{"id":2173,"date":"2004-07-31T09:06:06","date_gmt":"2004-07-31T16:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/07\/31\/2173.html"},"modified":"2004-07-31T09:06:06","modified_gmt":"2004-07-31T16:06:06","slug":"cheerfulness-crusie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/07\/31\/cheerfulness-crusie\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheerfulness (Crusie)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A couple weeks ago, some of us were discussing romance novels, and Twig loaned me another Jennifer Crusie book, Faking It.<\/cite> (Longtime readers may recall that a couple years ago I read Welcome to Temptation<\/cite>—still my favorite of Crusie's so far—followed by Crazy for You,<\/cite> which I didn't like so much.) Mary Anne zipped through that before I finished it, so when we found ourselves at a bookstore a couple days later, we went in and picked up a used copy of Fast Women.<\/cite><\/p>\n

I did eventually finish Faking It,<\/cite> and now I'm halfway through Fast Women.<\/cite> And I'm finding again, as I found when reading Welcome to Temptation,<\/cite> that reading a little Crusie in the morning or before going to bed almost invariably cheers me up. Every few pages there'll be a funny or charming moment, a bit of near-perfect dialogue, a nice plot entanglement. And I'm fascinated by her handling of sex: she has sex scenes in which the man goes ahead with things despite quasi-objections from the woman, the woman is dubious and not really interested but not actually vehemently opposed to the idea, and afterward it's neither ignored nor turned into a big deal. I think if a male writer had written these scenes, or if they were from male points of view (and Crusie does switch PoV regularly), I would be a little put off by them; but Crusie manages to handle them in a way that feels realistic rather than creepy. I think in most fiction if this sort of scene happened it would be treated as rape; and I think it would be easy for such scenes to give the impression that the author is saying that no doesn't mean no, or that it's not a big deal if a man forces a woman to have sex with him against her will. But that's not how these scenes read.<\/p>\n

There are other common elements among her books that I don't like as much—I get a little tired of basically the same dog appearing in all of them, for example, and even though I like various aspects of her handling of the romance aspects, they are a little formulaic, in keeping with what little else I've read in the genre. And the female lead is usually someone who's always taken care of things\/people, always been sensible, but thinks too much and doesn't let her emotions go; and she and the male lead fight with each other, because he's kinda take-charge (though not always in the same way), and neither one will admit their growing attraction for each other. But I don't really mind; the writing is good, the characters are engaging, everything moves right along, and it's funny and charming enough that I'll probably keep reading whatever she writes.<\/p>\n

In fact, I sorta feel like I ought to keep a Jennifer Crusie book half-read at all times, so I'll always have something to cheer me up. But it's hard to pace myself, and I imagine I'll run out of her books fairly soon at the current rate. Ah, well.<\/p>\n

So far, I would rank the ones I've read (or am reading) in this order, from favorite to least favorite:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Welcome to Temptation<\/cite><\/li>\n
  2. Faking It<\/cite><\/li>\n
  3. Fast Women<\/cite><\/li>\n
  4. Crazy for You<\/cite><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I find it interesting that each one seems to me to be in a slightly different mixed genre. For example, Faking It<\/cite> seems to me to be something like a screwball comedy\/caper\/romance, while Fast Women<\/cite> is a mystery\/romance, and Crazy for You<\/cite> is more of a thriller\/stalker\/romance. I'm not sure how I'd characterize Temptation.<\/cite><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A couple weeks ago, some of us were discussing romance novels, and Twig loaned me another Jennifer Crusie book, Faking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}