[Eric Selinger]

As usual, I'm overdue with my book orders for the fall. As usual, it's because I'm dithering over what novels to choose for my popular romance survey. All advice will be very gratefully received!

I have 10 weeks to work with, and the course meets twice a week (Mondays and Wednesdays).

As a general rule, I've started the course with this sequence of novels:

Hull, The Sheik: 1919
Heyer, Devil's Cub: 1932
Holt, Mistress of Mellyn (1960) or an early Mary Stewart, like Nine Coaches Waiting (1958)
Woodiwiss, The Flame and the Flower (1974)

That leaves me about five weeks in which to survey romancelandia since the mid-70s.

Now, in the past what I've done is spend a day on the reception of romance by academia after the Woodiwiss novel, covering some of the claims made against the genre and on its behalf in the debates of the 1980s and early 1990s. I then move on to talk about romance fiction as a self-consciously feminist genre, and look at a group of novels from various subgenres: paranormal, romantic suspense, etc. Always at least one African-American romance; always at least one m/m, mfm, or erotic romance (Hill's Natural Law, for example), too. I've been able to do this, however, because my course USED to meet three days a week, so that we could cover more novels than we had weeks. Last quarter, for example, we went from the Woodiwiss to a string of books by Loretta Chase, Jennifer Crusie, Suze Brockmann, J. R. Ward, Beverly Jenkins, Beth Patillo, and Alex Beecroft.

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to have my students do that, this time around. Frankly, I think a lot of students fell behind on the reading last time, and didn't catch up.

I've thought about adding Kinsale's Midsummer Moon (1987) after the Woodiwiss, in part because it's a delightful book (much lighter than FF) and in part because it shows how novelists adapted the long erotic-historical novel to feminist ends in the 1980s. (That desire to make romance an explicitly feminist genre dominates the second half of the course).

I've thought of doing a pair of Jenny's category romances (maybe Manhunting and Anyone But You), as two of these could be read over a weekend, and these would give us easy access to some categories and to some of her ideas about the genre, too. (These instead of Welcome to Temptation.)

I don't know... I suppose what I'm asking is this: if you had to list 9 or 10 Essential Romance Novels, what would they be? What about 9 or 10 novels for a "conversion kit": i.e., novels that could change a student's mind about the value, pleasure, artistry, and possibilities of the form?

Just looking for ideas here, I guess!

[Angela Toscano]

Quote

I don't know... I suppose what I'm asking is this: if you had to list 9 or 10 Essential Romance Novels, what would they be? What about 9 or 10 novels for a "conversion kit": i.e., novels that could change a student's mind about the value, pleasure, artistry, and possibilities of the form?

I have a hard time of trying to construct a conversion list, partially because I have this librarian tendency to want to do a reference interview with the individual person to see what they like and then recommend based on that. However, I do have a list in no particular order (unless you want ascribe meaning to the order I thought them up). I've left off stuff I know you already use/used so there's only seven.


1. An Unwilling Bride by Jo Beverley (might be out of print but I can't remember)
2. The Devil's Waltz by Anne Stuart
3. Aunt Sophie's Diamonds by Joan Smith (out of physical print but now in ebook format; may have originally been a category regency)
4. Thunder and Roses by Mary Jo Putney
5. Music of the Night by Lydia Joyce
6. Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas
7. Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes (more chick lit but yeah)

[Laura Vivanco]

Eric Selinger, on 13 July 2009 - 08:54 PM, said:

(That desire to make romance an explicitly feminist genre dominates the second half of the course).

[...]

I don't know... I suppose what I'm asking is this: if you had to list 9 or 10 Essential Romance Novels, what would they be? What about 9 or 10 novels for a "conversion kit": i.e., novels that could change a student's mind about the value, pleasure, artistry, and possibilities of the form?

Just looking for ideas here, I guess!

Re the AA romances, I don't know what balance of historicals to contemporaries you're looking for, and a Beverly Jenkins historical romance would be useful if you want to discuss Rita Dandridge's book, but I rather like Karyn Langhorne's A Personal Matter. The heroine's got a strong personality and no plans to have a secret baby or be bowled over by her boss, and there are some very prosaic elements (I discussed them here) so I think it might "change a student's mind about the [...] possibilities of the form."

