If you had told me a couple of years ago that one day I would genuinely love reading romance books, I would have laughed at you. Back then If you looked up book snob in the dictionary you would have found my picture. I took pride in all what I like to call the “high-brow literature that I read. Whenever I saw people reading any romance books in my presence, I felt superior to them. Never mind that I should have been happy a person was reading at all. I mean as a Deaf person who had to learn the English language without hearing it I knew first hand how hard and confusing the English language could be. However I do know where this attitude came about also. Waaayyy back in the ’90s and 80’s in Deaf Schools the powers that be would separate us into who could read well from those who had a more difficult time grasping the art of the confusing English language. Now that I think about it I bet trying to learn ANY language you cant hear difficult. I mean seriously. Have YOU ever tried to learn a language you couldn’t understand? I have it; it was not an easy road to get where I am now. It took not only teachers in the classroom explain things ten times but also a very persistent mother who made damn sure I could read. When I was at home, my mom had alll sorts of ways to help me learn my words. Then one day when I was eight years old everything finally clicked. I can hear you saying now..wait… Couldn’t you read well until you were EIGHT years old? Like I said learning a language that you had never heard spoken is very difficult. And those of us that mastered it we were told that we would be the ones to “make it” and we were sadly treated a whole lot better than the kids in the other classrooms. I guess even in the Deaf community there are “privilege” Deaf people and the grassroots people. But that a whole other issue.
So yeah I internalized what I was taught and declared that I would never be caught reading crappy books.
I wound up having to eat my words.
Fast forward a 100 years.. ok around 25 years to 2016 when I decided to get my Cochlear ear implants. The technology had made almost incredible leaps, and bounds and even some hardcore Deaf people started getting implants. I got jealous when I learned that they could hear music and all of that, so I googled and contacted Cleveland Clinic, and the rest is history. Once I started understanding audiobooks, and I started blowing through them; I came across the Audible romance package and decided to try it out. It turns out that I had only one type of romance that I was used to classifying all romance and that was those Harlequin romances. Now I would claim that there is nothing wrong with them that that type of romance is not for me. So I went looking through all the categories and guess what I found?
Zombie Romance!
Yeah, I almost crapped my pants when I saw that. I started listening to a zombie romance book and fell in love with THAT type of romance. I have to be honest though at first, I thought it was going to be a bunch of zombiesumm…ok we are alll adults here (I hope) so I will say it straight out, I thought it was going to be zombies fucking and stuff like that. I was sooo wrong on this point it is not even funny, but I began exploring and soon became hooked on the entire romance category.
It is interesting to think that I used to look down on audiobooks as a whole, but now it accounts for 85 percent of my books read. All the doctors that I see find it fascinating on how I can understand audiobooks when most people who were born Profoundly Deaf ( like me) and got it later in life ( I got my first one at 36) could learn to listen to audiobooks. I was only supposed only to hear environmental sounds, and that was it. To think if I never came to understand audiobooks and was looking to listen to audiobooks without going broke then discovering the romance genre with Audible I would still be stuck reading dry non-fiction.
Nothing wrong with dry non-fiction but these days when I read I am looking for an escape from reality for a few hours and for that I am going to read me some zombie romance!