Love. Books.
This blog contributed by BookGive volunteer, Miranda Ericksen.
Happy Love Month!!
There’s a lotta love at BookGive.
We love literacy, books, volunteering, reading and…blogs that aren’t the typical romantic love February trope-i-ness. If you were hoping for dating tips or a sappy love story, this blog may not be for you. Even the self-professed hopeless romantics like me, spend too much energy focused on romantic love as the all-encapsulating defining metric of the quantity of love in life. Only after periods of divorce, heartbreak, loneliness and sadness do we often realize that life is FULL of love. So this year, let’s spend February 2023 celebrating a few books that highlight and celebrate LOVE in all its beautiful forms.
Let’s start our journey with a celebration of friendship! First up is the lovely book Phosphorescence by Julia Baird. This book is a beautiful memoir about finding the joy and magic in heartbreak. The central theme is how much our friends hold and support us through times of sorrow and times of celebration. Do you have friends you can’t imagine life without? They truly are the sparks that ignited the phosphorescence of our lives.
The next love letter to highlight comes in the unlikely form of Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. This book was a fantastic memoir about grief, the complicated relationship between mother and daughter and an appreciation of culture. Zauner takes readers through stories of her childhood, intermingled with the slow assault cancer brings upon her mother’s health. She reflects through recipes and experiences with her mother’s native Korean foods and traditions. This book is for anyone who knows the love of a mother is complicated.
Okay, this last one does have a little romantic love. As a final recommendation for “books that are lovely that aren’t the traditional love story” please read TJ Klune’s House in the Cerulean Sea. This book is the perfect easy read escape. TJ Klune not only highlights a sweet, slow-developing love story between two men, he allows the reader to fall in love with being a child all over again. The quirky children in the book gradually work their way into the main character’s heart, breaking him of his stuffy shell and giving him permission to be playful and imaginative after years of corporate drudgery. The love story becomes secondary to the rediscovery of childlike wonder.
This February, maybe explore areas of your lives where love may be laying in wait to be recognized. Reach out to a friend, a family member or deep inside yourself to find the warm fuzzy love feelings you may feel have been missing from your life. Or… just scoop up a book and let the author take your breath away, one page at a time.
