The countdown to Valentine's Day is on! Stuck on what to buy your Valentine? Our featured titles have the bookish answer. From January 25th through February 6th, readers had the chance to win one of five Bookreporter.com Valentine's Day baskets. With books that include heartwarming novels, philosophical commentary, musical analogies and some titles that are just plain fun, our Valentine's Day suggestions are sure to satisfy whatever you’re craving to give on this holiday.
Our featured Valentine’s Day titles are:
BEGINNER'S GREEK by James Collins; BODY SURFING by Anita Shreve; FOUR LETTER WORD: Invented Correspondence from the Edge of Modern Romance, edited by Rosalind Porter and Joshua Knelman; LOVE IS A MIX TAPE: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time, by Rob Sheffield; THE MATHEMATICS OF LOVE by Emma Darwin; OTHER PEOPLE'S LOVE LETTERS: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See, edited by Bill Shapiro; and SOCRATES IN LOVE: Philosophy for the Die-Hard Romantic, by Christopher Phillips.
* Click
here to see our winners and read who they would like to spend Valentine’s Day with. |
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BEGINNER'S
GREEK
by
James Collins
 Price:
$23.99
ISBN: 9780316021555
Sometimes
in love, lightning strikes.
Peter Russell is one of those deeply
romantic men who still believe in fate. He has always believed --- or maybe confidently
imagined --- that he would meet the love of his life like that, in an instant.
That he’d be sitting buckled into an airplane seat, rummaging around for
something in his carry-on, when he’d feel a light tap on his shoulder and
there she would be. So it’s only with the shock of recognition and assured
providence that he opens his eyes on a business trip from New York to Los Angeles
and sees her. Her name is Holly. She has strawberry blond hair and a gorgeous
swanlike neck, and she’s reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain
for pleasure. And, impressively, she’s pretty far into it. Like the very
best romantic movie, Peter and Holly fall madly in love --- or as madly as possible
on a five-and-a-half-hour flight. When they part, Holly gives him her phone number
on the title page of her book. Peter can’t believe his luck. But later in
his hotel room, when Peter reaches into his jacket pocket to remind himself of
the incredible hand he has been dealt, he finds to his absolute horror that the
page is inexplicably, impossibly, tragically… gone.
A thousand
complications ensue in this delicious novel of missed opportunities, second chances,
and lost love. Both incredibly incisive and wonderfully wry, Beginner’s
Greek is like a glorious meeting of Tom Wolfe and Laurie Colwin --- a brilliantly
understated comedy of manners complete with the evil boss, the desirable temptress,
miscommunications, misrepresentations, and letters gone astray. It’s a novel
that will make you believe, like Peter Russell himself, that true love really
does exist.
 
James
Collins was formerly an editor at Time and has contributed to The
New Yorker and other magazines. He grew up in New York City and now lives
in Virginia with his family. This is his first novel.
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BODY
SURFING
by
Anita Shreve
Price: $14.99
ISBN: 9780316067331
At
the age of twenty-nine, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed.
Trying to regain her footing, she has signed on to tutor the teenage daughter
of a well-to-do couple as they spend a sultry summer at their oceanfront New Hampshire
cottage.
But when the Edwardses’ two grown sons arrive at the
beach house, Sydney finds herself caught in a destructive web of old tensions
and bitter rivalries. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence
Sydney has rebuilt is threatened.
With the subtle wit, lyrical language,
and brilliant insight into the human heart that are the hallmarks of her acclaimed
fiction, Shreve weaves a novel about marriage, family, and the supreme courage
it takes to love.
Anita
Shreve is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed and bestselling novels,
including A WEDDING IN DECEMBER, THE PILOT’S WIFE, which was a selection
of Oprah’s Book Club; and THE WEIGHT OF WATER, which was a finalist for
England’s prestigious Orange Prize. She lives in Massachusetts.
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FOUR
LETTER WORD:
Invented Correspondence from the Edge of Modern
Romance
edited
by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 9781416569732
"Let
us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration,
in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen
me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to
be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile.
Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with
pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you."*
Is there
any communication more potent than the love letter? Is there any charge greater
than seeing those words on paper? The editors of this collection decided to ask
some of the most important writers of our time to compose a fictional love letter
--- breathing new life into a forgotten custom, and affording words themselves
the power of seduction that they richly deserve. The result is an iridescent picture
of what love looks like in the twenty-first century: a collage of methods and
moods. Each letter is radically different from the others, and all but one are
published for the first time. A perfect gift, this book is also an ingenious showcase
for many of our most beloved writers.
Love: a vague word for an emotion
so ethereal it's not always possible to demonstrate. But there still exists an
assumption that experiences --- and, by extension, the emotions that experiences
evoke --- are more resonant when you write them down. And it's that faith,
that belief that writing down these naked, shocking, inadvisable and probably
destructive feelings make them worthwhile, that powers this collection, each piece
of which is a testimony to the creative powers of our leading writers today, and
every piece of which will move you.
*From letter by Neil Gaiman
| CONTRIBUTORS: |
| Jonathan Lethem |
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
Adam
Thorpe |
| Lionel Shriver |
David Bezmozgis |
Chris
Bachelder |
| A.L. Kennedy |
Jeff Parker |
Francine
Prose |
| Graham Roumieu |
Gautam Malkani |
Miriam
Toews |
| James Robertson |
Etgar Keret |
Mandy Sayer |
| Jeanette Winterson |
Michel Faber |
Hisham Matar |
| Geoff Dyer |
Matthew Zapruder |
Carl-Johan Vallgren |
| Joseph Boyden |
Neil Gaiman |
Valerie Martin |
| Peter Behrens |
Ursula K. Le Guin |
Nick Laird |
| Sam Lipsyte |
Panos Karnezis |
Jan Morris |
| Hari
Kunzru |
Anonymous |
Margaret Atwood |
| Damon Galgut |
Audrey
Niffenegger |
Juli Zeh |
| Leonard Cohen |
Phil LaMarche |
M.
