Fifty Shades of Grey tops NYT Bestsellers - mainly from ebook sales

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by Barty

About a rich male tycoon having a BDSM relationship with a young woman, he being the dominant one.

It's what twilight wants to be when it grows up!

They say romance is porn for women. As I tell women, you don't want to look at porn because you don't want to know what men fantasize about. Similarly for men, you don't want to read romance because you don't want to know what women fantasize about. It's best to don't ask, don't tell.

I wonder what kind of fantasy Georgette Heyer's comedies reflect? That women really, at heart, want a Bertie Wooster of their very own?

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

So I guess this means a year from now the publishers will be flooding the market with BDSM erotica titles!

Oh, great, just what I want snuck into my romances This stuff is pretty boring for those of us who do not fantasize about it, KWIM? It's more like reading a recipe ("cut slashes in roast 1" apart, and insert a garlic clove into each slash").

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by Joykins

I wonder what kind of fantasy Georgette Heyer's comedies reflect? That women really, at heart, want a Bertie Wooster of their very own?

I can't think of a Berty Wooster type in any of Georgette Heyer's books.. maybe Freddy (from Arabella?) is the closest.

Love Georgette Heyer...

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I can't think of a Berty Wooster type in any of Georgette Heyer's books.. maybe Freddy (from Arabella?) is the closest.

Love Georgette Heyer...

Freddy, yes, of course.

I also keep thinking of Sherry's "boon companions" in _Friday's Child_ (Ferdy Fakenham and his ceaseless quest for remembering Nemesis never ceases to make me giggle)--as well as Sherry himself of course. And Horatia's brother in _A Convenient Marriage_....

[VictoriaP]

Originally Posted by Joykins

Oh, great, just what I want snuck into my romances This stuff is pretty boring for those of us who do not fantasize about it, KWIM? It's more like reading a recipe ("cut slashes in roast 1" apart, and insert a garlic clove into each slash").

LMAO!

Being a vehement non-Twihard (every excerpt I've seen drives me nuts; poor writing and flat, cardboard characters--plus Bella is the absolute worst female lead character I've ever seen in YA OR adult novels), all I can say is I'll take my vampire smut without the side of glitter, please. Or the "recipes". LOL I don't get the fascination with Twilight and never have.


The side by side comparisons of the fanfic vs. published version that Dear Author did were pretty telling though, as well as the numerous character descriptions and plot points detailed by others that come directly from the Twilight books. I'll be interested to see if Meyer's camp has anything to say about the blatant ripoff of her characters for profit. Merely renaming them while leaving nearly all other characteristics intact doesnt change that. Though I personally have no respect for her writing abilities, those characters belong to the ORIGINAL author, and as such, I think her legal team should be on top of this now to make sure she gets her cut--which in my IANAL opinion should be all of it.

If the Fifty Shades author had made more significant changes to render her characters, locale, and descriptions as unique, there'd be less of an issue....but the publisher wouldn't have bought it, and it almost certainly wouldn't sell as well. I get that "there's nothing new under the sun" and virtually every work is derivative in some way, but I have no respect for an author who can be bothered to at least TRY and distinguish her work from another's.

[Joykins]

I don't get the appeal of vampires in general. I don't find bloodsucking monsters and part-wolf creatures sexy at all. I also hadn't heard of "50 Shades" until DA and SBTB started on about it. I had heard of Twilight, but you kind of have to have lived under a rock not to have heard of that. Obviously, this kind of thing *does* tap into some broadly-shared fantasy or there wouldn't be so much popularity or knock-offs (I can barely escape the paranormal romance offerings in bookstores both real and virtual), but I think what women (and people, women being a subclass of people) fantasize about can vary greatly (just like, aha, men). Oh, and I don't want a Bertie Wooster or Christian or Edward--I want an Aral Vorkosigan...

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Joykins

Oh, great, just what I want snuck into my romances This stuff is pretty boring for those of us who do not fantasize about it, KWIM? It's more like reading a recipe ("cut slashes in roast 1" apart, and insert a garlic clove into each slash").

