February 2021 Group Challenge

Valentine's Day this month, for those who bother with it!

So let's read a book with 'love' in the title, or that features a love story of some sort.

Probably won't be a happy love story; let's face it, in most 1001 Books, relationships are fairly dysfunctional and tempetuous!

I will be reading The Marriage Plot or Voss.

Top of my TBR pile at the moment is Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love so I’ll move it down a few spots so I can read it in February.

Inspired by this challenge I have put a hold on the audiobook for The Great Gatsby as none of the physical books I have on deck seem to be about love. My library says it should be available in about 3 weeks.

I am going to be reading Voss by Patrick White and I also have plans to read Delta of Venus, although I am not sure if counts as a love story - it's usually classed as erotica.

As it happens the top of my prose to-read pile is Swann in Love, so that.

Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved is sitting there on my TBR shelf, just waiting to be read in February!

As planned I read Bowen's A World of Love, an intriguing story of various relationships in a crumbling Irish country house. Love has worn thin over time but the discovery of an old packet of letters revives memories of old loves and stimulates the next generation. No mushy Valentine's romance, but worth a read.

I just started Captain Corelli’s Mandolin which should qualify as a love story.

I managed to get through Voss and a very strange love story it was indeed. I am rethinking reading Delta of Venus this month and will save that one for another day.

I read Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich for this month's challenge. I started reading it last June when it was a group read, but couldn't get into it at all. I restarted it this month and got right into it. I really enjoyed the multigenerational stories and varied points of view for the same events. I like collections of short stories that are interwoven in some way.