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I am now the official owner of a library card! It was a surprisingly painless process, even though I came there on a whim and the only ID I had was a) a student card, b) a blood donor card and c) an out of date driver's license. Apparently out of date driver's licenses are valid IDs for these sorts of things, especially considering I was already on their system.

And now I have a library card, and the ability to borrow Many A Thing From The Library.

At the moment my current plan for these newfound powers is to dip my toes into the romance genre in a low risk way. I have, at a best guess, about a 50/50 shot at liking standard romance novels (ie the kind you can find at a library). On the one hand, I am Known Romance Liker (see, my ao3 works and bookmarks.) On the other, it's quite possible I'd find standard romance frustratingly ~heteronormative, or find the main characters grating. But with libraries, if it turns out I hate the genre, I'm not out any money, and I can try a relatively wide variety of things if it turns out that I like one author and find the rest frustrating.

I didn't borrow any, because I went there on a whim with no way to carry books, but I did check out the blurbs. And it turns out romance novel blurbs tend to be incredibly goofy. Now, I doubt all the novels themselves are goofy, but the blurbs are bizarre. I think it's mostly a format thing. They're generally in the format of "[Female Lead] has [character traits] and is in/has [predicament.] [Male Lead] has [character traits] and [is related to the predicament, somehow.]" And I'm not saying there's no novel where all those things can be summed up in a sensible sentence, and with no amusing juxtapositions-- but I haven't seen a romance novel that's succeeded!

...and while some of the goofiness is a little 'wait, what?' (eg 'how is a vampire boyfriend supposed to help?' or 'wait, why is this dude at an antenatal class if he doesn't know that he's gotten someone pregnant?') some of it is more 'yesssssss' (eg the novel that was basically 'He's a rake. She's a scientist. It's the 1800s and their on a hot air balloon.' And look, I don't know if that book is good, but it is certainly intriguing.)