'Romance novels, an inexpensive escape for women, are helping some publishers hide from the worst of the recession.'

If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, how many is a 'bod' worth? I don't mean 'bod' as in 'body', an abbreviation that is now in vogue as "He has a great bod otherwise I wouldn't bodder wid him." I also don't mean 'bud' as in 'Nothing beats a Bud', a classic example of a beer-faced lie. Those of us who are older bud wiser know that any Carib, Red Stripe or Banks can beat a bud any day and any time. Both bods and Buds come in 'six-packs' although one is abdominal and the other is abominable. Just as abominable is the practice in Trinidad, Guyana and some other Caribbean countries of 'mining bud' meaning keeping birds in cages. But I don't mean those buds either although, like those who enjoy a good bod, I would prefer exploring the bush rather than my own hand.

For 'bods' read 'bodices'. When I was much younger, women wore bodices instead of blouses. A bodice covers the body from the neck to the waist. The term means a 'pair of bodies' because bodices were originally made in two pieces that were fastened together. Initially the bodice was laced together like a pair of 'yachtings' or 'crepe soles' or held together by 'hooks and eyes'. This garment and its disintegration in a romantic context featuring a dominant male armed with a throbbing member led to the name given to a rapidly growing literary genre which originated with Jane Austen and Emily Bronte - the 'bodice ripper'. The term was first coined in the United States (US) by the New York Times in 1980. Since then, every sexually explicit romantic novel which takes place in a historical or exotic geographical setting, with a plot involving the seduction of the heroine, is a 'bodice ripper'.

Now, according to Andrea Sachs in Time Magazine, despite or perhaps because of the global recession, bodice rippers are doing better than all other books: Romance novels, an inexpensive escape for women, are helping some publishers hide from the worst of the recession. Frequently an impulse purchase, mass-market paperback romances, often bought on the run at drugstores and supermarkets, cost US$4.75 to US$5.99 - a bargain when hardcover editions are typically US$25 or more.

descriptive or cliché

Bodice rippers, however, are not the first choice of literary critics. They are generally associated with 'purple prose'. According to author Deb Stover, 'Purple prose consists of words and phrases that sound stilted, overly descriptive or cliché.' There is an award named after one of the more famous exponents of the art, Edward Bulyer-Lytton, who wrote, "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." Since then his "It was a dark and stormy night" has been the quintessential cliché for the opening sentence of a novel and an award is given in his name to the best writer of the worst opening sentence for an imaginary novel.

More appropriate to the bodice rippers is the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. While I can only dip judiciously into some of the entries and serve them up as appetizers instead of giving you the Full Monty as an entree, I would recommend that if you're interested you do your own research like so many of us did in the days before the Internet, combing the pages of Chaucer and even Shakespeare for the sex bits. What is amazing is that the bodice ripper writers are not the prize winners.

The 2008 winner was Rachel Johnson for her book Shire Hell. She was singled out for her novel's "slew of animal metaphors, including comparing her male protagonist's 'light fingers' to 'a moth caught inside a lampshade', and his tongue to 'a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop'." One of her more intriguing sentences was, "I find myself gripping his ears and tugging at the locks curling over them, beside myself, and a strange animal noise escapes from me as the mounting, Wagnerian crescendo overtakes me."

masterful evaluation

If, like me, this is not music to your ears and you've read so much purple prose that you're seeing red, try this by Doug Powers, who once said that the way to get young people to read economics textbooks is to make the material sexy, "The British economist unbuttoned her blouse as he whispered the General Theory of Unemployment into her ear. Keynes was his name, economics was his game. She laid back, quivering from his masterful evaluation of the recession. Her supply curves and healthy assets gave him hard currency. His demand curve straightened. As her liquidity preference became apparent, he began slowly, methodically, and gently explaining why the US should go back on the gold standard."

Tony Deyal was last seen wondering why Sean Thomas would write in 'Kissing England', "Shall I compare thee to a Sony Walkman, thou art more compact and more ... She is his own Toshiba, his dinky little JVC, his sweet Aiwa ... Aiwa, aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh".