P0rn vs Spicy Books

 Language warning.

I've seen the odd post about some old fogey or two somewhere wanting to ban spicy books because they're thought of as porn, because porn is bad (and we all know without a shadow of a doubt that those old fogeys have never watched porn in their entire lives), and how dare women get in the mood without their husbands.

This got me thinking, just what is the difference between Porn and Spicy Books? 

Porn:

Dude: whoa, hey, I, uh, have a pizza? For this address?

Hot Woman: Oh, hey, yeah, why don't you come on in?

Dude Comes. On. In. 

Obligatory hot sex scene on a counter.

Obligatory anal sex scene.

Obligatory two girls one guy sex scene.

Optional boob sex scene.

Obligatory sex on a bed, but not in a position that looks remotely comfortable.

Obligatory blow job scene.

Obligatory someone else is watching the sex scene.

Not necessarily in that order. No story line. Just some random reasons to have sex. If you're lucky, you'll come across a sex scene where both participants look like they're having fun.

And if you're really lucky, the sex will be graphic. If you're stuck in a remote camp with limited satellite porn options, you might have to watch some guy get a blow job while he holds his unbuttoned shirt out so that you can't see the cock in the mouth.

If I wanted to use my imagination, I'd read a spicy book.

Spicy Book:

Meet-cute chapter.

Flirty chapter-character 1's POV.

Flirty chapter-C2's POV.

Flirty let's go for dinner/coffee/camping chapter.

Oh my god he's so cute chapter.

Make out session chapter. Sometimes it's a sex chapter.

Oh my god why is someone that hot into me chapter.

Self doubt chapter #2.

Do stuff together chapter.

Ohmygod she's so hot chapter.

Sex chapter.

Lack of communication chapter.

Almost break up chapter.

Almost sex chapter.

Miscommunication chapter. Or someone gets kidnapped. Or almost dies. Whatever it takes to bring about a big climax. Of the story.

Somebody saves the day / finally says whatever the fuck needed to be said in the Lack of Communication chapter.

Sex chapter.

Super sex chapter.

Stupid epilogue.

Of course, depending on the habanero pepper rating, you could have sex scenes sooner and more often, with more people (at the same time), with tails and/or tentacles, with ropes and whips, and with really creative positions.

What you definitely have is a story.

What's so wrong with spicy books?

Let's say that the porn is hot. Awesome. Chances are that unless dude's wife is watching with him, he's done at the end of the movie. Or the first scene. She misses out. Maybe. Maybe she dodges a mediocre bullet.

Spicy books, on the other hand, can be foreplay. They can rev you up and get your imagination going, and once that imagination is going, keep you hot until your partner is available.

Case in point: 

My husband likes some of the books that I read more than others. 

He has no idea what I'm reading. Just that I am good to go. 

Book Club: July

I have a Jack Reacher book finished, and I really should try and get a review done for Lindsay Buroker's Emporer's Edge series. EE cannot be a BMBR, but it might have to be. I'm also going to try and start reading something off the piano--ooh ooh! I need to start the Hunger Games' books that I borrowed from my neice; she probably wants them back ;).

So, those are the books on the plate for July if you'd care to join me.

BMBR (Smut Week): Surrender part 3: Juliana Stone's Offside

Girl goes to Sweden to play hockey, girl gets concussion, girl gets sent home, girl runs into guy that she lost her virginity to as a teen, guy starts falling for her, but he's feeling guilty because he thinks that he'd slept with her sister all those years ago (triplets--what do you do?).

This one was more of a novel length, which was kind of cool in a free book of six stories. I also contemplated for a looooong time about buying the other three books. I didn't, and I can't remember why.

Bottom line: it's well-enough written that they'd be worth the three bucks or so, so I was probably just trying to be a good girl. But I don't remember having a burning desire to get them. Maybe I'll see if the library has them.

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters

I don't know yet, but I'm about to find out. Reading the book by the same title by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa. It's non-fiction, by the way.

Update: a month after I wrote the above paragraph: I might have to go back and start the book over because I've been a little distracted by the latest Jack Reacher book (spoiler alert--he might be a dad!).

