My reading history??
As a child, I loved fairy tales. Since I’m the youngest of six siblings, including three older sisters, I especially liked the many, many fairy tales where the youngest sister is the prettiest, the most magical, gets the best adventure, and lands the handsomest prince! My love for the romantic element of a story never waned, and I gravitated toward the darker and more dramatic stories. Pride and Prejudice was all very well and good, but I much preferred Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester to Eliza Bennet and Mr. Darcy. I mean, come on–Mr. Rochester had a wild-eyed, lunatic wife in his attic! She ended up burning the house down! Mr. Darcy’s attic was probably filled with proper cracked teacups and old brocaded waistcoats.
High school saw me reading spicier fare–I remember my first romance novel with crystal clarity. It was Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers, borrowed from a girl friend who had smuggled it from her mother’s nightstand. Later, in college, I got out of reading romance and started reading a lot of fantasy–J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen R. Donaldson were my favorites. Those days, I got my romance fix from the soap opera All My Children, since back then romantic elements in fantasy fiction were sparse. A happy exception was the fantasy work of Barbara Hambly, which always featured a romantic subplot.
I started reading romance avidly again when I had three kids in diapers. I totally credit the romance genre with keeping me sane during those wild and sleepless years. Or maybe not so sane, since I gradually became obsessed with the idea of writing my own romance novel!
Being a romance writer is fantastic, but one drawback is that writing takes so much time that I don’t get to read as much as I like. But I manage to keep up with my favorite authors and also read new authors. High on my eclectic list of authors are…
for non-paranormal historical: Liz Carlyle, Lisa Kleypas, Jade Lee, Jo Beverley, Terri Brisbin…
for paranormal historical: Susan Squires, Sandra Hill, Jennifer Ashley…
for contemporary romance: Suzanne Brockmann, Donna Birdsell…
for futuristic romance: Linnea Sinclair, Liz Maverick, Colby Hodge, Susan Grant.
And many more talented authors, many of which I’m happy to count as friends. I read a good deal of what my kids are reading—Harry Potter, Eragon, Meg Cabot, Jerry Spinelli, and classics like the Agatha Christie mysteries.
My TBR pile is soooo huge. I’ve made a dent in it this summer, though!
I like your reads. 🙂 And the youngest daughter or son usually getting the best ending – used to drive me nuts. I’m the oldest of three, and you know how its always 3 sons/daughters in those fairy tales. So I’d be of course rooting for the oldest one. But no.. they always going in first and fail most miserably and have to be rescued! Bah I say!
lol – Oldest kids can have it bad! Didn’t see that as a child, but now that I’m the mother of three, I appreciate the benefits and drawbacks of all the birth orders!