August 31, 2004
tiki romance
Have I mentioned that I started reading romance novels? I’m hoping that they will give me insight into the minds of the people who read them a lot. I think there must be a lot of those people since there are so many of those books.
This first one I read was Circle of Love by Alma Blair. The book was going along in the way these books usually go along until this:
”Did my father really believe this? Was he really a Christian?”
“Oh, yes,” Ellen said softly. “Christ’s love just seemed to flow through him. Pop said from the moment he got saved, his one goal was to live his life for the glory of God.”
He only gets the girl after he is saved and decides to be a Christian. On the back of the book, on the bottom, something I didn’t see, were words that read, “Inspirational Romance”.
You may not be able to tell the quality of the book by its cover, but I could have begun to understand the content.
My next ab fab book was Kentucky Heat by Fern Michaels. In this book, a fifty-two year old woman throws her kids out of the house, gets them back, falls in love with her dead husband’s business partner, wins the Triple Crown for the second time in her life, and becomes severely scarred so that she endures much self-loathing.
Out of that stuff, the most absurd thing is the Triple Crown thing. Good Lord.
But! Magic things are about to happen! Lots of people will be introduced to make things wild and wacky! I will give you the list of names from the first chapter: Mitch Cunningham, Nealy Coleman Diamond Clay, Seth Coleman, Moss and Amelia Coleman, Cary Asante, Billie Coleman, Maggie, Susan, and Riley Coleman, Sallie Coleman Thornton, Cotton Easter, Ash and Simon Thornton, Fanny Thornton, Birch, Sage, Billie, and Sunny Thornton, Metaxas Parish, Ruby Thornton, Dillon Roland, Rhy and Pyne, Maud and Jess Wooley, Hunter Clay, and Nick Clay.
How many of these kids are in the book? Fourteen, near as I can tell. Out of the twenty-eight listed. Then there are the horse names, which I think I will leave to your imagination.
In my head I’m making a character who reads far too many of these books. I’m afraid I’m going to get more stupider than usually.
I think one of the most charming things is the lack of self-consciousness by the writer. For example, on page one, as they take care of a newborn colt, this line appears, “Ruby said in a hoarse voice…”
Ha! It’s magnificent! It wouldn’t be funny if she’d tried, but since she didn’t, ha!
The current romance novel is Embers.
For my next trick, I will divine the mathematical formula for the price of getting someone into bed with the possibility of matrimony versus the price without that possibility. I will also include a "community property" constant.
Please fund further study with tiki huts in your backyard. (I thrive on the voodoo powers of tiki.)
