Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

The Courier Mail book reviewers took time to identify some of their favorite books of 2007. Kate Cuthbert, one of the romance reviewers, listed three of the best of 2007: Demon Angel (The Guardians, Book 2) by Meljean Brook; And Then He Kissed Her by Laura Lee Guhrke; and Passion for the Game by Sylvia Day.
Demon Angel, from new author Meljean Brooks, is the kind of novel you are lucky if you manage to come across maybe once a year: a thick, meaty, dig your feet in and hold on tight kind of novel with adventure, sex and an epic quality that’s rarely seen in this genre. Demon Angel is an astonishing debut, and a harbinger of great things to come. If you read one romance this year, make it this one.
You can read the rest of the recommendations here.

National Book Critics Circle posted a summarization of the results of its Ethics in Book Reviewing survey. It’s okay to ignore self published authors and you shouldn’t review a book without reading the whole thing. There’s lots of other stuff, like whether it is more appropriate to eat m&m’s or hershey kisses while reviewing and whether you have to wear pants when you type since no one can see you, so go ahead and read the rest of the summarization.

(Yes, I made the latter two survey results up.)

Yesterday, Normal Mailer was the winner of the 14th annual Bad Sex writing award, announced by Literary Review magazine. His winning entry was:

So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.

The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again! His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.

SB Sarah loved his use of the word “piety”.

Personally, I loved this entry by Ali Smith …