Darker Shades of Rage

This one gets even more down and dirty, and personal, so proceed with caution friends and relatives.  And faint hearted strangers...

I thought I had gotten all of my rage out in the last post about the 50 Shades phenomenon, but then I saw this...

And then I decided to write a sequel.

It's kind of hard to put my rage into words that wouldn't get bleeped on network television. While I love those words, and use them often, I try to be a little more elevated with my vocabulary on this site. Just know that under all of this is a very heartfelt f*ck you.

The reason this, and the whole 50 Shades thing, makes me so mad is this continued idea that there's something wrong with people who are into bondage and dominance play without the holy sanction of reading these books. Liking to get spanked does not inherently make someone a bad person. Or a mean person. Or in need of a therapist. Or a potentially violent sociopath. It just means that the pain/pleasure centers in our brains play really nicely together. It has virtually no bearing on our moral compasses or our interactions with the world.

Additionally – nothing takes the fun out of a BDSM scene like someone worrying that they're not being “nice” enough. Stopping all the time to question the other person, tentative spanks, and extremely loose knots ruin the illusion and the moment. The pain and the implied danger are what make it fun. Constantly hearing “Oh my god, was that too hard?” does not. That's why you have safe words (or gestures if you're gagged.)

So Shady Ladies, or Wicked Christian's Bitches, or whatever your fandom has named itself, if you do find this new world you've entered into arousing and you want to play in the scene being condescending and judgemental about it is not the way to gain entree. There's quite enough anti-kinkster feeling floating around without people attempting to bring it into the community.

Oh – and to further shatter your illusions- the best place to find men willing to dominate you isn't Wall Street, or in the mythical handsome billionaires club. Generally those guys are the ones keeping all the professional lady-doms in business. The best place to find the guys willing to tie you down and spank you – Renaissance Faires and Sci-Fi Conventions. That's right ladies- those Star Trek nerds you mocked in high school, they're the ones with the best dungeons and toys. In fact last week at Comic-Con I can guarantee you that hotel rooms across San Diego were host to scenes of Batman tying up Wonder Woman and flogging her until she invoked the safe word. (Which was probably Superman. Nothing takes the power out of little Batman like hearing the name of that Kryptonian goody-two-shoes.) So run with that image next time you pick up your “naughty” books.

I realize I've devoted a lot of space to these books, and over-shared about my own personal life, but I really feel strongly about the things I brought up here. Growing up in a fairly conservative area and knowing that the women who led the pack in a lot of slut-shaming and pearl clutching are now shelling out cash for these books and acting like they discovered BDSM is pretty insulting and hypocritical. I've had these women ask me why I would ever want to read The Sexual Life of Catherine M, or inform me that the library would never stock something like Juliette. And clearly, from the title of the companion book I just presented, there is still a stigma attached to my interests. That somehow because I came into my kinks pre-Gray they're still evil and wrong, because I didn't go about it in the majority-approved fashion. And sometimes choking on hypocrisy makes me really angry.

I'll close once again by saying that if these books do actually open up some honest and non-judgemental dialog about sex and kinks and pleasure that will be great. Unfortunately I just don't see that happening. But what do I know? According to the Macleods, I'm not a nice person. 

Fifteen Shades of Rage

This one's going to get Cinemax After Dark, so family members and sensitive friends might want to skip it.

So unless you've been living in a cave for the past few months you're all aware that the latest publishing phenomenon is the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. And anyone who knows me at all will not be surprised to learn that I have a few issues with both the book and the phenomenon. Once again I put myself in the line of fire of the millions of rabid fans, but luckily very few people read this blog – so I'm probably safe.

As most people who know me will realize it's not the down and dirty BDSM I have a problem with, it's the following myriad problems, in no particular order:

• Most of the women carting around these books are the same women who give me dirty looks and clutched their pearls for reading Marquis De Sade or Anais Nin in public. Ladies – I hate to break it to you – the S in S&M (which Fifty Shades focuses on) is named for the Marquis. So from now on I expect to be able to read 120 Days of Sodom anywhere I want, perhaps now with a post-it on the cover reading “It's like 50 Shades of Grey, but with a Better Vocabulary.”
  
