Why I don't grade: the variety of reading pleasures; and an excuse for a snarky review

Broadly speaking, my book purchases break down into three categories:

1. historical romance (the endless search for the perfect book by the perfect author)
2. non-fiction and 'literary fiction' (about which I rarely blog), and
3. 'bottom drawer books' (in which I include category romance and erotica)

To compare something from one of these categories with something from one of the others makes no sense. I may as well use the same grading system for apples and pears. They share certain characteristics, but what you want from apple isn't what you want from a pear.

That's why I don't grade on this blog. To do so would be meaningless. But then I don't even regard this as a book review blog. I admire bloggers who can produce review after review of everything they read, but I can't. There needs to be something about the book that I've got to say beyond whether I liked it or not.

Besides that, there's a difference between how accomplished a book is and how much you enjoy it. Many blog reviewers don't worry about technial accomplishment and concentrate purely on the level of enjoyment they've derived. That at least is an honest reaction and is preferable to exaggerating the technical accomplishments of an author to justify enjoyment of a particular book. My favourite review(er)s usually have something to say about both areas.

The occasional disconnect between writing quality and enjoyment levels came up recently for me when Meriam asked me how I'd enjoyed Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas. I replied that it had been a B for me. I did really like it - but it lacked that edge that would have taken it to an A. My explanation to Meriam was that I think it's a reader-writer chemistry thing. Sometimes the perfect reader meets the perfect writer. Execution meets expectation and the result is sublime.

And then there's another aspect, which is How you enjoy a book. At the 'purest' end of the scale, there's that thrill you get when you read a wonderful bit of prose. Like the opening lines of Lolita ("Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. "). Or - with romance - there are the moments we romance readers hunt for. Those perfect moments that are so elusive and only found in one book in ten maybe. Like that scene in To Have and To Hold when Sebastian allows his dreadful friends to interrogate Rachel about her prison experiences *shiver*.

And then, then, there are those books that make you hoot and wince and groan. Which brings me, neatly, to The Italian's Rags-To-Riches Wife by Julia James.

I mentioned recently that JJ books are like crack to me (see also previous review on Bam's website). They're not good for you and they're terribly addictive. For me, her books are the absolute Form of a cliched category romance. They have all the key characteristics that are pointed to by critics of the genre: martyr heroines, shallow heroes, emotional pornography, absurd storylines, and a dubious moral outlook.

But I've got to say, I enjoyed The Italian's Rags-to-Riches Wife. It entertained me. I found myself blowing raspberries at the book (yes, really) and laughing aloud. It was Panto Romance.

It rather makes me wonder whether - if you take away all those 'objectionable' characteristics from category romances - you would have anything left to enjoy.

Anyhoo. The book uses one of my favourite category romance tropes: the Ugly Duckling. And no-one does ugly ducklings like JJ. She doesn't worry about reality at all. It's all about how much emotion and reaction she can wring out of it.

We get the hero - Alessandro's - initial reaction to the heroine - Laura - on page 16:-

...Alessandro let his eyes rest on her a moment, taking in the full extent of her unprepossingness. The girl wasn't just plain - she was ugly. Unkind it might be, but there was no other word for her appearance. She had a square face, eyes that were marred by unsightly thick brows, and a sour expression...

Later she is described by him as a:-

...suet-faced, beetle browed, gimlet-eyed, hedge-haired, atrociously dressed lump of a female...

A mere 60 pages later, on page 77, and after one afternoon at a spa, she is described by him thus:-

....the woman who stood there, dramatically framed, lushly outlined, her rich swathe of hair swept back from one side of her face to arc across the other and cascade down one shoulder was nothing, nothing like the one he had driven away from at lunchtime. This woman had dramatic looks, with high cheekbones and a sculpted nose and jaw, with winged eyebrows that arched over eyes that were deep and wide and haunting and just amazingly luminous, and a mouth that was an incredible slash of dark scarlet...

All that seems to have happened is that she's had her eyebrows plucked, but she has been transformed.

I'm not going to bother explaining how or why Laura and Alessandro meet in the first place or how that plot is resolved - it's all completely irrelevant to the main event. Suffice to say, post-transformation, Laura and Alessandro get it on (she is a virgin, natch) and nip off to some Mediterranean island for some hot loving and surprisingly middle-aged sightseeing. (That's one of the joys of category romance for me. The way the relatively youthful characters always into clothes and pasttimes that are more appropriate for people thirty years older. I love that. It makes me laugh and laugh).

Needless to say, there's a Big Mis that sends Laura hurtling back to England to defiantly regrow her eyebrows. Alessandro is presented with an horrific tableau when he rings her doorbell:

...She'd reverted. It was the only word for it. Her hair was hanging in lank soggy rags around her face, she wore no make up, her eyebrows were overgrown, her skin blotchy...

But no-one can accuse Alessandro of being shallow. Although he's disgusted when he sees her again, he's able to overcome his nausea. So long as he keeps his eyes shut:

...He slid his fingers underneath the lank lumps of hair either side of her face and cradled her head...
"Close your eyes." ..... "Close your eyes, and I shall close mine."
"Can you see it, Laura?... We're standing on the terrace in Amalfi... You're wearing something long and diaphonous, and your hair is like silk down your back..."

Hold that thought, Alessandro. And remember: you don't look at the mantlepiece when you're poking the fire.