Romance Week: Suggestions
Suggestion 1) Read a classic “Romance”, which includes William Shakespeare and some of the great Rennaisance plays. Don’t get upset with the language, seriously… pick one up. I prefer his Tragic Romances, but his Comedies have some great moments too. It’s good to know where the great sonnets come from. Gothic Romance is another great choice.
My list: Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Lady Susan, Love and Friendship. Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion (Jane Austin) Dracula (Stoker), Wuthering Heights (E Bronte), Shirley, The Professor, Jane Eyre (C Bronte), The Awakening (Kate Chopin), The Good Earth (Pearl S Buck, my mother loves this one), My Antonia (Willa Cather), The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald), Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, (Dickens) The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables (Victor Hugo), Daisy Miller (Henry James), The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux), Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott), East of Eden (Steinbeck), A Streetcar Named Desire (Tenesse Williams), Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell), North and South (John Jakes), The Time Traveller’s Wife (Niffeneger), The Scarlet Pimpernell (Orczy), Don Quixote de la Mancha (Cervantes). The Faerie Queen (Spenser), Middlemarch (George Eliot), Mrs. Dalloway (Virgina Woolf), Barriers Burned Away (E. P. Roe)
My favorites are italicized, I’ve not read some of the others. Not all of these have happy endings, and some have romantic ‘elements’ but it’s not the sole purpose of the book.
Suggestion 2) Pick a book off this list of “Top 100 Romance Novels” http://www.likesbooks.com/top100y2k.html
Suggestion 3) Buy Valentines Day cards, like when you were a kid, and bring them to work on Friday. Give them out to your co-workers. Remember, not everyone will /get/ something for Valentines, it is a holiday that isn’t as much fun as an adult as when you’re a little kid, for many people. Silly 5 dollars/box valentines cards may well brighten someone’s day. (Those lollypop ones are especially fun!) Or… get something with cartoon characters on it.
Suggestion 4) Send flowers to your loved one (even if you’re the woman… my grandpa has always complained how he never understands why men can’t get flowers… they’re pretty! who doesn’t like pretty). If you don’t have an S.O. send them to a friend, to your parents or to yourself. I used to buy myself flowers on occasion…until I discovered my cats like to eat them.
~Kristen