  
• This whole trilogy started as online Twilight slash fiction. Essentially it's Edward and Bella getting a little kinky. The only major thing that changed from fan-fic to bestseller was the names and taking away the sparkly vampire element . And judging from the horrible, repetitive, high school girl prose, that's really all that changed. I imagine that the editor they assigned to it had to get stupid drunk to get over the pain of paying for this drivel and passed out before they could bust out their red pen. If that's the bar we're setting for published works at this point I fear for the future of the written word. And I kind of enjoy the fact that some libraries don't want to stock it because it's so poorly written, not because it's naughty.
  
  
• Most people (women) buying these books are buying it for some sort of e-reader, and most say it's because they don't want people to know what they're reading. And I call bullshit on that ladies. Especially since every other bored soccer mom is reading the exact same thing. It's not particularly naughty or salacious if every one's doing it. You can't claim to be a naughty kinkster unless you OWN it. Let your freak flag fly people.
  
  
• I have a problem with how some of the kink is handled. And it essentially breaks down into two areas:

  
  
  a) They spend a lot of time setting up Christian's (the lead male/ dominant) troubled childhood and even send him off at the end of book one for some serious therapy. Guess what people – not everyone into BDSM, or the vast majority of sexual fetishes/kinks, has had some sort of troubled childhood, or needs a psychiatrist. As Dan Savage likes to say “It's a kink, not cancer.”

  
  
  b) The lead female Anastasia, who apparently grew up in Amish country as she's 21 and doesn't have an email address, is a wide-eyed virgin who hasn't even masturbated before meeting Christian. She then jumps into a full-time BDSM relationship and goes straight for the pain. That's like going from singing along with a song in your car to auditioning for a lead in a Broadway musical with no other steps in between. Really – a virgin with no experience, no fantasies, no self-pleasuring – just randomly decides she like being a sexual submissive. We're missing a few experiences somewhere in the narrative
.
  
  
  * I find it hilarious that all of a sudden all of these women claim to be into bondage and force and pain. Really ladies? Because I've found that most kinks show up in your mind somewhere before you and your book club get together to read a book and all decide you're submissives. And if you've made it to 35-40 without getting spanked during sex, or even thought about trying it, chances are you're not ready to jump into whips and ropes and domination. It takes a little while to build up to those things. And if you don't get off on the pain, or find pleasure in it, or properly prepare, it's just going to hurt.
  
  
• I feel really, really, really bad for all the unsuspecting men out there whose wives/girlfriends are reading this and suddenly decide they're into bondage. These poor men are going to hunt down the closest sex shop and buy the special Shades of Grey branded anal beads, floggers and ropes at their wives/ girlfriends requests, take them home, attempt to use them on an unprepared or unaware woman and then get kicked in the nards when the women find out that it actually does hurt. Especially since the book does not provide all the instruction you need to safely delve into BDSM.
  
  
• I am all for reading smut, but can't we read better-written smut? Or more honest smut? Or can't we all just acknowledge that we, as a species, like reading dirty books without all having to agree on one? And how exactly are the movies versions going to work? Because if they're true to the books it's NC-17 territory. And again I'm betting that most women waiting feverishly for these movies would judge me for my internet history, and some dvd purchases I've made.
  
  
• I think the thing that's most upsetting to me is that women are proving to be a powerful consumer base for the publishing industry, but we're putting all our power behind books like Fifty Shades of Grey, and Twilight, and generic books in the Bridget Jones mode/ genre. And I know I'm losing girl points left and right on this blog, but I feel that there are better uses of our literary dollars. At least when we're getting behind The Hunger Games there's a female character who takes care of herself and everyone else around her. Or the Harry Potter phenomenon that gave us Hermione Granger, Ginny and Molly Weasly, and kick-ass Professor McGonagall, and a better love story than most in the form of Lily and Snape. Or we should have made sure that Tina Fey's Bossypants sold as many, if not more, copies as Fifty Shades.

