The other morning on the subway I sat next to an attractive young blonde woman who was reading something on her iPad.She was very welldressed，carrying a Prada bag with tastefully applied makeup indeed，she had an unmistakable air of wealth，material success and even authority.I suspected she worked as a highlypaid Wall Street lawyer or stockbroker or something of that sort.So，I was curious to see what she was so focused on.The Wall Street Journal perhaps? The Economist?
Quite the contrary；rather，she was concentrating on a romance novel.Then I realized that I have known many women who love romance novels—smart，attractive，successful，“liberated，” modern females who nonetheless find some kind of deep satisfaction and thrill from those hyperromantic，artificial and extremely unrealistic tales of handsome，manly heroes falling in love with virginal women，enduring a series of adventures，then no doubt having a happy ending.
These_romance_stories_are_to_literature_what_hot_dogs_are_to_fine_food.Yet，the genre(体裁) remains enormously popular.Consider some of these surprising statistics from the good folks at the Romance Writers of America (RWA)：
