I love love stories! I enjoy temporarily disappearing into a love story on a summer day. Maeve Binchy, Elizabeth Berg, Willa Cather, Rosamunde Pilcher, Louisa May Alcott, Alice Hoffman, Annie Proulx and Jennifer Weiner: these are the authors of the love stories I love. The women are complicated and often intense (like I am).So, in honor of Valentine's Day . . .
- Love stories? Yes or No?
- If yes, "romances" as a genre? Or just, well, stories that have love stories? (Nobody's going to call "Pride & Prejudice" a "romance," right?)
Don't forget to leave a link to your actual response in the comments!
Three of the greatest love stories I can remember are Ethan Frome, Wuthering Heights and Silas Marner. I continue to read these books every few years.
I have to admit that in the year following my husband's death, I wallowed in romance fiction. If you remember from a previous post about my reading journal and LibraryThing (see my author cloud on the left sidebar), I have kept a list of books read for the past 17 years. Even then, in my grief, I was too embarrassed of this new obsession to even write the titles down! But I did keep a list of the authors. I had one reason for doing so: I would read everything by one author and then move on to the next, so I had to keep track of who I had read! Some of the romance novelists still stand out in my mind: Judith McNaught, Elizabeth Lowell, Linda Miller, Danielle Steele, Johanna Lindsey. They each have a distinct style that I enjoyed.
I read all of the romances sold in the huge superstore grocery store in Connecticut where I then lived. After that I had to begin to trade romances with other women! When I finally ran out of novels, I turned to Harlequin Romances. The thin plots and characters of those books finally wore me out and I stopped reading them.
So as my life moves forward, I look forward to doing Valentine's Day and no longer thinking about it! Have a great week!
_/\_/\_
My response to your comment in my LJ, since I don't think you'll get any notification from there:
ReplyDeleteI love the early Pern books. Other good SF romances are LMB's latest, as mentioned in the OP, and some of her Vorkosigan books. Also some of the Liaden series by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee are great SF romances. I'm sure I could find others, if anyone is interested, or titles/Amazon links. Just ask!
I enjoyed reading your entry for this meme. You reminded me of what a wonderful job Maeve Binchy does in telling a moving story with romance adding to the rich texture of her characters. And Ethan Frome! That's a book I reread every now and then too. It's one of the saddest love stories I've ever read.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have to confess I love romance novels...and although I have several favourite authors in mind, I will also try out new authors as long as their stories suck me in! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment on my blog. I've enjoyed some of Maeve Binchy's books too. I think the first one I ever read was Circle of Friends and I read it twice. I have a few of her other books, but haven't read them all yet. I'll have to get them off my mom's bookshelf as she was reading them...
ReplyDeleteNice post. I have thought of romance novels as an escape but fortunately not from a grief such as yours. Glad you no longer need them for that.
ReplyDelete