TresSugar

Dear Poll: Book Smart or Streetwise?

DearSugar — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:00:00 -0700

I don't think I'm alone in saying there's nothing sexier than a smart man. Having brains to back up a good-looking exterior speaks mouthfuls, but sometimes even the smartest men can be less than intelligent when it comes to street sense. On the flip side, someone who's not necessarily a straight-A student can be brilliant when it comes to common sense .

So ladies, since we all know being book smart and streetwise are two completely different things, which personality trait do you think is more crucial to possess? Of course, a good mixture of both is ideal, but if you had to choose, pick just one!

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Smart Dating - Would You Try It?

DearSugar — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:00:00 -0700

There are a plethora of online dating services out there, yet people are still skeptical to use them. Sure, they have a negative stigma attached, but it is possible to find the partner of your dreams with a click of a mouse, especially with sites like Degreedate.com. This education-oriented dating site which was launched in 2004, is now being relaunched with new security features and an upgraded design. It's geared towards a more mature, educated demographic so men and women can meet others who value the same type of pedigree. According to Cully Perlman, the site's founder,

The site appeals to more mature people who know what they're looking for. It's not like Facebook, which appeals to a younger demographic.

I know some of you are all for meeting people online, but for those of you who are still cynical or worried about meeting questionable men, would you try a site like this that guarantees education and intelligence? If you ask me, brains are a big turn on!

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Your Midday Ego Boost

GiggleSugar — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:00:00 -0800

If it feels like you're losing more and more of your mind as you get older - you probably are.

When You First Meet Someone, What Attracts You The Most?

DearSugar — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:00:00 -0700

Of course we want it all. We want a kind, caring, thoughtful, intelligent, polite, affectionate, generous, responsible, good looking person in our life. Someone who is good with kids, has a good job, can fix things, and has a great relationship with their family. We want someone we can trust and someone who will support us and someone we can count on when we need help.

While all those characteristics sounds amazing, that's what I would call the big picture. We can search for a lifetime. We hope that "the one" will have all these characteristics and more, but we have to kiss many frogs first! So I want to know...

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A Smart Game Show Contestant?

GiggleSugar — Thu, 17 May 2007 11:45:00 -0700

The folks over at Wheel of Fortune really seemed to be slacking in the contestant screening department lately. Until now. Watch this wonder woman come out of nowhere and solve a long-ass, practically blank, nowhere near obvious puzzle. The game is over before it even gets started and meanwhile, my wheels are still spinning...

Thanks, College Humor!

You Don't Need Permission to . . .

DearSugar — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:30:00 -0800

be brainy, strong, and girly.

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Say What? Elizabeth Smart Doesn't Let Trials Hold Her Back

TresSugar — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

"I have just never let it hold me back, and I have gone on to do everything, so far, that I have wanted to do, and I think that's so important. We all have our trials, and we all experience hard times, but I don't think we should ever let it disable us from what we want to do."

- Elizabeth Smart, the girl who was abducted from her bedroom when she was 14 and held captive and raped for nine months, explains that a determined spirit cannot be crushed. Elizabeth spoke yesterday at a panel about "Overcoming the Unimaginable" - something she has truly done.

Smart B*tches, Trashy Books Unravel Romance Novels

TresSugar — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have helped romance readers discern the good smut from the bad for years with their blog Smart B*tches, Trashy Books. And now with their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, they offer a guide through the heady world of the $5.99 novel and defend it with wit and intelligence.

So we asked these two smart readers about romance novels, and oh how they talked. So much, that we're breaking all their thoughtful answers into a five-part series. What's up first? Who reads these glossy books?

One out of five people read romance novels - who are these people?

Sarah: The truth is, behind the stereotypes, smart, savvy women read romance. It's a 60+-year-old industry of women operating independent businesses writing books consumed by an audience of women who spend $1.7 billion dollars a year. Two romance readers may have absolutely nothing in common except for the books they read, because romance readers are an incredibly diverse audience - no group of readers that supports a billion-dollar industry can be homogeneous. We're found across all ages, education levels, income levels, geographic locations and reading habits - and we all love romance novels.

Candy: The demographics for romance novel readers are all over the place, though there are strong trends. They overwhelmingly tend to be women, for example. They also tend to be voracious readers, period, and to be more highly-educated than the population at large. Other than that, it's hard to generalize.

You say, actually five out of five people read romance novels, what are some romances in disguise we've probably read? To see their answers, read more.

Sarah: Every fictional narrative contains a romance element. Where would Bond be without the sexual tension? What horror thriller in general doesn't contain the romantic suspense to support the plot? Romance is one of the oldest narrative traditions, so it's everywhere.

There are few readers more diverse in their tastes than the women and men who read my site, so I asked them. From the readers of Smart B*tches, here are romances you might not have recognized:

Lois McMaster Bujold's books, like the Miles Vorkosigan series, especially A Civil Campaign; Patricia Gaffney's Mad Dash; Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series; William Brinkley's The Last Ship; Jean Auel's Earth's Children series; many of Philippa Gregory's historical novels; Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series; and many of the novels you read in English class, including, and especially, Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice is one of the best romances ever written.

