Hee!

And the manager's a published author, too. I think she just sticks with her genre (rather dark fantasy), since I've rarely heard her give recs in other parts of the store, other than generic "this is what other people are reading" advice.

She gave me a rather funny look and then said, "You read such different books!

That ... really seems odd coming from someone who works in a bookstore.

I read mostly fiction, but I love non-fiction in a lot of different areas.

Another co-worker at the store has an even stranger (to me) bias in her reading tastes. She refuses to read female authors.

All female authors.

I've never heard of such a thing before!!

I've never heard of such a thing before!!

You'd be absolutely AMAZED at some of the biases. Diana Gabaldon says she's had people come up to her at signings and say, in compete and utter seriousness, "I've been told I'd really like your books and from reading the back covers, it seems like I would, but I won't read First Person."

There are romance readers who won't read women's fiction because "If I want realism, I'll look at my own life, I don't need it in my books." (This is the kind of reader who tends to give romance as a whole a bad name... )

But then when they do take a risk -- Outlander, The Eyre Affair, even Harry Potter -- people gobble them up. You'd think they'd learn...

You'd think, right?

and if anything, it's ma'am, not sir ... although a lot of people never get it straight

D'oh! I didn't realize. Many apologies.

Yeah, Toddson's all woman. Le Woof!

"If I want realism, I'll look at my own life, I don't need it in my books."

I can actually relate to this. I read to rest my mind or to explore a subject that interests me. I'm not in a mood often for tougher stuff.

people at work give me funny looks for knowing so much about movies. Guess where I work?

I have a couple friends who pretty much read only sf.

I can actually relate to this. I read to rest my mind or to explore a subject that interests me. I'm not in a mood often for tougher stuff.

Yeah, but I'm guessing that you'll accept that there are people who do like or who want a measure of reality in their escapist fiction-- after all, different strokes for different folks. But the kind of reader who says that with respect to women's fic is also usually saying that with respect to contemporary romance, which is a subgenre that's been losing a lot of shelf space to the paranormal and urban fantasy and erotic romances. This is also the reader who's not only saying that they don't want to read it, but no one else should want to either.

It's terribly frustrating.

There are romance readers who won't read women's fiction because "If I want realism, I'll look at my own life, I don't need it in my books."

When I was a kid in junior high and reading romances, 1970s-era Harlequins and Barbara Cartlands were fine for me. But, I was delighted as I got older to find out that romances, even Harlequin/Silhouettes, really expanded into what's now considered to be "women's fiction." For example, Kathleen Korbel's Silhouette Special Editions from the early 1990s dealt with everything from an illiterate hero to a heroine with a Down's baby, and I think they're some of the best examples of the genre out there.

Unfortunately, in the mid-'90s, category romances were taken over by way too many baby books--every other title was "Baby on Board," "Unexpected Delivery," or another insipid take on the subject. That's when I stopped reading them, even though I was working at Waldenbooks and able to get them with my discount. Now, the only romances I buy are Nora Roberts trilogies and the occasional book written by one of my old favorites.

Loretta Chase finally published her sixth book in fifteen years this summer, and I snagged it off the shelf after a customer brought it up to the register. I didn't even know she had a new one coming out. The customer laughed when my eyes nearly bugged out of my head when I went to ring it up; "Loretta Chase has a new book?!? How did I not know this?" She'd never read her before, but was delighted to have me recommend some of her old titles from the "other books by" list in the front of the book.