OMG, why do so many women like romance novels?

I think you'd be surprised (about the soap operas as well). I think you'd also be surprised at how many of these romances are written by men (many using pseudonyms, but not all).

 

Are Mary Stewart's books based on the Arthur legends "Romance?" I don't think they are, at least not in the way that genre is identified today. Maybe using a more classical definition of "romance."

There are plenty of good writers in Romance. Painting an entire genre with a broad brush on the basis of one or a handful of books doesn't make any sense. Diana Gabaldon did a nice job with Outlander, in my opinion. I've read a few others that I thought were pretty well done, and a few that were so bad I didn't get more than a few chapters in.

 

Men look at porn.

 

Not all Romance novels have explicit sexual content. The good ones I've read do not, in fact. The explicit works, which amount to pornography, are more of a subgenre of romance, I'd say.

 

My statement was in response to Ginger's query as to whether many men read romance novels. I would guess that a significantly higher number of men look at pornographic works rather than read romance novels. I would suspect that more women read romance novels than look at porn, although I have no concrete evidence to back that up.

I am sure that there are many romance novels with little or no explicit sexual content. My statement made no assertion either way. But there are differences between pornography and romance. They are not at all the same category.

 

Yes, I think those statements are probably true, though I've seen no hard numbers either. I've read a few romance novels with little or no explicit content. They tended to be better written than the ones that devolved into explicit sex, which I gave up on reading. I mentioned Outlander, above, and I don't recall explicit content there. It is a well-written and fairly well-researched historical/time travel novel that happens to be a romance because the romance is the primary plot.

 

I'm not painting the whole genre, but this one was highly rated so I have to assume it is at least an example of the genre. That's why I put the thread in the book discussion sub-forum and not the lounge.

 

All one need do is look at a few porn sites, they are targeted to a male market, gay and straight.

I was pondering if some men pictured themselves as the men in these stories and liked to read them. Romance novels are targeted mainly to a female market.

 

It may be exemplary of the subgenre of more erotic or explicit romance novels. I haven't tried to read many of those, but the few I've looked at didn't appear to be very well written, to be honest. There are other books within romance generally that do not have explicit content, and there are some good writers involved.

 

No, her Merlin books are not considered "Romance"at all.

They only crept into the discussion because Mary Stewart's original books WERE romances ...The Moonspinners, Thunder on the Right, Madam Will You Talk, etc. She is classified as a "Romance" writer, and is indeed credited with being the first to introduce Romance novels that were also mysteries. It was only after she'd established herself as one of the best Romance writers working in the genre that she (and her publishers) took a chance on her writing an entirely different kind of book.

I would definitely classify the Merlin trilogy as Historical Fiction. The 'man-meets-woman' factor is practically non-existent in these books, although they are very emotional in tone. She sticks to facts as much as she is able, and has written an accompanying introduction that explains how she did her research.


I did recently read the first book in the Outlander series ...and I didn't like it at all. Maybe living in Scotland myself has colored my view, but I don't think Diana Gabaldon has 'got' Scotland at all, and I find her characters unbelievable (and unappealing.) Far far too melodramatic and silly for my taste. And the idea of walking into a ring of standing stones and being transported into another time period? Oh, yuk, no. I think she's done a lot of research, but maybe it's a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees? Don't know. Just can't get into this series at all, although it's very popular—certainly in the USA.

.......17 November ...Just read in the Glasgow Herald that the Outlander series is being filmed in Scotland just now.

Where? ...OMIGOD. Cumbernauld!!!

Also some of it at Pollock Park in Glasgow. Well, Pollock house is pretty cool, and right for the era. It's where Garrow's Law was partly filmed as well. But Cumbernauld...

Cumbernauld...!!!!

I mean, they might just as well have filmed it in downtown Detroit these days, which I gather is now rather 'wild' and overgrown with shrubbery.
.........

 

I only read the first one, years ago. I liked it pretty well, but never read further into the series. It was melodramatic at times, true, but not so much that it bothered me.

 

I don't either, but as another possible source of information I recommend the website "Smart Bitches, Trashy Books". They are smart--I landed there a while ago when they were discussing a plagiarism controversy, and I'd really like to be a regular reader, but I still just can't like romance novels.

But they are smart, snarky women, and if anyone can communicate the appeal of romance novels, they probably can. (According to their About page, they've written a book about romance novels that is used at, among other places, Yale.)

 

Oh my, a review on the site of Devil's Bride

cough, gag....

I cannot for the life of me, imagine reading a book where the character's eyebrows raise a thousand times. It makes E.L. James of "50 Shades" appear to have just been following the genre when Anastasia bit her lip at Christian's long fingers a thousand repetitive times. And here I thought James was just a bad writer with a talent for writing sex scenes.


