maybe you thought i was joking about reading romances, but you were DEAD WRONG. in fact, i purchased my first romance today. it's interesting that the bookstore on campus doesn't seem to have a romance section, though there are sections for other genre fiction categories, like mystery and sci fi. and by interesting i mean DISCRIMINATORY.
i actually located my desired romance in the "literature" section.
anyway, i bought diana gabaldon's outlander, because 1) it costs $3.99 2) it's very popular 3) there is time travel in it 4) i saw at least five women reading these gabaldon books on the flight to switzerland last summer, so i'm sure they are worldly and sophisticated novels and 5) i've heard there's lots of sex in it. i tried to buy it unapologetically, though i was secretly ready to explain to the cashier that it's part of a personal investigation of why romance novels are so massively popular (i.e., the "it's a cultural studies thing" excuse). sure, i could read all the scholarly studies that have already been done and draw some conclusions that way. but there's almost never any time travel in scholarly literature. or sex.
(side note: buying this book was actually significantly less embarrassing than checking confessions of a video vixen out from the library. it was on the recently returned bookshelf and the title sounds so unseemly to me that i actually whispered it to the kid working the circulation desk. actually, first i whispered "i'm looking for the video vixen book," which, in retrospect, sounds like some sort of terrible code phrase.)
i probably won't actually read this until the semester's over. i'm currently breaking my own rule of reading, and i'm in the middle of three different books. so this whole romance thing is really on the back burner. i think i'll make it a summer project, and call it "reading outside of my range."
don't worry; i'll keep you posted.
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