Tag: Romance

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

#FollowFriday: Anna Cowan, Untamed, and The Reasons You Should Start Following Her Career

Australian romance readers don’t really need me to tell them about Anna Cowan. Her first novel, Untamed, picked up the Favourite Historical Romance award at the 2013 Australian Romance Readers Awards and earned Cowan the Favourite New Author gong as a follow-up. Untamed has also picked up a litany of reviews on the vast majority of the romance review sites I follow, where it earns descriptions like polarizing, ambitious,  and divisive, but still earns some pretty impressive critical ratings (check out the reviews from BookThingo, Dear Author, and Radish Reviews for a representative sample), Romance Readers don’t need me to tell them about Anna Cowan. This #FollowFriday is for everyone else. So, here’s my advice:  go read Untamed. Start following Anna Cowan’s blog. Be very, very excited by the whatever is coming next, ’cause on the basis of the first book and the blog, I’d put money on her second effort being something phenomenal. When you read Cowan’s blog you

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Five Books (And One Blog) That Got Me Into Romance

Once, many moons ago, it was pointed out to be that my objections to the romance genre were largely the result of lingering, passive sexism and a considerable snobby streak. I’m okay with being a snob, but the sexism thing bothered me. Self, I said, you cannot dismiss the entire genre just because it’s not targeted at white, male, middle-class readers. For one thing, you are not a fan of the patriarchy. For another thing, you get pissed off when people use the same thing to denigrate SF. Go ye and find yourself some romance books you like, or at least read enough that you’re informed about the genre and not operating under some appalling double-standard. That was about ten years ago, more or less. These days…well, I still wouldn’t claim I’ve got a grasp on the genre, for the realms of romance are vast and wild, but I am a convert. I read a bunch of romance. Occasionally I’ll