In Which A Stubborn Reader Matures

[x-posted from First Edition]

Gaelen Foley. Mary Jo Putney. Jo Beverly. Julie Garwood. Jude Devereaux. Mary Balogh. Madeline Hunter.

No, this isn't a list of the reigning Queens of Romance (though it can certainly double as that), or even a list of my personal favorites. This is just a smattering of the authors I haven't read.

I know, no Foley? No Putney? The horror! Or, so I assume anyway after browsing the Julia Quinn & Eloisa James Bulletin Board's Top 100 Romances (2008 edition). All these names make it on the list numerous times, their books obviously beloved and reread by legions of fans.

And yet, these novels haven't made it into my TBR pile, their names don't send a frisson of excitement down my spine just thinking about the author's newest release. How did this happen? After reading romance for almost a decade, one would think I'd tried every author under the genre's sun. Then again, when I started out at the tender age of 13, I didn't exactly have a guide to the impressive, candy colored shelves under the Romance banner. There was no kindly, pink-robed Dumbledore to point me toward the best and brightest, while away from the dark, shadowy netherregions of the genre.

I came to romance only after reading every single love story in the then paltry Teen section ( the 1990s being right before the advent of the modern "bigger and better" YA genre). After nobly suffering through my lack-of-book rants, my ingenious - and exasperated - mother finally put a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book in my hand. It was love at first page turn. But once I'd blasted my way through SEP's backlist, my reading choices were haphazard at best. For awhile, I was solely committed to contemporaries, reasoning that if SEP was so great, maybe the setting had something to do with it? Soon, I stumbled onto the whimsical paranormals of the day (my favorites: Julie Kenner and Kristine Grayson), before a few months later finally buying my very first historical - Wicked Angel by Julia London.

Since then, I've stayed true to SEP and some other great contemporary writers, but historicals are where my true passions lie. Luckily for me, in my messy randomly-yanking-books-from-the-shelf way, I did make it to some of the best authors writing out there - Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Sabrina Jeffries were early favorites who have continued to grace the top of my TBR piles, but...it seems like I have a gap.

Sure, I've heard people talk of Garwood and Deveraux, their eyes glazing over like romance-induced zombies as they recall the first time they cracked the spines on The Gift or The Heiress. This is about the time I excuse myself to the bar, shaking my head and smirking to myself, knowing there's no way these J named authors are as good as my own Quinns and Londons. Now, y'all are probably more mature readers than I am, but I've always been this way - knowing with ever cell in my body that my favorite books would shame and mortify the impostors that other people put forth. This is ridiculous, of course. Not only are people's tastes different, but with so many books published in this world, there's no way to pick one best or even a true top 1000 that every reader could agree on.

And so, I blame my lack of a proper romance shelf on this bias. By the time I'd started reading in the genre, many of these authors were already popular, with their books gracing the coveted fronts of bookstore kiosks and the shopkeepers always trying to foist them on the impressionable, but stubborn young Marys. I preferred to find my own favorites, which worked out well, but now it seems about to time to fix these personally overlooked, but much lauded author gaps. And, well, I have to admit - I downloaded my first Gaelen Foley to my Kindle last night and I'm already enthralled...here's high hopes for the rest of the gang too!

So, just curious - are there any bestselling, much beloved authors whom you haven't read? Is anyone else as irrationally stubborn as I am about recommended books? For that matter - if one was going to start reading these authors, where should she start?