Confessions of a Male Reader of Romance Novels

Although I never bought a romance novel until April 2018, my path had intersected with the romance genre over the decades. I'm a longtime fan of comic books, and as a teenager in the 1980s I began to explore other comic book genres besides the superhero titles that I'd followed religiously during my pre-teen years. I started buying war comics, ghost comics, humor comics, western comics, and was open to buying any genre that was available in comics form -- including romance. Romance comic books, however, had died out by the 1980s and back issues were rarely seen in most comics shops (though I did acquire quite a few).

I was intrigued by the gothic romance subgenre and watched the revival of the "Dark Shadows" TV series in early 1991. I saved (and still have) the local TV guide featuring "Dark Shadows" on the cover from that time and kept a newspaper clipping about a planned protest of the show's cancellation. It was around then that I bought two old gothic romance novels at a local church's book sale, one of them being "The Silver Ladies" by Margaret Erskine. I've forgotten the other book I had and some years later traded them both to a used bookstore, having never read either one. Sometime in the 2000s, I bought several 1960s "Dark Shadows" paperback books (written by Marilyn Ross) for dirt-cheap at a library sale, but I no longer have those either.

These particular romance-buying activities seemed acceptable to me. Gothic romance was an offshoot of horror and mystery which are taken seriously by young men. Romance comic books were another kind of comic book and therefore a logical purchase for an ardent fan of the comics medium. That is quite a bit different than if I were to buy an honest-to-God Harlequin Romance novel or something like that. The thought of doing THAT never occured to me in all those years. I loved reading about the past, even occasionally buying the nostalgic "Good Old Days" magazine as a teen, but somehow it never occurred to me to buy a Regency romance, despite the fact that the covers screamed out their appealingly old-fashioned style. When my family would go to the mall, I would spend most of my time in the B. Dalton bookstore, finding all sorts of intriguing titles, but I don't recall ever even looking at the romance novels. When we would go to K-Mart, I would gaze at shelves of paperback books and occasionally try something different, but never a romance novel. Perhaps I didn't permit my gaze to linger too long over the romance section in the same way that today I avoid investigating other things that are not aimed at me. One doesn't browse a place that one has no business being in without feeling weird about it. And besides, there were plenty of other genres on the book shelves to look at instead which might be more interesting and worthwhile.

If I had been told somewhere that romance novels were worth reading, then I probably would have taken a look at them. But whenever I encountered a mention of romance novels, the consensus seemed to be that they were mindless fluff, simply the "guilty pleasure" of many women readers. The fandoms that I knew about, such as comics and science fiction, had vocal proponents for the artistic and literary merit of their own favorite genre/medium. I saw no such position being advanced by those in the romance novel genre, or by anyone who read it, or by anyone at all. Fans of comics and SF have an obsessive interest in their own histories, with their own "Golden Ages," with outlets like fanzines to defend their fields from dismissive outsiders. Both have longed for respect, to be taken seriously, and the worth of the material is taken as an article of faith by its fans. (Witness the fury of said fans when any outsider challenges its value or puts it down.)

In contrast, most fans of romance novels freely admit that what they are reading is simply escapist fun, even though an inherent part of the work addresses the human condition. Romance novels that deal with love and sex and society are left undefended, to be derided as fluff, while imaginary space operas are claimed to be deeply philosophical and meaningful. A casual observer might therefore assume that a paperback romance novel does not have any great value and therefore is not worth one's time. Of course most people don't need to be convinced of literary merit before unashamedly buying a book and recommending it to others, but at the very least it helps not to have the book prejudged as unworthy of consideration based on its bad reputation.

I'm convinced that for many men in particular, that negative judgement of romance novels is not based on personal experience of reading them, but based solely on what they've heard others say. That disregard may have also been influenced by what people have NOT told them. They have not heard: This novel is worth reading, this novel is worth your time, you may like this. They have heard that said of other books, but not romance.

