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Wednesday 24 June 2009

Holiday reading...


While I was on hols (holiday/vacation) I read various books...by the way, I am never going on hols again. It's too frigging hard to get back into work mode. You know what its like. Holiday? What holiday? Anyway, back to the books...I read four. Three were boring as all get out but the fourth I read in one sitting. It was a genre I was not overly interested in reading - male/male romance. No, it wasn't because of the subject. Romance is romance regardless of genre or body parts. It was more that previous M/M books I had read turned me off reading more. It was to do with the language in those stories. What do I mean by that? Previous ones I had read in this genre had the men speaking to each other in the most cutesy terms that made the stories unbelievable to me.

Now, I am more than aware lovers, whatever gender, have their own language but I swear to god I don’t want to hear anyone - male or female - talking cutesy baby talk through an entire book. I don’t want to sit there wincing as I try to get into the story. I do wonder if the previous rush of a large section of writers to pen an M/M story had something to do with the genre sliding into the silly and cutesy. I don’t believe everyone can write M/M. I don’t believe jumping on a bandwagon is a good thing if your style does not reflect the market or if you don’t understand the genre. I believe the influx in dross M/M novels had a lot to do with writers wanting to cash in on a lucrative following. Whatever happened to write what you know? There has to be some basis in reality.

But – back to the book I really liked and read in one sitting – Sex, Lies and Celluloid by Jodi Payne and Chris Owen. It had a great story and believable characters and the men acted like real people, real lovers and not a version of what some writer thought gay men spoke like. No, I don’t know the writers of this book. But the book impressed me. I want real, believable stories...not people jumping on a cash cow. Yes, of course. Its human nature to jump on a fad but surely a credible, enjoyable story is more important than another published book under your belt.

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1 comments:

Anny Cook said...

Excellent. Glad you enjoyed the book! A good book is sometimes hard to find!