Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature

This is a study of romance stories from the point of view of the people who read them. I believe it was one of the early popular culture studies that revealed that texts can be read differently by different communities and that judging a text outside the context of its readership is often not very revealing.

This book profoundly changed the way I look at reading and literature. And while I still don't like romances, I no longer wonder why a lot of people do. If you've wondered why people "waste their time" reading romances, pick up this book. You'll be very surprised.

The introduction and the first chapter (and the last chapter to some degree) are overly academic, coming across as esoteric, and I honestly didn’t think I would make it through this entire book. Luckily, it picked up by the second chapter and most of the rest of the book was pretty interesting. The excerpts of interviews with the romance readers themselves were the most compelling, but the textual analysis also added a meaningful dimension. The author should have done a better job of explaining her reasons for doing this study and then describing her methodology before launching right into her findings, but perhaps she did in an earlier edition of this book. Also, there were times that the text was quite redundant, so some better show more editing could definitely have been used. However, it’s still an intriguing look at why some women choose to read romance novels and how romance fiction lies at the intersection between traditional patriarchy and radical (or maybe even not so radical) feminism. show less

I'm going to write a romance novel now. In June I am going to learn how to jog and write a romance novel.