HAHAHAHAHAHA Good oneOriginally Posted by Pensive
I would actually prefer Jane Austen for a romantic book. R&J is too deep! Whereas P&P and Emma are romance with something else in it!
HAHAHAHAHAHA Good one
I would actually prefer Jane Austen for a romantic book. R&J is too deep! Whereas P&P and Emma are romance with something else in it!
I'd Rather Be Hated For Who I Am Than Be Loved For Who I Am Not
Kurt Cobain
Isn't it interesting that a lot (not all, but a lot) of the books chosen here end in tradegy? I dunno, that just striked me as a kinda trend as I was scanning through. Thoughts?
My favorite is Villette (Charlotte Bronte), followed by Persuasion (Jane Austen) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy).
"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
classic: Pride and Prejudice, Love Story, uh...so many more...mind is blank...
more recent ones: P.s. I love you by C. Ahern, High Tide by J. Deveraux and 'The Time Traveller's wife'-like music most of modern stuff is rubbish, but 'Time Traveller's wife...' is fantastic.
We can never know what to want, because living only one life we can neither compare it with our previous lives, nor perfect it in our lives to come'
Milan Kundera,The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Parce que c'est toi, parce que c'est moi
& pride and prejudice has happy ending, and High Tide and Time travellers and Ps. I love u have a sort of happy ending, uplifting?
We can never know what to want, because living only one life we can neither compare it with our previous lives, nor perfect it in our lives to come'
Milan Kundera,The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Parce que c'est toi, parce que c'est moi
Good love stories are quite difficult, that which really portray the feeling of love. I would argue Anna Karenina does not do it, because if Vronsky and Anna are the best representation of love out there, I'd be scared...
Anyway, good love stories I've read, though I haven't found one I thought really typified love in an essential way: Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, but I'm still not impressed with these as seminal love stories.
I love 'love stories' and havent the chance to read that many. But whenever i cry or feel jealous of a character, i know the book must be good. mind you, i like Georgette Hayers and loads of people think they are trash, but im a romantic. i love Gone with the wind, that has really stuck with me above all else i think!!!!
Last edited by wooo; 05-08-2006 at 01:53 PM.
sry but phantom of the opera takes the cake for me!
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
William Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet
I think The Gift of Magi by O. Henry is one of the sweetest love stories; short and sweet without too much drama or tear-jerking (ie no enemies, eternal obstacles for them to overcome, no deadly illnesses, no third parties). It just shows how much two people can love each other.
Last edited by Scheherazade; 05-09-2006 at 07:59 PM.
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
Wuthering Heights is the best love story ever written. -Toronto, Canada
Yes- The Phantom of the Opera is really SOMETHINg else! And I rather think I'd have made a different choice from the heroine's- but then one can't tell until one really experiences a particular situation, right?
sry but phantom of the opera takes the cake for me!
And I just had a thought- "Love Story" need not be interpreted as male female Romeo Juliet Love, Does It? In which case The Two Absolutely best "Love stories I have read would come from Children's Literature and Science Fiction.The First One actually belongs to both categories- Why Weeps the Brogan by Hugh Scott- Love of a mother for her Children during a Nuclear Holocaust. It will set me off howling if I even attempt to summarise the plot. Next one would be Adult Science Fiction- On The Beach by Nevil Shute. Again, read it! Oh, actually that would be no: 4 - My numbers Two and Thre would be Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales "The Birthday of the Infanta" and "The Nightingale and the Rose. No:5 would be a tie between Dicken's "Tale of Two Cities" and Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby".
I do confess to a weakness for happy endings however, so that despite all theorising, my all time favourite favourites would be Austen's Pride and Prejudice!
I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
There's a pair of us, don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
Nicholas Sparks - A Walk to Remember
I'm the patron saint of the denial,
With an angel face and a taste for suicidal.
I found the movie (which I watched earlier than the book) as well as the novel amazing! It was sweet as well as sour.Nicholas Sparks - A Walk to Remember
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew.
To answer such a question it needs to be clearly defined on what criterion such a story has to be judged'
For example, is it the actual 'story' based on the 'facts' we are given - either on fictional romance, or one based on real life - as much as is known?
Or is it on the literary ability of the writer in the telling?
By this I mean, the actual account could illustrate a true, definitive, display of an all consuming love between two people, but in the telling, it could lose much of its ardour, or not even be seen as 'love' by most.
Some people may require that both characters must have wholesome appeal - sort of 'prince and princess' aura - if only metaphoric.
Yet, women have been known to show great attraction, and passion, for a partner whom history tends to define as of an evil persona. In the extreme, for example, by the couple who chose to die together in a war-torn bunker at the end of WW2 in Europe, when, at least, the female could have easily continued to live had she chosen to do so. That is a truly 'undying' love, paradoxically displayed by both choosing to pay the 'ultimate price', together.
Of course, no writer so far has taken this up to present as a great 'love story', and I guess, for obvious reasons, never will.
Not going to such extreme, there is the ' love story' based on two characters where one of the characters, while not 'evil', is engaged in some questionable pursuit, or means of providing a living. For example, one that comes to mind is a favourite of mine, 'The World of Suzie Wong', written by author, Richard Mason, born not far from where I first saw light of day.
Suzie is a Hong Kong prostitute, forced to take up the profession through circumstance, but her mind is never where her body lies (no pun intended).
She creates for herself an illusionary world. A love developes with an Englishman of 'good background' who has left his well paid job in Malaya to take up as an artist in the Hong Kong of the 1950's. I don't want to recount a complete synopsis, but, as you should be able to imagine from the background, and the era, the true love that blooms is at the expense of much inner, and outer, struggle to overcome many prejudices, including racial, both from self and from others.
It was slightly changed in the movie version, but though the story, both in the novel, and the movie, plays out in a world of vice, it is never an issue, and is without any seamy, or 'steamy,' emphasis.
Perhaps that is why it never reached the higher rating, I felt it deserved - the public's expectations based on such a theme, no doubt, were never met. Also, perhaps at that time, the Chinese were not seen by Western eyes as people of much consequence - certainly in the romantic stakes. The story was also on stage before the movie, though I never was privileged to see it.
I bring this attention merely to highlight the considerations that must be addressed in order to make a judgmental answer. Questions need to be fine tuned
in order to elecit meaningful, as in relative, responses.
We should also question just how much influence is exerted upon us by opinions of others such as critics, media comment, and teachers, on books which have become generally accepted as of classic status, or a works of literary merit with which we can quote, or admit to, without fear of adverse reflections, and comment, by others, on our literary tastes.
Just as I have occasionally seen greater dispalys of artistic talent in many advertisements than hanging on the wall in some aclaimed gallery, I am sure there is the odd great love story buried in the prolific turn out by Mills and Boone - though I have never read these books myself. I am not into love stories per se.
In 'The World of Suzie Wong' it was mostly the period, and the part of the world in which it is set, which attracted me, I drank in the atmosphere. The, relationship, and romance, and how it is portrayed by the author, grew with me as casually as it grew with the characters, while I wandered with them through the streets, and venues, of Hong Kong.
When I later visited that corner of the world, I spent many an hour finding the places in the book, seeing what they, and the author, saw, reliving again all the pleasure the book had given, and continues to give me if I only re-read the odd chapter. What better accolade can I give a writer, and his work.
Later, when teaching English in Taiwan to university level students, I used it as a reader, I was surprised that not one had ever heard of the book before, or the movie.
They amused me, however, by picking up a catch phrase of Suzie's, embedded in the first chapter, she used when being questioned on something she didn't wish to, or couldn't, answer: 'No talk!'
Last edited by Midas; 07-14-2007 at 08:26 AM.
The Time Traveller's Wife definitely gets my vote, has me in tears every time, it's so lovely.
Other than that, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres, A Room with a View by E M Forster, Love in the Time of Cholera or Of Love and other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. All great love stories.
Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre are my favourites.
Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes.
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
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