Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Hi!  I did read the posts and I do have a point so please bear me. 

I previously posted that I work at a bookstore.  Saturday night my manager let me know how much contempt she has for what I read, namely romance.  I had commented that the fiction book she was buying looked interesting and that I needed to give modern fiction another chance, but that I really didn’t want to read anything depressing (I read animal rights books loaded with gut wrenching accounts of animal abuse because that’s a subject I feel I need to be informed about and I read text books for school, but I’ll be damned if I’m going spend my free time on morose fiction populated with characters I don’t like).  She responded that she found romances depressing because of how poorly they’re written.  I started to rattle off some suggestions of good romance writing and she got annoyed at me for suggesting those type of books, that she didn’t like books that required no intellect to read.  I am not kidding.  I told her okay, that I wouldn’t suggest anything else to her, but she had discounted a whole genre as simplistic and mediocore and that wasn’t true. 

Probably everyone here has experienced some form of prejudice about their choice of reading material.  We’ve all had our share of sneers from cashiers and librarians who disapprove of an especially racy romance cover.  I’m sure most of us have had to endure some teasing from family and friends who have never read a romance, but feel free to judge us for liking them.

Okay, so what’s my point?  I’m actually okay with the type of nonsense I have to put up with from people who don’t read romance, they are usually operating under a state of ignorance, like my boss.  What’s starting to tick me off is the incessant defense romance readers are constantly providing each other for liking the genre.  I’m just so sick of going to romance sites and reading post after post of people justifying their reading choices.  I’m tired of people trotting out their various degrees, their professional titles, and their superior intellect to validate their reading choices (I wonder what stay at home moms and, god forbid, working class women think is being implied about them when, in defense of romance reading, readers make that assertion). 

I don’t want to explain myself to a college class and I sure as hell don’t want to justify my reading preferences to other romance readers. I don’t want to have to find some higher meaning in the books I like to validate my enjoyment of them.  I don’t want to have to defend myself as someone who supports rape in real life if I like a book that features forced seduction.  And if a book I like has a good sex scene (which I’ll probably enjoy reading) I don’t want to outline all the reasons why that scene does not constitute pornography. 

I love romance message boards.  Without them I would have never sought out Anne Stuart’s A Rose at Midnight or Elizabeth Vaughn’s Warprize (my favorite romance last year).  I would have never started reading J.R. Ward’s black dagger brotherhood books (which have been a hell of a lot of fun), J.D. Robb’s In Death series, and Gabaldon’s Outlander if I hadn’t gotten engrossed in the various message board threads discussing them.  I like bitching about what I don’t like (recently CTC) and finding kindred spirits who share my love of Linda Howard’s Mackenzie series or Julie Garwood historicals.  Finally, I read the boards for a good laugh because, dadgumit, romance readers have a good sense of humor (imagine a smiley face here, I’m having trouble posting them). 

I know this post could be considered off-topic and I understand why many of you probably applaud the Princeton discussion taking place, but I find it a little tedious.  When I was a younger reader I use to be embarassed to buy romance books.  I would have my mother purchase them for me.  One day she turned to me and said “Katie, if you read the books, you shouldn’t be ashamed to buy them.” It took a little bit of time, but I’m glad to say I stopped being embarassed about liking books that make me happy.  And, I’m really tired of justifying and explaining while I like the books I do to both romance and non romance readers alike.  Perhaps if we stopped defending the genre it wouldn’t need to be defended.  Just a thought.

Caveat: I’m not very articulate about my own likes, not to mention that English is my second language, but I’d just like to say that I completely see your point and have felt like that a lot. Which is why I have no problem telling people I like Romance or Fantasy (which isn’t considered very high literature over here either).

However my university did have an English Prof for “Trivial Literature” as it is translated and he lectured on fantasy, which I thought quite advanced.

I say read what you like. If you want to analyse it, go ahead if it still works for you. When I analysed fantasy for my prof’s classes I lost a lot of the immersion into the story and that made me unhappy.

So these days “the connaisseur enjoys and keeps silent about it”. ;)