I only caught the highlights of the Daytona 500 over the weekend, talk about exciting! The NY Times (reg req’d) says that Harlequin and Nascar are teaming up on a series of 16 paperback books that feature Nascar prominently. I didn’t know that romance novels account for 55% of all mass-market fiction sold each year.
The first book is called, what else, Speed Dating.
From another book in the series:
It wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t passive, it was a kiss that instantly proved the two of them were like high-octane fuel, their flesh sparking off each other in such a way that Lance felt the purely caveman urge to pick her up and carry her to bed.“
I feel the urge to never read one of these. I’m more of a Formula 1 kind of guy. I’ve always wondered why F1, and other race series, where the cars actually turn in both directions, hasn’t been able to capture the hearts of American motorsports enthusiasts. F1 racing is incredibly popular around the world, but hasn’t caught on in America. It appears the good old boys coming up from dirt track racing are a lot easier to relate to than the teutonic clean-room feel of F1.
Nascar driver Carl Edwards said while promoting the book series, that his own taste in reading ran more to nonfiction, and especially writers like Stephen Ambrose and Robert Wright, and added that first he didn’t entirely recognize this fictional version of himself.
