I love books, love them. At heart, I am truly a book nerd. Give me a good book and I will be completely and utterly absorbed in that world until the book is done. And on the flip side, a bad book or a lazy author makes me crazy. Typos, grammatical errors, all those things make me insane. I'm incredibly loyal to an author and their storyline until the author does something I don't like. At that point I'm gone, never to reconcile with either the author or their characters.
When I was younger, I loved Romance novels. You know, the bodice rippers filled with innocent virgins and dashing men. One author that I read a lot of was Julie Garwood. ...
The one above was the first one I found, and at 14 I don't even remember why my mother bought it for me, but I wound up reading about 7-10 of Miss Garwood's books. I stopped reading them when two things happened:
1. I noticed that all her books were pretty much the same. Beautiful, innocent, VIRGINAL heroine somehow crosses the path of handsome, world-weary, SLUTTY man. Man at first dislikes heroine, until he starts to become enamored with her charms (virginity). Heroine finds man loathsome at first (he's a man whore), and then eventually becomes enamored with him. They have sex, scenes that largely consist of phrases about caresses, gasps, and hearts filled with love. Cue to the BIG PROBLEM, where some sort of misunderstanding separates the two, hurt feelings abound. Then the big make-up where the two get back together and either get married immediately, or get engaged immediately, walking off into the sunset hand in hand. End Story.
2. My father, being even more of a book snob than I am, HATED the fact that I read these books, and undertook a spectacular cure for my obsession. How did he manage this? Well he would pick up a book, flip it open, and randomly start reading. OUT LOUD. Now I don't know how he managed this, but he would always manage to find the BIG SEX SCENE of the book, lots of descriptions of salty kisses, rough hands, bodies pressing together and my father would gleefully follow me around the house as he read. I, meanwhile, would be holding my hands over my ears and screaming because let's face it, the horror of my FATHER talking about sex was enough to scar me for life. I don't even think 20 years later I've fully recovered from that trauma.
Anyhoo, books. I do love books and maybe my next post will include some of my favorites!