A broad intro-to-romance style reading list, based on curated recommendations released by NPR in 2015. For series recommendations, rather than a specific book within a series, only the first book is listed.
Some of the single-book recommendations are also parts of series, which are mentioned when I'm aware of it. (Books are entered in the order they were originally listed, going through several genre sub-categories.)
The category romance recommendations are included as bonuses since older categories can be hard to find.
I'm just replicating NPR's list so inclusion is not endorsement.