The Hebden Bridge Times is running a summer campaign promoting the Hebden Bridge Summer of Love. As part of this we thought we'd ask for people's best book(s) about love - of any kind, it doesn't have to be romantic -and the reason for choosing them. This has sparked some debate in the shop.
Obvious choices have been Jane Austen's Persuasion, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and our younger customers have put in a strong vote for the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer (interestingly, as Twilight fans will know, Wuthering Heights is Bella's favourite book). Other choices are Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love (politics and love), Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray (love with a great sound-track) and Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula le Guin (the difficulty of love between different species).
Please feel free to post your suggestions here, or come and visit the shop, and add your choice to our reader's list.
Here goes!
ReplyDeleteAnna Karenina - Tolstoy
Far from the Madding Crowd - Hardy
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen (teenage rejected love)
Dr Zhivago - Pasternak
All the Georgette Heyers
Sentimental Education - Flaubert
Elective Affinities - Goethe
And not forgetting Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (he dies of it )
[Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter. - Thackeray]
Modern:
American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld (love as metaphor - it's related by a Laura Bush-like woman)
Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
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