Except for my mother forcing me to read Gone with the Wind when I was 11 or 12, I hadn't ever read a romance novel until I was almost 30. My friend Kij brought over a stack of Heyer romances for me when I had the flu.

---

I read all those too, David. I would buy Robert E. Howard's Conan books from the hardware store in the next town, where they would sell paperbacks with the covers torn off on a shelf by the door. It was at least ten years later that I learned this meant they were stolen.

Ha! "We're getting low on books, we'd better go dumpster diving behind the B. Dalton tonight."

I found the only used bookstore in South Florida where I could get paperbacks for half the cover price. Which meant if you were lucky enough to find an early sixties edition, meant it only cost you 30 cents for a book. I read Frank Yerby for my porn allotment, until I swiped Xavier Goes Wild from a department store.

---

I was the anti-Strega

Heh. It's probably a good way to be. I just read Lieber last year. I think it's for the best I didn't read those when I was in jr. high.

I read McCaffrey and I-don't-even-remember-what-all, too. It was just that, if I needed something to read, I'd raid the basement, which was full of 50s & 60s SF. And, like, Lives of a Cell, but I never got that desperate. Oh! And a lot of Fleming's Bond books. Which were probably dirtier than Leiber, now that I think about it.

---

I'm trying to remember what I read in junior high, other than the romances. Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Taylor Caldwell, some Michener (the school's Book Club had Chesapeake on the list), and lots of non-fiction--I would get into research jags that would last a month or two prompted by either a news story or something on TV. That's how I first read in-depth about the Holocaust, human origins, and the Revolutionary War, among other topics.

---

So far, I can nod in agreement with everything but the romances. There wasn't a lot else to do in Roswell, so I read and read and read. Lots of SF and dragon books. Classics, even. And Tom Robbins, obsessively.

I just couldn't read romances, though. I tried. I read the Flowers in the Attic series, some Mary Stewart, one that was a gift called The Lives of Rachel, and then when I was sick at camp, I read the books the nurse brought me. Romance novels, and the most boring thing ever, I thought. I opted to not read and just think.

Now, they weren't historical (except for being about 10 years out of date), but even the historical ones I wandered into, thinking they were fantasy, bored me.

---

I read the Flowers in the Attic series

Wait, are those considered romances? I thought they were ... something else. Modern wanna-be-gothic novels that were heavy on the smut, maybe?

---

They definitely had gothic overtones, which was probably why I could read them. Is there a genre for post-gothic? Neo-gothic? They've got the insular family, the house/family link, the secrets, and the decay and decadence, but the morality is skewed.

I don't know that I'd shelve them with The Monk or The Castle of Otranto, but I can see the connections.

---

I thought they were shelved with Horror, back when I was reading them.

They're not in Romance by any stretch, however.

---

Dad had all the Analog, Science Fiction and Science Fact magazines going back to the 50s. So I read a whole lot of SF. I got a bunch of fantasy from the library--the Dark is Rising series, some Xanth books (I went and bought the former a few years ago). I also picked up the occasional early Anne Rice. I don't remember reading YA romance--I just jumped head long into my folks Harlequin collection when I was 12. And then jumped right out again at around 18 when I realized that a heroine had been raped by a man, and yet it was ok because they were in love and engaged to marry by the end of the book. Ugh. It's taken 20 years and a careful reintroduction to Regency romances and Jennifer Cruisie to get me back into the romance genre.

---

Mary Stewart--along with Jane Aiken Hodge--rock.

---