Well, this is my first thread here at the Dope, (waves hello) and I would have liked to begin with something a bit more intellectual, even epic. Sadly it’s not in my nature to be either intellectual or epic.
I’m currently working on my thesis, which is an intellectually enlightening and emotionally rewarding process, by which I mean tedious and soul-sucking. So I’m in need of mental candy. (I have consumed enough of the alimentary sort to have outgrown all my jeans in the past year.) Furthermore, my thesis is on 17th-century French nuns, which, while admittedly very interesting if you’re me, is not the most exhilarating topic imaginable. Certainly not very sexy. (In contrast to the history of Renaissance Italian nuns… :D)
So I turn to you to suggest books that have really appealing romances. Not romance novels, necessarily; I’ve never been able to read anything from the romance section of the bookstore. Just novels that have a somewhat happy ending and a romance, the more incidental the better, with nice characters. Basically, there’s only so many times a girl can reread Jane Austen.
I generally read contemporary fiction, and I’ve never really gotten into sci-fi or fantasy, despite the repeated attempts of my best friend. I love historical fiction, but I very rarely find it done well. (I’m not at all concerned with changing biographical details, but I’m not at all interested in court politics and rarely think that authors capture the “feeling” of the era well - like I would know! :p)* I don’t think I’m a terribly literary reader, but for each friend I horrify with my unintellectual tastes, I piss another off with my elitism. So please just give me your recommendations, and I will hopefully find new escapist fantasies to get me through the strain of reading a few dozen more nuns’ biographies.
*Off topic, but I’d like to plug Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders as one of the best historical novels I’ve read in a long time. The ending’s a bit bizarre, but she really captures 17th-century England, as far as I can tell. My supervisor loves it too. And Brooks consulted with Philip Benedict, who is an awesome historian. I also recently read Sandra Gulland’s Mistress of the Sun, and while I didn’t like it much, she should get bonus points for consulting with Elizabeth Rapley, one of my favourite historians. I’m such a nerd.