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!

Category Romance: An Appreciation

I love category romance. I've been reading M&B romances ever since I was a school girl and the books have been with me through thick and thin. I can't remember the first M&B I ever picked up, but back in the day the books weren't split into lines like they are know, but all simply published as Mills and Boon romances and although writers have come and gone, covers changed and made more colourful and lines may have evolved, my enjoyment of these books hasn't diminished and nothing gives me greater pleasure than going to town in the first or second week of every month to pick up my books from my favourite bookseller and then going home and settling in for a good read. I'm also lucky in that as a reviewer of category romance, I get books by my favourite writers popping through the letterbox and there's been many a time when the postman delivers a review copy early in the morning, that I forget about the dirty cups in the sink or the pile of ironing and just put my feet up and indulge in the last romance by one of my favourites.

Although critics are quick to scoff and dismiss category romances, I just love reading them. I love the passion, the drama and the intensity of Modern/Presents, the variety, the humour and the emotion of Romance and the adrenaline, passion and humanity of Medical. And as a historical romance junkie who cut her reading teeth on Austen and Heyer, I just love being transported to the past and the M&B Historical writers deserve to be applauded for writing romances that are not just wonderfully passionate but also evocative and richly textured with historical details as opposed to many of today's historical romances published by others which could be set in the present day so scant is the research. Of course, then there are the books being published with Silhouette and there are many wonderful writers being published under the many lines such as favourites like Susan Mallery, Leanne Banks and Diana Palmer.

In my opinion, some of the best writers of romance writing today are writing category romances and people who disparage them clearly do not know what they are missing!

Shame on Me

I can't believe that it's been two months since my last blog post! Blame it on too much sun, too many wonderful books on my reading pile or else my own laziness, but I promise to start making at least weekly posts to this blog, so apologies to anyone who may have dropped in over the course of the past two months to find that I haven't been posting.

A lot of things have happened over the past few weeks such as those awful floods in England. My heart goes out to all those people who have lost their homes because of these floods. You are all in my thoughts and prayers and I do hope that things will be better for you soon.

Speaking of the floods, did anyone read that news report about a female journalist who was goosed during a live broadcast? I have to say that I was shocked and rather disgusted that a man still thinks it is acceptable behaviour to do such a thing - especially during such a sombre time!

Great Literature

Is it June already? It seems like only yesterday I was running around the shops buying Christmas presents and here I am today in June with the sun streaming through my windows on a blazing hot summer's day!

I haven't had much time to blog this past month so apologies to those who may have dropped in hoping to find a new post, but once the real world gets a hold on you, sometimes it does not seem to want to let you go. But I still have managed to fit in a couple of books and to read a couple of blogs and one recent blog I read on the Guardian website gave me pause for thought.

The article was about the wonderful Daphne Du Maurier, the writer whose wonderful novels like Rebecca, The House on the Strand and Frenchman's Creek, still have the power to enchant and captivate women everywhere with their masterful blend of suspense, drama and intensity. The article entitled "Let's not get carried away by Daphne Du Maurier" was written by a Professor of English who stated that Daphne du Maurier, although capable of tapping into our most profound fears, was not much of a writer. Words like "breathy prose", that much hated word by critics "romantic" and the word which I loathe and despise when applied to books "formula" pepper John Mullan's article and it's perfectly clear that for Prof Mullan, writers of popular fiction like Du Maurier are not worthy of being celebrated, admired or studied by academics because it's commerical and not literary fiction.

The definition of great literature has always puzzled me. I've always read voraciously and my bookshelves heave with M&Bs, historical romances, classics, thrillers, biographies and even literary novels. I've always read because I derive pleasure out of reading and the kind of criticism which Prof Mullan seems to be spouting totally derides readers and writers of popular fiction for once again he is suggesting that we should all be ashamed when reading popular novels because they are substandard when compared to more literary fiction because shock horror they give pleasure to readers all over the world.

I love popular fiction and if I live to be a hundred I'll still love it. Popular fiction has been my constant companion for most of my life and it has the ability to make me laugh and cry, to escape as well as to educate and entertain me (And if you don't believe me, ask yourself how many of us own our knowledge of history to Jean Plaidy and Georgette Heyer). Now, that is the definition of greatness.

Congratulations!

Last friday, the Romantic Novel of the Year award and the Romance Prize were announced (If you want to read all the gossip, check out Michelle Styles' excellent blog!) and the winners for the Romance Prize was Nell Dixon, whose first novel, Marrying Max, was published by The People's Friend Story Collection. Huge congratulations, Nell! I am keeping my fingers crossed that you soon become part of the M&B family!

The Romantic Novel of the Year award was won by Rosie Thomas and her novel Iris and Ruby. I have to say that even though I had no clue as to who would win the Romance Prize (especially as I love all the writers shortlisted!), I had a pretty good inkling that Rosie Thomas would win this award as her novel, about a grandmother recounting her adventures in wartime Cairo to her granddaughter seems like a novel which would appeal to all ages and Rosie's novels are critically acclaimed by the press- not to mention the fact that she's a Sunday Times best-seller.

I've not read either books, but will get Nell's book once it's released as an ebook and I must give Rosie Thomas a try!

Congratulations to the two winners and to all the other writers on the shortlist!

Catching up Again

I've been neglecting this blog again, but it's really not my fault. Now, that the pc troubles have eased, I've had a house full of the most demanding builders to contend with. Luckily, their work is done and after spending almost a week cleaning up the mess they left me with, I can relax and more importantly read! It's taken me a week to get through a particular book when usually I read three to four books in that same space.

I've been visiting blog land and romance message board in the meantime and a scandal brewed because of a particular book which asked that age old question - Is it rape or forced seduction?

The book in question is Anna Campbell's Claiming the Courtesan and even though I've not read I'm intrigued as it seems that opinions on this particular novel are divided - some people hate it whilst others love it.

Now, as I said, I've not read it so I can't comment on the content, but what I will say is that it's great that a writer and a publishing house took a chance and run a risk. Secondly, whenever I visit a messageboard, it seems that readers are moaning that the historical romance has grown stagnant and that every single book features the same characters in the same situations which we've read a million times before, so surely even if we don't like something, we should at least applaud someone who's tried to do something different?