{"id":4970,"date":"2014-07-27T06:52:33","date_gmt":"2014-07-27T05:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4970"},"modified":"2014-07-27T06:52:33","modified_gmt":"2014-07-27T05:52:33","slug":"books-books-and-more-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4970","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the books…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"My<\/a>
My lovely romantic novels are starting to push aside all webmaster John’s technical books…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

My TBR (to be read) pile is growing \u2013 it has expanded to a second shelf in the bookcase \u2013 that\u2019s a bit strange for someone who buys most of her books as e-books.<\/p>\n

The reason for the explosion is conference \u2013 in the past few weeks, I have been to the RNA conference in in the UK and the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in the US \u2013 and one of the fab things about both is that people give away books\u2026 lots of them.<\/p>\n

I was restricted returning from the US \u2013 the airlines get a bit funny when you want to bring on half a tonne of books as carry-on baggage\u2026 and they wanted me to pay to put them in the hold.<\/p>\n

Despite the book-unfriendly nature of international air\u00a0travel I did manage to squirrel a book or two or three in my bag, and there was room for one or two wafer-thin tomes in webmaster John\u2019s bag too.<\/p>\n

Reading those recent acquisitions \u2013 or at least the first round of them, I was struck again by the difference between US and UK romance novels. <\/p>\n

The romance in US novels tend to be much more direct \u2013 an instant physical attraction\u2026 the getting to know each other comes later. By contrast, while UK books can and do have strong physical elements in their romances, most tend to be slower developing.<\/p>\n

I read one cowboy romance \u2013 I am a sucker for a man in boots and a big hat \u2013 in which our heroine was serving beer in a bar. A handsome stranger walked in, grabbed her, snogged the living daylights out of her then asked her to make a drink for his girlfriend, who was waiting for him. The barmaid fell in love instantly with this man. Me \u2013 I would have slapped his face \u2013 or kicked him in the jewels \u2013 or possibly both. While\u00a0I love a strong, forward hero \u2013 what he did was pretty rude and not, to my mind, the actions of a hero.<\/p>\n

By contrast, English romances tend to develop much more slowly \u2013 to the point where sometimes I think \u2026 for goodness sake, just kiss her and stop mucking around! But it wasn\u2019t always this way \u2013 in Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy is slow to move and restrained in his actions. Yet some of Shakespeare\u2019s work is passionate in the extreme\u2026 to say nothing of Wuthering Heights. While not a romance in my view, Wuthering heights is a dark passionate and strongly emotional novel.<\/p>\n

I have to wonder if this difference in the style of books is a reflection of the difference in character between two people separated, as some would have it, by a common language.<\/p>\n

Having said all this \u2013 I must also say there are fine books to be had both sides of the pond \u2013 writers whose work I love and come back to again and again\u2026 because whatever the style,\u00a0good \u00a0storytelling is what it is all about.<\/p>\n

Of course \u2013 another section of my overflowing TRB pile contains some Australian authors I picked up on my last visit Down Under. I need to start reading them. I don\u2019t remember Australian authors being so very different \u2013 but maybe when I revisit some old favourites, I might think differently this time.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A selection of US, Aussie and UK books – recent reads or to be read… the difference in style is also very obvious in the covers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  My TBR (to be read) pile is growing \u2013 it has expanded to a second shelf in the bookcase \u2013 that\u2019s a bit strange for someone who buys most of her…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1ia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}