With the high street awash with heart-shaped objects - enterprising supermarkets are even flogging artisanal cheese hearts along with the chocolate fancies - it's hard to ignore the arrival of Valentine's day. But if your inclination is to go to bed with a good book, what to choose?
Romantic tastes differ, as Alison Flood and Imogen Russell Williams discovered in "the Battle of the Brontës".
The battle lines were drawn when Alison confessed to being bored by Jane Eyre, but recalled that as a schoolgirl: "I was so caught up in the melodramas of Cathy and Heathcliff ("Do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you! Oh God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!") that I'd be pages ahead when it came to my turn to read and would get in trouble for not concentrating."
To which Imogen responded that Brontë lovers divided into two factions - "those drawn to demure, bookish Miss Eyre and those for whom the pyrotechnical hanky-panky between Cathy Earnshaw and black-browed Heathcliff is paramount" – and called them Librarians and Rock Stars. "Alison is undoubtedly a Rock Star. I, on the other hand, am a Librarian."
Extrapolating this divide into more recent fiction is a lot of fun. Fifty Shades of Grey, one assumes, has the "pyrotechnical hanky-panky" to qualify as a Wuthering Heights sort of read. And what of the books that Mills & Boon are scattering around the London Underground this week? "Love on the Underground", they say, will feature books from their "contemporary, Modern, medical and historical series". One imagines commanding, distant doctors in the Mr Rochester mould.
But assuming readers of this blog incline more towards the artisanal cheese than chocolate fancy end of literature, which books would you recommend for this Valentine's day?