I really feel better for getting all of that off my chest. As a final caveat – if anyone reading this book did use it as a way to finally express their kinks or as a gateway to legitimately discovering their kinks, then that's great. And if this eventually leads to a more sex-positive, everyone gets off the way they want to attitude, awesome, we need that in this country. I just feel like it's a fad that could really backfire on pre-Shades of Grey kinksters. (Most of whom are not reading the book. Mainly because we read The Story of O when we were teenagers.)

Let the angry comments commence.....

BookWench is currently reading Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore. Hilarious and informative.

I'll Stick With Leeches and Magic...

In this post I talked about one of my (and my co-workers) least favorite customer groups, the Spoiled Bride. I've decided to expand upon that into a five-part series – BookWench's Least Favorite Customer Types. Before we continue I would like to offer this disclaimer: I realize that not everyone who falls into the groups I discuss are as dumb/ rude/ lazy as the individual examples I'm discussing in these articles. In fact, the reason a lot of these groups stand out or are particularly disturbing is how far to the negative extreme they fall in comparison to the hard-working, intelligent people who share their profession.

And on that note- Annoying Customer Group #4- Clueless Nurses.

I think the reason this particular group stands out so much and becomes so grating on the booksellers' nerves is because talking to someone who deals with life or death situations, but can't figure out how to get to the second floor of a building while standing in front of a staircase and an elevator is kind of terrifying. (Still not making this stuff up.)  It terrified me so much that I while working at the Borders in California I told my friends that under no circumstances was I to be taken to the hospital closest to the bookstore. I would rather take my chances and head to a different hospital then run the risk of being treated by the nurse who couldn't remember the name of the big test you had to take in order to become a nurse. She was convinced it was the RN-SAT, and could not be convinced that is was, in fact, the NCLEX. I can at least take a little comfort in thinking that she wouldn't find a place to take the imaginary test she was looking for and therefore wouldn't become a nurse.

I'm also concerned when I run across a nurse who has found the Health & Medicine section but cannot narrow down which shelves have the nursing books on you. For those of you who don't frequent the section- they're the ones that say NURSING. Or sometimes NURSING REFERENCE. Something with some form of the word “nurse,” clearly typed in large letters affixed to the shelf in question. What do these people do when confronted with the complexities of the human body? They are aware that people aren't labeled, right?

When I step into a medical facility I want to be assured that everyone treating me is much, much smarter than I am where matters of human anatomy and medical treatment are concerned. Which is why it is so troubling when I know more medical terms and references than the people who are studying/ working in the medical field.

The final straw that plants them so firmly in the Least Favorite Customer list is a trait they share with the Spoiled Brides and, in fact, all the groups on the list, they almost always leave a huge mess. And, since a lot of study materials come with flash cards, they leave a huge mess that we then have to take off the shelf and dispose of because we can't sell the open, damaged set of flashcards, or the study guide that they've written in/ spilled coffee on. I understand that school and textbooks and study guides are expensive, but again, try the magical library place, or skip a couple of fancy coffees and buy the book.

Before the lynch mob forms – I have the utmost respect for nurses who are good at what they do, as it an incredibly demanding and often thankless job. And those who do it well are amazing, and I am very impressed by the friends I have who have chosen this profession. They are much nicer people than I am. And I think they should be first in line to shame/ reprimand the people in their profession giving them a bad name by going out in public and asking for the Cliff Notes to Gray's Anatomy - “Because I don't understand the regular version.”

“Let's start with a few Latin terms...”

No, the Latin (and Greek) terms I'll be discussing today aren't nearly as much fun as the ones the Vicomte de Valmont* was teaching in the above quote, but I'm guessing maybe three people knew what I was quoting anyway. Today BookWench school is in session, and the words of the day are:

             Bibliography and Biography

These are, in fact, two different words, with two very different meanings, but at least once a month I am forced to explain the difference. One woman proceeded to yell at me for 15 minutes because I couldn't direct her to the bibliography section. She insisted that I was the idiot for not knowing where the bibliography of Barbra Streisand was, which only makes me more obstinately refuse to help her until she concedes that I am right. And yes, I am aware that I could just assume that they mean biography, and meekly take them to the right section, but I am the BookWENCH, and I demand that people use the right words, because stupidity triumphs when smart people say nothing. I am merely doing my small part to fight the inevitable Idiocracy.

