I admit I’ve never paid much attention to the Book Babes and I have no plans to in the future. But because I’m an easily amused monkey, I heartily enjoy watching their effect on others: It’s as if the sheer force of their vapidity and wrongheadness acts as a deadly tractor beam, drawing in lit bloggers and reducing them to sputters of rage and disbelief. Heretofor it was Mark, Ed and Ron who seemed most irritated. But in the past week, there’s been a rash of newly minted Book Babe bashers.

Example one: Last week the usually amiable Bookdwarf was provoked by Margo and Ellen’s response to Jenna Jameson’s autobiography How to Make Love Like a Porn Star.

From her response:

And then she has the gall to start the next paragraph with this doozy: “By now, of course, we thoughtier types get the picture. Jameson, it turns out, is the queen of porn, a woman who has become rich and famous by doing on screen what most people reserve for the privacy of their bedrooms.” I am picturing her saying something along the lines of “well, I never!”. Of course you haven’t dear. You’re a Book Babe. You probably haven’t gotten laid since the Carter administration. Granted, this all her opinion. Margo at least has a more sensible answer—moral outrage aside, is the book any good? It’s the ‘thoughtier types’ bit that really gets me. What does she mean? It just seems so elitist. I feel bad almost, since most of my scorn is for Ellen, but somehow Margo takes some of it just by writing a column with her. She should break away and start her own gig.

Example two: Then two hilarious posts from Sean at the LNR Books Diary chronicling his first and second Book Babe encounter:
The Book Babes on Wodehouse (scroll down)
The Book Babes on Hynes and Amis (with a wonderful digression on Amis and Larkin)

From Sean’s report:

Someone asks the following question:
Q: With all the problems in the world, I love a book that makes me laugh! Can you recommend some books to tickle the funny bone?

I’m laughing already. Ellen Bookbabe recommends Wodehouse – with which no quarrel – then tells us,

Wodehouse, who died in 1975, created the legendary (and make-believe) Jeeves the butler, whose fastidious attention to detail spoofs a slavish regard for convention.

What I like here is that you’ve been pulled up short by that ‘make-believe’ – you’re confused, your brain’s protesting, you’re sitting with a big black question mark over your head – so you’re off-guard when she follows it up with a misreading of the entire Jeeves and Wooster canon.

It does make you wonder what edition Ellen is reading.