I remember once hearing that the most lucrative type of book you can write as an author are Harlequin romances. Not good news for people like me, not good news. Those books are read by women, and now we have a corresponding world of TV.
The question is, as raised by this Globe and Mail article: Do women watch crap? And I’m inclined to say yes.
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For once (!), Brigitte wants to be contrarian: I have read a few Harlequin romances (it was research!) and while I got tired of the predictable writing style (the mouth goes dry, the knees go weak – I cannot STAND the see the words “mouth” and “dry” together anymore!), I have to say some of them are not altogether bad reads. At least they tell a straightforward and old-fashioned story, as opposed to so much modern literary fiction. But television, yes. A different kettle of fish to be sure. I used to loooove Will & Grace and Seinfeld and House and now (thanks, Netflix!), I’m going through Mad Men (second season) and the good ole Get Smart. None of which is particularly uplifting. But see, getting uplifted isn’t why I watch TV shows…
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Véronique comes clean: I watched Bulging Brides today while eating lunch. It was that or I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant on TLC, which scares me stupid, along with A C-section Story and Bringing Home Baby.
Until work installs iTunes on my desktop, I will need to watch low-brow tv on my soup minute (“lunch hour” too generous). At home, I watch House on the treadmill, Mad Man with my husband and The Good Wife while catching-up on work, all iTunes downloads. We do not want cable in our house: the content is too bad, the ads too many and the bills too high.
by 
My sister and I actually run a blog: http://everyneelsthing.blogspot.com/
which is dedicated to reviewing all 136 books of the Harlequin author Betty Neels. They’re all clean, kitschy and written by a woman so inspiring I can’t even stand it. (Served in WWII, was a professional nurse all her life, began writing at 59 (!) and wrote until she died in her 90s all while forcing (through the popularity of her own clean books) her increasingly smutty publishers to keep churning out pretty moral content.
I too loathe most bodice rippers with the heat of a thousand hot, hot suns but good stuff (or just innocently fun stuff) can be found.
I agree that the the Harlequin romances, but not the “steamier” imprints, at least offer reasonably well-written tales of romance. And they certainly are no less predictable than bestsellers like those of the guy who wrote “The Notebook” or Rose Tremaine or Joanna Trollope. And after throwing down in disgust the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by the lionized J.M. Coetzee, “Elizabeth Costello”, earlier this week, I am tempted to spend the next couple of months reading a few of these. Just to clear the palate, so to speak. If only Jane Austen had lived longer and written several more fine novels…