I teach great books to my students. Every year, I'm happy to reread the kinds of books they should understand allusions about when they come up in everyday conversations. References will come up because absolutely everyone who went to a halfway decent school will have read some of the same novels. And they're great.
But when I don't have any reason to annotate, I love reading books about love–new love, young love, slightly forbidden love, confused love. I know the tropes that romance novels employ, and I revel in looking for and finding them. Where's my meet cute? What's in his secret past? Why does she feel broken inside?
While some people want to read for the thrill of not really knowing what comes next, I feel that I get enough surprises in real life. In what I read, I want the satisfaction of having my genre expectations met.
You can call what I read predictable, but I call it delightful. Feel free to list some of your favorite romance authors and novels in the comments. I'll try to read some of them this summer.
