Reading is Dangerous

Because I have A) always loved to read and B) we hardly ever left the country to go into town, I had to make do with what was available. And what was available? Harlequin Romances.

Charlotte Lamb was my Charlotte Bronte.  My grandmother had, and probably still HAS, a 1000 romance novels in boxes on her back porch. The women were always innocent and the men were always arrogant. Every last one of them. No really, that’s how I learned what “arrogant” meant.

So then I read this today:

“In fact, some marriage therapists caution that women can become as dangerously unbalanced by these books’ entrancing but distorted messages as men can be by the distorted messages of pornography,” said best-selling author Shaunti Feldhahn, who studies the differences between men and women.”

Dangerously unbalanced? Hmmm, and my grand-mother and mother read THOUSANDS of these books while I was growing up? Interesting.

And then there’s THIS guy –

Well, him I give some grace. There are some books that are just that good.