Paradigm Shifts and the Romance Novel

It’s a little bit hard to write about this openly because for so much of my life, I was embarrassed (even a little ashamed) that I enjoyed reading romances more than any other genre. If you asked me why I liked them, or even why they were worthwhile, the best I could come up with was that I learned a lot of history (which is true - and the historical romances are still my favorite flavor). In other words, I bought into the idea that they were trashy.

Note: Click on the image to enlarge it, then step through the whole meme within the image viewer.

I know some folks think romance novels are just thinly-veiled soft-core porn, and as someone who has been reading romance novels since I was 14, I can tell you unequivocally that they are wrong.  Yes, they usually do contain (sometimes explicit) sex.  And while there IS a sub-genre called steamy romance which comes - ahem, pun intended - close to that description, the erotic scenes are not the point of the genre.  Except for the clean romance subgenre, which specifically excludes sex, those scenes exist only as a support for the story itself, usually to demonstrate that the heroine's partner is an unselfish and passionate lover who cares about the heroine's needs, both in the sack and out of it.  But, even if you remove the sex scenes, the overarching romantic story is still there.

Anyway, a couple of years ago, my daughter sent me the meme I've included here, and it was wonderfully paradigm-shifting. I felt validated, and letting go of my embarrassment was more than a little freeing. I stopped being ashamed of the woman-centered escapism that I enjoyed so much, and last fall, I got to visit a small indie romance bookstore called Tropes and Trifles in Minneapolis, and it was wonderfully COOL. There are only about 20 such bookstores across the country (up from 2 just four years ago). Even though I don’t read paper books very much anymore, I’m grateful that the store exists.  I bought a book, a T-shirt, and a tote bag, and got a recommendation for a book about a suffragette in the late 1800s.

I don't read exclusively romance - I read a lot of science fiction, WW2 historical novels and nonfiction, and really a smattering from nearly all genres (whatever catches my fancy, really), and I have an ongoing project to read as many Great American Novel (GAN) candidates as I can.