of being caught out by our more literary-minded peers. In time, that started to change. I not only found more indie booksellers who read what I read, but more and more booksellers who may not share my tastes, but accepted and respected them nonetheless.

But, the Old School Independent Booksellers are still out there. They're still gatekeeping. They're still trying to make me feel lesser because I don't read and love the "right" books. (They're still pretty much all older white men.) And in the last couple of months, I've experienced several of them. Today, it just got too much and I cracked. Not in public, because I still have to deal with these assholes in my professional life and I'm not quite ready to be a pariah. But, FUCK THEM. How dare they fucking try to tell me I'm not a reader or a bookseller because I don't swoon over the Dead White Man Canon. How dare they fucking judge me because I like happy endings and magic and shit blowing up. HOW FUCKING DARE THEY.

I'm done. I'm done being quiet. I'm done apologizing for what I choose to read. I'm done sitting back and pretending it's okay that industry newsletters don't review the books that I like to read and sell. I am starting a fucking revolution that shouldn't even need to be a revolution. I am declaring, here and now, that YOU ARE A READER and YOUR BOOK CHOICES ARE WORTHY.

You love Hemingway? Great. Let's have a conversation about why you do and I don't. You haven't read Nora Roberts? Let me try to convince you why you should and why she is a fucking goddess. You don't like Nicholas Sparks? Neither do I, but Jane Doe does. Let's ask her what it is about his books that works for her. We don't have to agree on books or authors. The world would be really boring if we all did that. Instead, let's celebrate the fact that we are all readers and we have found each other. Let's have each others' backs and protect our fellow readers from the scorn of the gatekeepers and tastemakers and anyone else who dares to try to make us feel lesser.

We are the revolution. We read whatever we want. We reject your scorn and your judgment. You have no power over us or our choices. WE WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO MAKE US FEEL LESSER.

Bite me, motherfuckers. Your time is so fucking up.

My Very Own Book Tournament Thingy

It's nearly December, so everyone's coming out with their "Best of 2018" book lists and folks like The Morning News are starting to gear up for their book tournaments and I am, again, trying really hard not to groan so loud that people in the next room can hear it. I mean, sure there are lots of books on these lists that are, by any objective measure, really good books. But, sweet baby jeebus in the manger, so few of them are actually enjoyable that it makes me sad/angry/frustrated. Howsoever, where there is a problem, there is probably a solution and I think I've come up with one. Granted, the solution will probably make me batshit insane by the end, but I think I'm okay with being more crazy.

Here, then, is what I am doing:

I am creating my own book tournament.

I am asking my bookish friends to help me pick a slate of titles that came out in 2018 and were enjoyable to read. I don't care if they are "good" in a critics'-darling sort of way, as long as they were, in some way, enjoyable to read. Did the story captivate you? Were the characters people you wanted to have dinner with? Were the characters people you wanted to set on fire with your brain? Really, did you just care about the characters in some way, either good or bad? Did you have an awesome time hate-reading a book? Was there a book that was total book crack for you? These are the books I'm going to pit against each other in my tournament. I don't care about the hot literary novel about a broken family. I want the hot Romance novel with two broken people finding love. I want the Mystery novel where you figured out whodunnit by page 10, but kept reading because the dialogue was sparkling. I want the memoir that made you laugh out loud or decide that the memoirist was your new BFF, even though you've never met and likely never will. I want the historical fiction wherein a dress was so lovingly and exquisitely described that you did a Google image search for it. I want the YA-fantasy-love triangle that had you saying "Well, that was a cliche from top to bottom, but I cannot wait for the next book in the series." I know that, for some of my friends, the books they most enjoyed will also be good books and I want those, too. I just don't want anyone to feel like books they nominate need to be impressive in any way. This is about the joy of reading and of sharing the books we love with others and maybe arguing their merits, depending on how "fancy" I want to get with this here tournament-thingy.

If you are reading this and haven't already been invited to join the Facebook group created for the tourney, you can find us here. Come join us and fight and vote for your favorite books of 2018.

Books and Social Media

I am going to try to post here at least once a week. I may not always succeed in that goal because sometimes I just don't have anything to say. Today, though, I want to talk about social media and books and the options available for sharing and discovering.

