Oh, stop running for the exits. Particularly you penis-bearing people.
I’ve been asked (by more than one of you) to talk about romances worth reading. So I am.
Look, for many many years I was one of your number. In fact, in many ways I still am. Faced with a book where the central point is who falls in love with whom, and what they do in bed (particularly the later) I … well… mostly I forget what I was doing and wander off to do something more interesting, like cleaning the cat boxes.
But what you’ve been led to believe – mostly by rom coms and romance movies, btw – about romance is mostly wrong.
Now, I didn’t read any romance till my mid thirties. Not really romance. Oh, sure, I liked Jane Austen, but Jane Austen is about so many other things, like public and private personae, and how wealth shapes human interactions and, of course, the problems of class in a society where class really is baked in. (Not something that I like, but something Americans should be aware of because, if not to that extent it is always there abroad. Here, not so much, though some people would like to establish it.)
Saying Austen is romance is like saying that Romeo and Juliet is Romance. It misses all the other dimensions of the story, and what it tells us about – yes, yes – the human condition as shaped by environment.
Or at least that was my excuse, and I was going to stick with it. I also did enjoy Effie Briest, in my German Literature class, but of course it too was about a ton of other things.
Mostly I didn’t read Romance because when I was ten or so, and wondering about these books young women traded with each other, my brother told me romance was stupid and “the opium of womanhood.” (If you have any clue what in heck he thought he was saying, bully for you.) Because he was ten years older than I and therefore clearly a voice form on high, I did not read romance.
Okay, I sort of did not read romance. I was, after all, the sort of kid who read anything that came into the house, including my brother’s and cousins’ college text books. (And solved all the math problems. But that’s something else. I found so long as I didn’t write in the books, I didn’t get chased all over the backyard and threatened with death. Yes, I was a terrible kid.) So, of course I read my cousin Natalia’s “blue collection” which was the equivalent of Harlequin. (Blue doesn’t have the same meaning in Portuguese. It was called that, because the covers were plain blue, with the title.) Those were romance, but they were PORTUGUESE romance, which is… er… odd. Or at least was. I suspect right now it’s more ah… colonized by movies and foreign programs, and probably more normal. If I remember those reads correctly (they sort of blur) the desired Happily Ever After was for the man to die and the woman to mourn him all her life. A lot of the male characters were bullfighters. (I guess to facilitate that death thing?) It wasn’t, even then, a really popular or even common profession in Portugal.
Anyway, those didn’t stick, anymore than the college text books stuck (more’s the pity.) So to my conscious knowledge I never had read Romance (not really Romance) till my mid thirties.
In my mid-thirties I set about repairing some omissions in my education and read Little Women and Wuthering Heights. Neither of these encouraged me to look into more romance. Little Women was just rather dank and drippy and Wuthering Heights… well… I think the Bronte sisters were trolling the reading public, and it’s one of the great unacknowledged masterpieces of humor. We’ll just say that. My husband says no, it’s supposed to be serious, but I think he’s just pulling my leg.
Then eight years later, my friend (and fellow mad genius) Dave Freer MADE me read Heyer. This was subsequent on a conversation in which he told me “there’s nothing wrong with your plotting” he might at that point have thought “you git” – he didn’t say it, but I got the general impression he thought it – “but you must learn to foreshadow.”
He then told me Georgette Heyer was the master/mistress (?) of foreshadowing, and I started reading her. (Coincidentally two months later, my publisher Toni Weisskopf told me to read Heyer for the same reason.)
Heyer – her romances, not her mysteries. Please, not her mysteries. I don’t know if she wanted to write mysteries or was pushed into it by a publisher, but they read like they were written with a “how to write a mystery” program. The characters have NO interior life whatsoever – might be an acquired taste. I love her, and her books are some I re-read constantly, but my husband can’t get into them at all. And it’s not the romance that bothers him, it’s the language.
She is also very accurate to regency, and if you don’t know much about the regency, it might seem very odd to you. As witness to it, most other regency romances aren’t. They’re actually (and it’s easier for you to think of them that way) like an alternate time line, where they wear the clothes, and there’s some vague waving towards the time period, but all the women are liberated, and there’s none of the real scarcity/privation attending a pre-industrial-revolution society.
That said, when I branched out from Heyer, mostly I read regency romances. This is because at least in regencies, they tend to confine the sex to one or two (sometimes five or six) pages. In “modern setting” romances, it tends to start and end in bed, with a lot of bed in between and that’s not why I read stories. If I wanted to read porn, I’d read porn. When I read stories, the only reason there should be sex shown on the page is because it affects character development. I’m fifty one. What goes where and all the oohs and ahs has long ago lost its mystery. It’s still fun, if I’m a participant. If I’m not a participant, I’m not going to learn anything new from these books. Maybe this is a good reflection on my husband, that I have no frustrations to work off vicariously. Who knows? I know that written sex, particularly in modern romances, bores me.
Anyway, I first started reading romance when my publisher at the time (Bantam) made me go to RWA (I still think Baen should have a room at RWA for those of us who write more romancey stuff. At least one year, as an experiment.)
The woman sitting next to me at the mass signing was Madeleine Hunter. I ran out of books halfway through the signing, but the house wouldn’t let us just leave, so I grabbed a copy of hers and read it. I THINK it was The Sinner. (Not betting on it, though.)
When I read her, I realized that it was really an historical mystery. She’s a little better at making it regency-accurate, even if her females are ridiculously liberated (but they pay the price.) And while there was a strong love-plot, there was murder, or theft or some other plot entwining and making it worthwhile.
I’ll tell you the truth, it wasn’t even much racier than historical mysteries I’ve read. It was also very well written. I read the book at the con, then came home and bought everything of hers I could find. (I still read her when I go on a “romance jag” which usually happens when I’m stressed.)
There’s also Mary Jo Putney. I’ve yet to read her supernaturals, because those tend to bother me. They cross too much into fantasy, and it’s not fantasy for people who read fantasy. It’s like they’re reinventing the wheel and it drives me NUTS. But her regencies are quite good. Yeah, it’s an alternate world, but it largely works, and most of them COULD be fantasies or space operas. (And I make no promises about stealing parts of them – feeling, character, situation – in the future.) Like Madeleine Hunter, there’s usually another plot, though it’s not often a mystery.
There are others – though because I tend to read them as popcorn, I tend not to remember their names. – Lisa Kleipas, whose political “feelings” (they don’t rise to opinions) are puerile, and whose understanding of the regency is laughable nevertheless gets read because she has a great handle on story. You just have to accept this is a parallel world and, yeah…
Also included here, though she is considered a mystery writer, should be Patricia Wentworth. She takes an Agatha Christie type mystery and crosses it with a Woman-in-Peril thriller and a romance, and it will carry you to the end. Yes, her plots can get repetitive. Yes, the MAIN plot is Cinderella (crossed with murder mystery or whatever.) Yes, she must have been bit by a secret passage that fills with water as a child. So many of her books end with that. BUT – but – she’s still selling many years after her death, and she too could be a good source for understanding romance and how to add romance to non-romance books. If you’re going to read her, I recommend The Chinese Shawl – which is like Peril at End House, but also a good example of how to steal a plot and make it thoroughly yours. (If you don’t believe me, read PAEH and then TCS.) And also, possibly my all-time favorite, The Case of William Smith. (I love assumed identity plots but the story is also immensely heart-warming for other reasons.) Oh, yeah, and She Came Back for identity mess and a bit of the thriller.
I think that’s it for now. I don’t read much Paranormal Romance – you’d have to ask Amanda for recommendations. And I don’t read any Western Romance, which is the HOT thing right now. I suspect it is much like all those Westerns you read as a kid, but with a page or two of sex, and a bit more emphasis on the romance.
I hope people will share, in the comments, other things they’ve found.