So as a quick summation -

Bibliography – list of books in the back of a published work/ research paper that the author used as references in the work. Biblio – from the Greek biblion meaning book.

Biography – a book written about a specific person by another person. Not to be confused with and Autobiography which is written by the subject of the book. (This is another fight I have all the time with people) Bio -meaning life, like in Biology.

I realize that most people reading this blog will not, I hope, need those definitions, as you are all intelligent and beautiful people with excellent taste in blogs. This is merely a tool you can all use to help educate the masses on proper use of literary terms. So next time you're out and about, or working in a bookstore, or just want to lord your superior intelligence over others, you can refer them here or reference the great and powerful BookWench to support your own vast knowledge.

So go forth an educate the world, so I don't have to kill the next person who comes in demanding a bibliography of George Lincoln, the president that freed the slaves. (Yes, that really happened.)

* I couldn't find a good clip, so you'll just have to go watch all of Dangerous Liaisons. It's amazing.  You'll thank me later.

BookWench is currently re-reading The Joy Luck Club and The Crucible to help out an English teacher friend of mine. They are both wonderful works, so it's not really a hardship.

1, 2…What's After 2, Again?

This is the cover of Janet Evanovitch's One for the Money:

I show you this to give you a mental image to carry with you for the story I'm about to relate. It's also important to know that this book is the first in a series, the titles of each book containing their series number. (i.e. Two for the Dough, Hot Six, Fearless Fifteen, you get the idea. They're very easy to put in order.)

And now – the story -

A woman comes up to me at the main counter in the store. She appears to be well into her forties.

Customer: I need a copy of One for the Money?

BookWench: Sure. Follow me, it's over here in the Mystery section.

Customer: Thanks. I'm new to this whole reading thing, so I'm not really sure how it works. Someone told me these Plum novels are really good.

(This is when the feeling of dread sets in. Anyone over the age of 20 who has never set foot in a bookstore and willingly volunteers, with pride, that they don't see the point in reading tends to lead to stories that make me cry. And, while I am happy that she's giving the reading thing a try, the lack of basic common sense that I know is coming is what truly terrifies me.)

I hand her One for the Money. Again – if you refer back to the picture, you'll see why this gets scary.

Customer: So how can you tell that this is the first one?

BookWench: All the titles have the series number in them. So One for the Money is book one in the series.

Customer:  So where does it say one?

BookWench: Right here. In orange letters.

Customer (staring at the shelf full of numbered books): So which one is next?

BookWench: Two for the Dough. They all have numbers in the title to tell you the order. Like the fourth book is Four to Score. The seventh book is Seven Up.

Customer: So, can you print me out a list of the order they go in?

This is a common question for series that have odd titles and no numbering on the spines of the books. I usually refer people to the list of the author's previous works in the newer books to get a series order. I totally understand if you need the order for the 20+ Xanth novels, or the 17 Anita Blake novels. This was the first and only time that I ran into a customer that needed a listing for the Stephanie Plum novels. I showed this customer the list in the front of the latest book, pointed out (again) that all the titles had numbers in them, and then showed her that we kept them shelved in series order. (You try to make things idiot-proof and they build a better idiot.) Then I excused myself for some quality whimpering time.

Addendum to this story – James Patterson's Women's Murder Club Series is similar in its naming style. (1^st to Die, 2^nd Chance, 10^th Anniversary, etc.) Today a woman came up to the counter to check the copy of one of the books she had just sold to us to see which one was the 6^th. She had to check 3 times, and then write it down. She had previously spent 10 minutes staring at the James Patterson books in the mystery section unable to figure out which one came after The 5^th Horseman. Seriously – whimper...then much drinking.

BookWench is currently reading Foundling by D.M. Cornish