Thanks for the link, though. If I want to broaden my horizons I should look before I pick up another one of these.

 

Bad writing does sell well, if you aim low enough.

 

I assume by "romance novel" you're talking about the kind of cheap, easy reads that reside in supermarket magazine/book racks, and in that sense I'd say it's a very much cultural phenomenon based on gender roles and stereotypes (the fact that they're sold so often in supermarkets is pretty interesting in and of itself). For hundreds if not thousands of years, girls and women have been taught that they're role is to find a man and make babies, and "romance novels" are part of that.

However, there are also thousands of great, literate romance stories, which are just as often written and widely read by men. The Great Gatsby is a romance novel written by a man, so is Norwegian Wood, and etc.

 

I'm sure you really didn't mean to imply that women write and read the trashy books, and men write and read the good stuff.

 

Whuthering Heights is one of my favorite all time books, so yeah, I'm talking about the genre that lines the shelves of the bookstores with a gazillion same sized paperbacks that all have that same generic man kissing woman cover art.

 

I blame Jane Austin. Not just for this, I blame her for everything wrong with this world. I blame Jane Austin for my dishwasher breaking this week.

 

Your dishwasher broke down this week? Awww ...diddums....

 

I know! And it's all Jane Austin's fault.

 

You know, you may be on to something here. A lot of women writers back then wrote what could be classified as romance novels. So perhaps romance has grown to become a niche for female writers. Just a theory.

 

I don't read a lot of romance, but when I do I don't read straight romance. I find it pathetic. I literally want to slap the author.

 

I've wondered about that too, but what the hey, apparently I just seem to be missing that part of my brain a lot of women have. That said, there have been some works, as is the case with every genre, I've enjoyed even though as a whole I find Romance boring at best.

So maybe you just haven't found the right kind of romance? I'm not saying you should force yourself to enjoy romance novels, but it's a big genre after all.

There's one historical romance series I actually love, even though it's dreadfully melodramatic here and there: Juliette Benzoni's Marianne series. Post-Revolutionary France as the setting, plus traveling through 19th century Italy, Turkey, Russia... adventures, lots of fighting, fancy castles and mansions, pirates, etc. And the heroine is not dependent on her main love interest and never makes decisions according to his whims or seeks to change herself to please him. And if a guy tries to force herself on Marianne, she knocks them out with a vase or shoots them.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if it's even supposed to be romance, 'cause Marianne does a lot more than chase men... But on the other hand, her search for true love is in the epicenter all the time, and the novels are definitely lighter and less well written than any works by the Brontës or Austin.

There's also this half-elf romance series by Erica Dakin which is pretty good, especially 'cause it joins together romance and elves, and in general I deeply dislike both, so I was rather surprised to find the first novel (I'm reading it right now) really quite sympathetic. Again, there's adventure, strong characters, social commentary, etc. yet it's still classified as romance.

I also think the level of writing matters a lot. While some women gobble down every fluffy novel out there, some may merely enjoy the writing style of a certain romance author and hence read a lot of romance.

Whether or not men read it, well, lesbian romance for sure!

Matthew G Lewis's The Monk, while totally creepy, was also full of sappy romance stuff.

P.s. Just check out our very own Trish's novel, Courage. Romance can be edgy and entertaining too

 

I think the problem I have with romance novels is the same problem I have with porn movies (even the "classy" ones): they're boring, predictable, and they have no real substance. The story is like the packaging on a toy: flat, flimsy, and with absolutely no purpose but to be torn through to get to the "prize." If the story isn't intriguing, why bother having it at all when I can just find a few pages of smut anywhere on the internet? If the characters aren't well-rounded and complete, why should I care about them getting in bed with each other?

I agree. I think there is definitely a place for this kind of literature (or whatever you like to call it), and that place is usually in the summer, on vacation, or when you are just plain tired and would like your world to be ordered and predictable for once. The way I see it, and perhaps the litmus test for whether a romance really qualifies as 'art', is to ask yourself plainly whether a book would still be popular (or whether someone would want to read it) if there were no sex scenes, no gratuitous displays of chivalry--etc, or if the whole thing didn't shock you in some way (like the 50 Shades books). Some people might define a good book by the presence of those elements in the first place---lol---but if you really took away the sensational aspects of a piece, would it still be worth reading??

 

Isn't that kinda like saying, "If you take away these elements of the genre, what good is the book?"? People like different genres and different books within those genres for a variety of reasons. If somebody else doesn't, they don't need to read them.