One obstacle for the male reader of romance is that they are not its intended audience. Romance novels are for women in the same way that "men's adventure" novels are for men. Recently I've seen YouTube videos by women romance readers talking about their favorite romance novels (most of which are new-ish looking modern releases) and the giddy manner in which they express their opinions of the books' characteristics is foreign to me. (You can view my own YouTube videos about my romance novel collection here.) I don't think that I've ever read a novel of any type (romance or otherwise) where I practically swooned over the relationship of the two leads. I have patiently rooted for the two lovers to work out their differences. I have laughed aloud at humorous banter, I have thrilled at action sequences, I have worried over the fates of characters in danger or distress, and most of all I have enjoyed being in the company of the characters as I read about them. But I have never truly "fallen in love" with a fictional character. I've liked them, enjoyed reading about them, but have never desired to bed them or see them bed another. If that is in fact a genuine response to reading romance novels for women, and indeed a factor in their popularity, then men are at a disadvantage in appreciating the genre (assuming my own response is typical of most men). 

And yet, there is much in these books that may be enjoyed by a male reader. For those who like mystery and suspense, the romantic suspense subcategory is a longstanding staple of the romance genre. For those who like history, there is historical romance, covering a wide range of time periods and places. Even among the regular contemporary romance novels, one may find the distant locales in which they take place to be an armchair traveler's delight. (Most of the older Harlequin novels were reprints of books published by Mills & Boon in the UK, which may interest Anglophiles of any gender.) While the novels may be written with a female reader in mind, with certain aspects geared toward that reader, some things in life can be considered universal regardless of one's gender. For example, when I was a child, me and my male friends often played with dolls. Only we didn't call them "dolls," we called them "action figures." Playing with such dolls was not considered strange and was not frowed upon in the least. (My dad even made a short stop-motion home-movie using my large collection of Mego superhero action figures.) Perhaps the "gothic romance" was another example of a label making something seem acceptable to someone who would have ignored it otherwise. Perhaps it's just the words that are used which determine our response. 

So, what changed for me? How did I suddenly decide to take a look at romance novels, and begin buying them, and even collecting some of them for myself? The short version is that last year I took a chance and acquired a huge library of old paperback romance novels that had originally belonged to one collector who had passed away. I bought over a thousand of her books with the intention of selling them to others. I kept some of them, though, and gradually began buying some for myself to read. Having a lot of these books in my possession gave me a more tangible sense of the evolution of the genre from the 1960s to the 1980s. For the first time I realized that there was a difference between the various writers (just like with, say, the individualistic styles of comic book artists). The original owner of the book sometimes wrote a brief review on the front inside covers: "Very good!" "Excellent!" and (to a lesser extent) an expression of disappointment. ("No female over the age of 10 would be this stupid," she wrote inside one book.) She had her favorites, but occasionally I'd find in her collection a random title from a publisher she didn't normally buy, and written inside would be "a gift from [someone else's name]" which suggested to me that her uninformed non-fan friend had meant well but bought the wrong type of book. No, all romance novels are not alike; she had her favorite authors, her favorite publishers, her favorite subcategories, and so on. That's a lot of preferences for something that doesn't really matter, for allegedly mindless fluff. It became clear to me that the only "mindless" thing going on here was the mindless dismissal of the entire genre by those who knew nothing about it.

Sometimes you need to get your hands on a large amount of something, to immerse yourself in the experience, to really understand it. Sometimes you need to be able to see something through another person's eyes before fully appreciating it. And then you can discover that it was there under your nose all the time and will be wondering "Why did no one ever tell me all this before?"

As I alluded to earlier, fans of comic books tend to have an interest in not just new comics, but older ones. Exposure to comics of the past is considered important in being able to appreciate today's comics. One should be aware of what came before in order to know what is going on and to be able to place events in their historical context (hence the naming of various eras to signify publishing trends). I was introduced to the comics medium by books like "Superman from the 30s to the 70s," which placed importance on the years when the comics came out (and which meant that as a child I was reading reprints of work that was published long before I was born). Some comics fans favor certain eras and try to ignore new comics altogether. There are numerous Facebook groups devoted to old comics, even ones from a specific decade. For example, in 2013 I created a Facebook group about independent (i.e., non-Marvel and non-DC) comics of the 1980s, which has over 1800 members. This would be comparable to a Facebook group devoted to non-Harlequin romance novels of the 1980s, a decade that had such explosive growth among a variety of publishers that it was known as "the romance wars." And yet, as far as I'm aware, no such Facebook group exists (although if someone did create one, I think "Romance Wars: Romance novels of the 1980s" would be a catchy name). Earlier this year I created a Facebook group named Vintage Paperback Romance Novels, but it has fewer than 50 members. To my knowledge it is the only Facebook group to focus exclusively on 20th century romance novels (not including those few groups devoted to a specific author or to gothic romance).

