Forget fleeting flouncy Valentine’s fluff and take a quick plunge into our steamy list!
Made for all– from the good-plot-lusting bookish lover, the yearning soul who desires delight in the tempers of youthful romance, or even the foodie who is keen to delve into the culinary dark arts, we have books that will add fire to all your quiet romances.
For those who love widely and deeply, here is a list of books called “love”.
Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra
Through the thick of smoke in a shady Bombay bar, narrated by a single omniscient narrator who sits amongst friends, this collection of five short stories, ranging from mystery thrillers to romances and horror, explores the ghosts, desires and longings that haunt and shape the human spirit. Capturing the essence of Bombay and its vagaries, this highly enthralling and captivating read proves the brilliance of Chandra as one of the finest contemporary voices in Indian English literature.
Love and Lies by Clancy Martin
Presented as “An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love”, author and philosopher Clancy Martin’s book is a mix of pop psych and memoir that questions the conventionally held value of “total honesty” in romantic relationships. For him, as he says in his book, absolute honesty is the “greatest threat to a mature and enduring concept of erotic love”. In drawing examples from his own life as well as the literature of greats like Turgenev and Goethe, Clancy builds on an unconventional theory that proposes the value of deceit and dishonesty in long-term romantic relationships.
Love and Lemons by Jeanie Donoforio
A festival of the seasonal and plant-based, Donoforio’s “Apple-to-Zucchini Celebration of Impromptu Cooking” is an ingredient-based guide to easy delicious cooking that promises to bring excitement back to your meal-prep routines. With over a hundred recipes that reinvent your approach to plant-based diets, Donoforio will force you to strap on an apron and bravely venture into the kitchen!
Love and Freindship by Jane Austen
“Love and Freindship”, a novel that emerges from the journals of a 15-year-old Austen, is an epistolary tale written solely for the entertainment of family and friends. Misspelling ‘friendship’, this juvenile tale is a riveting parody of all the romantic tales and tropes read and consumed by a twaddling teenage Jane, is perhaps one of the first of her works that truly start to disseminate the politics infused in narratives of love and their romanticization of romance.
Love Among Bookshelves by Ruskin Bond
Who better to talk about love among bookshelves than our Mussorie-wale-nana-ji. Part-memoir-part-anthology-part-fangirling, ‘“Love Among Bookshelves” narrates the life of Ruskin Bond through the wonderful books that he’s loved, and that have, in no small part, defined him. Come and listen as this apple-cheeked man lovingly introduces you to the great loves of his life (some of which are currently trapped in his shelves).
Love and Other Curses by Micheal Thomas Ford
There is a curse that travels through the Weyward bloodline, and it makes for an excellent romantic trope. Ford’s “Love and Other Curses” follows 17-year-old Sam Weyward, cursed with a ‘the person you fall in love with on your 17th birthday will die’ generational curse, and his attempts to buckle down and sincerely stay away from any romantic opportunities. A gay teenager in small-town New York, spending time with his magic-practicing grandmothers and the drag queens at Shangri-La bar, finds himself growing unwittingly close to Tom Swift, a trans boy who is staying at the lake over the summer. A fantastical twist on the ‘doomed love’ plotline, Micheal Thomas Ford’s pop queer romance is a funny engaging read that is light, except for when it threatens to kill.
Love and Reparation by Danish Sheikh
Comprising two plays, “Contempt” and “Pride”, Sheikh’s “Love and Reparation” displays the battle to decriminalize homosexuality in India and its colonial courtrooms. Starting with the colonial anti-sodomy law, Section 377, and the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision to overturn it, Sheikh’s book asks an essential follow-up question: ‘What now?’ ‘What does this ruling mean and what can it safely promise?’ Or, moreover, ‘what are the limits of law in the grander task of love and making reparations?’ By weaving literature with law, the personal with the public, the poetic intimate sacred with the coded institutionalized profane, Sheikh’s is an essential addition to an ongoing discourse regarding the quality of life as a queer citizen of India.
Love and Revolution by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
The first comprehensive biography of renowned Urdu poet, activist and revolutionary, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, “Love and Revolution” is written by Faiz’s grandson, and invites readers to peer through the maestro’s personal letters, documents and photographs. Capturing the great life of a great man, one who lived through the Partition, became a cultural force in the tender realm of new Pakistan, suffered through several prison sentences, and wrote some of the most evocative Urdu poetry that exists today, this biography offers special and exclusive insight into a man who has buried himself deep in our cultural history.
Love and Youth by Ivan Turgenev
From one of the most sentimental of the Russian literary greats, comes a collection of short stories, and a novella, that narrates tender tales of a “strange, feverish time”. Containing all the young-love romances you’d need: from the ravishes of first heartbreaks to the soaring and searing heights of youthful passion, Turgenev’s terribly tiny and profoundly rich stories capture the essence of his luminary voice and gift for pathos.
Pick up a book called “Love” from any Kunzum store or WhatsApp +91.8800200280 to order. Buy the book(s) and the coffee’s on us.