50 Books to Read if you're ....A Hopeless Romantic - Eric Karl Anderson

50 Books to Read if you're ....A Hopeless Romantic - Eric Karl Anderson. Such a delight to get hold of this and reminisce. 

Starting with David Nicholls 'One day' followed by 'Wuthering Heights' Emily Bronte and ending with Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen going through the collection was nostalgic, was wondering why some were missing like:

• P.S. I Love You - was it because 'Things we never said' by Nick Alexander was included and it had similarity?
• Bridges of Madison County
• Fresh water for flowers

Tempting ones were:

the curiosity to know Miss Queenie Henessy's side of story, and this is the first I would want to read - 'The Love song of Miss Queenie Hennessy'. Since I had read 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' and had loved it. 

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff's true tale of letters exchanges with Frank. Though they never met, it is suffused with powerful feelings of fond friendship and a passion for literature, that will soften the hardest of hearts. 

Felt like rereading, Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Tin Min, Love in the time of Cholera - have posted Tin Min here, others to follow soon.

Haunting Love story 'The Man without a Shadow'; by Joyce Carol Oates, who has tremendous skill for immersing readers within the fluctuating emotional states of her characters narrates the story of a scientist Margot Sharpe working closely with amnesiac, is romantically attached to Elihu Hoopes who has no enduring awareness of her. It reflects how people present different versions of themselves to loved ones, and shows that even the most devoted relationship can be extinguished in a flash. Margot claims to be both doctor and wife to Elihu who has short term memory loss. 

In 'The Incarnations' Susan Barker, gives us the tales of Wang a humble cab driver, who receives strange letters from an anonymous writer of their past lives and present struggles, thus taking us  through history, and playing with notions of gender, sexuality and race with the characters flipping them in different lives. 

A.S.Byatt, in 'Possession' convincingly invents the lives of two poets by combining elements of narrative, diary entries, letters and poetry, which also serve as pieces to a romantic mystery.  

In 'This must be the Place', Maggie O'Farrell beautifully describes how those who love us see us in an idealistic light, which in turn reinforces our own self-confidence. This novel meaningfully shows how complex relationships can be and that we inevitably follow lots of indirect paths in life, but also how powerfully changed we can become when honest connections are made.

Brigid Brophy, brilliantly plays with how we allow ourselves to e romanced and the ways that we can slip out of the shackles of identity to become someone new in 'The Snow Ball'

Dramatic and riveting novel 'A long petal of the sea' shows how a deep love can grow out of a partnership created in desperate times. As it follows the turbulent political changes occuring in two different countries, it also movingly demonstrates the way personal transformation leads to a series of passionate affairs. Isabel Allende is a most widely read Spanish - language author. 

So this book covers not only the original English but translations too. 

It was such a joy to get hold of the book by Eric Karl Anderson.