Sarah Wendell, one of the founders of the web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, appeared on the “Small Batch” edition of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour yesterday to discuss the romance genre.

Wendell and host Linda Holmes’ conversation is wide-ranging and concludes with Wendell offering some reading recommendations: two contemporary romances, Just One Of The Guys by Kristan Higgins (Harlequin, 2010) and A Gentleman In The Street by Alisha Rai (eBook only), and two mysteries with romance, Silent In The Grave by Deanna Raybourn (Harlequin/Mira, 2007) and In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Macmillan/Minotaur, 2003).

Wendell notes that readers internalize the way others respond to their choices: “Romance readers are so often subjected to shamming, we’re not actually ashamed of the books that we read but we’re told we ought to be … even by the people at the checkout counter at the bookstore. When you get that reception to the books you are buying or checking out from the library you internalize that [but] when you find other people who love the same thing you do. there is this enormous ‘squee’ of relief.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2015 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Fiction, Romance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.