Skip to main content

Granny Reads: Silhouette Christmas Stories 1990

When my husband and I moved into our current home, our landlord left behind several of his late wife's books, which were mostly romance novels. I love romance novels, but am too cheap/lazy to go out of my way to acquire them, so I was pretty excited about this unexpected bounty. Unfortunately, thanks in large part to the roughly 50 year age gap between us, the books aren't exactly what I'd pick out for myself. A lot of the titles seem to fall in that weird gray area between old school romance, where the heroes "seduced" (aka raped) the heroines in order to convince them who they should marry, and modern day romance where rape is extremely frowned upon. Still, I find that transition fascinating and so I'm enjoying reading these books for historical, if not entertainment, purposes, and I thought it might be fun to share what I found.

Since we just celebrated Christmas, I thought it would be appropriate to share Silhouette Christmas Stories 1990, a collection of contemporary (at least for 1990) tales by Ann Major, Rita Rainville, Lindsay McKenna, and Kathleen Creighton. The gray area between New School and Old School romance is really on display here. In all but one of the stories the decision to pursue someone romantically is made by the hero only. Both characters acknowledge an attraction, but we spend significant time watching the hero develop that attraction into an actual desire to have a relationship with the heroine. On the other hand, we spend very little time hearing the heroine's motivation for pursuing a relationship with the hero. The hero does the vast majority of the acting and the heroine's role is essentially to accept those actions. Even further frustrating me is that all three of these stories star single mothers and I hate stories where women are passive characters exponentially more when there are children to witness their mother's spinelessness.

However, Lindsay McKenna's story, "Always and Forever" was a little different. She tells the story of two people in the Air Force who meet when the heroine marries the hero's best friend. However, it's the middle of the Vietnam War, and shortly after the wedding, the heroine's husband is reported missing in action, and the hero steps in to comfort his best friend's wife. Over the years they keep up a really touching, open, and honest correspondence, becoming truly close friends. When it is eventually discovered that the heroine's husband was killed and the hero and heroine are free to admit the true depth of their feelings for each other, it's actually the heroine who makes the grand gesture to express her romantic interest in the hero, because he's too worried about dishonoring his dead friend's memory to be anything more than chaste with the woman he's wanted from the moment he met her. The rest of the stories in this series felt really dated, but aside from several mundane details, this one still feels relevant and relatable.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ebooks & Libraries

For a long time I've been frustrated with the way ebook publishers have been approaching library lending, but my rage has been overruling my sense and I haven't been able to get many coherent thoughts into print. Luckily Bobbi Newman pretty much hit the nail on the head with her " 9 Reasons Why Publishers Should Stop Acting Like Libraries Are the Enemy and Start Thanking Them ". I could go through each of her reasons and expound on why each one makes so much sense and explains a piece of where my frustration is coming from, but I'm going to focus on the points that have been bugging me the most. First from the consumer side, I know I'm not alone in the group of people who don't like to buy books until they're pretty sure they're going to love them. I simply read too much for buying every book I read to make any sort of financial sense. Often that means borrowing the first book in a series or by a new author to see if I want to spend money on th...

2023 Reading Challenges

Total Books Read: 85  of 100 Read Books I Own: 9 of 15 He's Where the Joy Is: Getting to Know the Captivating God of the Trinity  by Tara-Leigh Cobble Anne of Ingleside  by L. M. Montgomery (re-read) Faraway: Fairy Tales for the Here and Now  by Rainbow Rowell, et. al. Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts  by Rebecca Hall The Truth About White Lies  by Olivia A. Cole Mark of the Raven  by Morgan L. Busse When Morning Comes  by Arushi Raina Revelation Bible Study: Extravagant Hope  by Margaret Feinberg Romans: Good News That Changes Everything  by Melissa Spoelstra Total Series Read/Caught Up On: 4 of 5 Beartown by Fredrik Backman Loose Ends by Rebekah Weatherspoon The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang To Love Your Enemy by Jungyoon and Taegon As for subject matter reading, I love doing Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, even if I simultaneously chafe at someone else telling me what to read, leaving me scrambling to finish t...

2015 Reading Resolutions

Last year was the first year that I decided to do reading challenges beyond the basic "read x books" and I loved it. I read more books in 2014 than I ever have before, so I'm going to stick with it for 2015. First up is the challenge I created all on my own. When I was a precocious youngster, I was obsessed with reading "the best" books. Now I've learned the importance of reading things you enjoy, but I've read a lot of classics and tend to enjoy them, so I spent way to much time compiling various "best of" lists and made one master list of best novels. For 2015, I plan to read 50 of the 100 best (that I haven't already read). Below is the list, with the ones I read linked to my Goodreads review. Progress: 10 of 50 Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart Aligheri Dante The Divine Comedy Anonymous One Thousand and One Nights Atwood, Margaret The Handmaid's Tale Austen, Jane Emma Austen, Jane Persuasion Baldwin, James Go Tell It O...