Shelf Love: Romance Novel Discourse

Part 2 of the conversation about North and South with Helena Greer. AI generated these action items from the transcript of this episode. AI responses can be inaccurate or misleading.

• [ ] Schedule a kiss scene between the main characters for modern audiences
• [ ] Make the male protagonist more sympathetic by toning down his violent behavior
• [ ] Make the female protagonist more likable and relatable to modern romance audiences
• [ ] Follow a beat sheet to hit expected pacing and plot points for romance novels

This is part 2 of the conversation about North and South. Check out episode 136 for part 1.

Shelf Love:

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Discussed: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and North and South the 2004 BBC adaptation starring Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe

SAVE the Cat: https://savethecat.com/

Guest: Helena Greer

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Storyloom Choose Your Own Adventure

Helena Greer is a long time librarian and romance reader, and recent romance novelist. She has a degree in mythography and is interested in deconstructing the social context around the decisions storytellers make about how to frame --or reframe-- their stories.

Shelf Love:

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Trains! Fruit! Allusions to Hell abound! Victorian industrialist city mortality rates! Writer, sex educator, and librarian Helena Greer is here to discuss North and South. Did the 2004 BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1854 serialized novel make the heroine more likable and everyone else less nuanced? This conversation is serialized just like the original text. We compare and contrast the romantic moments in the book and adaptation, highlighting how the adaptation focuses more on negative emotions and drama, while the book emphasizes character growth and acts of romantic love.

Shelf Love:

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Thanks to the contributors to this episode:

Discussed: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and North and South the 2004 BBC adaptation starring Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe

Guest: Helena Greer

Website | Twitter | Instagram

Helena Greer is a long time librarian and romance reader, and recent romance novelist. She has a degree in mythography and is interested in deconstructing the social context around the decisions storytellers make about how to frame --or reframe-- their stories.

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Dame Jodie Slaughter, Feather Fetish Understander, and I recently discussed how The Savage and The Swan speaks the unspoken, what a winged wolf looks like, and whether this book is a metaphor for toxic masculinity and healing generational trauma. This summary below was written by AI using my episode transcript:

The Savage and the Swan by Ella Fields is a groundbreaking work of Enemies to Lover literature that combines elements of dark fairytale retellings, a possessive anti-hero, and spicy fae romance. The story follows Opal, a princess in a kingdom at war with its neighboring kingdom, Vordane, ruled by the shape-shifting wolf-with-wings Dade. Opal is forced to marry a human prince to strengthen the alliance between the two kingdoms, but is kidnapped by Dade and must find a way to reconcile her feelings for him despite his shocking act of violence.

Shelf Love:

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Discussed: The Savage and The Swan by Ella Fields

Guest: Dame Jodie Slaughter, Shelf Love’s International Smut Historian

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Starting the year off with some cozy re-reads, comfort reads, and short reads to combat the wintery weather and get through winter cold season. I share thoughts on all the books I read in January 2023, including Alice Coldbreath’s Victorian Prizefighter series, A Holiday by Gaslight by Mimi Matthews, His Majesty by Shon, Better Off Wed by Susanna Craig, Hero by Claire Kent, and the Murderbot series by Martha Wells.

Shelf Love:

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Discussed:

• Alice Coldbreath - Victorian Prizefighters series
• A Holiday by Gaslight by Mimi Matthews (novella)
• His Majesty by Shon (short story)
• Better off Wed by Susanna Craig (Love and Let Spy series)
• Hero by Claire Kent (Kindled series)
• Murderbot series by Martha Wells

Shelf Love:

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We need to talk about Anais Nin and her erotic short story collection Delta of Venus. Did Anais Nin write "female erotica"? Is there such a thing? Have Things™️ changed much since 1941? Noted smut writer Dame Jodie Slaughter is Shelf Love's international smut history correspondent. She schools us on the long history of smut, French people, Choice Feminism, why she doesn't believe in the female gaze, how her work is contributing to the demise of "our value system," and more! We unpack Anais's assertion that "women are more apt to fuse sex with emotion, with love" via Dr. Jodi McAlister’s book "The Consummate Virgin," and her theories of compulsory (female) demisexuality.

