Changing Tastes

The other day while working at B&N, I hand-sold the entire House of Rohan print trilogy to a customer, and noticed that when I was telling her about its heroes, all of whom go over the "heroes on the edge" boundaries, mentioned that had I read the books ten years ago, I would not have liked/loved them as I do now. The customer was intrigued enough by that to buy the series.

Just now, while putting making sure all my AAR reviews were entered onto my Goodreads page, my review for Jayne Castle's Zinnia caught my attention because I remembered this snippet from 1997 (I may not remember having met you last week, but I remember just about all the books I've read, and most of my reviews): "I didn't care for the author's reference to proud nipples or to the use of such clinical terms as the c-word that rhymes with Lavoris or "vagina" when describing a love scene." That may have been true thirteen years ago, and while "clitoris" still doesn't do much for me, "clit" does. Sex at its best is a raunchy proposition, and while "clit" isn't romantic, it's definitely raunchy.

So it seems my tastes have gotten darker over the years. Is it my age, the number of romances I've read, or something else? My two favorite romances for the year - A Secret Affair and Breathless - are light years away from each other in terms of sexuality (Balogh's Regency in Disguise is mild in comparison to Stuart's book, which is based in large part on sex, though it dials back the love-making in comparison to the earlier books in the series). As far as tone, Balogh's book isn't light, and it's not as dark as some of her others, while Stuart's is on a par with my beloved Ice series...or perhaps a tinge darker. As for my third DIK of the year - which was published in 2007 - Jonathan Tropper's How to Talk to a Widower is both dark and a comedy.

Very few of you respond to the questions I pose on this blog, but I'll try again: Have your tastes changed over the last decade or so, and if so, how?

Changing Tastes

July Books

Jonathan Tropper's How To Talk To a Widower is one of the books I most enjoyed this year. Because it was published under the Random House umbrella, I assumed that last year's hardcover, This Is Where I Leave You, released to great acclaim, was also published by Random House and looked forward to buying the digital version to coincide with the book's mass market release. Random House, as you might recall, did not switch to the agency model for digital releases, and as a result, their books remain discounted. Also as a result, their digital sales through Amazon have increased by upward of 40%.

Alas, apparently Tropper switched publishers in-between both books. His new publisher, Penguin, which sets its own prices for digital books at Amazon, is currently selling This Is Where I Leave You for $12.99 while the hardcover, which it does allow to be discounted, sells for less, at $11.23. When the trade paperback version is released tomorrow, it will sell for $10.20 at Amazon. If Penguin is true to form, the digital version should come down tomorrow, but my guess is that it'll match the paperback price of $10.20, which I find a ludicrous proposition.

I've decided not to buy the book because of Penguin's Kindle pricing policy and instead decided to fill in my Tropper back-list with Everything Changes - published by Random House and very nicely discounted at $7.20. It too is a digital version of a trade paperback, which currently sells for $10.20.

Here's what else I bought for July on my Kindle: Twice Tempted by a Rogue by Tessa Dare (published by Random House's Ballantine Books) and Susan Mallery's Almost Perfect (published by Harlequin, which, like Random House, did not switch to the agency model). The digital versions of both books are nicely discounted.

Though Dare's debut and subsequent releases have received great fanfare, I've never actually read her, so I'm hoping for a good read. As for Mallery, after hating the first couple of books I read for her and reviewed for PW - The Marcelli Princess and Sunset Bay - she seems to be growing on me. I actually recommended Under Her Skin and Chasing Perfect in my PW reviews.

As much as I'd like to buy Lisa Kleypas' Love in the Afternoon, Macmillan, its publisher, set the price for its digital version at $7.99 at Amazon. The mass market releases sells at Amazon for $7.19.

There is one book I'm wavering on for July: the third in Sharon Ashwood's Dark Forgotten series. I read and gave book one, Ravenous, a strong review for PW but put down book two, Scorched, mid-way and never finished it. This series is published under the Penguin Umbrella - by Signet - and, surprisingly, the Kindle price is $6.99, slightly less than the paperback will sell for ($7.19) when both versions go on sale tomorrow. But given my "meh" response to the unfinished book two, I doubt I'll be buying Unchained, book three in the series, even if Penguin is beginning to see the light.

