"A PRECIOUS JEWEL", AND MY READING PREFERENCES

I didn't manage to do as much reading as I thought to during my "lying in". For one thing, it is a bit awkward trying to hold a new paperback open without creasing the spine when one has an IV inserted in one hand. I hate pain, and I try to avoid contortions that might torture me. Having the book snap shut on me several times in a roll tends to curtail my reading pleasure somewhat.

I still managed to finish "A Precious Jewel" by Mary Balogh though. In fact, I could hardly put it down, pain in the hand or not. Which is a major surprise, since I bought this book against everything my brain was telling me. But my heart wanted the book, and in the end I didn't regret the impulse.

It is not your standard formula for Regency romance and far from meeting my usual requirements in plotlines. As far as I understand, the book almost didn't get written, because the initial feedback to the author's ideas were pretty negative. When you have a working prostitute, and a beta hero featured in a Regency setting, it sounds like an impossible deal - how do you get them to their Happily Ever After (HEA)? And how do you even make the characters likeable in a setting which typically revers eighteen year old virgins and alpha peers?

Anyway, she did it, and beautifully. I didn't want to put down the book at all. I wanted there to be any number of epilogues for my heart to continue pounding over how beautiful that love was.

Reading "A Precious Jewel" also made me conscious of the changes in my choice of reading material and plotlines over the years, from the day I first found out about adult romance novels at the tender age of thirteen. "A Precious Jewel" would never have made my list a few years ago, whatever my heart says. My reading preferences were extremely strict all the way up to my early twenties. The heroine had to be young, toothsome and most importantly, a virgin (I could just barely tolerate some little experience in modern settings). The hero, alpha naturally, older, good in bed (haha, as if any popular romance writer ever had a hero who had that kind of dysfunctionality) etc etc. No baggage of any kind - ex-spouses, lost loves, children etc etc. You get the picture. And don't forget the HEA. It was a foregone conclusion. It was extremely hard for me to get suitable books. I used to spend hours and hours in bookstores with dismal findings. And when I find an author who writes the way I like, I go after her backlist like a dog after a juicy bone.

Needless to say, I could never send anyone on bookshopping trips for me. It would have taken half the day just to enumerate the various criteria. And no friends ever gave me books as presents, even though everyone knew I loved to read. Ten out of ten, it would have contained something that will not pass my criteria.

I attribute that "era" to youth and idealism. Those things that I wanted in my romance novels then were things that I wanted for myself in life, and more importantly, they were still within my grasp. It wasn't just a fairy tale, it could still happen in real life the way I wanted it to. I had probably projected what I wanted out of real life into my requirements for my reading material, or vice versa, I don't know.

As I age, the reality changes. My reality has changed, hence, my reading preferences with it. My own dewy eyed, fresh faced era is gone, I am a slightly jaded, somewhat cynical woman now, and that is now reflected in the books that I read. Naive eighteen year old virgins needing masculine protection gave way to twenty seven year old shrews, who were smart and independent. A little sexual experience now seems sexy rather than crass. Overly alpha heros now border on outright chauvanism. A little
'beta-ness" can go a long way yet. "Cougar" heroines, hmm....why not? Today, a little baggage is acceptable.

That is not to say that my reading preferences has become a free-for-all suddenly. There is still one barrier that I have not been able to cross - the concept of only "One Great Love in Life" as opposed to "Second Chance At Love". I still believe, even at the venerable age of thirty one going on thirty two, that a person has only one great love in life, one that no other love will ever measure up to. And if that love is curtailed for whatever reason, there will be no other. I know reality says otherwise, but I have not had the occasion to experience that reality (and never hope to).

Which is why I avoid stories about finding a second love like the plague, because I can't imagine loving as much the second time if the first love is a true one. Such a storyline inevitably gives me the feeling that the protagonist has settled for second best the second time. It makes me question that should the protagonist be faced with his first and second love simultaneously, what would his choice be then? And whichever he makes, I would always feel that someone had been shortchanged.

It was interesting to note the changes in my own reading preferences, and to wonder what path it will take in the years to come. I had not really thought to chart my own emotional growth through changes in my reading material, but now that I have had some time to think about it, it seems only natural for a book-lover like me.

I still have piles of books to wade through in between HBO movies. I'll get on with it now. You will be hearing from me real soon.