WBPHMD isn't really a candidate for a BMBR type review, either. It's too cool. What I remember of it.

So, probably sometime this week I'll start reading it again, and I'll write a blurb per chapter. To make this go along a little faster than the frequency with which I get to shave my legs (it still hasn't happened, by the way), it would be wonderful if some one would read this book along with me, and get in on the discussion.

Motivation, my friends, motivation.

BMBR: Shadow Dance by Anne Stuart

Loved it. Masterful telling of falling in love while on the run and in disguise.

Two brothers are on the run; one is disguised as a woman who manages to fall in love with an innocent girl, who in turn could not be more confused because she is falling in love with a woman...

The other brother is falling in love with a woman pretending to be a boy.

This book is so well written, and the story was delightful, which has won me over to Anne Stuart. (I read A Rose at Midnight, which, while being well written, turned me off a bit because of the way that the main characters interacted. I've never been a big fan of women falling in love with their mean bullies. Shadow Dance is thankfully different.)

Shadow Dance won me over so well that now I feel like an idiot for not checking every day for Anne's 40 days of deals for 40 years of writing.

Bottom line: I would love to buy all of her books, but due to her prolific career I may have to settle for the occasional library visit. I'm also okay with slowly collecting her works as I find good deals for my Kindle. If I'd discovered her sooner, her real books would probably be on my bookshelf.

BMBR: Noelle Adams

I read A Baby for Easter on the weekend. It was about $3 on Kindle. Adams' books are usually in that range, and they're usually worth it. This one felt a bit short, and there isn't as much descriptive sex in it as there is in her other books, but maybe that's because the characters are blatantly religious in this one.

Baby still delivered a love story that had me falling in love right along with them, and it was great escapism (one of my dreams ended this weekend, so I'm in great need of escape), and I didn't lose any brain cells.

Bottom line: Adams won't kill your brain cells while you're reading her addictive love stories about triumph over miscommunication. It's pretty good foreplay, and the pricing isn't too bad. I've read most, and probably soon I will read all of her books.

BMBR: Thirst no 1 by Christopher Pike

My niece leant me this book. It's about a vampire's efforts to save all humanity, and to find her own.

This is my niece's favourite series. Yes, she's a teenager.

Boiled down, this story is about the last vampire on Earth (or so she thinks), her love for a boy named Ray, her discovery that she isn't the last vampire, and her quest to become human again.

She's also trying to reconcile her love for mankind--the side of her that hates to kill, with her nasty side--the side of her that has no qualms about squeezing someone's head so hard that their brains squish out.

At first I had a hard time with this reconciliation; if this teen book were a movie, teens wouldn't be able to watch it. But the more I read it, even though it gave me bad dreams, the more I respected Pike's honesty about how nasty a vampire would really be. There isn't much romanticism, and it's actually quite hard to like Alisa, let alone love her, yet it's easy to root for her success, and to love her.

Bottom line: it's $13 for a real book, and $11 for an eBook. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking that if I were a teenager, I'd probably spend that. As a busy mom, nah. I'd maybe get it from the library if I had time, but really, I'll probably only read on in the series if my niece lends me the rest of the books.

Until I got to the end. I'm still not going to buy the books, but I am really hoping that I can borrow them!

BMBR: A Wanted Man by Lee Child

I buy Jack Reacher books as real books, usually from Costco because they're a bit cheaper and therefore a more justifiable purchase. I'd probably pay full price. I like them in real form because my Dad reads them too. Sometimes he buys them and shares them with me. And by that I mean he doesn't usually get them back. Ahem.

Anyway, the four days it took me to read this one was an incredibly long time (it usually takes eight hours), but see my last post. I also had to sleep and work and hang with the kids etc. It's taken four days to write this much of this post. Busy Mom Book Review, for sure.

Quick synopsis: Jack Reacher hitches a ride with the wrong guys. Or, should I say that some bad guys pick up the wrong hitchhiker?

Action ensues, full of math puzzles, death, mayhem, and good old fashioned ass-kickings.