I have a Goodreads account. I have had one since before they were purchased by that giant behemoth in Seattle. I want to have a different option, and I do have "memberships" on LibraryThing, Riffle, Litsy, and Edelweiss, but none of them offer what GR does. LibraryThing is aesthetically unappealing and not easy to navigate, which doesn't make it easy to discover new-to-me books. Riffle is pretty, but it doesn't have a lot of users and the focus seems to be more on e-books than paper books. Which is fine, it's just not me as a reader. Litsy (which is now owned by LibraryThing) is basically what you would get if you pulled out the #bookstagram community from Instagram and gave them their own app. It's very visually-focused and not really geared toward reviewing. With Edelweiss, it's very clear that the social aspect was an add-on and wasn't (still isn't) a primary focus, which is fine, because that's not my primary focus in using it, either. It has been suggested that I employ a spreadsheet to track my reading, but that's not easily shareable, nor is it a tool for discovery. There just isn't anything out there that I've found that ticks all of my boxes.

What, then, would my ideal book tracking, sharing, and discovery tool look like?

• It would not be owned by Amazon, which should probably go without saying, but I'm saying it anyway.
• Nor would it be owned by a publisher or bookstore that would try to sell me things through it or use my reviews to try to sell things to other people.
• It would have a feed, much like the one on Goodreads.
• It would allow me to make my reviews viewable only to my friends.
• It would allow me to easily share my reviews to other social media platforms.
• It would have a rating system that allowed for fractions or decimals, so that a book that fell in between two ratings could be denoted as such.
• It would have different channels for the public and bloggers and book professionals. Or, and this may make me sound like a snobby arse, it would be open to book professionals only: booksellers, librarians, publishers, authors, etc. The reason for this is that I read a lot of Young Adult and I just can't deal with the plethora of GIF "reviews" and exclamation points and hating on a book before one has even read it that happens in the online YA-reading community. (Also known as: I'm old. Get off my lawn!)
• This is kind of a unicorn, but I am talking ideals here, so here it is: It wouldn't allow one to review a book one hasn't read. I don't know how it would be possible to verify this, but I'd love to see at least some effort made. It would eliminate at least some of the "OMG! Look at that cover! I CAN'T WAIT! Here's a GIF from a CW TV Show to show how happy I am!" and the "So and so is a cis-het, able-bodied, neurotypical white person who should not ever, ever be allowed to write about any characters who are not exactly like them and, therefore, this book is terrible and we should kill it with fire. No, I haven't read it yet, but I know it's the absolute worst."
• It would have a recommendation engine that wasn't just based on "People who read and liked this, also read and liked this." I get recommendations from Goodreads that make zero sense. Just because I enjoyed this Kids Graphic Novel does not mean that I would also enjoy that Erotic Shifter Novella (or vice versa) even if someone else liked both of those things.
• It would focus primarily on user interaction. Newsletters and author interviews are all well and good, but they don't influence my reading nearly as much as what my bookish coterie are reading and enjoying and recommending.
• It would allow the formation of groups so that I could hang out and talk Romance with my other friends who are Romance readers without my whole update feed being that conversation and boring my non-Romance-reading friends.
• It would look good and be easy to navigate. Keep the interface clean and uncluttered, but a little more fancy than text-only. And if I could customize my homepage, that would be ideal.
• And, finally, if I could easily link to IndieBound or an independent bookstore for anyone who wants to buy the book, that would be amazing.

I guess, in the end, I want Goodreads and Edelweiss (and a little Facebook) to have a baby that only had the best features of each of them. If you have the skills and the time and the inclination and want to make this happen for me, I will bake something for you.

This Is All Cynthia's Fault

I thought I was done with this thing. For four years, I let it lie fallow and thought of it rarely, if ever. And then a friend of mine wanted to know more about my 50 States/50 Romances reading challenge, but she doesn't (and won't, for very, very good reasons) use Goodreads. I've been posting about the challenge in a private Facebook group, but trying to find old posts on FB is not easy. So, here I am again, sharing my bookish (and maybe, occasionally, bake-ish) thoughts and adventures and disappointments.

Since I came back to this because of curiosity about my 50 States/50 Romances challenge, I suppose that's as good a place to start as any.

Back in March or April of this year, I created a project for myself: I was going to read one Romance novel set in each of the 50 states, and I was going to read them alphabetically by state. I finished the first book—Something to Prove by Kimberly Lang—on April 15th and have averaged about one book for the challenge per month. None of the books so far have been great. Or, at least, none of the books so far have been great for me. I am, by nature, a reader of Historical Romance and only one of the books I've read for this challenge so far has been an Historical. And it was an Old Skool Johanna Lindsey, so it was far from the best the sub-genre has to offer. But, part of the impetus behind this challenge was to get me reading books I wouldn't otherwise have chosen for myself.