As to why you should put romance in your plots? Shrug. You don’t have to. But I remember as a small child enjoying Heinlein a lot more than Asimov, because Heinlein’s characters were alive and had an interest in the opposite sex, which is – after all – part of being alive. (Unless you have an interest in the same sex, in which case mutatis mutandi.) Very few of us go through life so focused on our work/discovery/whatever that we neglect basic human relationships, and friendship and love are certainly two of the main ones. (Oh, yeah, and on marrying sf/romance, do read Clifford Simak, who always had some interesting romance in his books.)
So, see, that was relatively painless, and those of you with a penis still have it.
Before you condemn romance or laugh at it, take a small sample. Yes, there is a lot of it that is stupid and laughable, but saying it’s “lady porn” is like saying that all science fiction is “spaceships” and all fantasy is “wizards and unicorns.”
Every genre has bad and good examples, and you shouldn’t condemn the good with the bad.
Mad Genius Club 
56 responses to “Romancing The Romance”
There is an element of romance in most well-constructed books – because interesting characters do require being, um, rather human. And that means that as well as whatever else they have they are also motivated by emotion and sex. Where romance fails (for me at least) is where that emotion and sex (real or merely as an attractant) is ALL there is or where it is overwhelmingly dominant. To say men are not romantic idealists is… wishful thinking. Maybe the men you know are not, but I have a fairly strong genetic basis for concluding you are deluded, and a far stronger historical data set proving you’re smoking your socks, let alone deluded. It’s a modern fashion, that only women or ‘soft’ men are romantic. Which is good BS for camp-follower-men, who desperately need that approval that comes with being in fashion. Kind of like tattooing ‘L’ on your forehead… It is, for this man, anyway, a question of balance. Many of the Lois L’Amour’s are ‘romance’ of a kind – where there is strong balance of action too, and by in large they’re from a male POV, which is unusual in romance. A number of Neville Shute novels are definitely romance. Likewise several of the Novels of Dick Francis. The difference is largely one of POV (which actually includes or is male).
On what is usually considered ‘Romance’ – Heyer (whose skill in writing repartee is second to none), Doris Sutcliffe Adams/Grace Ingram stand out. As a cross between romance and tension, Mary Stewart’s Nine Coaches Waiting, or Ellis Peters’ Piper on the Mountain are favorites of mine. And in Fantasy that idiot Freer’s A Mankind Witch is a romance. With trolls, treachery, mayhem etc… but definitely a romance of sorts.
That “hack” Flint is always putting a “love story” into his books. [Wink]
Of course, his books are good reads and IMO he does a good job of making the “love stories” both part of the story and fun to read.
To say men are not romantic idealists is… wishful thinking.
I guess it could be indicative of a really horrible background.
What, other than a thing that can be called romantic idealism, would make a 50 year old man adore his 50 year old wife as much or more than he did when they were both 20-something year old lovelies, before she gave him children, and lost the bloom of youth?
Heck, I’m less than a decade older than when I met my husband, at a lot less cute. He’s only grown more attractive, objectively speaking. (Well, objective for someone who has always found salt-and-pepper hair attractive.) But he still loves me the way he did when we met, he says in several ways.
Thank goodness for selective insanity, I say.
🙂 Yes. I have to agree completely. 🙂 and thank heavens my Barbs does not find salt (more than pepper) and pepper beards unattractive, or I would have to dye it. And for me to be prepared to go to that length… I must be a very romantic idealist.
You have it right — men are indeed the real romantics.
Well, I do think both can be. But women are often more pragmatic.
So very true. Women like what they like, as do men.
The best romances were written in the middle ages and center around knight errants rather than the longings of people for sex. 🙂 Anyway, I do think that a good romance needs to have more going for it than just the love between the hero and the heroine. But, in the same way, a good thriller or adventure novel ought to have more to it than the action. Basically, there always has to be something more to any story than what titilates the audience, but romance done right can make the characters more human and thus more identifiable. Or, in the case of a thriller, someone’s loved one being in danger can make the reader more invested in the action.
Nit, the old mean of “romance” was closer to adventure not “love stories”. [Smile]
Yep. Of course, I like both in my books.