As usual, Lee Child does not disappoint. (Don't judge the books by the movie. They're better. But that's a post for another day because if I start in on the movie, it's going to hijack this post.)

The next book is already out. It's not waiting for me on my piano, yet. But soon. Very, very soon.

BMBR score: just buy them and read them, but be warned--you won't be able to put them down once you begin, so I recommend not starting them just before bed.

I'm Jonesing. Thanks, Lee Child. Thanks a Lot.

I'm currently reading A Wanted Man by Lee Child. In paper form. I can't bring it to work because I can't read it while on the exercise bike (I probably could, but it's so much easier to turn pages on a Kindle when you're trying not to die) at lunch time. And if I can't read it on the bike, I'll sit at my desk on lunch and read it, so then I won't be working out. So I just didn't bring it.

Which means that I'm having withdrawals. I must know what happens next!

Exercise in patience, Spinny, exercise in patience.

Outlander is coming to TV!

And I'm so excited!

And, Showcase is airing it in Canada, so I'm even more excited because now I'll actually be able to watch it!

BMBR: The Land of Painted Caves BT Jean M. Auel

I almost titled this Shelters of Stone. Does that tell me that it's all been a blur?

I'm done!

Anyway, Painted Caves was a wonderfully detailed journey in a time and place that existed a long time ago, as seen through the eyes of the peoples who lived then. The archeologist in me loved it.

I'm finally done!

The rest of me found the experience of reading the first six hundred pages or so to be an excruciatingly painful process. Painful. So, so, painful.

I can finally read something else!

Either when I was younger I appreciated the detail more readily, or now that I'm older I find that extreme redundancy in writing to be so very boring.

Thank goodness I'm done!

Sure I wanted to know how Jondalar's and Ayla's adventures ended, but I felt that I didn't need a six hundred page summary of the first five books before the last couple hundred pages.

I love that Ms. Auel does so much research for her books, I really do, but she could probably take a couple lessons from Diana Gabaldon in writing style. Sure, she does lots of research, too, and yes, her books are hundreds, if not over a thousand pages long, but you can't put them down. And, if you buy the fourth book first not knowing that it's in a series, and start reading said book, you realize by the second page that you should probably go buy and read the first three books first because Ms. Gabaldon is not going to sum up her previous books for you.

Back to The Land of Painted Caves.

You know what? I'm going to do you a favour. I'm going to presume that you've read the other books, and I'm going to sum up the first part of Painted Caves for you in one sentence, or so, and then I'm going to tell you from where to start reading the book so as to avoid Severely Repetitive Redundancy Pain.

SPOILER ALERT! I'm not responsible if you keep reading this post from this point forward and then decide to get all pissy about it. If you want to read the book in it's entirety without knowing what's happened first, stop right now.

The summary:

Jondalar and Ayla are living with Jondalar's mother's cave, their daughter Jonayla is growing up, but Ayla is really busy training as an acolyte for the Zelandonii, and what with all the traveling to summer meetings and a donier tour to see all the important painted caves, and with all the visiting and ceremonies and rituals and training, Ayla doesn't get to spend as much time with her family as she wants or needs to.

Now you can start reading from chapter thirty (page 580). It will start moving along a little faster, I promise.

If you really wanted the descriptions of the caves, do yourself a favour and find a picture book on cave paintings. I may even have an Archaeology textbook that I could lend you.

If you really want a summary of the end of a book, I can do that too. Let me know.

Random Thoughts March 20, 2014

Did you really think that I was filling the water reservoir in the lunchroom Keurig so that you could make a cup of coffee? Really? Wait your turn.

Vincent does not get enough exercise time on Beauty and the Beast. And if someone could hide his exercise shirts, that would be great.

Does the "Terrible Twos" ever end? Because I think that there's some kind of Richter scale thing going on with the age, here. Maybe it's easier to be sassy when your vocabulary is bigger. . .

Wake up early for exercise, or for sexercise? Yeah, I picked that one, too.

Only three hundred more pages to go, and I can read other books!

