Sex and the Romance Novel - do men read them?

I read several female authors whose books have romantic novel aspects to them.
Probably the most along that line is Sandra Brown, who writes suspense novels. What makes them different than most of my reading is they are told from a woman's point of view and invariably they will have at least one rather graphic sexual scene in it (often just one). Some of her books that I liked include Executive, Ricochet, The Switch, Envy, Standoff, Play Dirty, Rainwater, Fat Tuesday, Hello Darkness and Chill Factor. I like her writing style, plot development and well realized characters. On the other hand I tried reading one of her actual Romance novels and couldn't get into it (and it indeed had a lot more graphic sex) Note the difference in the covers of the books and it's easy to tell which are the suspense novels and which are the romance novels.

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Another female author I like that writes what I guess you'd call Romantic Comedy, is Jennifer Cruise. My favorite of hers was the first one I read, Tell me Lies. Comedy gold. I've read a bunch of her other books and while not quite as good, are still good for a fun read and like Sandra's books will always have at least one fairly graphic sexual scene.

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Arthur

 

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I've read one Sandra Brown - it was about a woman who survives a plane crash and wakes up with the face of another passenger on board - a case of mistaken identification by the family. It was catalogued as romantic suspense, except of course, it was a rather obvious story with little suspense and not really romantic. I forgot the name but I am pretty sure it is a Sandra Brown

I haven't read any Jennifer Crusie. Does she write like Kristan Higgans - the modern romance with the metropolitan male? Or like Emily Griffin - chic lit with un-PC characters?

One of the things I have noticed while sorting through romance genres is the changes in attitude of women towards women. Books written in the 70s and 80s had rapists and physical/emotional abusers as "heroes" - you were supposed to believe that a woman who had been raped could have romantic feelings about the man who raped her. Rape itself was not considered entirely nonconsensual and a lot of writing of the time seems to involve "forced seduction" [a rose by any other name apparently does smell sweeter] - in fact, some of the most popular romance authors seem to be the ones who wrote the most dipshit heros [Robyn Donald, Anne Mather, Carole Mortimer, Penny Jordan, Sally Wentworth] The ideal heroine was a self sacrificing, taking all the blame, remaining celibate for centuries when separated from hero [who bonks anything that moves] doormat. The current terminology for such heroines is TSTL [too stupid to live]

Moving on to the new century, the men are still dipshits and women still doormats but story lines no longer feature rape and force as the venue to romance. Still pretty predictable :yawn:

edit: I wonder if all those "forced seduction" books were filling in the slot now occupied by the Erotic Romance category since most of the romantica and erotica involve stories with alpha males as doms and women as subs

Most of the popular authors seem incapable of writing about women as independent and cognitively unchallenged human beings. The exceptions would be Sue Grafton, whose main female protagonist actually acts like a character in a suspense novel rather than a romantic appendage for The Man [see Patricia Cornwell for whiny and clingy PhDs]. And Joy Fielding, whose characters actually sound like real women - including the secondary characters - rather than cardboard cut outs of the little woman - she writes thrillers, btw.

The romance genre itself has expanded to Romantica [which is romance with erotica] and Erotica [which is just boring sex scenes competing for extremes] - I've flipped through a few of them - the women are written less doormatty - Sarah McCarty for example - but seem anachronistic when considering that she writes historical romantica - i.e. about times when women had no rights to speak of. The erotica is mostly about the gentler side of BDSM - again, seriously?

I have yet to meet a woman I can respect in the romance genre.

 

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there are very few 'romance' novels that are actually romantic. they are just soft porn and viewing sex rather gratuitously and women/men as objects. they are about only lust, no real affection involved which is what romance is or the affection is a feigned disguise for lust in these novels. they are morally reprehensible and is no different than looking at playboy for sexual arousal (for men) except it's for women to do so by reading such trash. they are cheap novels which use the label of 'romance' to give them some respectability or to pretend it's not a vehicle for porn.