One of my favorite romances is actually a mystery, Dame Agatha’s “Death Comes as the End”. Of course, the fact that the setting is ancient Thebes is a plus as well.
One thing that strikes me about Heyer is that all her different stories are different stories (mostly). Often it’s not about “falling in love” (which I’ve known people who don’t like her for that reason) but about two people who suit each other, realizing that they do. Her heroines range from dependent to strong willed or managing (even steamrolling), her heroes from foppish to alpha male, virtuous to selfish. Compare Friday’s Child to the Grand Sophie.
I read a lot of contemporary historical romance and even when they’re well written and the story is engaging, they’re about yet another different (but similar) situation with approximately the same hero and heroine in each of them. He is virtuous in all the expected ways and she is all about her independence in all the expected ways. Lately there seems always to be a gay character that the hero and heroine are supportive of.
I read a story lately (I don’t recall the author or title) that was different… he was “dying” so he quick marries a girl in her mid-twenties from the upper middle class who’d managed her father’s property and business until he died and then he “disappears” because as long as he can’t be confirmed dead his spoiled nephew won’t inherit until he’s a bit older and less likely to waste it all. A lot of it was just silly, but it made sense that the woman would have managed the family business and she wasn’t at all “I’m going to be independent!” and she had trouble giving up control when he got back but it wasn’t shy about *his* point of view either and she ended up having charge of fairly old fashioned “women’s” areas of the estate and he the public “manly” enterprises. Oh… and the gay nephew they both supported. *sigh* I suppose that it was meant to make up for the fact that the couple ended up very “traditional”.
She is also very accurate to regency, and if you don’t know much about the regency, it might seem very odd to you. As witness to it, most other regency romances aren’t. They’re actually (and it’s easier for you to think of them that way) like an alternate time line, where they wear the clothes, and there’s some vague waving towards the time period, but all the women are liberated, and there’s none of the real scarcity/privation attending a pre-industrial-revolution society.
It is very difficult for modern writers, especially ones who have been conditioned by feminism into believing a very false version of sexual motivation in history, to understand what it was like in a culture where the average population was by our standards grindingly poor and even the rich could die with horrible ease from some natural mistake or simple bad luck. They don’t get the fear — the sense that life could be short and very nasty, unless one exerted oneself to win a good place in it and make the best of that place in the time one had. That fear is what drives every one of Jane Austen’s characters, even when it takes the form of quiet desperation; it drove many real men and women in that era.
The problem with many characters in historical romances is that they act as if they had more options than they really did. “Shall I marry or pursue a career?” thinks the modern historical romance heroine. Nope, unless you have some very specific plan in mind for “career” — and some very understanding relatives, your choice is to marry or to become a spinster dependent on the kindness of your family. “Shall I have children in marriage?” Rather unavoidable, unless you or your husband are infertile. And if you want to make a good marriage, you’d better not disgrace yourself.
From the man’s point of view, they miss that “honor” at a level we now see only among stupid slumdwellers was taken very seriously in the highest walks of life. It had to be, because law enforcement was very spotty, formal credit reporting hadn’t yet been invented, and hence being seen to be dishonored could mean that you and your loved ones were at the mercy of every bully and unable to get a loan to (literally) save your lives. There’s a reason why so many men back then responded to really screwing up by emigrating — it was one way to start one’s life over again.
Writers see the glitter of the high aristocracy. Yes, the highest aristocracy were relatively free from fear — the rich heiress knew she would be courted even if she were a graceless ugly slut, the rich heir that he could buy his way out of all sorts of trouble (though their younger brothers and sisters were not always so fortunate) — but then the richest members of any society have enjoyed relatively pleasant lives most of the time. And no amount of money could buy you reliable anesthetics or any sort of antibiotics, so you still might be struck down by the hand o’God at any moment.
What Jordan said. This is really well put, and it’s something anyone can figure who thinks about it, but lots of writers of a certain type of book don’t. Thanks for capturing this so very well.
