Using our Library Voices
Using our Library Voices
Reading Room Radio: August Romance Reads
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From sports to SciFi, romance travels across the genres, and August is Read a Romance month! Check out the list of subgenre reads recommended in this episode here:
Reading Room Radio Recs Romance!
Recommendations from Nikki S., Esteban S., Crystal M., Anna W., and Mary M.
Created by the Podcast Team at the Harris County Public Library.
www.hcpl.net
Podcast Team Members include: Beth Krippel, John Harbaugh, Mary Mink, Dylan Smith, Sadina Shawver, Alinda Mac, John Schaffer, Jennifer Finch, Katelyn Helberg, Darcy Casavant, Darla Pruitt and Nancy Hu
Welcome to Harris County Public Library's Reading Room Radio, where your to be red pile gets a little more exciting one micro podcast at a time.
SPEAKER_02If you didn't know, August is Read a Romance Month. It's a time for celebration of the book genre where we can show love to it in different ways. Whether it's picking up a romance book after a long time away from the genre, or even if you're just looking to try something new. Celebrate in whatever way feels right to you. If you're celebrating by picking something new, here's some recommendations by subgenre that some of the staff has put together for you to enjoy. Check the episode notes for the link to the book hunters if you find a subgenre you're interested in and want more. Hi everyone, I'm Nikki, and my favorite subgenre of romance is sports romance. Judging by the hype and success of the TV show Heated Rivalry, sports romance is all the rage right now. It's not hard to see why. The stakes just always seem higher when there's a championship game on the line, or if you're trying out for an Olympic team of some sort. Their popularity is even starting to spill over into YA and middle grade reads as well. Personally, I understand why sports romance have gotten so popular all too well. Romance books set against some sort of athletic atmosphere just hit harder for me. And now that they're introducing all different sports like swimming, F1, track, tennis, and rugby alongside our regular hockey, football, and basketball, it's been such an exciting time for a lover of all sports like me. Here's two that feature women in sports that I think you should pick up right now. As someone who is also a YA reader, I read and fell hard for Smash or Pass by Bertie Shea. The main character, Ellie, isn't having a great time at Beach Volleyball Camp. She's expecting it to get worse when she's paired with an actual volleyball prodigy. As they work towards getting better at volleyball, the pair realize that volleyball and love are all about taking the right shot. For an adult pick, I chose Big Girl Blitz by Danielle Allen. For Spice, on a scale from sweet to sweat, this falls closer to the sweat side, like a 3.5 out of 5. Jasmine, the main character, graduated high school and left her hometown immediately. But once her aunt gets sick, she goes back to help care for her. They make a list of things to do to welcome more fun into their lives, one of which is dating. So when she meets Lamar in a sports bar and things between them click instantly, she refuses to fumble her shot with him. Jazz's football and stats knowledge are elite and it intrigues Lamar. They hit it off immediately. Now this is a series ender, so be mindful of that. But that just means go back and read all three. I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_00Hello, my name is Esteban Salinas. I'm an adult program librarian at Freeman Branch Library. The subgenre I chose was like horror romance. I don't read a lot of romance books at all traditionally. I read a lot of like horrors and thrillers, so when I do read books with romantic plots or attention, it is usually in that genre. And there's a lot of horror romance, I think. The first one I ever read was one that I really enjoyed. It's called Summer's Sons by Lee Mandelo. And Lee Mandelo himself is a trans man author, and Summer Sons revolves around these two men who weren't explicitly gay, but growing up they were inseparable. And sadly, right at the beginning of the book, one of the friends dies while off at college. So his surviving friend actually picks up his thesis and goes to his college to finish it for him because that was part of his friend's dying wish. And he also wants to figure out what happened to him. So it ends up being this really like steamy, hot, southern gothic romance where he's kind of figuring out what his friend was doing in his life and who these people were that he was hanging out with. And it does get very steamy. And there's a ghost, and there's a creepy professor, and there's a mystery, and a lot of booze, and a lot of drag racing. It was shockingly like Fast and the Furious, but gay and southern. So it was really cool. I really liked it. The only other like kind of horror romance book that I've read is was a fantastical one. It's called The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Kaw. And this one is a lot more sapphic. It's kind of like a eerie, grim-dark take on like the Little Mermaid mythos, where it follows a mermaid who has finished seducing a king and eating him and his people. So she's kind of nomadic, she's going through the woods looking for a new kingdom, and she comes across a non-binary plague doctor who is really cool. They hit it off very quickly, and they end up traveling together and stumbling upon a cult of children being taken advantage of by these old beings. And she's sympathetic to them, and they end up doing what they can to try to free these children from this cult while having their own kind of romantic subplot that grows from this tension and this conflict. Really, really good. Both the books that I highly recommend. Uh The Salt Grows Heavy, especially, is very short. So if you want something to just like dip your toes into, I think that's a good place to start.
