"With the clash of swords and the thrust of spears, The Purple Quest builds to an exciting climax."

[meganbmoore]

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Smart Bitches, Trashy Books? What other website would link me to a blog full of trashy, vintage romance novel covers and blurbs?

They must be seen to be believed. (Be sure to click the link for the other post. It's even better.)

[Poll #1300036]

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, really? Goodness knows I'm not the expert on this genre, but I've personally seen (and read, when I was wretched with the flu at school and there was absolutely nothing else available in the room I was too wretched to move out of) a bunch of absolutely dreadful late-1950s and early-1960s British category romances. Wikipedia claims that while the Woodiwiss marked the start of the modern romance genre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_novel) (i.e. single-title, non-category, paperback original, more explicit than the earlier chaste category titles), but that the Mills & Boon category romances date back to the 1930s...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends on how you define it. Aside from "oh, Harlequins..." I think the Woodiwiss style (eventually much improved on, thankfully) is what most people think of with romance novels. Really, I can see the argument both ways, so I guess it defends on what you're used to seeing, and how you've seen the subject approached.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's a generational thing, too? I honestly think of the most ridiculous Harlequin/Mills & Boon "Millionaire Exoticized Ethnicity Tycoon's Mistress's Secret Baby" category stuff first when I think of "stereotypical romance novel". But I was a small child when the single-title stuff a la Woodiwiss was just getting off the ground, and my mom and her older female friends weren't romance readers, so my main exposure to the genre was seeing book covers on the grocery-store shelves or the spinny racks at the library; the early clench covers were there, but they were way outnumbered by all the eleventy-squillion interchangeable-looking category titles.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Very true. My introduction to romance novels was...errr...the Kathleen Woodiwiss novels my mother kept stored on the very top shelf in the library, resulting in my 14-year-old self needing to find out just why they must be kept out of reach.