When I lived overseas as a kid, I remember a set of British graphic novels one of my English friends had (I kept wanting to write “comic books,” but they weren’t comic). The books were about very poor kids in the Victorian era who had utterly miserable lives. It brought home at a visceral level that the past was different. Mind you, I also wanted to live in Heyer’s England, but children can hold conflicting views very easily.
re: “the opium of womanhood.” Your brother was probably alluding to Marx, something he said in The Communist Manifesto: “Religion is the opiate of the people,” which I always took to mean that religion makes people unthinking sheep. My memory might be a bit faulty on the exact quote, since I haven’t read TCM since high school.
I write paranormal romances under a pseudonym and get a lot of “you write porn” comments from friends and family members. When I point out that Stuart Woods’ books have more sex in them than mine do, the usual response is: *crickets*
A good romance is about the relationship. Sex is just part of it.
Oh, I know what he was alluding to — I just don’t know what he MEANT. As well, he was 20, and he probably had heard it somewhere, so he didn’t know what it meant EITHER.
Agree with you on what a romance IS.
I was just ecstatic that I knew something. 😀
Thanks. Have added to a list of recommended authors in Evernote. My question grew out of a desire to learn more about the genre(s) and so get a map of the field. Or, at least a start on one. Actually David’s recommendation to read the Wikipedia article was terribly on-point and cogent, and one I should have thought of myself.
M
I’m sitting here thinking about romances I have loved… and I don’t read them much any longer, but I was introduced early to Grace Livingston Hill, through my mother (along with various harlequin books, and regency romances). Georgette Heyer is always excellent, and Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign may be my favorite of all time.
The dedication in A Civil Campaign is fabulous: For Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy–Long May They Rule
IIRC Dorothy Sayers (creator of Lord Peter Wimsey) and her friends were discussing the “intrusion” of a love story into mystery stories when one of them had the thought “perhaps the lovers view the mystery as the intrusion”. [Very Big Grin]
Which is how Lord Peter and Harriet’s honeymoon got interrupted by a murder mystery. [Very Very Big Grin]
One of my favorites! I used to have all of them… Oh, and that reminds me of the other one I adored. Elizabeth Peter’s Corcodile on the Sandbank.
One of the loveliest, most romantic scenes one can ever read is in “Busman’s Honeymoon”, where Harriet and Peter are sitting before the firelight with this incredibly intimate moment – nothing but a conversation. Gives me goose bumps thinking about it.
I remember telling my brother that I enjoyed romantic subplots in my science fiction and fantasy (it’s not required but it increases my enjoyment of the book). He replied that all the romances I read have warped my brain. 😛
Anyway, the whole “eww cooties” some people have toward romance puzzles me. The relationship between Han and Leia in Star Wars certainly isn’t central to the story but I really enjoy it. And I don’t think that romance overshadowed the main conflict of the movies.
“My brother told me romance was stupid and “the opium of womanhood.””
Maybe it was an odd reference to Marx’s religion is the opium of the masses?
Most of her works are out of print but I enjoyed some of Patricia Veryan’s romances. She usually has a strong murder/political conspiracy/theft plot to accompany the love story.
I like a romantic sub-plot and always hate it when the author tries to do something “realistic” at the end and the couple break up. (Sorry, Glory Road!) I’d rather have a restrained romance plot where the attachment is something other than sex, than to be drawn into the personal relationship and then dropped at the end. I also hated the decision in a YA that I read that seemed to be that obviously the two main characters were too young for a real relationship and broke up at the end despite having just gone through incredible events together… it seemed wrong for the characters who *I* thought would naturally have extreme loyalty to each other for the rest of their lives, even if they found other partners at some point… but the grown-up author (or maybe the publishing house or editor) decided that teenagers can’t make lifetime commitments. Argh!
Yeah, the notion that teenagers to can’t show great loyalty and commitment to people is ridiculous.
So, what if the very young couple break up and it’s just the first book in a trilogy?
Not that I have any reasons for asking this ….
It wasn’t that they broke up… it was that I didn’t *believe* they broke up. 🙂
A young man in my office is marrying his high school sweetheart this weekend. It’s pretty adorable.
