Yet another 10 bookish pet peeves, romance novel edition

I'm not participating in the Top ten Tuesdays meme this week, but here is one of my own lists:

These come in addition to the general peeves that I dislike in all fiction (list 1, list 2).

Heroines who need rescuing by the hero all the time. Come on, authors, can’t she solve the problem herself or rescue him for a change?
Alpha jerk heroes. Take-charge is one thing, bullying is another altogether.
“Forced seduction”, i.e. heroes who rape or “forcibly seduce” the heroines. Extends to heroines who get Stockholm syndrome and fall in love with the alpha jerk heroes who raped/”forcibly seduced” them. Authors, if you make the heroine fall in love with her rapist I am going to make a voodoo doll with your name on it and stick pins in it until you stop writing that crap. Never, in any set of circumstances is this ever right. Not even when the heroine discovers halfway through the ordeal that she likes it.
Pirate heroes. Read my essay about this subject for the reasons why.
Characters in historical romances who behave like the cast of The Young and the Restless in costume, i.e. historical characters who are so modern in opinion and behaviour that I feel as if I am reading a contemporary novel with all the characters dressed up as lords and ladies of past times. I don’t mind it a little - after all, we can’t know for certain that such opinions and attitudes didn’t exist in olden times - but too much of it and the story becomes unconvincing.
Unnecessary sex scenes. I like it when a sex scene strengthens the bond between heroine and hero or furthers the plot in other ways, but I detest sex scenes for the sake of sex. Especially when they are clearly padding and go on for chapters.
Jealous, evil skanky ex-mistresses, sisters, step-sisters, mothers and stepmothers. Puh-lease, that is so Barbara Cartland.
Lust = love. Authors, if you can’t make the falling-in love development convincing, you have no business writing romance.
Virgin heroines in 98% of modern romances. Of the remaining 2%, the majority are Amish and Christian/inspirational romances, which I, heathen that I am, don’t read, and the remainder are the ones where the author actually managed to make it plausible for a modern heroine over 20 to be a virgin. Virgin heroes are even less believable, but they are so rare that reading about one is refreshing rather than off-putting.
The sassy gay friend. He is funny and endearing and we love him, but he is woefully overused in modern romance novels. How about a cranky lesbian best friend for a change, or how about this: can the heroine actually have a heterosexual male friend, or even just a couple of normal, supportive female friends? I find romance heroines in general to be woefully lacking in friends, which is perhaps why I love to read Jennifer Crusie (who incidentally did write a novel with a hero who had a lesbian friend) and Nora Roberts’ books, because their heroines always have friends.

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

Reading in Reykjavík

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