Candy: Sarah's right about romance being an element to a lot of fiction and storytelling, but the modern romance genre is its own beast with a long, tangled past. If you've read Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, you've read books that would qualify as romances if published today. A lot of the sturm und drang (storm and stress) of certain romance subgenres owe a debt to books like Wuthering Heights, for example.

Here's the thing: the plot set-up and conflict dictates the genre the book's most likely to be slapped with. Speculation involving science and technology? Sci-fi. Mystery or conundrum that needs to be solved? Mystery. Mystical other worlds involving magic? Fantasy., etc. And there's considerable bleed-through among the different genres: it's perfectly possible for a book to be both a science-fiction novel and a murder mystery. But what drives the emotional conflict? If it's romantic love, odds are high you're reading a romance novel. Sharon Shinn and Catherine Asaro have written plenty of novels in which the central driving emotional conflict was a romantic entanglement, even though the plot setting was science fiction.

Stay tuned tomorrow to read about what romance novels tell us about women, relationships, society.

Talking Trash: Smart B*tches Tell Us How to Buy Romances

TresSugar — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have helped romance readers discern the good smut from the bad for years with their blog Smart B*tches, Trashy Books. And now with their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart B*tches' Guide to Romance Novels, they offer a guide through the heady world of the $6.99 novel and defend it with wit and intelligence.

What's up today? Candy and Sarah tell use how they assign grades (they're harsh) to novels on Smart B*tches, Trashy Books and how to navigate book shelves packed with romance novels.

You grade books on Smart B*tches, Trashy Books, A-F; what makes an A? What loses points?

Sarah: A grade-A book for me is one that has a strong plot that takes familiar concepts and reinvents them into something new and different, with memorable and realistic characters, dialogue that is authentic and human, and a story that stays with you long after you've finished. I also find that books that reach A level with me are impossible not to read, so if I pick up the book to look at a page I end up rereading the whole thing.

Candy: An A book generally means that a) I loved it, and b) it's at the very least competently written. There's a certain floor to the craft for an A book. That's not to say I don't love schlock, because I do, but a schlocky book probably won't get an A, no matter how much I love it.

Generally speaking, books lose points if they don't engage me - if I'm able to step back from my immersion in the fictional world and I'm taking a hard look at the gears and bits that drive the machine, so to speak. When my internal editor has slowed my reading pace to a crawl, that's usually the kiss of death. Good books shut my internal editor up, and that's hard to do, honestly - hell, it's hard to get me to shut up, period, much less the pedant who lives in my head and gripes about how people just don't use the subjunctive properly nowadays.

Beyond Throbbing Bosoms was originally titled The Top Ten Signs You’re Reading a Very Bad Romance Novel. Is there a way to know to recognize a bad romance before wasting $6.99?

To see their answers, read more.

Sarah: If a book, any book, doesn't grab you after the first 30 pages or so, it's probably not to your tastes. That rule has served me well in any genre.

But the original title of the book wasn't Signs You're Reading a Bad Romance Novel, though that was part of the book that didn't make it into the final edition. My favorite was the poor copyediting that made a horse change color three times in two pages. Magic chameleon horse in historical England? Not good.

Candy: I call it the 10-page test. It's kind of analogous to bad visitors. The really bad ones generally announce themselves early on and proceed to eat all the hors d'oeuvres you've set out, then belch in your face. Many others, however, survive the 10-page test and prove to be awful visitors when it's too late to get them out of your house. So flip through the first pages, see if there are egregious plot or grammar flaws, figure out if the characters and storyline are your cuppa. It won't catch the more sneakily awful romance novels, but you should be able to root out most of the worst ones.

Check out previous posts from Candy and Sarah, and stay tuned tomorrow for recommendations for romance-novel virgins.

Bicycle Built For More Than Two: SmartBike Hits DC

CitizenSugar — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:00:38 -0700

Washington DC is strapping on a helmet and gearing up to offer a bike sharing program hailed as one solution in the battle against urban traffic congestion and the growing stress on the transit system. Starting as early as next month, citizens in the nation’s capital can join SmartBike DC and rent one of one hundred and twenty shared bikes for the low price of forty dollars a month.

The bikes will be available from ten locations citywide, and members will be able to swipe a card and release a bike to ride for up to three hours. Although this is not the first of its kind, the use of better technology may be the key to its success. Paul DeMaio, a Washington-area bike-sharing consultant (Do they have consultants for everything in DC?) said: “...studies showed that many bikes would get stolen in a day, or within a few weeks. In Amsterdam (Netherlands) they would often find them in the canals.” Because of this and other reasons, European programs found themselves paying up to four thousand five hundred dollars per bike without private funding.

The idea isn't a ten-speed disaster everywhere - the Velib program is a hit in Paris and Barcelona - both cities started free-wheeling around a year ago and could grow to thousands of bicycles. SmartBike is looking to expand to San Francisco, Chicago and Portland, OR depending on success and their ability to attract private bucks to make it work.

Is sharing a bike with your fellow city-dwellers a good idea? Has the technology surpassed human nature to make a communal idea like this work? Is it something the government should be funding?

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