Make "special surprise inside" cupcakes with your three-year-old, don't get upset about any mess that ensues, enjoy your time together, and then watch said child pick apart the cupcake to get at the chocolate egg inside. Throw out the actual cupcake.

I'm in So Much Trouble

I've discovered Joanna Wylde's Reaper series. I've only read the samples, but I'm in so much trouble already.

I can't tell from the lengths of the samples just how good the writing will be exactly, but I have a feeling that it's going to be sexy.

But how sexy? Sexy enough to warrant the price of buying them? They're 6 and 8 dollars. That's my it-should-be-a-real-book price. But their real-book price is 19, so maybe 6 isn't so bad for an eBook. . . .

Sigh.

How about this: get through at least half of what's on my piano, and the rest of what's unread on my Kindle, and then I can get them.

Yeah. Losing ten pounds by the end of the month is more likely.

The Land of Painted Caves

I'm currently reading the last of the Earth's Children Series by Jean M. Auel.

I'm not done, so this isn't the official review, but I have to say, WTF? I started reading these books when I was eleven. Now that I'm not eleven, I'm wondering if they were all written as though we're stupid readers. I don't usually mind lots of detail, but come on, do you need to point out that not only did so-and-so have rope in their carry-bag all the time, but that you never know when it will be needed?

And sometimes I wonder if Auel's trying to "dumb down" the thought processes of the people of the time.

Case in point: Ayla leaves her baby sleeping in a meadow under the protection of Wolf while she pokes around the nearby shrubs for roots etc. She comes back and Wolf's growling at the grass. "Was something wrong?"

Really? Not, "What was wrong?" but "Was something wrong?"

Uh, your wolf's fucking standing over your baby and growling at something in the grass. Get your sling-shot out!

Oy.

Book Review: Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

I read this to K1 tonight. I almost managed not to cry. Almost. Saddest book ever, and it's a kids book.

I don't know anyone who wouldn't cry reading this book.

That's all I'm going to say about this one.

Book Review: Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich

Have you read the Stephanie Plum Books? You know, One for the Money, Two for the Dough, and on and on; I think they're up to nineteen, now.

They're really funny. The first book was so funny, in fact, that I laughed out loud so much in a restaurant that the lady at the next table asked me what I was reading, and I went out and bought all of the books before I headed into camp again. At that time I think they went up to eight. And I read one in the morning and one in the afternoon for the next four days. Laughed my ass off the whole time. Well, not all of my ass--there's still a large chunk of it hanging around today, but I'm sure that you get the idea.

Anyway, let's fast-forward a few years to a couple of years ago. I read Wicked Business, which is the first in the Lizzy and Diesel novels.

Diesel is the mysterious hunk that showed up in a couple in-between-the-numbers Stephanie books, and he's enlisted Lizzy--a girl with witchcraft in her ancestry, and the magical ability to sense magic,or something--to find all of the SALIGIA stones. Apparently they're only going to find one per novel, because they've only found two so far in the two books so far.

Without getting into too much detail because let's face it--K2 will be up any minute now and I don't have a lot of time--I'll just tell you that there is great humour, a lot of whining, a lot of kooky, annoying, evil and endearing characters, a pet (a monkey--and actually, don't tell him that I called him a pet because I think that he's probably some kind of reincarnated pshyco who'd think nothing of jumping out of the pages and wrecking my house. I mean come on--I have two toddlers. I don't need no damn monkey who thinks he's a fucking human (albeit one stuck in the when-is-he-going-to-be-fucking-four-because-three-is-making-the-terrible-twos-look-like-good-behaviour stage of life), thank-you very much! Oh, and a cat, and if they ever make this book into a movie it'll be played by that orange cat that plays the oh-my-god-what-the-fuck-happened-to-your-cat cat in all the movies that have that so-ugly-it's-adorable cat in them), and some magic. And, of course, there's that underlying sexual/romantic tension that's probably going to take nineteen--I mean seven--books to play out.

Anyway, if you've read the Stephanie Plum books, then the above probably sounds pretty familiar. Granted, Rex, the Hamster, is pretty innocuous, but don't forget about Bob the dog's hi-jinx.

Seriously, the whole time I was reading the Wicked books I got so sucked in by the whining girlie-girl who's in a situation that she's completely inept for, that every time someone called her Lizzie instead of Stephanie, I had to check the front of the book for the title. And I'd think, oh yeah. Not an SP book. Right.

Don't get me wrong, the books are still really funny, and I do enjoy reading them, but, and I'm including the SP books here, I don't have the need to rush out and buy the latest one like I used to.

If you haven't read them yet, I will recommend them as a great read, but don't be surprised when you start feeling like you do when your favourite sitcom has lost it's edge--you still watch it because it still makes you laugh, but it might sit around on your PVR for a while before you watch it. Or, in the case of this book, it might sit around on the piano for a bit before it's finished.

How I Became a Jennifer Crusie Dealer

It was Jennifer Crusie's birthday yesterday (the 17th), so in honour of that, I'd like to write a post that I've been meaning to for a while, and tell you about how I became a Jennifer Crusie dealer. (I'll do an actual review her books some other time.)

It all started a few years ago when I worked in the Oil Patch as a First Aid Attendant. Oh, wait, no, I started dealing when I went to school in 2003ish, but I have to go back to the first time that I worked in the OP as an FAA. Because before I became a JC dealer, I became an addict.

When you work on drilling rigs as an FAA, you have a lot of downtime. A lot. Unless you're working on a rig from hell, staffed by idiots who, against the lovely OP adage, "put their fingers where they wouldn't put their penises" on a regular basis, all you had to do was keep a clean FA Room, keep a clean and maintained ETV (emergency transport vehicle), make sure all of your pertinent information was up to date, and play nice with the rig pigs. I mean the men who worked on the rig. (This was usually the hardest job.) Otherwise, you could watch TV (if you had it; see this post), exercise, do correspondence courses, or read. Or sleep.

I read, a lot. When I first started up there, my stints were a three-week max, so I got good use out of my library card. On one pre-work library trip, I was looking for just one more book. As usual, I was vehemently avoiding the "Romance" racks (I like my books well-written, thank-you very much (I had been scarred by a very badly written Harlequin), and at that point I didn't think romance could be).

I spied the shelving cart, and there, in all of it's glorious yellow (JC has some of the best book covers, I swear), was Faking It by Jennifer Crusie. The book was stamped "GF" for General Fiction (thank goodness!), and the blurb on the back sounded funny, so I checked it out. Oh my god I freaking loved it! It is by far one of the funniest books that I've ever read. It is well-written. And when Davy was pleasantly surprised to bounce off a round and soft Tilda, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself reading about a "real" woman; not some uber-fit Twiggy who always had perfect hair and make-up. Tilda is also not a simpering idiot (this could be a whole post on its own, so I'll leave simpering idiots for later), especially when it came to men. I had a new heroine. I also had a new favourite author.

So I go to work, and in between jobs I manage to hit up the local library up north. I find some more JC books (Tell Me Lies and another one, but I cannot remember which one it was). I was excited! They were stamped "ROM" for Romance. Fuck. I actually stood there with abject disappointment and tears brewing in my eyes. No. No. No. I hummed and hawed for at least five minutes before deciding, okay, and I checked the books out. I read them. I laughed. I loved them. I still had a new favourite author! Phew.

(I did have another moment of panic later on when Jennifer Crusie teamed up with Bob Mayer; I love the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, so when I saw one of her co-writes, I bought it. Oh man, was I disappointed. Seriously, it was some of the worst drivel I've ever read. So when I saw Don't Look Down I stood in the store for a few minutes trying so hard not to have an anxiety attack. Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths. I bought the book, and thank-you, but Bob Mayer can actually write! Funny, funny, well-written book, and worth the leap of faith in JC. Every other co-write of hers is excellent as well.)

On the way home from the job I hit up a Chapters and bought every single JC book that they had in stock, even the ones I'd read from a library. I spent the next few years collecting every new and re-release I could get my hands on. I explored other "Romance" authors, like Sophie Kinsella and Diana Gabaldon. In more recent years I've collected even more romance (I was either pregnant, or, now, have two kids, so a girl's gotta get sex somehow when we're too tired/schedules don't mesh in real life), and I'm probably a bit of an addict, and Jennifer Crusie will always have a fond place in my heart as my gateway drug. I mean author. But this is another story.

Anyway, it's still a few years ago, and I now have a decent collection of books of all genres. I was taking a course at a college, and one of my classmates was deaf. She had an interpreter. Because the coursework was 90% practical practice, the interpreter had a lot of downtime. I noticed that she read a lot when she wasn't interpreting, so I approached her one day and said, "Have I got some books for you!" She was hooked (she aptly described the books as dangerous (in a good way)), and my JC dealing career started.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm back in the OP. I'm carrying with me a Rubbermaid bin full of books. Including my entire JC collection. A fellow FAA loved to read as well, and since we were sharing a house at the time, I happily lent her some books, Faking It and Bet Me included. I hooked another reader.

I've since lent (upon pain of Guido breaking your legs if you don't return the book) or recommended Jennifer Crusie to anyone who needs a good read. Oh sure, I recommend other authors, too, but none are as enjoyable. Or as addictive. But that could just be my opinion.

So, to Jennifer Crusie: Happy Birthday! And, thank-you for being such a great author. And thank-you for only co-writing with other wonderful authors! You rock. Even if your pajamas are being hijacked by old women.

Spinny

The Bookshelf (and the Kindle). A.K.A. My Library

I have a bookshelf full of books. A friend of my mother's was excited when she saw it; it makes her sad that so few people have a personal library these days.

I've always loved books, but when I was younger they were expensive (probably in part because they were "real" and partly because my allowance wasn't that big), so my library cards were well used. And, of course, English Literature was one of my favourite classes!

In my twenties I worked as a First Aid Attendant in the Oil Patch (more stories from there, I promise) and I a) made lots of money, b) was often out in the bush for weeks at a time and didn't want to incur late charges at the library, and c) had LOTS of downtime just waiting for someone to do something inanely stupid, so I started buying lots of books.

Now I have a couple of kids and an in-town job that doesn't pay as much (but it's getting better), so the buying of real books has slowed down. A little. I try to stick to series and authors that I already have been collecting. I only add authors that have recently produced some kick-ass series. Or authors that have filled a need . . . but more on that later.

Enter my Kindle. Baby number two does NOT like to nurse while I read real books. He's distracted by the light, and by the turning of the pages. So I downloaded Kindle to my phone and found a couple cheap books that were pretty good. I can now read silently in the dark (so long as I dim the screen)!

I have to admit that I prefer real books. Sure, my husband won't believe that statement since I've been reading tons of e-books lately, but honestly, I love real books. I thought that I'd NEVER go digital, and I still prefer to buy my favourite ("quality") authors in paper, so I reserve e-books for the cheesy stuff that I would prefer not to admit that I read (but I will. Admit it. But only under high duress) and for the books that are only available digitally.

Okay, I'll admit it: I also love digital books. No one knows what you're reading, hubby doesn't know how many e-books I'm buying until he sees the credit card statement, (actually, I don't know how many e-books I'm buying until I see it on paper. Cheap books can add up to a lot of money. . . . Ahem) I can quietly read in the dark, and I'm not carrying any extra weight in my purse when I'm out and about and my phone is right there when I'm waiting in line anyway, so it's really easy to whip it out to read.

But, I still like the feel of real paper in my hands. I love the smell of books. Paperbacks don't really weigh that much, and the batteries never run out. I can also read them in the bathtub (favourite pastime!) without fear of financial ruin; it's not too bad to replace a ten dollar book, but a 500 dollar phone? Yeah, no.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I have an eclectic library and I'd like to share it with you, so I'll be reviewing books that I've recently read, and I'll go back and review the books that I've already read. And, I'd love to hear your thoughts on these books/authors. I'd also like to hear any suggestions for good reads (and warnings against the bad ones).

I'm just going to go pick one. . . . See you soon. Maybe.