I Read Too Much Smut & It Taught Me to Love My Body

I am constantly reading.

Photo by 陆初雪 SWEETHEART💘（@luchuxue1997） on Unsplash

I love short books, long books, new books, and old books. I love realist and surrealist books. I love historical books, contemporary books, and time-hopping books. I have often bonded with fellow bookworms over the fortitude to not only bring a book in my bag wherever I go, but to have a back up book at the ready.

You know… in case I finish the first in my travels.

Ask me about what I am reading right now. I’ll tell you! I’ll go on about it! Ask for a recommendation and I will happily give you several based on your likes and dislikes. My yearly reading count hovers around the ninety to one-hundred and ten range.

Books. Per year. Yes, really.

And over the past three years, roughly 90% of those have been romance.

It’s not that I don’t read other things (I’m telling you, I read A LOT), but especially given the advent of ebooks and the corresponding lack of shame that goes along with not having to hide a particularly raunchy looking cover illustration…

The ongoing dive into the sexier side of modern literature perhaps began in protest.

I suppose it just keeps finding its way onto my phone more often than my beloved memoirs and fantasy series.

It would be, I think, far too easy to mention my long-distance relationship and the ever present need for connection without… ahem… connection. But I do honestly feel that even if we lived together, I would still have a need for the (for lack of a better term) stimulation romance novels provide.

The ongoing dive into the sexier side of modern literature perhaps began in protest. Why, yes, I have read all three books of the “Fifty Shades” series (I think I was hoping they might improve with time), and while I do appreciate the larger conversation they have started in regard to BDSM and introducing role-play in otherwise vanilla partnerships… I wasn’t impressed with the character development and I was altogether annoyed/disheartened/irate/indignant over the manipulation and abuse.

So I thereby set off on a quest to find better smut.