Shelf Love Podcast

@shelflove.bsky.social

1401 Followers 185 Following

A podcast & Substack about romance novels, and how they reflect, explore, challenge, and shape desire. Host: Andrea Martucci (she/her) #romancebks #romancereader https://linktr.ee/shelflovepodcast

Image of Jayne Ann Krentz, an older white woman with cool cat eye glasses and a wide smile, a short bob, wearing a blazer. Text on the image: episode 175. Risk & Reinvention in Romance with guest Jayne Ann Krentz.
it’s sort of comical how you think your opinion exempts you from genre conventions when, in fact, the book you’re calling predictable was handed to you by a genre that spent decades honing preferences and teaching readers and writers exactly what a love story has to do before it gets to call itself a romance novel.
Text: Shelf Love Romance Novel Discourse. Image of vibrant young Black woman with big framed glasses, crimson lips, and short hair, in an olive green velvet dress, smiling broadly and lightly touching her face. Seductively?! Text on image: episode 174. Sought, Surrender, and the Alien Erotics of Inevitability.
An adorable white with brown spots Havanese dog wearing a baby onesie stands on two legs at a window, staring out the front door…
A white graphic bordered with colorful confetti dots in green, orange, yellow, red, and purple. At the top is the Romancelandia Holiday Fairies logo with a small yellow magic wand. Large pink text reads “Sprinkle Fairy Dust, Babes!” Below it, purple text says, “Share with your author besties, book friends, book clubs, coworkers, and anyone who loves Romancelandia” At the bottom, light pink text says “Learn more:” above a purple box displaying the link “bit.ly/holidayfairies.”
A colorful graphic promoting Romancelandia's Holiday Fairies event. It features two women’s portraits, Andrea (@shelflovepodcast) and Gretchen (@booksblurbsandbrews), alongside the text “Meet the Fairies.” The image has a rainbow border and invites viewers to learn more via a link.
Graphic with colorful polka dots and a green box explaining the Romancelandia Holiday Fairies program. Text reads: “A community-driven gifting initiative. Friends in need share a wishlist. Fairies swoop in to buy what they can. Every gift matters. Learn more: bit.ly/holidayfairies.”
A festive graphic with a white background covered in scattered multicolored polka dots in green, orange, yellow, red, and light purple. At the top, there is a small illustration of a yellow magic wand with sparkles above the words “Romancelandia Holiday Fairies” written in red and navy blue text. Below, in large bold navy blue letters, the main message reads: “Submit your wishlist!” At the bottom, it says “Learn more:” followed by a yellow banner containing the link “bit.ly/holidayfairies.”
Graphic of a wrapped gift with “2025” inside a confetti pattern. Text reads: “Romancelandia Holiday Fairies: A Community Gifting Initiative. Back for our 6th year!” Romancelandia Holiday Fairy logo at the top.
As somebody who has been reading romance for a long time and has read a lot of older romance: the sex isn’t the problem. The problem is people’s concept of sex. It’s people’s concepts of women, of what we should find pleasurable. Stop trying to rehabilitate the texts: rehabilitate the society we live in.
Book cover of the adventure by Jane and Krantz. 1990s era looking cover with blue foil waves and a red compass with green mountains in the background.
Text screenshot: “These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).” From: Elle Griffin article called No one buys books
Romancelandia Holiday Fairies: Dedicated to the Memory of Romancelandia Community Member Melinda Utendorf. April 13, 1982-January 10, 2024. Image of smiling white woman with short blond hair and thick framed glasses standing in front of the ocean and a beautiful sunset. Melinda Utendorf was a beloved member of the romance reader community and a supporter of Holiday Fairies. In her last year, when she needed the support, she was a wishlist recipient herself. This year, we dedicate Romancelandia Holiday Fairies to Melinda. January 1, 2024 Hi Andrea, I just wanted to reach out now that the holidays are over and let you know how amazing the romancelandia wish list made mine. I signed up when I was in the hospital, and my stay kept getting extended, and when I was released I came home to a few items from my wish list and it was exactly what I needed. The coloring books and puzzles I received have been sanity saving for me the last few weeks. Truly, my mental health was so much improved by all of this, I can't even express it properly. So thank you and thanks to anyone who was involved. Melinda Find a gift list to support, or submit your wishlist: bit.ly/holidayfairies
