Monday, April 18, 2016

happy endings

Boy meets girl. Boy meets boy. Girl meets girl. Girl meets cowboy. Boy meets werewolf.
These are just a few of the romantic situations you can find in The Ripped Bodice, an all-romance bookstore that recently opened in Culver City, California.
It is the first of its kind in this country and watching the report on public television, I had an instant reaction: This is going to work ... big time.
[A]ccording to Bookstats, 46% of romance readers read at least one book per week.
All the upturned literary noses in the world cannot change the longing for a happy ending. How often does a happy ending actually happen in life and yet how many efforts are bound and determined to find a happy ending? How many excellent books about rural poverty in Maine do you have to read before the need for some glowing satisfaction (never mind if it's phony-baloney) rears its head?

Maybe it's just my old-fart gene, but I think The Ripped Bodice is going to soar.

3 comments:

  1. Stupid wins, plenty of quotes to that effect, sucker born every minute, nobody ever lost money overestimating the stupidity of, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Charlie -- Sometimes I am less convinced by the well-etched dividing line between moon-june-croon and womb-gloom-tomb.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't mean to suggest there's a dividing line between stupid and smart. I'm saying there's no such thing as smart. Perhaps by comparison that might seem to eliminate stupid, but the universe is made up of something, something stupid i think.

    ReplyDelete