Books you love that others hate (or: A defence of covers with half naked men)

[hildea]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The way I look at it is there are many books and not so much time. If a book I do not know the author and the cover is one that makes me think it may be something I won't like, I won't try it without a recommendation from someone I can trust enough.

The saying to not judge a book by it's cover is wrong. We do judge by the cover as it's the first thing we see if it's a book by an unknown author.

I don't care for steamy romance type books and the covers with half-naked men and maybe holding some woman cries out steamy romance. If that's not the case, then the cover is doing the book a disservice. But I'm not going to take that chance.

I'm not going to say that someone is not to read any books that I don't or may not like. You have the right to read what you want.

Here I was gearing up to a magnificent rant, and you have to ruin it by being reasonable

Originally Posted by Catlady

As far as indicating awfulness, well, the covers indicate awfulness to me. A well-written romance is still a romance, and I simply do not like the romance genre.

That's, of course, completely reasonable. The reason I became annoyed enough to start this thread was what I read as a claim that half-naked men are an implication of low quality books, instead of just a (sub)genre which some readers want to avoid.

Originally Posted by issybird

You agree that the cover’s terrible; you’re willing to suspend judgment but as with Catlady, I’m not. Next!

Makes sense. To clarify: I think that specific cover is terrible because it doesn't fit the book, not because the man is half naked. If it had shown a half naked man in his forties with greying hair, and an overall mood that fit the book better, I'd have no objections.

Originally Posted by kandwo

But what is up with that font? I feel dyslexic just looking at it.

That reminds me of a funny and informative post Courtney Milan wrote: How to suck at typography

Originally Posted by Apache

Authors usually have very little input on the covers. At least the ones that are not self-published.

I remember reading about Trudi Canavan having to fight the publisher who wanted to put a dragon on the cover of one of her books. To the publisher, a dragon would say "fantasy" in much the same sense that a half naked man says "romance", but there were no dragons in her books. She told them some readers care about dragons, and would be very disappointed and leave angry reviews if they were misled. They finally agreed, and replaced the dragon with a pegasus (no, there are no pegasi in the book either).

For self-published authors, I've read about the challenges of finding stock photos that fit the book if the protagonists aren't white and slender. Milan has written about this too: Can we talk about black women in stock photos? (Although that was in 2014, things may be better now?)

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

Well, sometimes great books just have cheesy covers. Ilona Andrews has the excellent series published by Avon books now, but these covers, this is hideous lol

That cover reminds me of Jim Hines' cover pose project, looking at the difference between men and women in (some) SFF cover art. It's really, really worth reading it all. I've attached one of the samples here. The cover which inspired that pose is an example of a cover that would make me nope out at first glance, without giving the book a chance!

Originally Posted by hobnail

Not a lot of traffic but this forum on reddit has some funny excerpts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WomenWritingMen/

There's more traffic at https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

I love KJ Charles, mainly some of the older stuff, especially Think of England and the Magpie series. I liked this one too and Silas was awesome - as was Cyprian!

This thread made me think about what I like best about romance, and I find that what really appeals to me is good dialogue. So I'll end this (overlong) post with one of my favourite quotes from A Seditious Affair, with the protagonists in bed engaging in one of their favourite activities

Silas shoved him, not hard, and the Tory sat up a little, making space. Silas moved to lie alongside him, feeling the heat of his bare skin.
“I finished the book,” the Tory said.
“Oh, aye? What’d you think?”
“Good. Terrifying. Strange. I can’t understand why you like it.”
“Why would I not?”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d agree with it.” The Tory gave him a wry smile. “After all, its burden is the need for man to keep in his place—”
“What?” said Silas incredulously.
“The overreaching man dares to play God and pays a terrible price. Abuses the natural order and creates a monstrous thing.”
“Bollocks,” Silas said. “That ain’t what it’s about.”
“It’s what happens.”
“No. What happens is he creates, he’s responsible for, something that should be”—Silas waved his hand—“great and strong, something that he owes a duty to. And he says to it, The hell with you. Go die in a ditch. I’ll have my big house and pretty wife. And it says, You don’t get to live in a grand house and ignore me. Do your duty or I’ll tear you down. Treat me like I’m as good as you, or I’ll show you—”
“That I’m not,” the Tory interrupted. “The creature murders—”
“Because he ain’t given a chance to live decent,” Silas interrupted right back. “You treat men like brutes; you make ’em brutes. That’s what it says.”
“No, you create brutes when you distort the rules of nature and the order of things,” the Tory retorted. “That’s what the book’s about. It’s obvious.”
“It’s not.” Silas snorted. “You think its author meant that?”
“Oh, do you know the author?” The Tory looked intrigued. “Who is he?”
“She.”
“A woman? A woman wrote Frankenstein?”
“A girl,” Silas said with some satisfaction. “Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin’s girl.”
The Tory’s mouth dropped open. “That—female who married that appalling poet?”
“Mary Shelley,” Silas agreed smugly. “Aye.”

