Escapism as a trend?

With everything going on in the world right now, I can honestly say, I have never been more grateful to live on an island in the middle of nowhere. I can’t fully escape seeing and feeling what is happening everywhere else, but I do get to walk on the beach and pretend I’m removed from it all for a few moments each day.

Home. The British Virgin Islands. 

Increasingly, people need an escape. This is reflected, in my view, in new trends in the world of romance books. We seem to be moving away from dark, angst-filled books, towards lighter romances, still with conflicts and tension but not as heavy as the sub-genres that have soared in recent years.

Another trend I have noticed is for shorts and novellas. Not necessarily as a replacement to novels but as alternative options. A fast escape from reality, whether they be enjoyed by readers lying in bed at night, during their lunch hour, or on a commuter train. See Carina Press’s call for erotic shorts and multiple anthologies, for example: http://carinapress.com/blog/submission-guidelines/ 

In terms of reading and writing, my own tastes are also reflective of the market. I am writing lighter books and dabbling in shorter books that are a little more removed from ‘real-life’ scenarios. My reading tastes are heading in the same direction. In fact, in the virtual book club I run through Facebook, my readers are choosing more fun reads and loving them. I am also listening to brighter music and watching rom-coms more often (together with eating copious amounts of chocolate but I’m not sure that’s relevant to the trend towards escapism J).

I want to make this blog interactive. So, tell me what you do to escape the realities of life, whether it be reading, writing, listening to music or something else.

I want to know whether you have noticed a shift towards less intense reads, and what you are reading of late.

Finally, I would love your suggestions for lighter books that I should read this summer and perhaps recommend in my book club.

Comment on this post and come to chat with me here:

www.facebook.com/groups/carterschiccats

www.facebook.com/lauracarterauthor

www.instagram.com/lauracarterauthor

www.twitter.com/lcarterauthor

If you are interested in joining a virtual romance book club, click here: www.facebook.com/groups/carterschiccats

Five Characters You Meet at Book Club

Today the Ladies Smythe & Westin are back in Permanently Booked, a book club-themed mystery. To celebrate—and perhaps as a gentle caution—here are the profiles of a few interesting members you may encounter at your next literary gathering:

Hermione 10.0

I know, we all adore Hermione Granger. This is Hermione on steroids. Uber-dedicated but a bit of a bossypants, she’s already finished every book on the selection list—and she’ll lap you on the re-reads. She prefers to draft her own reader’s guides and the questions are a lot tougher than the ones you prepped for on the Internet.

Sidebar Cindy and Cell Phone Sue

I’m counting these two as one here, since it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart. Sidebar Cindy talks nonstop about everything other than books: her love life, her workout routine, her kids’ soccer games, the last amazing party you weren’t invited to—you name it. Cell Phone Sue texts constantly, with alert pings that drive your dog through the glass coffeetable. She also loves to share photos and takes selfies with the refreshments. This duo usually arrives late, and neither has read the book up for discussion. Closest book club BFFs: Wine-Hog Wanda and Resked-Request Rita.

Fandango Fran

She’s rarely read the book, but you can bet she’s seen the movie or TV show, and blithely tries to fake it. No one except Hermione 10.0 wants to clue her in that the movie had a different ending, because that would be rude and embarrassing. She’s not going to read the book, anyway.

Malachi the Writer Guy

This member never misses a meeting. He’s in your writer’s group, too, but they’re the same thing, right? Malachi the Writer Guy is dying to share his (own) two-thousand-page novel. Usually military fiction with extremely, er, vivid romantic interludes you’ll never scrub from your mind.  Don’t bother trying to figure out a way to get rid of him. It’s futile.

Doodlebug Debbie

No one really knows about Debbie. She never says a word at meetings, but creates endless, highly-detailed illustrations on the back of the reader’s guide handout in shaded pencil. Mutilated unicorns, elaborate skulls, bloody, medieval-looking hatchets, that kind of thing. Probably best not to ask.

I admit, I may have exaggerated a teensy bit here—and if you share any qualities with these characters, I sincerely apologize. See you next month—Hermione 10.0 is already halfway through Permanently Booked!

Please join Lisa Q. Mathews at her website, on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. 

Readers, do you have a character to add to this list? Discuss below in the comments!

Chat or Chore? The book group

I'm Clare and I used to belong to a book group. (Chorus of "hello, Clare" LOL).

I gained a tremendous amount from it. I read books that I would never have considered buying on my own. I read in many different author styles - in many historical periods - in many different genres. It was also a great way to get together with friends each month, and chat about something other than the jobs we hated doing, the news that had depressed us, and the families driving us mad LOL. We'd extend the agenda to movie adaptations, other books by the same author etc etc.

It was a joy to discuss books with other readers when it was fresh in our minds. Okay, sometimes we disagreed with the overall opinions - or was that just me?! - but that made the evening even more interesting.

And then came the cracks.

"We should try a thriller next time," someone said with cheerful brightness. "Clare can choose that one for us." Understand this, I'm not ashamed of loving thrillers and crime novels. I'm Lee Child's greatest fan, at least in my house. But it seemed my taste for suspense and romance wasn't on anyone else's list.

We read a particularly emotionally harrowing one, which I didn't enjoy. "Have you read any others of his?" I was asked. I decided not to take that as patronising. (Not yet, anyway). "I don't think you appreciate his wonderful sense of time and place." It was still harrowing and an unpleasant read, I wanted to say :(. There are other ways of absorbing the same time and place, surely?

Then we read a Booker Prize nominee. Everyone raved about it, except me. Did I agree with them to keep the peace? In the spirit of tolerance and friendship? I'm afraid not :). Letting mischief take over, I announced that I had found it to be the worst waste of paper I'd ever read. Contrived setting, unfulfilling plot, self-indulgent characters ... I bit my tongue at everyone's disapproval.

Oh, Provocative Me! I left the book club soon after. All very amicably, don't worry. My friendships are intact :). And in fact the club fizzled to a halt soon a few months later, anyway. (And I haven't used actual conversations or details of my book group, so as to protect the innocent LOL).

I've decided that although I like to have my horizons stretched now and then - and I LOVE to talk books with people! - I read such a wide and varying range of books, good, bad, life-changing and DNFs, that it's difficult to find regular soulmates. It's also not easy to commit to any kind of club when my life is up and down with writing deadlines. The best I can do is overlap on some books with friends, as and when I read them. But the real benefit of my wide reading tastes is that I can overlap with all kinds of people, not just my immediate circle of friends, and that makes for some fascinating conversations.

Fiction is fiction, I often say! If you love reading, you love A LOT of it :). And although many of us can crit a book intelligently and constructively, it's not always easy to explain exactly WHY you feel the way you do about it. Sometimes it's enough for me that a book moves me emotionally, without it having to be dissected, or indeed, prove "worthy" to be so.

So have you ever been in a book group? Online or in real life? Enjoyed it? Or not?

It's always interesting to hear how people like to share their responses to a book. Tell us what you think! :)