Linkspam is a bit light this week due to me getting distracted by Hurricane Sandy and spending way too much time looking at weather websites and not as much time trawling for links.
- New Yorker trolls the nerds or Triumph of the State Nick Mamatas on this article.
- An Open Letter to E-Book Retailers: Let’s have a return to common sense
- Doing Justice to Desire A wonderful discussion of an older Mills & Boon novel that I may have to try to find a copy of. I know that I am often dismissive of category romances and I need to be better about giving them a fair shake.
- The Curse of the Sympathetic Character Interesting perspective on sympathetic characters and how, so often, female characters are forced into a sympathetic mode even if hurts the story. The comments are worth reading, too.
- Something else like…Heinlein Jo Walton starts a new series at Tor.com that is all about the recommendations.
- Writing sex: Who’s your horny reader? Jennifer Stevenson on different kinds of sex scenes.
- Amazon is deleting reviews of “competing products” I’m assuming this has to do with Amazon wanting to eliminate the practice of authors reviewing each other’s books. Seems a bit ham-fisted to me, though.
- When Contemporary Romance Goes Wrong: Some DNF Reviews
- A Zombie is a Slave Forever “[The zombie]…is a New World phenomenon that arose from the mixture of old African religious beliefs and the pain of slavery.” This is fascinating.
- In Defence of Twilight Absolutely brilliant analysis by Kit Whitfield. Her most recent novel, In Great Waters, is also brilliant.
And if you can, a monetary donation to the American Red Cross is money well-spent–they are one of the few charities with the know-how and supply chain in place to provide relief in situations such as Hurricane Sandy.
I loved that New Yorker article, but not in a good way. More for the shitty tone the guy takes, and the deep deep irony that none of those blowhards can see that “literary fiction”? Just another genre…