[issybird]

I think my difficulty with this thread is that in part it's difficult for me to think of books I love, in part that I don’t care if people disparage a book I’ve liked and in part that this ultimately seems to be about a genre in general and not titles in particular. Bingo! Because I think the last is the crux of the issue.

It boils down to the romance genre being met with mockery, even sneering, in a way that other genre fiction isn’t. Why are cheesy romance covers, signaled by bare-chested men, objectively more absurd than cheesy sci-fi covers or cheesy thriller covers? Especially when the last frequently figure the objectification, even abuse of women? And yet somehow, they’re considered art of a sort and at worst fun kitsch, and not trash.

Humph, I say. I admit I have issues with romance, mostly because it’s constantly marketed to me even by entities that have tons of data showing I have no interest at all. But that I’m inundated with these promotions on various feeds shows the problem; I obviously fit the demographic and somehow that trumps solid information about my tastes. There’s a double whammy there, also, in that the writers (obviously mostly women) who are paying to be promoted are being cheated in a way that I suspect sci-fi writers are not, where promotions are more effectively targeted. This last is guesswork on my part, as I never see promos for sci-fi.

I don’t think the OP in this thread was defensive in tone, but I get why romance fans can feel defensive and perhaps are secretive about their preference. Romance is viewed differently and it’s not about quality, it’s about who reads it.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

Well, sometimes great books just have cheesy covers. Ilona Andrews has the excellent series published by Avon books now, but these covers, this is hideous lol

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T3C2ZMC...ng=UTF8&btkr=1

Having read several books by Ilona Andrews (though not that one), I think the cover matches the quality of the storytelling.

Originally Posted by issybird

It boils down to the romance genre being met with mockery, even sneering, in a way that other genre fiction isn’t. Why are cheesy romance covers, signaled by bare-chested men, objectively more absurd than cheesy sci-fi covers or cheesy thriller covers? Especially when the last frequently figure the objectification, even abuse of women? And yet somehow, they’re considered art of a sort and at worst fun kitsch, and not trash.

I put romance and SF in the same trash heap of generally awful. Thrillers? That category is so broad that I don't know if generalizations can be made. The easy answer to why the romance genre is mocked is that it's marketed to women, and therefore must be inferior to genres men read. Another reason might be that genre romance is so formulaic. SF seems to allow for more variation in plot.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I put romance and SF in the same trash heap of generally awful. Thrillers? That category is so broad that I don't know if generalizations can be made. The easy answer to why the romance genre is mocked is that it's marketed to women, and therefore must be inferior to genres men read. Another reason might be that genre romance is so formulaic. SF seems to allow for more variation in plot.

I also class romance and sci-fi together as far as my own distaste goes; however, I know that within each there must be better books, typical books, and lousy books. As for thrillers, I was thinking of the subset with a manly man with a weapon on the cover and a limp partially clad woman in a subservient position.

I think you’re right about romances being formulaic, up to a point. I think the insistence on what is called HEA, or at least HFN, does them a disservice. Why limit outcomes and in a manner which the reader expects? I assume sci-fi doesn’t do that. But then, it’s not dissimilar to mysteries in that respect; readers have every confidence that Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot will figure out the culprit and that someone will find Nancy Drew bound and gagged in that closet.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think you’re right about romances being formulaic, up to a point. I think the insistence on what is called HEA, or at least HFN, does them a disservice. Why limit outcomes and in a manner which the reader expects?

