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RE: Saturday Rant!!! (Don't worry, if you miss this one, there will be more)
I think Stevia is natural. But give me good old cane sugar! I can't stand artificial sweeteners; to me they taste like chemicals and not sweet at all.
I beg to differ on the romances only in that the rare decent one might provide new ideas :))) Most typical romance novels annoy me because the characters are so vapid. But I'll read them anyway and then my husband seems extra sexy to me because he's not vapid and annoying...so there is a benefit for him, haha.
You have me stumped. I cannot think of any bizarre uneatable cakes!
I like cane sugar a lot, too, and from what I gather, it's supposed to be healthier than processed white sugar, relatively speaking. I'm really surprised, though, with a virtually non-existent calorie count and other desirable attributes that Stevia hasn't taken off. Apparently, it's had a hard time getting approval here. Sugar lobby maybe? :)
I think your explanation about the reason why women (mostly) read romances is the first I've heard that makes sense to me. :)
It''s too bad, though, that the romance genre is so broad, because there's a definite difference between some older, tamer romance novels, that might actually have elements of romance in them, and say, the 50 shades of Gray series, that I understand is focused on bondage and other sexual practices rather than what I would consider romance. Doesn't sound like the leading man treats the leading woman very well at all, regardless.
I refuse to read 50 Shades. I got sucked into reading Twilight (and it sucked) and from what I gather, 50 Shades reinvented Twilight's protaganists and put them on steroids. I've read the same thing about the man treating the woman badly and that she has major self esteem issues, etc....Now what's kind of thought provoking about that scenario is that 1. There are indeed real life situations in which a woman with low self esteem idolizes a man who treats her badly and mistakes his use of her as "love"...but 2. books like 50 Shades idealize that instead of exposing it. I've seen people hotly argue that point about the Outlander series as well.
There is definitely a huge variation in what constitutes a "romance" novel, I totally agree with that.
I didn't read Twilight, but I did see two of the movies I think. I'm not sure at all how they and 50 Shades of Gray correlate, other than I guess abuse. The big draw of Twilight were sparkly vampires and handsome werewolves, whereas 50 Shades seems to test the limits of the mainstream readers' tastes in less than mainstream sex. Or at least, that's how I'm interpreting it.
At any rate. it's a genre that could stand plenty of subcategories at least, if not flat out reclassification into other kinds of genre. Is Garbage a genre? :)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/340987215
^^ I just about cried with laughter the first time I read that. The author shows the correlation when she says "Yeah, like we haven't seen that before" about Ana and then when she crosses out "Edward" and "Jake" to show how the guys correlate to their corresponding Twilight characters. But like I said, they're on steroids in 50 Shades :))) The reviewer really hammers the point home about the glorification of a destructive relationship--dysfunctional in Twilight, but ratcheted up to abusive in 50 Shades.
Either way, I'd delightedly fling both series into a newly created Garbage genre.