More timeless romance

[resonant]

I've finished going through my aunt's books. Here's a statistical breakdown:

Total books: 46
Titles containing the word 'fire': 6
Titles containing weather words ('wind,' 'storm,' and so on): 7
Title that covers both bases: Winds of Fury, Winds of Fire
Titles containing the name of a British estate: 5
Silliest estate name: Wyndespelle
Titles consisting only of a woman's first name: 8
Chances that the author's name will be even more overwrought than the heroine's: about 50/50
Most overwrought author names: Gimone, Ariadne, Aola

There should be Romance Novel Cover Bingo.

Cleavage would be in the Free spot, of course, since even if you open the book and find the heroine lamenting her flat-chestedness, on the cover she'll always be courting lower-back pain.

Castle ... ship ... horse ... full moon ... cloak ... Stonehenge ... flames ... Bingo!

Now I've finished listing the books, and caught up on all the reading I missed while I had the Russian death cold, and I'm bored. Almost bored enough to read gen. Almost bored enough to go to bed early. Almost bored enough to write, even. But not quite.

Comments

[timian.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Is Aola in any way related to aoli? Is her writing reminiscient of mayonaise, or place undue emphasis on egg yolk?

[quondamquadrat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I needed this laugh. Thank you!

Q

[askmehow.livejournal.com]

...even if you open the book and find the heroine lamenting her flat-chestedness, on the cover she'll always be courting lower-back pain.
Hee! Thanks for that.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Some friends and I used to refer to romance novels generically as Love's Adjective Noun. You know, Love's Flaming Passion, Love's Sweeping Desire . . .

Cover Bingo is a great idea! Hee.

[celli]

*giggling* I would totally play that game.

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

Oh, hee. I used to look at romance-book listings and keep a tally of how overwrought the character names were. Plain-Jane names counted one; elaborated, respelled, or double-barrelled but recognizable Western-culture names ("Jamiela," "Lyndia") counted two; completely over the top names (especially involving fire or passion, like "Blayze") counted three. In the 80s this yielded an average score of around 2.4 for any publisher's current listing. Romance naming fashions seem to have calmed down a bit since then.

Never mind that actual people have named their kids or renamed themselves everything from "Moon" to "Praise-The-Mercy-Of-The-Lord" (and what would that guy use for initials?) to something that started with many Z's (in order to be the last listing in the phone book, and I do wonder what this person's *other* goals in life were). Romance heroines are another breed entirely.

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a librarian who has to weed through the Romance section every day--thank you for this.

You forgot the Savage series. Savage Longing, Savage Desire, Savage Ecstasy, etc. Stories about brooding Indians falling in love with really, *really* naive white girls and sweeping them away to their tepees or occasionally longhouses. And all the girls have names like Misshi and Dayanara and Veronica that were *certainly* prevalent in the 1800s. Oy.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Love's Adjective Noun

Snerk!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

The only 'savage' in my collection was Savage In Silk. We were trying to decide whether it was meant as an adjective or a noun.

And all the girls have names like Misshi and Dayanara and Veronica that were *certainly* prevalent in the 1800s.

There's a woman in my romance writers' chapter who's writing a Western romance set in the days of the Oregon trail. The heroine's name is Kayla. [sigh]