The lack of critical appreciation of the genre's output (among knowledgeable and respected critics, not mere Goodreads reviewers like myself) means that many worthwhile romance novels of the past are denigrated or ignored, even by self-described romance novel fans. If one is unaccustomed to reading old novels, their older style may be off-putting. Some readers, however, prefer older books, finding them more inviting or appreciating them on a retro level. I belong to a Facebook group about old paperback novels that has over 13,000 members, most of whom appear to be men (at least among those who post there regularly). They talk about old science fiction books, old westerns, even old sleaze novels, but not romance. During the rare times that the topic of romance novels have come up, the genre is treated dismissively. Two different members mentioned that their mothers read them, but they couldn't understand what she got out of them. Among the members who have owned used bookstores, they stated that they declined to take such books in, despite admitting that the books were popular. Since so many romance novels are published every year, more than any other genre, some places like libraries will not accept donations of them which again reinforces the notion that they have no value.

Despite the high volume of romance novels being produced each month, interest in the genre's history appears thin among romance readers. Could it be that readers are so busy trying to keep up with the new releases that they don't have much time to dwell on the past? 

Thankfully there are some impressive exceptions, such as the Vintage Nurse Romance Novels blog and the Mills & Boon and Harlequin Historical Romance Fan Site.  There's also the Regency Retro Reads site, which has reviewed 500 old Regency romance novels (primarily ones from the 1980s & 1990s). Among Facebook groups devoted to older romance writers, there is an active Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) Appreciation Group of over 3,000 members and a Betty Neels (1909-2001) group with 600 members. Among current romance writers who have been active since the 1980s, there are several groups devoted to Nora Roberts (one of which has almost 9,000 members) and a Jude Deveraux group with over 2,000 members. (Some "like" pages have many more thousands of likes, but I distinguish between pages and groups because the groups enable members to better engage in discussion and initiate topics whereas the "like" pages are used most often for self-promotional purposes.) Again, to compare it with the comics field: there are numerous Facebook groups devoted to comics creator Jack Kirby, who died in 1994. Such groups are a hotbed of debate over the work of a man who basically stopped drawing comics around 1985. Two Kirby groups have over 10,000 members each.

When it comes to romance novel readers, there is less interest about the genre's past, much more on the present. There is good and bad about this. The good is that it's an indication of a healthy, vibrant field full of new stories and new writers that are keeping up with what current audiences want to read rather than mired in trying to recreate the enthusiasm of past glory days. The bad part, though, is that older work gets buried and forgotten once it is no longer current. This fate will eventually befall today's fan-fave releases, too, as the years roll by and they get eventually dismissed as "outdated," replaced by the next generation of writers. This dismissing of past work is in stark contrast to many other genres and media (think, for example, of old movies & TV) where older work is often still being enjoyed, analyzed, and even preferred. Are old romance novels worse than old movies, less worthy of being revisited?

Most of the romance novels I read tend to be older ones, but then I'm a fan of vintage things in general. Most of the older romance novels that I've read have been from the 1970s and 1980s. The most recent one I've read was a Harlequin Medical Romance from 2018. To my surprise, I enjoyed the newer novel and felt that the more sympathetic (or at least non-abusive) hero was an improvement over some of the older romance novels that I've read. However, newer novels have their own annoying quirks, too (for example, I noticed in two other recent Harlequins where the heroine was described as having "fisted" her hands, which evidently is a real word, but may carry a connotation unintended by their authors). The photoshopped front covers of today's romance novels are less appealing to me than the beautiful illustrations on the covers of the old books. While the old paintings run the risk of looking corny, I find them more inviting than the lettering-dominated or photo covers of today which reinforce the colder corporate aspect of "the product" rather than as a work of art.

Of the 16 romance novels that I've read so far, my favorites have been three historical novels from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, all three of which were around 300 pages each and loaded with drama and adventure in addition to the central romance. All three books had foreign locales, a bit of time spent aboard a boat, feisty heroines and larger-than-life heroes, and writing that gripped me from the first page. Strangely, all three authors are little known (Katherine Kent [Joan Dial], Taylor Ryan [Taylor Robbins] and Sheryl Flournoy) and it makes me wonder why. I know that I need to read more historical novels of this type to be a better judge of what is the best work that has been done, since it may be that what I'm responding so favorably to are things which have been done before in other novels. So, my journey as a romance reader has just begun and I'm looking forward to learning more about the genre in the years to come.