What a difference a decade makes

 

So.  Another entry, more builder porn. 


Published in 1993, Built To Last is a far cry from Castles in the Air.  It was part of a special series of romance novels about working-class men.  Apparently a soft answer to Rule 34, since these books aren't super porny.  In fact, in this novel, there's only one sex scene, which starts on page 138 out of 182 and is incredibly demure in its rendering.  If you can believe it, pretty much all of the action is delicately insinuated, and neither her vadge, nor his willy are actually named or described.  Not even in terms of "his hardness" or "her warm and inviting embrace."  Somehow, via little more than suggestion and mentions of passion and general feelings-of-grooviness, Ms. Copeland constructed a sex scene with no actual sex.  It really boggles the mind.  So much so, that y'all get photographic evidence.  Just a minute; I'll be right back with the goods:

 

 

 

Pretty masterful, no?

Anyway, now that we have the sexy-sex out of the way, on with the narrative (maybe they should make actual-porn that way.  Just open with the huffin'-and-gruntin', then get on with the pizza delivery or boiler mending, or whatever pretext there was for the ugly-bumping.

I digress.  Good shit, do I digress.

Anyway.

Christine is a hard-working, conscientious, recent college graduate from Iowa who has made her way to Santa Cruz, California to work in a tech company.  She's been rocketing up the corporate ladder and is a project manager, not because she's especially career-ambitious, but because she feels she must pay off her student loans and car note as quickly as is practical.  However, she's been finding that her hotshot corporate job is less-than-fulfilling, and so she determines to volunteer in her free time to a Habitat-For-Humanity scheme which is renovating abandoned houses for low income families.

Christine pulls up to the renovation house in her well-kept, red, secondhand BMW 318.  Bear Malone*, the project foreman for the renovation scheme immediately pegs her as a yuppie dilettante, showing up for a couple of hours so she can clock some do-gooder time on her karma chart.  As such, he is gruff with her initially, and puts her to work doing scut-work.  As the day wears on, he discovers she's more competent than he'd given her credit for, and they begin to work together well.

* Lookie here...another digression.  Throughout the entire book, I was giggling myself stupid over the name "Bear."  It's meant to be a nickname from his footballer days, like Moose or Tank, but every time I crossed it, I thought of very hairy and stout gay men, possibly inclined to lumberjack wear.

So once they start getting along, they still have preconceived images of each other.  She considers him a bit of a meathead, and he has it in his mind that she's a prissy yuppy.  So, they set a bet that they'll take each other on a date, and theoretically put the other one out his or her element. 

On the first date, Bear takes Christine to a seedy, downmarket bowling alley.  Although he's not a regular there, he tries to make her think this is the sort of joint he frequents.  After a couple of beers and a reasonably decent game of ninepins, they concede that they've actually both had a lot of fun. 

On the second date, Christine has scored free tickets to the Nutcracker, so she hauls Bear to the ballet.  Initially, she meets him at a snack-bar they frequent, and he's dressed in jeans and a workshirt.  But then he asks her to make a pit-stop at a dry-cleaners, from which he emerges fully gussied up in a well-cut suit.  She'd believed that he had no appropriate clothing for a fancy venue, but he'd gone to the effort to have his suit cleaned and pressed for the occasion.  Again, they go on a date and have a good time, ending it up with a walk on the beach, where naive Iowa girl Christine gets herself soaked to the skin in chilly Santa Cruz seawater.  Some kissing ensues.

So, they continue on with the house.  Christine's networking skills help them get free or cheap materials and other donations of labor and equipment, and their excellent progress is noted by the local planning commission who appoint Christine and Bear to head up a committee on further low-income housing renovations.  About this time Christine's office holiday party comes up.  She's already called it quits with Percy, the man from her office whom she'd been dating in a desultory fashion before she met Bear.  So, she asks Bear to the party with her.  He accompanies her, of course, and they meet a few people who are interested in helping with the renovations project.  The party, on the whole, is a bore, and Christine ends up in a bit of a slagging-match with her ex, Percy.  Christine and Bear leave early and embark upon the strangely chaste lovemaking scene cited at the head of this entry..