Maybe the response is based off of how the “romance” (sex) gets tacked on to every blessed movie under the sun?
In a book, it’s relatively easy to do it properly; in a movie… there’s just not a lot of time to SHOW the sort of development that goes into a good relationship, not as a subplot.
I don’t know.
I think it’s possible to have a romance “sub-plot” from beginning to end if the writer is good enough.
Of course, some writers might not be “good enough” to do so. [Smile]
On the other hand, I’ve read one very good romance sub-plot that developed over several books in the series.
Oh, it’s POSSIBLE– but it requires a light hand, and lowers the likelihood of Hot Frantic Moaning for the film maker.
I come to this as a member of the “subtexter” fandom to Xena: Warrior Princess, which believed that — as the canonical episodes portrayed it — there was a romantic relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. We seized on the thinnest of clues in the subtext of the shows to reify the belief. So, subtle has my favor. Light hand, yes. So light you may not even see it.
M
As a Toph/Zuko fangirl, I can appreciate that.
What about the first ten minutes of the movie “Up”? 😉
Beautiful romance. ❤ No on-screen sex.
On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 7:37 AM, madgeniusclub wrote:
> TXRed commented: “What about the first ten minutes of the movie “Up”? > ;)” >
Yeah, it’s probably hard to do well in a movie as opposed to a book or television show but it’s still worth doing.
Hollywood often fails to understand that sex doesn’t equal romance.
Recommendations? How about Carla Kelly, who has an equal number of hits and misses in the plotting department, but Research! and even better, Unusual settings! I’m currently reading Safe Passage, about an estranged Mormon couple escaping through revolutionary Mexico.
Her Regency trilogy based around the Royal Navy is superb, in particular “Marrying the Captain” and “Marrying the Royal Marine”
On Georgette Heyer’s mysteries, I think I tried every one of them on the theory that, well, Georgette Heyer! Surely, the woman who wrote all those Regencies I loved had to have written a good mystery. It made me sad.
I loved Dorothy Dunnett’s Game of Kings series. It took seven books to get to the real romance, but with lots of harrowing adventure, betrayal, intrigue, and everything else you could ever want along the way. Very satisfying.
Dunnett? Romance? I guess I’ll have to get back into her.
M
This is me, running for the door.
I actually have read a Romance book. Singular. Outlander, by Diana somethingorother. It’s evidently popular in the genre. For some reason, it was the Sci-Fi bookclub’s selection of the month (and I didn’t return my postcard in time to avoid it).
My takeaway was that the main character was horrifyingly sociopathic, and that this was portrayed as an admirable, reasonable thing to be.
I did get something out of it. A useful conversation topic. Girls who had read the book (which turned out to be a good percentage of them) liked to talk about their thoughts on it. And those who gushed about how they identified with the main character gave me a very useful warning sign.
Diana Gabaldon? She can write, but she has weird ideas of what an irresistible man is…
Outlander is apparently not a Dr. Who fanfic fixup about what happened to the companion Jamie McCrimmon. However, it reads a lot better if you do assume that. 🙂
Actually, I think the female protagonist is supposed to be (from reader eyes) pretty messed up. From the historical Scots’ POV, I think she’s supposed to be fickle and impossible to read, like a fairy woman. I think this all got dropped later in the series, although apparently there were other otherwise-incomprehensible decisions by the protagonist.
I admit to messing up on this one, as I was given an opportunity to get a galley copy for free and didn’t take it, because I didn’t particularly like the book and had no idea it would do well.
I used to read a ton of Stephanie Laurens until I got to the third (?) generation of the family she was writing about and found I had just stopped caring. I still love Lynn Kurland, especially her time travel romances. Emma Holly and Katie Macalister are my favorites for paranormal romance; very different styles, both occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.
Adding Heyer to the reading list, now.
I’ve been reading Jennifer Ashley. She’s got historical romance (a bit later than some, they often take the train), and shifter romances which I enjoyed much more than some of the “oh rape me again” ones, which I really hate.
