I enjoy sitting down to read a good love story. A good romantic narrative has the ability to play with one’s emotions and the moment when the lovers either head towards happily ever after or say goodbye forever can spark a release of pent up feelings about totally unrelated things.
Before I go on, I had better define the difference between romances and love stories:
A romance is a work of fiction or occasionally a biography where the story focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and ends well, i.e. with the lovers united and every indication that they will live happily ever after.
A love story is a romance that is included in a work of fiction or non-fiction (biography, history) that does not focus exclusively on the romance, is perhaps more or just as much about something else. This can for example be a family or historical epic, a coming-of-age story, a real or fictional biography, a story about social behaviour and customs, or just about any other kind of story. These love stories sometimes end in separation or tragedy for the lovers.
Some love stories and romances I have enjoyed:
Just about anything by Georgette Heyer. Her historical novels are rarely just romances, but rather social comedies after the Jane Austen model that just happen to include a love story (and usually a bit of comedy that sometimes turns into slapstick). I especially like The Quiet Gentleman, The Nonesuch and The Unknown Ajax.
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. A great novel of manners that includes not one, but two love stories. Is there a romance novelist in the English-speaking world who hasn’t been influenced by this book? Has been made into several movies, including a modern Hindi version (Bride & Prejudice), and an excellent TV miniseries with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.
Persuasion - Jane Austen. Great story about second chances and mature love vs. young love. My favourite Austen novel. Also a good movie with Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds.
Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare. A play that begins as a romantic comedy and ends as the ultimate tragic love story. There are several movie versions, most lately a modern version with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
Twelfth Night: Or What You Will - William Shakespeare at his most light-hearted. A play. Features several different types of love: imaginary love, obsessive love, self-love, love at first sight, and also the platonic love of a man for his friend. Has no less than three romances, and some very funny comic scenes. There is an excellent movie with Imogen Stubbs, Toby Stephens and Helena Bonham-Carter as the romantic leads, and a supporting cast that includes Imelda Staunton, Ben Kingsley, Nigel Hawthorne and Richard E. Grant.
A Precious Jewel - Mary Balogh. Unusual Regency romance. The standard Regency romance usually gets no more erotic than describing a few kisses, and if there is sex, it is implied rather than stated or described. This one not only breaks the “no sex” rule, it gets away with it. The heroine is a prostitute who becomes the mistress of the hero, one of her regular clients, and falls in love with him. The wrenching scenes of her professional performances make the scenes where they finally make love all the more emotional and satisfying. It is admirable how Balogh manages to make the sex and love scenes real without them becoming pornographic. A two hanky cry.
Tim - Colleen McCulloch. A tender love story about a middle-aged woman who falls in love with and marries a young, intellectually disabled man. Have a hanky handy, as it does get weepy at times. Check out the movie with Piper Laurie and a young and gorgeous Mel Gibson.
This list is by no means complete. I have already reviewed a number of other enjoyable romances/love stories, and others I will review later on.
This is a novel about age, ageing, relationships and the ever present Death. The title, Memento Mori, means “a reminder of mortality” and refers to mysterious phone calls that the elderly people in the story keep getting, from someone who sounds different to each of them, but who always tells them the same thing: “Remember you must die”. The calls affect them in different ways – some ignore them, others accept the message, and at least one is driven to minor madness by it. The characters are all interconnected: friends, servants and former servants, their children and caregivers. Their relationships are complicated, full of memories of past illicit love affairs, and the present is fading health, dottiness, blackmail, and an ageing gerontologist who uses his friends as research material. As the calls escalate, so Spark burrows deeper into the lives and minds of her elderly protagonists, revealing their hopes and fears, and gently (and sometimes not so gently) satirising them. The humour is inky black, and some of her portraits of people, especially one of them (read the book to find out who), are very funny.
The story starts slowly, and for the first chapters it’s hard to see where it’s going (actually, you do know where it’s going all along, but you keep wondering who the mystery caller is and if he will do something more than just make spooky calls).
I liked Memento Mori better than the previous Spark novel I read, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It’s a more focused story and the characters are more distinct (I kept getting the girls in the other book mixed up – no danger of that with the characters in this book). Another reviewer complained that there are too many characters – I don’t agree. If the characters are well drawn and distinct like those in this story, it doesn’t matter how many of them there are.
