Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Readers: What words bug you?

I was at B&N the other day and eavesdropping on two readers close by. I didn't catch the titles of the books in their hands but we were in the romance section soooo...

Funniest thing was, they weren't talking about the hunky hero's eyes or shoulders or devastating looks. They were talking about words the author used to describe a) body parts and b) sex acts. Because we're PG 13, I can't say the words they used but I'm pretty sure you know or have heard of them. Female parts that start with c or p. Male parts that start with p or d (neither of which are absolutely vulgar in total but in certain applications, yeah.)

But this raised a question in my mind. As readers, are there words you hate seeing in a romance novel? Would you rather see euphemisms? How about sex acts that you hate or find icky? Do you put the book down? (Everybody has different tastes when it comes to sex and no one here is saying what is taboo or icky or, for that matter, what is totally fine and acceptable.)

The point is...certain words have connotations for all of us that can either apply to all English speakers or to only a select few. I'm interested in finding out what they are.

Leave a comment with your most hated words (keep it clean though even if you have to use initials and dashes. We don't want to be kicked out of blogger, lol)

2 comments:

RG said...

I personally like to read romance books that leave the details to the reader's imagination. I love a good first kiss or happy ending kiss. I like reading up to what I would consider PG-13. I don't want to read what I would not watch on TV. I will put a book down or return it if it gets too raunchy like I would walk out of a theater if it was too explicit. I wish there was a rating system in place for books like there is for TV so any words allowed in a PG-13 movie would not bug me.

Lynda K. Scott said...

Now that's an interesting idea. Would you use the same ratings as, for instance, movie theaters do?