Shelf Love: Romance Novel Discourse

Jennifer Crusie drops in to talk about Dove Bars, dogs, normative ideals of white middle class baby boomer womanhood, divorce, unconditional love, RWA, and all the good times ahead we've been wondering about. Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com 15 Romance Novel Audiobooks that Combine Swoony...

Dr. Angela Toscano returns to continue our discussion of The Secular Scripture by Northrop Frye and how it's an urtext for understanding the romance genre. You'll definitely want to go listen to part 1, which is episode 73, before listening to this one In part 2, we'll be discussing how identity must evolve in romance, the possibility inherent to the romance, and how we can have more critical conv...

Dr. Angela Toscano, a romance scholar, writer, and researcher joins Shelf Love to discuss literary critic Northrop Frye's 1976 book The Secular Scripture: A study of the structure of romance. Although it's 44 years old and isn't only about romance novels, it has a lot to say that's relevant to the popular romance genre in the year 2020 - and Angela and I call on many examples from more recent book...

This episode is about feelings, and romance novels, and hope, and anger, and powerlessness, and the year 2020. Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com Romancelandia Holiday Fairies Gift Drive (2020) Check out Shelf Love’s website including the transcript for this episode Shelf Love episodes with...

The Swoon Awards organizers drop in to share their exciting new romance award for readers. Ari, Amber, Lynell, and Nick were the perfect crew to join me to talk about favorite romances of the year and along the way we explain our own personal criteria for deciding what made the cut. Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: A...

Jhen, host of the Monogamish Podcast, drops in to discuss consensual non-monogamy aka polyamory in popular romance. We discuss Harbor by Rebekah Weatherspoon and Neighborly by Katrina Jackson. Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com 15 Romance Novel Audiobooks that Combine Swoony Words with Great...

Scarlett Peckham, professional writer of alpha heroines, joins me to discuss her problematic favorite trope: house parties! Forced Proximity! Lunch hampers! Bed hopping! Both everything and nothing is riding on who marries whom! And of course, capitalism, imperialism, and labor exploitation. Womp womp - don't worry, they kiss at the end. -- Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter...

Guest: Dr. Danielle Knafo, a clinical psychologist who studies fantasy, perversion, sexuality, and gender. In this episode, we discuss questions like, is it harmful to start reading romance novels too young? Why might someone fantasize about things that are undesirable in real life? What's the deal with sadomasochism? Am I become a joyless hag who's sucking all the fun out of romance novels by try...

Dr. Maria DeBlassie joins me to discuss three contemporary romance novels that explore everyday, practical magic with Black heroines: Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon, A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha L. Harrison, and Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert. Maria shares her experience as a practitioner of Brujeria, and explains how everyone can manifest some everyday magic. Show Notes: Shelf Lov...

Dr. Margarita Guillory, associate professor of religion at BU, shares her knowledge about the history of African diaspora conjuring practices, how they are and have been portrayed in popular culture, and how Black millennials and younger generations are practicing witchcraft digitally. Dr. Maria DeBlassie co-hosts. This conversation lays the groundwork for next episode, in which Maria and I build...

Dr. Eric Selinger is back to discuss Glitterland by Alexis Hall and how it's basically a big old allegory for the romance genre. Eric and I speak authoritatively about books we've never read, and how Glitterland addresses mental health stigma. - Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com 58 Romance...

John Jacobson, freelance editor at Carina Press, joins me to trouble the binaries as we unpack a problematic favorite trope: women in pants in historical romance novels. Show Notes: Guest: John Jacobson Twitter | Check out Best Laid Plaids by Ella Stainton | The Immortal City by May Peterson Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andr...

Romance scholar Eric Selinger explores different questions that have been asked about popular romance (not enough), how romance research has come in waves (three, to be precise), and asks "how can I make this romance more interesting?" (you always can). Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com 58...

Guest Jayashree Kamble, romance scholar is back to discuss My Beautiful Enemy by Sherry Thomas. This novel is a cross between Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a passing narrative, and layers in discussion of Chinese culture and the history British imperialism. Jayashree explored the Wuxia influence and transculturalism in a paper published in March 2020 in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies....

Dame Jodie Slaughter bares her belly in the first of the our explorations of problematic favorite tropes. We unpack the alphahole in popular romance fiction - why does Jodie love it? Why do readers love it? And why is it problematic when it recurs in the romance genre? - Show Notes: Guest: Jodie Slaughter Twitter | Instagram | Check out Jodie's Books Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter li...

Jayashree Kamble, a romance scholar and Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, joins me to discuss the various ways romance can be studied. She gives a brief overview of the history of the romance genre and pop culture research, why she doesn't encounter the hierarchy of taste when teaching romance, and explains who romance scholarship is for. - Show Note...

Jhen (host Monogamish Podcast) joins the podcast to interview ME in this retrospective on season 1 of Shelf Love. I tell my sordid journey into romance and romance podcasting, plus, I prepare you for season 2, and give you a look under the hood of this podcast and how and why I do it. Questions answered: why I'm no longer a member of RWA, why sometimes you just have to do the thing, and my corresp...

Season 2 Premiere! Hsu-Ming Teo, a cultural historian and romance scholar, joins me to discuss her research on cultural authenticity in east asian american romance novels, among many other fascinating topics such as love as a commodity, intimacy, Australian convict romances, historical accuracy, and why impact still rules, but intent may matter more than we think. We also discuss novels by Ruby La...

Learn more about a new podcast that is an oral history project for Black Romance: "The Black Romance Podcast features weekly conversations with Black writers, editors, and scholars of historical and contemporary popular romance fiction. Julie Moody-Freeman and guests talk about a range of experiences: their difficulties trying to publish love stories with Black characters; their favorite books; wr...

I Think I Might Love You by Christina C. Jones is the Romcom Novella that will have you laughing out loud and wondering what DOD stands for. Highly irreverent, wholly lovable Nicole Falls is back for part 2 to discuss this romance novel worth reading. - Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com 58...

Highly irreverent, wholly lovable Nicole Falls joins me to discuss imposter syndrome, how gifted and talented programs destroyed us, having the privilege to explore creative, personally fulfilling projects and the concessions we make to prioritize those projects, Danielle Steel's desk, incorporating the pandemic into contemporary romance, plant puns and plant bae, and how quickly and often people...

A Duke by Default by Alyssa Cole is our romance worth reading, and Tasha L. Harrison joins me once again to drop wisdom faster than a sword-making Scottish Duke can make our heroine forget that she definitely should not be making out with her boss. Our conversation is far-ranging - friends who aren't friends, parents who suck, figuring out how your brain works, and the horse your man smells like....

Tasha L. Harrison, romance author, editor, and lady about Twitter is my guest, and we discuss how Amazon's algorithm encourages the idea of "take and toss" literature, the white gaze in the romance publishing ecosystem, and why Tasha writes romance for Black people.  -- Show Notes: Shelf Love: Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: Andrea@shelflo...

Who among us hasn't started a project and then realized that you've inadvertently wandered into a longstanding and contentious debate? I enlist the help of two experts to unravel why I started the Shelf Love Modern Romance Canon project. First, Katrina Jackson helps me unravel some of the ways my professional and educational background made me think this was a logical thing to do. Then, Eric Selin...

Hannah Hearts Romance joins me to discuss The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham, a historical romance that asks the question: can women be rakes? And what would a rakess look like? Content warnings for this book are lengthy, and so I called in a mental health professional to help me unpack the brilliance of Seraphina Arden. I think this book is brilliant and important - but it might not be for everyone:...