romance novels and chick lit

I love to read.

Since I got married

my reading time has been reduced considerably.

This was fine for awhile but

now we have entered into the comfortable stage of our marriage

I feel the need, the need to read.

 

 

 

But what to do?

 

I would normally read non-fiction,

mainly historical or economics books,

a bit of social science,

maybe some juicy, complicated non-violent crime

but lighter reading is in order.

 

Now this sounds very dill-brained of me,

but I'm sure my loving friends will know of my dill-brained moments,

but I sort of didn't realise that chick lit sat solidly in the romance section. 

 

I'm not actually sure what I thought I was reading all these years.

Not that it's a serious issue

as chick lit is hardly a genre that takes it's self seriously.

Mercifully.

 

I think I was just attracted to the bright colours and funky fonts

so often found in the cover art of chick lit.

 

Yes I do judge books by their covers.

 

But now a new issue has arisen for me.

 

I like to lie in bed at the end of my day

reading a chapter or two or eight before

relaxing in a mind blanked sleep

(non-fiction is not always conducive to this).

 

But my new issue is that I'm lying in bed,

next to my Homeboy husband,

who will be playing on the iPad,

and I feel disloyal reading about the rocky romances of others',

often twee, imaginary ones at that.

Ones where vain and silly dramas arise and are resolved in 300  to 400 pages*.

 

Real life ain't like that.

So I find that my reading escape pod is failing to launch,

as my real life problems are certainly not resolved in anywhere near

the time it takes to read those pages or

in the imaginary timeline of the characters.

 

Plus when the romance side of these novels rears it's floaty, dreamy head

I feel disloyal to my real life Homeboy husband,

who only does romance when directly instructed

(though he does plenty of meaningful, really important things for me,

like understanding my phobia about touching rubbish bins

and taking the rubbish out without a word from me and

he puts my heel cream on my feet and

tucks them into bright pink and red fluffy socks so neatly.

Practical romance is more our style).

 

I feel disloyal because it's encouraging a fantasy of variations of Mr Darcy.

Yes the most famous of all Asperger's persons in the whole world.

Who knew that dark and moody, rude and surly,

was the olden day equivalent of an inability to read faces and social environments

and when dressed a cravat and muslin shirt would be the hottest thing ever.

Gosh make him a vampire and it's all over rover.

(not actually into fantasy novels so am assuming dark, brooding, marginally verbal,

quirky vampires are the norm based on my limited watching of True Blood).

Plus, as is often the theme in chick lit,

women who think they can change a man

have to be the most deluded lot of them all.

Ok that was a side note.

 

Anyhoo,  romance novels, chick lit

have lost their attractiveness to me now as they are too

vapid and vain to distract me from my real life woes and to create an idea of what I may be missing out on .

I'll take a cosy night on my couch with my Homeboy

half watching kung fu movies while I distract myself with cross stitch and iPad facebook

than any of the feet of clay romantic heros in a book.

 

I shall have to resort reading to free market theory and studies of neural pathways.

 

P.S. When I was high school I had a history teacher named Mrs Smith.  I remember her saying she was not hugely impressed with being a stay at home mum (before she came back teaching, which as good as she was, was not her choice of an ideal career).  I remember her saying that she would hide in the loo from her toddler children just so she could have a read of what ever she could get her hands on.  I am that kind of reader. It's a neglected need.

* I googled "how many pages has an average chick lit novel" and google came back with an average of 250 words per page with a total of about 65,000 to 80,000 words, which should be about 300 to 400 pages with a 2.5 cm margin (in case you are wondering).