Rating: A darkly humorous story about the ironies of life, death and old age. 4+ stars.
The Cereal Murders (series mystery) by Diane Mott Davidson
This is the third in a series of mysteries that combine cooking and crime, as amateur sleuth and professional caterer Goldy Bear serves up one delicious dish after another while sleuthing on the side. In this installation, Goldy has been hired to cater a series of events at an expensive prep school. The peace is disrupted by two murders (a third appears to be connected), and someone starts harassing her and her son. Through it all Goldy serves up one delectable dish after another (recipes included) and observes the graduating students and their parents battling it out over who deserves to go to which exclusive university. It’s a matter of touch and go whether Goldy will manage to solve the mystery in time to prevent a fourth murder.
As in most amateur sleuthing series, the murders and the murderer’s methods are highly unlikely – especially how it is Goldy who finds two out of three bodies - but the characters are rounded and the surroundings realistic for the most part. The descriptions of the cold and snowy weather, for example, are positively chilling. There is a touch of realism in this book that I have not seen in many others of its kind, in that Goldy actually feels wretched after finding the bodies, has difficulty sleeping and is offered therapy by the police at the end of the story. Her relationships with her son, her lodger/assistant and her lover, are realistic – things are not always sunny, but neither are they always bad. The title, in my opinion, stinks. It’s a good example of a bad title: cutesy, punny (to say nothing of cheesy) and not much connected with the story. If the rather clumsy homophonic pun is ignored, it doesn’t even make sense. Which cereals were murdered? Was cereal involved in the murders somehow? (it was not). Someone, I hope not the author, deserves to be flogged with a wet noodle for inventing such a lame title. Some of the other titles in the series are just as offensive, while others actually manage to be quite clever. (Not that I’m letting the bad titles stop me from reading more).
Rating: A nice, slow murder mystery to cool you down on a hot summer’s day. Don’t let the cheesy title deter you from reading it. 3+ stars.
Read this funny romance over the weekend. When journalist Jane Alcott is asked to cover the ice hockey beat while the regular reporter is on sick leave, she jumps at the chance. Not only is it a better paying job than writing her monthly “sex and the city” type column, but it is a step up the journalism ladder for her. She is expected to cover all the Seattle Chinooks’ games, and it quickly becomes clear that her presence on the team plane and in the locker-room is not wanted. She meets with hazing that might discourage a less determined woman, and open hostility from sexy goalie Luc “Lucky” Martineau, whom Jane secretly fancies. After an incident where she is first fired for bringing the team bad luck, and then rehired for bringing them good luck (by barging into the locker room and giving them a goodbye speech) a ritual develops between Jane and the team that gets funnier and funnier as the story progresses. The incident also serves to show Luc that she is a real person with feelings and a strong character, and he becomes attracted to her in spite of her being nothing like his usual bimboesque "girlfriends". But love’s journey doesn’t run entirely smooth, and Jane’s moonlighting job as a porn writer for a men’s magazine just might put a boulder in their path…
With plenty of funny verbal sparring, interesting details about ice hockey, and believable characters, this is a good book to spend an afternoon with. 3+ stars.
Here’s a more detailed review from All About Romance (with slight SPOILERS): See Jane Score
There is a fine line between bibliophilia and bibliolatry. Bibliophiles love books, reading them, holding them, owning them. Bibliolaters don’t just love books, they worship them. I would venture to say that the former group consists mostly of devoted readers. The second group may be divided into two groups (feel free to correct me): book-collectors, some of who don’t even read their books because it could damage them and lower their value, and people who read books and devote their lives to doing what the books says they should do, such as the people who are overly devoted to the teachings of Dale Carnegie or who follow the Bible to the letter. Some people of course are both bibliophiles AND bibliolaters, which can lead to all sorts of problems.
