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Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

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Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#81

Post by dsr_ »

0xffff2 wrote: post #70
dsr_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooch. In my experience talking to professional reviewers, they will generally say that genres are marketing, not objective categories. Ilona Andrews's books are marketed to romance (three series) and to urban fantasy (one series). Two of the romance-marketed series could get new covers and be sold as SF. The urban fantasy novels could get romance covers put on and be sold that way. Repeat ad infinitum with literary S…

>I read 203 books in 2019. That is really remarkable! Can I ask how you go about selecting what to read? Compared to the ~20 books I read every year that seems like an absolute firehose. I wouldn't even know where to start assembling such a long list.

The vast majority of my reading is SF/F, history, biography, autobiography, and sciences. Each of these have excellent reviewers who I treat as sources of recommendations.

e.g.: for current SF/F, James Nicoll, Locus, and John Scalzi's posts which are nothing but "here's what publishers sent me as ARCs which they are hoping I will blurb" are all good sources. I have access to NetGalley and some insider-baseball publishing sites thanks to my wife, who used to be a professional reviewer for Publishers Weekly. When I read a book by an author I really like, I try to add their blog or website to my RSS reader.

I think the 203 in 2019 was not a record for me, but it was certainly much larger than in 2020, where I had several multiweek periods of not wanting to read. This year is looking up.

One of my long-term tactics is to have some reserve books that I know I want to read but haven't, yet. Currently that pile includes a Walter Jon Williams, a Steven Brust, and an Elizabeth Bear. If I see a long run of not-so-great books, I know I have those to pull me out.

Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#83

Post by harperlee »

dsr_ wrote: post #81
0xffff2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I read 203 books in 2019. That is really remarkable! Can I ask how you go about selecting what to read? Compared to the ~20 books I read every year that seems like an absolute firehose. I wouldn't even know where to start assembling such a long list.

The vast majority of my reading is SF/F, history, biography, autobiography, and sciences. Each of these have excellent reviewers who I treat as sources of recommendations. e.g.: for current SF/F, James Nicoll, Locus, and John Scalzi's posts which are nothing but "here's what publishers sent me as ARCs which they are hoping I will blurb" are all good sources. I have access to NetGalley and some insider-baseball publis…

How quickly do you read!? That’s 1.8 books per day! Assuming a book is 240 pages, that takes me about 6 hours if it’s not too dense prose, so for me that would be a full time job with quite some overtime and weekends, assuming I don’t get tired.

Honest question, there’s a couple assumptions in my napkin calculation :)

Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#84

Post by 0xffff2 »

macspoofing wrote: post #75
0xffff2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... and have the senate adjudicate, which would be decidedly not great. Why not? Sounds like it's roughly tantamount to giving the cabinet the power to impeach the President. Given the natural restraint on that power in that the cabinet is appointed by the President, I'm not sure I see any problem there.

>Sounds like it's roughly tantamount to giving the cabinet the power to impeach the President Congress also the ability to impeach the President. Congress couldn't get the votes to do remove the President from office ... so your partisan solution is for the cabinet to find a reason to remove the President? Why? Because you don't like how your fellow citizens voted? How about this: Vote him out in the next election? O…

Woha, what? This wasn't "my solution". I was just commenting because I didn't understand the particular danger, which the OP clarified.

Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#85

Post by 0xffff2 »

harperlee wrote: post #83
dsr_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of my reading is SF/F, history, biography, autobiography, and sciences. Each of these have excellent reviewers who I treat as sources of recommendations. e.g.: for current SF/F, James Nicoll, Locus, and John Scalzi's posts which are nothing but "here's what publishers sent me as ARCs which they are hoping I will blurb" are all good sources. I have access to NetGalley and some insider-baseball publis…

How quickly do you read!? That’s 1.8 books per day! Assuming a book is 240 pages, that takes me about 6 hours if it’s not too dense prose, so for me that would be a full time job with quite some overtime and weekends, assuming I don’t get tired. Honest question, there’s a couple assumptions in my napkin calculation :)

I think you did the division backwards. By my math that's 1.8 days per book. I'm guessing OP reads pretty fast, and 1-2 hours per day spent reading isn't outside the realm of possibility. I would probably read 2-3 times as many books, except I'm a fairly slow reader and since I read for fun I have pretty much zero interest in reading faster.

Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#87

Post by dependsontheq »

The regency period is interesting because it combines the influence of the French Revolution with the aristocratic society of England. Clothes, fashion and behavior no longer were supposed to match your role and status but also your personality. So you have individualism and princes and balls and at the same time it feels quite modern. So it’s not that Jane Austen wrote some books, she lived in a time where she could write books that feel quite modern to us.

Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#88

Post by perl4ever »

Kaibeezy wrote: post #43
seneca wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN, for all of its claims of intellectualism, is pretty unforgiving to any thoughts that don't fit one of a couple of echo chamber themes. I hang around because I think it's important for people (including me) to hear other ideas, but you should expect to be downvoted.

It takes long, hard work to accumulate the knowledge and experience to be able to consistently say things that matter. It’s impossible to fake, and an astute crowd will always spot it. The Luke-in-Yoda’s-hut scene pops to mind.

I wonder how many people in this thread had heard of Georgette Heyer but not "The Luke-in-Yoda’s-hut scene".

Even after looking up the script, I have no idea what you are saying.

Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#89

Post by ameister14 »

dsr_ wrote: post #65
ameister14 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i personally consider that meticulous categorization of fiction to be tedious and childish When you read several hundred books a year, categorization goes from being tedious and childish to being necessary and useful.

Ooch. In my experience talking to professional reviewers, they will generally say that genres are marketing, not objective categories. Ilona Andrews's books are marketed to romance (three series) and to urban fantasy (one series). Two of the romance-marketed series could get new covers and be sold as SF. The urban fantasy novels could get romance covers put on and be sold that way. Repeat ad infinitum with literary S…

>I assure you that the marketing categories are not helpful in my basic quest, which is to determine if the book is good. Nothing short of starting to read the book can do that.

Interesting. I found that when selecting books, it's helpful for me to see how people have tagged them. That way I avoid some of the cliches I really don't care for and can narrow focus a bit. It's unusual for that to be wrong for me, where I actually like one of the books I had initially excluded based on category.

For example, if you really aren't into steampunk noir, I think it's helpful to know that the book you're about to read is a steampunk noir. Same goes for space opera, litrpg, gun porn, hard sci fi, hack and slash, harem stories, overpowered heroes, etc.

When you've got the best version of something you generally dislike, you'll see that in reviews.

Re: Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

#90

Post by stubish »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #41

Coincidentally, started "Bridgerton" on Netflix just yesterday. Mills and Boon brought to the screen basically so bound to be a ratings winner, a lot of fun but with clever contemporary twists like a completely multi-ethnic aristocracy at which no character turns a hair.

Over here, the family which normally eats historical stuff up isn't watching, because we found the script and dialog so poor and the characters so superficial and obvious. Although I'll admit nobody got through the first episode. The Mills and Boon reference might just hit the mark, as we thought this show might be targeting the Downton Abbey audience but is instead aimed at something else. With so much wit to draw on in the related genres, its disappointing they couldn't bring everyone along for the ride.
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