 

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On second thoughts, thats too sweeping a statement - authors like Essie Summers, Dorothy Garlock, Pamela Morsi, do write real romance which appear to be set in historically accurate settings

 

Might have been, I haven't read that story though. Try one of the ones I mentioned and see what you think. (Consider Rainwater for a short novel with interesting characters, though not really a suspense novel)

Can't say, never read any of those authors. I do know that I occasionally laugh out loud when reading a Crusie novel though. I think you would like her protagonists.

Arthur

 

Might have to go back a bit - to Kate Chopin, for example.

The story of an hour

The Awakening



There is a psyched up sex scene in David Grossman's "See Under: Love".

 

But how can there be (much of) a romance story if the two protagonists are more human - if there isn't the characteristic dominator and the dominated?

I think the limits of the romance genre are due to the nature of romance itself.

 

I think that is a cultural distinction. Indian romance is typified by the man giving in to the woman. IOW, romance is the power of the woman over the man - the lover is one who is willing to give all and make a public spectacle of his love. So most of these abusive men/tstl women are "abnormal" to me. What passes for romance in many of these books seems like abuse and degradation to me [blackmail, forced seduction, flaunting other women, infidelity, indifference, humiliation, emotional abuse - this is what villains do in Indian romance

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]

@adoucette

The Sandra Brown was called Mirror Image

blurb:

A lot of reviewers have given it positive reviews on amazon but I found it boring and incredulous. I prefer novels with real angst and more "meat" [see Jonathan Kellerman for instance] rather than stories where the major problems are failure to communicate

I've just dl Bet Me by Crusie. Will read it over weekend and get back.

 

I have been thinking recently whether there are any books or films in which the man falls in love with the woman - and I couldn't think of any.

Obviously, there is plenty of stories where the man sets his eye on a woman and then seeks to conquer her.
But that he would be so desperately in love the way female characters are usually portrayed - I can't think of any.


"Indian romance is typified by the man giving in to the woman." - Interesting!! Really strange. Is this a kind of overcompensation for the harshness of the Vedic tradition?

 

My background is more "academic", I haven't read any of the "popular" or "mainstream" romance novels.
I have begun some, but gave up quickly ...


Have you read anything by, for example, Ingeborg Bachmann?
I find her stories to be that of real angst, but they are also characterized by a "failure to communicate".

 

That sounds a little incredulous, which is probably why I didn't read it. Sandra is a prolific author and so clearly there are some misses.

I might suggest Ricochet as a more interesting read.

http://www.amazon.com/Ricochet-Novel-Sandra-Brown/dp/0743289331

Ok, not one of my favorites but you'll know pretty quick if you like her style or not.

Arthur

 

Most Bollywood films are like that

Maybe, or maybe it is just how romance is viewed - if a man loves a woman he either goes mad for her, sacrifices his life/wealth/status/power for her or submits to her. The notion is that love = sacrifice.

Come to think of it, most "vedic" love stories are more like Harlequins [Draupadi, Mira, Shakuntala, Radha, Sita] so it would seem that the stories which we generally consider as standard fare "love stories" - Heer Ranjha, Shirin Farhad, Laila Majnoon are actually imported ones.

No I read very little fiction as a rule and when I do, its more likely to be a medical or psychological or legal thriller

I have Ricochet although I haven't read it. Which Crusie would you recommend? Usually when reading a new author I go by customer reviews [best and worst] plus blurb

 

Wow!

Just to be clear - you mean that the Bollywood kind of romance stories are imported, and the Vedic ones are basically the same as the Western ones (man conquers woman)?

 

Tell me Lies

And on this site you can read the first chapter, which I find is usually a good indication if you will like the author's style and if after reading the first chapter you find you want to read the second then it's usually worth the read....

http://www.jennycrusie.com/books/fiction/tell-me-lies/tell-me-lies-chapter-one/

 

This reminds me of the situation with courtly love.

For centuries, it was believed that medieval love and life were in fact as the literature of courtly love described - "romantic", with little or no sex, and definitely not rape.