Shelf Love:

Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove

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Guest: Dame Jodie Slaughter, Shelf Love’s International Smut Historian

Website | Twitter | Instagram

Discussed:

• Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
• The Consummate Virgin: Female Virginity Loss and Love in Anglophone Popular Literatures by Dr. Jodi McAlister: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-55004-2
• Hard-Core Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, Best-Sellers, and Society by Eva Illouz
• Sady Doyle’s Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/apr/07/anais-nin-author-social-media
• Sherilyn Fenn “MTV Books, Feed Your Head” 1991 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHRo5FAJ3g0

Shelf Love:

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Arranged marriage trope in contemporary Indian American diaspora romance novels with cognitive psychologist and author Sri Savita.

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Discussed:

• Running Away With the Bride by Sophia Singh Sasson
• Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma
• Marriage Game by Sara Desai
• The Trouble with Hating You by Sajni Patel
• The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale

Shaadi dot com performance by Awaaz Do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzwhcCeJ4lk

Guest: Sri Savita

Sri writes romance by night, and by day is a Cognitive Psychologist.

Website | Twitter | Instagram

Forthcoming Short Story: "How to Find Your Footing in France," part of a Wordmakers New Year's Eve holiday anthology.

Hôtel d'Amour: A Sweet Romance Anthology: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BMXV9JG3/ref=x_gr_bb_kindle?caller=Goodreads&tag=x_gr_bb_kindle-20

Shelf Love:

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A billionaire romance novel that name drops Citizen’s United only comes along every so often. Carter Sherman, Senior reporter for VICE News, joins me to discuss Preferential Treatment by Heather Guerre. We talk about power exchange, heterosexual marriage as a transaction, and subverting the single script of the hegemonic BDSM billionaire romance to focus on the fantasy as care & safety as opposed to letting go of control.

Romancelandia Holiday Fairies: https://shelflovepodcast.com/blog-posts/romancelandia-holiday-fairies

Discussed: Preferential Treatment by Heather Guerre

Other media mentioned:

• Hard-Core Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, Best-Sellers, and Society by Eva Illouz
• Every New Year by Katrina Jackson
• Private Eye by Katrina Jackson
• The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian
• Marriage: A History by Stephanie Coontz
• You’re Wrong About Abortion Stories: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270/11515738-your-abortion-stories

Guest: Carter Sherman (she/her/hers)

Senior reporter for VICE News

VICE News | Twitter

Shelf Love:

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Shelf Love:

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Are men in romance novels granted agency & subjectivity, and do readers have the same expectations for male consent as they do for female characters in M/F romance? Lynell from Weekend Reader has some thoughts on mutual consent in romance, especially as she’s binging dark mafia romance with kidnapping plots. What happens when your real life values conflict with your fantasy world values, and how do ideas about happily ever after change as our culture changes?

Romancelandia Holiday Fairies 2022: bit.ly/romancelandia

Shelf Love:

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Guest: Lynell from Weekend Reader

Website | Twitter

Books Mentioned:

• Sabbatical by Katrina Jackson
• That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion At a Werewolf by Kimberly Lemming
• The Spies That Love Her series: Her Only Valentine by Katrina Jackson
• Toying with Temptation by AH Cunningham
• Georgia Acadian series by Dria Anderson

Shelf Love:

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Hear Elysabeth Grace & Katrina Jackson in conversation: a recording from Black Romance and Historical Spaces presentation put on by the Center for Black Diaspora at DePaul University on November 5th, 2022. This episode is a co-release with Black Romance Podcast, hosted by Dr. Julie Moody-Freeman.

Shelf Love:

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NEW! $1 Patreon tier “Here for the Discourse” - for those of you bummed by the decline of Twitter

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Black Romance Podcast

https://blackromancepodcast.libsyn.com/

Center for Black Diaspora

https://las.depaul.edu/centers-and-institutes/center-for-black-diaspora/Pages/default.aspx

Katrina Jackson

https://www.katrinajacksonauthor.com/

Elysabeth Grace

https://www.elysabethgrace.com/

Shelf Love:

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Breaking News! Harlequin Associate Editor John Jacobson is here to give the scoop on Harlequin’s newest, currently unnamed line of sexy new contemporary romances. We talk about Harlequin’s intentions, hopes, and dreams for the line, and also talk about the unfulfilled… gaps in the market, especially for younger readers who want to imagine their own unique, personalized, non-normative happily ever afters.

Shelf Love:

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Guest: John Jacobson

Twitter

Harlequin.submittable.com

writeforharlequin.com

Shelf Love:

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• Email: [email protected]