Book Recommendations for a Day of Romance
Dracula, Bram Stroker
It’s not Halloween anymore? Are you sure? Okay but- well, still, Dracula was the OG seducer of innocents, the defiler of wholesome beauties. The dark looming presence in the night, elegant and classy, horrid yet alluring. Seriously, go read this again- Dracula gets downright saucy. —Elliot Alpern
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Is it romance? Is it sci-fi? Is it fantasy? Is it absolutely fuckin excellent? Yes, yes, and yes. I randomly picked up Eat Pray Love at a used bookstore one afternoon as a teenager, and the stranger beside me looked left, right, and covertly hissed: no. The book I ended up with was The Time Traveller's Wife, and I have returned to it again and again over the years. Every reread brings fresh interpretations and different points of empathy to interface with, each trip down the literal memory lane is an opportunity to luxuriate in lush prose. Unapologectically romantic, hopeful, luminous, and beautiful, today, when I think of that stranger whose features I cannot remember, I cannot help but wonder if she were a future me, sent back in time as a guide. —Jemimah Wei
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
St. Victor Hugo never wondered, as Major Briggs did, whether or not love was enough. When Hugo’s political critique falters it falters because he has an implicit and unexamined faith in the power of love—familial, romantic, platonic—to redeem the society he had found himself, at the time of writing, exiled from. Hugo’s characters thrive when they find people to love, and people and ideas to give themselves to; they inhabit a hugely optimistic universe that’s closer to Middle Earth than the world we live in, despite the book’s correspondence to real places and events. —Nathaniel Berry
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart
Legend has it that back in the day, by which I mean 1945, Elizabeth Smart was browsing through a London bookstore and stumbled upon a book of poetry. Smart then did what no woman should ever do: she fell in love with the poet. Thus begins a torrid love affair with a married man and 240ish pages of prose poetry with terrific lines like “I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold onto.”—Gauraa Shekhar
Catherine House, Elisabeth Thomas
It's new, it's sexy, it's weird. It will make you wonder if your boo likes you for you or if he just wants you to become part of his science experiment. —M.M. Kaufman
Heartburn, Nora Ephron
Carl Bernstein cheated on Nora Ephron while she was pregnant with their second son. She turned it into one of the funniest, barely-fiction books I've read, full of devastating heartbreak and delicious recipes. –Rachel A.G. Gilman
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston reminds us that it’s never too late to fall in love—just be ready to blow your boyfriend away with a rifle if he gets rabies, and threatens to kill you. Love can bring excitement and adventure, but Janie learns that self-love can come at a cost: her beloved’s life, and the respect of her small-town neighbors. Love yourself this Valentine’s, and empty your lover’s revolver, just in case. —Nathaniel Berry
Porn Carnival, Rachel Rabbit White
Former "hooker laureate of the dirtbag left" turned pious bride of Nico Walker (the author Cherry, now a film starring Tom Holland) released her first poetry collection last year with a celebratory party/orgy covered in New York Magazine. The recently released Paradise Edition of the book has a corresponding perfume plus unreleased poems where RRW explores her new, literary love. I am living vicariously through her. –Rachel A.G. Gilman