Soon afterwards, Christine is called up to the head office and accused of arranging for her volunteer commitments on company time and ordered to quit the volunteer project or risk her job.  Seeing as she is committed to paying off her car and student loans, she backs down.

Embarrased and confused, Christine doesn't offer Bear any explanation of why she has disappeared, and resigns from the City low-income-housing committee.  He think that she's getting all greedy and yuppie again and doesn't want to get messed up with a manual laborer.  She continues to work at the renovation project on weekends and some very late nights, and she and Bear manage to kind of scrape along, but resentful, hurt, and suspicious.

During this period of tension, a man Christine knew from her job and from the City proposes a venture for further renovations, but on the stipulation that she and Bear go into it as business partners, her for her networking acumen, he for his construction know-how.   Since she and Bear are on the outs, however, she turns him down.

Blah, blah, blah, Christine and Bear are miserable.  Confessions are made.  The relationship is patched back up.  They determine to go ahead and go into business together.  Christine sells off her BMW and buys a very used minivan for cash.  Bear, who throughout all of this has been learning to drive, buys a flashy convertible, because unbeknownst to Christine, he's actually a retired NFL footballer and banked the bulk of his hefty NFL paychecks, choosing to live a low-key lifestyle and work construction on renovation projects because he wanted to commit himself to something positive.  The ending, of course, is happy and wedding bells are on the future for the Iowan Yuppie and the hammer-handling ex-Bronco.

During the course of this bad-books project, I will probably read books in pairs or groups per theme, as I have been so far.  Thus far, I've had a pattern, of the first book I read being completely awful, and the second being a welcome improvement.  So far the pattern continues.  While both of these books are set in the same region (San Francisco Bay Area) and in the same milieu (construction), they couldn't be more different.  Part of it is just that it is two different authors and two different decades.  The biggest difference, however, is the characters.  In Castles, both characters were really loathsome.  There was nothing especially prepossessing or charming about either; they were both total assholes.  In Built To Last, both characters are sweet.  Sure, they misunderstand and stereotype each other at first, but they are both intelligent and compassionate enough to look deeper and discover that the other is actually a decent human being.  They stand on much more equal footing, as well, both being highly competent in his or her field.  There is none of the dominating or breaking down that we saw in Castles, either.  The virgin sex trope is alive and well, but the approach to her losing her virginity is much more affectionate.  Bear wants Christine to have a good time, whereas Mike wanted to MAKE Samantha to want him.

My next two books are both called Duchess.  I wonder which one of them will suck.  I guess there's only one way to find out.

Dude, we get it...the E.R.A. movement scared you

Good gawdalmighty.  I just finished up reading a book written by a woman with a serious axe to grind.  The axe being "don't let your women get too independent, or they'll stop being proper women, and then what the hell will we do with 'em?"

 

The central message of this novel is that women want and need to be dominated and subjugated by men.  A. Lot.

Published in 1984, just two short years after the Equal Rights Amendment was shot down, the anxiety about the increasing uppityness of women is transparent and palpable.  Every other page is larded with heavy disapproval of Sam's independence and with covert admiration for Mike's breaking her down and "putting her in her place."

Dialogue is overtly sexist, and many of the so-called sexy scenes strike me as pretty close to rape.  There's a lot of "'no'-means-I-am-not-trying-hard-enough" and a lot of breaking down of defenses.

The trope of "belligerent sexual tension" is the theoretical principal motivator of the narrative.  However, Samantha is pretty fucking vile pretty much from page 1 through page 252, as is Mike.  Basically, both protagonists are completely loathsome.  She's basically a buzzsaw with tits, and he's a cocky, megalomaniacal bully who's trying to rule the world with his cock.

