Friday Confession

For Sue... Again... :)

I majored in English Literature at The University of Texas at Austin. 36 hours (translated into 12 classes) over three years (as my first year I was a Communications/Undecided major) of reading.

I mostly read the classics, Shakespeare, Victorian literature, the Brontes, Early American (read Puritanical) works such as sermons and Revolutionary writings. Later American works such as The Grapes of Wrath.

I read a lot. I also skimmed a lot. There were quite a few long, difficult, depressing novels. Dickens, Shelley, George Eliot (who was a woman, by the way).

I was graded pretty hard in some classes. Lots of subjectivity. I actually pulled a B in a class that should have been a C because I went to the professor's book signing (Narrative Ethics) and was the only person in my class to show up. Yep. I totally brown nosed my way into that grade and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

I took two classes from the same professor. A former Jesuit Priest who was now practically an Atheist ("What's the best way to kill your belief in God? Go to Seminary!"). He taught "Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales" and "The Bible in English and American Literature." He was fascinating to listen to and required we purchase a Catholic Bible for class. I got a B in each class because I missed more than two each semester. That sucked. But I got that grade through my own laziness.

To be honest, my GPA would have been much better had I only attended more classes and office hours. But I was lazy. And that's not my confession.

Nope. My confession is that during that time, I was a member of the Harlequin Romance Book Club. My Mema got me into the books as she was an avid reader of them for as long as I've been alive, having a wall of bookcases in a room of her house that is full of little else. Floor to ceiling bookcases full of them. And I started reading them.

They are "fluff" books for sure. 180 pages of escapist, happy ending, romances. I devoured them. They weren't "bodice-rippers" and they didn't have Fabio on the cover. They were contemporary, formulatic romances that included a romatic triangle, a hero who was an arrogant man. I adored them!

I still do. I read romance novels as my first preference. I've definitely expanded my horizons, but my first stop at the bookstore is the romance aisle.

I'm not sorry about it, either.