a bookstore with no romance section?
thoughts on our culture's contempt for girly things
i’m still thinking about
’s great piece in people’s princess: “carrying around a copy of the bell jar doesn’t make you look smarter.” here she writes,“You know those contemporary romance novels with a cursive-eqsue font on the cover and the main characters depicted as cartoonish illustrations? I would avoid those books like the plague. They felt off-putting to me, like I could pick them up and immediately know what happened and for so long, that meant that they were bad. I just never was interested in those, or the YA novels that so many people my age were discovering for the first time. ACOTAR? I read the first book in middle school. It just felt very juvenile for me, like I had matured and was not going to read something I would have enjoyed when I was 13 when I could grab an Elena Ferrante novel instead.”
it is very much worth your time to read the full piece. when i read sarah’s post, i started thinking about my own process of falling in love with romance novels. i too once wanted to be a “serious” reader who could go around saying, as sarah would put it, “did you know i’ve read tolstoy?” i think i saw those two girls on the white lotus with their marxist books or whatever and thought: god, i want to be them so badly.
all of this reminded me of the time i walked into a bookstore with no romance section.
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two years ago i was visiting two of my best friends in durham. they took me to an independent bookstore which i will not name: i was just giving into my love for romance novels. i had devoured secrets of a summer night by lisa kleypas, red, white, and royal blue by casey mcquiston, people we meet on vacation by emily henry, reputation by lex croucher, rosaline palmer takes the cake by alexis hall, among many many others. yes, the writing in some of these books at times felt “unserious” by the standards i was taught: but these books had me exploring my innermost emotions like none i had read before. i was a fiend for romance! for so many years i’d concealed this behind a literary interest in the classics: jane austen and the bronte sisters in particular.
but now i knew where that interest really came from: i loved love, i loved romance, not for its “literaryness” or “classicness” but for itself, for the special thing that only romance is. not only had i been devouring all these romance novels: i’d spent a huge chunk of deep covid binging romance movies. i just loved love, you know? especially during that christmas: i must have watched 2-3 romance movies a day. i loved the confusing feelings i got when i would see a woman walk down the stairs in her dress, and i loved how i could feel my whole heart flutter upward when they finally kissed.
so yeah, obviously, in durham at the store: i was so ready to browse the romance section! unfortunately, my experience was not the one i’d hoped for.
i love walking around in the romance section, just picking up the books and looking over their covers, checking out the back. with a romance novel it’s not quite the details of plot on the back cover that compel me to pull out my credit card. people say, “oh, it’s so predictable!” - a silly criticism. what is not predictable is the swirling spectrum of feelings and reflections which the romance novel is sure to stir up inside you. can other genres awaken these feelings as well? yes: but i would argue not in the same way romance can.
even if the plot of a romance novel seems predictable, what’s not predictable is your personal journey with the book you are holding in your hands.
with a romance novel it’s not about plot. it’s about the atmosphere, the vibe, the way that book in particular somehow calls out to your soul even if you can’t explain why: the way the back summary is written, the kind of dialogue sprinkled on the first few pages, the attitude of the protagonist, the happy feelings and causes for deep reflection you’ll be left with. by the end of a good romance novel, you have grown internally as a person. you are more in touch with yourself and with others. so when choosing a romance novel, you do not perform seriousness: you follow your heart!
that’s why i love to browse romance novels for myself. if i relied exclusively on bestseller lists or online recommendations (i do sometimes rely on these), i’d never be able to really feel the book before i buy it, you know? and i need that! i need that sense of connection that sparks between me and a book!
but this store in durham… had NO romance section.
this store had something like two bookshelves completely stuffed with the thickest “literary criticism” books you’ve ever seen, but no romance section. this store had a full aisle of dense history books, but no romance section. all the other genre fictions were represented: fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction, even the witchy shit, but:
no. romance. section.
now at the time i had yet to embrace my identity. in many ways i was living as an identity drone. i was still dressing up as the cis man i believed myself to be. i was always so nervous buying romance novels. sometimes the cashier would give me a knowing glance when i would plop a stack of 3 books with girlishly illustrated cartoon covers on the front desk. what this glance knew i cannot say, but the glance knew: there’s something different about this dude. and i liked that. i think i was addicted to that: i wasn’t sure what it was inside me i wanted affirmed, but i knew these people were seeing something beneath the surface.
still: in durham i was afraid to go to the desk and ask about a romance section, so i had my friend do it. maybe i thought they’d think i was some kind of joke, or a girl, or something: whatever it was, they’d be onto me for sure, and i was nervous about that even as i wanted it. so my friend went and asked, “excuse me, do you have a romance section?” the woman at the register, with a genuinely sad look on her face, slunk down her shoulders and said, “no, we don’t, i’ve been trying to get the owner to start one.” and i wondered: how many of those literary criticism books are even selling?
i still think about the owner of this bookstore. woman? man? other? i don’t know: let’s use “they.” do they not realize what my friend
recently reminded me over text? many have said it: romance novels carry the book industry like taylor swift carries the music industry. yet large segments of our culture struggle to take both seriously. and what do romance novels and taylor swift have in common?there is an overwhelming sense across our culture that the girly is fundamentally unserious, immature, off limits, embarrassing, childish. romance novels are something a lonely old woman buys at a grocery store. romance novels are for teen girls who aren’t ready to read grown-up books. romance novels aren’t deep emotional experiences for the reader: they’re porn! yes: how quickly criticism of the girly escalates from accusations of childishness to accusations of perversion
i hope that store out in durham has a romance section now: maybe more people out there are stumbling upon romance novels that just might change their lives 🦋
(photo my own: lake como, italy)
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i love this piece!! it means so much that you connected with my essay 💓 your romance-less bookstore experience is so interesting and i love all of the points you made
No romance section! It’s a true crime story! I love your takes on this topic, though. Romance books have gotten me through some difficult periods in my life, and I’m so happy they exist 💕