Linkspam, 11/2/12 Edition

Fifty Shades

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.