In the 20th century, the literature of courtly love and other historic records were critically reviewed, and it was discovered that medieval love and life were much different than what the romantic courtly literature suggested - that the literature of courtly love was an exaggeration and embellishment, and more importantly, that the people of the time took it as such.
Basically, they were telling eachother romantic lies, and they knew it.

Is something similar the case with Bollywood romance?
Does anyone take seriously the romantic notions presented in those films?
Or is there an understanding that those films have nothing to do with how things really are and should be?

 

I had to think about this some. Where do we get our notions of romance? I think I can safely say that all our [Indian] notions of romance come from the movies. I don't know anyone who thinks of Ram-Sita [husband dumps wife after accusing her of adultery - she has secret twin babies in exile], Radha-Krishna [Krishna humps anything that moves Radha is his "consort" not sure if they ever tie the knot] Mira-Krishna [Mira is devoted love slave to Krishna but gazillion years after the fact so she never actually "meets" him] Pandavas-Draupadi [Arjuna meets and marries Draupadi then shares her with all four brothers, one of the brothers loses her in a game of dice] etc as examples of romance. More often when Indians think of a love story, it is from their movies where the heroes are tender, magnanimous, generous, sacrificing, loving and the heroines are strong, opinionated and willing to withstand family and social pressures for their "man".

If I had to think of classical love stories it would be Heer-Ranjha, Shirin-Farhad. Sohni-Mahiwal, Layla-Majnun Mirza -Sahiba or the famous pair of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan [who built the Taj Mahal after his wife died - probably from being barefoot and pregnant lifelong]

I just realised that most of these stories are either North Indian or based on notions which are non-Vedic i.e. the notion of love before marriage. All of the Vedic stories are literally "arranged marriages" where The Man i.e. groom or the girl's parents decide on the pairing. Vedic "romances" seem to be dominated by the alpha male/virgin-celibate doormat female and based on notions of females as the chattel of men i.e. excellent Harlequin material

You might have also noticed that some classical [and therefore tragic] love stories are based on Arab or Persian myths. Thats another surprise to me, since I've never considered the origin of these love stories

I would say that Indians like the idea of romance more than the notion of love. IOW, even in an arranged marriage, the couple have expectations of romance and these expectations are based on what Bollywood tells us is romance.

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Which is why it is hard to grasp as romantic "love stories" where you can neither respect the H [hero] or the h [heroine]. For example, I read one "romance novel" where one of a twin meets a man on an airplane, they are attracted and he comes looking for her, the twin's sister meets him, decides she wants him and pretends to be the other twin, sleeps with the guy. The other twin finds out and pretends to be her twin and then also sleeps with the guy. The "hero" of course is passed back and forth without having a clue as to which sister he is sleeping with - finally the sisters toss a coin to decide who gets him. Then five years later the twin who married the sucker dies and the other one comes back to "claim" him. Meanwhile you learn that the sucker knew all along that he was being passed back and forth and had even witnessed the coin toss

wtf?:bugeye:

Are your friends South Indians? They tend to be sexually very conservative in some parts of India and it is a mistake to assume that this is the status quo for all Indians. Many "arranged" marriages are "arranged" behind the scenes i.e. both girl and boy are from the same community so they meet each other at formal occasions and festivals and express a preference to their families who make the arrangements. The problems only arise when they don't belong to the same community.

 

What a sentence!!!!!!

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry!


Dear Lord!


I have to tell LG about this.

 

Krishna is the original roue/rake-rogue

Haven't you ever seen how he is depicted? Surrounded by gopis [milkmaids]

And of course being godly he can be simultaneously available to all!

You can recognise him by his peacock feather crown

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I like him - he is direct, unapologetic, not weighed down by too much conscience and quite pragmatic in his outlook

The Bhagvad Gita is Krishna's "manual of mankind" to Arjuna [of Draupadi fame]

 

Oh, I have seen pictures of Krishna, and I know of his reputation ...
And I have probably read more BG than you.

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But your sentence!