Here, then, are the books I've read for the challenge thus far. I've tried to include some thoughts about the books in question, but it's been long enough since I've read most of them that I only remember broad strokes, so the details are very sparse.

Alabama Something to Prove by Kimberly Lang: I started off with a small town contemporary. I liked it okay, especially since the author didn't feel the need to create a Big Villain to provide conflict. It was just small people being small who stood in the way of Happily Ever After for the hero and heroine.

Alaska The Royal Treatment by MaryJanice Davidson: A kind of alternate universe setting where Alaska has a royal family. There were some good humorous set pieces, but some of the world building was questionable.

Arizona Fairyville by Emma Holly: When I started, I vaguely remembered reading this one when I was going through a period of reading a lot of Paranormal Romance. It's on the steamier side and is about a polyamorous relationship, but it occasionally felt like the focus on the sexy bits took away from the plot and the actual emotional development of the relationship.

Arkansas Wild Child by Molly O'Keefe: Another small town contemporary, this one about a prodigal daughter returning to her childhood home. It wants to be angsty and edgy and it is more of those things than some other novels, but the edginess felt more forced than natural or realistic.

California About That Kiss by Jill Shalvis: Shalvis is one of the few authors of contemporaries who is almost an auto-read for me, so I enjoyed this one more than a lot of the others on this list so far. That being said, though, her Heartbreaker Bay series (of which this is #7) is not my favorite of hers. It's enjoyable, but a little cookie-cutter.

Colorado This Gun for Hire by Jo Goodman: I like this one more in retrospect than I did just after I finished it. It features a female bounty hunter hired to protect a miner's daughter and the Army cavalryman who hires her for the job. The relationship between the two was great and the supporting characters were more than just props or plot devices, but the resolution to the external danger they face just didn't quite work for me.

Connecticut Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey: This is a 2005 re-issue of a book originally published back in 1990 and has some issues, as a lot of Romance novels from the 80s and 90s do. When I was younger and didn't know any better, I devoured Lindsey's novels in all their Fabio-covered glory. Reading one now only made me realize how far the genre has come.

Delaware Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick: This is as far as I've gotten in my quest. This was fine and would be a good addition to a beach bag, but the characters seemed to change their attitudes/outlooks/personalities because they needed to do so for plot reasons and not because they put the work in to grow and change. There was also some medical/healing stuff that was seriously questionable. It is, however, fairly "clean," so would be a good recommendation for readers who don't want all the swearing and explicit sex.


There you have it. The seven books I've managed to read so far for my 50 States, 50 Romances challenge. I'll add new blog posts for each new book I read for this project. I'll also occasionally post about other books I love or loathe, but not about the ones that are just okay. I also listen to a lot of audiobooks, so I may do a post or two about the ones that I think are really worth a listen. I'm baking a lot right now, so I may share some of that here, too. Of course, there's an equal chance that I'll get bored or distracted by shiny objects and let this die again.

More Pet Peeves

I'm back with more of the errors that bug the ever-loving f**k out of me when I run across them books. In and of themselves, they're not enough to make me give up on what I'm reading, but the damned things rarely arrive solo--like all bad things, they seem to come in threes.

Rein/reign--One does not take the "reigns" of a situation, unless one is engaged in a coup d'etat. The things used to control a horse are reins. No "g". Seriously. Just stop adding that "g" and we'll all get along just fine.

Principle/principal: Principles are those things you live by--the points on your moral compass. Principal is the guy at your high school who busted you for smoking. Principal is also the main/first/most important thing. An easy way to think of it is that the "principal" at school is the most important staff member. (And one hopes he or she has principles.)

Could of/should of/would of--NO. Just fucking NO. It's "have". Or, in contraction form, could've/should've/would've.

My biggest, biggest, biggest annoyance right now is "could care less". Think about that for a moment. If you could care less, that would imply that you care at least a little bit, There is room there, a possibility for caring less. It's couldn't care less. As in, there is no possibility for fewer fucks to be given.

I leave you now with Mr. "Weird Al" Yankovic saying in song all the things I want to say:

That Word. You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.

In my reading, I run across some of the same mistakes again and again and again and some of them show up so often that I feel like I need to launch a personal crusade to eradicate them. Now, I'll be the first to admit that my grammar and word usage are not always above reproach. I make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. However, I try not to make the same mistake on a consistent basis and if someone points out my error, I will take pains to correct it. Consider this my attempt to point out some such mistakes.