Image of two hands reaching out to each other. Text on blue background: Romancelandia Holiday Fairies. Give the gift of mutual aid in the romance community. Find a gift list to support, or submit your wishlist: bit.ly/holidayfairies Gift Giving Period: November 17 through December 31. 5 Years: Romancelandia Holiday Fairies is a mutual aid effort for the "Romancelandia" romance novel reader community to support anyone in the community who could use help with purchasing gifts for themselves or loved ones in the holiday season. The annual event launched in 2020 and is organized by Andrea Martucci / Shelf Love.
Shelf Love: Next episode we discuss: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne. Image of a still from the movie with the two main characters looking at each other in an elevator. Image of the book cover of The Hating Game - two professionally-dressed white people looking at each other on a cartoon cover.
Text quote: "We may hate how unlikable characters act throughout a story — that’s the point. It’s the equivalent of discovering a body in the study with a knife in their chest announcing that there’s a murderer roaming the house. We take note of the problem that needs to be solved and eagerly look for clues that they’re changing."
Line Chart labeled: romance sales relative to US GDP
Buy a gift for a fellow romance novel reader who needs help this season. Find all the wishlists and more information. Learn more: bit.ly/holidayfairies Romancelandia Holiday Fairies 2023
Image of fairy wand and text: Romancelandia Holiday Fairies. Request - Submit a Wishlist. bit.ly/holidayfairies
Picture of a book: Harlequin Superromance Spellbound by Ruth Alana Smith
“Claiming to have her best interests at heart, Virgil Pembroke forbade her studying Egyptian writing. He said that even male scholars familiar with Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Persian, and Hebrew had no hope of deciphering it in her lifetime. This he deemed no great loss: Egyptian civilization being primitive—greatly inferior to that of classical Greece—decipherment would contribute little to the store of human knowledge.” — Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase https://a.co/eqXoY6D
Episode 147 Shelf Love. Text is on top of a dramatic cloudy sky in a sweeping dramatic font: The Agony and the Candlelight Ecstasy
Showing vs. Telling Feelings In her book Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction,7 Jayashree Kamblé uses adaptations to illuminate what distinguishes a romance novel. Kamblé’s analysis illustrates the differences between the formats of novel and film and how that impacts the consumer's experience of the romance. Kamblé’s thesis can be summarized as: Romance novels: tell events and show thoughts and feelings Romance films: show events and tell thoughts and feelings While a novel may thus contain a description that forces readers to exclude some of the items in their mental storehouse of visuals, it leaves the final image to them. Movies can not replicate this novel trait of flexibility in adopting various narrative styles and moods in the same way. (page 7) The example that she uses to illustrate this point is Nora Roberts’s 2001 book Midnight Bayou, which was adapted into a 2009 Lifetime made-for-TV movie.
Shelf Love Episode 146. Mistress of Mellyn: in love with the man or the house? Reformed Rakes crossover.
Romance novel cover The Game is Played by Amii Lorin.
Double Occupancy by Elaine Raco Chase, a Candlelight Ecstasy Romance, number 56
Photo of book cover: Snowbound Weekend by Amii Lorin. A Candlelight Ecstasy Romance, number 50.
Book cover, Illusive Lover, by Jo Calloway a Candlelight Ecstasy Romance
Photo of book cover, Lilac Awakening by Bonnie Drake, a Candlelight Ecstasy Romance
Image of book cover: hotel of secrets by Diana Biller
Photo of a book called Black Fox by Kate Buchan, #38 Masquerade Historical. Two women in medieval dresses ride a horse.
Photo of teen romance book series from the 1980s 90s and 2000s.
Photo of 3 books, each edited or written by Jayashree Kamble, about romance.
This week’s new books: stack of about 25 vintage paperback romances.
Episode 144 - Flames on the Sides of my Flower Shelf Love podcast. Guests: Leigh Kramer & Hannah Hearts Romance.