1. I had other comfort literature higher on my to read shelf, and

2. I knew exactly what would happen.

See, like most people – particularly males – I grew up with pretensions. And Harlequin didn’t really fit those pretensions. They publish cheap trash that starts out its life in Kmart and ends its life moulding in the houses of Nannas everywhere, or moulding in second-hand bookstores everywhere. But things change. I realised that I couldn’t be judgmental forever. I bought a copy of another Harlequin book in Japanese, that I read, understood and even enjoyed a little bit. I also realised that Harlequin has been a massively successful publishing company for decades, and is managing the transition into digital publishing much easier than most (their books are available cheaply on their website as Adobe ebooks, so their are no format worries – you can pay extra for the kindle versions too if you want).

The first Harlequin book I read was in Japanese, and I’d recommend them to anyone learning to read in a second language. They’re simple to read, everything that’s said is said in a rather straight-forward way, and as your reading gets better you can learn better to appreciate the  innuendoes, the rather unique descriptions, the cliches that you can reuse yourself (although most of the ones in the Japanese version were translated straight from English, and not replaced with Japanese equivalents) and you can grow to appreciate the stories better. Because the stories never really change. Neither do the characters. Or the writing really, for that matter. Not that I’m claiming I could write a romance novel. I wish I could. It’s pretty lucrative, I hear.

So what if you know exactly what’s going to happen? So what if the characters are predictable? These books are for when you don’t want to read anything else. When you’ve just come off a night flight from Tokyo and gone from snow to a Melbourne summer and just want to lie next to the fan and not do anything particularly strenuous. They’re fun.

I liked this book because it was set in Melbourne. I liked this book because it was unashamedly feminine. I liked this book because I was quite certain before reading it that I wouldn’t really like and thus it came as a pleasant surprise that I didn’t dislike it.

OK so maybe this is a bad review to start my 2012 challenges, because I only spent one line actually reviewing the book. Next one will be better.

The author’s twitter is: https://twitter.com/#!/NicolaMarsh , the publisher’s twitter is https://twitter.com/#!/MillsandBoonAUS

The book’s website is: http://www.millsandboon.com.au/product.asp?productid=4591

Progress:

Australian Women’s Challenge – 1/10

Twitter Challenge – 2/? (including the Neil Gaiman I read at the end of last year)

Next Challenge Book: Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

(First to read 100 books and rate them on Goodreads, secondly to get my to-read shelf down to just books I own)

This year’s challenges will be multiple, and again, I will have one or two that I have no intention of completing.

Firstly, the Australian Women’s Writer’s Challenge:http://www.australianwomenwriters.com/p/australian-women-writers-book-challenge_25.html

Ten books, five crime, five from other genres (I’m thinking…one romance, one non-fiction, one YA, one sci-fi, one fantasy. Mostly with titles in mind but I can be flexible)

Secondly, to review every book I read.

Thirdly, to complete my masters. That’s not really a reading challenge though. Neither is writing. Nor maintaining this blog or my tumblr. But they’re all goals.

Lastly, this year was going to be the year of the epic. I have copies of the Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, and The Tale of Genji to read – but just as this year was meant to be the year of Australian authors (I ran out when I finished Bliss by Peter Carey on the train to Napoli and then forgot about that challenge) I don’t know how long that will last. They might sit on my to read shelf for another year.