I've got Jo Beverley's My Lady Notorious on my TBR pile so I can't say much about it, but I do know it's got a cross-dressing hero as well as a cross-dressing heroine, and I thought that sounded interesting and very unusual.

Sandra Schwab's Castle of the Wolf has fun with fairytales and it's set in Germany, so again, it's a bit unusual. Sandra's a colleague of course, but that's not why I'm suggesting it.

If you want to give them a real shock to the system you could try Rosy Thornton's More Than Love Letters. I discussed it here. It's very feminist, full of references to UK politics, it's in epistolary form and there are no explicit sex scenes (and only one, extremely short non-explicit one, as far as I can recall).

But maybe you didn't mean "change their minds" in quite the ways I've been thinking of?

[Eric Selinger]

Laura Vivanco, on 13 July 2009 - 04:29 PM, said:

Re the AA romances, I don't know what balance of historicals to contemporaries you're looking for, and a Beverly Jenkins historical romance would be useful if you want to discuss Rita Dandridge's book, but I rather like Karyn Langhorne's A Personal Matter. The heroine's got a strong personality and no plans to have a secret baby or be bowled over by her boss, and there are some very prosaic elements (I discussed them here) so I think it might "change a student's mind about the [...] possibilities of the form."

It's funny, Laura: that post of yours also discusses a Karen Higgins contemporary (Catch of the Day) that I enjoyed recently, and perhaps because of some spillover effect I'm finding that the Langhorne looks very, very interesting for the class!

More on the others you mention (and you, Angela!) when I've had the chance to investigate them, too. More Than Love Letters sounds intriguing and fun!

[Laura Vivanco]

Eric Selinger, on 13 July 2009 - 11:45 PM, said:

More Than Love Letters sounds intriguing and fun!

It is fun and funny in lots of places, but it's also got some very sad moments, real trauma which is not resolved in a neat way, and people who do bad things but aren't punished. So although there may be "emotional justice" for the hero and heroine, it's counterbalanced to some extent by the emotional injustice. As the title suggests, there's rather more in the novel than love letters, but in the end it does come down on the side of having an "Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending."

[Laura Vivanco]

I was wondering if you needed some science fiction/romance on the list, and it occurred to me that Catherine Asaro's Sunrise Alley would be an interesting choice. It's available at Baen's free online library but I checked and you can get new, paper copies. Given that the villain is "experimenting with copying the minds of humans into android brains, implanted in human bodies" it raises some interesting questions about what makes us human, and what love is.

[Eric Selinger]

Laura Vivanco, on 13 July 2009 - 06:40 PM, said:

I was wondering if you needed some science fiction/romance on the list, and it occurred to me that Catherine Asaro's Sunrise Alley would be an interesting choice.

I've never read Asaro, Laura--but my brother, who is a physicist, is a big fan of hers, and has brought her out to a couple of events to talk about the science in her work. Since it's readable on line, I'll take a look. Thanks!

[Eric Selinger]

Angela Toscano, on 13 July 2009 - 04:06 PM, said:

1. An Unwilling Bride by Jo Beverley (might be out of print but I can't remember)
2. The Devil's Waltz by Anne Stuart
3. Aunt Sophie's Diamonds by Joan Smith (out of physical print but now in ebook format; may have originally been a category regency)
4. Thunder and Roses by Mary Jo Putney
5. Music of the Night by Lydia Joyce
6. Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas
7. Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes (more chick lit but yeah)

Wow. I've only read two of these, I think: the Joyce & the Kleypas. Have read some Keyes, but I don't recall if I read the one you list. Last Chance Saloon I read ages ago, and quite liked, if memory serves. Onto the TBR list they go!

