In Praise of Puppy Books
During the last several years of my tenure at the parent’s house, I made the middle bedroom my billet. Truth be told, it wasn’t the middle bedroom. That would have been my older sister Tina’s bedroom between the parents’ room and mine. Regardless, after I left home for greener pastures, my Mom made the errantly-named middle bedroom her sewing and reading domicile. Eventually, she had my Dad build an impressive set of book shelves to house all her beloved romance novels. He even painted the shelving a pristine shade of white. It was impressive to say the least, as you can see from the photo above.
What you can also see in the photo, if you look close enough, is a photo of Carla and me taken early one Sunday morning the year we got married. We had closed the restaurant down late the night before. I can only describe my condition as bleary-eyed, not adequately caffeinated, and possibly hungover when the shutter snapped.
As for her books, Mom belonged to the Harlequin Romance club for many years running in the 70s. Once a month a box would appear in the mail. Mom would quickly open it to explore the next stretch of reading. At the first opportunity, she’d disappear into her bedroom with the new books, her cigarettes, and a mammoth cup of hot tea with multiple Lipton tea bags still trailing down the sides of the mug.
In a matter of days, Mom would tear through the latest batch of Harlequins. But she never wanted to talk about them. When questioned about the books, she would respond with something along the lines of, “I know they’re kind of trashy, but I learn things about geography and history from them.” For the record, I tried not to give her a hard time about romance novels for the simple reason that she was reading ten times more than I did.
Yes, Mary Ellen Gaiser was a voracious reader. But heaving bodices and clammy hands were just one stop on her never-ending grande book tour. If I think about it, it makes sense. With a book in hand and cigarettes and tea at the ready, she could temporarily escape the daily chaos of raising six kids, not to mention a husband who was heading towards premature cantankerism at a steady pace.
In time, there were hundreds of Harlequins lining the shelves in the middle bedroom. I remember coming home to visit years later after the library was installed. I’d sleep on the same single bed with a thin lumpy mattress over a flimsy metal frame, now just next to the book wall. Many a time I would lay in bed and scan the shelves looking at the titles and author names on the book spines. The titles always promised mystery, allure, and secret assignations with names like The Safari Encounter, The Haunting Compulsion, and The Dark Oasis. The author names, surely noms-de-plume, included the likes of Charlotte Lamb, Mary Wibberly, and Flora Kidd. A quick scan of the contents of any book would reveal a slowly building crescendo of passion and tumescent pseudo-foreplay between the two protagonists. Finally, near the end of the book, that passion would momentarily reign supreme with said participants losing control, ultimately engaging in various high school wrestling moves with abandon.
I once heard romance novels described as puppy books. The logic being that the beautiful scantily clad young maiden pictured on the cover eventually ends up in the arms of a handsome barbarian. Then at the end of the book they fall in love, get married, and have puppies.
My Mom made a career out of reading romance novels. It was fine by me then and I can only admire it now. The puppy books were only part of her making reading a necessity of life. As kids, both Grandma Wade and Mom incessantly drove us to read, learn, and be informed. In other words, to avoid being an uninformed dumbass. As a result, the need to read has never left me. During the pandemic with practically all the news on TV and other media being what it was, books became a much-needed solace and safe haven.
So here’s to romances novels with heaving bodices and maids in the arms of savage barbarians. I can’t wait to get to page 132. I just hope they have puppies.
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