They’re actually (and it’s easier for you to think of them that way) like an alternate time line, where they wear the clothes, and there’s some vague waving towards the time period, but all the women are liberated, and there’s none of the real scarcity/privation attending a pre-industrial-revolution society.
So, a specialized form of fantasy?
yep.
One of my favorite authors is Douglas Reeman. He writes war stories, most set in WWII and featuring the British Navy, but some of them cover times ranging from WWI to the late 1950’s. One of the things I noticed by the end of the third book was that there was ALWAYS a romantic sub-plot in his books. I found somewhere an interview he’d given to someone — can’t remember much of the details of where, but what was covered was very interesting. He also said that the friction generated by men and women being attracted to one another, sometimes in some of the most bizarre circumstances, added both flavor and substance to his other words. I’ve tried to incorporate that into my writing, as well. I’ll leave it to others to decide if I’ve succeeded or not…
I hope people will share, in the comments, other things they’ve found.
Anne McCaffery.
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when I read “Restoree” and realized it was a romance sci fi, and then I read the one with the huge cat-man that got exiled with the disposable human slaves.
My mom turned me on to Restoree. She was a big Romance fan. (Read two or three books a day, so had plenty of room for wide variety. Everything from Westerns to hard SF to historical fiction to classics.) Anyway, loved it, and suddenly get why romance might appeal to this hapless male.
M
Most love stories used to be written for men readers, at various points in history. You even see serious arguments in Victorian times that women really can’t understand love stories, because women are the practical sex and men are the spiritual and romantic one, and therefore men are constantly doooooomed to love and be misunderstood….
Yeah, both sexes like to play the lamentation card!
* A lot of Victorian women were tagged as unromantic — mostly for telling male Victorian poets and writers that they needed to either make enough money to support a family, or get a real job, if they ever wanted to marry. Alternately, for not cutting all ties with their family and turning down the advantageous marriage in order to elope and starve with the penniless guy.
That is one of the few good romance subplots of McCaffrey’s, as good of a writer as she was, her romances always came across warped to me. It was like she didn’t believe that two people could be faithful to each other their whole lives and be in love both.
The Skies of Pern is the other one of hers that comes to mind with a good, clean romance subplot.
Sherrlyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter books for paranormal romance. Be warned, they have lots of sex, but there is a story buried in there, and I don’t usually want to strangle the characters.
Sir Walter Scott wrote good romances, also. Otherwise your out luck for recommendations from me, I find most romances make mediocre fire starter; and that is their redeeming feature. Of course I dislike stupid people, and for some reason most romances insist on the woman being so stupid you wonder how she remembers to breathe; and often enough the man isn’t much smarter.
Nora Roberts should be mentioned in more than passing, in both her primary personae. JD Robb (Eve Dallas, et al.) includes romance and SF and mystery AND just a decent cast of characters across the board. Yeah, there have been one or two bobbles where I wanted my S.O. to toss the book against the wall with force (just not AT me, please!) … did I mention that she’s read more of them to me, out loud, than I’ve read for myself?
Two current names not-for-everyone, but have kept my attention for one reason or another: Linda Lael Miller and Janet Evanovich.
Linda caught my attention when I picked something up from a break-room lending pile and Could. Not. Put. It. Down. Not particularly great literature, perhaps, but a really compelling story that MADE SENSE. (And no, this was not one of her Westerns – contemporary, and set in the American West, but *not* a Western.)
Janet, Stephanie Plum, nuf’ sed? (I have not seen the movie of “One For The Money” yet. The lead casting leaves me wondering a bit. Debbie Reynolds as Granma – THAT made sense to me, for whatever reason…)
Yeah, there have been one or two bobbles where I wanted my S.O. to toss the book against the wall with force (just not AT me, please!) … did I mention that she’s read more of them to me, out loud, than I’ve read for myself?
Doesn’t she get a lot of (usually not listed) co-authors and a handful stunk on ice?
I know JE is one of my mom’s favorites.