Before I went on vacation to Puerto Rico last month, I asked readers for book recommendations. Wendy suggested The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, a romance novel. Lord Ian has autism, which I think marks a new weirdness in the autism literature genre. I downloaded it and read it by the side of the pool at the resort.

For multiple reasons, I found this book pretty horrifying. In order to purge my mind of this book, I needed to read a different book pronto. Based on recommendations by Amazon readers, I downloaded In Bed with a Highlander by Maya Banks.

I haven't read a romance novel in years. I probably went through my last romance novel spree back when Ian was born, and I was stuck breastfeeding for hours and hours. I was shocked to learn that romance novels are way more porn-y than they used to be. Just to be sure, I read the other two books in the series, Seduction of a Highland Lass and  Never Love a Highlander. Yep, lots of porn. In addition to traditional maiden deflowering, I got some bondage action, lots of oral, and some sex with highland wenches who were still asleep.

There was always good sex in romance novels, but the authors would slowly work their way to it after a hundred pages or so of misunderstandings, tempestuous personalities, and jealous wenches throwing up roadblocks. Now, we zoom into the sex after 20 pages or so. The drama doesn't revolve getting into bed for the first time. 

At one point, I looked up from my iPad and checked out my fellow vacationers around the pool. Like me, the middle aged women in various Lands End one piece bathing suits were all reading romance novels. Wow. You're reading porn. And you're reading porn. And you're reading porn. 

Romance novels always sort of pretended to based in a historical time. The authors used to throw in some wikipedia references to important battles or real historical events. These books didn't bother with history and didn't pretend to be placed in any historical context. The heroes were metrosexuals who cared about grooming. The women were constantly in a bathtub. Their wispy tendrils of hair curled up in the hot water, which servants had happily carted up the stairs to the bedroom. In one of the books, the hero decides not to bed the maiden on her wedding day, because she was going to have to travel on horseback the next day and he didn't want to make her maiden spots too tender to ride. 

 Which brings me to Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy. Well, not quite yet. I'm downloading it this weekend. Anybody read it?