It all started with authors who use "vice" when they mean "vise". This is still the one error that makes me growl out loud when I run across it. And I run across it A LOT. The usual occurrence is when an author is trying to describe a hangover and the character describes his or her head as being stuck in a "vice". Which, okay, is kind of true. But, truthfully, it's a vice (specifically, overindulgence) that has led to the head feeling as if it's stuck in a vise. No one ever seems to make the error in reverse, though. I've never read of a character whose only "vise" was gambling. Oh, I'm sure there are books out there where this mistake is made, they're just not as common. This mistake is actually so prevalent that I literally cheer a little when I see an author using "vise".

I've also noticed a tendency among authors to use regime/regimen/regiment interchangeably. These things are not the same. A regiment may assist with regime change and endure a rigorous exercise regimen to get them in shape to do so. But, my dears, it is not an exercise regime. Or an exercise regiment. Not the same. Just because the words are similar and share a root does not make them synonymous.

Recently, I've noticed a number of romance authors writing about the "throws" of passion. Now, it's possible that the participants got so excited they began hurling items across the room, but I do believe that they were actually in the throes of passion. Homonyms are not synonyms.

There are other errors that rub me the wrong way, but these three seem to be the ones I'm seeing a lot of recently and the ones that are almost bad enough to make me give up on an otherwise perfectly good book. Remember, authors, spell check is a helper, but it's far from infallible. Trust your instincts; if it doesn't feel right, double check it. Even if it feels right, double check it. Ask your local grammar snob to proofread for you. (You may not think you have a local grammar snob, but you do. Some are just better than others at hiding it n public. Trust me, they're judging you in their minds. Talk about an "exercise regime" and look for the quickly-concealed wince.)

Well, I've basically turned this blog into a place for me to rant about the crap that bugs me in my reading, so I expect both of you will see more posts along this line in the future. Consider yourselves warned.

The Slump

I know you've gone through them--those periods when nothing on your TBR stack is catching your fancy; when none of the hundreds of books you have seem appealing; when every book you do manage to read leaves you profoundly underwhelmed. Or maybe you don't, but it seems to be a regular thing for me. I'm going through a slump right now and it's not because I'm not reading good books. I've read a lot in the past couple of weeks that I know, objectively, are good books. The problem is that the only books giving me profound feelings are the ones that I want to fling at the wall and then jump up and down on in anger and frustration. And, I hate this feeling. I hate feeling like I'm reading books because it's habit and not because there's something that I just can't wait to get to. And even the books I've been excited by haven't lingered with me for long, no matter how good they were from an objective point of view.

I want something that makes my heart sing. Or that makes me laugh out loud. Or that makes me weep like my world is ending. I want to feel big, teenager emotions. I want book crush. I want to feel the way I did when I first read Andrew Smith's Winger or Ernest Cline's Ready Player One or Neil Gaiman's American Gods or Lish McBride's Hold Me Closer, Necromancer or any of the myriad other books that have made me give a little squeal of happiness and hug them to my chest and maybe do a little happy dance around the apartment (though I admit to nothing).

And it's not the books, it's me. I know that. I mean, one of the books I just finished was Scott Westerfeld's upcoming Afterworlds which is really fucking good. I could write a wordy discourse on its razor-sharp observations on publishing and its keen insights into the life of a writer and its seamless integration of two separate novels into a cohesive whole and how perfectly it captures the highest highs and lowest lows of that first young love. But, I can't rhapsodize over it like a teenager discovering John Green for the first time. I'll be recommending it to friends and colleagues and my sixteen-year-old niece, but my skin won't flush and my eyes light up with evangelical zeal when I do. Which is not due to any shortcoming of the book itself. I'm just feeling oddly flat about everything I read right now.

Have you ever felt that way? I'd think it was symptomatic of something deeper, but it's only books that are leaving me (not) feeling this way. Movies, TV shows, toy-like things, really good stinky cheese--any of these can still make me giddy and excited and desirous of sharing my "discovery" with everyone who crosses my path. It's just books.Maybe I need to go back and re-read some old stand-bys. Maybe that would shake me out of my slump. Or maybe I need to read a book that I know I'll enjoy but that I can read completely non-critically. (Mmmmm...brain candy.)

Or maybe I'll never have that giddy, book-crush feeling again. Maybe I'm doomed to a life of readerly maturity. Maybe I'm becoming,,,a critic.