[Eric Selinger]

So, as of this morning, the survey syllabus looks like this:

1. Hull (1919)
2. Heyer (1932)
3. Stewart (1958)
4. Woodiwiss 1972
5. Kinsale, Midsummer Moon 1987
6. Crusie, Manhunting / Anyone But You ('93, '96)
7. Chase, Lord of Scoundrels ('95)
8. Roberts, Montana Sky ('96)
9. Langhorne, Personal Matter ('04)--I quite liked the excerpts on line
10. Beecroft, False Colors ('09)

There's a bump in the middle of this, in the 1990s, but that doesn't bother me. I'm a bit more concerned that there's no paranormal in the list, which seems a gap. I have one extra class day, so I could conceivably put in another short book--I've been thinking of maybe Victoria Dahl's "Talk Me Down," which talks about erotic romance and e-publishing, and I think the students would like it, but maybe I should wedge a paranormal in instead? Could also put a chick-lit in: Bridget Jones could fit into the section on the 1990s, for example.

Another possibility (again from the '90s) would be Catherine Asaro's "The Veiled Web," an SF romance with a western heroine (Latina-American, I gather) in a forced-marriage espionage plot which takes her to Morocco, where she ends up married to a computer scientist & falling in love (in his absence) with the Artificial Intelligence version of him. Could be fun to pair with The Sheik! Oh, yes, and it's also tempting because it's set in what Flight of the Conchords would call "the distant future," in this case, the far-off year of 2010!

Thoughts?

[Laura Vivanco]

Eric Selinger, on 14 July 2009 - 12:31 PM, said:

So, as of this morning, the survey syllabus looks like this:

1. Hull (1919)
2. Heyer (1932)
3. Stewart (1958)
4. Woodiwiss 1972
5. Kinsale, Midsummer Moon 1987
6. Crusie, Manhunting / Anyone But You ('93, '96)
7. Chase, Lord of Scoundrels ('95)
8. Roberts, Montana Sky ('96)
9. Langhorne, Personal Matter ('04)--I quite liked the excerpts on line
10. Beecroft, False Colors ('09)
[...] I'm a bit more concerned that there's no paranormal in the list, which seems a gap.

If you replaced Roberts' Montana Sky with Midnight Bayou, which we were discussing on another thread, then you'd have a paranormal.

[Jennifer Crowley]

Laura Vivanco, on 14 July 2009 - 08:09 AM, said:

If you replaced Roberts' Montana Sky with Midnight Bayou, which we were discussing on another thread, then you'd have a paranormal.

I kinda agree, because you probably want that extra class day if you want to linger over a book. I'm biased for Midnight Bayou, because it's one of my favorite Roberts books.

[Eric Selinger]

Jennifer Crowley, on 14 July 2009 - 08:14 AM, said:

I kinda agree, because you probably want that extra class day if you want to linger over a book. I'm biased for Midnight Bayou, because it's one of my favorite Roberts books.

OK! Here's where teaching multiple courses will come in handy. Maybe fall quarter I'll do Midnight Bayou, and the next quarter I'll do Montana Sky. I don't have to decide forever, just quarter by quarter, lucky man that I am.

On the drive home I also decided (I think) to do Prince of Midnight instead of Midsummer Moon. The horse scenes in POM beg to be played off against the ones in The Sheik, and as far as tone is concerned, we'll just ramp up the angst with two long novels and then break the tension with the short ones from Jenny.

Given all these new preps, I'm going to stick with Holt's Mistress of Mellyn, rather than bringing in Mary Stewart's Nine Coaches Waiting. Again, I'll save that for a later course, rather than ditch it entirely. The current line-up is therefore:

1. Hull, The Sheik (1919)
2. Heyer, Devil's Cub (1932)
3. Hull, Mistress of Mellyn (1960)
4. Woodiwiss, Flame & Flower (1972)
5. Kinsale, Prince of Midnight (1990)
6. Crusie, Manhunting / Anyone But You ('93, '96)
7. Chase, Lord of Scoundrels ('95)
8. Roberts, Midnight Bayou ('04)
9. Langhorne, Personal Matter ('04)
10. Beecroft, False Colors ('09)

With a possible final book. Maybe.

[Jennifer Crowley]

What level course is it?

[Eric Selinger]

200 level, which means it draws everyone from freshmen to seniors, from around the university. No pre-requisites, no assumption that students have a background in literary study or analysis. A challenging course, but fun.