Paperback Reader

I have to come to believe that there is a karmic balance to reviewing. You hit a patch of bad books, you think that’s what life will be like forever, and then, bam!, good books galore. It gives one (me) the strength to go on.

I think I mentioned that I came late to historicals in my reading career. Something about all those bosoms seemingly desiring to bust free made me nervous. Sort of like I was one bad bra strap away from social disaster. Also, those covers were just plain awful. Embarrassing. I mean, I read in public.

So my historical thing came about when I found the tasteful covers of Amanda Quick. Then I realized that, frankly, I sort of liked them. All things being equal, I preferred the Regency era to, oh, medieval times, but that’s due to the fact that personal hygiene was greatly improved in the 1800’s. Also, people weren’t so much eating with their knives and indoor plumbing was just around the corner.

Men and romance - not always a comfortable or easy combination. Maybe that's why most romance novelists are women. Maybe that's why romance readers expect romance authors to be women.

And in walks Dan Graziano.

Sportswriter, male and...romance author? Yeah. Graziano does not write smaltzy romance. Graziano does not write the guy-on-the-make romance. Call it romance. Call it lad lit. Call it chick lit by a guy. Call it whatever you want. Graziano writes a strong, smart, heartfelt story that proves men know romance.

Each time I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged I am struck by one (okay, more, but stick with me) thought: once you get past all the speechifying and selfless self-sacrifice on the altar of money, it’s a romance novel. Pure and simple. Follows the so-called formula to the letter.

We all know the story. The world’s elite have come under the grip of Extreme socialism bordering on out-and-out Communism. The idea of producing for the bottom line of a company – or worse, to line the pockets of the company’s owners – is an anathema. No thinking person works for the individual good; the collective good is all that matters.

In the course of imposing this theory on the world, these philosophical elites drive all the thinking, doing folk of the world underground. The ones who can actually make things work are, in the words of one character, on strike. They won’t make money for The Man. It is Rand’s private little joke that The Man is a hand-wringing do-gooder.

There are plot set-ups out there sure to cause an instant reaction...a not-so-good reaction. One could even call it a negative-to-the-point-of-dread reaction. To pick up the book - to pay money for it, especially hardcover money for it - you have to hold tight to the "it's all in the execution" theory. Chant it. Make it your mantra. Believe and hope. After all that, sometimes, like the heroine of The Sleeping Beauty Proposal, all of that hard work pays off.

Stephanie Feagan has graciously accepted our offer to join us here at PBR. We find Stephanie's writing intelligent and funny, her observations keen and savvy. We're thrilled to add another voice to the reviews here and are particularly thrilled that voice is such a nuanced one.

Welcome Stef!

I freely admit a great deal of my anthropological and societal education has been gleaned from the pages of historical romance novels. I know, for instance, that a woman in England couldn’t inherit a peerage, but she might be a peer in her own right. I’m aware that while a pelisse was an absolute necessity for a young woman rushing off to meet a shady character in Hyde Park so she could save the hero/her mother/family estate/world, she wouldn’t typically be in need of a man of affairs. That’s because she didn’t have affairs. Men handled money and business. Women stayed home to serve tea and have babies. For certain, other than kick-ass chicks like Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great, women generally had less-than-powerful lots in life until about 1982, when Boy George burst on the scene and forever altered the face of masculinity, forcing women to revolt and change their lots from less-than-powerful to more-powerful-but-still-not-great.