An author not writing that is the reason I read the end of the book before purchasing (when it is a paper book) it so it doesn't happen to me. I'm very glad people want realistic books, I don't. Discussion about formulaic stories, awful covers, more realistic characters, in my country, stories placed here instead of USA or UK, are common (or were, I haven't gone in a lot of time) at romance convention. I'm a traditionalist and I like my romance with a happy end and as minimum reality as it's possible (mistoric are a bit more difficult to accept but....). I will be happy for an author if she or he want to broaden their limits and write another things, but I'll be out of there.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by issybird

I don’t think the OP in this thread was defensive in tone, but I get why romance fans can feel defensive and perhaps are secretive about their preference. Romance is viewed differently and it’s not about quality, it’s about who reads it.

Thanks - I tried to write about my enthusiasm for the genre I feel somewhat defensive, though. When I was younger I used to be embarrassed about liking romance, and when I admitted to reading it I'd quickly add that I also love science fiction and fantasy. To me it was definitively a gendered thing -- I'm a woman with a male dominated education and career (engineering and IT) and male dominated hobby (board games), so it has taken me some time to be unashamed about stereotypically female interests.

That said, I get uneasy these days when romance is described as "for women, by women". That slogan is being used to make men and nonbinary people feel unwelcome in the genre, and that's (obviously) not good. And there's a huge issue with straight women dominating gay romance to an extent where they push out gay men, and that's also problematic.

Originally Posted by Catlady

I put romance and SF in the same trash heap of generally awful. Thrillers? That category is so broad that I don't know if generalizations can be made. The easy answer to why the romance genre is mocked is that it's marketed to women, and therefore must be inferior to genres men read. Another reason might be that genre romance is so formulaic. SF seems to allow for more variation in plot.

Sigh, yes, I get annoyed when a whole genre is describe as a trash heap of generally awful. And I'm surprised that you think thrillers is a broader category than either romance of SF, no matter what criteria you measure the breadth of a category by.

Originally Posted by issybird

I think you’re right about romances being formulaic, up to a point. I think the insistence on what is called HEA, or at least HFN, does them a disservice. Why limit outcomes and in a manner which the reader expects? I assume sci-fi doesn’t do that. But then, it’s not dissimilar to mysteries in that respect; readers have every confidence that Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot will figure out the culprit and that someone will find Nancy Drew bound and gagged in that closet.

The way I see it, genre conventions are not a matter of limiting outcomes, it's a matter of labelling/truth in advertising. Say you sit down to read a historical novel but find that it takes place in 2022. Or midway through a historical novel the protagonist is bitten by a vampire and then abducted by aliens. Or a book marketed as a cozy mystery had several extremely explicit sex scenes with detailed descriptions of body parts in motion and exchange of bodily fluids. Or you are enjoying a crime novel with a tricky locked room mystery and are looking forward to finding out how the author is going to explain it, and then learn in the last chapter that a ghost did it. Or a book marketed as a fantasy novel is a realistic contemporary story with nothing supernatural or magical at all. All of these books may be perfectly fine in themselves, but if they don't meet a minimum of their readers' expectations many readers will be disappointed and annoyed.

Authors are, of course, free to write as many love stories with unhappy endings as they like. But they shouldn't slap a label saying "this is a hopeful, uplifting love story" on their tragedies. Just like authors are free to write stories which take place completely in the present day, but then they shouldn't call those books historical novels. And so on.

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

An author not writing that is the reason I read the end of the book before purchasing (when it is a paper book) it so it doesn't happen to me. I'm very glad people want realistic books, I don't. Discussion about formulaic stories, awful covers, more realistic characters, in my country, stories placed here instead of USA or UK, are common (or were, I haven't gone in a lot of time) at romance convention. I'm a traditionalist and I like my romance with a happy end and as minimum reality as it's possible (mistoric are a bit more difficult to accept but....). I will be happy for an author if she or he want to broaden their limits and write another things, but I'll be out of there.

If I'm going to read a tragic book I'm going for non-fiction, and I need to be in the mood for it. When reading Svetlana Aleksijevitj's book about Soviet women during WWII I needed frequent breaks, and each chapter of The Sixth Extinction was a depressing downer about another species going or gone. Most of my reading is for entertainment, and then I want to feel good when I finish a book.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by hildea

And there's a huge issue with straight women dominating gay romance to an extent where they push out gay men, and that's also problematic.

Yeah, that really bothers me. And then female dominated gay romance is so large it crowds out other forms of gay literature.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Yeah, that really bothers me. And then female dominated gay romance is so large it crowds out other forms of gay literature.

