Skip to main content

Top Ten Books You Shouldn't Read for Valentine's Day

Today's Top Ten Tuesday is a Valentine's Day freebie, so I thought I'd have a little fun and share with you some of the most unromantic stories I've ever read. Definitely DO NOT RECOMMEND if you're trying to impress your valentine. Some of them should be obvious--and some of them should be obvious. And I have a little more to say on the last one, which is one of my favorite books of all time, and in some ways one of the most romantic books of all time, but also the key to explaining why some books are not as romantic as some may think. Keep reading if you're curious:


Top Ten Books You Shouldn't Read for Valentine's Day
  1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  2. Pamela by Samuel Richardson
  3. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier 
  4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  5. 1984 by George Orwell
  6. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
  7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  8. The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Carey
  9. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  10. Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Austen on Why Romance Can't Be Trusted

Towards the end of Persuasion, Anne Eliot engages in conversation with her friend, about a mutual friend who plans to remarry a few years after the death of his fiancee. Anne declares that women love more and longer than men, but her male companion cannot agree, claiming that books and history are against her. That's easy, Anne replies, history was written by men and cannot be trusted. 

We have the trope of the femme fatale, the perilous woman for whose love the world falls, our Helen of Troys, our Guineveres, women who are faithless to their husbands and hardly more so to their lovers. We have Dante's Beatrice and Petrarch's Laura. Courtly love, where the men can never attain their goal. It's not hot. Not in my opinion, and not in Austen's. Men enjoy professing love, she demonstrates, but in the actual absence of their lovers, they move on. It's what they do. Go outside. Go to sea. Join the navy, like Anne's former lover, Captain Wentworth. 

It's the 21st century, and many of the books I listed above are written by women, all from earlier centuries. They write about women who were murdered or raped by their husbands and lovers, or who took matters into their own hands, and killed their lovers or themselves first. Jane Eyre isn't murdered or raped by her husband, but her husband's first wife is grossly mistreated if not murdered by him, and if Jane's isn't widely considered a tale of manipulation and grooming, it should be. 

What Austen gets at is just because one of the characters thinks you're in a romance, that doesn't make it so. We can't trust Persuasion as a romance because that trust has been broken before. Anne was persuaded to break it off with Wentworth in the past. Captain Benwick broke his undying love for Fanny Harville and married Louisa Musgrove. This is a romance written by a woman and it shows that men break their promises too. So, who can we trust? Not the slippery pedophile Humbert Humbert, not cowardly Winston, and certainly not murderous Rachel or duplicitous Mariam. Innocent angelic Tess, perhaps, but even she will murder where bereaved. Romance isn't just full of liars, it's full of murderers, rapists, and victims. At least in these worlds. At least in these stories. It may all depend on how you tell it, and who's telling the story, but these aren't the ones you should reach for if you're looking to celebrate. 


Comments

Judy Krueger said…
I "love" your take on this meme this Tuesday!
curlygeek04 said…
This is a great topic - I agree there is little that is romantic about Jane Eyre, and Lolita certainly tops this list. I haven't read all of these but I loved Tess. Hardy certainly shows the uglier side of love.

Popular posts from this blog

Books with Single-Word Titles

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! Books with Single-Word Titles These are all my favorite books that I could think of with one-word titles. A lot of fantasy, a few nonfiction (minus subtitles) and Kindred , whether you consider it scifi or historical fiction. Also two portmanteaus using the word "bitter." I suppose it's a word that lends itself to amelioration. 1. Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler 2. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore 3. Fire by Kristin Cashore 4. Heartless by Marissa Meyer 5. Inheritance by Christopher Paolini 6. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 7. Stoned by Aja Raden (has a subtitle) 8. Educated by Tara Westover 9. Fledgling by Octavia Butler 10. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

Speaking of cultures and society, I leave for Spain on January 9. Instead of continuing as a book blog with a specific goal for number of books to read in a year, Space Station Mir will become a chronicle for my adventures in Spain. Expect a post for each new place that I visit, with pictures! I also plan to continue reviewing books, however I will not make a set goal for number of books to read this year. I do pledge myself to read at least one book in Spanish that was not assigned for a class. In terms of my goals for 2009, I was not diligent enough in keeping track of them. Looking back, I've fulfilled some of them and not others. The greatest trend in my reading this year, which marks a huge deviation for me, is that I've read more non-fiction than I think I've read any other year in my life. I've finally developed the ability to sustain interest in non-fiction other than biographies. For a while, biographies were the only non-fiction I ever read, with the exception

Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish

 I feel like I've been DNFing a fair amount lately, mostly with review books. I feel obligated to read review books longer than I would if they were books I just picked up on my own. That said, I have a caveat in my Book Review Policy  that if I feel I am not the right audience for the book, I won't post a review. I try to avoid that by only picking books I genuinely think I will enjoy, but of course I can't always predict that before I read. Also, while book clubs have been a great way to get exposed to books I wouldn't normally read, tastes will differ and every once in a while, I find a book I'm just not willing to finish. I also want to say no shade to the authors or anyone who enjoyed these books--they just weren't for me. Happy Top Ten Tuesday! Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish 1. Caribbean Competitors by Poppy Minnix--LibraryThing review--This one sounded great and has a beautiful cover, but while the island setting was compelling, I just couldn't ge