Take me for example. I am a confirmed bibliophile, but I also have a strong respect for books that borders on bibliolatry. If you find a badly treated book in my library, chances are I rescued it from somewhere, or lent it to someone who does not respect books the way I do (such people only get to borrow a book from me once). Books that I own from new stay looking new as long as possible, which is incredibly difficult to do with paperbacks. I recently made the difficult decision to cancel my rule of not breaking the spines of paperbacks, because I like to hold a book in one hand while I read, and it’s a strain on the fingers to hold open an unbroken book. It was wrenching, and I still try to break the spine in as few places as possible. Not only does spine-breaking give the book a wrinkled look, but it means that pages are likelier to fall out when the book gets old and the gluing turns brittle.
My hardcovers stay in their dust jackets, even if the jackets are ugly and the book looks better without them. This is not just because having a jacket increases the value of a book for reselling, but also because it prevents fading and rubbing of the cover.
None of my books is kept where direct sunlight can fall on them. I haven’t gone as far as blocking the window in my library room - I have no very expensive books to protect and only a few that are likely to attain value with age, but I do keep my old books and first editions in the dark, on deep shelves behind other books. Neither do I keep them near a heat source – I have seen how heat can warp bindings and I know it hastens the brittling of glue and yellowing of pages. I also make sure there is no dampness in the room, because I hate to see mould and smell mustiness on books.
I find it incredibly hard to throw away books, even if they are falling to pieces or have pages missing. I have a box of sad books that have fallen out of their bindings, and/or have pages missing and they make me shudder every time I look at them, but I can’t bring myself to throw them away. If I can bring myself to do it, I may turn them into altered books. Just look at what can be done to turn books into art: altered books. Before I discovered altered books, just the thought of taking scissors, paint or crayons to a book or gluing pictures in one was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat…except in the case of my journals, which at the end of a travelling holiday are usually twice as thick as they were at the beginning. I am beginning to think that I can reconcile my bibliophilia with turning my damaged books into artwork. It would be better than recycling them – it’s a scary thought that a once favourite book could end up as toilet paper, or worse, a tabloid.
Of course, my inability to throw away books means that my library is somewhat bigger than it should be and growing at an alarming rate, even though I have started giving books to libraries and charities to get rid of ones I don’t want anymore.
I’ve already listed my favourite non-fiction foodie books. Now it’s time for fiction.
Not only do I enjoy reading food history and other food-related non-fiction, I also love novels that have great descriptions of food and meals in them. In some cases, it’s the only thing I like about the books, in others it’s an added bonus to an already good book.
Here are some fiction books with food and eating scenes I have enjoyed:
Chocolat - Joanne Harris. A sensuous book about a woman who runs a chocolate shop and who is able to find the perfect type of chocolate for each of her customers. The movie is even more chocolate-centric, and has the added attraction of delectable Johnny Depp.
Babette’s Feast - Karen Blixen. Wonderful story about a French chef who cooks the meal of a lifetime for a group of strictly puritanical small town Danes, with amusing results. Another novel that has been made into a great movie.
Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel. A so-so love story with great scenes of food preparation, wonderful food, feasting and recipes. For story, I liked the movie better than the book, but the food scenes are better in the book.
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens. Mmmmmmm! Those mouth-watering descriptions of the shops on Christmas morning and all the food they are selling, and the Cratchits’ Christmas meal are enough to make anyone hungry. Has been filmed many times, but the food scenes have not translated well onto the screen in those versions I have seen.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - Fannie Flagg. I would love to be able to sit down in the Whistle Stop Café and order a plate of fried green tomatoes. Would avoid the barbecued pork, however. Good movie, great book.
Faking It - Jennifer Crusie. The discussion about men as doughnuts or muffins had me salivating, and I put down the book, marched to the kitchen and baked up a batch of blueberry muffins to eat while I read the rest of the book. Crusie fans will know which scene I’m referring to.
The Little House books – Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wonderful descriptions of frontier food.
The Famous Five and Five Find-Outers books by Enid Blyton. Those kids were always eating and having picnics. At the drop of a hat the motherly girl would produce, as if by magic, a basket of mouth-watering goodies that would be devoured with gusto by the kids and that would in all likelihood send the reader straight to the kitchen to raid the refrigerator.
The Asterix comic books. Several of the books include sumptuous feasts as part of the story, and they always end in a boisterous alfresco group dinner under the stars that I always wanted to participate in.
Piers Anthony’s Xanth books. Who wouldn’t want to have a pie tree in their backyard?
