This is a good piece, but I’ll just say it’s perfectly fine for women to enjoy porn and for that porn to come in written form. But this piece seems like it’s about something else.
Also re: Yesteryear thought it was pretty good but I felt like the main character married her husband too soon after not knowing him at all.
nice read. I'm not a huge proponent of "X or Y priviledge," but this seems like a clear case of male priviledge from my perspective. I never even considered the possibility of people being embarrassed by their association with this genre until I read this article.
Reading “The value of these books is not in their quality” reminded me of the Pritchard Scale of Understanding Poetry from Dead Poet’s Society haha.
Anyhoo, conversations around our respective choices of guilty-pleasure books is but one of the myriad ways in which the lived experience of American girls and boys is so different. I readily concede that it’s been much easier for me having been born (and never doubting that I was meant to be) a boy. My rough equivalent of unserious, guilty pleasure books growing up would have been works by Jordan (Wheel of Time) or Rowling. But to the extent that there was any shame in reading these vs. works of Hemmingway or Fitzgerald (which I also read!), there was no assumption of cognitive inferiority for having read them. In fact, if anything, the opposite was true. Yet despite containing plenty of smut adjacent scenes, no one suggested I was dumb for reading A Song of Ice and Fire.
I love this so much. I'm retired from public television where I was surrounded by many readers of serious literature, and I definitely never talked about my love of romance novels. One of my favorite writers, Suzanne Brockmann, describes her books as "birthday cake." Doesn't everyone love birthday cake? When I bought the 50 Shades books, before I had a Kindle, I used to carry around a "cover" book (literally and figuratively) at the bookstore.
For almost twenty years, I ran All About Romance, one of the genre’s essential institutions: a place where romance was taken seriously without anyone having to pretend we were all swooning over the latest unreadable Booker Prize winner. I’m not sure how many romances I’ve read—2,000? 3,000?—but it’s a lot. A lot a lot.
I don’t read much romance anymore. The genre has moved away from my tastes, and my tastes have changed too. Still, I think romance novels are the bomb. They lift readers up—I’m a big fan of aspirational fiction—and at their best, they can be excellent in all the ways great books are excellent: thrilling plots, characters you’d love to meet, and prose that makes you gasp.
I’m often asked which are my favorites.
Here, in no particular order, here are my top ten.
I don't buy the gendered framing here, popular books aimed at men (remember Dan Brown?) don't get any critical respect either, and are not something you'd admit to reading to your classmates in an elite college seminar.
I have made a fun urbanist tourist hobby of buying and reading self-published romance books at farmer’s markets and craft fairs. The quality is various!
I take issue at Emily Henry being considered "smut". like I'd consider "50 Shades" to be smut that you'd be embarrassed to read but a nice light beach read? never been ashamed of that!
Many (most?) Of the supposed serious books are not. I would go further and say, many of them are crap.
The Great Gatsby crap. The grapes of wrath, a boring slog.
Frankenstein just ok.
At least part of the reason that many kids don't like to read is because the books they are given to read are just not fun. We should be introducing them to fast and entertaining books that they will actually enjoy reading '
This is a good piece, but I’ll just say it’s perfectly fine for women to enjoy porn and for that porn to come in written form. But this piece seems like it’s about something else.
Also re: Yesteryear thought it was pretty good but I felt like the main character married her husband too soon after not knowing him at all.
nice read. I'm not a huge proponent of "X or Y priviledge," but this seems like a clear case of male priviledge from my perspective. I never even considered the possibility of people being embarrassed by their association with this genre until I read this article.
Reading “The value of these books is not in their quality” reminded me of the Pritchard Scale of Understanding Poetry from Dead Poet’s Society haha.
Anyhoo, conversations around our respective choices of guilty-pleasure books is but one of the myriad ways in which the lived experience of American girls and boys is so different. I readily concede that it’s been much easier for me having been born (and never doubting that I was meant to be) a boy. My rough equivalent of unserious, guilty pleasure books growing up would have been works by Jordan (Wheel of Time) or Rowling. But to the extent that there was any shame in reading these vs. works of Hemmingway or Fitzgerald (which I also read!), there was no assumption of cognitive inferiority for having read them. In fact, if anything, the opposite was true. Yet despite containing plenty of smut adjacent scenes, no one suggested I was dumb for reading A Song of Ice and Fire.
Loved this one!
I love this so much. I'm retired from public television where I was surrounded by many readers of serious literature, and I definitely never talked about my love of romance novels. One of my favorite writers, Suzanne Brockmann, describes her books as "birthday cake." Doesn't everyone love birthday cake? When I bought the 50 Shades books, before I had a Kindle, I used to carry around a "cover" book (literally and figuratively) at the bookstore.
For almost twenty years, I ran All About Romance, one of the genre’s essential institutions: a place where romance was taken seriously without anyone having to pretend we were all swooning over the latest unreadable Booker Prize winner. I’m not sure how many romances I’ve read—2,000? 3,000?—but it’s a lot. A lot a lot.
I don’t read much romance anymore. The genre has moved away from my tastes, and my tastes have changed too. Still, I think romance novels are the bomb. They lift readers up—I’m a big fan of aspirational fiction—and at their best, they can be excellent in all the ways great books are excellent: thrilling plots, characters you’d love to meet, and prose that makes you gasp.
I’m often asked which are my favorites.
Here, in no particular order, here are my top ten.
https://thepassionatereader.substack.com/p/my-favorite-ten-romances
I don't buy the gendered framing here, popular books aimed at men (remember Dan Brown?) don't get any critical respect either, and are not something you'd admit to reading to your classmates in an elite college seminar.
I have made a fun urbanist tourist hobby of buying and reading self-published romance books at farmer’s markets and craft fairs. The quality is various!
I take issue at Emily Henry being considered "smut". like I'd consider "50 Shades" to be smut that you'd be embarrassed to read but a nice light beach read? never been ashamed of that!
Fiction books should be enjoyable
Many (most?) Of the supposed serious books are not. I would go further and say, many of them are crap.
The Great Gatsby crap. The grapes of wrath, a boring slog.
Frankenstein just ok.
At least part of the reason that many kids don't like to read is because the books they are given to read are just not fun. We should be introducing them to fast and entertaining books that they will actually enjoy reading '
Minor complaint about the post: ChatGTP generates images, not photos. There are no photons passing through lens that get detected by film or a sensor.
We need to be rigorous that generated images are labels thusly.
give a man an inch (mention romance novels) and he will take a mile (overshare about the porn he’s into)
Brilliant work, Halina. You’re the coolest, smartest person in the world.
The men who are talking about porn in this comment section have entirely missed the point of this piece. This is why we can’t have nice things.
incredible click bait
honestly a heart warming read, thank you for sharing Halina
I enjoyed this article. I did read a book by Sally Rooney. It was good. But mostly I read mysteries. Maybe I'll switch up some. Read Yesteryear.....