G. Vassanji |
| Tessa Brown |
Douglas Coupland |
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Joshua Knelman is an award-winning writer and editor and a frequent contributor
to The Globe and Mail newspaper. He is currently writing Hot Art,
a nonfiction, investigative book focused on the international trade in stolen
paintings, to be published by Free Press in 2009. He lives in Toronto.
Rosalind Porter is Senior Editor at Granta and lives in London.
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LOVE
IS A MIX TAPE:
Life and Loss, One Song at a Time
by
Rob Sheffield
Price: $13.00
ISBN: 9781400083039
Mix
tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re
instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time
was one of miraculous love and unbearable grief. A time that spanned seven years,
it started when he met the girl of his dreams, and ended when he watched her die
in his arms.
Using the listings of fifteen of his favorite mix tapes,
Rob shows that the power of music to build a bridge between people is stronger
than death. You’ll read these words, perhaps surprisingly, with joy in your
heart and a song in your head --- the one that comes to mind when you think of
the love of your life.
Rob
Sheffield is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He has been a rock
critic and pop culture journalist for fifteen years, and has appeared on various
MTV and VH1 shows. He lives in Brooklyn.
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THE
MATHEMATICS OF LOVE
by
Emma Darwin
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 9780061140273
THE
MATHEMATICS OF LOVE is an intimate, poignant story of two people whose lives ---
amazingly, impossibly --- become interwoven in a brilliant tapestry of tragedy,
memory, and love. Emma Darwin’s extraordinary narrative beautifully evokes
the horrors of war, the pain of loss, the heat of passion, and the timeless power
of love.
In 1976, sixteen-year-old Anna Ware is packed off to live
in the English countryside, where, bored and curious, she finds a collection of
old letters between Stephen Fairhurst, a war-weary veteran of battles both bloody
and heartbreaking, and a Miss Lucy Durward, letters in which Stephen shields himself
from the shadows of the past. But as Anna unravels his story letter by letter,
she begins to create a heartrending secret of her own --- one that will connect
her to Stephen in startling and indelible ways.
Emma
Darwin was born in 1964 and raised in London, Manhattan, and Brussels. She studied
drama and theatre arts at Birmingham University, and then worked in academic publishing
before turning to photography and writing. In 2002, as part of the M.Phil. in
Writing at the University of Glamorgan, she started what became THE MATHEMATICS
OF LOVE. She then turned to short fiction, and her story “Maura’s
Arm” won the 2004 Bridport Prize, which was judged by Jim Crace. Emma is
now working on her next novel as part of a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths
College. She lives in London with her two children (and, if asked, will admit
to being a great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin and his wife Emma Wedgwood).
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OTHER
PEOPLE’S LOVE LETTERS:
150 Letters You Were Never Meant to
See
edited
by Bill Shapiro
Price: $22.50
ISBN: 9780307382641
Fevered
notes scribbled on napkins after first dates. Titillating text messages. It's-not-you-it's-me
relationship-enders. In Other People’s Love Letters, Bill Shapiro
has searched America’s attics, closets, and cigar boxes and found actual
letters --- unflinchingly honest missives full of lust, provocation, guilt, and
vulnerability --- written only for a lover’s eyes. Modern love, of course,
is not all bliss, and in these pages you’ll find the full range of a relationship,
with its whispered promises as well as its heartache. But what at first appears
to be a deliciously voyeuristic peek into other people’s most passionate
moments, will ultimately reawaken your own desires and tenderness…because
when you read these letters, you’ll find the heart you’re looking
into is actually your own.
• "i think UR great. wanna have
wine & Tequila again sometime?"
• "I can't believe
you're real, and I think about you constantly in some way or the other all day.
I haven't given the finger to anyone driving since I met you."
• "With you I learned how to fight cleaner, how to talk things out better,
and how to make a strong loving family out of nothing. These are priceless gifts
that I will carry with me the rest of my life. One more thing you did for me:
you left, and I had to get through it."
• "P.S. I
look forward to your letters too much to call. Also, where do you stand on chains?"
Bill
Shapiro is the former editor of Life magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New
York.
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SOCRATES
IN LOVE:
Philosophy for the Die-Hard Romantic
by
Christopher Phillips
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 9780393330670
In
his first book, Socrates Cafe, Christopher Phillips introduced his passion for
the Socratic method and took it on the road --- and in Six Questions of Socrates,
he took it international. Now Phillips goes to the heart of philosophy and Socratic
discourse to discover what we're all looking for: the kind of love that makes
life worthwhile. Love of neighbor, love of country, love of God, love of life,
and love of wisdom --- each is clarified and invigorated in Phillip's Socratic
dialogues with people from all over the world. Throughout, he enriches his dialogues
with commentary on the great philosophers of love from the ancients to Rumi to
Ayn Rand and Anais Nin, leading us to a more complete understanding of what it
means to love today.
Christopher
Phillips, educator, author, and founder of the Society for Philosophical Inquiry,
travels the world over talking about philosophy. Visit him on the Web at www.ChristopherPhillips.com.
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