Currently reading:The Cereal Murders by Diane Mott Davidson, a mystery that I haven't yet decided whether I like or not, but which has great descriptions of food and some mouthwatering recipes.
Readers: If you have a favourite food scene in a novel, please post the title of the book in Comments. I'm always looking for good reads.
I have just finished updating my internal links, so all the book reviews and literary musings I have written so far can now be found as links on the right sidebar.
This book had been sitting in my TBR pile for nearly a year, so it was about time I read it.
In short, the book tells of the escapades of the narrator’s aunt Mame, his legal guardian. Mame is offbeat, outrageously fashionable, adventurous, and a sucker for a sad story. She is the kind of woman who throws herself wholeheartedly into all she does, including her relationships with men. She becomes a southern belle for the millionaire from Georgia whom she marries, Irish for the Irishman whom she falls for, and so on. She seems unable to recognise when she is being played for a sucker until the facts stare her right in the face, but when realisation dawns, she is quick to act and can extricate herself from all sorts of situations. She also has a knack for getting her nephew involved in her adventures.
The book is told like a biography in the form of snapshots, seen from the point of view of the nephew, who draws a portrait of a woman who is totally unprepared for the responsibility of rearing a young boy, but who rallies magnificently and manages to retain her free and easy lifestyle while still being a loving, if a trifle eccentric, parent to her orphaned nephew.
This is a funny book. It’s charming and was probably a bit risqué when it was first published, with its allusions to sex, single motherhood, its unconventional heroine and her hedonistic lifestyle. It’s easy to see why it was made into a movie, because it has a very charming heroine, who, in spite of her unconventionality, has a heart of gold, an opportunity for dozens of costume changes, and is allowed to be sexy without being bad – a perfect role for the right actress (I haven’t seen the movie, but I plan to). The comedy is by turns satire and slapstick, and through it all, Mame never loses her dignity (except for a brief dunking in a river, but even that turns into a victory).
The book is well written, and the author has a good eye for comedy, although he does go a bit over the top in the chapter with the British war orphans, but then he did need a good climax to top everything that happened earlier in the book.
Funny and irreverent, satiric and slapsticky, this books gets 4 stars from me, and a permanent home in my library.
The Corinthian (historical romance) - Georgette Heyer
This is a delightful Regency romance from the mother of the genre, Georgette Heyer. It should perhaps rather be classified as a historical novel with a romantic twist, because, like in all the Heyer novels I have read so far, the romantic element doesn’t come in until about 3/4 of the way into the story and takes second place to adventure. All the way through it is a delightful romp with a plot that would not feel out of place in a Shakespearian comedy.
Sir Richard Wyndham, dandy and sportsman supreme, is about to give in to family pressure and marry a young woman who only wants him because he’s rich and can get her family out of financial trouble. As he walks from his club one night, slightly the worse for drink, he sees a young woman, dressed as a boy, struggling to climb out a window. She turns out to be the Honourable Miss Penelope Creed, an heiress who is attempting to escape the house of her aunt, who is trying to force Penelope into marriage with her odious son. Richard decides to help her escape, and accompanies her to the country where she has another aunt whose son she intends to marry. To avoid detection, they travel by stagecoach, Penelope still dressed as a boy, and pretending Richard is her tutor. What awaits them is adventure in the form of stolen diamonds, low characters, murder, and a pair of lovers in desperate need of help.
A great combination of adventure, romance and historical detail. 4 stars.
This is the first of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, written during the Golden Era of crime fiction, an era that produced many authors who are still in print and considered to be classics. They include Sayers, Agatha Christie, S.S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr, to name a few of the biggest.
The story tells of how Lord Peter Wimsey gets involved in two criminal cases. The first is the mysterious appearance of a naked corpse in the bathtub of a respectable architect, and the second the disappearance of a rich businessman who had a strong resemblance to the dead man. Aided by his valet, Bunter, and his detective friend, Parker, Wimsey uncovers a clever and diabolical revenge scheme and a very ingenious method of corpse disposal, with a few red herrings thrown in to confuse both Wimsey and the reader.