That's the amusing thing about people's appetites: fetishism (and virtually everyone has it in some slight way) is the OCD of sexuality. The writer who gets too invested in explicit material often turns into Robbe-Grillet describing the minutiae of a stain on the wall for twenty pages. Then again, certain fanfic writers (the kind who tend not to use or possibly understand adjectives) seem almost unconscious of what they're writing to begin with -- they're a bit like Henry Darger.

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by Joykins

I want an Aral Vorkosigan...

A person after my own heart.

[Joykins]

Oh, wow, even the wikipedia entry on Henry Darger was tl;dr.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Barty

About a rich male tycoon having a BDSM relationship with a young woman, he being the dominant one.

It's what twilight wants to be when it grows up!

They say romance is porn for women. As I tell women, you don't want to look at porn because you don't want to know what men fantasize about. Similarly for men, you don't want to read romance because you don't want to know what women fantasize about. It's best to don't ask, don't tell.

Romance is NOT porn. It is not "porn for women." Again. Romance is NOT porn.

Originally Posted by elemenoP

So I guess this means a year from now the publishers will be flooding the market with BDSM erotica titles!

eP

Too late! It's been there for ages. And this isn't even BDSM done right.

Originally Posted by xg4bx

more triteness that'll take the world by storm. if you want smut, buy smut, don't disguise it by reading 'literature'. get a copy of penthouse variations and go to town.

sorry but hack names like anastasia steele and christian grey don't set my pulse racing, they make me groan at their sheer cheesiness. ted longdong and foxy le'mew are good names for erotica characters, not anastasia.

Romance is NOT porn. It is not "porn for women." Again. Romance is NOT porn.

I like my smut and don't have any shame in it. Just because you aren't into it is no reason to look down on those who do. Penthouse is NOT romance. And romance is NOT porn.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Twilight porn is in the best seller list. Are women that desperate?

And jeeze, Jon. This comment

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

Romance is NOT porn. It is not "porn for women." Again. Romance is NOT porn.

Quoted for truth.

SmartBitchesTrashyBooks had a long discussion on the difference between romance, erotica, and porn.

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/b...-condescension

Whether porn is a legitimate art form or not, the term "porn" is used as a put-down... mommy-porn, gun-porn, terms like that.

Romance deals with courtship, an emotional arc. It has a long literary tradition.

Romance is not porn.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Quoted for truth.

SmartBitchesTrashyBooks had a long discussion on the difference between romance, erotica, and porn.

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/b...-condescension

Whether porn is a legitimate art form or not, the term "porn" is used as a put-down... mommy-porn, gun-porn, terms like that.

Roomance deals with courtship, an emotional arc. It has a long literary tradition.

Romance is not porn.

Exactly.

[JSWolf]

The term porn (these days) is also used to mean things that cause one to get aroused or an overload on a given subject.

Some romance novels do get pretty close to being porn.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The term porn (these days) is also used to mean things that cause one to get aroused or an overload on a given subject.

Some romance novels do get pretty close to being porn.

SO NOT TRUE.

ROMANCE IS NOT - I repeat - NOT PORN.

You just want to tar the genre.


Not there is anything wrong with porn...but if you think ROMANCE is PORN....then you've been doing porn very wrong for a very long time.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The term porn (these days) is also used to mean things that cause one to get aroused or an overload on a given subject.

Some romance novels do get pretty close to being porn.

From SmartBitchesTrashyBooks:

But as I was discussing with anyone who would listen to me rant, anyone who labels romance as "Porn" is most often being derogatory, because "porn" is also often declared bad, shameful, and something that ought to cause embarrassment. People say "porn" in the same tone of voice they'd use for the word "smut." And if women are indicating interest in pornography, that same derision is applied to them. "Nice girls" don't look at pornography and shouldn't do so. Neither should adult males who used to be stars of children's programming (Hi Pee Wee!).