Observational Humor

One of my favorite pastimes is poking around the library's ebooks website to see what's new.  If you check frequently, you can get the books before the waitlists get too long.  The problem is that they usually acquire in batches, and these batches are often thematic and not particularly interesting.  It makes you wonder what kinds of requests the librarians got to put in these orders, or if the ebooks come in packages.  You'll get the entire back catalog of a certain author (Ann Perry or Jude Deveraux), or a whole slew of books on spicing up your love life, studying for the GRE, or dealing with hard-to-manage coworkers.  This month, we got romance.

I'm not a very big romance reader, but Sarah seems to go on these binges, and it kind of convinced me to pick one up.  I've got a reviewer copy of something called Almost a Scandal, which is about a woman who disguises herself as a man to join the Navy and falls in love.  I'm a sucker for one of those--can't wait to see what happens. 

In my opinion, though, romance novels are like wedding dresses.  Any individual one looks fine close up, but when you fill a room with them and look around at that room, it's the tackiest thing you ever saw.  Observe:

Okay, so a little sultry, but it's just a book.  But then you get a run of them:



Looked at collectively, they're not delicate beadwork and embroidery.  They're bedazzled polyester.  And that's just the images--look at the titles.  Bad Boys in Kilts; Lady Drusilla's Road to Ruin; Sheikh Without A Heart (which I'm pretty sure is spelled wrong).  Maid for Him. Assassins in Love.  I can't stop--they're all like this!

A few notes on more general themes that I  noticed: highlanders; pectorals; the Amish; ranchers; ranchers holding babies; business executives holding babies; more Amish.

And do you want to know the worst part?  In going back to look up titles for this post, I reread the blurb and found myself--yes, you guessed it--putting a hold on Lady Drusilla's Road to Ruin.  And I kind of can't wait till it comes in.  Curses!