Changing taste

 TV viewers and romance readers/watchers have dominated a lot of the news this week with the arrival of the adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals on the screen. A quintessential 80s 'bonk buster' full of steamy scenes, and featuring all round cad, Rupert Campbell Black.  In the 80s Rupert was considered irresistible. Now - I'm not so sure. The idea of a romantic hero has changed. Rakes are not quite such a thing any more - except perhaps in traditional style historicals.  

That made me think of how fashions in reading have changed in general. Take size, for instance - and no, that is not mean as an innuendo - well, maybe, just a bit. In the 80 era of Riders, Rivals and others, like Shirley Conran's Lace, readers were looking for big books - ones that would last for a long haul flight and probably the holiday as well. Now you can load up a shed load of e-books and never have the fear of having nothing to read. Our attention spans have apparently got shorter, but with the rise of gaming and social media there are other avenues for entertainment. Reading has to cope with the competition. I don't think our appetite for extended stories has dimmed - but now they are more likely to take the form of series or trilogies - three books or more in place of one. 

The bonk busters had huge casts - I suspect that the number of characters in books has got smaller, but that is only gut feeling. They often extend over lengthy time periods too, which maybe is not so frequent now?

And then of course, there is the s.e.x. It really doesn't go out of fashion. What are currently termed 'spicy' books are still in demand. There is still a tendency for a particular book - or series - to make headlines, to be the one everyone is taking about and curious to read - Fifty Shades being the most recent example . Before that I'm thinking of Forever Amber and the Angelique books. Authors like Barbara Taylor Bradford and Jackie Collins are big names who have been known for writing sexy scenes, but romance writers who are not known outside romance reader circles write them too, it's just not so well publicised. Or perhaps that should be notorious? And now romantic relationships can be gay, sapphic or involving more than a couple. 

That's really what it is about - whether the bedroom door is open or closed - romance is about relationships. And that's never going out of fashion.