SPEAKER_01So the sub-genre that I chose was disabilities and romance. And I love it because it's been so long in coming that people are recognizing that there are people with disabilities that want to have their own kinds of romance, and it hasn't really been represented in the past very much. So my recommendations are going to be Semantic Error by Engi and Giosuri, which only has five volumes. And my second recommendation is Love in the Palm of His Hands by Rinte Ku. Semantic Error is a Korean boys' love manwa centered on Chu Seng Wu and highly organized computer science student who values rules, routine, and logic, and Jang Jeeyung, an outgoing design student whose personality clashes with Seng Wu's. Their conflict begins when Seng Wu refuses to include Jee Young's name on a group project after Je Young fails to contribute, which causes Jee Young to lose credit and forces the two to interact. What begins as irrigation gradually develops into attraction and a very explicit relationship. Seng Wu is not portrayed as someone who needs to be fixed before he can have relationships. Instead, much of the romance develops as Jee Young learns how Sang Wu communicates, and Sang Wu gradually becomes more comfortable with emotional and social situations that do not fit his carefully structured worldview. This can be read as a challenge to the assumption that there's only one normal way to communicate, socialize, or express affection. I'm including this one even though the author has not canonically identified Sang Wu as autistic, because its value in a disability discussion comes primarily from the ways reader recognize themselves in Sang Wu and from the possibility of interpreting his differences through a neurodiversity lens. Love in the Palm of His Hands is another BL manga by Rinteku that follows a young actor, Fujinaga, who becomes involved with a man who is deaf, Keito. Fujinaga receives bad critics for his over-expressive form of acting, but Keito finds that he can follow along best when he's watching Fujinaga work at his craft. Their relationship develops through the challenges and possibilities of communicating across different hearing experiences, with sign language playing an important role in how the characters understand one another. Rather than treating deafness simply as a tragic obstacle to romance, the manga makes communication itself part of the relationship. The characters have to learn how to express feelings, understand one another, and navigate situations in which spoken communication cannot simply be taken for granted.
SPEAKER_04Hi there. My name is Anna, and I'm one of the collection development librarians. And even though I'm one of the youth selectors, I really have a soft spot in my heart for historical romance. So I'm gonna share a couple of my favorite ones with you. Historical romance falls into two main categories for me. One is high on pining, and the other is like high on shenanigans. So like Kirkle races, or trying to steal the crown jewels, or like getting lost in the countryside as you're racing to Gretna Green to stop a marriage. All of those fun shenanigans. So I'm gonna give you one from each category, and you can choose whichever route you you enjoy more. So the first book I want to highlight is Isabel and the Rogue by Liana Delarosa. And this is part of a series called The Luna Sisters. And basically, it's Mexican heiresses that come over to Britain. They're trying to curry favor with the ton to get people to be more sympathetic to Mexico during the French occupation. And what I really enjoyed about this book was it was equal parts romance, mystery, and like a little bit of historical background. Some historical romances really lean gently on the historical part and they're really just set in a certain time. But what Della Rosa does here is she actually weaves in a lot of true historical facts within the novel. And so I think it makes like a much more well-rounded experience. And I'm always a sucker for a hero that falls first and a hero that pines. And that's exactly what happens here. Isabel is a bit of a wallflower, but she discovers some documents that could help turn the tide of the French occupation, and she has to decide what she's going to do to save her country. And meanwhile, this rogue, this undercover British Home Office agent, sees her skulking around finding these documents, and he has to decide if he's going to stay true to his country or if he's going to stay true to his heart. So this was a great read for me. Um, actually, the whole series is worth checking out. The other pathway that you can take is high on shenanigans. And I love reading these kinds of historical romances because they're so funny. There have been so many that make me laugh out loud. The one that I'd most recently read is called Scandal of the Summer by Alexandra Vasty. And Vasty has come out with a ton of books recently, and every single one of them has just like made me giggle. And so I'm recommending this book partially because it's ridiculous and partially because I really wanted to highlight this author specifically. So the basic plot of Scandal of the Summer is a debutante is trying to escape from the tawn. She's tired of being a wallflower, she's tired of being on the shelf, she's tired of being under her father's thumb. And so she cons her way into a foreign dignitary's household. But meanwhile, the foreign dignitary's household is also being run by a con man. So it's cons on cons. He's a bit of like a smuggler pirate-esque with a heart of gold situation. And this book has one of my favorite types of characters, which is like very intelligent but socially awkward heroine meets absolutely charming hero. You'll find that a lot in historical romances. And so when I found it in this book, I was very excited to see how it all unfolded. And this one has a lot going on, not just smuggling, but a bunch of ruses and some kidnappings and and all sorts of shenanigans, both on the coast of Cornwall and also in the city. So it has a little bit of everything. So those are the two that I wanted to highlight. I hope you enjoy digging into some of the historical romances that we have in our catalog.
SPEAKER_03Hey, it's Mary from the Spring Branch Memorial Branch Library. When starting to think about the selection for a science fiction romance, I'll admit I had some trouble coming up with a book for this. I read a lot of romance, I read a lot of science fiction. It should have been easy peasy. Honestly, this is a little bit of me, because I am strict about what I consider science fiction and what I consider a subgenre, like space opera or a monster romance, because note I would classify alien romance more as a monster romance rather than science fiction. Though it's in the umbrella. That said, which is important to my recommendation, science fiction is defined as our world as it could be or as it will be with regards to science and technology. I think that's what makes science fiction romance so fun. They're oftentimes characters experiencing romance while they deal with things bigger than themselves. Sort of the same reason people like romanticy. But like I said, in a world that could easily be ours. Maybe. I know that means you're ultimately looking at reading a science fiction novel with a romance subplot, but it's still romance. Anyway, I know you're here for my wreck, so here it is. A quantum love story by Mike Chen. This is a science fiction novel that surrounds a romantic relationship between Mariana and Carter, except Mariana doesn't realize it because to her she's just meeting Carter, whereas Carter is stuck in a time loop and remembers every time they meet. Think of it as a meat cute if the author just keeps rewriting the scene. I really liked watching their relationship grow little by little with science fiction aspects, definitely bringing present. They're scientists after all, and they have to figure out what's causing this time loop with quantum physics, of course. I think you'll enjoy this if you're looking for something that's romantic with science elements. Give it a shot.