There is so much just brainbendingly awful text in this book, I can't even.

When I started this project, I stopped at Office Max on my way home from work one night and bought myself a little pack of those Posty-Note page marker tabs, such as you use on legal documents where you have stuff you need to reference in a report.  

As you can see, I used almost an entire block of them to demarcate remarkably offensive, sexist, or sexually-aggressive passages in this book.  Eventually, I kind of got weary of even marking this shit.

And, because there is SO MUCH to object to in this book, I'm not even going to bother transcribing this foolishness.  I'm posting photos of the text, consequences be damned.  I seriously doubt this book is still in print, and if anyone wants to actually seek out and buy a copy to read, well heck, the title and author are pretty much the first thing you'll see on this page.  Knock yerself out, folks.

Okay...on with the show, this is iiiiiiitttt,

A little bit of back-story.  This Mike Sutherland guy is a bigtime contractor and has been poaching a lot of Samantha's best workers.  She ambushes him at a jobsite, bitches him out, not knowing that the random muscley lunkhead she's castigating is actually the business owner, and he determines that he won't carry on a fight on his jobsite and insists that she go out to dinner with him to discuss the situation.  He picks her up from her apartment in a Ferrari (NB, how delightfully, tackily 1980s, right???) Immediately, squicky sexual tensions begin to arise.  Also much belligerent attraction, or whatever they call it over on TV Tropes.

In the swanky restaurant, he starts macking all over her.  Because nothing impresses a lady like being full-court-press seduced in a public place, amirite?

I just highlighted this one because it is annoyingly sexist and made me want to just go upside a fictional character's head with a brickbat, is all.

 Blah, blah, almost-sex scene (I say "almost" because they don't actually get their bone on until about 20 pages from the end).  I only highlight it because of the whole "[h]is intense masculinity subjugated..." bit.  Because who doesn't want to be subjugated?  Oh wait...yeah.  Most of us.  Also, what's with the scorching?  Is he filled with molten lead or something?  Weird.  Also I accidentally cut off part of the passage, but apparently he is a Houdini when it comes to undressing a woman and can get her dress undone without her knowing it. 

 One of those delightful quasi-rape scenes.  Oh.  Yay.

 Because what women really want is to give over the governance of their lives to someone else.  Preferably a man who insults them and cuts them down in front of their colleagues and employees.

 A little more of the "'no' just means I'm not trying hard enough" action.  Good god, the message that it is okay, and even desirable for a man to push for sexual action is pervasive in this book.  Back when I was an earnest young thing in college and we did a unit on romance novels in a popular culture class, I formulated the notion that a lot of romance novels are sold to young women whose ideas about sex and relationships are very malleable and that a girl could get the idea that it was all right and even perhaps preferable if a guy was kind of mean to her or was sexually aggressive.  That these books could help formulate a young woman's attitude toward sex, gender norms, and what is acceptable in a relationship.  Given that this particular novel wears its agenda out loud and proud, my old, rickety theory raised its hand and waved "hello."  I really do see a lot of these novels as being a  sort of cultural primer for sexual and romantic behavior intended for an impressionable audience.  And in that, such novels with questionable intent (like the one under discussion today) carry a certain amount of potential danger for the impressionable and disinclined-to-analyze reader.

 Woo, woo.  More sexism.

 Well, here's some more quasi-rape to warm your knickers.  Hot sauce, right? 

 Heyo!  He actually causes her physical damage.  Goodfuckinggrief.

 I think the author is trying to go for the "she likes it rough" trope, but it still comes off so very unpleasant.

 Ah yes, again with the "I should let you run my life" schtik.  Because men just want their women to be puppets, and all women secretly wish they were marionettes.

 So, now because she won't go all the way with him, he is trying to make her jealous and basically guilt her into fucking him.  Klassay.

 The spanking scene.  Because physical intimidation and infantalization are nothing but hawwwwt.

