Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love

Our Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love Collection features titles centered on love and all of its complexities. This Collection represents authors who have grappled with romantic, familial, and other forms of love through writing. With titles ranging from contemporary romance picks to works by Shakespeare, this Collection has something to offer any reader who has ever lost or found love.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

by Raymond Carver

Publication year 1981

Genre Short Story, Fiction

Themes Love, Marriage

Tags Relationships, American Literature, Love & Sexuality, US History, Modern Classic Fiction, World History, Romance, Classic Fiction

American author Raymond Carver is best known for his short stories and his simple, precise writing style. He was a nominee for the National Book Awards as well as a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. In 1988, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Carver is one of the chief figures in the “Dirty Realism” movement of American writing, which became popular in the 1980s and provided vignettes of the dark side... Read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Summary

When Dimple Met Rishi

by Sandhya Menon

Publication year 2017

Genre Novel, Fiction

Themes Coming of Age, Love, Immigration, Family

Tags Romance, Relationships, Arts & Culture, Realistic Fiction, Modern Classic Fiction

When Dimple Met Rishi (2017), a young adult romantic novel by Indian-American author Sandhya Menon, is focused on the blossoming love story between two Indian-American teenagers during a tech summer camp. It was widely praised for its realistic and original depiction of the ways in which second-generation teenagers react to their mixed cultures.Dimple Shah is a strong-willed eighteen-year-old girl with plans to go to Stanford. She wants to go to university to build a career... Read When Dimple Met Rishi Summary

When Life Gives You Lululemons

by Lauren Weisberger

Publication year 2018

Genre Novel, Fiction

Themes Friendship, Loneliness, Nostalgia, Femininity, Midlife, Love

Tags Humor, Realistic Fiction

When Life Gives You Lululemons is a novel by American author Lauren Weisberger. Originally published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster, the novel is the third installment in Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada universe. The title is preceded by the bestselling 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada and its 2013 sequel, Revenge Wears Prada. In this third novel, Weisberger continues Emily Charlton’s story, years after leaving her life and career at the fashion magazine Runway... Read When Life Gives You Lululemons Summary

When We Collided

by Emery Lord

Publication year 2016

Genre Novel, Fiction

Themes Love, Family

Tags Romance, Mental Illness, Realistic Fiction, Modern Classic Fiction

When We Collided is a young adult novel written by Emery Lord and published in 2016. The novel explores themes of mental illness, grief, and familial bonds. Lord presents the story to her readers through alternating chapters between two characters: Vivi and Jonah. They are the main protagonists of the novel who find themselves in a summer romance that changes them forever. Through their bond, both Jonah and Vivi learn more about themselves, their families... Read When We Collided Summary

Where Angels Fear to Tread

by E. M. Forster

Publication year 1905

Genre Novel, Fiction

Themes Social Class, Justice, Love

Tags British Literature, Historical Fiction, Romance, Classic Fiction

E. M. Forster’s debut novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), is a tragicomedy that explores the collision of two vastly different cultures. The story follows the Herritons, a respectable upper-middle-class English family whose carefully ordered world is thrown into chaos when their widowed sister-in-law, Lilia, impulsively marries a handsome and much younger Italian man from a provincial town. Philip Herriton, Lilia’s former brother-in-law, is dispatched from the repressive suburb of Sawston to the passionate... Read Where Angels Fear to Tread Summary