JP, why are you here if you dislike romance? That certainly seems to be the case from your comments.
Feel free to take your genre-sneering (because every genre has a formulaic requirement equivalent to the HEA) elsewhere.
Michelle Styles sent me a link to this hilarity that is a celebrity-laden video promoting the Year of Reading. Michelle’s (and my) favorite is the “bloke in a bar reading from a Harlequin Presents.”
Michelle tells me that as part of the Year of Reading, she is going to be the Writer in Residence for Northumberland, which is so very, very cool.
I’d like to suggest a similar program here in the US of A, wherein we all take a year off, just for reading. Anyone...? Anyone...? No?
Bollocks.