Yes, the intimate and eclectric, intellectually challenging, emotionally limitless small independent bookstore is the new and favorite romantic getaway! We also provide a sort of single's club service -- compatible strangers easily meet when contemplating the same book. Conversation starts so naturally. And what is more pleasurable than browsing through books with a beloved friend or partner, opening the book, pointing out a passage, comparing favorites? Each to his or her own, I say, regarding electronic reading devices, but two people reading real books together is romantic. Two people gazing at their devices together, unable to lick the pages, is just sad.
I just read Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald -- romantic. Dune and Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert -- romantic for the old school geek. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami -- romantic for any sort of geek. A Farewell to Arms, Wuthering Heights, Portrait of a Lady -- romantically filled with deception and loss. My friend Keith's top ten romantic novels are: Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. The Lover by Marguerite Duras.
Calling for more romantic (literary) nominations -- especially in the contemporary and Native books category -- I am hoping that some of you will respond --
Free chocolates at Birchbark Books during Valentine's Day week, and a table of romantic books to share.
Hearts,
Louise
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of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Beautiful is such a certainty, but uncertainty is more beautiful. Because they didn't know each other earlier, they suppose that nothing was happening between them. What of the streets, stairways and corridors where they could have passed each other long ago?
I'd like to ask them whether they remember-- perhaps in a revolving door ever being face to face? an "excuse me" in a crowd or a voice "wrong number" in the receiver. But I know their answer: no, they don't remember. They'd be greatly astonished to learn that
for a long time chance had been playing with them. Not yet wholly ready to transform into fate for them it approached them, then backed off, stood in their way and, suppressing a giggle, jumped to the side. There were signs, signals: but what of it if they
were illegible. Perhaps three years ago, or last Tuesday did a certain leaflet fly from shoulder to shoulder? There was something lost and picked up. Who knows but what it was a ball in the bushes of childhood. There were doorknobs and bells on which earlier
touch piled on touch. Bags beside each other in the luggage room. Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night, suddenly erased after waking. Every beginning is but a continuation, and the book of events is never more than half open. -translated by Walter
Whipple