Reader interview: Rosario

Rosario is an economist from Montevideo, Uruguay, and she has a blog Rosario's Reading Journal When you were a child, what did you usually read? Everything I could manage to get my hands on. When I was a child (early '80s) there just weren't any books for kids available that had been written around here, so my reading tended to be translations of mostly English and American books. I remember every time we travelled to Buenos Aires, my parents would take me to this absolutely enormous bookstore called "El Ateneo" and allow me to choose a few books from the Robin Hood collection, which was basically translations of "classics" ... I remember reading stuff like Little Women, Heidi, Tom Sawyer, Rider Haggard's She, every single Jules Verne novel and, of course, Robin Hood. I also read every single book featuring boarding schools I could find (Malory Towers, St. Clare's, Trebizon). I especially adored Enid Blyton, including The Famous Five, the Adventure series and The Secret Seven. Oh, and I musn't forget Emilio Salgari! My grandpa had every single one of his books, and some of my best memories are of proceeding through those shelves one by one. There were about 100 titles, and I loved that I never knew what I was going to get, beyond the fact that it would be a wonderful adventure. It could be a band of pirates fighting against the British and Dutch in Malaysia, as in the Sandokan series, or a Venetian noblewoman disguised as a man and fighting in the siege of Damascus, as in the Captain Storm series. They were a lot of fun. And grandpa also had all of Agatha Christie's books, which I loved. I blame my preference for cozy mysteries on the fact that I cut my teeth on those. I also read a few books which might have been a teeny bit too adult for me. My parents always allowed me to read whatever I wanted, so I'd raid their bookshelves. I especially remember Philippa Carr's Daughters of England series. The Lion Triumphant shocked me to death, and finding out that I was reading The Adulteress shocked one of my mom's friends to death. As a romance reader, what do you usually read? A bit of everything. There are a couple of subgenres I'm not much of a fan of Time travel novels, Westerns, or military romances, but I'll read a couple of titles every now and then. I like contemporaries (especially straight contemps, without suspense subplots, though I do like Romantic Suspense), chick lit, futuristics, paranormals, Erotica, romantica (and everything in between) and historicals set just about anywhere. I'm not as tired as most people seem to be of the Regency-set historical, as I think good authors can still make it feel fresh, but I do wish there were more variety. Apart from romance novels, what do you usually read? I'm still reading cozy mysteries, as I used to when I was a child. I've been rereading some old Agatha Christie favourites, and recently I've been discovering other Golden Age mystery writers. I've fallen in love with Dorothy Sayers and I've very much enjoyed other authors, like Ngaio Marsh. I'm also cautiously dipping my toes in the SFF genre, following the recs of other romance readers. I'm starting with books with a strong romantic thread. What else? Some humour, some thrillers, some horror, some non-fiction and a dash of literary fiction, mostly in Spanish. When you buy romance novels, how do you make your selection? Romance novel availability here in Uruguay is pretty much zilch (I wrote about that in my first RTB column: Reading Romance in the Third World), so I buy 99% of my books online. The only exception in the past few months was Kate Rothwell's Somebody Wonderful. I actually found 3 copies of it at a local bookstore. It was about US$12, so it would have been cheaper to buy it new at Amazon.com, but I was just so damn happy to see something other than Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele that I grabbed it right there. Anyway, this means that things like cover and placement and so on don't affect me at all. I make most of my buying decisions based on online reviews and comments on message boards and blogs. And of course, I do have a couple of autobuy authors (or autobuy when it comes out in pb, rather). Name top five favourite romance authors if any. This is hard! Sorry, Màili, I'm cheating here, but if I have to choose only 5, I'll leave most of my mid-list faves out. [*sigh*] So I'll just say I love these 3 biggies:

• Nora Roberts / JD Robb Love her trilogies, her single titles, her futuristics, and I've liked many of her categories.
• Jayne Ann Krentz / Amanda Quick / Jayne Castle Is she reiterative? Yes. I don't care. I do think her best books are behind her (my faves are the ones she wrote in the early/mid '90s), but her latest makes a wonderful comfort read.
• Suzanne Brockmann There's something about her voice that just clicks with me.

Other than that, my favourite 5 authors are:

• Laura Kinsale
• Liz Carlyle
• Judith Ivory
• Michele Albert
• Connie Brockway

Do you have any weaknesses for certain themes, storylines, settings or such in romances? If so, what are they?

• Friends falling in love
• Virgin heroes
• Nerdy heroes
• Nerdy virgin heroes
• Older woman / younger man romances
• Role reversal plotlines (only if the tough woman isn't "put in her place").
• Unrequited love, when it's the hero who has been in love with the heroine forever
• Futuristics about regular people, just living their regular lives and having adventures without universe-wide consequences (as opposed to royalty trying to save their worlds), especially when a big part of the story takes place on starships.
• Books set in South America (just to see if they got things right. It's masochistic of me)

What are your pet hates with romance novels? In the right hands, anything can work but in general:

• Alpha jerks
• Double standards ... stuff like the demonization of the "loose woman" vs. the adoration of the Duke of Slut. You can call me overly PC if you want, but I have a lot of trouble reading books which espouse a sexist point of view. It just drives me nuts and makes me so angry that reading the book ceases to be enjoyable.
• Martyr heroines who are determined to sacrifice themselves for stupid reasons. I'm thinking of those heroines who practically sell themselves into servitude so that their ne'er-do-well brother who's always treated them like crap will be able to keep on living in style and gambling millions away, or so that their bitchy sister can keep on wearing pretty dresses.
• Secret baby plots in which the heroine didn't have an extremely good reason not to notify the hero.
• Adultery (or rather, I hate it when the hero or heroine cheat on each other, whether they're married or not. If what happens is that they fall in love while they're with someone else, that's not my favourite plot, but I don't mind it that much).
• And I'm getting more and more tired of villains who do bad things only because they're insane. Easier than writing a believable motivation, I suppose.

When discussing romance novels and/or the romance genre with fellow readers, which issues interest you most? Pretty much anything! Discussions about specific books, discussions about different themes and plotlines and subgenres, book covers, book titles, reading "rituals". The only issue I'm not that interested in is the business side of romance publishing. If an influential romance editor asked you for an opinion on the romance genre, what would you say? I don't know, really. I could tell her what I want more of and what things I hate in a romance novel, but why would she listen to me? Offline readers seem to want more of the same, and even in the online community, which is apparently more open to new stuff, whenever there's, say, a heroine who's not the same old self-sacrificing, maid-befriending martyr, she gets slammed. Name up to five romance novels that left you lasting impressions.

• The Rogue - Janet Dailey One of the books I borrowed from my mom's shelves, probably one of my first romance novels. I despised the absolute bastard of a hero and the doormat heroine, but must have reread it tens of times.
• Shanna - Kathleen Woodiwiss This one I borrowed from my school library. Same as The Rogue, I didn't like it at all, but still read it and reread it constantly. I guess I was so thirsty for books *focusing* on the romance (as opposed to having a nice romantic element which didn't get nearly enough attention), that I just read whatever was available. Paradise - Judith McNaught The first book that showed me what romance could be.
• Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase Best. Romance. Novel. Ever.
• To Have and To Hold - Patricia Gaffney The book that made me realize I should never say never, that a good writer could take any theme and make it into something I could love.

What was the last romance novel you bought? I just bought Tiger's Eye by Karen Robards. My only romance-reading friend here in Uruguay saw it mentioned at one of the AAR message boards and was intrigued by it, so we bought a copy at ebay together. Thanks, Rosario. :> Be good, be bad & be safe.