 He doesn't spank her after all.  So she claws him across the mug. 

 He ends up meeting her mother who informs him that Samantha definitely needs a man to boss her around.

 Blah, blah, seduction.  I just was particularly taken by the description of his seduction of her as being a "deep invasion [that] was wholly male."  Hurr, hurr, penetration.

 Another reference to the curtailed spanking scene.  And reference to the notion that naughty little girls need punishment and that he's more than happy to dole it out.

 "No" means "goddammit woman, I'm gonna make you want me, so getta load of this tongue."

So, after she finally gives in and gives up her virginity (of course she was a virgin; of course) to the manly-Mike, Mike does her the favor of running off her ex-boyfriend by basically calling her a slut.  Thoughtful guy, eh?

 Further explanation of the ex-banishing maneuver.  Because a woman can't be trusted to a) know her own mind, b) take care of her own relationships, and c) be trusted to manage either.

By this point the entire endeavour has become so tedious I can't even continue.  I managed to finish the book, in which they bickered and battled until damn near the very final page.  Bickered, battled, and boned.  Both protagonists were complete assholes and really, spending as much time with them as I did was a real feat of endurance.  I need to get better at, you know, skimming a book instead of getting all committed to reading it, no matter how brutally awful it is.  Some characters really are a waste of my time and good nature. 

The Last (one should hope) Viking

Well, I decided to carry on with the theme of horny time-travelers, and this time lowered the bar of my expectations.

I lie.  I expected this book to be utterly fucking terrible.  Since it was moderately to passably rotten, it pleasantly exceeded my expectations.

Also, it was a mercifully quick read, with little intrigue, few subplots, and once Girolf made it to 1998, his ass stayed there, which was quite frankly a little easier on everyone.

Also..."Girolf."  I expect it's meant to be pronounced something like "Yirolf" with a long "O" as in "rose," but I kept hearing it in my head as something not far off "giraffe."  Though the author shortened it to Rolf, which, of course made me think of this guy.

Anyway, nutshell synopsis  - Viking dude of the 10th century survives a storm which breaks apart his longship.  When day breaks, he floats to shore in...Connecticut, in 1998, 1,000 years later than when he had set sail.  He breaks into a medieval studies professor's house and sets himself up a rabbit roast in her fireplace and threatens her with a knife when she gets home.  Somehow, the relic-containing belt buckle he wears helps him understand modern English and speak it.   The Viking's magical translator belt and a pair of stylish armbands which doubtlessly accentuate his bulging biceps prove to be of great academic interest to Meredith's sister, brother, and colleagues and precipitate a rather far-fetched heist attempt.

The professor has set herself a task of finishing a replica Viking longship that her deceased grandfather had begun.  Girolf, full of bossy, "manly" swagger, tells her the workmanship stinks and begins breaking apart the ship with the intent to rebuild it and try to sail himself back to 10th century Norway.  Professor Meredith protests and Rolf determines to help her finish her ship properly and build himself a secondary boat for his own quest.  In the midst of all sorts of personality clashing and strife, the two fall in lust, then in love.

Meredith's intern, a cocky former Marine called Mike befriends the Viking and teaches him how to drive a pickup truck, love Home Improvement (good lord, does this ever date the book!) and shop for power tools.

A great deal of interference from Meredith's family, especially ambitious, scheming Jillian, and her overbearing Ivory Tower parents helps prevent the horny Norseman and the prissy professor from consummating their lust until a good halfway through the book, though once they start fucking, they pretty much don't stop until the last page.

The novel has two particularly ludicrous scenes that definitely conform to the bodice-ripper stereotype:

 "'Say the words," he demanded.

Her pale face turned pink with embarrasment, but she yielded.

'Touch me,' she whispered. 'Please.'

He needed no more invitation. Looping a finger under the front band between her breasts, he pulled forward, tearing the garment. Her breasts burst free, and they were glorious, perfect globes of creamy skin and dusky auroles."

 ****************************************************************************

She wasn't really frightened, except perhaps of the thudding of her heart.  She surprised herself by doing as he commanded, raising her hands to the top of the refrigerator, where she grasped the edges of a casserole dish. But despite the compliant pose, she tossed her hair over her shoulder in a geature of petulance.

'Ah, a defiant slave,' he cooed.  'Are you wanting to be tamed, wench?'

She shook her head.  Do I?

 Before she realised his intent, he eased the small knife inside the neckline of her sweater, first to the left, then the right, slitting the straps of her bra.  He did the same from under the hem in front, cutting the center band of her undergarment.  With the flick of his fingers, he pulled the wispy lingerie out and dropped it to the floor."

So, basically the take-away message I gathered from this book is that Vikings are hella hard on your brassiere supply. 

Also, in that first scene where he literally rips the bra off her body, I kept thinking that must have been hella unpleasant.  Do you people know how tough your typical brassiere is?  Since most of you are lady types or men who have probably taken off a bra or two in your day, I assume you know.  That shit is structural and generally constructed as such that you could probably skydive by the damn thing with impunity.  If some asshole was yanking so hard on my brassiere that he tore it off my body, he'd probably take out a rib or two along the way.

 Not cool, Girolf. 

Not tender, nor sessy. 

Sorry, man.  Don't try again.

And the moral of the story is...

Don't form any expectations before you open the book.

The book in question being A Slip In Time, by Kathleen Kirkwood.

 The premise promised a fair amount of amusement.  There's the fish-out-of-water theme of a medieval Scottish nobleman pitching up in the Victorian era versus a prissy Victorian shabby-genteel woman coping with an oiled-up near-barbarian.  There's, of course, the appeal of the supernatural.  And of course there are lots of descriptions of pretty dresses and stately homes.  To myself, I was thining, "oh boy, oh boy...the bar's set pretty high with this one.  Hell of a way to start out this blog, what with horny Medieval Scotsmen, trembling Victorian virgins, time-travel, mystery, and social intrigue."  Because I was all charged up to read a rockin' fast-paced mystery novel with time-travel, boning, and betrayal, the pacing, back-story, and frankly not-very-sexy sex scenes came as a total bummer.

I'll say this right now in Ms. Kirkwood's defense - chick does know late-Victorian fashion.  She described one of her heroine's day dresses as being about a year out of fashion and explained how in a way which was absolutely factual and accurate for 1893.

Choosing a morning dress of striped changeable silk, she rid herself of the dressing sacque and drew it on. Betty gushed over the gown's details - the multicolored stripes of rose, green, and brown, and the lacy "Vandykes," long V-shaped points of snowy Irish lace running in double rows down the bodice and edging the cuffs. In truth, the style was a year out of date, the skirt being somewhat narrower than this season's, and the upper sleeves not as full above the elbow..."

However, the storyline had a real tendency to bog down in background - about the betrayals Rae's middle brother was orchestrating and the Cinderella-and-the-Stepsisters situation that Julia's aunt was inflicting upon Julia.  The author spent perhaps too much time making clear that the heroine and hero were wronged parties and perversely made them less sympathetic characters through utter fatigue of the point.  And don't get me started on the sex scenes.  They were about as sexy as a bowl of cold porridge.  I believe Ms. Kirkwood's favored term for gettin' it on was "he filled her."  Although at one point, he sheathed himself within her.  Um.  Eeew.  Fuck!

I felt that the explanation of why the protagonists keep time-traveling was a bit labored and...nebulous, as well.  Apparently it's gemstones and phases of the moon.  And the only way they can seal their fate and love is to rid the entire property of any kind of mineral crystal before the moon  turns full.

