Romance book of the year shocker, Richard’s DNA spurs infidelity questions, social media harassment rises to the Supreme Court
Publishing Newsbest of list / Goodreads / harassment / social media / Supreme Court22 Comments
The Supreme Court Heard Its First Social Media Harassment Case – The Supreme Court is currently hearing oral arguments in the case of Elonis v. United States, which is being touted as the first social media harassment case to hit the legal big leagues. Note that the criminal defendant, who was convicted for threatening interstate communications, has challenged his conviction on First Amendment grounds. The nature of social media, however, makes the case a much more complex legal situation than it might otherwise be:
According to court papers, after Pennsylvania’s Anthony Elonis’s wife and two children left him in 2010, he began posting violent threats about her on Facebook. Elonis was no angel before that: After sexually harassing two of his female co-workers, he went on to post a Facebook photo of himself holding a knife to a female coworker’s throat (taken at a Halloween event) with the caption “I wish.” He was fired the next day. . . .
The case would determine whether the US cyberstalking law Section 875(c) could be expanded to require proof of “subjective intent” to threaten. As the law currently stands, a person can face federal charges, up to five years in prison, and a $250,000 fine for threatening to injure someone over the internet, via telephone, or any other kind of interstate or international communication.
The Supreme Court decision in Elonis will be vital for determining how online harassment and threats are prosecuted going forward, specifically impacting cases like Gamergate, where the majority of the threats against female gamers were made in third-party message boards and on Twitter.
–Vice
Twitter reveals new tools to deal with abuse and harassment after criticism – In the wake of Gamergate harassment problems, Twitter has created new tools that apparently make it easier to report harassment and manage harassing users, including the ability to prevent people you’ve blocked from seeing your profile. I think it’s smart that they have not actually changed service “rules,” because challenges will likely be less severe. Also, more changes are apparently in the works, and it will be interesting to see what else they attempt to implement.
The new tools include a more mobile friendly and simpler reporting system for abusive tweets, which will require less information from users. The new tools will make it easier for those that observe abuse but aren’t receiving it directly to report abuse, Twitter said in a blog post.
The company has also made changes to its internal processes that will help it review reported tweets and accounts more quickly, it said.
The new tools don’t change the company rules around harassment and abuse, but make problem tweets easier for users and the company to respond to, it said. –The Independent
Richard III’s DNA throws up infidelity surprise – So this is interesting. The remains found under a shopping center parking lot in Leicester have been confidently identified as those of Richard III. But that’s only half the story; the more interesting part is that the genetic analysis uncovered evidence of likely infidelity somewhere in the maternal line. Just imagine the fictional possibilities…
Their analysis shows that DNA passed down on the maternal side matches that of living relatives, but genetic information passed down on the male side does not. . . .
The instance of female infidelity, or cuckolding, could have occurred anywhere in the numerous generations that separate Richard III from the 5th Duke of Beaufort (1744-1803), whose living descendants provided samples of male-line DNA to be compared against that of the Plantagenet king. –BBC News
Goodreads Choice Awards 2014 – Best Romance – Wow. Out of a total of more than 239, 000 votes, Diana Gabaldon’s Written in My Own Heart’s Blood has taken first place, with a whopping total of 50,933 votes (more than 20% of the votes spread across a field of 20 books). Book #8 in the Outlander series, which Gabaldon swears is not Romance won Best Romance by a landslide. Did a lot of Starz viewers vote? I just don’t even know what to make of this. Do we get to see Gabaldon make some kind of acceptance speech? I’d love to see that. –Goodreads
The most hilarious thing about the Gabaldon win was her FB post in which she snootily pointed out that she would have won in Historical Fiction and General Fiction too. My take from this is that Goodreads readers are as confused about genre as most other non-romance readers. Last year I think all the romance nominees were NA and half of them weren’t NA romance.
a good portion of the romance nominations this year were NA again – i mean, you can’t tell me there weren’t plenty of other romances released this year to beat out the Colleen Hoovers and others (not that they are bad, just the amount of them was staggering)
Written In My Own Heart’s Blood is not a romance. It’s also not a particularly good book; I realize that Gabaldon writes her books in vignettes, but this one lacks focus and could have lost quite a bit of the word count during the editing process without being missed (I have a friend who think that everything from the fifth book onward could have been condensed into two novels at most, and I think she’s got a point).
But then Gabaldon does have a lot fans, and since her work was placed in the romance category, I’m not surprised they voted for her there.
I’m with Ros, her post on facebook about making to the higher rounds in the voting was very snotty. As much as I love her books, I don’t really care for her. I am curious to know how GR picks books to be in certain categories, because there were a few NA books in the romance category. Or they didn’t feel like making a new category for it.
Of Gabaldon’s books, I’ve only read Outlander. I thought it could have used a much heavier edit, personally, and I thought this before I ever started writing books or reading about publishing. However, I really liked the Starz series. I think the TV series is a HUGE factor in the book winning. It’s a largely recognizable name, and even if readers hadn’t read THAT book, they might vote based on the series, or not knowing any of the other nominees. Curious how it got on the list.
And while I think Gabaldon’s snootiness toward romance is eye-rolling, she has a point similar to what Jodi Picoult raised; both authors get pegged as romance or women’s fic instead of say historical or literary. Picoult has a lot of good points which basically point back to sexism, which is stuff all of us on this board have probably read about a hundred times already. I think it applies to Gabaldon as well.
Also very surprised that Rainbow Rowell’s Landline, which was my least favorite of her four releases to date, won the Goodreads Best Fiction award over books by well-known authors including Jodi Picoult, Jojo Moyes and Anna Quindlen. I’m a big fan of the author, but Landline was certainly not the best novel I read in 2014.
@It’s Me: I think the books are just nominated by GR readers, not picked by GR staff. So I guess a lot of Gabaldon’s readers do think she writes romance.
@Ros: I don’t recall ever seeing an actual nomination process for the GR awards.
And as to how the book (Outlander) became romance – GR crowdsources genres. So if enough people shelve it as Romance, it’s romance on that site.
I’ve never read/watched Outlander but a lot of my friends have. They all tell me that its a really long and super involved time-traveling, love triangle historical romance.
@MrsJoseph: in the book it’s not really a love triangle, but from what I gather the series really plays up the Claire-Frank relationship. In the book they’re more like strangers trying to reconnect, having spent the several years apart during the war.
It’s difficult to classify, but I think the closest for me is historical fiction, albeit with romantic, adventure and time travel elements. Also the Loch Ness monster.
Another bad book that won was “The Book of Life” by Deborah Harkness. UGH!!
@SusanS: I agree with you about Landline.
“And as to how the book (Outlander) became romance – GR crowdsources genres. So if enough people shelve it as Romance, it’s romance on that site.”
That is another reason why I dislike GR.
@mel burns: Thank god I’m not the only one wondering WTF. I DNF’d Discovery of Witches and found the heroine bordering TSTL territory despite being an Oxford professor.
And if Gabaldon is romance, why isn’t Harkness? She seems to be marketed as historical fantasy but DoW read like straight PNR to me.
@Lada: Just chiming in to say, “Ditto,” on the Harkness series. One of those books/series where I stand on the sidelines, blinking stupidly at the books’ fans, and feeling like an alien among my own species.
Harkness: loved the first book, could barely get through the second.
I used audible.com’s generous return policy to return Discovery of Witches. I have to really hate a book to take that step.
@Kim W: “I had pre-ordered The Book of Life” from Audible and returned it after reading a quarter of the book in print. I have no hesitation at all about returning audios to Audible…..I am grateful for their generous return policy too.
Just a question: What does NA mean?
@AJ: New Adult.
@Rose: I’d say the first book fits as genre romance because there is a central love relationship (Jamie and Claire) and a happy/optimistic ending. If one stopped there, one wouldn’t have to work too hard to believe in a HEA for them. However the next books are not necessarily HFN/HEA endings (even though DG has promised to end the series with a HEA with Jamie and Claire – who knows how old they’ll be by then).
The other thing is that after the first book, other main characters come into play and it develops into a family saga/historical novel. I read and liked Written in My Own Heart’s Blood but it’s not romance – it’s a historical book with romantic elements.
As much as I enjoy the books and the series, I’m not all that fond of the author’s social media style either.
At least the Sci Fi category got it right. The Martian was one of my favorite books this year and was originally self published. Can’t wait to see the movie with Matt Damon in the lead.
Also still a large amount of Twilight P2P fan fiction being picked as the “best of” at Goodreads. O.o
“The instance of female infidelity, or cuckolding, could have occurred anywhere in the numerous generations that separate Richard III from the 5th Duke of Beaufort (1744-1803)…”
A friend (Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, giving her props) has pointed out a problem here. So quick to assume female infidelity? She could have been raped. Any author can come up with a variety of situations that would have resulted in the woman not being unfaithful yet carrying a child not belonging to her husband, some of which would be not that farfetched. But I saw that headline numerous times without questioning it.
@Ros:
Her Outlander series isn’t particularly historically correct. There are people who would have had a fit over her winning anything history-related. To me it doesn’t qualify as a romance either. There’s cheating and bigamy involved, and her historical husband is some Christian Grey-precursor in disguise. I’m always astonished at such results. Or maybe not.
@Patricia Burroughs [aka pooks]: Between those two choices, I sure as hell hope it’s infidelity, because that’s a much more empowering narrative for the women involved.