It's a shame that authors have to suffer for their publisher's misguided policies, but rather than over-paying for the Tropper and Kleypas books, I'll likely be reading them at the bookstore instead.

One last thing before I sign off...in less than a week I've published two Amazon Vine reviews. I recommend both, with some recommendations. Please check out my reviews for Marcus of Umbria and The Bucolic Plague, both memoirs with a similar theme.

P.S. - This link will only work until next Monday, but if you want to read my newest PW review, for the new Susan Andersen, click here. The review is third from the bottom of the page.

July Books

How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper

How to Talk to a Widower

Jonathan Tropper

Grade: A-

Fiction

If asked for one word to describe Jonathan Tropper's How to Talk to a Widower, I'd choose one I don't throw around lightly: sublime. Devastatingly profane, laugh-out-loud funny, yet surprisingly emotional, it's a book I'm thankful that James at a bookstore lent to me after I heard about it from Laura, who had earlier been told about it by James.

Twenty-nine-year-old Doug Parker is slim and beautiful, and after Hailey, his wife of two years, died in a plane crash he is still so sad that he cannot move on in his life. The monthly column he writes about his inappropriate grief gained him a large magazine following, yet he refuses to follow his agent's advice and write a book out of his experiences that publishers are clamoring to buy. Instead he obsesses over the annoying squirrels who live in the garden of the house he shared with his wife, the house she previously shared with her first husband and their son Russ, now a grieving 15-year-old whose father Hailey realized was banging another woman when she found his snipped pubes in their bathroom trash can.

Women in the tony Westchester neighborhood want to take care of Doug - or sleep with him - while their husbands want to buy him lap dances. But he is forced out of himself by two things: Russ needs him to step up and be a father to him, and his bossy, pregnant twin sister Claire, who's decided to move in after leaving her husband, promises him that if he turns himself over to her, she'll fix him. God knows he needs the help...and can't rely on the rest of his family. His dad, once a prominent doctor, whom he can't remember as ever having hugged him, is becoming lost to dementia while his former actress mother, a cross between Marilyn Truman and Bobbi Adler from Will and Grace, self-medicates.

Meanwhile, his younger sister is about to marry a man she met and schtupped as he was sitting shiva for his dead wife, his twin begins arranging blind dates for him that invariably go badly, and if that weren't enough, he's falling for the temptation of his wife's [married] best friend's ample charms even though the feelings aroused by Russ' beautiful, quirky guidance counselor are anything but curricular. And so he tries to move beyond the anger, sadness, and self-pity overwhelming him, even though he's equally sad that one day, when he's moved on and has a happy new life and family, all he'll have of Hailey are minor memories.

Despite his being totally fucked up, Doug Parker is an appealing hero. Here's a guy who never believed he'd end up with a woman like Hailey, a guy who's smart - well, a smart-ass, anyway - funny, and a keen observer of human nature. He may think badly of other people, but he never believes worse about others than he thinks about himself...and how attractive is that? Though his relatives are not as fully rendered, all are well drawn, and a few scenes, involving either his father or his step-son, are stand-outs. While the story does veer toward the melodramatic near the end, all can be forgiven because two of those terrific scenes occur as a result.

Jonathan Tropper doesn't write absurdist fiction, but it's high praise indeed that How to Talk to a Widower reminds me in some ways of Christopher Moore's marvelous A Dirty Job. Both authors created hilarity from the dark premise of a beloved wife's death. Both authors appeal to those of us who are "wordies," readers who enjoy the use of language itself, but Moore's novel, while it does have moments of poignance, wasn't written to provoke the same feelings of tenderness Tropper achieves in his pathos-filled comedy. Inappropriate it may be, but brilliantly, funnily so. Thank you, James, for lending me your copy.

How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper