At 5:53 PM +0530 6/16/10, Udhay Shankar N wrote: >Sruthi Krishnan wrote, [on 6/16/2010 5:10 PM]: > >> Haha. >> I picked up Heyer recently, and I think her books = MandB plot + >> Overdose of Victorian fashion + lots and lots of prudishness. Swoon. > >I read Heyer for basically the same reason I read PGW. The language, the >semi-to-full-fledged-farce, and the comfort of the same story over and >over again. Of course, for the last named, I could just read Mills & >Boon. Or JT Edson.
The romance genre, like soap operas, is essentially emotional and fashion porn for women. That's why people look down on it and why so many women are secret consumers. Add to that the fact that many romance novels are witty and knowingly self- parodying, and it's easy to see how they become junk read addictions. At the edges of the genre, I can recommend Amanda Quick (her heroines are all geeky dilettantes) and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (it takes some creativity to work kidnappings by pirates, highway robbers, and London street thugs into the same novel). Even further on the edge, I can recommend Barbara Bickmore, whose heroines are all serious-minded pioneers in their fields and whose books are as much about, say, the history of Flying Doctors in Australia or missionaries in the Congo as they are about the heroines' romantic lives. I missed soap operas, having lived a tv-free life since 1974. I recently encountered snippets from The Guiding Light on youtube, and was hooked most of an afternoon. It's the same formula -- high adventure, suspense, drama, emotional scenes, and lots and lots of unresolved sexual tension. -- Heather Madrone ([email protected]) http://www.madrone.com http://www.sunsplinter.blogspot.com I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me access to the source code.
