Drivel.

I don't like movies without explosions. Accordingly, I don't like novels based solely on romance. Now, we all know that I'm a classic novel junkie, so you may be saying "Jilltheobscure, how can you love those books without liking that kind of plot?"

The thing is that there is usually some background action going on besides the love plot. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, we saw lots of romantic/marriage plots, but they were broken up with drinking, violence, aldultery, and unlawful imprisonment. You know, the good stuff. In North and South, there was another long, drawn out love plot. But it was made secondary to the plight of the working class, and the mob violence, and the conflicts between upper and lower classes.

What I'm trying to get at here is that Emma by Jane Austen was a few hundred pages of frivolous, mind-numbingly boring romances. One might sum up the novel in a few lines of dialogue:

"Oh my, I dare say he's in love with you!"

"No, he couldn't be! I'm not (insert desirable adjective here) enough!"

*next day*

"Well, I guess he was secretly in love with that other woman, but that man over there seems to be in love with you!"

Confine this superb storyline with the fact that there's only about 20 people in the whole community, and you have a story that's not just uninteresting; it's outright torture.

The only reason I finished this one is because I was leading a book club about it.

Oh, and *Spoiler Alert* When Mr. Knightley tells Emma that he's been in love with her since she was 13, that was....gross. I know that perceptions of proper age have changed over the years, but still. The guy's considerably older than her. This was no puppy love situation.

coming soon: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card