Love Story Recs?

[PrincessCrappy]

My book club would like to read a love story for the month of February but we're blanking on any good ideas.

What's your favorite love story? Any genre is fine, fiction, classic, non-fiction...

Thanks!

[Rosebud]

Here are some ideas that I think would be great for book club reading/discussion:

Four Letters of Love (http://www.amazon.com/Four-Letters-Love-Niall-Williams/dp/0330352695/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201023210&sr=1-1) by Niall Williams

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k284/rosebud03_2006/Misc/fourletters.jpg

It's lushly romantic, almost dreamlike. I thought it was beautiful. From the NY Times:


Four Letters of Love is formed with an unusual authority and grace, and it is filled with marvelous characters, large and small, all depicted with an understated veracity.... Contemporary Irish fiction is almost always about Irishness. Extraordinarily rooted in the Irish language and landscape, this novel is no exception, embracing both William Trevor's dark Ireland and Maeve Binchy's lighter one. Yet in its serious fancifulness, its feverish intensities, Four Letters of Love also gives us Niall Williams's own Ireland, a place devoted to the belief in miracles and the obsessive power of love.

I Capture The Castle (http://www.amazon.com/I-Capture-Castle-Dodie-Smith/dp/B000GQLCVY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201023352&sr=1-1) by Dodie Smith

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k284/rosebud03_2006/Misc/icapture.jpg

This one is sort of a love story, sort of a coming of age story. It's really brilliant and a page turner. I think it'd make for good discussion. From Amazon.com:


Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain wants to become a writer. Trouble is, she's the daughter of a once-famous author with a severe case of writer's block. Her family--beautiful sister Rose, brooding father James, ethereal stepmother Topaz--is barely scraping by in a crumbling English castle they leased when times were good. Now there's very little furniture, hardly any food, and just a few pages of notebook paper left to write on. <snip> But romantic isolation comes to an end both for the family and for Cassandra's heart when the wealthy, adventurous Cotton family takes over the nearby estate. Cassandra is a witty, pensive, observant heroine, just the right voice for chronicling the perilous cusp of adulthood. Some people have compared I Capture the Castle to the novels of Jane Austen, and it's just as well-plotted and witty. But the Mortmains are more bohemian--as much like the Addams Family as like any of Austen's characters. Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmations, wrote this novel in 1948. And though the story is set in the 1930s, it still feels fresh, and well deserves its reputation as a modern classic.

[diam124]

While I don't think it's a really intellectual book (and thus maybe not good for a lot of book club talk), I think The Notebook is a really sweet love story.

[HeatherFL]

You could go the classic route and read something along the lines of Gone With the Wind or maybe something like Tom Jones; a Foundling, but it is very long.

I think Little Women is a love story too; love of sisters, love of their family, and the romantic loves they each find for themselves.

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights comes to mind, and I know some people don't see it as a "romantic", but I think The Fountainhead is a great love story too (true love for your passion and human love.)

[Dizzy]

I thought The Time Traveler's Wife by Niffenegger was one of the best love stories I've ever read, but you've probably already read it.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss was incredible.
I also enjoyed The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler, although I remember it made me cry...
OH, and The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer was one of the must *unique* love stories I've ever read. Let us know what you guys end up picking!

[Rosebud]

PrincessCrappy- What did your book club end up reading for that month?

Looking for some good romantic reading for the summer months. Any more ideas?