Guilty Pleasures - A Rant

Having spent the past two weeks up to my eyeballs in balloons, vol au vents and seating plans as I organized a surprise birthday party for my best friend, it was a relief to get back to normal and to have some time to sit down and have a good read and catch up with what's happening in blog land. I read with delight the details of the AMBA lunch on several M&B writers blogs, but my delight soon turned to trepidation when I read that BBC Radio 4 were going to be transmit a programme about the history of M&B on Thursday entitled Guilty Pleasures - and my trepidation increased when I read the press release which, to be blunt, was a pile of rubbish.

For one thing, I've been reading M&B for decades and have never felt any guilt or remorse that I was reading them especially as unlike the harshest critics of Mills and Boons, I do actually read across the board and enjoy a wide variety of genres. Secondly, why should I feel guilty because I enjoy reading books about two people who are doing the most natural thing in the world - falling in love? Critics laud crime novels full of gory details and peppered with bloody corpses and macabre killings so why should they turn up their noses at romance?

Celia Brayfield, in an article which appeared in last Saturday's Daily Express, said that M&B are aimed at the lowest comment denominator and that "women with two neurons who rub together wouldn't be able to read these books unless they had the flu". Hmm, I think that Ms. Brayfield could learn a thing or two from M&B writers about telling an entertaining and engaging story, especially if all her books are like the ghastly Heartswap which I borrowed from the library a few years back and which I promptly returned as I couldn't get past page 50!

The programme's press release claims that the books are conservative thus implying that they never go beyond the bedroom door which I am sure will be news to the Blaze writers as well as to the writers of all the other lines. Clearly, research wasn't high on the producers' priority and one wonders whether other genres would be awarded this same kind of pejorative laissez faire.

I can't understand why the media cannot just accept the fact that women all over the world of all creeds and cultures read these books for the simple reason that they enjoy reading these wonderful stories of passion and romance. We feel no shame for liking these books nor should we. We don't judge or criticize other people's reading choices and it's a shame that others do not afford us that same privilege.

Mills and Boon launched the career of some of the world's biggest selling authors - Rosamunde Pilcher, Nora Roberts, Sally Beauman, Linda Howard, Stephanie Laurens and Jayne Ann Krentz not to mention that it's home to writers who have achieved success writing for both M&B and other houses such as Penny Jordan, Anne Herries and Helen Brooks as well as being the home of million selling writers such as Kate Walker, Lynne Graham, Carole Mortimer, Sara Craven and many, many more.

As Mills and Boon gear up to celebrate their centenary all I can say is let the idiots criticise and keep on producing these wonderful, wonderful books which we just cannot get enough of!

Mary Stewart

Don't you just love libraries? Despite have a reading pile comprising of a ton of books at home, I always look forward to my regular trips to the library where I enjoy spending hours browsing through the shelves,remembering gems which I love and finding new writers to add to my ever increasing collection at home.

Today, despite telling myself on my way there that I was not going to borrow any books, I dropped off my huge pile and went for a quick browse and spotted a book which I just had to borrow - Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. I don't know why I picked it off the shelves having read it some years ago, but as soon as I read the first page I was enraptured.

Not much happened in the first few pages, but I was simply hooked. Mary Stewart's prose is so rich, so lyrical and so utterly enchanting that it just sweeps you away.

I just cannot wait to read more of this wonderful book and to enjoy the magic that is Mary Stewart!