A great way to spend the time between here and Valentine’s Day is by decorating, practicing that great recipe you found just for that special somebody, and, of course, by reading!
Authors have been thinking and writing about love for as long as written language has existed. This week, we gathered up five of our favorite romantic reads for you to consider for your bookshelf.
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
This literary classic is a long-standing fave among casual readers and even writers. For good reason: it’s well written, decidedly modern for a novel that came out over 200 years ago, and above all, romantic! This witty social commentary is a classic tale of bad first impressions and the simmering love between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. If books aren’t your thing, no worries: there are dozens of film and TV adaptations of this classic story and even a short-form YouTube series. Whether you go with the analog or digital version of this literary masterpiece, we highly recommend you give it a try this Valentine’s Day!
Love In The Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Is there any title on this list that’s more appropriate for the current climate? Although there’s quite a bit of controversy associated with this book, especially around whether or not it can be considered a romance title in the first place, we think this alluring tale is a must-read for any book-lover. Full of seductive prose and brilliant imagery, this delightful novel is a great short read for fans of stories that take place over many years.
Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn
Slated to become a contemporary classic, Clayborn’s sweet, whimsical romance will provide readers with welcome respite this Valentine’s Day. This slow-burn romance will have readers fervently flipping the page. The novel follows Meg Mackworth, a professional wedding calligrapher. Meg struggles to overcome her artist block, eventually enlisting some help from a previous client, Reid Sutherland, whose relationship Meg shrewdly predicted would end in disaster. What unfolds is Reid’s quest for closure and Meg’s journey to rekindle her creativity as the two slowly and inevitably fall in love. Set against the author’s total love letter to New York City and filled with nuanced hints to the characters’ inner workings, this enchanting and masterful read is a joy for book lovers everywhere.
Love Poems by Pablo Neruda
Poet Laureate Pablo Neruda’s immersive prose is straightforward yet alluring, provocative in a way that only simple words and clear metaphors can be. This beautiful anthology of the poet’s best love poems features his works in the original Spanish and English, cataloguing the dizzying highs and lows of love one after the other. If you’re in the mood for a no-nonsense anthology that’ll leave you reeling and waiting for your next big love affair, then this is the title for you!
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Like her sister’s novel that we recommended for your October bookshelf, Charlotte’s classic gothic novel Jane Eyre is the perfect mix of romance and darkness. Set in Northern England, Brontë’s moody love story is the antithesis of every run-of-the-mill romance. Chronicling the life of a young governess, the story follows her early childhood as a perilous orphan, all the way to the meeting and courting of her young ward’s brooding & iresome guardian. Brontë’s proto-feminist novel is a classic in literary circles and also a fun and easy, if a little long, read.
Those are all the titles we have for you today! We’ll be hunkering down this Valentine’s Day and reading some poetry ourselves but we’d love to hear what your plans are!
Till next week!
