NOT on my Notable list

Since I was sick I read something NOT on my list. I read a romance. You heard me, a romance. It might have even been a Harlequin. Yep it sure was and a darn good one at that. Actually, this is one of those titles that was mentioned on one of the "best of" lists a couple of years ago so I picked it up, stored with the many other books I have squirrelled away all over the house. The reason I decided to read this one today was because it was on the bookshelf closest to the couch and as I have mentioned before, I felt puny.

I like reading romance. Actually I like almost any type of book but that is beside the point. I like thinking about people's inner lives and how they view the world and romance is one of the better genres for exploring those kinds of issues. On my other blog I have been writing down the list my "getting asked on a date" pet peeves. Here is my reading pet peeve. I really hate it when people judge other people's reading material.

First of all, if you are judging someone else, you can be darn sure that someone else is turning up their nose at what you are reading. No exceptions! Not even for the literary readers among us. Everyone has a slightly different idea of what good lit. is and there are just as many people who think that the dead white authors are outdated and not worthy of mention as there are people who think that they are the only thing that should be read. The are plenty of people who think that all mysteries are dreck, that SF is juvenile, literary fiction is pretentious and romance is just a bunch of sex scenes strung together. Everyone is right and everyone is wrong. For every good romance/mystery/literary fiction novel there are eight or nine really crappy ones floating around.

If you have only read one of any particular type of book your odds were pretty good that you picked up one of the crappy ones. If you are at all interested in trying a new genre, please go and ask a librarian (preferably one who reads that genre or is really good at reader's advisory) to help you pick out something that might give you a different view of genre. There is a lot of good stuff out there in every genre, even literary fiction.:)