You Know What? (A Rant)

Twitter just doesn't have enough damned characters! I need to express my feelings and thoughts, dammit! Is it a full moon? *goes to check* Nope, not a full moon, so just things pissing me off. *LOL*

Here we go...

The term TSTL aka Too Stupid To Live. You see this term all over the place in discussions about romance novels of all sub genres - fantasy, PNR, suspense, urban fantasy etc... Writers, reviewers and readers all use it ad nauseum and it's always used to talk about the heroine of the novel. I have seen others try and use it in fandoms, media fandoms in talking about TV shows, but not that often, yet always talking about women. So, you say, what's the problem? So many of these romance heroines are dumb and shame on the authors for writing them that way and yadda yadda yadda but, all you people standing up for the rights of women, and denouncing the rape culture in our society, and calling out all the things that denigrate and insult and belittle women.... TOO STUPID TO LIVE??? What is THAT? You're agreeing that women, if they make the wrong choices should die??

NO ONE is TSTL. Really. And in this case it only adds to the misogyny and all these women complaining about how women are being written... it's kind of hypocritical. It's like... YAY for the strong, multi-faceted, smart portrayal of women, but those ones here? TSTL. Do you see the problem? The less than clever, brave, well-rounded are not worthy of life.

I know it's a clever, catchy, pithy little phrase/acronym, but isn't it really just feeding the misogyny?

Ah... Marketing

So it looks like there is a reissue of the Mistborn trilogy with new cover art... so the tweens will buy it? 

 

I'm guessing anyone over the age of 18 doesn't matter anymore.

I'm a browser in a bookstore and I wander about looking at the books, picking up the ones with intersting covers and I have to say, these covers would make me walk right by.

Heidi Says It Best

So... Big news in the romance publishing world today and it's been reported in fashions from the ridiculous to the well, not actually close to sublime. Heidi Cullinan posted her thoughts about it and as always, it's a terrific post.

http://heidicullinan.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/breaking-news-media-still-sexist-in-reporting-of-romance-industry/

I admire, appreciate, adore this woman.

Goodreads Does Indeed Suck

*crossposted to my blog Ev's Place*

I had been debating buying Book Collector, a book database program that's full of lovely bells and whistles and the most important thing, provides me my own copy of my collection of over 2600 books on my computer as well as cloud storage etc.. etc... So, I went ahead and bought it.

Now, two months ago, I opened an account here at Booklikes for my book blogging and imported my collection from Goodreads. Now I love Booklikes, but it's newish and growing and it doesn't have an export function yet, so... I used my Goodreads export to load up my Book Collector. I sure wasn't going to add all 2600+ books one by one AGAIN! Once was enough. :)

Anyway, in doing this, I have realised how Goodreads has totally fucked my books and shelves. I had taken the time when originally adding my books into Goodreads, to find the proper ISBN numbers, the correct covers and editions etc... Then Goodreads was bought by Amazon. They "cleaned up" their database because no one using it had books any older than 10 years old, right? *eyeroll* Now I have ISBN numbers that don't match the books I own, covers have gone missing all over the place, even books have disappeared from shelves. Add in their censoring of reviews and peoples shelves and all the other bullshit from the past 6 months, and I'm CONVINCED I did the right thing in moving to Booklikes and buying Book Collector.

I have sorted the author names (you wouldn't believe the mess of the import) and now I 'm about to dive in and do covers and series. It's going to be FABULOUS once I'm done. :)

But DAMN, Goodreads used to be the PRIME way to catalogue books, but then Big Business got involved and it went into the shitter. And it's made me so very pleased I don't own a Kindle. :) Now, if only the Kobo Aura HD will go on sale.... I'm due for an upgrade.

You Know What? A Rant

I posted this over at my daily blog, but since it's mainly about reading, I should post it here too. :)

When did we become such a society of non-risk takers? Even worse, when did we stop allowing ourselves the pleasure of being surprised by our entertainment? When did it become de rigeurto know everything about a book, movie, TV show before reading or watching it? And I'm not talking about spoilers, folks.

Just look at the fervour with which people tried to suss out the details of the latest Star Trek movie. The world was going to end if we didn't know which villain Benedict Cumberbatch was going to be portraying. And really, did the knowing make the pain of the let down of that movie any easier? And really, if you're reading spoilers etc.. about Scandal, then you're missing a HUGE treat when you watch the week's episode.

I read a lot. I follow a lot of reader blogs and author blogs. I use Twitter a lot to follow these folks too, because they're interesting and funny people for the most part. I have come to realise that these days, part of marketing a book is to put half of it out there, all over the internet, in sample chapters or previews or teasers. There's also a big deal about cover reveals (more on that later) and authors are interviewing all over about books that aren't even going to be out for months! I mean seriously! There is one series I read that the 4th book is just going to be out this week and the authors are interviewing about the following book! And this is the norm these days, not the exception.

Don't people want to be surprised any more? I don't want to know about what I'm going to be reading, that's no fun! I don't want to lay down $ for something I already know all about. I do my best to avoid all these things, I don't read the interviews, I don't read reviews that come out before the book is available to the general public, I don't read reviews of books I know I want to purchase until after I've read the book! And as for tweeting those little snippets of your book that was published months ago, the same snippets over and over and over again? Well, I won't be buying that book. Sorry, you've turned me off any interest I may have had.

There's just too much pre-release information out there in my opinion. The surprise is gone. The delight of discovering what your favourite author has done with your favourite character while you eagerly turn page after page long after you should have been asleep, is gone. The anticipation of what you're going to see up on the big screen that will make you gasp or cry or laugh is gone. It's all so damned SAFE these days. I suppose it's a result of the internet age and ebooks and the rise of indie, small and self publishing, but, call me old-fashioned, I don't like it.

And as for covers! Let me tell you. A favourite book that I (and many others) term as a psycho-sexual thriller, that has SO much deep and violent shit in it... should NOT have a damned cover that looks like it's a new Harry Potter book!