It amazes me that they're still so popular. Presents and Romance are virtually the same line. I think the only differences may be length and degree of on-camera sex.
Don't I get a cookie?
Spike ,'Never Leave Me'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Amy - May 05, 2008 3:22:14 pm PDT #5654 of 28348
Because books.
sj - May 05, 2008 3:22:56 pm PDT #5655 of 28348
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."
they may be selling, but I am not buying, no matter how huge my Penny Jordan collection was at 13. Things scarred me for life.
She was the Harlequin author I had a huge collection of too!
P.M. Marc - May 05, 2008 3:35:28 pm PDT #5656 of 28348
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear
Her books were like crack! Patriarchy-addled, colonialist-approved crack, but crack just the same.
Jessica - May 05, 2008 3:43:09 pm PDT #5657 of 28348
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
I can't recall an openly gay character in an OSC book, no.
Typo Boy - May 05, 2008 3:52:13 pm PDT #5658 of 28348
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.
I remember one. He revealed his gayness by trembling with desire when helping a (male) child character change his clothes. Don't remember if he was merely fired or executed.
I think it was in Wyrms. At any rate it was in the same novel in which a female child character revealed the depth of her evil while being raped.
Miracleman - May 06, 2008 4:03:08 am PDT #5659 of 28348
No, I don't think I will - me, quoting Captain Steve Rogers, to all of 2020
Does Card actually have gay characters in his books? How does he treat them? I admit I've never read anything by him (I missed Ender's Game during those crucial high school years), but I just assumed that his books would reflect his anti-gay stance by not including any gay characters.
Yeah, I was wondering that, too.
I should never ever read OSC's opinions on anything. I try not to let it detract from my enjoyment of his fiction, but it's hard.
It pains me that he's a family friend.
Fred Pete - May 06, 2008 4:35:32 am PDT #5660 of 28348
Ann, that's a ferret.
Does Card actually have gay characters in his books? How does he treat them?
He was all the rage in the SF circles I frequented back in the day -- it was in NC, and he was winning all sorts of awards while living in Greensboro. I don't remember the subject coming up in his work or otherwise then.
On the other hand, I haven't read everything he wrote.
Jessica - May 06, 2008 4:44:25 am PDT #5661 of 28348
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
I've read (and loved) most of his early stuff (the original Ender books, the Alvin Maker trilogy back when it was still a trilogy, the Worthing Saga, a whole slew of short stories), but very little of his recent work.
I tried reading the Ender prequels, but once Petra hit puberty and realized her true mission in life was to stay at home and meekly pop out baybeez, I was too full of incoherent rage to continue any further. And I haven't had the heart to read anything he's written since.
Fred Pete - May 06, 2008 4:53:59 am PDT #5662 of 28348
Ann, that's a ferret.
I've read Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, the first two Alvin Maker books, and some of his pre-1990-or-so short fiction (including the short stories or novelettes that became EG and the AM works). I vaguely remember a moment or two in Ender that one could, if one wished, interpret as homosexual in the sense of one male showing affection for another -- but I doubt OSC intended it that way.
Miracleman - May 06, 2008 5:03:48 am PDT #5663 of 28348
No, I don't think I will - me, quoting Captain Steve Rogers, to all of 2020
I tried reading the Ender prequels, but once Petra hit puberty and realized her true mission in life was to stay at home and meekly pop out baybeez, I was too full of incoherent rage to continue any further. And I haven't had the heart to read anything he's written since.
They weren't really prequels as the continuing stories of the other Battle School kids. But, yeah.
I read them and found them fascinating in a "near-future warfare" kind of sense, and Bean just rocks, but Petra going from "bad-ass Battle School grad" to "I jus' wanna have Beanie-Weanie's widdle babies" was baffling. That and you got the sense that OSC became kind of lost in the expanse of his global war. Tom Clancy he ain't.