Since I'm in a romance novel mood, and Fernando and I are book shopping this Thu, I was making a list of some authors to check out, and which books I already have etc.
I keep my most complete list of titles read/owned on my facebook weread page. If I'd discovered Goodreads before it, I'd use that--but I'd already entered my whole library into weread by then. So I keep both of them updated, but only use Goodreads for social networking. If you look up my Goodreads profile you'll see exactly which books I've read recently, properly in order.
But whenever I remember an author I've read in the past, I add their books to my weread page--so it's not a reliable source of What I've Read Lately. I'll go in there and add all the Harry Potter books, or Church Mice books or whatever.
So just now I was thinking of Amanda Quick, one of the first historical romance authors I read. She was hit and miss with me, and I eventually tired of her. But I can't remember exactly what I've read cause the titles and covers in the 90s were all the same! I took an educated guess and posted a few.
And then I thought of Jennifer Wilde. Definitely one of the first romance authors I tried, from the second hand bookstore. Oh my Lord. Wilde was actually a man, and wrote the most ridiculous romances. They went like this:
- heroine SO gorgeous no man can resist her
- raped by baddie
- hero defends her honor and kills man in duel
- then blames heroine because she caused him to kill a man
- he runs off
- more terrible things happen to her
- eventually they get together.
Oh my days. I can only tell which ones they were by the covers. They were terrible--I even thought so now, so I can't believe I read so many. There's at least one that I know I sped-red to the end. The men were terrible assholes in them.
My brother had a college radio assignment where he had to do a recording of a dramatic reading, so he read a scene from Love Me, Marietta. All I can remember is: "LOVE me Marietta. Love ME!!!" It was unbelievably funny. His teacher must have loved it.
When Love Commands is the continuation. I rather liked the cover. The model looks like something from an old Cosmopolitan cover.
One of these is the one I just couldn't make it through.
This is the one high school romance read that Swiss Girl will remember. This one takes place in the war of 1812. Some Englishman on the run, and I think he kidnaps the American chick, or they somehow end up out in the wilderness together, having sex. That was when I learned that the word "manhood" is used instead of "penis" in these books, and I thought it was THE FUNNIEST THING EVER. Swiss Girl was sitting playing games on our computer, while I read the sex scenes out loud to her.
I also read this one. I was attracted by the premise of a woman disguising herself as a man so she can run off to be with her fiancé in the Civil War. But her fiancé was this sweet guy who was horrified by war, while she was all blood-lusty and thought he was a big wuss. So I really couldn't stand her.
There's one more romance novel--maybe the first I read--but I've never been able to rediscover it. I found it on my step-mother's shelf, though I don't think she'd ever read it. It was about this pair of beautiful twins, one virginal and shy, the other Wild n Crazy. You know how this goes. The wild one is in trouble and asks the shy one to Be Her on some trip to Somewhere Foreign. Off goes the virgin, and the man there was all *Roar! I am full of sex appeal! And YOU are a slut so WHY are you acting like a VIRGIN??*
I don't know if I read these before or concurrent with Judith Krantz, but at some point I must have realized I was safer sticking to Krantz. Her heroines were genuinely cool, the men weren't so sexist, and the sex scenes were better.
