There’s been a veritible cornucopia of articles about romance that raise a stunning amount of eyebrows, induce side eye, and create a wave of eyerolling. But look, eyerolling does not burn enough calories. We can do better. And though the writers of these articles don’t seem to be working too hard to reach accuracy, or anything in the same metro area as accuracy, that doesn’t mean we get to take it easy. We can take the meandering nonsense of uninformed asshairs and turn them into abs and buns of steel.
NB: I’m not sure why the link doesn’t work anymore, but the pinnacle was a recent examination that called romance “light masturbatory reading.” Oh, yeah.
Please note that in most cases, condescension and sexism is presumed but not required. Like the previous workouts, you can do all these exercises with a mat and your own bodyweight. No additional weights are needed unless you want to use some.
Standard disclaimers still apply: although I play one on tv and have a costume lab coat and stethoscope, I’m not a physician. I can recommend books to read but I can’t discern your state of health or your physical limitations so by all means work hard but be kind to yourself. To put it another way, ask your doctor before beginning any exercise regimen.
I will tell you that you should drink water and read books, but that’s very obvious, right? Right.
And yes! By reader request, I have a convenient PDF of all 17 workouts so far. Each page has two images on it, and the PDF is 1.5MB+ in size. You are welcome to print and distribute the workouts, give them as gifts, or use them as bookmarks.
Download the Romance Novel Workout PDF Collection here.
And now, Romance Novel Reader Workout, Part XVI, in graphic form suitable for pinning, sharing, printing, and pointing at!
If you have questions or suggestions for future workouts, please share, either in the comments or via email.
And remember the ferocious yodel of the workout: unless you faint, puke, or die, KEEP READING! AND BREATHING!
The rise in blood pressure that I experience when I read these articles must be burning some calories.
Googled the phrased “light masturbatory reading” and read the cached version. 😛
Don’t you just hate it when someone looks down on other’s work because they’re so oh-so-superior with their literary choices? Apparently other genres are inferior because they don’t reflect human nature as much as books of [insert favorite author’s name]. Pfft. Yeah ok. Because it’s not like good and bad books are present in all genres, right? -.-
People like these are perhaps knowledgeable, but definitely not wise, IMHO.
So, with this workout we get to be sore both emotionally/mentally and physically.
It’s funny how common it is for people to assume that if they don’t like something of an art/entertainment nature, it would be easy for them to make. The truth is usually just the opposite: if you don’t like something, odds are you don’t understand what makes other people like it. And you’re attempts to duplicate it (in the bizarro world in which you actually followed through with this delusion) would probably look about as legit to fans as someone slapping on a tutu, standing on tiptoe, and yelling, look! Ballerina!
And I actually made the you’re => your mistake backwards. Go me.
I’d like to add something to the above workout.
Writer chooses romance novel written more than 20 years ago to make his or her point:
CHUG THE BOTTLE.
@Fahrenheit- I just googled that too. I’m pretty sure I burnt a lot of calories eye-rolling through that mess.
About what you’d expect from a guy who apparently hasn’t noticed that writing styles have changed in the last 150+ years.
That article was the reason the word “hateread” was coined.