Knowing that I'm a part of that 800 pound gorilla that is straight women reading romance, I try to alleviate this by seeking out, and reviewing, romances written by queer people. (I'm not great at reviewing, but working on it.) In contemporary romance I like Nathan Burgoine, Alexis Hall, and Jack Harbon. In SFF romance, TJ Klune and Tasha Suri. Historical romance: Hm, only E.E. Ottoman springs to mind.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by hildea

Knowing that I'm a part of that 800 pound gorilla that is straight women reading romance, I try to alleviate this by seeking out, and reviewing, romances written by queer people. (I'm not great at reviewing, but working on it.) In contemporary romance I like Nathan Burgoine, Alexis Hall, and Jack Harbon. In SFF romance, TJ Klune and Tasha Suri. Historical romance: Hm, only E.E. Ottoman springs to mind.

It's not a genre I read too much of. But when I do come across a gay novel that sounds interesting, I do a little research on the author, As soon as I read "she lives with her husband and too many dogs" or something like that I move on. This goes against my usual principles. I wouldn't judge an author like that in any other case. But with gay fiction, I just don't want to contribute to what I see as a real problem.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

It's not a genre I read too much of. But when I do come across a gay novel that sounds interesting, I do a little research on the author, As soon as I read "she lives with her husband and too many dogs" or something like that I move on. This goes against my usual principles. I wouldn't judge an author like that in any other case. But with gay fiction, I just don't want to contribute to what I see as a real problem.

Not romance, but have you read Joseph Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter series featuring a gay detective? Given that the first book in the series was published in 1970, they were truly groundbreaking - and excellent on their own merits.

[SanchezZz]

Okay I'm gonna unmask myself here... I just came to collect names for new books to read... yeah, I've been in the mood of reading these for a long while but never truly got the courage to just go and get one... I mean, jeez is the 21st century and I am that stupid, but it's true.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by hildea

Knowing that I'm a part of that 800 pound gorilla that is straight women reading romance, I try to alleviate this by seeking out, and reviewing, romances written by queer people. (I'm not great at reviewing, but working on it.) In contemporary romance I like Nathan Burgoine, Alexis Hall, and Jack Harbon. In SFF romance, TJ Klune and Tasha Suri. Historical romance: Hm, only E.E. Ottoman springs to mind.

Me too, to a point. I read a lot of m/m romance and UF and mystery, and didn't realize the outcry until recently on Twitter. I looked through my authors in case as I typically don't pay attention to the author when picking out these books - some seemed straight, some were not, some were female, some male. Most of these are small press or self-published either way, and not many have enough of a following to rival some of the large name authors, no matter if they are straight women who enjoy writing this stuff, LGBT or trans. Reading perspectives from readers and authors on this issue has been interesting.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by hildea

This thread made me think about what I like best about romance, and I find that what really appeals to me is good dialogue. So I'll end this (overlong) post with one of my favourite quotes from A Seditious Affair, with the protagonists in bed engaging in one of their favourite activities

I remember that scene. Need to re-read this series someday, been a few years but it stood out. Unfortunately I don't like KJ Charles books the past few years as much as I enjoyed her earlier stuff, but I still consider her books mainly autobuy and she's a favorite in the genre.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The saying to not judge a book by it's cover is wrong. We do judge by the cover as it's the first thing we see if it's a book by an unknown author.

I love a well-done cover, but since I now read so many self-published and small press books in Urban Fantasy, romance, or horror, I've found the cheaply bought covers can sometimes be part of it unfortunately. I've read some great books that had truly awful covers, so I don't let it deter me from trying the book for the most part. Will admit a well done cover draws me in quicker to read the blurb, though.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The saying to not judge a book by it's cover is wrong. We do judge by the cover as it's the first thing we see if it's a book by an unknown author.

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

I love a well-done cover, but since I now read so many self-published and small press books in Urban Fantasy, romance, or horror, I've found the cheaply bought covers can sometimes be part of it unfortunately. I've read some great books that had truly awful covers, so I don't let it deter me from trying the book for the most part. Will admit a well done cover draws me in quicker to read the blurb, though.

One of my favorite things to purchase is reprints of old OOP paperbacks. Unfortunately, they often have lackluster to crappy new covers. I find a good scan of the old paperback in those cases.

A 'new' book by a self-published author where they use some photo they took with their phone camera... maybe Jon has a point.