Romance Novels, With Respect

We don't use the words "trashy" or "guilty pleasure" here.

[sarah-maclean-completist]

🧵

[hogwartscastle]

whats your type?

Fictional men written by women.

[thoughtslikeaminefield]

Never not a reblog

[morgana-pendragon]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) + letterboxd reviews 

(insp.)

[respectingromance]

I can’t find anything more than this from Kirkus, but this is absurd! Every detail doesn’t have to be perfectly wrapped up for a book to be a romance!

Here are the rules:

1. A central love story. ✅

2. An emotionally satisfying ending. ✅

Helen Hoang has nothing to apologize for.

[nprbooks]

"Some of the best books can make you feel free," say our pals at the Code Switch podcast,"free from your daily grind, free to imagine a new reality, free to explore different facets of your identity." So this month they're highlighting books that look at what it means to be free -- and can I tell you how HYPED I am that The Kiss Quotient made their list??? Check it out here.

-- Petra

[stuckinreversemode]

Josh Duhamel & Leslie Bibb in The Lost Husband | 2020, dir. Vicky Wight

[littlegreenplasticsoldier]

[nprbooks]

Photo Illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR

This summer we're doing a hella fun series of podcast crossovers between Pop Culture Happy Hour and Life Kit designed to introduce readers to genre fiction -- and today's episode makes me so happy because it's ROMAAAANCE! Give your day the HEA it needs with this great conversation between some of my favorite bookworms: PCHH host Linda Holmes, Code Switch's Karen Grigsby Bates, Unfriendly Black Hotties host and frequent PCHH guest Christina Tucker and romance author Adriana Herrera. Check it out here, and hear some great recommendations! (Nthing KGB's recommendation of The Kiss Quotient, which is one of the all-time great contemporaries.)

-- Petra

[christophernolan]

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love. - Jane Austen

[utopians]

“sex scenes have no narrative purpose” is such a funny take on so many levels. people will really believe that the whole human experience is valuable to portray artistically except sex, which of course has never held emotional weight or significance for anybody

[utopians]

“what’s the purpose of sex scenes in media??” well you see sometimes people have sex. sometimes it can be important even

[northernbookworm]

You’ll pry my historical romance novels from my cold, dead hands.

[pinejaysong]

you know what’s even better than a guilty pleasure?

a smug indulgence. tell yourself, “i’m gonna do this thing because i like it, and there’s nothing you can do to make me feel bad about it!” eat that cake! read that romance novel! be free!!!

[uglyduchessrantsandcomments]

Man and woman in a period piece: meet

The rest of the cast and me watching from my couch:

[respectingromance]

What new romance novels are you most excited to read?

(I have three holds available on Libby. 😏)

[imnotoverlyobsessive]

One thing I’ve noticed about romance novels is they alternate POVs a lot. Many of them every other chapter. And, well, you know how I feel about male POVs (read: boring, overdone, and no longer interesting). So why are they included? Do a lot of people like reading male POVs? Do they like hearing about the guy’s side of things? Am I the only fan of romance novels that groans when I turn the page and it says the guy’s name at the top again? Am I the only one who won’t bother if the majority of the chapters are in the guy’s POV? I’m just so, so past the point of complete disinterest. It’s nothing but guy POVs in most major media and I’m so utterly done that even in my favorite books, I dislike the guy’s chapters. I wish it wasn’t so common (more common than not having it, actually), but it is so common to have alternating POVs that I’m legitimately surprised. I can’t be the only female reader out there that wants to be completely rid of male POVs, can I?

And to the males reading this: I’m not saying your worldview isn’t important or that your experiences and thoughts aren’t important. I’m merely saying that the fictionalized thoughts of fictionalized men are so, so much more prominent than those of women that I’m bored of them. That and the fact that men experience life in a very different way than I do, and I’m sorry, but when I read a historical book, I’m more interested in the hopes and dreams of the women at the time than I am the history of men I’ve already read in every textbook ever. It’s just so goddamn boring to me and I can’t relate to it in the slightest, so while your stories certainly deserve to be heard, there’s already a metric fuckton of them, and I would very much like for there to be an equal number of exclusively, or at least predominantly, female POV stories out there.

[respectingromance]

You’re right, it’s common in romance novels to alternate POVs. Since the framework is (most commonly) two characters falling in love, alternating POVs let readers experience that journey from both perspectives. I am the opposite of you: I hate being stuck in one character’s head for the whole book. I’d much rather be privy to both of their experiences as they get bowled over by love.

A lot of contemporary romance that is written in first person stays with a woman’s POV for the whole book. I tend to dislike them for that very reason, but it’s an option for anyone who wants to stick with a woman’s POV and still read romance.

[and-one-fine-morning]

just a little romance 💕

[hamletthedane]

‪I [27 M] have a massive crush on this girl [21 F] but hate her family. I told her that I’d still like to marry her despite her poverty and how annoying I found her mother & sisters. But she said that I was ‘the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry’!! ‪AITA?‬