The story has some moments of charm.  The elderly Lord Muir taking Julia under his wing is rather sweet, and the interplay between kinsmen Lord Muir and Rae McKinnon is amusing at times.  The scene where Lord Muir's supernaturalists are testing the time slip wherein Julia is fending off Rae's seduction is actually giggle-worthy.  But on the whole, the story is surprisingly tedious when you consider that it's a tale of time-travel, prissy Victorian virgins and virile Medieval Scotsmen.

I reckon I'll give this one a C-

Bodice Ripper Bullet Points

•  Early on in the story, Rae thinks Julia is a witch and tears her nightgown off of her and inspects "every inch of her body.
• After ascertaining that no mark of the Devil could be found on her tender flesh he decided she owed him a kiss after all his efforts and lays upon her the most intrusive and quite frankly obnoxious French kiss I've ever read about.  To wit:  

  "Julia saw the hungry look kindle in the Scotsman's eyes.  He gathered her to him, drawing her up in his arms til they both knelt in the middle of the mattress, pressed together.  Before she could protest, his mouth crushed down on hers, a searing possessive kiss.
  
  His hand slid down her spine to the hollow of her back, then over her backside (NB: she's still buck nekkid from the inspection process) kneading her flesh and Holding her firmly against him.  The wool of his plaid rasped her tender flesh and through its folds she felt the hard, shocking proof of his desire. 
  
  Julia struggled to no avail as the Scotsman continued his aggression, parting her lips and invading her mouth.  She started as his tongue laid siege to hers, stroking, fencing, and ravishing till her blood surged beneath his seduction.  Her voice abandoned her, as did her strength, so undone was she by his virile highland possession." 

•  At another point in the proceedings, after Julia decides that she likes doing the nasty with Rae, they both get so horny that he can't wait to remove her corset the regular way (loosen the laces, unhook the busk) and so he whips out his dirk (hurr, hurr, hurr) and slices the laces asunder.

And because my brains have been warped by lo these many years of trashy pop-cultural exposure, pretty much EVERY time they mention a "time slip" in this story, I had a really damn hard time not belting out, "Let's Do The Time Warp Agaiiiiinnnnnnnnn!"

How this came to pass...

My mother-in-law Nancy (the tiny, white-haired woman on the porch) and I went in together to buy the house you see above. Joel and I are about to start renovating it for Nancy. She's going to be our neighbor, six doors down. We're all pretty excited about this upcoming endeavor. But before the renovation can take place, I have had to clean out the basement of this little house. The previous owners knocked $1,000 off the selling price because they had no intention of dealing with the basement full of junk.
As you can see, this was not a basement for the faint of heart.
Or stairs for the clumsy of feet.
 
In the process of clearing out the basement, I discovered several boxes packed to the bursting with books. The bulk of the selection are extremely cheap pulp romances of the formula type, though there's a mix of other picks from murder mysteries to helpful hints on living via the tenets of the Bible. I will be selecting books from the stash to read, contemplate, and review here. Some of these books I intend to share with blog readers as very silly giveaways. Others, I intend to inflict on friends and family as gag gifts. Still others, I hope to perhaps swap and trade locally for other titles that I am more interested in actually owning. We shall see what transpires.
 
My plan is to start with a stack of books I have selected as looking either particularly ridiculous, potentially funny, or actually legitimately amusing. I'll probably begin each book by basically skimming it to determine if I can actually bear with reading it. If it is just too fucking awful, I will simply post pictures of the cover, select some mockable excerpts, and just MST3K the shit out of the thing. If it is essentially readable, then I will read it and provide a legitimate review. Every entry will start out with a cover shot and photo of the blurb, if available, then my impressions of the book itself. Sometimes, I'm sure I will be pretty obnoxious about it. There will probably be cusses. This is to be expected, if you know much about how I roll. $25 dollar vocabulary and cheap-thrills profanity. I do hope you're not too delicate to handle it. Well, here's to a thrilling selection of throbbing members, trembling flowers, thrusting groins and heated loins. Should be a wild ride!