I am not very fond of romantic literature and movies in the mainstream sense, where people meet, fall into argument and/or love and after 2,5 hours they get married. Romcoms as a genre bore me (although, interestingly enough, plenty of my favorite fanfics are romantic and comedic, but use tropes differently)
However, the high drama and tragedy of older shoujo manga, early yaoi (Zetsuaiiii~) and that kind of love has always appealed to me. Take Anne Rice, or at least my reading of her as a teenager. Plentiful tragic and failed love stories there, although I didn't demand that the love ended in tragedy. Then there is the other kind of love story, the kind that doesn't burn like insanity, but is nevertheless true and deep. In a way, it's an even rarer find, because it's easy that stories about that just fall flat or end up in some kind of trite "and then they married and lived happily ever after yay" cliche, without any real emotion at all.
One of the novels I remember most fondly from before, and which I re-read not all that long age with great enjoyment, was Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song for Arbonne (Cover image of the first edition I've owned).
( How the flowers bloomed in Arbonne )
A final note, perhaps of importance to my point? This is one of the few books I've owned twice.
The first I inherited from mom and after years of intense reading (her's and mine, she bloody kills the spines), pages stained with tears, food and a rather memorable nosebleed, I felt it was time to retire that copy. Because somehow, a book about the beauty of love and how one should cherish that, deserved to live within a nicer cover.
Except for Good Omens and some Pratchett books, this is the only book I've re-bought just because I want to have a more polished copy. Even Tigana only got one buy, because I borrowed it from the library the firstsix times I read it.
And now I really gotta get back to studying. Abelard and Heloise was it, wot?
However, the high drama and tragedy of older shoujo manga, early yaoi (Zetsuaiiii~) and that kind of love has always appealed to me. Take Anne Rice, or at least my reading of her as a teenager. Plentiful tragic and failed love stories there, although I didn't demand that the love ended in tragedy. Then there is the other kind of love story, the kind that doesn't burn like insanity, but is nevertheless true and deep. In a way, it's an even rarer find, because it's easy that stories about that just fall flat or end up in some kind of trite "and then they married and lived happily ever after yay" cliche, without any real emotion at all.
One of the novels I remember most fondly from before, and which I re-read not all that long age with great enjoyment, was Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song for Arbonne (Cover image of the first edition I've owned).
( How the flowers bloomed in Arbonne )
A final note, perhaps of importance to my point? This is one of the few books I've owned twice.
The first I inherited from mom and after years of intense reading (her's and mine, she bloody kills the spines), pages stained with tears, food and a rather memorable nosebleed, I felt it was time to retire that copy. Because somehow, a book about the beauty of love and how one should cherish that, deserved to live within a nicer cover.
Except for Good Omens and some Pratchett books, this is the only book I've re-bought just because I want to have a more polished copy. Even Tigana only got one buy, because I borrowed it from the library the first
And now I really gotta get back to studying. Abelard and Heloise was it, wot?
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