The Book Smugglers

Alright, friends!  It’s time to kick off TALES FROM THE BLOG O’ SPHERE with my first interviewees…

Why The Book Smugglers? Well, it’s certainly not because they had me over for a guest blog themselves awhile back!  Goodness knows it’s not that.  Rather, it’s because Ana and Thea, the two ladies under suspicion of smuggling literature themselves, are some of the most diverse and busy bloggers in the industry today.

Reading everything from fantasy to paranormal romance to young adult to vampire-free romance at a blistering pace that makes lesser bloggers quiver in fear, these two ladies are some of the most attentive and active members of the community today.  Please join me as we discuss issues in these genres…with ladies.

Let’s survey your blog, at first: you ladies cover everything from YA to paranormal romance to romance without vampires to fantasy and beyond.  Would it be fair to say your tastes are eclectic, or do you think you simply know what you like and you tend to find it translates across genres?  Has it been a good year for those tastes?  Do you suppose the impending debuts of 2010 (there are a heap!) will also serve you well?

Thea: I think it’s a bit of both actually (eclecticism and we know what we like). One thing I think that is awesome about both Ana and myself is how willing we are to try different genres – because, ultimately, a good story is a good story regardless of the genre its filed under. We’re not snobs to say if something’s shelved as a “paranormal romance” or “literary fiction” that we won’t read it. Heck, you’d probably miss out on so many excellent stories out there if you discriminated based on genre! The thing that’s important to me is how entertaining, how thought-provoking, and how meaningful a book is. Strong characters, plotting, and writing will always be welcome on The Book Smugglers!

So far 2010 has been pretty good in terms of reading quality. Ana’s had more winners than I have so far, but I’ve already read a few very memorable books (dystopian SF thriller VERACITY by Laura Bynum, hard scifi TITAN by Stephen Baxter, delightful chick-lit paranormal NICE GIRLS DON’T HAVE FANGS by Molly Harper, to name a few). There are a TON of 2010 debuts that have me pretty giddy. The aforementioned VERACITY was a solid debut, and i’m also looking forward to BIRTH MARKED by Caragh O’Brien, GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD by Karen Healey, THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS by N.K. Jemisin, THE POISON THRONE by Celine Kiernan, SPELLWRIGHT by Blake Charlton…I’m forgetting a few, but there are many promising debuts out there this year. So far, I’ve only really been disappointed with MR. SHIVERS by Robert Jackson Bennett, but I’m hoping that’s the exception, not the rule.

Oh yeah and there’s also some joker who wrote TOMES OF…something. Or something like that. Might give him a try too….

ANA: Yes, I agree. It is both – being eclectic and knowing what I like. Although one is highly dependent on the other. Because I am eclectic I am open to trying new things, therefore what I like changes all the time. I am always discovering new genres, new subgenres whenever I dare to go outside comfort zones.    The bottom line is I simply cannot envision myself sticking to one genre, not only because I truly think I would be bored silly but because there are good stories everywhere.

So far, this year has been an awesome year for reading. YA BLEEDING VIOLET by Dia Reeves and Fantasy THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS by NK Jemisin were both amazing read, some of the best I have ever read. And Paranormal Romance ARCHANGEL’S KISS by Nalini Singh was pretty good too (see what I mean? Eclectic indeed) . As for debuts that I am looking forward to…..so many!

THE POISON THRONE by Celine Kiernan, WOLFSANGEL by M.D. Lachlan, basically the entire ANGRY ROBOT catalogue, plus several YA books. I don’t know about this one book called TOME OF THE UNDERGATES though. That much water on the cover….makes me nervous.

Did you know you are both girls?!  It’s baffling!  What’s more, you are girl BLOGGERS.  Let us take a moment for this to seep into the minds of people everywhere…okay, now let’s talk about “what women want.”  What are your thoughts on demographics?  Do you suppose female readers want different things from their fantasy and YA?  Or do we all pretty much want the same thing: love, hate, conflict and gore, just in different doses?  Do you find your views on certain books differ wildly from male bloggers or is a crappy book just crappy all around?

ANA: Weeeeeeeeeell, Sam.

Do female readers want different things from their fantasy and YA? Do male readers of fantasy live in their parents basements and have no social life?  How are we supposed to know what all “female readers” want? Thea and I are both female readers and we both want very different things from our books. We are not all the same you know, just because we share the same gender. I bet the same can be said about you guys.

This need to separate readers by gender is perhaps where the problem lies: a chromosome is not an imperative for whether a person wants gore or romance. To say that women don’t read Fantasy because we don’t like gore or conflict would be the same thing as to say that all men don’t like romance and emotions. Isn’t that a little of a gross generalisation? There’s gotta be room for personal preference and cultural background and a myriad of other factors.

Having said that: if we don’t think that genetics is not necessarily a determinant factor on what a person reads, perhaps cultural background  is. So, in a society like ours where female rights have only started to take hold a few decades ago, it doesn’t surprise us that people think that males read gore and female read romance and that people tend to navigate towards these genres accordingly. As time changes and opportunities open, more and more women read fantasy and more and more women are writing it too. YA for example, is replete with kickass female authors writing amazing speculative fiction.

An aside: We have to say that we were highly amused to see how people were surprised (and even furious in some cases) at the amount of women attending Comic Con. Because what? We can’t?

And to answer your other question: is a crappy book just crappy all around? As much as we would like to think so, if there is one thing we have learnt in these past two years of book reviewing is that there are no absolutes when it comes to reading. There are books we loved that other people hated and books we thought were absolute crap and other people hailed as the bestest ever. We do believe that certain things cannot be argued though: a shoddy plot, spelling mistakes, a poorly edited book but beyond that….reading and reviewing is really, a very subjective art. And this is why we think that yes, sometimes our opinions differ from other bloggers, but only because we are different PEOPLE not because they are male and we female. At least that’s how we see it, and we sure hope that’s how they see it too. Because otherwise you know: Thea is really, REALLY good with a chainsaw and I know how to get rid of the evidence.

We BET you did not know this question was a hornet’s nest did you, now? On second thought….maybe you did. Well played mister Sam.

THEA: Yeah, what Ana said! *revs chainsaw*

I find the whole stereotype thing (Only DUDES like horror! Only CHICKS like romance!) to be hilarious. I am probably the least romantic person you will ever meet, and I have an addiction to horror, gore, and an impressive collection of B-horror films and comic books.

My point is, these labels are silly. People, in general, like what they like. I don’t think you can generalize based on gender, because…well, not all women or men are the same. Some folks like romance. Some like zombies. Some like a weird combination of the two (hello, BREATHERS). Every reader has their own criteria, their own preferences of what they look for in a book. I think we all just want to be entertained, engrossed in the books we read.

And thank you for not drawing attention to the fact that I live in a basement!

There’s a lot of griping about cover art lately, but you’re one of the few that have an entirely different beef with covers.  We can agree that whitewashing covers (the practice of putting a lighter-skinned character on a cover when the actual character is darker) is a pretty reprehensible practice, misrepresenting the author and the reader alike.  How prevalent do you suppose this issue is?  Do you think more needs to be done to prevent it?  On a tougher note, do books actually suffer sales or see increased profits with whitewashing?  And what is your opinion of this?

THEA: Covers are a popular point of contention with bloggers all over the interwebs. We love fellow blogger Aidan Moher’s COVER SPOTLIGHT feature, and agree with a lot of his commentary concerning the general blandness of certain cover art. But yes, some issues are much more important than others – namely, whitewashing.

Whitewashing is a shockingly widespread practice, and it’s one that has been prevalent for a very long time. And it’s a problem in the speculative fiction genre, too. Anyone that’s read Ursula LeGuin knows that a majority of her characters are of darker skin tone, and yet early covers (and casting for that insipid EARTHSEA adapted miniseries from SciFi a few years back) depict white skinned characters.

This is to say nothing of the fact that in fantasy, science fiction and horror, or young adult literature, the overwhelming majority of protagonists are caucasian/European descent. Even in books with characters of color, they usually aren’t depicted on the cover (see for example Neil Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS or Alison Goodman’s EON). But that’s besides the point. Whitewashing is a racist practice that has been around for a long time, and one that publishers continue to use. It’s infuriating. There is no justification for changing a character’s race on a cover. That’s an active choice on the part of the publisher, and that’s racism, plain and simple. So yeah, you could say that we think there ought to be more done to prevent it!

As to the second part of your question, the popular rationale for whitewashing of covers is this idea that books with POC (persons of color) on the cover “don’t sell.” Is that true? Does whitewashing mean higher sales for a book? I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s any solid conclusive data to back that statement up – and part of that is because there are so few covers out there with POC on them (check out one survey done by a blogger cited at Racebending.com, in which a paltry 2% of 775 YA books looked at had POC on the covers). In a sense, yeah, books with POC on the covers don’t sell – but that’s because there AREN’T any significant number of POC on covers to begin with.

And considering the recycled, horrible crap that many publishing houses put out as covers, justifying whitewashing with the rationale that POC covers don’t sell seems more than a little disingenuous.

ANA: Exactly. More than that, it is a freaking insulting rationale too.

Now, what can be done to prevent it? On the part of the publishers: a more decisive, careful approach to covers. There’s gotta be a better communication between cover artists and editors. A lot of the times we hear the excuse that people working on the cover don’t even know what the book is about, but that cover  must go through several stages of approval by people that HAVE. Plus, if you are going to publish a book with a POC protagonist in it, OWN it, put that person on the cover. As for readers, the only thing we can do is to buy those books who have POC to show by way of numbers, that we don’t care who is on the cover as long as it is accurate!

Before becoming bloggers, we had no idea about these issues and how prevalent it was. The outcry surrounding the cover of Liar by Justine Larbarlestier and more recently Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore (and also, last year the whole RaceFail09) were huge eye openers. We are not leaders of any movement nor do we see ourselves as especially knowledgeable (it is a learning curve for us as well) but we like to think that we definitely part of the solution not part of the problem.

And thank you, Ana and Thea, for being our first guest!  I hope everyone found it just as insightful and perhaps less threatening than I did!  Tune in later in the week for more guests and more interviews!

Also: no, I don’t know what that thing on the MSPaint banner is supposed to be.