Wimsey has, when the story begins, solved at least one case of theft, and other criminal investigations of his are alluded to, and characters are spoken of as if the reader were expected to know them. Either it is a trick of Sayers’ to make the reader feel at home with the characters right away and make away with long “get to know them” passages, or the novel is the continuation of short stories about Wimsey. Either way, it does not feel like the first thing she ever wrote about him, and the aura of familiarity makes one feel as if the book has been plucked from the middle of a series, but without the reader having really missed anything.
I liked this book much better than the previous Wimsey mystery I read, Five Red Herrings. That particular story was much too involved and mathematical for my taste, but this one is quite different, and I’m glad I didn’t let my dislike of the other book prevent me from reading this one. 4 stars.
Well, I'm back. Finding an Internet connection will not be a problem during my holiday, so I will continue posting as usual.
Some time ago, I wrote about smelly books. I had just acquired a second-hand copy of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley that I was planning to make my book of the week, but when I opened it, I just gasped and closed it again. The previous owner had obviously been a smoker, and had probably kept the book – for years - in a room where he smoked. The book reeked like an ashtray full of stale cigarette butts, and the only way I could possibly have read it was with a gas mask on, or by arranging it on a book-stand and reading it from a distance through a telescope.
Neither option being viable, I decided to try de-odorizing the book with a method I came across while browsing the Web. It involved standing the book, fanned open, in a closed paper bag with a small bowl of baking soda for a couple of weeks. As an added measure, I put the book out on the balcony where it would have a circulation of fresh air.
After two weeks the book smelled just the same. The stink seemed to be disappearing after four weeks, and after six I could hardly smell it any more, so I took the slightly damp book inside and laid it on a table to let it dry out before reading it. Then I forgot about it for about a month, and when I opened it, the stink was back. It was slightly subdued after the treatment, but it was still there, and too strong to ignore. I decided it was time to bring out the heavy artillery for a kill-or-cure treatment.
I took the book, held it in my hand and fanned out the pages, while spraying a generous amount of Febreze into it. Then I stood it on end, open, with fanned pages, to let it dry. After a couple of days I took the book, stuck my nose between the pages and took a sniff. No cigarette smell. The chemical attack seemed to have worked. I put the book away for about three weeks, and then had another sniff. This time there was a slight cigarette smell, nothing like before, but still noticeable, so I repeated the application, and this time it took away the smell for good. The book still doesn’t smell right - the Febreze seems not only to have taken away the smell of cigarette smoke, but also the smell of paper and ink. There is now a slightly unpleasant, indefinable biological smell to the book, but you don’t notice it unless you stick your nose close to it and sniff, so it’s alright for reading.
I have now treated two other smoked books in the same way, and they just smell like regular books. I think maybe the first one had been not only kept where someone smoked, but also where it could absorb other odours, of cooking and possibly of pets, that I didn’t notice because of the cigarette smell, and which the Febreze couldn’t eliminate.
So here you have it: Febreze works just fine for getting cigarette smell out of books, and I’m told by a reliable source that it works wonders on musty smells as well. I would like to try and see if it works on perfume smells and cat piss – if it does, it will be truly miraculous and will save some unlucky cat owners a load of money.
Please read this before you go and doze every smelly book you have with Febreze: Personally, I would only use Febreze as a last-ditch treatment for smells that fresh air, baking soda and/or kitty litter do not work on, in books that are not valuable or collectible. I don’t know what the chemicals in it can do to paper and bindings in the long run, and I am not sacrificing any of my first editions to test it. I would rather have a valuable book treated professionally than risk ruining it with chemicals that haven’t been tested for long-term effects.
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About me
What this blog is about:
Reading and books.
If you’re wondering about the name 52 books, it stems from a book-a-week reading challenge I set myself. The challenge is over, but I'm still reading, and will continue to blog about the books I read and my reading experiences, and other stuff connected with books and reading.
I rate the books (if I feel like it), giving them stars ranging from zero to 5.
Books I have already read (sporadically updated):Cover gallery
Note: Some of the entries are linked to the months the reviews appeared in, because I made several entries for each book. I have marked those reviews with an asterix (*). If you want to read the whole review from beginning to end, you must scroll down and read from the bottom up (but you probably already knew that ;-) >
